Archive for September, 2005

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Moving day was rather eventful yesterday. My folks ran into a problem which almost caused the deal on our old house to fall through (which would have been a very bad thing), but it all got worked out and we’re now moved in. And so now the fun begins. There are a lot of repairs that need to be done to the house:

1. The hot water heater is broken (I took a cold shower this morning).
2. Both air conditioners are broken, so it’s rather hot on the second floor.
3. All of the smoke alarms around the house are ‘peeping’ (the backup batteries in them are dead).
4. Our cable hookup has been pushed out until Saturday.
5. There are apparently some mice in the house (our cat should have some fun with this).
6. Some wood around the dormer windows is rotting.
7. The previous owners left a broken refrigerator and freezer for us to cart off to the dump (gee, thanks).

I fixed the smoke alarm problem last night (at least the ones upstairs), so that’s one job done. And several of the more important jobs are being taken care of today. It will take some real engineering to get a CAT-5 cable up to my room on the second floor, so that I can hook up my computer to our network. And we’ll need to run the incoming coax cable over to our library, where we plan to put our NAT box and cable modem.

Anyways, things are starting to get back to normal. I plan to hook up my computer and begin unpacking my stuff tonight. One of these days, I might even get some pictures up somewhere. Googlebar Lite 3.0 development work should begin again soon - it will be out no later than the weekend of October 8-9.

What a morning! After a late night of packing, I wake up late, have breakfast, and finish some last minute packing chores. Then I pack up a suitcase with the stuff I’ll need over the next day or two (or three) and put everything that’s not to be put in the moving trucks on my bed. In doing so, I notice several items which have been lurking in the corner of my room for several days. I have no boxes to put them in (in fact, several items wouldn’t have fit in a box anyway), so I go out to put them in the trunk of my car. As I slam the trunk shut, I realize a horrible truth: my keys are there in the trunk, along with everything else. And naturally, all of my car doors are locked.

With my dad’s help, we locate the key box (which was packed away in the attic), but no spare key is to be found. My dad had made use of the spare a while back, so he was the last one to be seen with it. After placing a call with a local locksmith, my mom finally finds the spare: in a box of my dad’s belongings. I cancel the locksmith, finish packing, and head out to work. On the way, an hour and a half late mind you, my car’s check-engine light comes on.

I have no idea what the problem is, and I have no time to take it to the shop. Tomorrow I take a half-day of vacation to carry my cat over to the new house (which should be painful), and to meet the cable guy. And all of this rests on the hopes that one of the realtor’s agents will meet me at the house with a key to get in.

I’ll be so glad when all of this is over…

With the movers coming Tuesday afternoon, anything and everything in sight is being placed in a box. Most of our stuff gets packed Tuesday, and the rest gets packed Wednesday morning. Later that same day, we close on our current house and on the new one. Then everything gets moved in to the new house after that. I’m definitely looking forward to the end of all that.

I still have a decent amount of stuff to pack in my room, although I have made excellent progress. I would estimate that I’m nearly 85% done. But with tomorrow evening being the only time I have to finish everything, I’m beginning to panic a little bit. I know I’ll get it done - it just seems so overwhelming now. There’s no telling how many boxes I’ve already packed. 15? 20? 25? It’s a lot, I know that. And so much of it is junk!

This is my last post from this house (my computer gets packed up tomorrow night when I get home from work). And please note that I will be “off the air” for several days. With any luck, I can continue to make blog posts from work. But don’t expect any progress on the Born Geek front: updates there will most likely resume in a week (or two).

The demo for Serious Sam 2 is out, and I finally got a chance to play it last night. For whatever it’s worth, here are my impressions:

The Good

• Cool, cartoon-style environments. I’ve seen a lot of discussion on this point, and virtually everyone thinks the art direction is poorly done. Considering that virtually every computer game today is striving for ultra-realism, I think this is a breath of fresh air. It’s something original. What a concept!
• Loads of weapons. The demo showcases a number of really neat weapons, including the parrot bomb (of which you only get one round - so make it count).
• Fast paced action. Just like the Serious Sam days of old.

The Bad

• Can you say "Console Port"? It is blatantly obvious that Serious Sam 2 is being developed for consoles. The user interface with the game menus is horrible, especially when it comes to changing key bindings. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a poorly done "port".
• The demo is way too short. I certainly hope the other game levels aren’t this anemic.
• Cut scenes are really shoddy in quality. Couldn’t they have just used the game engine for these cut scenes, instead of this low-resolution pre-rendered crap?
• Sam did virtually no wise-cracking through the entire demo! What have you done with the Sam I once knew?!?

The full game will be released in a few weeks (October 10 is one date I’ve seen), and I do plan on picking it up. Will it be worth the $30 asking price? I certainly hope so. Perhaps the rough points will have been smoothed down in the final product. Let’s just hope they don’t mess with the core Serious Sam formula. That would be a crime against nature.

My family and I move one week from today, so we’re beginning to kick our packing efforts into high gear. Until one packs up all of his belongings, one doesn’t realize how much junk has accumulated through the years. I’ve packed up a total of five fairly large boxes so far, and their contents consist of only my books and computer game boxes. A tiny ripple in a very large pond.

Fortunately, I’m moving up in room size. I outgrew my current room a number of years ago, so it’s well past time to have something larger. My new room provides substantially more real estate (having two closets will help tremendously), so I won’t be nearly as cramped as I am currently. As soon as I have a sizable down payment stored away in the bank, I’ll get a place of my own (and then I’ll really be moving up)!

Unfortunately, all of this activity is hurting my Googlebar Lite 3.0 efforts. We are unlikely to have internet connectivity for a few days at the new house, so that won’t help matters (although I can still work behind the scenes). So, don’t be surprised if version 3.0 shows up later than expected.

According to the story over at Slashdot, it appears that the Opera web browser is now available for free. This should be an interesting thing to watch over the coming weeks. Will large numbers of Firefox users switch to Opera? I know that I certainly won’t, but a number of Slashdot comments already indicate that at least some portion of the Firefox community is (and will be) making the switch. I don’t see anything in Opera that immediately jumps out and says, “You should try me now!” Is there something I’m missing? Or is Firefox still the best little browser in the world?