Matt the Geek

Today marks the 65th anniversary of D-Day, hence the title (23,471 days = 65 years.) It was one of the events that served as a turning point in favor of the Allies.
Today we remember all those lost that day. On all sides. Everyone should be remembered, not just those that won the war.
World War II has always been a point of interest for me. I have done research on it, own books about it, and not for school. Now let's not misunderstand, I'm not someone who salivates at the thought of war, or invading other countries. I read up on it to better understand the why.

Shifting gears, not much new has been going on in life for me. I'm still alive, my car still needs work if I ever get the money for it, work is still going well, etc etc.
Boy I'm not very interesting...

I meant to start writing more often, but that's been covered in previous entries.
Sitting here at work, where everything is either running tests, or waiting to be picked up. So, I am sitting here, looking at the nice day outside. Have the shops back door open, letting the nice day in, at least a little.
There isn't much to update, really. Work is going well, but slow. Car is going well for the most part, and also slow. Learning guitar on my own, is getting better, but I still suck, to put it bluntly. And I still don't get out and use my camera enough.

Went to the Waldoman LAN in Lansing this past weekend, had much fun. Still got plenty of gaming in, but for me it's just as much about getting together with friends.

Also, continuing my trend of being late to the party, I have finally just now watched the first 2 Lord of the Rings movies, with the 3rd on tap for maybe tonight. They really are pretty good. I tried once, about 4 years ago, and made it about 20-30 minutes into the first one, and fell asleep. I'm noticing similarities between LOTR and Harry Potter, so that is interesting as well.

That's about all I've got for now. Take care.

Apparently, I still fail at updating. But, at least it hasn't been a month since my last update. That would be tomorrow. Hooray for minor victories. About the biggest piece of news since the last time, is that I now have a running, driving car again. Most of that is due to my boss. Besides knowing computers well, he also put in something like 15 years at Harvey Lexus, so he knows cars as well. With his help we figured out the axle I had for the 4000 was indeed too long, thankfully CarQuest swapped it for the correct one. Big Ben's Tire up in Sand Lake let us use their lift after hours, and Floyd (my boss) did most of the work for me. That wasn't the plan, just how it worked out. Car got the right front axle installed, new starter, new distributor cap and rotor, new spark plugs and spark plug wires. Can't tell you how happy I am to have it operational again.

Work is still going well, for which I am also quite happy. And the people will never cease to amaze me. Today, we built a guy a $500 computer *just* so he could play Neverwinter Nights 2, and that's all.

Also, a week or 2 ago I "discovered" a web-comic called The Order of the Stick. Now, I've never been big into Dungeons and Dragons and things like that, but still find this series funny. Quite at times.

Anyhow, that's all I've got for now. I'm sorry if you were expecting big and exciting things...

So. It's been over a month since my last post again. I have no excuses. There was always some game to be played, some forum to be browsed, or some other mindless thing to while away the time at night. Because during the day I have been working. Finally. Have been for about 2 weeks now, or is it 3? After having a 5 month, economy induced vacation, it is very nice to be working again. Especially when it's doing what you like to do. So that means I am getting to be a geek and fix computers. Tomorrow I am actually opening the store by myself and running it alone most of the day. Lord have mercy.
And he does.
An example being that my work is now only 3 miles or less from where I live, and there is a bike path across from my house that leads towards work. Which is handy since my red Audi still won't start, though in fairness I've been too broke to throw parts at it to see what fixes it. As for the gray Audi, well, it's up for sale. It is beyond my help.

Apparently I have lost my train of thought, so this shall be all for now.

It just hit me that I don't update here enough. Well, I have known this, but I did the rough math just now, that I've had this site for 5 years and 3-ish months, and only made 171 updates, including this one. There have been about 272 weeks in that time, so that's about 1 update every 1.6 weeks, far less that I really envisioned. But I also am not too interesting, so there isn't much to write.

In a semi long-term road-test, I have been running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit edition on my main rig for a couple months. My WinXP install went kind of nuts, so I pulled that Hard Drive out and popped in the spare that had Vista64 on it, tweaked it up and got all my programs and games on it. After hearing all the horror stories about how Vista was so horrible both for games, and in general, I have to say it's really not that bad. In fact I'm loving the "eye-candy" of the Aero Glass interface and the transparency effects. And it hasn't been all that bad in gaming. I've basically been playing Crysis, and a lot of different driving games like GTR2, especially the mod for it called Power and Glory, featuring cars from the '60's and '70's. Love it.

I'm glad I've been able to drive on the computer, because I haven't been able to much at all in real life. Neither car will start, and I think the Grey car is going to go away. I like it, but it needs a lot, now including 1, possibly 2 sort of major problems. The confirmed problem is that the right front axle's CV Joint is going out. The other problem I am not sure of the severity yet. Last Sunday my Ex-wife came over and used her car to push start my car so I could go to the store. It was a task on the slippery driveway but it worked. The problem is on the way to the store I noticed it was smoking out the back. I got to the Rockford Meijer, and after pulling into a parking spot, figured out it wasn't smoking out the tailpipe. After I got out, I noticed a slight oil trail that followed the path my car took. Uh-oh, that's not good. Looking under the car I could see oil dripping out from the oil filter area. I did my shopping, picking up oil now too, and got back out of there. Topped up the oil (2 quarts low, it was a good drip), and since I parked strategically on a decline, Push-started the car myself and drove home, still smokin'. Either the oil filter gasket failed some to create the leak (easy fix), or the oil filter housing cracked (not good).
One of these days, I'll have a decent car. I hope.

Alright, that's enough mindless drivel for this post.