ChronoTech

purgatory

1. in Catholic theology, the stage of the afterlife where souls suffer for their sins before they can enter heaven
2. any situation causing suffering

While the first definition doesn’t apply here, I’m certainly in a situation that causes suffering.

I’m currently taking an intersession class at UNM. This particular one is History 161 (US History to 1877.) I’m not taking it because I want to, but because I still need one last 100-level history class for my major (not to mention that I need to maintain 12 credit hours for last semester.)

The big problem is that the instructor might possibly be the most boring person on Earth. It might not be so bad if I didn’t already know all of this. In fact, I’ve known all of this for literally decades. 

I know why England liked having colonies. They like having money. They like trading. It’s not that complicated, though by the looks on the faces on some of the mouth breathing morons I’m sharing this classroom with, it appears to be surprising information.

I would guess that I’m probably the only person in here with any real interest in History, other than the professor and his very bored teaching assistant. It’s ironic that all three of us are in this classroom for less than academically valid reasons. The instructor outright admitted that he’s in here because he likes money… much like the British.

At any rate, it could be worse. He could be one of those instructors that insists on everyone paying rapt attention to him throughout the entire class.

I’m seriously thinking about not buying the book and seeing how much of this I already know.

Time for a break. I thought it would never come.

Well, this has been a wonderful fracking day. Me and my roommate headed out so I could drop him off at the airport, and we got to about Yale and Lead, when the back end of the truck started to feel all wonky. I pulled into the parking lot of Tri-H Gas, and got out.

The tire is completely shot. Parts of the tread are missing. The worst part is that I know from the last time this happened to me, I ended up paying almost 200 bucks to replace the tire. At least this time, my truck isn’t sitting on the side of the freeway, with traffic wizzing by at half the speed of light (eighty miles an hour.)

It gets better of course.

My friend Josh shows up to take me to go get a tire. I get to discount tire, and they - of course - don’t have the tire I need. I already called Big O, and they were asking almost two hundred bucks for the tire. Not going to happen. So we left, and after stopping off at Sportsman’s Warehouse so Josh could buy their entire stock of .308 FMJ ammo, Josh dropped me off at the truck, while I called a tow company.

To top it all off, I was very late for work. At least my boss is a pretty understanding guy.

P.S. My motorcycle now charges, but it sat so long that I need to replace the air filters and clean out the carbs, maybe rebuild them. IT NEVER ENDS!

For most of the summer, I haven’t been able to ride my motorcycle because of electrical problems. The bike starts up fine, when it’s being jumped, or the battery is at full charge, but I can only charge the battery by hooking it up to an external charger.

The reason for this is because, for whatever reason, the charging system isn’t working.  I decided to replace the rectifier, and seeing that mikesxs.net had a solid-state rectifier/regulator, I replaced the regulator at the same time. I also installed a new wiring harness. I took the bike out in the driveway, hooked it up by jumper cable to my truck battery, and started it up. I removed the jumper cables and…

No joy. It died as soon as the connection was broken. I looked over the wiring guide to the rectifier regulator, and noticed that I was supposed to ground out a wire that doesn’t connect to the new unit. It’s the ground wire for the alternator rotor. So I grounded it and…

I ran out of time to work on the damn thing. It got dark, and I had to head to work anyway.

So, that’s the story so far. I’m really hoping that hooking up that ground wire worked. And if it doesn’t, I really hope that replacing the brushes on the alternator is sufficent to get it working again, because if it isn’t, I’m looking at spending US$149.99 on a new rotor, and US$199.99 on a new stator for the alternator. That won’t be any fun at all.

At least I have an idea of what’s wrong. That’s something, right?

So I just bought an iPod touch to replace the classic I just sold. So far I’m pretty happy with it. The apps are fairly rediculous. Typing is a little hard with the chincy little keys but overall it’s not too shabby. It’s good enough to write this with.

The Wordpress app is particularly awesome. The lack of a delete key or the ability to copy & paste is a little annoying. That’s pretty easily overlooked just due to the fact that it is so easy to type up a blog and post from where ever you happen to have wireless.

That’s the one thing that would be better about having an iPhone instead. Because then you aren’t even tied to a wireless hotspot, which I have to admit would be pretty cool.

Of course, given how often I actually post to this blog, it probably doesn’t matter. Hopefully the coming fall semester should give more material to blog about.

UPDATED:

So now I’m writing this on my brand new iPhone. The 3G Internet more than makes up for the fact that I had to pay a $200.00 deposit to AT&T.

T-Mobile is of course being a pain in the ass as regards my old phone. They insist that I have a contract even though I never signed any such thing. To counter this I changed the credit card number to a Paypal generated one with a one time use, and then immediately canceled it. Assholes.

At any rate, I can’t even begin to describe how cool it is to walk down the street while listening to a Pandora station. It is quite literally, the bees knees.

I’m putting the touch for sale on eBay to recoup the costs. I’m also throwing in my old iPod dock, as the case I bought wouldn’t allow the phone to fit into it, even if I had the proper dock adapter, which I don’t.

I’m getting pretty fast at typing on this thing now. It’s pretty impressive what this thing will autocorrect from. You can hit completely the wrong keys and still get the right word. Kudos to Apple for that.

via The New York Times

The monsoon season in Albuquerque is here. That means, that while the rest of the country is busy boiling in it’s own skin, I’m currently drinking coffee outside of Satellite in nearly perfect comfort. It’s maybe 75 degrees out right now.

Unfortunately this brings with it the totally unpredictable rain that is one of the signature elements of life in ‘Burque. I’m perfectly comfortable right now, but it might be pouring rain in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes after that, it’ll have probably stopped.

Back in the day, these rainstorms use to mean that the entire valley would flood on a fairly regular basis. All of the main streets on the slope from the foothills to the Rio Grande would become minor rivers a couple of times a week. This was a bit annoying

These days, we have a fairly extensive network of concrete drainage ditches, locally referred to as arroyos. If you were to visit ‘Burque in the late spring, when it rarely rains, you would wonder why the hell we have them. If you were to visit during a rainstorm in the monsoon season, your confusion would be quickly abated as a wall of water slammed down an arroyo, typically with a greater water volume than the river usually has.

Some of the streets still flood, particularly Lomas Blvd. Every couple of years the local news gets to report on how someone in a Chevy Metro got swept down the street and drowned. The really frightening thing about the monsoon storms is that they can deliver the same amount of water in 20 minutes as a three day thunderstorm might in Seattle. If it ever rained for three days straight in Albuquerque, there might not be a city here anymore.

In the meantime, I’ll take my 75 to 80 degree July days and laugh while people boil in their own skins in Phoenix.

Fuck you, United States Senate.

That is all.

I’ve been playing Bioware’s Mass Effect lately, and honestly, I got to say, I’m a bit confused. Am I playing an RPG, or an FPS? Hell, am I really playing Mass Effect, or am I actually playing KOTOR III?

Honestly, I wish this was KOTOR III. It’s an awesome game, and the addition of lightsabers could only make things better. It is a little weird playing what is most definitely an RPG, and still having to aim. On the other hand, there is a reasonably well developed magic-like system in the game, though it isn’t really quite as broad as one might hope. There could definitely be more spells. Unfortunately, as the default character, I was pushed firmly into the the default ‘Soldier’ class. That’s a little disappointing, and in a way, it turns the combat into just another FPS game, albeit with a couple of magic users (or not, depending on your choice of party members) as back up.

This is a weird trend in these types of games. I don’t mind playing them, but if wasn’t for the story, I wouldn’t be playing Mass Effect at all. While the cinematics and general look of the main story line are quite striking, the sidequests are fairly boring and cookie cutter. All of the buildings in those quests are laid out exactly the same, and they tend to get quite repetitive. I really hope this isn’t a sign of EA’s influence on Bioware, but I fear that is probably the case.

Overall, Mass Effect is an entertaining game, but it quite simply does not live up to the standard set in KOTOR, or in Neverwinter Nights. It doesn’t hold a candle to Jade Empire, which was quite simply a masterpiece of gameplay and story. I could be slightly biased. I’m going to restart the game with a magic user, and see how that works out. Hopefully, it’ll be better.

Of course, comparing it to other Bioware games might not be fair. If you compare it other non-bioware Xbox/PC RPG’s it’s in a class of it’s own. Remember Fable? That game sucked. So much promise, and so little delivery. Mass Effect definitely delivers a finally crafted experience story-wise, and it’s not shabby in the graphics department. It could use some improvement, but what game couldn’t?

Tom Morello is a bad-ass guitar player.

Sony has the best commercials.

That just looks like fun.