GasMeister’s Bile

Well, I had a little time to kill last night so I decided to fire off the XBox360 and loaded NXE. So far, I like it. It is pretty intuitive. I especially like the fact that I don't have to wait for game info to load when viewing achievements.

I also had fun making my Mii60 buddy:

I tried to make my avatar pic look like my RvB avatar. I got pretty close:

I am looking forward to getting my Netflix subscription now. I really like the streaming thing!

I spent last week in San Diego for the Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference put on by USENIX. As you can imagine, I had a total geekgasm. It is one of the few times that I can hang out with a bunch of geeks until midnight while playing around on my laptop. I spent most of the time in training, but there were also some Technical sessions and miscellaneous talks.

There were many opportunities to meet new people, like LISA Bingo. The object was to find people on your card and have them sign it. It made for a good time meeting some of the key people that were responsible for coordinating the conference.

The conference was held at the Town & Country Resort Hotel. The place is a little on the aged side, but still provided a nice place for the conference. My room looked like it was something out of the seventies with all the mirrors

But still, the built-in ironing board provided a perfect desk for my laptop. I could even watch TV while I was busy computing.

Like most computer conferences, there is plenty of swag to take home, I must have brought back seven shirts and lots of just cool stuff.

I even got my picture taken with a booth bunny! LINKY-NSFW

After coming home from the conference, I decided to get all the stuff I moved into the garage from storage up into my computer room. I was getting tired of having to scout a parking spot in the street. I got the desk and rack moved to allow me to stack more in the room.

I also setup the old Apple //gs. I have been wanting to relive some of my childhood and geek-out in 8-bit coolness!

Fortunately, there was plenty of room for all the storage boxes.

That about wraps up the week.

Well, I think things are just about back to normal in my life. I am almost feeling my usual self after being sick for most of the week. I count my blessings that it has been a year and a half since I last called in sick at work. Worse part about it was the fact that it was all in my sinuses and throat. I was feeling fine otherwise. On a good note, I managed to raise my XBox gamerscore 605 points in the last week!

I also got the Hummer fixed (finally). I broke the output gear for the low range in the transfer case. I don't know what I did to cause that, but I am relived the broken part was located and replaced.

At least I was feeling good enough to attend a house warming party for kickcows and drkjstr333 . We had a lot of fun playing MarioWare as a group!

I also finally got to meet GodOBiscuits in person.

At work, we blew the main transformer on my building, so the place was without power until about 3:45 this morning. I am running around getting all the computers back on line. I have a feeling that many problems are not going to show up until this afternoon, once everybody gets back up to speed.

That about wraps-up my week.

During my last trip to Bishop for my reunion, I planned a trip back to the 12,000 ft. mark in the Sierras by taking Wheeler Ridge Mine Road. At about the 10,000 ft mark, my transfer case started to make some loud popping noises. Rather than push it, I decided to stop where we were. Ellen snapped a few pics while I assessed the situation.

We had a good view of Crowley lake from here:

You can see the grade we were pulling when it happened:

The road wasn't too bad yet, so it was a good thing the Hummer broke down at this point and not later:

We babied it back down the hill and back to town. Once I took it out of low range, the problem disappeared. Everything was good enough to get us home.

I have been bickering with the dealer to get the problem fixed. They had my truck for two days and were "unable to reproduce the problem". Well, I was able to reproduce it, and eventually took the service manager and lead mechanic out for a test drive. I was barely out the shop when the infamous pop happened, causing both the manager and mechanic to jump. Mission successful. I am bringing it back in Monday.

At least I had my truck to use to empty out my storage unit. Ellen and I decided to move our storage into one of the bedrooms to save some money, so I rented a trailer and hitched it to the Hummer. Luckily, the truck held together.

I had a fun weekend in Bishop for my twenty year class reunion. It all started off with watching the homecoming game against Rosamond.

We even had a section of the bleachers reserved for the Class of 1988!

The next day, we went to the city park for an informal get together. I got to see friends that I haven't seen for 22 years!

Later that night, we went to the formal dinner. Even more people showed up. A made a conscience effort to talk to everybody. Twenty years is the perfect amount of time for a reunion. All previous grudges are gone, all social barriers are diminished. Nothing but hugs and handshakes.

I wish I wasn't so tired. There were a lot of late parties at local homes, continuing the reunion. Maybe the 25 year reunion . . .

I can remember the Rubik's Cube when it first came out. I never did figure out the magical pattern to solve it. My friends would show-off how they could do it every time with less than 50 moves (in the worse case, it only takes 21).

Rubik's Revenge came out, which was 4×4x4 and a little harder. Totally impossible for my brain to grasp.

Later came the Rubik's Professional Cube, a 5×5x5 wonder. Might as well be quantum physics as far as my mind is concerned.

But it doesn't stop there! There is a company making a 6×6x6 and 7×7x7 cube, with plans on going up to 11×11x11!
Go check it out! LINKY

Ellen and I spent Saturday in Temecula with our new friends, Terri and Jason. We met them in Williams, AZ during our trip to the Grand Canyon.

They took us around for some wine tasting. It was just the ladies that partook in the sampling while us guys sat around and bonded.

One of the vineyards had some really cool stuff, like furniture that was made entirely from the oak barrels used to make the wine.

One of the more "interesting" items ws the jar of Frog Balls (yes, you read it right). It was actually pickled brussels sprouts. Very delicious!

I also worked on Jason's laptop, an old Apple G3 PowerBook laptop (Pismo for you geeks out there). I kept goofing things up and ended up having to bring it back home to finish it. I still need bring some stuff home I left a work to complete the task (2-1/2" firewire disk case). I hope that is the missing piece that I could not figure out.

The sunset was beautiful in Temecula. It was a great day to spend with our new friends!

I am tired . . . so I am signing off.

Well I had a pretty good weekend. It started out by putting the Hummer in the shop. I apparently broke a couple of exhaust hangers during my last off-road expedition. The shop loaned me a 2009 H3 without the adventure package. It was really weird to drive a stock Hummer so close to the ground. It was also an automatic, so I kept trying to press the imaginary clutch pedal.

Since I was off Friday, I decided to swing by Game Stop and pickup Lego Batman. Out of all the Lego series, this has to be the best one. The programmers did a good job of adding new features. Also, the game does not follow any movies like the Star Wars or Indiana Jones games do, so the story can not be anticipated. The musical score from the Tim Burton movies really compliments the on-screen action as well. If you liked the Lego Star Wars games, you will love Lego Batman.

Not too much else happening. I am getting ready for my twenty year high school reunion in two weeks. Thanks to cheeser, I will not have a last minute panic trying to fix my tie. Zipper ties are the greatest!

Check it our for yourself!
LINKY

I have finally found a press release that accurately describes the Hummer H3:

Hummer H3

The trouble with the H3 is that people, especially cyclists and pedestrians, think it's the real thing. The fact is it's much, much smaller than the H1 and H2 models made famous by the Gulf War and rap artists' shoot-outs. Its five-cylinder engine makes it no more profligate than Japanese petrol SUVs, and when compared to most of them it's actually better in the dirt and more refined and nimble on the road. For just over $60,000, the Hummer H3 has a reputation it doesn't deserve, but unfortunately, it also has the looks to ensure that you can never persuade anyone otherwise.

The price is a little off, but that is because it originated from New Zealand.
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