Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 10:08 @merrygodown uhm, yes. :)
• 10:11 Just got started with Sakura Wars V [SW5]. Don't want to spoil too much before the impression, though. :)
• 10:12 @sabin1001 You were so happy you knocked yourself offline? Now I have no one to talk to on AIM.
• 10:15 @wagamamajuliet Your dad normally buys girl clothes? Interesting.
• 10:20 @merrygodown Maybe she was hot a few decades ago. Now she was just a bitchy old maid~
• 10:27 The day the last harry potter movie came out, I was out of the office. I picked it up the next day, but they mailed a copy anyway. Now what?
• 10:30 @DHStom Nah, WB only gives us DVD copies.
• 10:30 @merrygodown Dude. She's 60. I refuse to find a 60yo hot. I just can't do it.
• 11:24 @TheRealMariners Aww, the first trade I don't like. Morrow showed real promise.
• 12:11 RT: @merrygodown: Oh Victor Ireland. Your ego amuses me to no end.
• 14:29 @SquareEnixSonia Hmm, so Square Enix Members doesn't use the Square Enix ID I made for PlayOnline? Now I have to remember my password.
• 19:03 @amneufeld Heh, this is why you never came on to talk to me after all. :)

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 09:18 Two Fantasy wins this weekend. I am playing for 5th in both leagues. Scored over 130 points last week for my good team. Dang.
• 14:43 I have given the code on the whiteboard a holiday hat. I'm not entirely sure why, except that it was funny.
• 14:44 I wish it was Christmas already. All this waiting is crazy. This might be the slowest week ever (except maybe last year's xmas?).
• 15:07 @Reetin It'll be "wow" if I actually see a day that Office can't be sold in stores, but MS is hardly done playing their hand.
• 15:32 @SquareEnixSonia Pff, you have nothing to whine about; Seattle sunset: 4:20 PM. :(
• 16:51 The example of the usage of Net::Twitter is outdated. A few variables no longer exist in the API. Can you submit a patch for documentation?

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 16:16 Hurray for two new toys: tinyurl.com/nfd9yw & tinyurl.com/ycdopjk .. Mall traffic sucks, though.
• 16:17 @jodyblair Cool, congrats! What's the job?

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 00:05 Wife and I previewed The Secret of NiMH today. I don't think Vivian will be watching it any time soon. I like the story, tho, always have.
• 00:15 @IanNeufeld young children, maybe. I saw it after reading the book and felt I understood it then. Book is still better, though.
• 00:20 @IanNeufeld Still haven't read that, honestly. I don't have an urge to, either.

It's on netflix. If you've ever done any pen & paper RPGs and you have netflix, go watch this. (bonus points for it being locally produced)

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising Trailer from Dead Gentlemen Productions on Vimeo.

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 13:36 Fare Thee Well, Mac Mini: I wanted to run the mac mini until it died, but I never thought it would be so soon. tinyurl.com/yjughwv
• 13:59 Avatar must've been good. I didn't tweet once on my phone while watching it.
• 14:30 So tired of hearing how good Gonzaga's basketball team is. Nice to see them being crushed right now.
• 22:02 There was no signal at the holiday party tonight. That's happened every year. It was a good party though.

It's been a rough week for the little guy. I decided to install FreeBSD, but that failed miserably on Wednesday night. I was up until 3:30 trying to get something to work, but I, and the mac, were left in a state of disrepair. The mac couldn't be partitioned by FreeBSD, so I installed ubuntu (Linux) first, then used the partitions for FreeBSD. No problem, except that FreeBSD wouldn't install a boot manager, and yaboot from ubuntu wanted ubuntu, oddly enough. I couldn't even eject my CD to reinstall back to ubuntu. Gave up so very frustrated.

The next night, I decided to take apart the mac mini to retrieve the CD. This actually went fairly well, considering the amount of cursing I did while trying to hack it open with a kitchen knife. Overall, very minimal cosmetic damage to the casing, and none of the clips broke. I quickly remove the CD and reboot the machine, deciding to leave it outside of its casing, just in case I can't get it eject again. Ubuntu installed like a dream and I had a machine working again. Case went on fairly easy and all is well. Right?

Sadly, I had forgotten to backup Delphyne's mysql data, so all I have to work with is a 2007 backup I used before trying to install new Pokemon data. Fortunately, the scripts that I've used to get this data do still exist. Still, it's going to be some work rebuilding two years worth of data on the poor wyvern bot.

Friday night, I went out to see Avatar. When I came home, I tried to ssh into my mac, but was unsuccessful. It would simply not load a shell. My programs that were resident in the memory ran fine, but anything else crashed immediately. I rebooted the machine and it wouldn't come back up. I sighed and went to bed. What could be wrong now?

I tried to boot up the mac this morning and it spewed, and I mean maybe hundreds, hard drive errors. What the heck? Bad install? I try to reinstall the OS, despite not wanting to, and it takes forever, then finally says "Error installing the base system" ... not good. I try a few more things and it's just one I/O failure after another. The hard drive has failed.

All I can think of is that I am so amazingly lucky that I managed to start this process a few days before, thus having a recent backup of almost everything I need. It's too bad about the mac, though. For now, I might just live with a remote shell and see if I can tolerate it, or I need to find another machine for the house. I'm not home as much as I used to be, so maybe it's not a big deal now.

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 00:51 The Mac is Back. I was going to blog about this, but I'm tired now. Will blog tomorrow instead.
• 09:41 Hurray! Sakura Wars finally arrived. I hope I get a chance to play it before the podcast tomorrow.
• 13:53 Pizza and beer, always a good decision. That was just a warm-up for tonight's movie night!
• 13:54 @DHStom I think XSEED has a facebook page. You could become a fan, if you're into that stuff.
• 15:20 @DHStom I know. That's one of the reasons why I never seem to become a facebook fan of anything.

I should probably mention that I started officially working at RandomNPC again this week. I also started my gaming blog again: http://blogs.randomnpc.com/roku/

For those of you who have been living under a rock, the TF2 WAR update has gone live. It adds one of the best CTF maps in the game (seriously, find a server on ctf_doublecross and give it a try), a 2CP map I haven't been able to try, and the new weapons/achievements for Demoman and Soldier.

Oh, and a massively increased drop rate. Oh, and the crafting system to use those random drops with.

P.S. red.ocrtf2.com is passworded for this weekend. Password is "ocrtf2"

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 01:02 @sabin1001 I doublechecked. It's not even five years old. Macminis came out in Jan 2005.
• 13:39 Sometimes I think I need a special twitter just to use to follow companies that use these gimmicks to give away stuff.
• 13:42 @sabin1001 Um.. but I did just find out about it. I never said I was on top of Apple's OS updates.
• 16:05 @xlash What's the point of a holiday party if there's no alcohol? Weak.

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 10:37 I made a bootable CD (I hope) for my macmini last night, but it doesn't boot my PC. That's expected, right?
• 11:07 @AllieinPink I have one of the original macmini's from 2005. G4 processor and the like.
• 11:25 @FinalMacstorm One PAX a year is enough for me.
• 11:31 @FinalMacstorm Another fine day of not being where I can chat you :P
• 14:27 The FFXI tour today was a lot of fun. It's more interesting when they show me content I haven't seen yet (and doesn't have spoilers!)
• 14:40 Reasons I need a powerful PC: I absently click Open in New Tab so often that my main Firefox window has 42 tabs. There's a 2nd window too.
• 15:05 Mac mini Will Need a New Name: Since Apple dropped support for my Mac, it's time to drop support for Apple. tinyurl.com/yf2577d
• 20:54 FreeBSD 8.0 has the smallest boot font I've ever seen. I should've used my 47" TV just to be able to read the boot sequence.

I've had a Mac mini since the beginning, back when they came out in 2005. It's the original G4, but we got the upgraded one with the 80GB hard drive. Scary to think how small that is now.

Apple has decided to terminate their intent to make an updated operating system for the PowerPC architecture. It's like kicking me out in the cold. I was actually shopping on their site last night, planning to [finally] update my mac to the latest version, but no. I'm not worthy of the Snow Leopard operating system. My machine is not even five years old and it's been declared a dead platform by its creator. I have five year old PCs that would only benefit from Windows 7, but Apple gives up on me.

So, I have to give up on them. I first looked at getting a new Mac mini, but they are still the same price they were when I bought them five years ago. Why should I reward Apple for their thoughtless decision by buying another device? I thought about getting a mini PC (Aopen MP45-D), but that ended up being too much money for a powerful PC I didn't need to buy right now. So what to do?

Fortunately, Chris looked on the FreeBSD site and found that they have PowerPC compatibility since version 6 (currently on 8). I burned a disc and hope to have this installed tonight. I can't wait to be free of Darwin. Just have to finish backing up /home before I can do it.

This just in from your resident media guy: Chibi Kairi and Zack Fair in Birth By Sleep.

Current Mood: busy

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 09:22 @FinalMacstorm @jodyblair yeah.. Vivian wasn't around, so I so didn't want to cook. I went and picked up Kidd Valley burgers instead.
• 11:28 win64 openssl hurts my brain. Why is open source stuff always so hard to figure out?
• 13:42 My boss came in and wanted to chat about some specs. First thing he does is apologize for interrupting my gaming. I <3 my job.
• 15:14 @sabin1001 so much love. Love love love love. :)
• 18:26 I wonder if my macmini is reaching the end of its usefulness. I could pay to upgrade it, but I'm so tired of darwin's funkiness.
• 19:33 I thought about upgrading to snow leopard, but they don't even support my machine anymore. Sad :(
• 22:40 @sarahmcgarr Yeah. I've had a macmini since 2003 or so.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/12/15/1626211/Christmas-Light-Hero
A former Disney imagineer combines Guitar Hero with 21,000+ christmas lights on their house, all synchonized really well with the music and lighting effects from the game. It's even played via a set of lights that emulate the fretboard in the game, albeit only on easy it seems. You have to see it, really. It's amazing. Transiberian Orchestra, eat your heart out.

Current Mood: chipper

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 09:35 @sarahmcgarr Only females answer demographic surveys. :)
• 09:41 Tonight's NFC matchup holds the key to my playoff hopes. Lots of passes from Warner to Fitzgerald please, esp. for scores.
• 09:56 @DHStom I don't get why you're the only team that has secured a playoff spot. How do the others fall out of the picture?
• 10:03 @DHStom Except Chris and I are playing each other, so that's not possible :(
• 10:06 @DHStom Yup... it sucks :(
• 10:11 @DHStom Billy has managed to beat me twice, even though I score 100+ points each time. Not sure I want a third matchup. :x
• 11:02 Only 11 days left until xmas and I finally send out a wish list. I kinda suck at making gift lists. :P
• 11:27 Kudos to @NISAmerica for the cute image in the latest Prinny Bomb. It expresses how I feel about the series too. tinyurl.com/y9uhfdt
• 11:30 @SquareEnixSonia In hindsight, I'm wondering why #FFXIII isn't going to be released on March 13th instead of the 9th. Japan got a 13th. :(
• 11:37 @amneufeld @SquareEnixSonia: a game as big as #FFXIII should get a Saturday release anyway, so we can get it Friday night and play all day!
• 14:19 RT: @Utah_Jazz: twitpic.com/tj9i9 - Tonight is Family Night - 6 tix/6 hotdogs=$84 -- Only in Utah does Family Night mean six people.
• 14:26 Would you pay $1000 for a football you can't play with? I thought it would be pricey, but geez. tinyurl.com/ydcfzz5
• 14:37 To those who retweet @TheMime, if I wanted that stupid crap, I'd follow it myself. Those that continue may be unfollowed.
• 15:13 Best news of the day: Jake Locker will return to the University of Washington to play his senior year at QB. Husky fans should be excited!
• 15:46 @amneufeld Nintendo sells on Sundays because they sell to children and can't get around truancy laws ^.~
• 16:36 @AllieinPink because it's a mime.. so it can't talk. Why people retweet dots just baffles me.
• 17:15 @sabin1001 You can't learn poker from a book. You have to play from your gut.
• 17:23 @sabin1001 @DHStom People that play with numbers and science become fish to a real player. Knowing the hand is a flip doesn't help much.
• 17:29 @DHStom @sabin1001 Where's your stat to back that up, number boy? Was that a bluff? :)
• 17:31 There's not enough places that deliver food. I don't want to go out and I don't want pizza. Irony that we don't have good Chinese here.
• 17:34 @sabin1001 @DHStom oh, then it must be true. :)
• 21:11 Lost both games this weekend... one my less than a point. That's twice that's happened, coupled with my three 100+ point losses... damn.
• 21:13 @sarahmcgarr Yup, so I lost by 0.48 points.

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 01:13 @madhtr hmmmmmm... I'm puzzled which game that is. I guess I'll have to ask someone at work on Monday? :x
• 02:45 Jazz beat the Lakers! Woot! I know the Laker fans will cry that Bryant was too ill to play, but who cares. Jazz win!
• 09:44 @madhtr I meant: who's making it? Is this one of the projects I've seen, or something else? I only know the code names, not game titles.
• 09:52 @madhtr Yeah, I saw the Rocksteady logo. I'm just surprised I didn't already know about this. :(
• 09:54 Week 14 and I need two wins to move on to the both playoffs. No pressure, right? :x
• 18:51 @SquareEnixSonia You're sending cookies with the cards this year?

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 16:45 The annual Tidwell Tree Hunt was quick & easy. Time to take the kill home.

Today's Twitter from @mtidwell:

• 09:55 RT: @sabin1001: Please don't Retweet: Video Game Deal of the Day! Save 40% on Cross Edge for PS3! bit.ly/vg-dotd /via @amazongames
• 10:40 @sabin1001 I retweeted how bad it is! You should give me credit. :)
• 20:36 @amneufeld Do they know what happened? Hope you get well soon.
• 20:39 My kids take turns being the worst they can be. I may think twice before taking off time from work to watch Vivian "perform."