Extremely Conflicted

I've been pretty quiet lately, mostly because I've been thinking about the blog and what I should and shouldn't post here. In the past I've posted whatever was on my mind, even if it was personal in nature. That's gotten me in trouble more than once, so I started to censor some of the content I put up here. The blog has also soured a few friendships from my posting of things better left for private conversation.

So what does this mean? It means I'll probably be taking a break from personal blogging for the next week until I can figure out some sort of posting guidelines for myself. I originally intended for this to be a fun place for my friends to come and find out what I've been up to and for me to tell them without the requisite mass e-mail. I hope that after some time off that I can get back to that point. Until then, I'll be updating the mini-blog and the netflix log as I find stuff to post in them, and expect a return of the main blog some time in early December.

Hopefully This Will Stop The Flow For A Bit

Last night I noticed that someone was spamming the comments for the mini-blog by posting links to the Paris Hilton video. That was the final straw and I took the time to install MT-BlackList. It was supremely easy to install and setup, and the site maintains a list of known spammers to jump start the BlackList. Now if I could only find something that blocks IM spam I'd be happy. Anyone know of anything?

3x Thursday: 11/20/y2k+3: Turkey Day and the Holidays

Here we are again. 3XThursday time. Thanks to Missy for posting these:

1. What are you doing for Thanksgiving this year? Are you staying local or going afar?
   Well my parents only live 20 minutes away, so as usual I'll be going over there and doing the typical family meal. Of course my dad and I will be watching the football games on the HDTV they got. We will eat tons of food and then feel sleepy, it will be fun.
2. Do you like the winter holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas)? Why/why not?
   Well I certainly like that fact that this year I get two days off for both holidays. Thanksgiving is good because it's one of the few times that I get to eat some of my favorite foods (sweet potato pie, date nut bread). Christmas of course is nice because of the presents. It also helps that I enjoy hanging out with my family, otherwise these kind of holidays would be torture.
3. Do you think the holidays are superficial? Do they really mean anything anymore?
   Christmas has become so commercial it makes me sick, but it really comes down to what it means to you. Personally I see the holidays as an excuse to have a big family gathering.

Bonus: What did you do for Thanksgiving as a kid?
Well pretty much the same thing as now, except that we all went to my grandparents' place in Marchfield, MA. So I spent my Thanksgiving hanging out with my aunts, uncles, and cousins on my mother's side of the family. Now I hang out with my sisters, brother-in-law, niece, and nephews.

Finally Got The Plates I Wanted In The First Place

My new vanity plates showed up today. When I originally got vanity plates, New Hampshire only allowed 6 letters/digits so I couldn't get Turacma. I settled on SSJVEG, a reference to Dragon Ball Z (which was an obsession of mine at the time). Well this summer I started noticing NH plates with 7 letters, and sure enough, the state had expanded the vanity plates. So when it came time to renew my registration this month, I made sure to ask for new plates. As my dad would say "It set me back a few shekels", but it was worth it. I now have the plates I really wanted in the first place.

Some Disturbing Trends

I've noticed two things lately that have really started to get on my nerves, and both of them are spam. I've actually been getting IM spam of late. Sometimes I get up in the morning to 2 or 3 IMs from some spam bot sending out links to porn sites. Now I could very easily block everyone not on my Buddy List, but that would prevent anyone from IMimg me without first telling me they were going to. Secondly, I got my first bit of spam comments. Some bot scanned my archives and found this post and posted some link to a debt consolidation site. I plan on installing MT-Blacklist as soon as I have the time to. The internet is great, but I get sick of the people that find new ways to abuse a great piece of technology.

3x Thursday: 11/13/y2k+3: Reformatting: A trip or a tragedy?

After a couple weeks off, it's 3XThursday time. Thanks to Missy for getting these up early:

1. How often do you reformat your computer? Why? Is it out of need or is it a routine thing?
   I usually end up reformatting one of my computers every 6-8 months, so for any particular machine it's usually about 2 years. More often than not it's because it'll be so much easier to rebuild the machine from scratch then to patch it to some level of stability (particularly on the Windows machines).
2. How long does it take you to do a typical reformat? This includes re-installing windows, drivers, and all of your programs.
   It takes me about an hour after I've reformatted and installed, but the format and install will vary depending on the machine. I have a couple 160 GB drives that take a while to install and Windows takes a little bit longer to install than Linux (at least in my experience).
3. How do you backup your stuff when you're going to reformat? Burned CD? Backup tape? Server?
   I keep most of my important files on my file server that has a mirror raid array. It's worked a lot better for me than the days when I kept everything on CD. This way I always have everything at my finger tips and I never have to worry about it being out of date.

Bonus: What's your most memorable 'reformat' story?
That would have to be the time the Chernobyl virus took out the MBR on my hard drive. This was before I knew about the utility that restore the MBR, so I was going to format and reinstall windows, only I didn't have a CD. So I had to jerry-rig my roommates hard drive (which had a copy of the Win98 install) to do the install. Unfortunately during the moving around of hard drives, I accidentally dropped my second drive (which had all my MP3s and a bunch of other stuff), completely toasted it. So not only did I lose my system drive, but also my storage drive, not fun.

Thinking happy thoughts

This morning I got a call from my mom telling me that dad had to go in for bypass surgery today. This wasn't completely unexpected. At my birthday party he had mentioned that he would be going in for tests today and if they indeed found a blockage (as the expected they would), they would send him over for immediate surgery. Apparently he had a 97% blockage in one artery and 65% in another, so they may do both on this try.

My dad being in the hospital is nothing new to me at this point. During my life I've seen my father go through many stays in the hospital; 4 back operations, 2 rotator cuff surgeries, pins inserted in his feet twice, not to mention countless panic attacks related to his PTSD. He's also a walking pharmacy, with medications for pain, potassium deficiency, PTSD, etc, plus he takes insulin for diabetes. I love the man though, so it's still hard to see him in the hospital and especially now going through a serious (but at this point almost routine) surgery. So I'm just trying to think happy thoughts until I get the call from mom telling me he's out of surgery and everything is OK.

Update: Got the call. Surgery apparently only took 13 minutes. Dad's awake, doing well, and should be home tomorrow.

Cross another off the list

I failed to mention it (or much of anything for the last week), but I finally finished off all the cups in F-Zero GX. After a great run on Diamond Cup in Master I took on the AX tracks. None of them were especially hard, so I managed to beat the cup on all 4 modes in a couple of days. In reality I beat the cups not because I drove them particularly well, but because I became really adept at knocking the computer players off the track (I had 16 total attack on Master class). Now that I'm done with all of the single player modes I care about, I probably won't play it much except for vs. with Shane.

I've still got plenty of games on the stack to play, though FFTA will be the one I dive back into in an attempt to clear out the stack before getting anything new (the stack has shrunk some, but inevitably there's some new game that have to get). I hope to finish off FFTA and possibly the Metroid games before the holiday season so I can pick up Mario Kart Double Dash and the new Mario RPG.

This lack of sleep is going to catch up to me eventually

Who knew having a personal life could be so difficult? After going out almost every night for the past week, and not getting much more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep (last night was less than 3), I'm starting to drag pretty severely. Last night, the boys from NU + Bill and myself caught the last showing of Matrix Revolutions in Boston. We played some pool at Boston Billiards before the show and the guys bought me a few drinks in belated celebration of my birthday. The movie was good, but after making sure everyone got home safely (i.e. not driving home drunk), I didn't end up back in Nashua until 3. Today I have lunch with Britni as another belated birthday present, but my evening is free, so I think I'll take the chance to catch up on some sleep seeing as I already have plans for Friday and Saturday nights.

A Quarter Century of Fun

As many of you know, I was born 25 years ago today. I went over to my parents' house today to celebrate where the whole family had a nice dinner and cake and ice cream for desert. I've never been a big fan of birthdays, just another reminder that I'm no longer a care-free kid and I have to play the adult. This birthday has even less significance, because the only thing that's really changes is my car insurance rates, but I suppose that's something to be happy about.

At the same time, I look back and realize that I've had a pretty good life. I have a great family, friends I know I can count on no matter what, and a ton of great stories. So here's to another quarter century better than the one before.