Before I head off to spend the evening reading (just for fun) I was inspired by gordon_r_d‘s video game post to write a bit about the games that I currently enjoy playing.

1. Insaniquarium: A Popcap Game (the folks who brought us Alchemy and Bejeweled) that I got from Real Arcade. I joined Real Arcade’s Gamepass membership over a year ago now and so every month, I get a free game. Of course, membership is $6.95 a month, so really I get a $6.95 game every month. Works for me! Insaniquarium is my latest addiction. So much so that I fear I may get carpel tunnel syndrome if I don’t watch it. You click like mad, but you get to have fish in your virtual aquarium. And you get to protect those fish from aliens. You have to feed the fish and you get money as your fish grow. And you can even buy fish that eat other fish. It’s crazy, manic, and sometimes painful. But I love it. In my virtual fish tank I now own 8 fish and can keep 7 pets (which I won as I played through the game) in with them.
2. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (expansion pack): From Blizzard Entertainment – which I bought when judiang got herself addicted to it. I don’t blame her, really. After a hard day’s work, it’s nice to come home and kill dead things. Thanks to Insaniquarium, I’ve not played a lot of Diablo lately, but I figure when the newness of Insaniquarium wears off, I’ll get back to my Assassin and her battles. Plus I’ve got several online games started with friends. This one isn’t nearly as painful to play, either. The expansion pack is even better than the regular Diablo II because with it you can be an Assassin or Druid.
3. Ultraball: Another game-of-the-month from Real Arcade. I love pinball games (see below). I love Breakout. So why not combine the two? That’s what Ultraball does. I’ve gotten up to level 74, but it only lets you start at every 5th level. So I keep having to start back at level 70. Eep! One day, I shall get to level 75! I hope! (Um, should I admit that I’ve only gotten to level 74 using the Easy mode?)
4. Hoyle Board Games & Hoyle Card Games: One of these I bought a proper CD of, but the other is yet another Real Arcade version. I’ll let you look at the links to figure out which is which. 🙂 (You can, BTW, get the Card Games from Real Arcade, too.) In the Board Games, I love the Rummy Squares (aka Rummikub) best of all. But thanks to the program I’ve learned how to play Backgammon and Dominoes. I’m great at the MasterMind-style game, too. I loved that game when I was a kid – still do. And am still good at it. (Someday I’ll challenge Judi at it.) In the Card Games, I love Canasta and Euchre. I love playing Spades, too, but I prefer playing that with the online version of Hoyle Card Games. The computer partner is much better there and I can bid double nil and have a chance of my partner not screwing me up.
5. 3D Ultra Pinball: I have ’em all! Well, most of ’em, that is. As it’s nearly Halloween time, I’ll soon be playing 3D Ultra Pinball: Creep Night once again. I do it every season. Real Arcade got me access to 3D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride, based upon Hershey’s theme park. I’ve nearly completed Creep Night and I have completed Thrillride before. Not as much luck with the other two – the original and the dinosaur one. I think there’s a NASCAR one, too, but I’ve no interest in that. I love pinball games – hope to someday have one for my finished basement. Have to finish the basement first, however. And get a Galaga machine.

Now these are just the top five games that I’m currently playing. But I’m a fickle person. I used to be gung ho about Lemmings (just about every version of it). Beetle Jr was one of the games that converted me to Real Arcade. And as I mentioned in my previous paragraph, I’d love to own a Galaga machine someday. Perhaps my most favorite arcade game of them all! And let’s not forget the various games that I have for my Gameboy Advance. (Which I haven’t played in a long while now.) Fickle, fickle treen. Someday my poor little fishies from Insaniquarium will all be belly up as I’m off playing the latest and greatest video game to steal my heart.

If you guessed “at work?” then you were right! 🙁

I just got home, rubbed the cat, and am going to type this up before going to bed. So, can anyone tell me why I decided to work on computers? (Rassafrassin’ computers!)

Last Monday, you may recall that JohnnyCache died on us. So I spent the day reinstalling the software on a new HD an all that jazz. Got it running by the end of the school day.

Today’s disaster was worse – the Fileserver went kaput. At around 8:30 this morning, several of my students informed me that they’d just gotten the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Shortly after that, kids and teachers were popping in to tell me likewise. I checked all the servers and everyone was up and running. Oh yeah, except the Fileserver. Perhaps the most important computer of them all. Gah!

What made working with the Fileserver harder than with Johnny was that it can only been seen through Terminal Services. Still, I did hook it up to a monitor just so I could see what happens at the boot. But there was no keyboard jack. I looked like it kept hanging up at the boot, and when I’d try to access it, it would reboot again. Time to call in Dean, our technology partner.

He had another job in Troy to do first, but he was there before lunch. Dad (who was in working the morning only) and I were very happy to see him. He actually found a keyboard port when he opened the case and discovered which of the drives had gone bad. We started backing up crucial files from the server (starting with mine and dad’s, then the superintendent and secretaries, finally the teachers, e-mail, and grades. Students were not backed up at the time.) This took a hell of a long time, so I headed back home around 4 to change clothes and get mail (alas, my amazon.co stuff didn’t come today – I want my Ghost Light!). I returned, did more backups, drove off to Troy to pick up some Lo Mein and an egg roll, returned to do more backups. Around 8:30pm, I called Dean back to tell him I was nearly done with backups and by 9pm, we were trying to put the new HD in.

You’d think with RAID-5 and a mirror this would be an easy replace & restore operation. No, dammit. The C volume had errors – so we broke its mirror. But the RAID-5 volume did not have errors. And it didn’t like us swapping out the harddrive. So our final action was to start backing up the student files (these are all being backed up to my own computer’s harddrive) and we’re going to try and use the Fileserver as is (with the broken mirror) until the weekend. Maybe this weekend we can FINALLY get the new Fileserver up and running. (One of our summer tasks that we were unable to finish.)

I hope that my amazon.co order arrives tomorrow. Cuz if it does, I’m going straight home and watching Ghost Light. Twice. Maybe three times. Bleh!

Sorry about the bog-standard pun for my topic title. I went off to Famous Hair today (they were having a sale – only $7.99 per cut) to finally get my hair cut. I prefer short hair – easier to take care of in the morning. I wash it, brush it, and fuggedaboutit. My kind of low-maintenance hair.

I wondered what other folks thought about hair lengths. And decided to make a poll. As it looks rather long (even though it isn’t too long) I’ve put it behind an LJ cut. I was quite pleased with the number of responses to the family reunion survey (which you can still vote on or see the results here). Good to know I’m not the only one out there who likes to vote in surveys. I put the last choice in there for folks who wanted to clarify their votes, should they so desire to do so.

Wow – I’ve now seen three recently released movies within the past month. Maybe even four, if Princess Diaries 2 counts as well (has that been within the month?) Of course, two of these three/four are only recent for the US: Hero and now Shaun of the Dead. Heck, Shaun‘s already on DVD in the UK. (I think I may have to get that DVD when it arrives in R1.)

So yeah, as you might have guessed from the topic and first paragraph, I went to see Shaun of the Dead today. It wasn’t playing locally, so I took that as my excuse to go south of Dayton for some Indian Fud. For a change of scenery, I went down 741 through Moraine to get to the Dayton Mall area. (Usually I just take I-75 all the way to 725 and then hop on 741. But since few on my flist know what I’m talking about, I’ll just shut up now.) I started by going for lunch at India Palace. They have a lunch buffet, so I ate too much and then had rice pudding.

I lumbered back to my car and drove to CompUSA to look around and then to Best Buy (both very near to the theater). I bought a replacement MP3 CD player for my car (the good one died and its first replacement was crap). Got one that was pre-opened so I saved $3 and it was easy to open in the car. Once I had it in place, I could start listening to the latest Doctor Who audio, Faith Stealer, which is so far proving to be entertaining. Once I was done shopping, it was nearly time for the movie.

$6.25 later, I had me a ticket and was sitting in the theater waiting for the credits to end. (Wow, short movie! Heh…) They did the usual slide show of ads, which I missed because I was reading instead. Then some commercials (blech!) and some previews and a funny “what not to do at the theater” short which had Charlie Sheen and some others. And finally the movie. Yay! I’m not much into horror flicks, but I liked Spaced and love British humor, so I figured I’d enjoy the movie. And I did. Dylan Moran as someone other than Bernard Black was fun to see. (And in a sideways “ooooh!” moment, my DVDs of Black Books season 2 ought to arrive this week.) Simon Pegg was great as Shaun and the love interest was good as well. Some true laugh out loud moments, but often I found myself giggling when others in the theater were not. Ah well! (I was just impressed there were folks other than me there.)

After the movie, I headed back up 741 to I-75 and into Troy. I got some Science Diet for Leo (have to buy that at the pet store – why does my cat only like food that must be bought at the pet store?) and then went to Walmart for some items on my list. Which I left at home. Thankfully, I remembered everything that I needed and got a couple of other things that will come in handy. And while I was there, I decided to go for a hot fudge cake at Frisch’s for dessert (with supper to come later in the form of a bowl of cereal). However, I discovered at Frisch’s that they still had Cream of Broccoli soup. I was a good girl and ordered only a single bowl of soup. And then ordered my hot fudge cake (no cherry). I shall refrain from having a bowl of cereal now. 🙂

‘Twas a good day to be a treen, sayeth the treen.

And in honor of yates‘s birthday, I have my birthday icon on. Happy Birthday yatesy!

EDIT: Since judiang and elsaf didn’t seem to catch the gist of my “review”, I’ll say that yes, I liked the movie… (I suck at reviews, as you can see.) And I still don’t know what ETA means other than Estimated Time of Arrival. Any one know what it means?

I tend not to post politically. I’m not terribly good at articulating my thoughts on the matter. Basically, I distrust most politicians (“No Matter Who You Vote For, the Government Always Gets In”) and think schools should be better funded. I’m pro-choice, pro-LGBT, pro-goodness & niceness, anti-war and anti-mass-murdering-f*ckheads. And in this post, I’m going to put a link out that I think anyone who’s pro-Kerry or anti-Bush should check out. (And if you’re pro-Bush, maybe it’s best to just skip it.) It was written by elsaf and is funny and brilliant. Be sure to share it with your friends if you so desire.

The First Slacker’s Song, sung to the tune of “The First Lord’s Song” from HMS Pinafore, by Gilbert & Sullivan.

Very funny, Elsa! Way to go!

I’m Trina Short and I approve this filk.

I haven’t had a post with LeoPix in awhile, so I thought I’d do one tonight. I actually took these photos last night only to realize that I didn’t have my download cable here (it was with my laptop at school).

I’m not a big one for decorating at Halloween, but I recently bought a Halloween tablecloth for the dining room table. And as soon as I had it out, Leo had to make sure it suited him.

It did.

I love my cat. (Does it show?) 🙂

I started watching Star Wars last night and finished it this evening. By Star Wars, I mean the original feature. I don’t care what the “new title” is – it’ll always be Star Wars to me. (Man, do I sound like an old fogey or what?)

Anyhoo, the picture was fabulous and the sound rocked my chair. Damn – never was I so glad to have my surround sound on. What I *really* need to do is borrow the new LCD projector I just got at school and watch The Empire Strikes Back with it. Mmmmmm – sounds good to me!

Anyhoo, I noticed a glitch in my DVD. Thankfully, it only takes place in one section. When Leia is being interrogated by Grand Moff Tarkin, it jumps in a couple of places. As a matter of fact, it jumps almost as much as Leia’s accent does. “She’s English. No, she’s American! No, she’s English!” etc. So I think the girl broke my DVD in that place.

If any of the other discs have glitches, I’ll take the set back. As it is, that one particular glitch just seems rather funny to me. 🙂 (Yes, I find the strangest things funny. Makes for a more fun life, if you ask me.)

Walmart has vindicated itself somewhat for failing at the Columbo task. I just purchased the Star Wars Trilogy for $41.96. Ah, Instant Gratification…

Actually, I probably won’t watch any until tomorrow – I have a Columbo ep to finish (one of my favorites: Suitable for Framing). Well, maybe I’ll watch a little… I do have some physics tests to grade. And sleep? Who needs it!

And to make the evening even more perfect? Frische’s had their cream of broccoli soup! Mmmm! Man, if I ever got hold of that recipe, I’d be 400lb within the week.

Back when dad and I were installing our new webcaching server (using Mitel Networks SME server – a flavor of Linux – and free!) we kept calling it Johnny as our personal joke. And then when it came time to name it, I decided that JohnnyCache should be its name. (It’s a name that is rightly feared at school. Yup, the Man in Black is immortalized in the server that blocks our school game sites.)

It was built out of the same computers that were installed in my computer lab last year. And that was used in the elementary lab. And that had the batch of Seagate harddrives that die. So the poor server was just a ticking time bomb. When would the HD die, we all wondered? Um, the answer is “Today, dammit!”

I had one main tech task I was going to do today – set up the computers for the elementary special education teacher. Well, when I discovered the HD had expired, I called dad in and he took care of that one classroom while I put in a new HD (Western Digital this time – we’re not gonna put in a replacement Seagate) and reinstalled SME. Of course, wget needed to access our proxy server in order to download SquidGuard, but I couldn’t get that to work easily. After half an hour or so of faffing about with wget and .wgetrc, I finally got SquidGuard installed. This is the software that does the actual content filtering.

The next task was the blacklist. I actually had a sort-of up to date list of game sites. And when I went to start typing them into the web interface, I discovered to my delight that IE remembered the other domains that had been entered in the before. So I think I did get everything entered that was there before. (There were a few overlaps between what the browser remembered and my text list o’ domains). Once I got everything entered, I saved a text file of the list in case we have another crash.

So JohnnyCache crashed this morning and I had him repaired by the end of the day. Way to go me! (Not bad for a tech who works 1 period a day. Except that I usually work 2 periods a day – using my “plan period” for tech.) The next goal for dear Johnny is to also become our Pop Up Blocker. I know you can do that with SME, but I don’t know an easy way to do it, yet.

Despite a few false starts today, I managed to get some cleaning done – woohoo! It helps that I ripped my two latest CDs to my vast collection and listened to ’em on my MP3 player while I cleaned. The new CDs are Chumbawamba‘s latest album, Un, and George Harrison‘s Thirty Three & 1/3. (I had the second as an LP but I’ve been slowly upgrading all of my George Harrison stuff to CD.) Un is great – catchy, angry, funny, and melodical. In other words, what I expect a Chumbawamba album to be. Go buy it.

I haven’t completely finished yet – taking a short computer break first – but I did get a lot of cleaning (including laundry) done. My bed is made, even! (I love freshly washed sheets which have been dried on the line. So does Leo, apparently.) Even got my shoes sorted in the closet (you won’t believe how many I threw out. Why the hell did I still have them????)

Anyhoo, I’d probably better get back to work, or I’ll waste my time away on the computer playing Insaniquarium.

“When fine society sits down to dine, remember that someone is pissing in the wine.”