Ruthie threw me a party yesterday for my birthday. It wasn’t really all that big a surprise for me, I guess. I knew that something would probably be afoot 🙂 Aaron suggested a LAN on that day, Ruthie and I had gone to Michael’s over the week leading up to it where she was looking for cake stuff. And, Friday night Ruthie wouldn’t let me chill at her place because “The Plague” was there 🙂

Of course, what I didn’t know was that the cake was going to be in the shape of an XB 360 😀 So, go figure, during a 360 birthday LAN party we ate an XB 360 🙂 It really was quite the yummy cake; Ruthie used fondant, which was really tough for a plastic fork but very good. And the biggest surprise of that day was that my bro showed up. So, he got to partake in cake, birthday door prizes and some killin’ on the 360. Mostly, we played Call of Duty 4. I don’t know if that sold him or not, but Keith says he’s getting a 360 next week. I certainly look forward to kicking his booty over XB Live 🙂

I got a VGA cable for the 360 via eBay this past week for $5. Even after the shipping, it was still 1/4 of the price for the retail crap that’s out there–$39.99 for an “official” VGA cable. Boooooo! This one suited me just fine at the LAN, thank you very much. I like paying what a cable is worth rather than what it’s licensed for 😛

I got a really kewl Mage shirt from Ruthie, official Blizzard merchandise, of course 😀 Matt & Rynn got me 1600 XB Live points. w00t! I also got one of the door prizes, Snakes on a Plane. I hadn’t seen that one before. Should be interesting. My bro got me season one of Jericho–we already watched four of them over at the ‘rentals today. Between all of that and the wings feast they made, it was quite the happy birthday 😀

Ruthie throws very awesome parties, and Aaron and Beth are certainly quite the smashing hosts 🙂

Today, I’ve been chillin’ at the folks, spendin’ a lil time with the bro before he headed back–he left a short while ago. Now that he’s only 3.5-4 hours away in Atlanta, he’ll probably be popping around once a month instead of every four. w00t! My folks got me a $50 gift certificate to a rather swanky haircutting place…but, I swear I don’t need one yet 🙂

(not for those who haven’t seen through season three)

(link)

Looks like I’ve slowed down in my old age 😐 My all-time best is 98WPM 😐

84 words

Touchtyping

R.I.P., Sir Edmund Hillary

So, I’ve been playing WoW for a good bit now…I’ve been 60+ for probably over half of my time playing it. I’ve really been slowing since passing that stage, but I hit 66 this morning. I got a few upgrades to my spells, another talent point, and it also turned out that I’m Revered in Stormwind. I don’t know when the heck that happened, but it meant that I could get a nice Swift White Steed in Elwynn. It’s about time I got a swift one 😛 It’s amazing the difference it makes, too, when you’re running away from baddies. lol.

I’ve also been playing on Linux. Wine seems to treat WoW really well, at this point. I’ve had my difficulty in getting going with it–it initially froze intermittently. But, a few tweaks to the xorg.conf file, and I was good to go. I’m gonna download Portal via Steam tonight and see how that goes. It will be nice, though, if they ever put out a native binary for Linux 😛 (fat chance) But, even if they don’t, Wine can do the job quite nicely.

Ruthie’s birthday present to me got here early. She basically unwrapped the box it was in when I walked in on Thursday night, so she gave it to me early. It’s Seiko automatic watch. It’s really frickin’ cool. I’ve never owned a mechanical watch before. I’ve come as close as analog quartz, but never anything with lil gears in it. Pretty awesome. It stopped last night, and I got quite discouraged. But, this morning Ruthie got it going again. We were both shaking it every which way yesterday, trying to get it going again. It turns out that you have to shake it like a rattle to get the rotor to wind. I guess I’m too slothy for an automatic, so I guess I’ll have to shake it every morning or something. hehe. Small price to pay for never having to replace a battery. lol.

http://r33b.net/

I hope everyone has a very awesome one 😀

Another weekend! Even though this is a purty light week, anyway. lol. Good to have, though…even better that Ruthie is getting back on Sunday. w00t! I do miss her uber fiercely.

So, I’m disassembling my desktop. I think I’m going to stick with a lappy. I’ll still have my server, of course…and I’ll probably get a controller card and put the hard drives into it. The only thing I’m using the desktop for, at this point, is Media Center stuff…but, I could do that with just the server. Since I’m gaming more on the 360, the desktop just seems an unnecessary waste of power.

The bro is coming back around for the weekend. Should be a hoot.

I’ve been playing Call of Duty, which I got for Christmas. Very good game. I had only played the first one up to this point, so it’s a pretty big jump. There’s a pretty good subplot to all of the downing of baddies–not really as “epic” in scale as Halo, but it’s decent.

So, I’ve been in Louisville for the past few days. I’ve been visiting Ruthie and her family–her whole family 🙂 The whole shebang. They’re pretty awesome folks. They certainly made me feel quite welcome. I’m sad to leave; I won’t see Ruthie for another week *sniffle* This makes me quite glum. My phone is dead, too, which makes it even worse because I can’t text her–I had forgotten my AC adapter. D’OH!!!

Anyhoo, Louisville is quite the awesome lil town. It’s almost a mini Chicago in a way–there’s a whole bunch to do here, certainly more than you’d ever hope to find in the rinky-dink lil town that Huntsville is. Very nice part of the country, wonderful town. We went to an art museum the other day which was quite fabulous. They have a Rembrandt here that they’re quite proud of. I think I’ve discovered over the years that I prefer paintings, landscapes at that. They had a number of beautiful such oil paintings there that were quite smashing.

Yesterday, we went to a glass blowing place, which was awesome. I made a really awesome cobalt blue ornament. I think I shall give it to my mom–it’s reminiscent of the days when I was young and I came back home saying “look what I made for you, mom!” lol!

I’m recompiling VLC as we speak–I had trouble with it this morning. Booooo! I hope I can get it going whilst on airport wireless, lest I won’t be able to watch my episodes of Heroes in-flight. D’OH!!! I hate when things break in Linux. hehe.

Anyway, tonight I shall find out whether my fam is going to Atlanta or sticking around Alabama–it all depends on whether or not my bro’s furniture gets into his place or not. He’s lived there about three weeks now, with nothing but an aero-bed. BOOOOOOO!!! I know he found his new apartment before all of that insane midwest weather. They’d best take something off the top for him 😛