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All posts for the month January, 2007

It works!

Posted by Matthew on January 31, 2007
Posted in: Gaming, Linux. Leave a Comment

After a few hours of messing around with Cedega, I finally got all of the Steam powered games running on the new Linux box. I tried messing with so many things I nearly forgot what the heck I changed. In the end, it turned out to be an audio problem. If anyone out there is running AMD64 Linux and using the 32-bit emulation packages to run Cedega, please, please, PLEASE make sure you have the “Use MMap” option unchecked. It was that simple. Uncheck and games run wonderfully.

The best part was that I didn’t even have to reinstall anything. All I had to do was scp my ~/.cedega directory from the old machine to the new and run. It was just that easy. The directory and all of the sub-directories was about 12G in total size….

A new desktop

Posted by Matthew on January 30, 2007
Posted in: Toys. 2 comments

John decided a long time ago to get himself a new desktop. After a lot of research, he settled on a system from Shuttle. They offer smaller case sizes with a smaller motherboard pre-installed. Slap a processor, RAM, and a hard drive in the case and you are all set.

He does the research. I am the impulse buyer. I basically bought the same setup that he has, except I upgraded to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual-core 2.6GHz CPU. Faster with more cache.

I had to one up him. There is no way I was letting him have a faster rig me!

The Gentoo install is chugging away right now. The base install is all set, and I am compiling Xorg and fluxbox. I should have most of the apps up and running tomorrow…

Bye Bye Peter

Posted by Matthew on January 29, 2007
Posted in: NHL, The Flyers. Leave a Comment

My guess is that the Flyers will trade Peter Forsberg soon. Even he is getting angry over the Flyers and how their total suckage:

“I’ve been frustrated lately – every single game,” Forsberg told reporters after the game. “I told [Mike] Knuble before the game to drag me out of there and keep me quiet. I’ve been frustrated at losing and not playing good. It’s something I have to work on.”

He was even benched for the last three minutes of the second period in yesterday’s game. I’m sure that went over well.

Woo Hoo!

Posted by Matthew on January 28, 2007
Posted in: NHL, The Flyers. Leave a Comment

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to excite me, but when the Flyers have gone 9 games without having a win, I think this is a good reason.

Although the Flyers still really suck, it seems they have been playing a lot better lately. The games have been much closer and losses aren’t generally by 3-5 goals. Again, baby steps.

It was a great Sunday afternoon game that was very close throughout. Jeff Carter scored both Philadelphia goals with the second coming with 1:03 left in the third period.

They are still 11-32-5…

Comics

Posted by Matthew on January 26, 2007
Posted in: General Nonsense. Leave a Comment

I know I am getting a bit old, but I have recently started reading comic books. It’s just my speed. I generally don’t buy books (novels, etc) anymore, only because reading generally puts me to sleep. I think I get bored really easily these days. All it takes is one or two chapters and I am snoring away.

Comic books, however, are perfect. It is basically a never ending story, but delivered in small chunks. Perfect!

On a side note, I’ve been reading and looking into just about everything comic book related. I’ve started to watch the new TV show Heroes. I actually like it a lot. I’ve watched plenty of movies based on comic books, and most of them are OK too. However, enter Smallville. It really does have a high level of suck. It was like, 2 minutes of cool super hero stuff and 58 minutes of Dawson’s Creek. Friggin Dawson’s Creek!

I shall watch no more!

garyswrong.com

Posted by Matthew on January 24, 2007
Posted in: General Nonsense. Leave a Comment

I’ve been a Howard Stern fan ever since I can remember. I used to listen to him on my daily drive in high school. When I went to college, I used to sit in my car between classes and listen for hours on end. When he mentioned that he was moving to Sirius Satellite Radio, it didn’t take me long to become a subscriber. Trust me, I am a fan.

For the last few weeks, a Stern fan created a site called RobinsWrong.com. Basically, they nitpick the show and post any mistakes that she makes. I got to thinking, logged into my Dotster account and snagged up GarysWrong.com and BabaBooeysWrong.com. I never thought much of it really. I setup the domain, parked them on this webserver with some temporary pages and kind of left it go.

Last night I got an email from Steve Langford, a Howard 100 News reporter. He just said that he was interested in talking to me and that I should call him.

I think I laughed for a good 10 minutes straight.

This morning I tried calling him a few times and got nothing but voice mail. I finally got through and he seemed thrilled to talk to me. He asked me if he could record the phone call and then asked a few questions. Again, I didn’t think too much of it at first. Then, I heard the domain garyswrong.com mentioned by Steve when he was talking to Howard and Robin, and I almost flipped.

After the days show was over, they usually have news briefs at the top of every hour. Just around 3:00pm, I heard them play me two lines from the interview.

Too cool. I am thinking of posting an mp3, but don’t any lawyers hounding me over copyrights. At any rate, it was quite cool.

The SuperBowl

Posted by Matthew on January 23, 2007
Posted in: NFL. Leave a Comment

SuperBowl XLI’s teams are set. The Chicago Bears representing the NFC and The Indianapolis Colts representing the AFC. Who will win? Who knows. It should be a good game. Let’s just hope and pray that the Bears don’t bring out another SuperBowl Shuffle.

SuperBowl Shuffle 1

SuperBowl Shuffle 2

SuperBowl Shuffle 3

SuperBowl Shuffle 4

SuperBowl Shuffle 5

If you aren’t old enough to remember what I am talking about, then you are the lucky one. Get up to speed by checking out Google Video. I actually used to own the record. Yes, the record.

Mistakes can happen

Posted by Matthew on January 18, 2007
Posted in: General Nonsense, Toys. Leave a Comment

Well, it seems that I do have a bit more luck then I first thought. My replacement head unit arrived much faster then I thought it would. So I consider today Round Two of the great truck stereo battle.

Same routine as the other day. Take the entire dashboard apart and start unplugging and plugging back in. All seemed well. I had everything hooked up, but not prettied up and installed back into the dash. A few more connections and then came the test.

Same problem. No sound from the auxiliary input jacks. I said a few kind words out loud and grabbed the phone. Again. While being on hold while “Cody” was researching the problem, I started to get a bit hot under the collar. He finally came back on and discovered the problem. There were two mistakes. First, it seems that my model of Durango already has its own internal amplifier installed somewhere. Lord knows where. With the old stereo, there was a small connecting wire that lead from the main unit to that amplifier that basically told it when to turn on. That was nice. It seems that this wire was not included in the wiring diagram I got from Crutchfield. He “looked up a few manuals” and found out what wire was what. After a few snips, strips, and crimps, all was working wonderfully.

Now, I just need to read the manual and figure out this thing’s crazy menu system. But, in the end, the list of features make it all worth it.

Now, what should I buy next?