Blade Edge

Computer software | Video production | My life in general

Blade Edge main header

I don’t *want* a PS2, I *require* a PS2

November 25th, 2006 · Gaming, Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Yes, there is a difference.

See, I’ve never been much of a Playstation fan. I barely have enough time to game on the computer, my poor GameCube and N64 sit sadly to the side – hooked up but unused. Because of this, Nintendo has kept me more than occupied in terms of console gaming. However lately I’ve had a burning desire for something the PS2 offers over the GameCube and N64 – Guitar Hero and DDR.

Why? Well I’ve been over at my buddy’s house lately jamming away at Guitar Hero and it’s freakin awesome – great arm workout too. DDR is obviously a great cardio workout as well and I’ve been craving it a bit for years. Sure, I’m a physical guy in general, at work when I coach and do stunts, but it’d be nice to be able to get up off my ass at home every now and then as well. They say sitting around in computer chairs can be unhealthy. Whodathunkit?

Sure, in terms of physical activity the Wii will certainly prove its mettle, but I don’t have one and I’m not planning on getting one till the price drops below $200 (*sniff* I’ll be missin Twilight Princess till then – don’t even wanna bother with the GameCube version). You can get a slim PS2 these days for about $120.

But I don’t want a PS2.

So what do I do? Well I’ll just have to try and trick myself. I’m going to ask for Guitar Hero II and DDR for Christmas this year. If someone gets me one or both, then I’ll have no choice but to buy a PS2 to play them.

Laugh all you want – mind games work

In other news, it was finally dry and nice out today, I was able to be a bit more aggressive driving around. It was fun Already used to the clutch, it’s real nice and I barely jerk even slightly into gear anymore. It was mainly getting the hang of how quick this clutch grabs on. You let your foot like an inch off and it engages. So you can let up quick and when it grabs you feel it and slowly ease up – it took a bit longer on the tibby. I topped 100mph driving home on a nice flat straight backroad (rt. 537 for you local people). Wheeeee

→ No CommentsTags:···

Back in business

November 22nd, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

As I figured, defaulting the BIOS settings was a bad idea – too bad not doing it during the update screwed something up. After mucking around a bit I looked at the Boot Order and sure enough, the BIOS defaulted to my Maxtor HDD (no OS) rather than the WD Raptor HDD (has OS) because the Maxtor is hooked up to the Primary Slave IDE cable. So I switched the primary hard disk to the WD Raptor, selected it as the secondary boot device (behind one of my disc drives) and presto chango – we have an OS again.

Yeeesh. Okay – back to installing stuff and getting set up again…

→ No CommentsTags:

Stupid Computer and a Wonderful Car

November 22nd, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I got up at 7:30 this morning to get to DMV early like I said I would and got all my title and registration taken care of. I wanted to get personalized plates saying DREWCFR but I have to send a form to Trenton and it takes 4-6 weeks, but then they credit me for the normal plates so that’s cool. Then Heather drove me down to pick up the car and all was good. It was drizzly/rainy driving back up so I couldn’t mess around too much, and of course I spun the tires out at least twice pulling away from lights, but I’ve since gotten used to the clutch/power/rwd combo and things are smoothing out quick. My god it’s such a nice car I’m so freakin happy. Oh yea I did screw up a little bit in that I didn’t register the car under my father, since it’s his name on the insurance. So now he and I have to go back so he can sign on as co-owner.

Now, as for my desktop well, it’s being a whiny little bitch and I wanna kick it. So I flash my ROM to update the mobo BIOS and uncheck the box that says “reset CMOS checksum to restore default settings” cause I wanna keep my settings and I update OK and restart and get an error saying some settings are wrong, press F1 to continue or F2 to restore default settings. So I was like, well fine I’ll just restore the defaults and change em later and it restarts and then tells me “Error loading OS”. Wonderful. I shut it off. I’m going to go back tonight and go into the BIOS and try and restore default settings again and muck around to get things working again. Barring that I’m just going to have to resintall Windows. Again. Good thing I didn’t bother activating it yet… *sigh*

→ No CommentsTags:·

Ups and Downs…

November 21st, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So this time everything went pretty much as planned – I got up early, got to the bank and was immediately able to sit down with Damon, my loan officer, and start the closing process. Since my dad needed to co-sign the loan and he’s always busy at work, we had to transfer the papers over to the branch located in his at&t building (luckily). Unfortunately the lady who would be handling the process on that end couldn’t do it until 2pm, so I had to call Dan up and tell him I would drop the check off later tonight and then register the vehicle tomorrow, drive down and pick it up in the morning. So I got the check at 2, and my Dad gave me quick tour of the at&t building and his office, which was cool since last time I was in that building I was like… I dunno… 12? Now I have to go deliver the check and get up even earlier tomorrow to get to the DMV at 8 when it opens to handle all that then be at Dan’s house before 10:30 because he has business to attend to later. But it shouldn’t be a problem.

I started reformatting the desktop. Going good, tho I already got tripped up once. Geez. Somone’s out to get me I swear. I installed the motherboard chipset inf update files and when I rebooted windows reported a corrupt system file, so I had to use the Repair function off the setup disc to fix it. And now it’s telling my my activation is no longer functional (this was my third activation). But I’ve never had a problem calling the phone number and getting the activation number, so I’ll just do that tomorrow.

Back on the upside, my Hauppage tv tuner card arrived today and is all hooked up ready to go, just have to get around to installing the drivers for it and all that. Wheeee

K, have a check to deliver!

→ No CommentsTags:·

The delay! Oh teh pain!

November 20th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

I dragged myself outta bed at the ungodly hour of 8:30 so I could get to the bank by 9am and get the loan process started. Well I made it, but it seems my loan officer decided to become ill or something and not show for work. Did I give him permission to become ill? No. Bastard.

So oh well, that bummed me out completely the rest of the day, I’m waking up early again to try once more tomorrow.

Enjoy a non-review up on the main GDNet page. We have a few more, don’t worry

Looks like I need to reformat already. Something seems to have gotten screwed up in my Mobo’s software apps installation, among some other things I can’t use the update utility to flash my BIOS, which is bad enough. If I get down to like ~1.2GB of available system memory programs fail to load and menus/graphics fail to show like the system is drained of any and all available memory. I let memtest86 run during boot through 5 passes and not a single RAM module error turned up, so it has to be something with the mobo drivers/software – or even XP itself. Or maybe it was an app I installed or some service I disabled.

In short there are too many variables – I’m just wiping clean and installing bare-bones apps, adding new apps when I need them instead of all at once at the start, so that if something starts acting weird I can remember which app I installed last.

So yea I’ll prob take care of that tomorrow too if I’m not running around getting shit done for my car. Which I hope I will be.

Dammit 8:30 will come too soon. Must try and get some sleep…

→ No CommentsTags:··

The Last Farewell

November 19th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So today was the memorial service for my friend Jon, who died almost two weeks ago in a freak gymnastics accident. The service was held at Jonas Gymnastics, where he worked and where the accident took place. It’s hard to have to keep saying good bye to someone – first when he actually left, then at his funeral and then again at his memorial. A part of me wanted to chuck it all and just party and have a good time and celebrate Jon’s life with laughter and… well, life. But there were a lot of people there that had not yet had a chance to properly say goodbye like I have and others have, so for them this was good. I think it was also good for those who have had to say goodbye other times because I believe it gets a little easier each time, at least I hope it does for those having trouble letting go.

The service was much more than I expected and very nicely done. We started with an opening speech from one of the gym owners, Jeff Jonas, followed by a playing of What Hurts the Most by Rascal Flatts. Then there was a reading of Psalm 23, followed by some more words and a Eulogy by my good friend Sasha, who did an upstanding job – I will get a copy of what he wrote and post it here for sure, because it was amazing. Jon’s girlfriend, Kris, also said some words about the man she loved. She told me it took her 5 days to write, and I said that was good, because you certainly don’t want to say you can write something like that in two hours. I will also try to obtain a copy of that, for the words she wrote down would convince anyone that she did indeed take 5 days to write them. Melanie Jonas then joined with her husband Jeff and together they dedicated a weeping cheery tree in Jon’s name, everyone lit a candle and we played Hurt by Christina Aguilera. Then Jon’s room mate Korey (Dizzle) threw on a huge fro wig of Jon’s, a nice bit of levity, and read a poem Jon had penned before his death. It reads:

I will be right here when times get tough,
I will be right here when the road ahead looks rough,
I’m staying and waiting till the day you come home,
I’ll be here no matter how far you may come.
If there’s trouble ahead and you can’t cope,
Just remember I’m here, it’ll give you some hope.
If you’re tired and hurt and your head is a mess,
And you can’t handle all of the stress,
Just remember I’m waiting with a smile on my face,
Sitting here patiently in our special place.
You have your journey and now you must face it,
And I have my path, I coldy embrace it.
Yet, soon enough, our day will come,
Our paths rejoined will be as one,
Everything from now until then,
Will be spilled from within this pen.
So just remember I am here,
Go with confidence and have no fear,
For I support whatever you do,
Through all of this our dreams will come true.

Final words by Melanie wrapped up the ceremony:

“It is said that the purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all. John mattered; he was productive; he made a difference in all of our lives”

– Jonas Gymnastics

After that everyone who had roses placed them before the tree. Food, refreshments and counselors were then provided inside the gym. I forgot my damn camera so I had to use my camera phone:


(I would like to mention that the signature board was full-up by the end of the service)

After the service while getting food I caught sight of Kris sitting all alone on the far side of the gym. Well that wouldn’t do. I knew she was still having a hard time so I went and sat with her for a while until some more people started to drift over to her and keep her company. After that I partook in the food and company and had a good time.

→ No CommentsTags:

And the winner is…

November 18th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I went today to Linden to check out the 04 and wasn’t too pleased with what I saw. It was def a nice car, the rims were hot – 3 peice with black spokes and chrome rim, but that was about it. The body had some rubs and slight scratches – barely noticeable but I’m a stickler for such things. The interior looked faded, there were rubs and scratches on the dash, a stain on the driver’s seat… he prob left it outside with no cover on it. To top it all off he had a 3rd stage clutch installed. Even tho I’ve been driving manual for a year and a half and was just allowing myself to admit to being competent, a 350Z has close to twice the horsepower of my old Tiburon and it’s a rear-wheel drive car to boot. Learning to handle that power while dealing with a 3rd stage clutch would be a nightmare – I know I’d burn it out in a month.

So I told him I had another offer to look into tomorrow – which I didn’t but, just in case I ended up changing my mind – and I called up Dan from yesterday with the 03 and told him it was on. I managed to do a little wheeling and dealing in the final price, he thought he had listed for $20k and I honestly told him he had listed for $20.9k, so then I told him he could keep the $500 cash deposit I was gonna give him to hold the car and then I would just cut a straight check from the bank for $20k (my original max loan target – damn I’m good). So I saved myself $400. I ran a quick CarFax report before I took down the cash – intuition was saying OK on the deal but never hurts to get a second opinion. CarFax came back clean so I handed over the cash and signed the bill of sale. Well, the original source says I’m going in to the bank when it opens to schedule an appt to get the loan papers signed and get the check. Then I’ll prob hand over the check on Monday as well, come back home to get the car insured, registered and the title switched, then my friend Sasha will drive me down Tuesday afternoon in his NSX to pick up the car and we can ride back home together, two bad-ass cars cruisin

So. Tuesday at the earliest – Wednesday at the latest. HELLS YEAH!!!!

→ No CommentsTags:

EaW is still my bitch… mostly

November 17th, 2006 · Gaming

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I finally set up my Gamer account in XP on the new computer. I have a separate user account that I use to play games, because my main account loads up a whole bunch of apps and utilities that I simply don’t need hogging up my memory while I’m playing a game. I also disable all wallpapers and strip the XP theme. Bare bones, baby. Bare bones.

So I loaded up Empire at War – I put both install discs into my two drives to see if the install program would detect the second disc and not ask me for it. It didn’t which is kind of disappointing and is a feature that should be included in installers IMO, tho not everyone has 2 disc drives it has become more prevalent of late. Still I just had to point the installer to the second drive, and not have to actually change out a disc. Meh, same difference I guess.

It’s been over a month since I’ve played EaW, and I was hoping to see some radical changes in the ladder now that they had released Forces of Corruption, but it was all pretty much the same, though it does look like they cleaned up all the bastards with multiple accounts giving themselves hundreds of wins. I patched to v1.5 and hopped online, expecting to be mutilated due to my lack of practice.

However tonight must have been n00b nite, either that or all the good players have upgraded to FoC. I blasted all 5 of my opponents without any real trouble. The closest I came to losing was a TIE Bomber rush early in the game, but I countered in time. I checked all their records and they all have a ton of losses to their names already, so although I got some low picks, at least it was a good way to come back to the game. Snag myself another 5-win streak medal. I even managed to improve my ladder ranking a good 40 or so points. now I’m ranked 301st. not too shabby. Maybe I’ll stick with EaW for a while more before upgrading to FoC and start battling the big boys again.

→ No CommentsTags:

03 checks out!

November 17th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So that’s the car I went to check out today, and I must say I was very pleased with what I saw. The owner, Dan, was recently divorced and so was looking to sell a lot of his toys for some money – he also had a restored 240Z, two bikes, a truck with a boat on a trailer, and his daily driver. I gave them all cursory look-overs as well and he’s kept every one of em in great shape – his daily driver has over 200k miles on it and still has the original clutch installed. His dad was a truck driver and taught him how to drive stick. The car itself was also in great shape, it wasn’t his daily drive so he kept it in the garage all the time, he had it out once in the rain, never in the snow. It was a bit dusty, but it’s hard not to notice on a black car. I should know. Keeping my Tibby clean drove me to fits. A few minor barely noticeable knicks from the road – normal shit you get driving around. There was a small rub over the front left wheel well, barely noticeable.

I hopped in to take it for a spin around the block and immediately proved myself completely inept when I failed to start the car. Dan: “You have to hold down the clutch”. Ah, right. So I depress the clutch, start her up, release the clutch and stall the car.

great.

Dan: “Are you sure you know how to drive manual?” This is where I had to explain to him that with my Tibby and its auto-starter, I could never leave the clutch engaged if I wanted to auto-start the car. I also never had to depress the clutch to start the car for that reason. I only left the car in gear if I parked on a hill, which I avoided at all costs anyways. Hence, I’m not used to pressing the clutch to start the car and I’m not used to having the car in gear when I start it.

So he nodded his understanding and accepted my apology, and we went for a little drive through the neighborhood. He took me down some of the bumpier roads so I could listen for any weird noises coming from the car, of which I heard none. The handling was so tight and I could feel the road so much it was amazing. I didn’t get a chance to push her past 3rd gear but I could feel the power.

Parked her back in the driveway and then I took one last look around the outside and through the interior, checking everything out. The only thing I don’t really like is that the Z’s glove box is behind the passenger seat, which I think is kind of awkward, but it’s a spacious glove box.

So that was that. I have a really good baseline now to take with me tomorrow when I go look at the car out in Linden. After that I’ll be able to make my decision, do the Carfax, give someone a down payment and head to the bank to sign for my loan. Oh yea baby…. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s report

→ No CommentsTags:·

First test drive tomorrow

November 16th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I called up both owners of the 350Zs that I had found last nite and both cars are still up for sale – whoo hoo! Tomorrow I’m heading over to check out the 03, and Saturday I’m heading out to look at the 04. I definetly have my eye on the 04 but the 03 is certainly a decent fall-back car. So I’ll update tomorrow with news on the 03!

Oh and I’m prob going to go out later to visit my friend Sash who’s camping out tonight to get a PS3 tomorrow. Tho his chances are pretty slim seeing as how ppl have been camped out since freakin Monday, holy crap. So I’ll have to take pics and post em

Update

Looks like Sash will be camped out by his lonesome at a local K-Mart that supposedly isn’t getting any PS3s. Maybe. They may get like… one. But hey, that’s honestly his best shot right now considering the fact that all the lines now have more ppl in them then the stores will have units to sell, and people in the big lines are just getting shot at, robbed, beat up, beat up some more, and kicked out. So yea, maybe he is the smart one. Or still, maybe not. I’m gonna go hang out and keep him company for a bit. We’ll find out tomorrow if he makes off with a prize.

→ 1 CommentTags:·