Real Life – Page 11 – The Kind Healer

Mysterium Travel Woes – Driving Trip

Well, I’m having a slight problem, as mentioned on UO. The hotel is not actually in Boston directly, but Burlington (which is a suburb outside the normal local subway, aka the T). It is slightly available via a bus (350/351) which could be possible but that only takes me to Burlington Mall and from there I need to find a way to cross Rt 93.

I am now considering a suggestion from my father – drive from NJ. At first that sounded a but nuts to me, since I’m not certain how much sleep I’m going to get prior to the drive (my flight lands home at 11 PM on Thursday!). But I suppose if I get some extra sleep Thu morning and a quick nap before the drive, I may be able to depart around 5 AM and be there in time for Friday Reg. I’m staying until ‘Monday’ anyway, so I can leave around 00:30 (during my ‘normal’ work hours) for a nice drive home.

As a side note, the only reason I’m actually considering this is the fact that I have Nav in my car. That allows me to punch in the destination and go without worries…

Anyway, I’m effectively setting this as the plan now, so anyone interested in how a Prius works can take a look over the weekend. :)

/salute
–TSK

Travel Update 1 – Dexcon / Flight to MO

*waves from Springfield, MO*

Well, though Dexcon was not the full weekend for me, it was still pretty good.

I didn’t really *play* anything official (other than James’ LARP module). I did, however, get back into the ‘Avatar System’ LARP that pervades the Double Exposure convention system. We’ll see how that turns out; I had fun, and got ideas for their IC forum.

As for today’s flight, I’m tired, annoyed, amused, but happy. First a major portion of the route I intended to take to the airport was closed. Then a whiny kid in the row behind me (though I was able to book the exit row – woot!). And lastly a plane-swap, as the one I intended to take on the 2nd leg was broken and going to the hangar for repairs.

I’m not sure it that bodes well for the week, but I had a little fun with the 2nd flight so no worries.

–TSK

Itinerary (or: How Nuts will I really be the Next Two Weeks)

Well, my vacation will start this evening, with Dexcon 2008. In reality things really will start tomorrow (where I will stay at a nearby hotel this time, cashing in on HHonors VIP points). This convention ends on Sunday, July 20.

However, I’ll be going home Sat night as I’m flying to my father’s house in MO. This will mark the second time I’ve been able to make it down there, the first being in Dec as my original plans were deep-sixed from a company re-org. With luck, I’ll make the connecting flight at Denver (and yes, per a comment on UO I am beginning to think we should consider a Mysterium there one year). More worrisome is my first experience with the Newark Airport parking lots; My father says that security is not a huge issue, but distance may (can be a mile or more of walking). We’ll see, since I don’t mind walking too much.

My return flight is on Thu 7/24 where I’ll likely be home around midnight. That gives me enough time to clean up, rest, and re-prep for a 3 AM train ride to Boston on Sat.

That’s *The Plan* anyway. Keep your eyes open through the next week and a half, to see how well things fit (oh and yes I SHALL rant as needed!)…

/salute
–TSK

Popping my Head Up

I had no intent of not writing a RSS-able entry in the past two months; In fact I’ve been tweaking away at the site now and then, its just not in areas that will be noticed much by sites like MystBlogs. :p

Anyway, the obligatory ‘what’s been going on since April’ post:

-> The Slug (NSLU2-Debian), he be toast again (shortly after my last post, ironically). I’m fed up with the rather convoluted way that I have to connect to it, so I’m looking at just getting the smallest entry-PC you can get (about $200 at MicroCenter) and dump Debian on it. Maybe dual-boot it with OpenSolaris. :)

-> New video card: nVidia 8800 GT from Palit. Despite the iffy reviews that came out of NewEgg, its looking good so far. Only problem now is that I no longer have any inhibitions to add mods for Oblivion…

-> Continuing the overclock: I’m up to 3.0 Ghz on the Q6600 (that’s 375×8) and stable; Rolling back the HSF to the stock one helped with that, as well as replacement exhaust fans on the case. I will update the PC page at some point, but in most respects now my system specs match Craig’s.

-> Back on SL, heavily: After two months in There, of all things a golf tourney in SL gets me involved again. I’m fiddling with sailing a bit more too, and exploring why the durn Viewers like to crash so much (I think that’s been mostly solved as of yesterday – more testing to do).

-> planning for vacation and Mysterium: I had planned to goto Boston for Mysterium before I heard about Wolfie’s death. Now I will definitely be there, perhaps trying to make a ‘boffer safe’ Riven dagger as a demo (need materials from James – perhaps while at DexCon – or visit an appropriate store). Making a sheath for this could get complicated…

-> My health: Don’t worry, good news here. :) I’ve been experimenting with something called ‘colloidal silver’ (which, according to the FDA, I’m not allowed to explain what it does – I’m NOT kidding!). Things are progressing well, and I may bring samples of the stuff as well as the generator I use to make it.

-> Blue Belt: Last and definitely not least, I earned my Blue Belt at Tiger’s (around late April). This was despite the sore wrist going into the testing period, but I just dealt with it and endured. I really should start getting pics for this…

*Reviews the above* Ya know, even if the new MO were available today, I still don’t think I could join atm. It’s just too busy in my life. We’ll see once the servers are up again.

/salute
–TSK

Sheesh (Fun /w Comment Spam)

Ya know, It was an ideal life about one – or even two – years ago, when I started this site up. I just wanted someplace to quietly rant about things, in my own way, and to otherwise get my mind off work.

To that end, I wanted a way to prevent any major monitoring and/or admin work with the comment system. [I don’t believe in removing comments altogether, but I’ve thought about it multiple times!] Various methods were in place over time, but two are still in place for about a year now – Bad Behavior and (currently) Akismet (the latter *only* because I happen to have a WP account from the original LL weblog requiring a login – that got me a free API key in the deal).

Up until this week, I only had 30 comments tracked by Akismet as spam – not bad for a semi-known site. But in the past week, thanks to the prior post (and the mentioning of two little words) I’ve been inundated with another 18 comment spams over three days. This is impressive only because this is *after* Bad Behavior is preventing bots from even reaching here in the first place! And checking past articles related to Akismet, it appears to be due to their lagging behind (and in some cases, its also placing valid posts into its moderation queue).

So, I’m looking pretty hard at another service – Defensio – which, amusingly, Akismet’s own weblog introduced with a smile and a wave just this past winter. I’m also in the process of enabling OpenID and related referrals on my site, so that I can post to other sites without any major issues (Gwyneth’s site is a good example, actually). For WP that’s actually relatively simple – a couple of plugins – and off to the races. Will post on that later.

/salute
–TSK