Monday, February 27, 2006

Oh Dark Thirty

Well, not really. It's quarter past 10, Monday in the AM. I am on day 3 of my unintended three day weekend. However, I made the mistake of staying up all night playing Dawn of War instead of just going to bed at a decent hour. Why? Because I'm an idiot. I think I'm going to grab a few hours worth of nap before starting the Great Laundry Run. Whee.

who needs sleep? never gonna get it

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Carnevale

So there's this old mill built near an old gold mine in Jamestown (a suburb of Greensboro). Someone thought to convert the mill/main building of the mine/land into a castley type deal. All told the place is pretty sweet. Anyway, hey hosted a Carnevale costume-esque masquerade-y type thing this past Saturday. Lots of folk in costume. A vastness of people in club clothes with cheap masks and a lot of goth punks (tell that to a goth or someone claiming to be punk and watch them puff up) wandering about, but there was a large collection of actual Venetian inspired masquerading going on. And aside from that, there were several just awesome costumes. I've a few pictures I'll add presently.


















That's me in the middle with Wes (left) and Doug (roommate, right) at Fire and Sticks Japanese steakhouse prior to Carnevaling.


















Heather and Squatch looking very happy to have their picture taken.























This is Suzie at the actual event.























Lani looking very blue (da ba dee, da ba die).























An, admittedly poor, side shot of King Neptune. A lot of these costumes got ridiculously extravagent.






















Like the poorly photgraphed "The Iron Man" here. Man, what an awesome costume that was.






















And lastly, but leastly, me in my mail and surcoat.

here she comes again

Monday, February 20, 2006

The Scrimshaw Falcon

Wow. Sounds like a cool name for a book or something. But alas, it refers to a model. I put together and painted the Eldar Falcon grav tank that I have (of two) a few days ago, and just got to painting it last night. And since the Ulthwe army I want to field uses black and bone with red accenting (a familiar paint scheme. hmmm.) I thought a few bone-colored panels would look good along the sides. And then I remembered something I had seen in a Siegler's & Co. catalog I had. Scrimshaw. For those who don't know, scrimshaw is a term for artwork carved into bone or horn. It originates from the whaling days of the 1800's. Sailors would often carve artwork into whale teeth to pass the time out at sea, and then sell the artwork when they got back to shore. So I copied some of the mappy-type notions from the scrimshaw, fiddled out a few runes, and bam! scrimshaw falcon. It looks pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

And today is day one of two off in a row for me. A rare priveledge in the retail world. And I started it in good style by sleeping until 3:30PM. Huzzah. Might just get stuff done of the cleaning type the next couple of days. Shock of shocks.

In other news today, I've started the overclocking of Skywarp. I've currently juiced it up to 2.0GHz instead of the 1.8 it came out of the box with. I've not fully tweaked the voltage just yet, though, so I might be able to squeeze a little more juice out of this machine soon! But, I must go wantingly check the mail to see if any more of my over-priced space elves have made it in yet.

nandato?
!

Friday, February 17, 2006

Oh Why Not?

It's been awhile since I posted about Skywarp. Which is significant, since I've made some big changes since the last post. A shiny new processor and a spankerific new video card.

Skywarp 3.0*
Athlon64 3000+ (256KB L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache)
Currently running at 1.8GHz, but I might begin the overclocking soon.
Thermalright XP-90 heatsink
2024MB PC3200 Corsair RAM
Not overclocked. Yet.
SOYO CK8 Dragon Plus Socket 754 Motherboard
160GB HDD (internal)
160GB HDD (internal)
200GB HDD (external)
16x DVD-ROM
16x DVD+/-RW
Floppy Drive
6-in-1 Media Reader
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB Video Card
Sony Trinitron 19" (Viewable) Flat CRT monitor
6 Port USB 2.0 PCI card (1 internal)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital sound card
Altec Lansing 5.1 surround speakers w/ powered subwoofer
4 80mm (Purple 4 LED) case fans
1 80mm (Purple 4 LED) CPU fan
2 80mm (Purple 4 LED) power supply fans
Chieftec 420W power supply

It is a shweet rig, it is. The awesomey bit is that the CPU is actually supposed to be a mobile processor. Which means it uses less voltage for the same performance. And it's a much cooler chip to use. So it's awesome to use for overclocking. And right now it's running about 15 degrees Celsius cooler than the Sempron chip did. And that x1300 is an awesome card. It's the newest card I've ever owned. When I bought that old GeForceFX5500 I had, it was a year or so old, technology wise. The GeForceFX6800 had already come out. But the Radeon X1300 Pro came into the store the day I got it. I was just window shopping, comparing prices. It was so new, Newegg even had it at our retail price. It was the first time my store discount was a better deal on a video card. It's twice as fast and twice as good as the 5500 is. But I never really had any complaints about it. Once I build that media center/server/guest computer, I plan to put the 5500 in it. But I actually have a gaming rig! Yay! Speaking of which, I think I'll get to playing some Dawn of War now.

*Anything in italics is a new addition.

Repent! For tomorrow you die!

Random Day Off

Today was nice. It was a random Friday off. I actually managed to get a lot done. Who knew? I slept a whole damn lot. I passed out around 8:30 last night. And aside from about 30 minutes from 10:30 to 11:00PM, I slepy until about 1:39 this afternoon. Man. That was just what the doctor ordered. I'd been have a cold in sections all week. Started with a mild fever on Sunday with some minor aches and weariness. Then earlier this week, the achiness was gone, but instead, I was dry and scratchy of breathe and throat. And here towards the end of the week, I have been sneezy snuffily, but none of the aching and horrible dry feeling. *shrug* This weather sure ain't helpin' none. It was 70 degrees out today. In February. The heck. And tomorrow (the next day, for those at home keeping count) is forcasted with a HIGH of 35 with a chance of sleet and snow. Bloody hell! This is weird even for North Carolina! I want cold and snow like a few years ago when half of North Carolina lost power. Yeah, it sucked but cold and snow like that. I want a reason to need this ecxessive ability to handle cold not heat that I have. Instead of living in a constant level of "just a hair too warm to really be comfortable in clothing." It's annoying, really. Especially considering I spend half my waking life in pants. And forced to wear shoes. Don't ask me how it works, but often when I am too warm, I just take off my socks and shoes, and bam. My feeling of the temperature is regulated out to something more comfortable. I'm baffled.

Anyway. Got some contacts today! Yay insurance! It's very nice having some actual peripheral vision. Soon I'll actually get some new glasses. These glasses have served me well, but I've had them since 10th grade or there's about. Almost 7 or 8 years. It's time for some new ones.


Crackhead Mike, it turns out, is not leaving, as previously rumored. It seems his scheme (read: utter BS) of getting refurbished iPods from Indonesia fell through thanks to local political unrest. Uh-huh. Either way, we're stuck with him. At least until I can figure out how to get him fired. I'm not malicious, but he makes a huge mess back there that takes all the rest of us in the precinct to clean up. We've had to give away a lot of labor in refunds or free work in relation to his screw ups. He seems to abjectly refuse to follow the operating procedures. But we can't fire him because it would negatively affect our turnover rate and God forbid we should jeopardize that cheap plastic trophy we just got for having a low turnover rate. God forbid. This is why I fear I'll never become a manager. I just don't have the tolerance for bullshit necessary for it.

nani?

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Snow!

First snow for me in the longest time. Though it's not the same as at mom's. That kinda mad me a little sad. You have to understand that I love snow. Nothing to me is prettier than a blanket of white below and above. In a more rural setting, falling snow brings a very calming hush to the world. It was nice to see, but here in the city, it loses some of its calming effect. But it still snowed. And like all day. It was too warm for accumulation, sadly, but it kept going anyway. It was nice.

Impatiently, do I await the arrival of my Eldar army. Having all but mastered the Dark Angels, I figured it was about time I got to building the army I originally thought about. Eldar. Space Elves. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dark Angels. So much about them resonates thematically with me. Dark and brooding, the fact that they are considered the First Space Marine Chapter Evaarrrr, of all the chapters in the mythos, the Dark Angels are the only ones that got split in half during the Horus Heresy (where half the good guy armies went bad, for the non-40K players out there) as opposed to the rest which went one way or the other, they're slower moving and very shooty, stubborn as hell. But the Eldar are just so damn sweet looking. Nothing, even the Mighty Land Raider, is cooler looking than the Eldar Falcon Grav Tank. They are, however, a much weaker army. But to counter that, they're much, much faster. It'll be a new thing for me, but I'm looking forward to it. But I chose the Ulthwe (of the Damned) army to field. A lot of freaky psychic powers and a brooding black and bone color scheme. This will be fun. It's just a shame that Jerod's 'Nids will chew through them just as easily as they do my Dark Angels. Oh well.

Wow. Another 4AM post. I need to start going to bed a whole lot earlier. o.O

Oh yeah. Getting sick? Sucks. Getting sick enough to need to stay home..for ME..really, really sucks. Bleh.

tolkien-based heavy metal...yum

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Patches and Expansions

Well. After installing the latest patch for Dawn of War and the new expansion for it, I went form being able to win every battle, albeit sometimes only just and only after hours and hours of slogging through wave after wave of enemy, to getting my ass handed to me every time. WTF, over? This is standard difficulty. Not like I was tromping though at insane and suddenly insane is harder. I mean really. How is it that the computer can pull out specialty squads so damn fast? I've got just as much resources AND multi-tasking and I'm still not fast enough. And since when were Space Marines so flimsy? *shakes head*

waaaaaaaagggghhh!