I’m weary. And not in the “I’m a little tired” way. I mean in the “I could sleep for 3 days” weary and I don’t know why. As much as I’d like to blamer her this time, it’s not the baby. I’m sure the fact I have trouble falling asleep until around 2 am has something to do with it, but a fix is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I should see a doctor about it.

I think I’m getting sick. My head’s stuffy, throat’s scratchy, my limbs ache. Yup. Gettin’ sick. That’s a prospect that a look forward to much like I look forward to a kick in the groin.

Lucky for me, I have an assorted array of medical supplies and soups to combat this illness. It’s either the flu opr strep as those are the only 2 things I ever get. And to think I’ve actually tried to stay indoors more to avoid getting sick. Blarg.

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I just read an article today that said a large group if IT companies have banned together to oppose governmnet mandated copyright protections. This group includes Apple Computer, Microsoft, Dell Computer, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

Naturally, this upped my spirits. With the amount of collective cash these comapnies have to throw at lobbyists (and with Microsofts ability to weasel out of things), it’s very doubtful that any governmnet mandated DRM would be implemented in any useful form.

I also hold no illusions that any of these companies are actually looking out for the consumer. At least not directly. For instance, the Wintel alliance stands to loose out with government mandated DRM because they are developing the Palladium platform. Many of the other companies listed are also involved in the TCPA initiative. So the governmnet stepping in and saying “do it this way” would make all that research and money spent a waste.

Not that I agree with Palladium or TCPA, but, as the phrase goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

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Gonna spend a nice quiet evening with the wife doing the dinner/movie thing. Sure is going to be a nice change having the place to ourselves.

Not exactly sure what we’re going to have for dinner or what we’re going to watch, but it should be nice in either case.

The pregnancy kind of distanced the two of us because of the bed rest and all. It was mostly my fault, but, hey, I feel it’s excuseable under the circumstances. I’m just glad we’re making the steps neccessary to patch up the small things that are wrong. I do want to emphasize that the problems are small. Miniscule. But, if ignored, could cause ploblems later and I’d rather avoid that scenario.

Ragnarok’s been going well. I’m gaining experience at a steady pace again, but gaining levels still takes long periods of time. I usually gain a level a day or every other day. Slow, but better than Everquest I’m told. Gravity has started making some bone-headed decisions concerning gameplay, though. Their recent announcement is this:

“From now on when a guild member’s charged of ill-mannered or hacking incident,we will punish all guildsmen of the person.Please behave.”

Now, I agree with their sentiment in principle. I mean, it just won’t do to have bots and hackers running amok, HOWEVER, how am I to prevent my guild leader from inviting them? If such an incident occurs, why should I have to bear the brunt of the punishment because of one person? How do we know that this bad apple didn’t just act nice just to get into a guild with the intent to have it banned for acting out?

What gets me is that Gravity encourages guildes and parties to improve the community. Then they pull something like this. With this new rule, the on;ly way to be safe is to only be in a guild with people you know in real life or just not be in a guild at all, which is counter to what Gravity wants. Or so they’ve lead on.

I’ve talked on the Ragnarok.cc forums about this and asked that they try and have this rule turned over, but I’m not sure how effective they can be. I do know that if many more of these rules come into being, Ragnarok won’t be worth playing and I WILL leave. Diablo II is still fun and I never did conquer all my Final Fantasy games.

Well, I’ve worked my blood preassure up enough for today. I think I’m going to go home. I’ll devote more time to what’s wrong with the Ragnarok world later.

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For the many of us stuck in the wondows world for one reason or another (my reason is games), I just found this site that’s shipping CD’s with a ton of freeware/opensource software designed fro windows. Much of it are windows ports of Linux programs such as GIMP. ISO images are also available.

If you’re going to download it, I would also order a CD to support this effort. It’s the same reason I still buy Red Hat CD’s. I just like supporting companies that show interest in supporting me as a user.

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Since I complained about it enough, I figured I’d let everyone know the outcome.

Turns our that it wasn’t anything I was doing. For some odd reason, the way out GTK libraries were compiled was causing problems. A quick (quick being a relative term) recompile of those by our GTK admin fixed our problems.

Compiling Mozilla for out Sun systems now. Been going for a few hours, so I’m confident that it will finish. Of course, this is being optimistic and I was optimistic during the SGI build, too. We all know what a pain that was…

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Linkin Park just announced the name and release date of their new album. On March 25, 2003, Meteora will hit the shelves.

I still spin their past 2 CDs (Linkin Park and Re-animated) quite a bit, so I can’t wait until some new stuff comes out.

Maybe that LP underground membership may not be such a bad thing. I might be able to get a hold of the CD early. If not, at least I’ll get some cool gear.

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I was just looking through my my site statistics and, my god I have some crazy people looking in my neck of the woods. Hits from all over the world, including Argentina, Poland, Japan and Romania. I even have a couple of hits from an old Arpa net connection!

Not to mention the search strings that find me. How in the world would my site come up when someone searches for things like “just a simple girl”, “nerd gallery” and, my personal favorite, “hate microsoft like crazy”. It’s nuts! Not sure who was looking for me when they typed in “being constantly late for work”, though I suspect it’s a co-worker.

And you thought everything I posted was informative! XD

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Man, this kid has the life. Eat. Sleep. Poop. Keep mommy and daddy up until 4 am by making baby sounds that mimic choking sounds….

In all honesty, it’s very surreal to sit and watch Shelby do even the simplest of things. I really enjoy just watching her look around the room with wonder that only an infant can have. Occasionally she’ll grab my finger and start sucking on it, which is just plain funny.

However, I could definitly live without changing diapers….

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So it occurs to me, being hinted at by the fact that enough of my posts have dissapeared to cause a weird overlapping of my style-sheets, that I need to post more often. So, another update on what’s new in the life of Jason.

My best friend and his family truly are sadistic people. Other than the keyboard in the first picture, yes, that is one present and, yes, that is duct tape. It occurs to me that in previous years, I’ve never had to put that much effort into opening a Christmas gift. Sure, they’ve wrapped things in other boxes, etc, but never to this extreme! I’ll have to think of a suitable punishment.

On another note, I’m seriously considering moving back to my iPAQ. I like my Clie, but it has it’s issues. My biggest complaints are that the way palms handle expansion cards are a hack at best and it doesn’t have a color screen (I understand that this was a choice of mine). Also, over the past few days, I’ve has the unit lock up, reset and eve hard reset on me. No real reason, just poof. So, I’ll probaby go back to my iPAQ for the time being. Maybe I’ll be able to afford an Zaurus soon.

The baby is doing well. She’s started making little baby noises. Noises which sound dramatically close to baby choking on her own vomit, which really freaks daddy out in the wee hours of the night when he’s supposed to be sleeping. Not very entertaining to say the least. I haven’t really gotten to hold her that much as I’ve been sick since Friday. Also not very entertaining. the dog is jealous, of course, but she’s adjusting. Which reminds me, I have more pictures to upload.

Chuck, this friday is payday, so I’ll pay you for what I owe on the site. Should be somewhere around $30. Sorry it’s late, but with the holidays and the baby, I just haven’t had the time.

I’ve made knight in Ragnarok some time ago, but just recently discovered that a more AGI build would have been better. I can still have a pretty well rounded character, but I’m missing a lot in dodging ability. Maybe it’ll be alright sinch I have a decent VIT, I’ll be able to take the damage that actually makes it through. For a game that’s targeted for children, it sure has an overly-complex character development plan.

Ok, hopefully that’s enough to fix my stylesheets.

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Well, my little hiatus is over. The holidays have passed and that should leave more time for me to do things such as post on Happypalm.

For those not knowing, My wife and I had a baby (pictures available in the gallery) on Christmas Eve. I was really hoping for after the holidays, but, hey, nature decides ;-). Little Shelby was born at 12:08 AM on the morning of December 24 after 6 hours of labor (god I love epidurals!). She weighed 6 pounds and 12 ounces (the baby, not the wife).

I finally made knight in Ragnarok. I was tempted to goto lvl 50, but barely made it to 50 so I cut my losses and went knight. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s ok, all shall be revealed.

In Ragnarok (an online MMORPG), there are classes of characters you can be. After you reach a certain level you can change to another, upgraded class. In my case, I went from novice (which everyone starts as) to swordsman to knight. If you reach lvl 50 as a swordsman (or any cequivilent class) you get certain bonuses. I think you should get a solid gold achievment award, too! Soon I’ll have a screenshot area in my gallery for Ragnarok screenies.

Oh well, time to leave to play RO.

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