Once I know I’ve got the funds settled for both the move and my June trip to Alaska for James and Stacy’s wedding, I’m getting at least one of these. Probably one of the BSOD-t’s and the Mac Bomb-t.
Copy-proof CD’s not so copy-proof?
I just thought this was interesting. I found a thread on the HTF today (which has since been deleted) — apparently the new ‘copy proof’ CD’s can be copied with some old software. The copies may actually be better than the original CD’s, too! Here’s the info:
disclaimer: I’m posting this so others can make back-up copies of cds they legally own.
I picked up More Fast and the Furious mainly to see if I could crack the copy-proof measures the labels feel they must take. I first tried to playing it in my computer and dvd player to make sure it was copy-proof, and it was, it wouldn’t play in either. I then tried ripping the cd with Adaptec, and Exact Audio Copy (EAC), and each one errored out. I next tried ripping the cd with EAC’s error correction mode, and even this didn’t work, I was starting to believe these cds were copy-proof.
I decided to then try an old (from 1997) cd copier I had laying around, NTI (Newtech Infosystems) Cd-maker. It was so old I had to download a patch to get disc-at-once burning. Surprisingly it worked perfectly, even copying the cd-rom portion of the disc. It may even have applied some error correction to the copy I made because I was able to copy, and rip the “copy” in anything I tried after that.
So spread the word, copy-proof cds are anything but. I wonder, would it be ethical to now get my guaranteed refund? Only kidding.
I knew it wouldn’t all be good news
Two big “ouches” that may be affecting the site due to my upcoming move — a $300 fee I hadn’t expected, and a possible downtime of as much as 2 months (worst case scenario). I was afraid this might happen….
All that’s going on is when you sign up for a DSL account with Speakeasy, you sign on for a 12-month contract. Should you cancel your service within that 12 months, you’re subject to a $300 cancellation fee. Since the DSL line is hooked up in co-operation with the phone service provider (Qwest, in my case), it can’t be simply tossed onto another number…even when changing apartments, it’s a process of closing one account and opening another. On the bright side, though, if you re-open your account at the new address within 90 days of cancelling your account at the old address, that $300 is refunded. Still, I have to spend it in the first place, which hurts.
The last downside — because I’ll be starting the connection process over, my website could be down for as much as close to 2 months. Speakeasy asks to allow up to two weeks for the connection to take place (from placing the order to the signal coming up and online), and they can’t start the process until after you’ve had a working phone at the address for a month.
I’ll see what I can do with creative juggling to make the transition as easy as possible, though. Melvin just told me I’ll be able to move into the apartment on March 15th. I’ll be paid up at my old apartment through the end of March. So, figure I leave my webserver at the old apartment until the very last possible day — that will have my website up and running through the end of March. If I start my phone service at the new apartment on the 15th of March, then I’ll be able to place my DSL order on April 15th, and the new DSL line will be up and running by the end of April, with about a month of downtime. If I’m really lucky, Melvin will allow me to place the order to start phone service to that apartment at the beginning of March, before I officially move in, and I’ll just leave that number unused until I actually start living there mid-March — if I can do that, then that could move all pertinent reconnect dates up by two weeks, giving me only two weeks of downtime for the website. I’ll see what I can do.
I should still be able to get online for e-mail and such the entire time, though, as I’ve got modems in both of my computers now — so at least I won’t be going through the same ‘net-less existence I was when I first moved into my place.
More updates on all this nonsense will appear as I nail down the details.
Hedwig – first impressions
I just got done watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch and…well…to be honest, I’m not really sure right off the bat just what I thought of this film. I’m going to let it percolate in my brain for a bit — I’ve got to get to bed right now and post more thoughts on it later.
For now, though, I did want to put up the lyrics to one of the songs in the film, “Origin of Love.” Wonderful song, great lyrics.
Infocom presents Tetris
Y’know, you might only get this if you’ve been using computers for a long time…but I think it’s hilarious. Royce will, too, if he hasn’t seen it already (or, perhaps, if it’s just been a while). Tom will probably understand too. The rest of you…well, you’ll just have to bear with us ‘old-timers’.
Basically, Infocom was a company that did some of the earliest computer games, back when everything was completely text-based. Think Zork, or the origininal Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. If you have to ask…you won’t get it.
You are looking at the shaft. A large red block, four units by one
unit, is above your head, dropping slowly. It has its long edge
horizontally aligned.
>turn the block
I don't know how to "turn" something.
The block descends lower.
>rotate block
The block rotates in mid air, now with the long edge vertically
aligned.
The block descends lower.
>move block left
The block shifts to the left.
The block descends lower.
>drop block
You aren't holding the block.
The block descends lower.
>move block down
The block drops into the narrow gap, filling the four columns.
The columns flash twice, then vanish, dropping the blocks
above them down. A musical tone is heard.
[Your score increased by 20!]
A square grey block, two units by two units, is now overhead,
slowly dropping.
— This is from a post I found that was originally posted to alt.religion.kibology, by Dave A. Largtigue.
A splash of color
I did a little bit of dinking around on the site this evening. Nothing really incredible, just playing with some of the styles that I use. Added the green background, made the day division headers stand out a bit more, changed the color of the text for quotes so that there’s a more visible difference between my babble and quoted babble, and rearranged the links a bit.
The wierd thing is, somehow this seems to have borked up the comments boxes a little bit — they now don’t quite fit within the defined window size. I’m not sure why…will experiment a bit to clear that up, though.
Lots of moves, and Casey turns 30
I’m a little tired right now, and kind of sore (there’s a nasty flu bug going around that I think I might be catching), but I wanted to toss a quick post up before I crashed out for the night.
I’ve spent much of the past couple weekends helping Candice move. She was able to get a new room in a different wing of the college, so she’s out of the standard dorm situation. A much bigger room, with a bathroom all her own — she’s quite excited about this. Can’t say as how I blame her, either — I know I’m really enjoying having my own space rather than the roommate situation I’ve been in ever since I moved out of my folks’ house.
Speaking of moving, it appears that my move is going forward as well. I’ve given Melvin my rental application, and he’s said I should be ready to move in on March 15th. This will most likely mean that my webpage will be offline for a while (grrrrrrr…) as I get the DSL line transferred over to the new apartment. I’ve got a bad feeling it could be as much as a month to a month and a half, as Speakeasy apparently can’t connect a DSL line until I’ve had a phone line up for a month, plus there’s the time for the connection to actually get made. Ah, well…so it goes…I’ll make it as short a time as possible, however.
Casey hit that wonderful 30 about two weeks ago, but everyone’s been so busy that we weren’t able to have the party until this weekend. However, it ended up going pretty well. Dez made an absolute masterpiece of a cake, as you can see in the picture here — a kitty litter cake! I don’t think I remember quite all of it, but I think it was crumb cake and white cake crumbled into pieces and mixed with pudding, put into a litterbox, with a litter scooper for a cutting/serving tool, and complete with Tootsie Rolls melted and formed into the right shapes to serve as kitty poop! Dez was bouncing around the kitchen when I showed up, completely thrilled with herself for creating this thing — and I laughed as soon as I saw it.
It’s wonderful having sick friends sometimes.
The cake was a hit with the rest of the group too — once they could convince themselves that it actually was edible (though one or two of them had to remove any ‘poop’ from their plate before they could actually eat any of it). We all sat and talked and joked around for the evening, and it was a pretty nice night. They’d done the whole party with a ‘white trash’ theme, complete with weenie wraps, pork rinds, and cheeze-in-a-can for the crackers, and to top it all off (aside from the cake, of course) — pig’s feet! The pigs feet even got sampled, too, though I decided that that was one culinary adventure I really didn’t need to explore. In any case, was a good evening. Candice and I stayed until a bit after 11pm, when she ran me home, and she went back out to campus.
And that pretty much catches up to where we are now. Until later….
The pope said what?
In November, the frail and ailing Pontiff sent his first email, a message sent to his Bishops in Oceania in lieu of what would be a taxing visit. “This new Internet is a Blessing from the Lord,” the Pope said through an interpreter, “but Jesus Motherfarking Christ, these annoying-ass pop-up ads are farking pissing me off.”
The return of Spudnuts
I got the following off of the comment thread from this post by Wil’s wife on WWDN. Yes, I know i’ve been mentioning that site fairly often lately…but Wil rocks, as does his wife, and as do many of the people who read and comment on his site. It’s become a daily stop for me.
Anyway, one of the regular readers and posters-of-comments has been MIA for a while. Last night at around 2am, Spudnuts returned with a vengeange. Whoever Spudnuts is, he’s one of the funniest guys I’ve read stuff from — and the following series of posts demanded to be saved. If you read this, I hope you get as much of a giggle out of it as I did. The majority of the posts are by Spudnuts, plus there’s a few relevant posts by other WWDN regulars in there too.
Cross-platform 2.0
Tom was good enough to send me two screenshots of my site that he took on his *nix box. Generally good results, but (sigh) not perfect. In any case, I’ve updated my browser compatibility chart with his submissions.
Thanks Tom!