I recently upgraded this installation to Drupal 5.0 RC-1. Everything appeared to go fine, but if any of you happen to run into errors, please tell me, and I’ll try to get it fixed.
And now, for a random quote from IRC:
[Mr_Boomba] YOUR PENIS IS CONCAVE
[Geary] ……ow
[Kron] ITS CALLED A VAG NOOB
This was Tyrone Spellman’s explanation to police: He “snapped” after he thought his daughter had broken a $600 Xbox game console.
Alayiah Turman was only 17 months old, born March 29, 2005. Spellman beat her to death, prosecutors say.
In an alleged confession read at his preliminary hearing yesterday, Spellman, 25, said he was playing one of Tom Clancy’s “Ghost Recon” games – a violent combat epic – in a front bedroom of his family’s Brewerytown home that Thursday morning, Sept. 7. He had taken Alayiah into the room so her mother, Mia Turman, could rest.
“She pulled the cord and the whole game console fell over,” Spellman said in his statement, read by Homicide Detective John Cummings. “I thought it was broken. I popped her in the face. I picked her up and tossed her in a chair.”
I usually don’t use such language as that featured in my post’s title, but this guy deserves it. I mean seriously, if you kill your own child because they knock over something — even if it’s an expensive item — then you deserve to rot in prison for the rest of your life.
If you don’t know, I’m an avid video gamer. I like to play the occasional Halo, your Half Life 2’s, even your Gears of Wars. However, I don’t take things that happen in the games back with me when I return to reality-land. I don’t try to shoot cops on the street, I don’t pick up hookers in my crazy sports car, and then shoot the when I’m done with “the act” to get my money back, and I don’t carry around a large enough arsenal to equip a large army. I know what things are in the normal confines of good behavior, and things that are not, and killing your own spawn is not in the list of good things.
Let’s hope this guy decides to permanently remove his genes from the human gene pool. We should give him a reward or something posthumously if he decides to do that…
Yes, folks that wonderful time of the year is fast approaching. And though I wish I were talking about Christmas in this entry, I’m not, unfortunately. The (not) wonderful time I’m talking about is college finals week. Yes, unfortunately, I have Finals this week, and I really don’t feel like doing anything remotely related to studying.
This weekend I spent forever on a Bonus project for Computer Science… I had one tiny problem, and I finally figured it out after hours of deliberation. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that it was a gay problem, and one that was luckily really easy to fix.
This weekend, however, I did go and pick up the TV I wanted for my Christmas present. You can see the secksiness here.
And so far, I have had no want to study for any of the tests I have. Though tomorrow is just Writing and no-calculator part of Calculus, so I don’t think there’s much for me to really study. Tomorrow will be different, however… Computer Science. Which I don’t think will be too bad, but I’m going to study just in case.
Wish me luck on the Finals!
So, I finally got with my “Acadmic Advisor“, and got my schedule unfuxified. So, my new schedule is looking like I’m an undeclared major, instead of a declared one (which, for the record, I am… I’m majoring in Information Systems [haven’t decided on the track, though]).
So, t3h sched:
Academic Writing and Research (A fancy name for Comp II)
Basic Oral Communication (why can’t they just call it Speech?)
Geography of World Regions (jeez, guys… why don’t you make the course titles as long as possible? ¬_¬)
Concepts of Health and Fitness (I’m sensing a pattern of long names, here….)
Biology for General Education (that one’s not too bad)
And yes, just to reiterate, I have declared a Major. My schedule’s pretty easy, too. Monday is the hardest day, with Bio and KPED (the health class) back-to-back, and an hour break, and then the Bio lab, and Writing back-to-back. (That’s going to suck…) Tuesday and Thursday are gay-easy (“Mrs. Smith, are you insinuating that all gays are whores?”). With two classes back to back in the morning, and then I’m done. Wednesday and Friday are almost the same with Bio and KPED late in the morning, with Wednesday also having the Writing class late in the afternoon.
So, really, I don’t think my schedule will be too bad. I might actually have the free time to get a job next semester, and actually have something to do/have money. That’ll be fun.
So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone (metaphysically), and try out some blog software and Drupal’s BlogAPI and the Windows Live Writer software and see the results. Sooo…. this is what comes of it. Hope you enjoy (and that it turns out right…).
So, this weekend felt like I did absolutely nothing (either that, or it went by extremely friggin’ fast). On Friday night, I went over to Jason’s (known in some circles as Nofirefrog) house, and made a tournament bracket, surfed the Internet, and did some stuff on Xbox Live. The tournament bracket was for the Third Annual MHS Quiz Bowl Invitational Tournament, which I helped with on Saturday. Unfortunately, I was assigned duty as the scorekeeper for Ms. Oates, who, for those of you who don’t know, is pretty much the most insane teacher in all of Arkansas. Throughout the matches she would randomly damn math and science, mispronounce words terribly (though that’s not a big surprise), pull out a magical faerie wand (complete with light and sound), and whack me on the back of the head. Yep, fun times.
However, over the weekend, I did reformat my laptop’s hard drive, clean out the crap that got in my laptop through the fan inputs (more on this later), and re-install Windows XP, and install Ubuntu (more on this, as well). First, the dust. It’s amazing how much dust a laptop can collect in a period of roughly six months. I got a can of compressed air, and used it to clean out the dissipaters on the heatsink, and it was crazy how much dust came out. Next, I grabbed the vacuum and stuck it over the input grates, and it was almost sickening how much clobs of dirt came out of that thing. No wonder my laptop had been overheating so easily lately. I was really gross. After a combination of the compressed air, the vacuum, and some tweezers, I finally got it all clean, and boy, does it run much cooler now.
Now, onto Ubuntu. As I said, I got it on my laptop, but I’ve run into a few problems. The first is that my touchpad’s scrolling feature doesn’t work (as in, I can’t scroll my finger on the right and bottom of the touchpad to scroll text, or whatever in a window). Next, my wireless suddenly crapped out, and third, and most depressing, I can’t get my ATI card to load the correct drivers. The first time, I installed the open source driver, but it still loaded the default one. Then, I tried the ones from ATI. This turned out even worse, as now no video loads after the boot screen. ;_; So, if any of you readers happen to know of a way to solve any of these problems, please point me in the right direction in a comment or something. (I suppose it may be useful to say that my laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A75-S1253)
In other Linux news, on my desktop,I got Xubuntu running with Beryl running, and boy is it sweet! For those of you who have no idea what that meant, check out this video:
Pretty sweet, eh? I submit that it is. And Linux runs sooo much faster with XFCE (the window manager Xubuntu is based on) than Gnome (the window manager the stock Ubuntu runs on). It’s a win-win situation, especially since I like XFCE as well as I like Gnome (I don’t like KDE, for the record).
So, really, I guess I did more than I thought I did, but it just felt like it wasn’t much.
Well, I think that’s about enough rambling on for one entry. Hope you enjoy, and I hope that Windows Live Writer submits the story to Drupal correctly. I will be sure to have a copy saved in the clipboard, just in case, though.
EDIT: OK, it’s probably a good thing that I saved a copy of my entry, because Window Live Writer + Drupal != good. It was posted as one single paragraph and none of the links worked. Fortunately, WLW has an option to view the raw HTML, and I could copy that into a new story in Drupl, and set the input format to full HTML, and it works fine. The source is crap-ass ugly, but only I will ever know that. I think from now on, I’ll stick to the regular HTML submission form for my blog entries.
Shit… I just realized I have to “get up” for class in 5 hours… that sucks.
Just when you think that fashion accessories can’t possibly become any more far-fetched, something comes out of left field, and shows you what-for. This time it’s the NES Advantage Belt Buckle. For those of you who don’t remember the glory days of the NES, the Advantage was a big-ass controller for the NES that had a 8-direction joystick with two huge buttons for A and B. There were also rapid-fire modes, and a “slow-mo” effect caused by rapidly alternating the pause feature of games.
Behold, the NESAdvantageBuckle in all of it’s 8-bit glory:
I fucking hate hackers. I usually can keep a pretty even composure (at least in my opinion), but this just completely pisses me off. In case you haven’t noticed (or just come and enjoy my blog, and don’t see the main site), East Forums were hacked earlier today.
Now, I’ll admit, the site didn’t get off to the best start in the world, what with the tons of spam bots that signed up every day (up until I improved the CAPTCHA that only allowed two non-legit registration go through), the problems with various mods (mods as in modifications, not moderators. However, few people besides me probably knew of the modification problems), the low amount of registrations, and the meagre amount of posts. I’ll admit EF v2 was no the greatest site in the world, but I kept it going because I enjoyed it, and truly believed that eventually, it would boast a moderate community.
But now, that’s not going to happen, at least for a little bit. First I need to find a new forum software to run. The previous incarnation was run on the last legally free version of Invision Power Board. I personally don’t have the cash to drop for the newest version of IPB or a license for vBulletin, either. So, now I’m going to have to go and figure out what to use for the site now. If you happen to have a suggestion for a good forum software (preferably with a “Front Page News” module, though that’s not a die-hard requirement), please leave me a comment pointing me in that direction.
So yeah, hackers pretty much suck the balls of life. If this site gets hacked, then I’m going to be severely pissed. I already am pissed, but if another of my sites falls to a hacker, then I’ll be even more so. However, I think that, having the old version of IPB , the EF job was an easy hack because of it being a few versions back. Hopefully, Drupal will be more hardy against such attacks. Just in case, though, I’m going to go make a database backup right after I post this entry.
OK, so really, I meant to have this update on Thanksgiving, but circumstances (which should become apparent as you read this update) caused me to have to delay my readers another juicy update. So, without further ado, I present: Thanksgiving: The Update.
So, TG, that wonderful time of the year where you get together with your family and enjoy a fine meal of Turkey an dressing (or if you’re weird, lobster) and maybe watch some football (that would be of the American variety).
That’s pretty much how my TG was, except for one tiny little change in the plot: I was sick. And I’m not talking about the runny nose-only sick. I’m talking about the full-blown headache, runny nose, sore-coughing throat, man-it-really-sucks sick. And it wasn’t just one day of the break. It started about Monday evening, but didn’t really pick up until about Tuesday night — just in time for the TG Holiday, I might add. It lasted the entire break (even now, I’m not feeling 100%). So my break = suck.
So, if any of my family members from my mom’s side of the family gets sick, I’m sorry (we went and ate there on TG, we had already had TG with my dad’s side last Sunday, as I suppose that’s the only time we could all get together). If I had the choice, I would have not been sick on TG, thus causing you to get my infections.
Then, the second major cause of my delays occurred, and that was the moving the blog to a more semi-permanent home, which you are currently viewing. I did some extra tweaks to this version, and I must say, it really turned out how I wanted it. I was mainly looking for a way to have a WordPress-like way of perma-links, so instead of having http://galador.eastforums.com/node/1 , it is now something like http://galador.eastforums.com/archive/2006/nov/26-another-new-blog-sheesh . Longer? Sure, but now you can see my posts by year or month, and I think those kind of perma-links look much nicer.
So, I apologize for the delay, but I think it cause my blog to come out even better than ever. And I actually did an update, so you can’t really complain all that much.
As a side note, I think I’m going to change my major. (The world exclusive announcement, right here on mah blog!) I’ve been thinking about it over the break, and programming is just not for me. I thought it would be fun, but I just don’t enjoy it. I can do it, but I get no sense of accomplishment in it. Not like I do than, say, setting up a new OS or a new server, and it finally working how I like it. So, based on my thoughts (scary huh?), I believe I’ m going to change my major to Computer Information Systems.
To tell the truth, that’s probably what I should have started out doing, but either I didn’t realize that it was offered here or (more likely), I just didn’t think about the possibility of doing it. I thought that Computer Science was going to be the way for me, but it turned out that that was not the case. I think programming would be something I would want to do on my own time, not something that I would be forced to do when my company has a new client with X features and Y days to do it in. That kind of pressure is not for me.
So there you have it folks. Not only an update, but a world-exclusive announcement straight from the horse’s mouth. Enjoy that food for though, and hopefully it won’t give you any indigestion.
So yes, it’s time for those beloved updates to yon Xanga.
But what should I write about? How I’m excited about moving to college? Nah, too cliché. How much I’m going to miss all my friends, and how awesome they all are? Nope, too depressing. How I have absolutely nothing to write about? Nah, too boring.
So, what should I write about? Randomness? Ah, that sounds good!
Soooo…. how to start? How ’bout with a good quote?
life is overrated?!?
life kicks ASS
I’m going to go to the Maroon and Gray game tonight, so I hope to see all my peeps one last time before college.
I went shopping for college stuff on Wednesday. That was fun. (Not really, but I need it, so whatever…)
Been playing Sim City 4, and my region is crazy-insane-good. For serious. I mean, look at it in it’s Sim … City-ness … glory … Yeah….
I hope Amanda doesn’t get sick.
I had forgotten that Facebook had a “wall”, so if you left me a message, sorry I didn’t return a comment. Speaking of Facebook, my profile page is huge now, ’cause I added a ton of stuff to the “Music I Like” Section.
I think that’s enough randomness to constitute an actual update. Hope you enjoyed the randomness.
Arkansas, what is it famous for? Perhaps it’s natural beauty and numerous state parks. Perhaps it’s famous for a certain president who like to “mess around.” Perhaps it’s for the World Championship Cardboard Boat Races.
Wait… what? Yes, you heard me right folks, Arkansas is home to the World Championships of the sport of racing boats carefully crafted of cardboard, duct tape, silicon, and deck and patio sealer. Hang on, you’re thinking. Cardboard boats? Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, cardboard boats.
Why would I know this, you’re thinking. It’s because they were held yesterday, and I actually went.
Yes, in the quaint little town of Heber Springs, Arkansas, on the shores of Greer’s Ferry Lake, a competition the likes of which would probably make you think, “Why?” is held annually at Sandy Beaches State Park. And this is not something new. This competition was in it’s twentieth year this year. Twenty years, people!
You may also ask, “Why were you at this thing?” Well, Will’s family has been building cardboard boats for the past three years and he invited me to go with them.
While I had been over to his house, one could find random people from their neighborhood in their gameroom (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a seperate bulding from their house that contains a small area with a basketball goal downstairs, and a “nook” area that has a TV and his game consoles), carefully crafting these strange creations at just about anytime you would be over there. And it’s not as though these boats are built in a day or two, or even a weekend or two. No, this is a very detailed process from start to finish that took them (about seven people) nearly two months to complete. Granted, they didn’t work on this nonstop. Most time on these boats was spent during the weekends up until the race.
Now, what, you may ask, goes into a carboard boat? First, obivously, is carboard. Lots and lots of cardboard. Dr. Lyon had a friend who works at International Paper, so he was able to obtain quite a supply of cardboard for free (two truckbeds full of sheets of cardboard, if I recall correctly). To begin, you create thick layers of cardboard for the shell of the boat. After the shell is complete, you must waterproof the cardboard. There are two main methods to do this. First, and most importantly, you surround the exposed edges of cardboard with duct tape. Now you may not believe me, but cardboard is actually pretty waterproof. The main problem with carboard is that if
water is allowed to get between the two “outside” laters of the sheet of cardboard, it causes the cardboard to absorb the water much faster. If you cover the edges with duct tape, however, the rate of waterabsorption is quite lower. However, duct tape alone is not enough. To fully water proof it, you must apply some sort of water-proofing sealer (much like you use for a deck or patio) to the areas not protected by the duct tape.
After the edges are sealed, and the surface coated with as many as four coats of sealer, you can begin to assemble your boat in the desired design. Most people use silicone to attach the pieces together and then cover all the corners with more duct tape. After the pieces are finally assembled into the desired shape, you may then apply a last coat of sealer.
Also needed is some means of propelling the boat in the water. For this, there are two divisions of races (both of which are further divided into two categories: youth and adult). The first is the mechanincal division. In this division, you are not allowed to use any paddles. You must have some mechanism to propel your boat, such as paddlewheels, propellers, etc. However, you may not use some sort of motor to power your boat. It must be all human-powered. In the non-mechanical division, you must use paddles to propel your boat.
And this is not some willy-nilly hobbyist competition. This is governed by strict rules in regards to weight, propulsion system, and even the amount of duct tape allowed in the first heat (after the first heat, the judges do not care if you make repairs using duct tape, in fact, you can use as much duct tape as needed to keep your boat afloat for the second heat).
I was surprised at how many people actually showed up at this. I can honestly say that there were the most people I have seen on a beach at one time, anywhere. Not only that, they held a competition to see who had come the farthest to see the farthest to attend this competition. They announced people from Mississippi (not too far), California (a little farther), Japan (umm… why?), and Korea (again, why… if they come to the States, is there not anything more exciting you can come
see than the World Championships of Cardboard Boat racing?). And this just wasn’t Will’s family that went. There were probably at least five other families (including the DePriest family and Catharine Horita) that were on our “team.” Our group entered five boats in four different categories (there is also a “demolition derby” at the end of the competition to give the entrants a good reason to just go out and tear up some cardboard boats). [As a side note, the World Championship Watermelon Eating contest is held at this beach on the same day.]
The actual races are arranged in two heats, with you facing one (possibly two) other boat in the channel with you. For the race, a line of buoys are arranged into a small arc from one part of the harbor to the another, reaching about a quarter of a mile. While you do have another boat in the channel with you, your real opponent is the clock, as the tornament placement is based on your average time from both heats.
We did well in the children’s mechanized and the adult demolition derby, each getting a first place trophy. One of our three adult mechanized boats placed second in the tournament, and another of those boats was the one that won the demolition derby. Our adult non-mechanized entrant placed fourth. Our group won the “Team Spirit” award, as we made team t-shirts for everybody who came with us, and we created all sorts of cheers for our team (most of the girls that were there were in cheerleading), and we yelled for all of our boats in competition. However, the crowning acheivement was that Will’s boat won the “Pride of the Fleet” award, a monstrous trophy given to the most original boat design.
In the end, we won one award for each boat we entered, which was quite nice. After the competition, we all went over to the DePriest house, and enjoyed our vistory with pizza. It was great.
I really didn’t think that I would have all that much fun at a Cardboard boat race tournament, but it actually turned out quite nice. The demolition derby was definitely the best part of the whole tourney.
I wish I had a digital camera (or any kind of camera, for that matter)to capture this event on film, but alas, I don’t, so I will leave it up to your imagination to dream up what these boats looked like.