Asleep at the Wheel 40 Miles Left to Go
If I’m using one of the Ministry of Ontario’s Self Serve Kiosks and not making use of expensive, human labour by going to one of their centres, why am I charged a “convenience fee”? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that because I’m entering all the data, and not some unionized person on the other side of the wicket, that I’m actually saving the gummint some money? It’s only a buck, but seriously…
They’ll be bamboozled for hours, and will convince everyone it’s the new gospel. It reminds me a lot of the old Press Release Generator from the SGI intranet (back when SGI was still relevant).
It would seem that someone set up a little place to poke around while I wasn’t looking. It’s been there for a while – I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. Welcome to the pintday party line, and be sure to beat the sysadmin regularly.
Oh, and I have a stored rant from that store regarding the last time I group led. Some of the instructors just leave a lot to be desired with people new to the sport. *sigh*
Tiger Woods is back. No matter if he ultimately loses the Masters, he is putting on a jaw-dropping performance. He had a terrible first round, and could have packed it in then. He didn’t, and is destroying the course right now. He birdied the last three holes yesterday, and the first four holes played today. Seven in a row, even with a 12-hour break to lose the momentum.
He is the man, and it’s going to be hard to pay attention to packing this afternoon. I best get my ass in gear and finish before 3pm (Woods & DiMarco’s tee time).
…
Update: 16th hole. Chip from the second cut on the fringe, hang it out, watch it come in, seeing eye to the hole, hang on the lip… and in. Wow.
Following Coop’s lead, I installed the beta of Gallery 2, the next major release of the photo album software most people on deadsquid.com use, for my pics this eve. It’s much prettier, but there’s a number of things I’m not crazy about, most notably the drop down action bars for regular users. I’m sure there’s a way to tweak the configs, but that’ll be for another day.
It looks pretty, at least, and the installation script made migrating from the current version a breeze.
Today was supposed to be packing day for the move to the new digs on Thursday. It didn’t happen, and I hate being sick. Ah well, these things happen, so the day was used for the forces of good battling the forces of evil. To assist me with that, I finally finished Halo 2 (I had been sitting at the last mission for about 4 months). I know it’s been written about ad nauseum, but I really wasn’t prepared for the abrupt ending, and now I understand why so many people felt cheated.
The final “battle” was over in about 30 seconds, and it was a bit of a fluke on my part. If you’re ever wearing a shield generator, remember that it shields both ways. This is important if a plasma grenade becomes attached to your leg, because it’ll direct the blast back in. I tell you, the practical things I learn playing games.
So that’s my big news. Six months later, I finish Halo 2. I got Burnout 3 three months after Halo 2, and finished it a month sooner. Ah well, at least I’m finishing games, which is a little different than in the past.
Bobo, coop, and I played our first round of the spring today (at least, I think it was bobo and coop’s first round). I didn’t suck, which surprised me. Four birdies on the day, and managing to hold par or better from the 11th through 18th hole made me a pretty happy guy. If it wasn’t for the fact that the first hole was underwater, it probably would have been a pb for me. As it stands, I shot two over par over the seventeen holes we played.
We all met up later on at Drumlin’s for the first time in ages. I didn’t even know Larry had moved on, but now I do. There’s now Strongbow on tap, and that was really the only other difference from before. ’twas nice to get out for a bevvie and shoot the breeze.
I’m about to re-rip my entire CD collection for the fourth time. I don’t want to do it again, so have decided to invest in a small(ish) array and use a lossless codec to create a reference set of my music. From the reference, I plan on transcoding to a variety of bitrates (depending on where the final product will end up i.e. ipod, media centre, etc.) and whichever format of the week suits the device(s) the transcoded content will ultimately sit on.
I don’t particularly care about encoding time, but would like something that transcodes nicely to mp3, wma, ogg, and other formats in a reasonable length of time. I would like to ensure that track metadata is maintained in the reference, and is easily transferrable when transcoded. I also want something that’s not proprietary to an individual’s or small group’s whims. I’m thinking FLAC, but was wondering if other people had better experiences with other codecs.
If you were to use a lossless encoding format, which would you use, and why?
On my return, there was a note from FedEx stating they had a package they had tried to deliver, but were unsuccessful in the attempt. I thought it was some crap from work, but it turned out to be the toy I had pre-ordered and had hoped to pick up prior to jumping on an airplane. I was surprised they drop-shipped it to me, but it was a pleasant surprise.
It’s cool, and much smaller than I thought it would be.
Initial impressions:
Very pleased with it. The movie playback on UMD was very nice, but I have a hard time picturing paying more than $10 for a movie, since you an’t use it on anything other than a PSP, and I’m betting Sony won’t sell ’em for less than $25. Games are great, but the packin of Gretzky was kinda lame – it’s a pretty shitty game, IMO.
Can’t wait for some of the third party apps to come out, ideally a MAME emulator or some such 🙂