www.graphjam.com

Absolutely *ucking hysterical....

BSG...finally a hint....

"A dying leader will know the truth of the Opera House. The missing three will lead you to the five who are of the 13th. You, Kara Thrace, are the Herald of the Apocalypse and will lead them to their doom."

So any fans out there? Whaddya think?

Yeah...new INK

Well it was very spur of the hour, shall we say. Here in Vegas on vacation and after a morning at Hoover Dam we came back into town, stopped at the hotel and then went over to Ironhorse Tattoo to look at flash. We hadn't planned on ink while we were here so did not bring any of our stored art ideas. So, back to the flash. Dan and I both looked through the collection and I settled on this nice red and black dragon....and onto my calf it went.

I guess my right leg is going to be my red and black leg. Hadn't really anticipated that but I am already thinking how the rest of what I want to do on my right leg will work in and around the new kid on the block.

No pool or hot tub while were are here in Vegas I guess. The things we do for INK!

4-18-08: Just realized that I had posted this pic directly from my laptop and had not flipped the image. The ink really is on my right calf...and now the picture actually is correct. Surprised none of you eagle-eyed inksters caught my mistake! :-)

In response to Carp.....

Alan Parsons Project....

What can I say 'cept there are 13 albums on my iPhone. :-)

Some RAM, some RAM, my kingdom for some RAM.....

On Easter I was at my sister-in-laws place and she and her husband we continuing to complain about how slow their old Dell Dimension 3000 was/is. Having used the machine on occasion (to set their daughters up with their iPod Fatty's) I concurred. Being the somewhat power-y Mac user that I am that KNOWS to buy as much RAM as you can (regardless of system software), I had assumed that their XP installation was riddled with crap and anti-virus and that was what was slowing down the machine. Tracy then mentioned that she checked the RAm on the machine and it was listing 512mb.

"512mb?" I said. "You're joking right?"

"No"

"Well there in lies a big piece of your problem."

"So I should buy more" Jim said.

"Yes, as much as the machine will take."

"How do I know that?" was the obvious question from Jim......

I then spent the next few minutes at Dell's website researching what kind of RAM the 3000 took and how many slots. 2 slots, each capable of handling up to 1gb pc3200 300mhz srdam sticks. Cool. So that's what I told Jim. We checked some prices on-line and he bought two. Next he wanted to know how to change out the RAM. So I had him unplug everything and pull the box out of the shelf. I opened it up to show him the two slots with the one 512 stick that was in the machine.

Low and behold there were already two sticks in the machine. UT OH, I thought, one of the sticks is bad. I told Jim either one of the sticks was bad or one of the slots was bad. We reversed the two sticks in the slot and rebooted. Still only 512. Fuck, one of their RAM slots had gone south. He had two 1gb sticks on the way and couldn't cancel the order though he could return one. I told him that of course it might be possible to get the slot fixed but that would probably not be worth it. I told him to put one of the 1gb sticks in along side one of the 512s and see what the machine told him. If it was still 512, he coud just reverse the sticks and at least get 1gb. It would still improve things alot.

Three days pass....

Phone call: "Bill, I put in the 1gb stick like you said and the machine is reading 1.25gb...."

(Light bulb goes off in Bill's head!)

"Oh crap Jim, it never occurred to me that the 512 in your machine was actually two, 256 sticks! No worries Bud! Both slots are working, go ahead and put the other 1gb stick in and you should be golden at a full 2gb!"

One hour passes...

Phone call: "Bill, the second stick is in and Hannah is on the computer, iTunes cranked, iPod syncing, four IMs going and her little fingers are flying. We are set and working at 2gig."

"Excellent."


Post script: It never even occurred to me that the 2 sticks in the machine would only be 256s. I have been away from that kind of useage for so long. My mind just sat on two 512s with one broken in some manner as the base possibility. It also doesn't help that XP does not identify the breakdown of the RAM in per slot manner like Macs do, at least not in a way that I know where to find it in the XP system reporting tree.

All's well that ends well.

EVE-Online

So....just over a month ago I was reading through my normal news items and saw a story about EVE, the space-based MMOG, now being available for Mac. Hmmm, I thought, that sounds interesting. I had a mild interest in WoW but had never pulled the trigger to check it out. A space based free flowing game seemed right somehow for gaming on the computer. I decided to check it out.

WOW

Can we say hooked?

The game has been in existence since 2003. The programmers are based in Iceland and their servers are in London. The "EVE Cluster", the star system that is the EVE world, is some 5000 star systems.

There are a few differences with WoW.

First, the EVE "playing field" is not broken into shards like WoW. When 30,000 players are in the game they are all playing in the same world, not copies each containing a few thousand players.

Secondly, the game is not a face to face game like WoW. EVE players all fly ships and interact ship to ship, ship to station. The EVE builders have stated that a later addition to the game will give players the ability to ambulate in stations.

Third, there are no "levels" per se in EVE. Players train skills and advance in proficiency in that manner. Skills are ranked, some are harder to learn than others, and the more advanced skills have other skills as prerequisites. Skills give players bonuses in game play, both in running and maintaining your ship(s) and in dealing with the NPC world of the game. A player can train one skill at a time and the skill trains in real time. The beginning skills can take as few as 15 minutes to train. The higher level (proficiency in a given skill from 1 to 5) of skill and the higher rank (difficulty of the skill relative to other skills from 1 to 12), the skill will take longer to train. The longest training time I have seen so far in my month of play is 8+ days. Skills continue to train when you are logged out of the game. So you can set a long skill to train when (if?) you go to bed or if you are going to be away from the game for a couple of days. Even when not actively playing, if you have a skill training, there is this background connection to the game, you "know" that your character is still working at something.

Most importantly I think is that in EVE there is no "one" story path to follow in the game. You can be anything you want. A fighter, a good guy, a bad guy, a miner, a tradesman, a bounty hunter, a corporate megalomaniac bent on taking over the whole cluster. Whatever floats your boat. You can play against the computer, receiving missions from agents or fly in to low security (sec) space and take on other players in direct Player vs Player combat.

The game also provides for voice capabilities so when you are in a fleet with other players you can talk to them in real time.

I have no vested interest in this plug. If you were thinking about trying a massive multi-player on-line game, take EVE for a spin!

eve-online.com

Oh yeah, one more thing....the graphics are un-fucking-real.

Bill

Vegas Bound...

Well we finally pulled the trigger and have decided to add Vegas to our New Mexico trip so we'll be there for SmokeOUT the first weekend in April. Finally going to meet some of the fine cigar smoking men I usually chat with online.

Crapped out on Yahoo.....

Friends and acquaintances....

Alot of you here I also know to some degree on or through Yahoo. Several weeks ago I got phished via a link through Yahoo Messenger, sent to a Yahoo page that was by all accounts PERFECT in it's look-alike-ness to a real yahoo page. Within fifteen minutes I was logged out of messenger and then could not log back in. Beyond the fact that I am still kicking myself for being fooled, I am no longer in charge of my old yahoo ID: tat2dredbear. The associated 360 page is now out of my control and Yahoo, in their very typical way, can only seem to send me form letters in response to my requests to shut it down or get me a new password.

I love how when the first thing I tell them is my password was hacked, the first thing they tell me is "log into your account." DUH, not really possible now is it? Geez.

Anyway, I have created an alternate yahoo ID, tat2dredbear65, and anyone here who happens to also chat on yahoo messenger, can find me at that ID. My aol and iChat ID remains the same, archhawk.

Catch ya later....