Deer

So I have have a case of deer in my back yard. As you can see here. It's a good infestation, four deer in total that I saw today. I'm wondering if one of them is a buck without horns cause I remember hearing that bucks can lose their horns? Hmmmm... that would mean 3 doe and 1 buck or 4 doe total.

Hope they stick around, deer infestations don't seem too bad. :P

X-47B Robo Plane

If this isn't a page out of the Terminator movies, I don't know what is. The X-47B robo plane will do it all and even take off and land on carriers. I wonder how long it wlil be till Skynet is online?

Other Pics

I posted a few others on Flickr. Some friends of mine are on there and I signed up giggles.

Check em out here.

Camera lense problem...

fixed! Now aussie approved, just ask Hoss my dog.

When you get a camera...

.. always remember to get a lense for it. :P I bought a Nikon D90 camera the other day and when it arrived I realized I didn't get a lense with it. So this weekend I go lense shopping.

Confirmed!

It really does suck at the center of our galaxy. After 16 years of study they finally confirmed that there is indeed a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Check out the European Space Agency site here.

I like how one of the comments on Slashdot put it. "We're living in an accretion disk."

WoW, Music, oh my!

So today at work I was listening to an internet radio station and heard a song by Tom Lehrer called "Poisoning Pigeons" and my first thought was of a character on my WoW server called Ferine. I'll let this Google search peck your curiosity. For some reason I could just see Ferine singing this as he goes through a park.

Clock

I've added a clock. Isn't it pretty? I was bored and coded it up over lunch today. :P

Conference Time!!!

So I just spent the past two days at a PABUG conference in the Harrisburg PA area. For those that don't know, PABUG is Pennsylvania Banner Users Group. It's a group of universities in Pennsylvania and around the state of PA that use the Sungard's Banner software.

The first day wasn't bad on Monday. I went thinking the morning would be more interesting then the afternoon and that turned out to be the exact opposite. Tuesday turned out to be a more techy type day. I spent a lot of time hearing talks on Oracle's Application Express.

The very last session of the conference was a bit odd. Apparently Sungarde is moving in a Java/Adobe Flex path for their Banner product. I wasn't aware of it for the most part till that session. Everyone was asking about APEX and talking about what it could do for them. Then the Sungarde people kinda just brushed it off. Atleast that is how it seemed to me.

Ah well... it was a good conference anyway.

Mars needs women... and men!

Cause now you can get a drink it looks like if you go to Mars. Huge glaciers of pure water ice are just under the surface of Mars even away from the poles. Some over 3 times the size of LA and a half a mile thick. Check it out here!

Personal Goals

Today I reached a personal goal of mine. At the start of 2008 I set a specific goal to reach in order to start seriously looking for a house of my own in 2009. That goal is met and now I'm going to start really looking in to buying a new house of my own.

I'll keep this simple...

Lunch and Work

So it's lunch time at work and I'm reading Slashdot. And I read a story about the US Election and see the old speech posted that Howard Beale made once. So I thought, what if I WoW'ized it? Well...

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's an expansion. Everybody's out of a raid or scared of losing their raid position. The gold buys a silver's worth; guild banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a [Dwarven Handcannon] under the counter; l33t sp34k punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the potions are unfit to use more than once a fight and our food is unfit to buff. And we sit watching our ThreatMeters while some stats forcaster tells us that today we had fifteen low DPS moments and sixty-three over healing casts, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazier than Yun’s prices on the AH!

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in Shattrath, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our BGs. Let me have my [Arcanite Reaper] and my [Amani Bear Mount] and my [Armored PVP Drake], and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to forum protest. I don't want you to riot as a naked gnome on some server. I don't want you to write to your forum moderator, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the expansion and the consumable inflation and the Scourge and the “Slap in the Face Nerfs!”

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a WoW Player, goddammit! My subscription has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs (If you play Horde you shouldn't have them in the first place, they're piled up on the Bulwark!). I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it (Not click on the damn thing!), and stick your head out and /yell,


"I'm as mad as hell; and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Halloween Costumes

Friend of mine just sent me a YouTube of some kids Mech costume. Take a look here. :)

OS Upgrades...

A little while ago I bought a second hard drive for my desktop computer. I decided to give the Ubuntu OS a try on that system, more specifically the Kubuntu derivative.

For the most part the experience has been wonderful when I booted over there. The operating system boots way faster then Microsoft's Windows Vista and just seems to make better use of my systems resources over all (IE: No disk thrashing/taking forever to load things). I only run one anti-virus on my Window drive and don't load very many things at all during startup. I did check Vista's MSCONFIG to be sure.

Out of the box with Windows you get an Operating System, Media Player, Web Browser, email client, and a basic paint tool and some other things. With Ubuntu I got all that plus a full office package, photoshop like paint program, and access to tons of games. Plus I also got access to Wine which lets me run some Windows programs in Linux w/out Windows.

There thats my Linux sales pitch, now for what happened to me last night. Yesterday the new version of Ubuntu came out (8.10 I believe). You can either download the CD, buy it, or request a free copy. Unlike Windows, I found a nifty feature that let me upgrade the OS directly over the internet.

So I started the upgrade process and by morning my Kubuntu 8.0.3 install turned in to a Kubuntu 8.10 install. Everything appears to be working, I found no compatability issues unlike with what I found when I went from XP to Vista. The operating system did its job and upgraded the necessary packages to keep my system performing without a hitch.

With the updated Kubuntu I got the newest version of KDE desktop. Oddly enough the new KDE desktop looks a lot like the new Windows 7.0 screenies I saw on some news sites. I noticed the system tray on the new Windows 7.0 screenies reminded me of my Linux desktop with how some of the icons looked Linux'y and were on a Vista like interface. The only difference is the Linux version doesn't make my system choke trying to load different things or search.

Maybe Microsoft will get their OS to the point where it does things without spinning drives like crazy and bugging users with the (C)ancel or (A)llow question all the time some day. :P

Next door neighbor...

Epsilon Eridani is only about 10.5 light years away. Already it's got peoples attention because it's so much like our own solar system when life first started on Earth supposedly. Take a look at the details here.

Ewwww icky politics!

So Senator John McCain decided to use YouTube for his campaign. A good idea really, but there was just one problem in his plans. Apparently back in the day he voted for a little thing called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and it's come back to bite him in the backside.

Check it out here!

US National Debt Clock Runs Out...

of digits! Check out the article here. They plan on adding two more digits to handle the United States of America's ever growing debt total.

It's a shame we have to add digits to a clock instead of starting to pay off our national debt. If your curious how much we owe right at this moment. Check that out here. I'm thinking I want to build my own debt clock at some point.

Giant Space Bubble!

Do we live in a giant space bubble? Does this bubble make things seem farther away then they really are? Take a look here!

Zuckermen Strikes Again!!!

Zuckermen, the evil pig genious has struck again! View the latest here!

Space Tornados!!!!

Gas, dust, etc spiral in to a wild and crazy display. Check out the space tornados!

Gallactic Collisions!

In a few years the Milkyway Galaxy will collide with the Andromida galaxy.

Here's a nifty simulation.

There is also a documentary on the subject here.

Some say when this happens, two things could happen to the earth depending where we are in the galaxy at the time. We'll either get thrown out of the galaxy or burned to a crisp from the collision of the two black holes. Glad it's a couple hundred million years away. :P

First Ever Planet Pic!

This may be the first ever picture of an extra solar planet. You can find it here with the article!

Ubuntu and the EEE PC

Today I got my EEE PC 1000 40G setup with the new version of Ubuntu EEE. As far as I can tell most of everything I want working out of the box is. I'm very happy with this because the default Asus OS that shipped with my EEE was broken all to hell and back and I did not want to run Windows. (ugh!)

So.. I did have to do some tweeking but I found out in their bug reports all the fixes I needed. First off my web cam was not responding. This was a simple fix, I just had to go in to the BIOS of my EEE and enable the camera. Apparently Asus's Xandros install ignores BIOS settings. This is bad.

The second thing was I wanted to be able to listen to my Gridstream. I used to play Anarchy Online and I do miss that game but I got addicted to WoW. I still listen to GSP though, I love the station even though I'm totally loving being a tauren druid.

Anyhow the media codecs needed to listen to GSP were not in the base install and I had to download those from the update repositories. There still was a bug in the release code that prevented the update manager from function properly. I had to go to the console and delete a bunch of files in two directories by hand. After that things just worked and downloaded and now I have music. The two directories are:

/var/lib/apt/lists
/var/lib/apt/lists/partial

NOTE: You need to keep the partial sub directory itself intact. Here's the bug report.

Oh and just take a look at the sweet Netbook Remix interface!

So yeah, I'm happy now. :)

Space... the place we may never go? o.O

Wired has an interesting article on what it would take to explore the universe and opinions on why some feel we'll never get past our own solar system. Here's the article here...

One thing to remember, our sun only has a limited life span. There will come a day when it will go *Poof* and take us with it. While that may or may not be far off in the future, it's a good idea to get our eggs out of one basket before the 11th hour.

Science takes to the fridge!

Someone's working on a new way to make the fridge work without a compressor. Here's the details.

Moo moo moo.

Moo moo moo, moo moo moo moo moo. Moo moo moo moo moo. Moo moo? Moo moo moo moo, and moo moo moo. Moo moo moo moo moo moo.

Mars, Water, and maybe... LIFE?

Looks like the fearless leader of the USA got briefed on something maybe more then just water on Mars. This could be big, really big!

Oooh yeah!

So last night I made the plunge and ordered a new laptop. I'm really going to enjoy the new EEE PC 1000 when it arrives. Best of all it's running Linux out of the box. 8-D

Wow + Wine + Linux

Is awesome sauce.

Screenshot

Silly Kubuntu...

That darn Tux has got me running WoW with Wine in Linux! I tell ya he's a crazy little penguin. Next thing you know he'll have me running more Windows games like Neverwinter Nights and such in Linux because Microsoft's newest operating system refuses to run NWN1 for me. NWN2 does sort of run but there's graphical errors in parts that just make it not worth running.

If setting up games in Linux is becoming easier and setting up games I love to play in newer versions of Windows is harder then I'm almost tempted to kick Vista out the door and stick with Linux. Companies don't want to patch older games as much as release new products. Microsoft has changed the OS so the games don't work as well as they used to or not at all. Games were the last sticking point for me and Linux, now that sticking point is rapidly vanishing.

Hmm... guess what that means for Microsoft products on my home desktop?

I'm torn... EEE

I really would love to upgrade my Asus EEE PC with the new 1000 series that has Linux. I really love my 4G, the bigger screen of the 1000 would make it perfect. Unfortunatly, Microsoft is shoving an elephant on to the back of an ant and got Windows shipping with the EEE.

Right now Newegg.com only has 1000H's with Windows on them. I really hope they get the 1000 series in soon with Linux. I can't see running this hardware with Windows. Windows is just too bloated a monster for something lean and mean as the EEE machines.

Boomer Galaxy

A young galaxy is churning out about 4000 new stars a year. Check it out here.

Animals aren't the only ones...

That extinction can happen to. Metals used in common every day stuff are also threatened with extinction. That nice LCD you have on your desk reading this with? Better take VERY good care of it. Cause it could go 'Bye bye!'

Well maybe not bye bye, but it'll be fun mining the landfills for this stuff. ;)

Earth Sounds from Space!

Ever realize that the Earth has been sending out radio waves long before humans?

Check this out!

Here too. (Article)

Life After Humans

An interesting take on what life would be like if Humans disappeared from the face of the Earth. The best part of the video is the view of what could be from the city near Chernobyl. The part that made me laugh was flying cats in New York.

So check it out, Life After Humans.

Boy would it suck if they did...

Scientist at the LHC say they won't create a black hole when that thing switches on which would destroy the Earth. Still I have to say it would suck if they did.

Wired Article.

Martian Green Thumb?

Looks like you can break out the gardening tools for Mars!

They say it has a pH level around 8 or 9 and the ground is like what you'd find in your back yard.

Money and motives! (Hahaha)

Recently the Fermilab which is a place in the USA that has a nice big particle accelerator got a $5 million dollar donation. While the donors motives aren't clear, there has been some recent speculation here.

The Gods Must be Crazy!

Gee they seem like such nice folks!

Natives

*Fwwwwwhippppppppddd!* EEEPP!

Shake, rattle, 'n roll! I say shake, rattle, 'n roll!

First in China...

and now in Iceland...

The world is a rock'n allright. Here's hoping the people effected by these events are as safe as can be and in good care.

Another useless post...

I can't believe your reading this. Oh well, anyhow I've been playing a game called Tabula Rasa. It's not a bad game, Earth gets blown up by aliens and whats left of humanity ends up on other planets. Right now I'm just running around doing little quest type things and killing aliens. It's fun.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!

I have a blog now. :) I hope I actually use the damn thing instead of a one time curiosity.