Renaissance Fair!
Craing, Kiara, and I went to the renaissance fair yesterday. I wasn’t going to go because I had a little over $20 in the bank, and $3 and change in my pocket. Craing told me that it was unacceptable to not go, so he offered to pay for Kiara and I to get in, drink while there, and eat meat on a stick. We took him up on his offer, and we set off to the renaissance fair yesterday morning. It was supposed to be the last day of the fair, but we discovered that they had extended it a week. We were already there, so we decided to enter anyways.
We made the rounds to all of the shops throughout the day. There was the usual stuff: jewelry, clothing, staves, weapons (great quality, poor quality, wooden, etc.), shields, some armor, beer, lots of water, soda, various types of renaissance food, chess sets, eating utensils, etc. Mostly good stuff all around. We caught a couple of shows here and there.
After doing our shopping (Craing bought a staff, Kiara a piece of jewelry for her pony tail, earrings for me, a t-shirt for me, a necklace for me, and a 30th anniversary miniature sword), we decided to watch some shows. It was getting late in the day, so we didn’t have much to choose from. Kiara and Craing wanted to watch a hypnotist, and I was jonesing to see Zilch the Torysteller since I hadn’t seen him in a few years. We parted ways for a bit, so that we could watch our respective shows.
I had 30 minutes to kill before my show started, so I hit the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program booth again. I love birds of all kinds, and the larger birds that they have at the fair are wonderful to behold. The booth had a barn owl that had a broken wing that is now healed, but still prevents him from flying properly. There was also a Ferruginous Hawk that was stolen from her nest when she was young. She was raised by hand to accept food from humans, but this practice is illegal. This is because her training overrides her instincts. She does not know how to hunt, and would not know what to do with a male hawk of her kind if they met. The encounter would probably end up with the death of one of the two birds. She’s perfectly healthy, and it’s quite sad to see such a wonderful bird ruined by the hands of another human. There was also a Great Horned Owl there as well. I never did hear why it was not releasable, but it was a great bird to watch. It has the hugest eyes that I’ve ever seen on a bird. What a wonderful creature!
While at the booth, I learned that when a bird arrives at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, there are three options. Rehabilitation and release back into the wild, training as an ambassador if they cannot be released, and if the bird does not accept training as an ambassador, then it must be euthanized. It’s quite said that so many birds must be put down because they’ve fallen foul of human hands.
At least we have some humans out there that are trying to make a difference. I’m tempted to see if I can volunteer some time with them. However, they are in Ft. Collins, and that’s a 3 1/2 hour drive from my house. They require you to come to weekly meetings in Ft. Collins, and then volunteer on a Saturday for most of the day. I don’t mind the time on Saturday, but I’m not sure I can make it to the weekly meetings. I may have to settle for a cash donation to the organization. When the volunteers at the fair would talk about releasing a bird back into the wild, the reverence, awe, pride, and joy that was in their voice brought tears to my eyes. I would really like to see a release someday.
If you’re so inclined, you can visit the RMRP website, and see about volunteering, or donating. It’s a great program, and it’s a tax deductible donation!
After I spent about 30 minutes with the RMRP folks, it was time for Zilch to start his show. I headed to the Celestial Stage to watch his show. He started out, and I soon realized that I had heard this act about 5-6 times before. I didn’t care. It’s great to listen to him spout out Spoonerisms while reciting Romeo and Juliet. It’s a hoot to hear the way he mangles words, but it’s all done in such a manner that you can still understand what he’s saying. There are a few interludes from the story while he talks about other stories that he has to avoid (Robin Hood [Friar Tuck], Robinson Crusoe [Fighting Buckaneers]) because of possible “wirty dords” that come about while telling the tale. It was a good half hour, and I spent a vast majority of it laughing. At this point, all I had in my pocket was $15 of the $20 that I had gotten from the ATM before the fair. He had two CDs, and they were $15 each. I wanted to get both of them, but I had to settle for one of them. I’m going to check later to see if I can order the second one off of his website.
After the shows, we got back together near the front gate, and headed home. We stopped by Rosie’s Diner in Monument on the way home, and had some decent food. We were all tired, hot, and sweaty by the time we were done with the day, but it was a good day. I’m glad we went and spent time together. Many thanks to Craing for spending his cash on us, so that we could go to the fair!
New D&D Campaign
We started a new D&D 3.0 campaign last night. We have a total of 7 players (plus me as GM), with an 8th waiting in the wings to join in. It’s been a while since I’ve played in a large group, and I’m really looking forward to running this game. Characters were created, they were introduced to one-another, and we’re going to be getting things rolling next week. It’s been a while since I’ve run a large group, so I hope that I’m up to the challenge.
You can find details about the game at this page. Each session will have it’s own entry in the list. We game Thursday nights, and I hope to have the adventure summary up by noon on the next day. It all depends on how busy I am at work on Fridays.
Also, since I’m doing the adventure summary on Fridays, my blogs will probably be shorter than normal since I won’t have much time to do the adventure summary and the blog. We’ll see how it goes.
Networking Printers
With the move, our network topography changed. At the old house, we had two isolated networks. We had 192.168.1.0/24 on the cable modem, and 192.168.0.0/24 on the DSL. The printers, file server, and desktops were on the cable modem network. Our laptops were on the DSL network via wireless connection. In order to print, we had to swap to the wireless network that was hooked up to the cable modem, or plug in a network cable.
With the new house, we just have DSL. This means that the 192.168.1.0/24 network has vanished, and we’re just using the 192.168.0.0/24 network. The laptops were already configured to work with the new network, so there was no trouble there. The three desktops that we own are going to be rebuilt. The plan is to take the biggest hard drives that we own, and put them into a single machine to act as a file server at the house. The remaining parts will be used to build out two machines that we’re going to sell or donate. This will get us down to one desktop as a file server, and two laptops.
One set of equipment that we’re keeping is the printers and the print server. The print server is an embedded device that has an RJ-45 jack, and two parallel ports on it. You hook it up to the network, configure it, install some custom software on your Windows desktop, and print over the network. It’s pretty slick.
The problem that I had last night was that the print server was on the 192.168.1.0/24 network at the old house, and I needed to move it to the 192.168.0.0/24 network on the new house. I knew that I needed to talk to the print server, so I pulled out my crossover cable. I used it to hook my laptop up directly to the print server. I changed my network settings to use the old 192.168.1.0/24 network, so that I could talk to the print server. I could see it just fine, but when I attempted to load the “advanced settings” in the configuration software, it would fail.
After fighting with it for about an hour, I called Netgear’s tech support. I waded through the prompts, and finally got to a person. He collected all of my information (serial number, name, phone, email, etc.), and then put me on hold. After about 5 minutes on hold, he came back and told me that my support period with them had expired a few years ago. I wasn’t surprised by this since I had purchased the print server many years ago. He told me that I could either use the web as support for free, use email as support for free, or talk to him to get the problem resolved on the phone for $33 and change. I declined his offer to spend my money, and decided to give it a go myself.
After getting off of the phone with the tech support person, I hit Netgear’s web site. A few searches, and some clicks later, I came across a knowledge base entry that said that the print server’s software would not work properly under Windows XP with service pack 2. That was the operating system that I was running, so I finally found out the problem. Fortunately, there was a fix. I had to download a newer version of the software, install it, and use it. Sounded simple enough.
I downloaded the software, virus scanned it, and started to install it. It detected my older software, and told me to remove it first. Easy enough. I removed the software, which required a reboot (go figure.) After the reboot, I tried installing the newer software, and it installed just fine. However, I had to reboot again (no big surprise there.)
Finally, after about 3 hours of fighting with the print server, I had its config right in front of me. I changed the network settings of the print server, and saved the changes. The next step was the yank the crossover cable that I had been using, and plug the print server into the 10/100 switch that I had hooked up to the DSL router. The link light came on right away on the print server and on the switch. I was making progress.
I then launched the port setup software for the print server. It saw the print server over the wireless connection, and let me setup the ports. The way it works is that it sets up a bogus, software-controlled “port” under Windows. Then you point your printer to use that “port”, and the drivers behind the scenes send the print job over the network to the print server, and ultimately on to the printer. I still had the printers setup from the old house, so I just needed to configure the ports. I got both ports setup, went into my printer configs, pointed the printers to the new ports, and then sent a few test pages out.
Voila! We have working printers on the new network at the house. Our new HP ColorJet 2550n works like a champ. It takes a bit to get started on printing, but once it gets going, it churns out printouts at a pretty good pace. Our older HP LaserJet III jams anytime you print to it. I would go get it cleaned/fixed, but it’s really not worth the time or trouble. It’s a good, solid printer with new toner, new rollers, and some other new parts. We had it totally overhauled for about $200 last year. I just gotta figure out what to do with the thing.
My next project around the house is going to be backing up stuff from the three desktops to my laptop, and then figuring out which hard drives go into which machines. I’m going to build out the two spare desktops first, and get rid of them. Then I’ll build out the file server that we’ll use at the house. Should be a fun project. I can’t wait to get started on doing it.
Invaded Dreams
Here’s another dream that I had recently that you might find interesting
In my dream, I woke up like I normally do. As I was getting ready for the day, the doorbell rang. I went to the door and opened it to find Colin Powell standing at the door in a very nice suit. He spoke to me in James Earl Jones’ voice. Somehow it wasn’t odd to have that voice coming from that body. It all seemed to fit. Mr. Powell asked if he could come in to talk to me on a very important matter. He seemed a little nervous, but I invited him into the house anyway. He looked around as if to see if someone was watching him come in, but he entered my house anyway.
He sat down on my couch and told me that the United States government had been implanting dreams into countless Americans in an effort to accomplish some “secret mission” that he was not able to detail. He said that the ACLU was in the process of filing a criminal complaint against the federal government on behalf of millions of Americans.
However, before they could get an accurate count of people that had been afflicted, they needed a signed, sealed statement from me on what kind of dreams I had been having. Mr. Powell handed me an envelope that was already stamped, and had the ACLU’s address on the front. He told me to write up a description of the dreams that I had been having. I was to then lick the envelope closed (to provide a DNA sample), and then sign the edge of the flap where it closes in with the body of the envelope to ensure that no one had tampered with the contents of the envelope.
Mr. Powell told me that the ACLU had obtained copies of the scripts of the dreams that had been implanted into peoples’ subconscious. He said that they had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain these scripts. He wouldn’t tell me more about the scripts because I had to provide an independent match to the dreams that had been implanted. If what I said matched the scripts, then I would be notified by mail. If I heard nothing back from the ACLU, then my mind was free of tampering. I told Mr. Powell that I would do my best to describe my dreams in as much detail as possible. He thanked me for my time, got up, shook my hand, and headed out the front door.
As the door closed behind him, my alarm went off. I guess I’ll never know if my strange dreams are implants, or if they are creations of my warped subconscious.
Out Sick
I’ve been pushing my body pretty hard lately with the move, unpacking, moving furniture around, working at work, and trying to have a social life. It finally caught up with me last night. I went to bed feeling a little off last night, and I hoped that it would pass. Unfortunately, it didn’t. I woke up this morning feeling achy all over, and a bit feverish.
Kiara always goes into work when she’s sick, and it invariably gets passed around the office, and back to her a few times before the process is over with. Work environments are like huge petri dishes just waiting to be embedded with a colony of germs. I will go to work when sick, but never on the first day of an illness. That’s when you’re most contagious, and I feel that going into work when contagious, then I’m just not respecting my co-workers by exposing them to my cold.
I really want to spend my time here at the house unpacking, but I know that if I do, I’ll just make myself worse. I’m not sure what to do with myself, so I think I’ll just sit around and maybe watch some TV. I know that I just have to avoid being downstairs where all of the boxes are at, or I know I’ll start lugging them around and unpacking them.
Oil Change Blues
A month ago, I went to Saturn to get an oil change, and I had a horrible experience while there. I was stuck at the dealership’s service department for two hours while waiting for an oil change. I also had my tires rotated and balanced, but that shouldn’t have padded the time that I had to wait for too long. Saturn always sends me a survey that I can fill out and mail back to them after I have service done. I usually give them glowing reviews because I’ve always had good experiences there.
This time is different. Sitting on my thumbs for two hours waiting for an oil change is ridiculous.The thing that really got me steamed was that my car sat for an entire hour before they started working on it. I had an appointment for the work, and I was 10 minutes early. If I had just shown up without a call beforehand, I wouldn’t have minded the wait. However, I had an appointment, which tells me that they should have a mechanic (or technician as they call them) sitting there waiting to do the work on my car.
I just got the survey form from Saturn over the weekend, and I just finished filling it out. I gave them the worst review that I could possibly give, and I included a letter with the survey. I hope they get the point that they really screwed things up this time around. Here is the letter that I included with the survey:
I made an appointment to take in my 2004 Saturn Ion Red Line in for an oil change. I showed up 10 minutes early for the appointment, and during the inspection, it was suggested that I rotate and balance the tires since it had been more than 12,000 miles since it was done. I agreed to the rotate and balance of tires in addition to the oil change.
I was told that they would start working on my car right away, so I took a seat in the waiting area. I was conveniently sitting where I could see my parked car. I would occasionally look up from my book to see if my car had been moved. ONE HOUR PASSED before anyone came near my car.
If I had just shown up without an appointment, I would have expected an hour wait. However, I did have an appointment, and I expected the work to start on my car immediately. If Saturn is unable to keep their end of the appointment, then they should abandon their entire appointment methodology, and simply take care of people as they show up.
I had to take the initiative to ask why my car had now been sitting there for an hour. I was told that the technician was backed up on oil changes, and that he would get to my car next. This was totally unacceptable. By the time my patience had worn thin, my car was on the lift, and was being worked on. If the tires had still been on the car, I would have asked for my keys back, so that I could go to Jiffy Lube to get the oil change done.
After waiting for an hour before the work was started, I had to sit and wait another hour for the work to be done. I did not get an engine flush during this trip. It took the technician an entire hour to change my oil, and balance and rotate my tires. This is totally unacceptable.
To make matter worse, I had to return a few days later because one of the front tires was not balanced properly. I had to sit and wait another hour (even though I had made another appointment) for a single tire to be balanced.
Overall, three hours of my life were wasted because of your service department’s incompetence with handling appointments, scheduling enough technicians to do the work, and keeping me informed with an accurate time estimate on how long a process will take. If I had been told up-front that the oil change would have taken two hours to complete, I would have arranged for a ride back home where I could have done some work around the house. However, no one even made an effort to approach me to tell me of the extended wait times. I had to track someone down and ask them. If your staff is aware of problems, they should immediately inform the customer of the problem.
In the past, I have been greatly pleased by the service department’s track record. When I bought my new car in 2004, it came down to the Saturn that I purchased, and a Volkswagen. The deciding factor between the two cars was the reputation of Heuberger Volkswagen’s service department (which is poor), and my past experiences with Saturn (which is good.)
I am willing to give Saturn a chance to redeem themselves. However, if this kind of treatment continues, I will gladly trade my Saturn in for a different model of car, so that I can move to a different service department.
Please ensure that the manager of the service department at the Saturn of Chapel Hills in Colorado Springs, CO receives a copy of this letter.
Kevin Smith
I’m tired of posting about moving/unpacking. I’m sure you’re sick of reading about it. I’m going to change the pace a bit a talk about someone that creates things that I totally love.
I’ve loved all of Kevin Smith’s works since I first saw Clerks on VHS that I rented from Hastings sometime around 1995-ish. I wish that I had seen it in the theater, but I was cash-strapped at the time, and renting movies was the only option that I had at the time. I really didn’t know who Kevin Smith was until around the release of Dogma. I had watched all of his movies up to that point, but I hadn’t seen his name enough to start putting the name “Kevin Smith” with the great works of art that he’s created.
I’ve seen everything that Kevin Smith has created, and I have copies of everything on DVD. I even have a signed copy of “An Evening With Kevin Smith” in my collection. If you know me well enough, you know that I hate cartoons. Despite that fact, I even have a copy of the “Clerks” cartoon series that was (I think) aired on ABC. I’m really looking forward to the August(?) release of “An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder.” His stories, oratory skills, and modesty facinate me. I love watching him speak. Someday, I would like to see him live. I think that would be a riot.
Out of all of his movies (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jersey Girl) I think I like Dogma the best. It had the best dialogue out of all of his movies, tackled some touchy subjects, had some action, a great plot, and some very cool guest stars. I really enjoyed it quite a bit. Unfortunately, all of my DVDs are packed away in boxes (dammit, I talked about moving again, didn’t I?), but as soon as they’re unpacked, the first thing that I’m going to watch is a Kevin Smith movie.
Kevin has a new movie (Clerks 2) coming out tomorrow. I’ve been following the story of the creation of the movie very religiously on the Clerks 2 web site. I’ve also been following Kevin’s blog for well over a year, and I really enjoy reading Kevin’s writings. He somehow manages to turn the mundane daily activities into facinating descriptions. I just wish I had half his talent when it comes to writing.
Even though the movie comes out tomorrow, I won’t be watching it on opening day. I have other plans with some friends, but I’ll be watching it Saturday afternoon with some friends. I can’t believe that I’m putting the show off a day, but I enjoy my friends and we only go out on the town every 2-3 months. I’m tempted to wear my Randall costume (It’s composed of this t-shirt, this hat, and this Mooby shirt) on Friday, but I’m going to hold off and wear it Saturday at the movie itself.
News broke a day or three ago that Joel Siegel walked out of a critics’ screening of Clerks 2. Not a big deal, really. Not everyone likes the brand of humor that Kevin presents, and I can respect someone refusing to watch an entire movie that they don’t like. I’ve walked out of one myself, so I know the feeling. However, Mr. Siegel stormed out in a huff, cussing, and causing a scene. He’s a professional movie go-er. If anyone knows the etiquette required at a movie, he should. Disrupting the movie that other people are enjoying is totally unprofessional, uncalled for, and downright rude. I’ve never liked Siegel’s reviews because of the method he uses to present the information, but I at least respected his professional opinion in his area of expertise. That respect is now gone. I’ve never really read his reviews, but I haven’t gone out of my way to avoid them. I guess I will now, even though he apologized on a radio broadcast that included Kevin as part of the broadcast.
I know that Kevin is starting up a new movie early 2007. I’ve been waiting for Clerks 2 for over a year now, and I’m sure that what he has in store for us again will be great. I just hope it’s not another Jersey Girl. It’s hard to watch a PG-13 Kevin Smith movie. I know that he had to hold back on his raunchiness, sexual conversation, and frank speech about life itself. I’m sure that all of that pent up creativity will be released full force in Clerks 2, which will make the movie that much better. BTW, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Jersey Girl very much. It was a great flick, but it wasn’t the typical Kevin Smith production.
Shopping Spree
Kiara and I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while because we didn’t want to buy a bunch of food that we would eventually have to move to the new house. Now that we’re in the new house, we decided to stock up on food. We went to the local Safeway because it’s closest to the new house. In past years we’ve shopped at Albertson’s and King Soopers because they were the nearest places to get food. I’m fairly loyal to a company if they give good service at a reasonable price. However, the large grocery stores are all the same, and going to the one that is closest to the house just makes sense.
We got to Safeway around 8:00. Neither of us had spent more than 5 minutes in this particular store, so we decided to walk down each aisle in an effort to figure out the layout of the store. As we made our way through the store, we would pick up items that we needed. The whole process took much longer than I expected it to. We ended up leaving the store a little after 9:00, and got home about 9:30. The total bill came out to over $160. That is quite a bit higher than our standard grocery bill, but like I said, we hadn’t been to the store in weeks.
Once we were home, we had to put away everything that we bought. That took another 20 minutes, and I was getting frustrated with how long the whole process had taken. We had just gotten Dish Network installed, and I wanted to spend the evening setting up the TVs. Kiara went downstairs to spend some time with the cats while I tried to move the furniture in the bedroom to where we wanted it all to go. I got the dresser pretty close to where we wanted it, but I couldn’t move it in the small increments that I needed to get it against the wall. I finally tracked down Kiara and got her to help me shift the dresser into the right spot.
The small TV stand that we use has, for some unknown reason, has wheels on it. They weren’t a problem at the old house, but something about the carpet at the new house and the wheels made the stand very unstable. I had to take the TV off fo the stand, put it back on the bed, flip it over, and take the wheels off of the stand. That took about 10 minutes to do, but we finally go the TV back where it goes. Then I had to wire up the cables for the VCR, DVD player, the Dish Network box, the signal switch, and the RF modulator. That went pretty smoothly, and in the end, I ended up with a working TV!
It was around 11:00 by the time I got all of this done, so I called it a night. I really wanted to get the living room TV done as well, but that just didn’t happen. I’ll work on that tonight… I hope.
Digital TV
We’ve had crappy Adelphia analog cable for the past 7 years. It’s been ok, but not great. With the move, Adelphia isn’t an option, which is a good thing. We went with Dish Network over DirecTV because of price, and DirecTV doesn’t offer anything more than Dish Network. The signal is great, the sound is clear, and the picture quality is outstanding. We’ve only got the bedroom hooked up for now. The TV in there is an older one with only a single analog input. We have to run the clean digital signal through an RF modulator to convert it to the analog signal. I’m sure we’re losing some quality at that point, but it’s still pretty damn good.
I’m really looking forward to getting the main entertainment center setup, so I can use S-Video to connect the Dish Network receiver into the TV. We’ve got to see about investing in some surround-sound speakers. The house is wired for it, but the old owners took the speakers with them. I may do that today while out at lunch. If they’re not too expensive, I’ll pick some up. They need to be able to mount on the wall since the holes for the speaker wires are fairly high up on the wall. It shouldn’t be a problem.
Bright Light! Bright Light!
I love my new house, but I have one complaint so far. It’s too damn bright in our bedroom in the morning! Our old house had blinds, winter blankets, and curtains on the windows to block out the annoying orb in the sky that people call “the Sun.” The new house just has these cloth blinds that pulldown to block most of the window. They don’t cover the arch of glass that is over the main window, so the sun streams in through that part of the window. The part that is covered really isn’t covered all that well.
All-in-all, it makes for a bright morning. I try to sleep in as late as I possibly can, but with the brightness in the bedroom, I’m actually getting up earlier than I need to. I normally do the morning routine, and head right out the door. The past couple of days, I’ve gotten up, done the morning routine, sat around, and waited for time to leave. It’s not enough time to be productive on anything, so I just sit there in the morning and wait for time to come.
Maybe I’ll take up drinking coffee in the morning…
