Stuff and Things and Junk

Aside from the wind gusts that seemed to appear from nowhere (I took this picture of my neighbor a few minutes ago), and which knocked my cable modem out for the past hour, the weather today was awesome. Actually, it's been a little bit windy all day, but not bad until the last couple of hours. Anyway, managed to get back out on the bike again today. Road about 9 miles at the park again. I made the mistake of skipping lunch and I was definitely ready to stop at the end. Still slowly working my mileage up. Hopefully since I'm caught up at work this week, if the weather stays nice I can get out and ride a couple of times during the week too. I've also decided I really need to be more strict with my diet the next couple of months. Every pound I drop before the ride will make it that much easier to finish it.

So after returning from the park, I came home to watch the race, catching-up to realtime on my Tivo which was dutifully recording it, but I ended up not really watching it much by the time Junior was 46 laps down. What a bummer. Leading the points standing for the first time in his career, then he has handling problems and now he's down to 7th in the points standing.

Also, Donna's LCD monitor freaked out today. I thought it was fried. First the screen went all white, then I powered it off and on and the screen was all jumbled. You could see stuff but it looked like one of those jumble picture puzzles. Then I got to thinking it looked more like a video card problem, like the memory was corrupted somehow, so I powered off the PC. Same result. Finally dragged on old 17" monitor out of the closet and all was well. I was cursing the cheap LCD monitor because I only bought it last July, when I got a pretty good deal on it. I was reminded of that old saying "you get what you pay for". I was also thinking I should have been clued in to buy the extended warranty since when I bought it, after the first one I got quit working after about 10 minutes and I had to take it back and exchange it. I was thinking it only had a 90 day warranty, but I went to the web site to double check. Turns out it has a 3 year warranty. I wasn't looking forward to the hassle of returning it to the manufacturer but at least it was not going to be a total loss. In an effort to determine what was going to be involved in returning it, I checked the support area and found that it's actually a known problem with an easy fix. Don't just power the monitor off but actually unplug it. I did so and now it is fine! Weird. At least that little story had a happy ending. Moral of the story: if it's broke, unplug it. Unless it's a cable modem. Then it won't make any difference.

Speaking of being happy, not only are Battlefield Vietnam and Unreal Tournament 2004 being released this month, but if you can believe it Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is supposed to be available March 26th. I presume that's this year. I say "if you can believe it" because when I did a google search to see if I could find any corroboration, I ran across this article where some higher-up at valve swore that the game was going gold shortly and would meet it's November 18, 2003 release date. This game has been delayed so many times it's crazy. I used to really be in to CS and always wished it had good bot support. It may be too little too late, though. I'm gonna be pretty busy with the other two games. I'm also still waiting on Half Life 2. Of course I'll probably end up buying CZ at some point just on general principle.

I should have more time for all these games because I will be taking my Java programmer's certification exam a week from tomorrow Monday. I guess if I don't pass I'll have to quit my job. Or lie about it. Of course it figures that now I'm ready to take the exam for JDK 1.4, JDK 1.5 will be available before much longer.

OK, the winds kicking up again so I better get this posted before my cable modem comes out again. Oh, if your bored, check out my revamped "links" page (AKA as "Other Cool Stuff" on the right sidebar). I hope to keep this updated with cool stuff as I uncover it, mostly just for my own reference but maybe you'll find some of it useful or entertaining as well.