Random Access

Monday – 31 January 2011
Another week begins. And this one starts with Mother Nature’s frozen, mocking laughter blanketing the valley. That’s okay. It’s warm in the office.

Yesterday was a lazy day. SaraRules! and I lounged about the house all day. We filled a little bit of the afternoon catching up on a couple episodes of Young Justice. After that, I tinkered with my new game PC for a bit. DC Universe Online was still locking up at random, making it… difficult (read: “damned near impossible”)… to play. *sigh* I headed to the local Best Buy to put a hypothesis to test: Maybe using an off-board graphics card in the system would help. I picked up an new nVidia card (GeForce 210) to be tested out after dinner.

We went up to the in-laws’ for dinner and to watch the Pro Bowl. I’m not sure if it is because of the new schedule or the changes in rules, but the game just wasn’t “good.” Sure, it was football… kind of… but, the AFC just didn’t seem to have their usual fire or passion. It looked like they were just “there.” It was disappointing. I’m glad that it wasn’t the last game of the season this year. We turned from the game at halftime to watch RED, which the in-laws hadn’t seen; it was also far more entertaining than the game.

Back at home, SaraRules! and I started watching last week’s Fringe. Until the recording just went blank. Laptop to the rescue! I hooked up the BlacBook to the TV, surfed to Fox.com and finished the episode. After that, SaraRules! called it a night, while I installed the new video card…

…and, lo and behold, it worked! I logged into DCUO and played for about an hour. It didn’t cut out once. It’s a beautiful-looking game. The texture maps and environments look really nice. And, I also appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to run everywhere to get around, working my way up to Hover, the second-most useless superower (See: “Adventures of a Novice Hero,” in this post); I picked Flight as a travel power to start and it was immediately available.

Stray Toasters

• Israel Shaken as Turbulence Rocks an Ally
• For SaraRules!: For Ernest Borgnine, career has been an eternity
• Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List
• 
• emmet swimming
• I just ran across this, from an old post, while looking up the “Hover” reference above:
  

  Juan: Shall we dine?
  Squee: NO! NOOO!! I don’t wanna eat the toasty souls of the damned!!
  Pepito: I thought we were having Stove Top? I want none of this soul-toast.
  Mother: Souls? What are they talking about? I didn’t cook any souls, Juan.
  Juan: Ah, darling, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. You see, I am Satan.
  Mother: Hmmm… That explains the basement. But… I’ve always been such a good Christian woman.
  Juan/Satan: Well… then let’s both be thankful for irony. So, Todd, my son tells me you wish to join my soulless army of darkness?
  Squee: No, but once I wanted to be a giant monster.

• The Dutchman Flies Right Off the Wall
• I’ve long thought that Closer and Come Together should be able to combine, fairly easily, in a remix. This morning, I discovered that someone had made that remix (NSFW… just for the record):
• Some Boomers ‘retire’ to jobs that allow them to help others
• Totally “been there, done that…”
  



• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Republican school board in N.C. backed by Tea Party abolishes integration policy
• Guy Named Potter Survives 1,000-Foot Mountain Slide

Namaste.