PC: a last look

Well, I'm going off-line in a little while. I really mean it... since I won't be in my office either (not that I should be blogging there to begin with). Here's Zero Prime in its old skin:


As you can see, the only case-sticker on it are the standard Aopen brand for the itself, and an original AthlonXP sticker (I actually have a few of those). You can also see that my plan to acquire a new case has been in the works for quite some time: that black DVD burner was bought nearly 2 years ago! ^_^;;;

Here's the new case....




If all goes well, I'll have this up and running within a few hours. Plus I'm anxious to finally apply the case stickers I've had lying around. I kept from putting them on the old case knowing that sooner or later I'd change cases anyway. Among the stickers: another AthlonXP label, one for the ASUS motherboard I bought a whole year ago, and finally, one for Arctic Cooler from the CPU fan I added in a few months ago. *sigh*...

But first... I'm hungry. ~_~;;

Wish me luck!

PC: new case, [finally]

Nothing to report save that the shop finally called to let me know the case I ordered back when our union reached a settlement finally arrived. See, at the time, I received a huge chunk of cash as retro-active pay I was owed at the rate negociated in my current employment contract... my idea of a good celebration was to go buy something utterly useless: like a fancy case for my PC. I mean the only thing it contributes to my performance is.. well... it'll look cool.

Anyway, I picked it up tonight. It's sitting in the kitchen now under the table. I'm not so sure when I'll get around to actually installing it... Pictures later (forseeing all the headaches I will likely blog about, I decided to already start taking pictures of the box... *sigh*

On a side note: I did open the box and it turns out there are no printed instruction manuals in there save a little sheet for the USB pin connectors. [insert eye-rolling here] ...luckily I'm not a total dolt and printed off the PDF file from the manufacturer's web site.

Hmm I do believe that's the most useful thing I'd done with my colour printer in over a year...

old-school video...

So I'm at Wal-mart last night doing what I call "preliminary shopping" - that is I haven't actually thought of a Christmas list yet... but just getting ideas on what to get my family.

I'll bypass the fact that I did spend over $60 last night on myself (DVDs of Fantastic Four and Clone Wars).... but something I felt the urge to blog about was in there: The He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special.

This was the first meeting between the icon and his female copy (the "Secret of the Sword" 5-part origin of She-Ra apparently doesn't count for some reason; colour me confused - was it released later?). Anyway, it's a 45 minute cartoon (let's not make it out to be anything other than what it really is). Orko the wizard accidentally arrives on Earth, accidentally bring two Earth children back to Eternia, and the only person who has any inkling of what Christmas is would be Queen Marlena (hardcore fans of He-Man may recall that the Queen was actually an Earth woman).

It was campy and ridiculous. Bow (a manly man if there ever was one) even sang a "Christmas song" with the kids. Skeletor betrays Horde Prime and saves the kids after having a change of heart... Ugh. It was stupid enough to make me want to shut my eyes or even turn off my DVD player. But you know what's funny?

As primitive as the show was.
As ludicrous as the plot went.
As painful as it was to hear 80's cartoon songs.

...It brought a smile to my face. I sat up when Prince Adam raised his Sword of Power and magically became ...well, he became a tanned version of himself actually, but still. I sat up when She-Ra rode onto the scene on her winged unicorn. I sat up when Skeletor made a typical snide remark against his underlings and ejected them from his ship (with only 1 parachute). I sat up when Hordak appeared with a group of his robot troopers...

All these things - even all the groans. I truly relived my childhood last night. *sigh* 16 bucks well-spent! ^_^;

Palm: MobiPocket

It's those little discoveries that make my life moderately interesting:
www.mobipocket.com

This is a variation of the eBook. I haven't figured out the nuances of this particular software yet but so far so good. I actually found it because I discovered that Baen is supposedly the leading eBook publisher. Works out just fine for me since they happen to also be a leading publisher of science fiction (which oddly enough I haven't read much of in the last 5 or 6 years anyway).

As it turns out, once a book is older than a couple of years, Baen publishes the same book in a royalty-free elecrtronic format for you to download from their web-site. In fact, the latest Honor Harrington hardback by David Weber came with a CD-ROM featuring a full library of the series to date. Naturally - you know me - I downloaded the disc without buying the book (yes, before you even need to ask - the disc is free to distribute and share; I'm not doing anything illegal... just somewhat ambiguously immoral).

Anywho - so I find out that the disc contained a choice of formats to read in. It's set up like a web-site you look at with a browser but then you can load in each novel in HTML, a Rich Text File, or an eBook format for MobiPocket...

...And there's a free "read-only" version of Mobi-Pocket available for download (not unlike Adobe Acrobat, that is). Anyway, I'm just highly amused that after months of not reading anything with my handheld, I've revitalized its purpose.

On a side note - if you've got an older Palm device like I do, I suggest trying the "archives" at MobiPocket - they have older versions which might work better (for the record, my PalmOS would crash when I tried to run the latest version).

Disappointing haul...

Hmm... ever go out somewhere expecting to blow your budget and instead realize what you had in mind just wasn't there? It's kind of a downer, if you ask me...

Things I was looking for:

1. Trade: "I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League"
2. Trade: "Teen Titans: The Future is Now"

Instead I came home with "Green Lantern: Rebirth." Which in itself is not such a disappointment since I missed the big hooplah last fall when Hal Jordan came back to the mortal realm to be Green Lantern once again. But still, I really was looking forward to some goofy adventures from the lighter side of the DC Universe.

On a side note, I also picked up this month's "New Avengers" and "Legion of Super-Heroes." Now don't laugh just yet - Legion has been turning out to be a great ride and I'm glad I took a chance when the title relaunched last year. I just wish the plot hasn't dragged on the way it has for the last couple of months. ~_~;

Alternate notes: placed another order at http://www.toy-wave.com last night. Wanted to take advantage of their holiday-season sale (5% off everything). Finally got the VF-1S I wanted in 1:48 scale. Also tried to order a PVC statue of Rin Tokosa from the Fate-Stay-Night series for my brother (he's got the matching Saber statue already) as a Christmas gift, but they were sold-out. Crap... now I have to go Christmas shopping for him. I hate that. @_@