It looks like my recent purchase of Fallout 3 might have been a little bit hasty. This October, there’s supposed to be a Game of the Year (GATY) edition that will include the full game as well as all 5 of it’s expansion packs, set at $60 for consoles, $50 for PCs. Then again, I just paid $25 for a $50 game, and if there isn’t any option to just upgrade to the new “expanded” version for less through Steam, I can just buy it for $50, the price of all 5 expansion packs today, and still have saved $25, right?

Maintaining me as the victor! YAY!

Lark

Steam the service, not steam the water vapor. But it does have it’s drawbacks. For instance, I broke down and bought Fallout 3. I own Fallout 3. However, I won’t have Fallout 3 for another few days, until it’s downloaded. Not Steam’s fault, it’s my crappy ISP, but still…

This might be the first thing you want to do. Windows 7 automatically grants itself the option to restart itself without your confirmation after installing updates. It puts a little notification up over the status icons, but if you’re like me you’ll think it’s asking to restart. I closed it, figuring I didn’t tell it to restart, so it wouldn’t. Nope, it was just telling me it would restart in 10 minutes, and since I didn’t pay enough attention and choose to delay that, I lost a lot of changes I was making to an image for work. (Re: the link–I used the option to edit group policy from that page)

I don’t know anything about the website I linked to, I’m not endorsing it at all, it’s just the first result in Google and it had the fix I was looking for.

Lark

Thinking about my previous post, and Beloit, Kansas’s courthouse having a screen door (which isn’t a big deal by the way, just unexpected), I was reminded of my brother’s future plans for his nursery.

They have four cats, I think, and just had a baby. To keep the cats away, but so they can still hear the baby, they are planning on putting a screen door on their nursery. That’s actually a good idea, but that didn’t stop me from remarking that it would be the most trailer trash nursery ever.

Phase 2 of their plan? Leaving the screen door on the child’s room until he’s 18. That’s how Jesus would want it done.

Oh noes! I just realized that if my brother searches for “screen door” and “nursery,” he’ll come across my super-secret blog! I hope he doesn’t see the picture on my “About” page, that’d really cement his suspicions that this blog is in fact run by…his BROTHER. (cue organ music)

I am not in Beloit, this is something I wrote months ago, before I had a phone I could go online with (thus the obsession with wifi access). I just now stumbled across this and decided to post it for the hell of it.

Greetings from Beloit, Ks. I had to stop through on business, business meaning someone I know has paid me to drive to Beloit (they broke their leg) and I have hours to kill while they’re in appointments.

I spent a little bit of time in the courthouse. Interesting fact about the Beloit courthouse–it has a screen door. Am I the only one who finds this strangely amusing? A courthouse with a screen door. I’m not sure, it may be the back door, but it’s got steps and signs and stuff, it’s a courthouse door.

Ajaxed Wordpress, come on down!

Do you, the audience, like how my “Click to continue reading” link, and my comments section, folds out of the post, instead of loading as it’s own page? I love it. It lets you check out comments or finish the post without diverting you from catching up with other posts you may want to read next. No more opening multiple tabs for one site, as I have to do with many other blogs. That’s all thanks to Ajaxed Wordpress.

Now I feel crappy, posting how great it is, knowing I’ve never given the people who’ve worked on it a cent in return. It’s on my list of things to do once I get paid next, which could be be weeks (sad but true).

In the meantime, thank you, creators of Ajaxed Wordpress, your plugin is amazing. Why, just today I set up an additional plugin allowing users to subscribe to comments. Did I have to dig through code to get it to show up on AWP’s special comment form? No! I didn’t have to do anything but activate the plugin. I don’t know how it works, but I know I like it.

Lark

Is it just me, or are Google’s ads getting better and better? More dead on? Better at delivering ads to me that I am interested in?

I’m the type of person that never clicks ads. Probably ruined by those old banners for free Ipods or “You’ve just won a free !!!” Obvious scams. Now in the past month I’ve clicked on 4 ads. 1 on a web page, 1 from a Google search result, 2 from youtube videos.

I could be that the more I understand about Google’s ads, and how they work, the more I’m trusting of them. It’s relative cheap and easy for anyone to throw their ads in the mix. Also, I’ve seen a lot of ads for business and products I know are legitimate. It’s a definite possibility that the difference is me.

Anybody else?

Lark

First off, let me just say shame on any website that forces phones to use mobile pages. Google has it right, let us choose. I’m talking to you, banks. Amazon.com, don’t think you’re getting away with it either.

Some mobile versions of sites are decent, and I understand the reason for them. However, my Touch Pro is capable of viewing and navigating most complex web sitesWhen I log in to my bank’s site on my phone, it’s usually to check my balance. I have to go through so many screens to get to my balance, it’s maddening. If my bank would just have a link to allow me to use their regular site, a la Google, then there would be no problem.

Opera does have the option to be seen as a desktop browser by most sites, bypassing any mobile pages. Depending on the version of Opera, however, it may or may not work. My bank isn’t the only one. Amazon.com? Your alternate mobile page is probably great for weaker phones. My phone CAN use the normal version of your page, quite easily. When you let me…er, when the version of Opera on my phone lets me? Okay, I don’t know who’s fault it is, but I know these sites could give people the option to choose, if they wanted. Right?

Lark

In defense of connecting most computers to the internet, even MRI machines and those with sensitive information, Cory Doctorow wrote this interesting article for the Guardian, comparing teen sex and computer networking. As always, abstinence isn’t much of a solution.

Operating systems are getting more promiscuous about net connections, not less: expect operating systems to start seeking out Bluetooth-enabled 3G phones and using them to reach out to the net when nothing else is available.

Later, he wrote:

In the era of cheap and easy virtualisation and sandboxing, there’s no reason users shouldn’t be able to partition their computers into “dirty” public-facing sides and “clean” private sides. Of course, a user might subvert this separation deliberately, but the only way to comprehensively prevent that from occurring is to make it possible for a user to get the job done without needing to do so.

It’s a very interesting article, definitely worth a read. One thing he barely touches on is how IT employees (in my experience) are the most abusive of security policy. They feel like since they know the reason for the rules, they can safely break them. Like they’re above it. Above it–wait, where have I heard that before?

Because here comes another sleep update. Even though I was with family at the hospital till 1am, got to bed around 2am, and didn’t get to sleep until 3am, I still woke at 8:10am and jumped straight into the shower. I notice that sometimes I’m up in 5 minutes, sometimes 15. 20-minutes is a good time. And there’s been no more groaning, no more struggling to get out of bed. The repeated alarms sufficiently wake me up. It’s a good thing I’m not sharing a bed with anyone right now, 20 alarms in a row would be annoying for someone without my condition. Although I have considered strapping my phone to my ankle at night and setting it to vibrate, when I’m visiting family or something. That could do it.

Lark