Twev1701.net 2002-2012

(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
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I just looked at the satellite map from The Weather Channel again after I made my last post. It seems the storm is moving faster then I thought, and the ice band is getting larger and is right over Pittsburgh right now. That means that the storm is most likely going to be in full force right around the time I have to come home tonight.

How did I ever get so lucky??

It appears we have another storm getting ready to pounce on us. This one is a wee bit nastier though. It’s going to start off tonight as snow, then freezing rain, then sleet, and then rain all together by tomorrow. Sounds like fun!! I work until 10-10:30 tonight, so who knows what I’m going to be walking out to at that time. According to The Weather Channel, we should get about 1-3 inches of snow from the storm before it starts to switch over. I think the thing that makes me upset about this storm is the fact that the rain is going to melt all of the snow away, and then as soon as it gets colder again, it’s all going to freeze into one big ice rink. Snow is very movable, but ice…not so much. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what plays out.

I finally got to play Guild Wars last night. In fact, since I closed with Joel last night we hopped on together. We had a great time! He ran my Necromancer all over the place so I could level up better and hunt where he hunts. Also, I finally let go of the Sons of Ramzi and joined his guild. When we first got he game, we were all hell bent and getting our own guild and building it up. Well, let’s just say that that never really happened. We did form the guild, but then Joel’s computer broke and he wasn’t on for about a month. Then after that, JP got busy with the wedding and such and stopped playing. Around the same time, I was getting busy and I would only play maybe one or two nights a month. After a while, it was basically only Joel playing. He came to me one day and asked if I would be offeneded if he left the guild. I told him no one would be and wished him the best of luck. Since then, he’s told me quite a bit about his guild and how cool and helpful they all are. So, last night I decided to disband our guild and join his. I really want to try and make time to play a few nights a week, so we’ll see how far that actually goes. I’m planning on playing again tonight. I was actually going to play this morning but I slept in something feirce, and don’t have time to do much of anything other than grab abite to eat and get ready for work. I guess staying up until 2:30am will do that to you somtimes–especially when you’re not used to it anymore!!

So, the plan today is work, then home, and then play Guild Wars as the storm comes and pounds us. Should be good times!

So…it’s 12:45pm and it now up to a balmy 15 degrees outside. The cats and I are in here huddling around a space heater like mad. If it wasn’t for the fact that they have literally priced decent heat so that no one in the middle class bracket can afford it, I’d crank up the heat right now and be able to feel my toes again. As it stands, we have our 2 little space heaters to keep the house from turning into an ice cube. I hate greedy coprparate bastards. I’d tell them they all could burn in hell but I’d be a bit envious of them right now.

Well, time to go chip away the ice on the shower head and take a shower. Toodles!

To say that the oast 2 mornings have been frigid would be an understatement. Yesterday morning when I got up at 5:15am, it was 5.2 degrees out. When I got up today at 7:45am, it was -1.1 degrees out, shattering our old record of 2 degrees. In fact, that said that in Benton, a town near our farm which is about 45 minutes away, it was -21 degrees there this morning. Now that’s cold! It supposed to get bck down to about 5 tonight, but after that, we should stay in the double digits at night for the rest of the week. In fact, we have another winter storm headed our way tomorrow night. It’s supposed to start out as snow, then sleet and feezin rain, then rain, back to sleet and freezing rain, and then back to snow again by Friday morning.

The last few days have been pretty good. We were in New Jersey most of the day on Saturday to celebrate Jess’s birthday with her family. The drive down was fine since it had stopped snowing by then. Although surprisingly they got about 2 more inches of snow then we did up here. Most strange. I have to say that I had a really good time at her mom’s house. Kelly showed up which makes things fun as always. We all had a nice dinner, and after desert I got a virus off of Jenn’s laptop as promised. After that, the girls pretty much hung out and talked wedding stuff while Steph and I sat there and talked tech/business for most of the night. We left a lot later then we wanted to but it was all worth it!

Sunday was my totally unoffical company Christmas party. See, my company does shit for us on Christmas. So, for the past 3 years we’ve all gotten together in our department and set aside a night where we go out, have a few drink, some food, and a lot of laughs. All I will say is that it was a hell of a party!!

The last 2 days have mostly been taken up with work and various domestic things. Although, we did kind of deviate from the plan last night and went out for a bite to eat. We ended up going to Asian Cafe. Although we did behave ourself this time and didn’t order one peice of sushi. That totally made the bill a lot more respectable!

Today I start a 3 day closing streak, which comes as a total relief to me. I love to open, but after the past few days of activities, sleeping in never felt so good. Of course, ‘sleeping in’ for me today was waking up at 7:45am. Amazing how that definition changes when your alarm usually goes off at 4:47am!!!

Oh, on a g33k note, I got something done last night which I have been meaning to for a long time. When I got home from work yesterday, I had some cleaning that I wanted to get done before dinner. So, I decided that before I start, I should edit the XML file for my Xbox Media Center and have it point to all of my iTunes Podcasts so I could listen to TWiT while I clean. So, as I was doing this I got an idea into my head. I did a bit of Google searching, and came up with the right answers. Long story short…I can now play all of my DVD rips through my Xbox! That means that I can now enjoy all of the movies that I have on my HD in the comfort of my own living room with full surround sound! Sometimes it’s good to be the g33k! The funniest thing though, it that it was always capable of doing this, I just never really knew it. In fact, that sucker is capable of doing a lot more then I thought it ever could and that there are actually Python add-ons for it. I may have to play around with some of these later on in the week.

A little something to warm everyone up now that the snow has stopped!

(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
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I like to switch up my software now and again. In fact, right now I am posting this using Opera instead of Firefox. Anyway, I have been using Trillian for about 7 months now, and with the release of AOL’s new Triton client, I decided to give it a try.

I should preface all of this by saying that I used to be a die-hard AIM user. I’m not talking about the protocol, but the program. I tried Trillian when it first came out years ago and every time I did I went back to AIM. Then, AOL started killing my client with annoying ads that you couldn’t block. To combat them, I found a nice little program call Dead AIM. But like all good things, this guy turned around and started wanting money for the nice little util he used to give away freely. Not a problem for a guy with connections to get a hacked copy. But after a while, it got more annoying and more annoying to get a hacked copy since by now he added a validating process that made it harder to to hack. I was forced again to but bombarded with ads. But, without Dead AIM, I lost 2 of my new must-have features — tabbed messaging and a chat log.

Then I discovered Gaim. I had known about Gaim for years as it was the defacto Linux AIM client. However, once I head that they made Windows port of it, I was all of that shit. I tried it and really enjoyed it. In fact, I even enjoyed the fact that I could also be logged to Yahoo! and ICQ at the same time through one client. While gaim was great, had all of the features I required including tabs and logs, the reality was that it was damn ugly and not so user friendly. Sure, looks aren’t everything, but they do count. That’s when I went back to Trillian and I really haven’t looked back since.

That is until yesterday.

I downloaded the new Triton client since their BETA client showed some promise. This morning after the snow storm, I sat down and decided to install it and give it a whirl. From the get-go the client is quite nice. It’s got a clean interface, and all of the familiar bells and whistles. It even supported tabbed browsing now, and I was even thinking that chat logs were something I could live without. Then, something made me check my Task Manager to see how much resources this guy takes up. I almost fell off of my seat! I thought that maybe I was overreacting, so I loaded up Trillian as well. I opened one chat window in each client and then hit up the Task Manager again. The results were shocking! AIM, requiring 2 separate processes, takes up a staggering 57.3 mb of memory, while Trillian only takes up 12.4mb of memory. Just to show you that I’m not making this up, here’s a screen cap of my task manager.

The red highlighted itmes are the AIM client, and the blue highlight is Trillian. Big difference, eh?

I think I will be sticking with Trillian for the time being. It’s really a shame because I like the new Triton client, but with that kind of memory usage, it just doesn’t make sense.

I tried going to work today. I really did. However, I didn’t get too far. I got stuck in the snow a total of 4 times, and after I finally broke free for the fourth time, I twas clear to me that not only was I not making it to work, I wasn’t going to make it back home either. So, I had to abandon ship. I left my little Neon on the side of the road and had to walk home in the driving snow. It was actually really cool because it was lightning out. I’ve seen this a few times and it’s pretty wicked. In fact, when I called Jess to tell her I was walking back home, she said the thunder had woken her up. Nice…

As for the snow totals, we won’t know for a few more hours. It’s still coming down out there like a mother fucker. I left for work at 5:45am, and right before I left I shoveled the patio and drive way. Also, when I pulled out of the driveway, where my car was was completely devoid of snow. When I got home at 6:25am, there was over 2 inches of snow where I had everythig cleared, including where my car was. To give you another perspective, I walked homeon the roads and the snow was still up over my ankles. I’m trying to convince Jess to stay home today. Yes, we need the money and both of us losing a day’s pay is bad, but it’s better then having her get hurt trying to get to work.

Besides…I need a ride to dig out my car later…

We have 2 storms that are going to collide to the south of us and merge like Voltron, forming a storm that is going to pelt us with some decent snow. Depending on your source, it’s anywhere from 3 to 8 inches. I love snow but htis is going to make my morning commute a little hellacious since I will be driving to work literally in the middle of the storm. It’s supposed to start around midnight tonight and end around noon tomorrow. I have to be at work at 6am. You do the math. All of this means that I am going to have to wake up earlier since I’m figuring it’s going to take me about 40 minutes to drive to work. (normal drive is about 15 minutes) To make matters worse, the snooze button on our alarm clock broke a few days ago. So, for the past 2 days I’ve had to literally shut the alarm off when it goes off, and being the sleep lover that I am, I usually fall back asleep. I can usually afford the extra few minutes, but not tomorrow morning. So, I went to Target after work and picked up a new alarm clock. Then, on my way home I stopped at PetSmart and picked up 6 new fishies for the fish tank. Jess bought 3 little guys a few weeks ago but 2 of them didn’t last too long. The one that did remain looks aweful lonely swimming around by himself, so now he has company!

On another topic, Jess’s birthday was fun. I drove her to work in the morning since it was cold and she didn’t have to walk the 5 blocks from the parking lot to her building. I told her I was going to make spagheti for dinner since we had gone out for her birthday the night before and that we had to do some grocery shopping. When I picked her up from work, I started driving off and it took her almost 5 minutes to realize that we weren’t heading in the direection of home. When she asked where we were going I told her I thought she might enjoy her favorite burger at Red Robin for her birthday ratehr then pasta. She perked right up! We went tehre and had another awesome meal. But, right before we got our food I snuck off to the bathroom and on the way back I snagged our waitress and told her it was Jess’s birthday and if they do things. She smiled and said she would take care of it. Sure enough, after we were done with our meal, here comes the entire wait staff with baloons, singing, and clapping with theis huge desert for her. I think she was a little embarassed, but deep down I personally think she loved every minute of it!

Well, I guess I’d better go fill my icemelt bucket and get ready for the storm before I start dinner. Later…