The Ramblings of Ken

We have a definite time and location for the next LAN party. It is Friday, February 10th at 6:00 pm. If you have any other questions or concerns feel free to post a comment.

I know certain people that think that if they own it, it is the best that there is! I won't name any names because this is going to be a touchy subject. However, I love to create discussion. For the sake of this post I am going to say that my car is the best!

Here are some specs for you:

1993 Ford Escort
1.9L 4 cylinder engine
88 hp / 108 ft-lbs torque
4 speed automatic transmission
34 mpg highway
Front-wheel drive
(more specs available upon request)

It beats the crap out of everyone else's car! Just look how sexy it is... Tell me why your car is better. Pictures are welcome too.

Since I know a few people that play the Sims 2 regularly, I've kind of gotten back into it. Although, I do have to say, it is the dumbest game in the world! It is a big waste of time to watch dumb people live their lives when you should be living your own life! :) I, however, find myself being addicted to it at times. What is it about helping someone else live their life that gets so addicting?

Do any of you out there have comments on this game? Does anyone else play it?

(Image hijacked from EA Games website)

Gaming night planned once again! Anyone who wants to come can. We are planning on Friday February 10th or Saturday February 11th. You are all going down!!! It will be at my house again... in the basement. Come join the fun! I will post a later announcement confirming whether it is Friday or Saturday.

As I came home from work today I handed my laptop to my mom to show her my assignment in biology, which is posted on the web. To my surprise, she actually scrolled down on the page using the side of the touchpad! Wow! She usually takes her pointer over to the scroll bar to scroll down. Good job, mother! I'm very proud!

I know I'm two days late posting this, but I needed to calm down before I posted crap that I would regret later.

I know I'm going to have maybe two upset people because I have so many friends, but there will be no Super Bowl party at my house on February 5th. The Denver Broncos lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday to lose their chance to go to the Super Bowl. Sigh... I'm kind of upset about it. I was sure that they were going to win.

Well, "Big Ben" and "The Bus" deserve it. They've worked hard this year and they've outplayed their opponents, especially when it really counted. Good luck, Pittsburgh, in the Super Bowl. Denver went down to a worthy opponent.

I went skiing last night with one of my very best friends. It was so fun! It had been way too long since I've been skiing. I wish I could go more often. I forget the feeling that goes through me when I'm gliding over the soft white snow. I also can't describe to you the rush that overtakes me when I'm flying through the air after hitting a good jump. Wow... I sure missed it. Must...go...more...mmmm.... I love skiing!

(Image courtesy of skithebeav.com)

I'm debating on whether or not I should start a section on my site like hotornot.com. I've decided to run a test to see what kind of response I will get. Here is the first picture for you to rate! Post your rating from 1 to 10 in the comments section please...



(This is what people get when they ask me for a favor to take a picture of them... muwahahahahah...)

I was up late earlier tonight and I was messing around with my DSL modem's settings. I was having a little bit of trouble and I wanted to make things run a little more smoothly. I got curious and I wondered if there was a firmware upgrade for my modem. It turns out that there was one! I quickly downloaded it and installed it. My modem then rebooted and everything looked normal. I tried to connect to the modem. Everything was dead! No response! What in the world happened?

Not knowing what to do now, I found the CD that came with the modem and browsed through it. I found some utility that was called gtrecover.exe, I believe it was. I ran it and it was able to restore the old firmware to the modem and reboot it. I then ran the setup utility that came on the CD and got connected back up to the internet. Wow, I saved a disaster!

I then did some searching on what went wrong with my modem's firmware upgrade. My findings surprised me...

From http://www.tlarson.com/guides/dslhack/diag:

[blockquote]This upgraded firmware seems to actually have features and options missing that were there before. That's odd. What's even more odd still is the version information as stored in /etc/ver.dat. While the original firmware is version:

[code]QW04-3.60.2.0.6.3-GT701-WG[/code]

the "upgraded" firmware comes up with

[code]3.60.1.0.4.1-GT701-WG[/code]

It seems the the upgrade is not only a non-Qwest build, but it's also version 3.60.1 instead of 3.60.2. In other words, the upgrade is actually a downgrade.[/blockquote]

Qwest, you have great DSL service, but why do you have a broken firmware upgrade on your site? Can you please do something about this? You cost me a couple of hours of sleep. For others without as much experience as me, it might be an entire night of sleep, or more. Please fix this...

I always thought that being able to scroll in a window using a touchpad was a hardware feature that was only enabled on newer laptops. I found out yesterday that I was wrong.

Remember before the days of mouse wheels when you had to move your mouse over to the scroll bar and pull down on it to be able to scroll in windows? Well, I've been living in those days on my laptop. I've had to manually use the touchpad to move the pointer over to the scroll bar and pull it down. I hated every second of it. I've finally figured out how to fix this!

All I had to do was use the correct driver. I downloaded the generic driver for Windows XP from http://www.synaptics.com. It was a very simple process and it enabled me to scroll using the edge of the touchpad! This is exciting stuff! I also got it working in Linux by changing the driver from the generic "mouse" driver to the "synaptics" driver. It was so simple. I wish I would have discovered this a lot sooner.

Oh, and if any of you are like my mother and don't use the mouse wheel and/or side of the touchpad to scroll in web browser windows... um... you should have one of your fingers cut off as a punishment. Make life simpler! Use the scroll wheel!

(Image courtesy of Gateway)

I have a professor in a computer science class who claims that he hates Microsoft. He tells us that we shouldn't be using Microsoft products. However, he uses Microsoft PowerPoint to show presentations in class every day. He uses Microsoft Visual Studio to develop programs and he requires that we use it too. He also uses Microsoft Windows as his operating system to run all of these programs. Isn't this hypocritical? He tells us that we should not use Microsoft products, yet he does.

The other day in class the fact that he could use alternatives to Microsoft products was brought up. It was suggested that he could use Linux as his operating system. He could also use programs like OpenOffice to replace Microsoft Office products. His response was that since everyone else uses Microsoft products, he is forced into it. Hmmm...

Don't claim to be a Microsoft hater if you support them and use their products. There really are alternatives for those of you who truly hate them and there are those of you out there that can testify to this. If you don't want to use Microsoft products you don't have to!

Or maybe someone out there can prove me wrong and give me a situation that I haven't thought of...

(logo is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation)

My Denver Broncos have done it again! They've made it to another AFC championship game. A win against the Pittsburgh Steelers next Sunday would take them to their 7th Super Bowl.

Pittsburgh devestated the Colts today in a 21 - 18 victory at the RCA dome in Indianapolis. Pittsburgh earned a trip to Denver to take on the Broncos in the AFC championship game. Can they do to Denver what they did to Indy today?

Go Broncos! Beat those Steelers next week! Go to the Super Bowl and get the snake off of Jake's back forever!

(Images courtesy of http://www.denverbroncos.com)

I'm frustrated with myself. I can't seem to make friends of the opposite sex without wanting to date them, court them, etc. I have to have a full blown dating relationship or nothing at all. Why do I have to be this way? I really want to have female friends that I can hang out with and not have all of the dating confusion involved. I just don't know how to do it.

Help?

I played my first church basketball game of the year tonight. Um, we got beat... badly. The final score was 59-38. The worst part is that we got beat by my brother's team! We have no height, however. I think every guy on that team was taller than the tallest guy on my team. Well, it was fun and that is what counts.

On the bright side, I stole the ball from my brother at the end! He he he...

(Image courtesy of spalding.com)

From my good friend James:

That’s the eternal question. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are going? Will get there in a mini van? A super sonic jet? Or some space age time dealy? The point is….nobody knows. Except me. But I don’t know if I can tell myself yet.

I just got asked to come fix a problem in a conference room at work. I went in wondering if I was going to be able to fix it. Sometimes it is amazing what happens! I went right in and my instincts took over! I had the problem fixed within two minutes. It was a wonderful feeling!

So, guys, I still know what I'm doing.

I'm back to work at the Space Dynamics Laboratory again! It is great to be back! Thanks to all of you for giving me a chance to come back! I loved my time here before and I'm sure that I'm going to love it still. The Utah State University Research Foundation is a good company for a USU student to work for. I don't think that there is a better place of employment for a student. Thanks SDL/USURF!

I guess I could have posted this when I actually started school on Monday, or even before that. I didn't. Oh well.

After a year long abscense I am back at USU! It feels great so far! No, I am not excited about doing homework and being extremely busy with classes and work, but I know that it is for the better. I do really want to make something out of myself in this life. I feel like I need to graduate from college in order to become what I want to. I am sticking with it this time to the bitter (or happy) end! College life for me!

I have had some people ask me what a LAN party is. For those of you who have asked, here you go...

From http://www.answers.com:

LAN party

An event to which several users bring their boxes and hook them up to a common LAN (Local Area Network), often for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games, especially action games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament. This is also a good venue for people to show-off their fancy new hardware. Such events can get pretty large, several hundred people attend the annual QuakeCon in Texas. The theoretical rationale behind LAN parties is that playing over the Internet often introduces too much lag in the playing experience — but just as important is the special quality of trash-talking each other across the room while playing, and the instinctive social ritual of consuming vast amounts of food and drink together.

To celebrate the new aquisition of http://www.tigrao.org, I would like to announce tigrao.org's first ever contest! The first person to post a comment to this entry with the correct answer to who this person is in the picture above wins! The grand prize winner will receive an all expense paid entry on my blog (until I think of a better prize).

So, who is this person in the picture?

Disclaimer: The person who actually is in the picture and, thus, knows exactly who they are is disqualified from this contest. Sorry.

I have registered the domain tigrao.org to use with this webpage now! Everyone can now point your browsers (and homepages... heh) to http://www.tigrao.org. We'll see if I can create new services and fun stuff with this new domain that I have purchased...

All right! We are having another LAN party tonight at my house! It is gonna be a fun one! This has become a once a month tradition. Each one, in my opinion, has become more fun than the last one. Everybody come! I'm sure we'll be up past 1:00 am, maybe even until 3:00 am.

So, I finally read "Ender's Game" for the first time in my life. I really liked the book. The end definitely caught me off guard, though. This wasn't one of those books where I could predict everything that was going to happen. I found that I became Ender as I read on. I felt for him. I wanted him to just be able to stop everything and give up and just "go home" and relax his life away. But, then, I was cheering for him to go on and help save the world. Anyway, I don't want to give the book away for those who have not read it. It is definitely one worth reading and I would recommend it to those who like sci-fi type books.