//Work

First up is work. Things have been going great! I’m still learning more than my brain can handle every day and I’ve been put on a multitude of projects. Well, one project but a bunch of tasks. The issues i thought i was going to have for a while, like understanding how everything is layered and how they like to structure things have come and gone. I’m really starting to understand the bigger picture of how everything works together.  Things are picking up now though, there are release dates that have to be hit, and code that needs to be pushed. And there’s a new guy. He seems pretty cool, and seems to know his stuff. And most of all, has replaced both Zach and I as the new guy. Though we’re still noobs.

//Eve

I’ve become re-addicted to Eve. I know, i seem to say that a lot. But this time does seem a little different. ONYX Heavy Industries has a good bunch of people in it, and I enjoy hanging out with them while online. Heck, there have been a few time when i wouldn’t even be in game, and i’d just be doing my thing (programming or whatever) and chat on teamspeak.

//Development

Speaking of development, that bug has bitten again too. I’ve been working on this http://www.blackmesacorp.com/eveCharCheck. It’s going to become a site that allows directors in corporations to check character’s Limited API keys and see if they can really do all the things they claim (based on the skills and certificates they have). There is currently only very limited functionality, but i hope to expand on it soon once i figure out some major bugs. Something between the ale Eve API libraries and my database libraries is colliding.. and i’m not sure why it’s doing that.

//Social gatherings

I’ve been hanging out too. Not as much as i used to, but i think that’s good too. Sometimes i just want to be alone at my house.  I went and saw The Crazies the other weekend. It wasn’t a bad flick for a horror/thriller/action-ish movie.

//New computer parts

I bought a new monitor the other day, it’s wicked. I am now rocking two 22″ LCD monitors! So much desktop space! They’re Acer x223w’s and they’re fabulous!

Tomorrow (or actually today since it’s 4am and i can’t sleep for some reason), we’ll be doing more onboarding as they call it. And we’ll also go more in depth into what the company does and how i’ll be part of that. The setup they have is similar to where i worked before in a few ways. First it’s a secure site, meaning only people that work there or have business there are allowed access. Second, they’re watched/audited quite a lot since they deal with moving money (electronic payments, not literally moving cash).

I’m a little anxious to actually start looking at code and tables, I want to know how big my learning curve is going to be. It always sucks knowing that you’re going to have to play a bit of catch up, but you don’t actually know how much.

Ugh. My brain is tired but my body isn’t. WHY IS THIS?!

Anyway, tomorrow is day two! I can’t wait to get in there and start doing stuff!

Over the weekend I didn’t do much, played Eve on Friday and Saturday morning, then ran some errands and in the afternoon drove down to Nashville to see a show. The show was alright, the venue could have been better, but the bands made up for the fact that there was no drinking, smoking, moshing, crowd surfing, cursing or any other fun activities that one usually partakes in while at a show. Rcktwn is the fail. On sunday we drive back and once i get home I play some more Eve

On the topic of Eve, i figure i’ll give an update of the goings on of Krandor delMarniol. Krandor’s left Legion of Black Mesa because many of the members have left or stopped playing. Krandor has found a new home with some old friends in UKM (United Kingdom Mayhem) who have many more active players than Legion of Black Mesa did. So far things are pretty good, besides the whole Circle-of-Two getting reset by Northern Coalition thing. While things are pretty turbulent up there UKM has decided to pull it’s industrial assets out of 0.0 and try to find a good empire home for them. After that is done, I think i’ll take Krandor back out to 0.0 to help in the effort to keep our home constellation.

OK, back to real life. This week starts and i still don’t have a computer. I don’t get it back until Wednesday (a whole week later). So I took some half-days and went home early, did laundry, ran some errands, etc.

Now it’s Thursday and I have my computer back up and running (though still not completely updated). It’s good to be able to get back to work

Let’s start back on Friday. I really didn’t do much, mainly read, nap, play video games, mow the lawn, drink beers. Speaking of the lawn.. a few days earlier we’d put down some weed killer and it seems to be working. Now all that needs to be done is get the lawn feed out and get that grass back to being the dominant plant in the yard. I’m serious, half the lawn is brown with dead weeds atm!  Anyway, back to the weekend.. I got a call from Michelle! It was the first day they were allowed to use the phone, so that was pretty exciting Friday night i went out with some friends. First we went to BW3’s for dinner, which was delish and then to some bar in Louisville, The Electric Cowboy or some such. It was ‘eh’.. Not really my scene. Lots of cowboy hats and older people and yeah well you should get the picture.  I left pretty early, it was only midnight i think, and went home.

Saturday we had our weekly SoNotSoft meeting. We talked about what kind of moves we want in our game and tried really hard to come up with a lengthly list. There’s only so much you can do with a pencil i guess. After the meeting Josh came over and we played Counter-Strike, we both suck horribly and soon decided that food was more important than video games. We ended up going to Kanzai in E-town. Man i love sushi! The Thai Chilli Roll was exquisit! I was invited to go to a River Bats game with Sarah, but to be honest I didn’t feel like driving all the way back up to Louisville. So I went back home and played some video games and took a nap.

Sunday I was up early and hit Walmart first thing. I’d heard that ammunition supplies were low (besides every gun owner always saying ammo is low). It was true, there were only 4 boxes of .40 S&W left. I bought three of them. I got back to the house and got out my pistol and made sure that it was clean and not covered in rust My dad came over around 12:30 and showed me his new rifle. A sweet M1903. We headed out and got to Knob Creek Gun Range around 1.  I fired a few magazines of ammo through my pistol (Springfield XD-40) and then tried my dad’s new rifle. Man does that thing kick! After only 5 rounds my shoulder was pretty beaten up.. After i found out later because i wasn’t holding it quite right So now i have a nicely bruised shoulder. After we’d finished we went back to my place to clean our weapons and eat some food. Sean started up the grill and put burgers on. Things took too long i guess, so dad left, since he still had to go take the dogs on a walk. And then Kristina came over and kidnapped Sean for dinner. So i was there with a grill full of burgers. There’s no way i could eat them all Instead i played some Eve. We were trying to run some wormhole plexes.. we didn’t do too well. Apoll0s lost his domi and Scab lost his apoc. I got a bit frustrated and logged pretty much right after that. I went back to reading a new book (Relentless) for a few hours before i went to bed.

Now it’s back to work for a few days before the next weekend, which will be pretty busy too. Family is coming in starting on Thursday for the family reunion my dad is hosting this year. Saturday we get a tour of the Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown.

So far i’m very happy with it! There are a few things i need to fix, like getting the front peripherals hooked up properly (USB, Headphones, etc) and getting a few extra fans for the extra fan spots. But other than that it’s perfect! It’s much quieter than my old case. This is mainly due to the fact that it runs much cooler than my old case and the graphics card doesn’t have to spin up as much.

It’s very nice, very black, and very sexy

I’ve uploaded a few pics to my flickr, go check them out!

In the meantime though, i’ll talk about other things; like the garden. The plants are growing, ever so slowly, and i think there are some blossoms for the corn and peppers; which is very exciting.

I also got some new books; impulse buys really. T-Minus and Hackers. I already finished T-Minus, it wasn’t a very long read. Plus the pictures were nice Hackers on the other hand is a bit longers, and not as exciting (for me anyway), though it is very informative and interesting. I’ll keep plugging away at that one for sure.

blah.. I’d really hoped to be able to talk about my new case.

I’ve put Windows 7 on yet another machine! Now it’s running on my Macbook Pro, one of my desktops, and my Eee PC 900! The Eee PC does pretty well even though it’s only got a 900Mhz processor. I’ve been thinking about putting it on my living room computer as well to see how it works as a Media Center. But I think I’ll hold off on that for a bit longer. I’ll want to wait to see what the prices for Windows 7 are actually going to be. If they’re too expensive I’ll have to down grade all my machines to XP (or find a hacked version of Windows 7). Seriously, no OS is worth more than 200 dollars. If I can get OS X for less than 200, and Linux for free, why should i pay more for an OS that comes from a certain company which has consistently produced dismal software? Seriously..

If you want to try Windows 7 on your netbook, you can check out the tutorial i followed: here.
I also read this one while I was in the middle of installing, it looks like it’s geared more towards the Eee PC 900: here. (I’ll say though, that his statement about needing a 4GB USB stick is inaccurate, i used a 120GB Seagate External USB HDD with the first tutorial and it worked fine).

It’s almost 4pm and Brad’s falling asleep at the computer again.. wtf.

After that I installed Eve, Steam, and Pidgin; you know, the essentials. I haven’t installed any of my steam games, but Eve runs quite well. Pidgin works, I really didn’t expect that to break. I was able to get all my Danbo wallpapers from my desktop transferred over and they are now in slideshow mode for my wallpaper. Very sexy

So far, so good. I’m really liking Windows 7. If things keep up like this I might break the cycle and buy a legit copy of Windows again. The last time i bought a copy of Windows it was XP, just after Vista came out.

We shall see

I downloaded and installed some updates and then got right into installing Visual Studio C# Express and XNA Game Studio 3.0. Over my phone, it’s taking forever! C# finally installed and i’m about 50% on the XNA download (it’s only 62MB, but it’s been going for about an hour )

So far here is what i like:

1. Aero. So sexy, and it runs like a dream.
2. The new desktop personalization features (having your desktop wallpaper change every x minutes; changing the base color of all your windows, taskbar, etc
3. The new window changer, alt+tabbing between all your windows and getting a preview
4. Being able to choose what icons are shown and which ones are hidden in your system tray.
5. The snipping tool
6. the new paint, it’s about fraking time!

That’s really all i have right now. Once i get home and i’m able to get some fat pipe connected to this thing, i’ll install steam, eve, and whatever else i’m missing (IM program maybe?). We’ll see how those run. All that after I install bootcamp and get everything working.

For anyone that has a fairly new (meaning in the last 3 or 4 years) computer that’s just sitting around collecting dust, but you’re not ready to try it on one of your main machines, I’d highly recommend this. I know this will probably be my main OS on my laptop. The only thing they need now it for Windows to be able to read other file systems (like ext3, hint hint!).

you can get the RC here.

When it first arrived!

Another box inside the box!

ooooooh! pretty

Still with it’s protective screen on

With the keyboard exposed.

I’ve only had it a day, and so far i’m very happy with it. It’s my first real smartphone so i don’t have anything to compare it to. Well besides the iPhones that i’ve played with. This has a similar feel in some ways, but in other ways it’s totally different. I do admit, i like the keyboard even though it’s tiny.

I’ll give more impressions as i find them. I might even be able to post from my phone to my blog! that would be very nifty!