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Heather and I went to go biking today, but when we got there, I found that my slowly deflating tires had decided to act a bit faster and the rear tire had completely deflated. I had ordered new ones yesterday, but they’re not going to come in until the 18th, so now it looks like I won’t be biking again for about two weeks. We wasted about an hour of the day, packing up the bikes, taking them to the park, fucking around with the tire, packing the bikes back up and driving back. I could have rebuilt the computer today instead. this weekend has definitely been an up and down weekend.

My portable Hard Drive crashed on me this morning… and I’m afraid I may not be able to fix it. It’s 30GBs of all my stuff. I’ve been so fortunate in the past to keep it running and always have it around when all my other hard drives crash. I’m really concerned about salvaging all this data, I’d be willing to never use the drive again if I could only get the data off of it. I’m trying to find someone who has a 2.5″ to 3.5″ IDE cable that I can borrow, if you have one, could you please let me know? I would forever be in your debt, or at least in your debt to the amount of 30GBs of personal data. I realize most of it is crap, a lot of it isn’t really as important as I’d like to believe it is, but still. It’s like 5-10 years of my life on that drive. The drive itself is not that old, but when I bought it, I transfered all my important data to it so that when my computers blew up, my data would be safe in a remote location. Now the remote location’s been bombed.

My entire Vampire campaign is on that drive, and while I’ll more than likely not run that campaign again, as much as I’d like, I’ll probably never finish the web site, I liked knowing that I had the campaign notes if I ever needed them. Also, all the creation files for my web site are on there… I mean, yeah, the web site is still safe and sound, but all the files I used to create it are on that drive. I have stupid videos that don’t do anyone any good on there. I have all my RPGA stuff on there, I have all my recent graphic work on there, including the creation files for all these stupid LJ User Pics. Ugh. I really need to get the data off this drive.

I don’t know how I’m going to buy a new one either. What I may do is look into Laptop hard drives and see how big they come, and then research to see how big a drive I can put in my Nomad and then just start using that as my portable hard drive. It’d be one less portable device to carry around at least.Shit I’m concerned about this now. Damnit, I shouldn’t have thought about what was on there. I should head over to GALMAC early so I can see if one of the people in the Micro Computer shop can hook me up.

Fuck Fuck Fuck

If you have a paid account and don’t subscribe to paidmembers, you should. They just announced that because of all the problems lately, they’re going to give people two free weeks or months. You can see the details here.

This isn’t so much of a journal entry as a list of resources I’m going to reference when I rebuild my xp box next week. Do not, I repeat, do NOT berate me for my operating system choice, the only reason I’m even posting this as public is because I thought someone else may be interested in some of these links if they’re having similar issues.

• General Windows XP Setup(simplistic, but informative)
• WindowsXP Setup and Maintenance
• Application Compatability (maybe will fix rights problems with older apps)
• WindowsXP Downloads
• Service Pack 2 RC2
• TweakXP.com (a resource no advanced XP user should be without)
• How to move your “Documents and Settings” folder*

Maybe it’s time to stop working on this and go on to making the Fraklid map for Starcraft.

*Hmmm, maybe it’s only worth it to move Desktop and My Documents to the D: drive, rather than the entire Documents and Settings folder. It’s looking like a giant pain in the ass to move everything and really, so long as the actual data is safely off the C: drive, I should be fine.

So I’ve started working on some Starcraft maps recently and am now really looking forward to playing them. I just need to get together with zero_interrupt, blu3warri0r, and corwin75 and schedule some time. I guess if there are any Starcrafters out there amongst you, feel free to contact me about a game. I’m pretty much free to do whatever I want after 5:30 CST. ReplayTV means I don’t have to watch TV, so I’m not bound by their scheduling any more, god my child is going to be spoiled.

Anyway. A long time ago, Julian made this map, Alamo. It was awesome, he made a simple map but it didn’t work, the AI and triggers didn’t work correctly and the mexicans never attacked, or didn’t attack forcefully enough. So I took the map home over the weekend, and started reading up on AIs and triggers and other scripts and got the thing working. It was the best “map settings” map we’d ever collectively made because it was almost a perfect 50% chance to win or lose. You never knew, when you started, if it was going to go your way, or the enemy’s way. When you won, it was a lot of work and a lot of luck. When you lost, it was devastating and horrific as hordes of zerg came flooding over the walls in waves so large you didn’t know what to do with yourself. After a few weeks or months of play, Julian decided it was too hard, or easy, or something. I don’t remember, but he took it home and tweaked it. When he brought it back, it sucked. The zerg didn’t do anything. He reprogramed all the scripts and triggers and they didn’t work right. Then he tried to fix it again, and broke it the other way and they worked too fast. He never got it right, and when I went to try to fix it, the magic was gone, I couldn’t do anything to make it work again. Unfortunately, we’d all replaced our orignal copies with the new improved copy. Alamo was gone forever and all we could do, was think back and remember the Alamo (ironic, actually).

So I started trying to recreate the feel of Alamo while not duplicating it. I’ve created two maps that take a slightly different approach to the historic battle. They both look to have some great potential, but I haven’t had a chance to play them yet. I’m really looking forward to trying them out though. They’re both four player maps, but could probably be played with three. unfortunately, that’s just not enough. Hmm, a new idea for a new map is brewing, or at least a new trigger and script. Now I just need to design a map around it. Maybe I will make a campaign someday, even if it’s just a few maps.

Shit, I don’t have anything really interesting to say. I’ll stop wasting your time.

100 things you probably didn’t care about, but I did the meme anyway because I’m in the lab and I’m bored.

wow, I was actually able to read all of my livejournal posts with no delays or “server not found”. Anyway, I have to go read the module for the game I’m running at noon. It’s gonna be interesting, running levels 12, 9, 3, and 3 through a module together. I hope I don’t kill everyone but the 12, or some wierd shit like that. I’m gonna try to actually prep npcs on this one cause I know this module can get trick. I have 3 hours, I need to go.

So I went to the Microsoft Security Class today afterall… I think it’s because Steve and Craig didn’t want to suffer alone. Sheesh that shit is dry. Anyway, I’ll be going tomorrow too, so you can breathe a sigh of relief that I won’t be online posting lame journal entries all day.

unless I get bored and start posting them from my PDA. 😉

Heather’s curled up in a little ball of stress and sickness again today. I was hoping a day all to herself yesterday would help, but she seems to be even sadder and more depressed this morning than yesterday. I know I used to spend a lot of time depressed and I know how hard it is. I even got tested for Chronic Depression at one point and the doctor said it was nothing chemical, I was just depressed. Heather actually takes anti-depressants, so I’d hate to see her this week without them. She said she even took two the other day.

I started writing a lot of extra stuff here, but decided that it was stuff that Heather would probably prefer I not share, so you’ll have to wait and see if she talks about what’s bothering her, and us.