Category Archives: digital pity


digital pity

To IDE Or AHCI My SATA Drive?

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Dear LazyWeb: should I be running my 500GB SATA-II drive in IDE or AHCI mode?

FWIW, I installed with IDE. Found a registry setting that allows you to switch to AHCI mode after installing (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msachi\Start needs to be 0 for AHCI to be active, it seems) and I already tried that out… I still have my SATA DVD drive showing up there (some people lost theirs when they tried this) so that’s a non-issue.

My reason for asking is that I’ve read that AHCI mode is supposed to be better yet I think IDE mode was faster – or at least I’m seeing AHCI take longer on boot and then hiccup a little bit while booting…

Just curious…

digital pity

Score!

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Interesting times my 1337 gam3r friends… got handed a copy of Halo 2 for Vista last week – another happy day in games land: Forza 2, Shadowrun for Xbox 360, and Shadowrun for Vista came my way today.

I’m stoked for Forza 2 because I know I can trick out a MINI Cooper, but it’s Shadowrun that presents an interesting quandary. Either way I’m playing with a 360 controller. That’s a given. At home I’ve got a larger screen yet on the road, I can take yet another fun and multi-player Xbox game with me… and that’s in spite of the specs for the PC version: they are not for the faint of heart. According to the box, the following are required: dual processor, 2GB RAM, and either an ATI’s X1800 or nVIDIA’s 7800 level of video card. What is nice is that these seem to be the ligitimate estimates rather than the “typical” feeling that “you can run with 512MB, but don’t plan on liking it”. In fact, I’m able to run it on my notebook – Core Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI’s FireGL 5200, Vista Rating of 4.3 – and that’s at 1400×1050.

What’s really neat about Shadowrun is that it’s the first “active” cross-platform game for MGS: you play online with a PC via Games for Windows Live against other players on their Xbox 360 via Xbox Live. I did that this afternoon without even knowing it – only the Achievements that I earned told me it was a cross-platform game… and those points are welcomed: I finished wh0r3’ing myself out for some more Achievement points this weekend and finally broke 10,000.

And props to FASA for their Achivements list: you get points for fragging or restoring players on the “other” console, which should keep things very interesting.

digital pity

Hey, McFly?

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McFly2015.com: It’s a grassroots movement to get Nike to make available to consumers the futuristic-looking sneakers seen in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part 2.

File this under “why petitions don’t change the world” right next to the Gas Boycott Movement. Of course Nike could afford it and it will probably sell beyond expectations, but even so…

There’s no way I’m wearing my pants inside out in 2015.

digital pity

THETUBE

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I noticed this “new” network called THETUBE when I was back in Connecticut a couple of weeks ago at my sister and brother-in-law’s house. Basically, it’s what MTV was when MTV started. But with more recognizable music. Which is something MTV lacked for a long while as it ramped up – and something they later lost when they turned into a Real World network. Pissed me off though, because I’m spending almost $200 a month for cable, premium cable, and ‘net access yet was missing this channel.

Channel 116 on Comcast HD in Redmond – I don’t know if it’s a HD broadcast, since it’s not widescreen, but it is 5.1 sound which is all whoo hoo and stuffs – I was hoping it would help me to get some homework done but it looks like I’m beyond help with that…

digital pity

Sakura-Con

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Sakura-Con 2007 is going on this weekend… and yes, I finally gave in and bought a three day pass. Now the question is whether or not I actually get off my ass and go.

Go be a fan boy and try to pay homage to Fred, Hawk, or Chris? Maybe. It’d throw in the Rooster Teeth or Errant Story crew, but I don’t think they’ll be there. Hell I don’t know who’s going to be there.

I do know one thing: if I see even one 350 pound man that’s furry from facial hair that dressed like Sailor Moon and that will be it. Decades of therapy. Endless nightmares. I’ll have to wax my head or something.

Maybe I should rethink my plans this weekend…

digital pity

How To Lose An Argument: 120GB Xbox 360 Edition

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Want to argue with me? Come with proper facts and some logic to argue your case or I’ll make you cry and send you home a loser.

Oof. Look at all the would be job applicants that just retracted their resumes – I’m not talking about a work argument… believe it or not I’m far more willing to compromise and accepting of different points of view at work. This is about some all-too-typical fanboy crap.

For example, consider the 120GB Xbox 360 Hard Drive upgrade and it’s suggested retail price…
Continue reading How To Lose An Argument: 120GB Xbox 360 Edition →

digital pity

What Would You Do For A Headline?

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Rory: What a f***ing mess

Rory weighs in on Scoble’s recent comments about Microsoft… you know, the company that helped grow his ego blog image and further fund his current endevour by paying his salary for years…

Thanks to Rory, I have nothing else to say on the matter.

oO, Part II caused by the comments of the comments… bout bloody time someone said it, too.

digital pity

It’s… 2007

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Old news to you, I’m sure, seeing as it’s March and all, but I think the 2007 part of the year just hit me. With a 2×4. Upside my head.

I just realized how old some of the mail I have on my home machine actually is… like stuff dating back to the end of 1995. Over ten years of email? I even read through some of it: stuff that was so important then that it was worth saving. Tips, shareware, and Geek stuff is scattered throughout the collection… sad since I figure that 95% of the URL’s in them don’t work anymore. There’s no way in hell I’m looking in the “Women” folder – evar! In fact, I think my “cleansing lust” was just kindled… I’ve got tubs and boxes of stuff that is old – some bordering on ancient – marked as “stuff that I might need someday”. Now I get a feeling that I want to unload it all. Maybe after GDC… and my homework. And my writing, if I ever get back to that.

The only saving grace in being a pack rat in today’s day and age, is that the 1 GB of old email will fit on a thumb drive that’s smaller than a quarter.

digital pity

I Am… Insulted.

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Subject: Hello Friend, lets be friends because friends are like clothe without them one is naked

Oh my friend,

Hoping you are fine and living good. ice having your address, I wanna be your friend, for first friendship cannot be seen or even be touched, it must be felt within the heart.Hoping you feel just the way i do.Wow, friends are like clothes, without them you feel naked!I guess am right.

Am Omonye Ojojie, from Rwanda in Africa presently residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar Senegal due to the civil war going on in my country. Am 25 years female. I will tell you more about myself, my family and all that maybe necessary in this relationship when you reply to this mail.If this interest you, get back to me on my email : [removed because who wants to help a spammer].

The language, man, the language! And how wonderful – there’s towns in Connecticut that don’t have ‘net access, yet they’ve got broadband in an African civil war zone. Honestly, does spam ever work?

Someday I’m going to go off the grid and click on every link I see, just to see what happens.

digital pity

Did You Just Feel That?

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Hmmm. I would swear I can feel a cloud of Bad Geek Karma swirling over my head. The early warning signs? I can’t get my Sirius Widget to load and play music. And not for anything, but having to leave IE open for streaming music sucks. I’m half tempted to bring in Sirius hardware to avoid it. I also recently noticed that my home machine was built in November, 2002. That’s just ripe for disaster. On top of that, I’ve noticed a drop off in my page hits – that’s when I noticed that I’m completely gone from Google, Live, and Yahoo!’s search engines. Not the whole site – if you search for RandyRants it’s still there – but all of the things I used to get picked up for – like Against All Odds store, Yankee Stadium, Boston Sucks, and iTunes Support – are just *poof*’d. None of my links changed, so I have no idea what happened…

Very odd and very un-fixable – I never figured out how I got to be the top seed in the first place, so I don’t know how to get it back *g*

digital pity

Oh My Nose!

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Gizmondo: The fragrance world has evolved into unexplored areas, and now Play-Doh has gotten into the act. Celebrating its 50th birthday, Hasbro decided to release Play-Doh Cologne Spray in a limited edition for $18.99, reminding you of that time in kindergarten when you decided to see what Play-Doh tasted like. That, a side of paste and an Elmer’s Glue chaser was a respectable lunch in those days.

*snort*

digital pity

Email Consolidation

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*sigh* I’ve resorted to asking the LazyWeb(tm) mob for info!

I’ve had one email address at one domain for over 12 years now. I’ve got three Hotmail Windows Live Mail accounts. I’ve got a few other email addy’s now that I’m a DreamHost customer. While I have all of them streaming into one Outlook Inbox, I’d really like to retire the WLM accounts and simply forward any incoming mail to different POP3 account…

Anyone know if this is possible? Without running a client on a machine to manually forward the email… that would be too lame to do.

digital pity

This Space Is Leased By Joost

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This space is leased by Joost. Well, not really by Joost – it’s actually on loan on behalf of a co-worker that wants to be on the Joost beta… which needs an invite from someone that’s already a member… so she asked me to ask you to invite me so I could invite her. Whatever that means.

The question now is: does anyone have an invite for Joost?