It’s always fun to see how English, a notoriously difficult language, is translated aboard. I’m probably late to the party on this one, but I recently just watched the Youtube video “Backstroke of the West”. Wow…

OK, I know I’ve been remiss in posting. We’ve had a pretty hectic pace around here lately with kids in sports 7 days a week, and that’s only just petered out for the summer. Or at least until August when football for both my boys sparks up. (sigh)

Plus I just took a few (much needed) days off. Very little online time during that period. Muchos family time. On my 5 days off I:

Went to Drumheller and the dinosaur museum with the kids
Finally did my taxes
Took the wee ones to the zoo
Saw Wall-e (nice little movie)
Hiked my fat ass off - twice! (Horseshoe Canyon and just outside Cochrane)
Went to a baseball game with the family
Tackled long overdue house chores (cut the grass, replace lights, clean the BBQ, etc…)

I am pleased to say that my video cards woes appear to be over. I snagged a Nvidia 9600 and it’s awesome. It’s overkill for the aging machine that I have, but it’s an awesome card - and at least I can use the Windows box again. Well… for games, but still… that’s kind of what I have it for so…

All right. Lots to do before I go back to work tomorrow - where I apparently have a new computer sitting on my desk. I’m sure that will pose no problems. (sigh)

Congrats to old man Jose on his pending nuptials. Despite evidence to the contrary he’s taking the big plunge… at a date to decided on. Still, big “woohoo’s” on hearing the news.

Awesome #1 is Moby getting me tickets to Spamalot! That is also worthy of a much more subdued but nevertheless sincere, “woohoo”.

Awesome #2 goes out to my Windows box who will be getting a new video card today. My old one is borked. And my really old one is painfully slow for anything but Solitaire. Even then… So today I will go nab a new one. The “woohoo” factor here is that there’s some really decent cards out there in the under $200 range, so at least it won’t set me back a bundle.

All right… off to the grind.

I’ve had an ongoing battle with my Nvidia card for months now. In hindsight I probably should have just taken the thing back because I think I got a lemon. But now it’s been far too long… Curse my sloth!

At any rate for my regular Windows stuff, it’s all tickedy-boo. However if I try to start up a game now, errors all over the place. In days gone by I used to be able to play for a spell before it texture bombed on me. So for those of you thinking a system restore might be the answer, not so much. I’d just roll back to when the behaviour was just slightly better than awful.

Today I’m going to gut and clean the beast. Re-seat the card, grab basic drivers from Nvidia (not XFX - screw you bastards and my lame card!) and see if I can get something positive out of this. Ah…. while typing this (on the Mac Mini), I just turned around and watched my XP machine blue screen. I’m so f’n happy.

Then, while doing that, I plan to do surgery on my pop in-laws old Dell laptop. Seems the key presses you hit don’t translate on screen. (ie hitting “b” types a space or something) It’s definitely a hardware issue and that version of the lappy is known for it. So we’ll see how I make out here.

Since this is computer repair day, I might pop out that 2 gig stick of RAM from my ASUS Eee PC and drop it in the Mac. The Xandros version of Linux running on the Eee PC only recognizes 1 gig anyway so… might as well use it on the Mac. Take the 1 gig stick from there and drop it in the Eee PC. Makes sense yes?

Then I have a shit ton of Unix stuff to do that I ignored all weekend… I really need to get on that.

Man… what a nerd.

My trip to the Maritimes in a couple months is in jeopardy. We’d received a kind offer to hunker down on “The Rock” with friends. However, we cannot rent a car. I mean… anyway on the island. Hell, even our friends can’t rent a car.

I’ll be calling different parts of the Maritimes this week. If I can’t get a car in Nfld, maybe I can get on in Halifax…? Then just drive up the Cabot Trail or something? Or… maybe we’ll just go somewhere else completely… Like our old cabin in Ontario…? At least that way we could drop by Wpg and see some family etc…

(sigh)

So I read a little bit about what was announced at the WWDC Apple event and all I have to say is “meh”. Don’t get me wrong though. From a mobile point of view it’s pretty important, and I’m sure that all these dev tools will improve the mobile world but since I’m a cell phone hater, I can’t say that I care a whole bunch.

In other mobile news, I hooked up the PSP to my Windows box (since Sony has no Mac support - sigh) and DL-ed some titles from the Sony PSP Store. Echochrome is insane - and hard. Apparently I’m even dumber than I thought. Stupid puzzle games! Gah! One nice feature of the Sony online store is you can always log into your account and redownload the games you’ve purchased. Nice. Are you paying attention Apple? (Hmm? Are you? Probably not.) Speaking of Apple, I really need to drop more RAM into this Mini. Running Azerues, Handbrake, iTunes, Mail, Firefox, Pages and my PSP software (doing movie conversions) all at the same time really bogs it down. Weird eh? I have the RAM - I just haven’t had a chance to plunk it in. I’m mentally preparing myself for the horrible snap, crackle, pop sounds of ripping open a Mac Mini.

This past weekend I finished Season one of Jericho. Neat show, neat premise and prematurely canceled IMO. Even though it was canceled I understand that it was brought back for a few episodes to just give the series some closure. I’ll need to dig those up.

However, while I search for those, I started watching Deadwood. Holy crap - that show is awesome! Great acting, great dialogue, great atmosphere… I love HBO shows…

Finally… despite the hectic kids schedule, escalating work commitments and just your general overall chaos, things are more or less rounding back into shape here. Nothing seems to help me get things done like having too much to do. That’s why the latest issue of “Make Magazine” is ill timed… My youngest wants to build the remote control car with the VR goggles that’s in it. (sigh) And so do I…

In about 5 minutes I have to take my dog to the vet. Sadly, for the last time. You see, we’re putting old Indy down.

His health has been deteriorating over the last while and it’s really not so good now. We’re counting his days as good and bad and well… when you’re doing that… We think he had a heart attack last night which only makes this decision all the more correct - but not any easier.

Oh man… I’m going to miss this dog. He’d be 15 this November.

Well, it’s good to be back from DC. It’s always good to get back from being away… especially when you’re not with the family. Then again, I suppose I might have an different opinion on that if I were in Vegas with the fellas…

In other news I just watched a really awful film… “Diary of the Dead”. OK, it’s a zombie film, ok it’s a cheesy zombie film, but this was really bad… Oh, where to start? The acting? The script, the dialogue, the cinematography, the everything? Moby was pretty spot on about this flick. It’s bad, but it’s the good bad - and there were some epic zombie kills. A bad film, but fun. Gotta love the cheese.

Oh, before I forget.. The good news about the Washington trip is that I passed the course I went too… (Whew!)

So here I am… in Washington. Well, Arlington VA to be exact. But I’ve been back and forth between the two enough that it’s easy to get confused.

I’m here evaluating a course that my company is considering teaching in house and well… it’s pretty much the standard offering really.

A few observations though… It’s easy to see you’re in a government town. I’ll say that much. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing a bus zip by that says “Pentagon” for its route. Heh. That’s neat. I went into a Macy’s today. I thought it would be something special, but it’s not. I went to a McDonalds here and supersized it. Holy crap! They really are huge here. It’s explains all the fat Americans… that I’m the same size of… Shit.

I found an IHOP (International House of Pancakes)… and just for the grossness of it all I might have to eat there tomorrow for breaky.

I love hearing all the accents from the folks I’m in my course with. A North Carolina accent on a pretty woman is a site to behold… erm, hear.

All right… that’s enough for now. I really need to hit the hay. I’ve got a ton of reading to do for the course tomorrow… (sigh)

It’s been awhile, but I finally had a decent result in a chess tournament. As mentioned in the last post, I signed on to play in the Calgary International. Amazingly, I finished in sixth spot overall, and tops in my division. This was a good result for a few reasons. I gained some rating points back (thus pushing me ever so slowly back towards regaining my master rating), won a few dollars and made myself a player in the arena again. I had a pretty spectacular flame out in my previous 7 tournament games so this was a nice recovery.

I think I’ll use my massive winnings and take the family out for dinner and movie…