Category Archives: /dev/null

random stuff, without categories

Survivor – Buh Bye Flica

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We are getting down the the merge, and it appears that people finally got tired of the c’est la vie that was Flica.  She certainly couldn’t be trusted in any alliance.

For the remaining 12, the numbers are interesting.  Four of the original asian tribe (only Cao Boi has left), four of the original white tribe (only Flica gone), three of the original black tribe, and only Ozzie is left from the Hispanic tribe.

So who will make the merge, and start playing for individual immunity?  The big four alliance of Yul, Becky, Sundra and Candice will probably make the merge, the two Aitu outsiders are Jonathan and Ozzie.  I think if Aitu goes to tribal, they’ll probably pick Ozzie to go if they council before the merge.  He is too dominant in the challenges to risk survival part the merge.  If he does make the merge, he’ll have to run the table because he is such a big challenge risk.

On the once powerful Raro, they have shifting alliances, since Pavarti looks out for herself, her vote is for sale.  Adam’s challenge acumen is highly over-rated, and I think he just expects to move on based on his physical talents.  Brad, Jenny, Nate and Rebecca may make a good alliance to challenge the Aitu alliance, but as the last reward challenge showed, Rebecca is extremely lacking in the physical challenges.  Add Pavarti to the group and you have in interesting alliance, should they all make the merge.

Will the tribes end up at even strength come the merge, it will make some interesting game play strategy wise.  This season hs shown that they aren’t afraid to mix up the formula to make the game more spontaneous, I wouldn’t be surprised with an early merge with even strength teams, and another two people must leave at the next tribal council.

Yeah… this is just NaBloPoMo fodder. 🙂

Dusty tadpole

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For the past few months I’ve been a disgruntled laptop owner.  My beloved Dell Inspiron 700m was having the case of the freezes, and was verily unstable.  It was so bad that even booting the machine was hit-or-miss, and letting it stay on, or do some heavy processing was too much for it.  It is out of warranty and I had just changed out the motherboard in the last week or so of the factory warranty, so it should be working better.

I suspected faulty memory module, but the errors never mapped to a memory problem, and memory problems if they are present are usually consistent, and this was hit or miss.  I spent a few hours on the phone with Dell trying to get them to replace my memory module (lifetime warranty on that) but since the problem wasn’t consistent they couldn’t swap out modules.

So I’m stuck with a laptop that can’t go an hour without simply freezing, or if I moved it a bit here or there, it would freeze… I’d read here and there about dust and heat causing this kind of behavior, so I tried to change my processor throttling (easy to do in Linux) and use my fans more to blow the heat out.  Accoring to dkrellem the normal heat was over 50 degrees celcius and if it popped in the upper 60s or over 70, then a freeze would happen.

That worked for a while, but last night the latop (tadpole I call it) really hit the wall, couldn’t get it to boot up normally, to either Ubuntu Edgy Eft, or Windows Vista Beta 2.

This morning, I started to disassemble the laptop to get to the fan and see if I could make that work better.  A little daunting taking apart a laptop rather than a desktop.  But I got it apart, and the fan… she was DUSTY.  Blew it out with a can of air, and reassembled it… and ended up with the right number of screws…

Did some torture testing and normal temps are now dow in the low 40s, a full video transcode (100% processor for about 25 minutes) brought the processor into the low 60s, then it came back down to the low 40s.  It is mucho stabler, and I can even move it around while working on it.  The true test comes with booting up at home, on the couch.  That will be later tonight.

Gah… Energy bills!

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Was in my bill paying mode this morning, and when I looked at what I owed for power, I about fainted.  You see, Angie and I signed up for a *new* Super Saver 24 whatchamacallit from TXU, and the dudes on the phone said we should see significant savings from the lower rate.  Only we are on an average monthly payment plan, so our actual payment changes … hardly at all even with the lower rate.  Wanna know why?

Well I did some number crunching, and I’m not at all sure that SuperSaver 24 is the best plan, but a little smoke and mirrors from the power company.  You see the rates for power went through the roof this last year, and if you all remember gas prices, you’ll understand the shell game that TXU is playing here.  We all remember the almost $3.00/gallon price for gas we paid through the summer.  Well the price of electricity about matches upto that on a per cost basis, lagging a bit since the price of power isn’t as volitile as the price of gas.

Last October for instance the price we paid for power was ~$0.10/kwh (when gas was ~$2/gal pre Katrina), last month we paid ~$0.15/kwh.  The new plan locks us into a price of $0.13/kwh.  A two cent drop, which sounds good, until you realize that if the price of energy drops to the equivalent of what the price of gas.  If gas stays at ~$2/gallon, then it seems we might have signed up for a plan that is 2 cents more expensive than the actual cost of power.

Check my math… or any other intangibles…  Should I call up and cancel the locked in 13 cent rate, and see how the market responds?  Because, since we pay an average monthly payment, the rate fluctuations don’t respond that significantly to the rate we pay.  But I don’t want to be locked into spring 2006 prices either.

Its an Honor just to be NOMINATED

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Hugo Hurley Reyes

But winning is soooooo sweet.

Winner – Funniest costume at my place of employment.

Costume: Hugo “Hurley” Reyes from LOST

Note the backpack, the jar of official Dharma Ranch Composite.  (Not pictured: box of  “Lil Dharma Chocolate Swiss Rolls”)  My t-shirt reads “4 8 15 16 23 42”

Heroes – Better Halves

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Another good episode, and yet another good cliff-hanger.  I’m impressed that they’ve ran this back to back for six episodes, and have another one next week.  LOST won’t have seven straight until after this first six episode tease.

Michael has a good recap, if you can get past the crowing of  ‘I called it, EDEN is THE MOLE!’

As always it starts off where we left off, and we get some focus on the mystery of Niki’s powers.  Up until now we have just skirted revealing her power, which is somekinda split personality disorder on steroids.

Last episode we left Peter answering present day Hiro’s phone call, and we pick up with Peter saying the battle cry!

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World!

Hiro and Ando have a broken conversation about which no one really knows what the next step is, or who the cheerleader is, but they agree to meet up in New York, while Peter and Issac work on figuring out who the is the cheerleader.  Peter also spills that future hero has a sword, which later edges Hiro into katana geek-out mode.   Spoilers and recap after the break. Continue reading →

Sweet NaBloPoMo Bippy

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nablopomo_120x240.jpgSince my better blogging half is doing it. I may as well sign up to write a bit every day for a month. Last time I did a consecutive posting was on CrazyGator for 40 Days of Purpose.

I’ll be blogging mostly for myself and my 1.5 readers, so I’m unsure of what my topics will be all about. I can blather with the best of them, and I won’t tell you about my lunch (mostly because I hardly ever eat lunch.

I probably also need to be linking to other people more often, and drive the traffic up. I don’t have blogger ads or anything, so you linking and reading me just cost me money, not you. But I’m a traffic whore like anyone else, so feel free to link back to me.

I don’t know if I’m as good at content-free posting as Eric.  I don’t have any important dates looming on the horizon.  I watch way too much TV, and so do my virtual friends.  I dabble on my PC too much, hacking away in vain.  I study and prepare for lessons for Sunday School and Wednesday Discipleship class.  I do take requests, and I love a good meme.  Absolute won’t do any Melissa Theuriau blogging.  And I promise not to video-blog.
Heh!  This thirty-days of posting will practically write itself, then Fussy will have to give me a PRIZE.  If I win.  Which I won’t…

Jericho – 9:02

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Okay… I’m stating for the record that this showed has Jumped, quite possibly the proverbial shark.

9:02 – I gather is the time of ‘Federal Response’ and the time that the magical EMP blows out ever electronic part, everywhere.  Impressive range, but I call plot device.  Like someone would explode an EMP over rural Kansas, because … we’ll there just is so many Military Industrial Complexes…  *grr*

So now we really get into post-nuke phase.  Back to the stone age, and HAwkins is ‘compromised’ so he’s getting ll domestic, looking out for number one.  The hoodlums are being hoodlums, and Ms. IRS chick is going after farm boy.

Nothing much else happens, except we learn a little about why Jake left… he was involved in a theft gone wong apparently, and some poor kid got shot.  *yawn*

I watched happy days after the shark jump, so I’ll keep watching.