web log - sunday, july 22, 2001 woohoo. day 7. i got through a week and i didn't miss a day. i guess this isn't as hard as i thought. :) good ol' sunday. a day of rest. gotta love that. didn't do a whole lot of anything today. played ut for a couple hours. tried out a couple of new mods, operation spingray and ut4ever. while i'm not yet overly impressed, i must admit that both mods do have some cool features. operation stingray has some awesome new weapons, while ut4ever has some awesome maps. although, neither mod is near as good as most mods available for halflife. sorry people. oh... for those that care, no baby yet. we've got another appointment this wednesday. we'll see if we're even starting the process then. btw, the doctor won't "induce" delivery for at least another 10 days. also looked at a few used cars today. our 1987 honda is getting old and is too small for a new baby. we checked out a 1995 toyota 4runner sr5 4x4 ($13,500) and a 1997 toyota 4runner sr5 2wd ($15,200). both were nice, with the 1997 being just a bit nicer (since it's newer). and even though it had airbags, we didn't like the fact that it's only a 2wd. not good since we have friends with a cabin that's 1/2 hour from bear valley. the 1995 had really low miles (57,000 vs 88,000) but it didn't have airbags and "felt cheaper" to my wife. so the hunt for a new "mom car" continues. sigh. went down to my mom's house for dinner. she bought a new charcoal grill and charcoal but forgot the lighter fluid. doh! so we had to make the burgers on the stove. oh well, still tasted pretty good. watched the last 1/3 of "never been kissed". sigh. it could have been worse. it could have been "pride & prejudice" or "anne of green gables". peace, spudwrench web log - saturday, july 21, 2001 whoa. day 6 and i'm still here. i guess i'm doing pretty good. for me, at least. :) i installed a ceiling fan in our office today. pretty easy considering i'm not a real "home improvement" guy. didn't even shock myself so i'm really surprised. nice to have and only $40. schweet. got a couple of dragonball-z videos in the mail today and, wouldn't you know it, one of the tapes doesn't track on my vcr. suck. now i gotta send it back to columbia house and ask them to replace it. in fact, i think i'm not gonna even pay them until i get a tape that works. i'm sure they'll sent me about a dozen notices but who cares? i ain't gonna pay for something that i can't even watch. boneheads. helped my father-in-law take some measurements for the new porch he's gonna help us (i.e. he works, we watch) build. it's gonna rock. we'll be able to sit on the front porch, eat dinner and enjoy the evening. i'll be adding some rants to my "rants" page in the next week or so. most were written at various times over the last year or so. they'll range from windows to teamkillers in ut. actually, they'll be about whatever the heck has pissed me off in the last week. advisory: some content may not be suitable for diehard fans of micro$oft or ut. once again, i've actually added a few links to my "links" page. i'll be adding a ton more... i'm still just not happy about how they're looking right now. i added my complete mp3 list and album list to my music page. and, no, i don't trade so don't even ask. peace, spudwrench web log - friday, july 20, 2001 dang. day 5 and not a day missed. heh... wait until the kid is born. then we'll really see if i can keep this page up. :) ok, one more day of this old man down. i finally told him that we either need to reinstall the entire computer or buy complete new systems. i'm tired of trying to figure out what they did to them to screw them up. we'll see what happens next. another day and no internet access at work. apparently some idiot in boston (!!!) cut a major fiber-optic line and pulled most of worldcom's network down. oops. i'm pretty sure whomever did it is now unemployed. heh. went to talk to a friend at the day camp that he works at. it was "slime day". well, to make a long story short... i got "slimed". the "slime" is a mixture of oatmeal, tapioca, water and a ton of green food color. nasty and thick. my shirt was a goner. but they gave me a new counselor's shirt. no biggee since my wife did the actual logo for them. :) i've been doing more reviews for the ut map review site that i was working for. it's fun plus it gives me a reason to play ut and give my opinions out to people that probably don't really want them. muahhahahhahaa. i've actually added a few links to my "links" page. i'll be adding a ton more... i just need to decide on how i want to organize them. i don't really like how they're looking right now. peace, spudwrench web log - thursday, july 19, 2001 wow. day 4 and still going strong. scary. ok, i got some graphics up. nothing really earth-shattering but it's a start. none of the other pages really have anything interesting on them yet so don't even bother. ok. i'm officially tired of dealing with this old man. today he calls me again and asks when i'm gonna get the network "thing" working again. obviously he is deaf because i told him i had to do some research on the problem. honestly. for real. i did everything short of reinstalling the entire computer to get that ancient piece of history working. so i screwed around with it for a while since he was there and then promptly left. he's just gonna have to learn not to mess with his damn computers without knowing what the hell he is doing. 'nuff said. our internet at work was on the fritz all day. major drag. when anything affects the network, it gets noticed and reported by *everyone*. so i had to defend myself from the same questions over and over and over, all day. ugh. apparently, worldcom was having "networking problems" and it killed the dns servers for our isp. boneheads. had a company bbq tonight. mmm, free food. gotta love that. chicken (slightly overdone), bread, curry rice, pasta salad, chips, sodas, brownies, cookies... the works. lots of people and kids there. pretty cool. i would have loved to stay longer but the wife isn't really a "people-person". if she hasn't known them forever, she doesn't seem to have much to say. so we left and went to costco. a jumbo-sized box of baby wipes and two cases of coke and some other miscellaneous stuff. wee. peace, spudwrench web log - wednesday, july 18, 2001 day 3 of this crazy web log and no end in sight. heh... finally got most of my stuff moved to my new office. the guy that was in there was supposed to move two weeks ago, mainly because the phone's were all moved two weeks ago. so i've been without a phone for two weeks. not a good thing considering i'm tech support for our entire organization. he probably just figured i could wait until he had some free time. well... since he was away for the week, the office manager decided that he was going to be moved while he was away. so they packed all his stuff in boxes and moved him out. he's gonna be in for a big surprize when he gets back. oh well, maybe he should have thought about that before being so inconsiderate to everyone. bonehead. ok, that crotch-ity old man that i had to deal with yesterday... he was at it again today. no sonner does he ask me to look at a problem than he starts to explain to me how to fix it. not only that, but he feels that he has to explain it to me 5 times, with 5 different solutions each time. so i get to stand there and listen to his ramblings about "the network this" and "the network that". this is a prime example of why a large number of people over the age of 55 shouldn't have access to a computer. before a certain friend of mine gets all bent about that statement, let me add one thing. she is the reason why I said "a large number of people" instead of "all people". suffice it to say (like i said yesterady), this guy knows exactly "diddily" over "squat". bonehead. woo hoo!!! the baby's due today but... still no baby. in fact, no action at all as far as signs of progress. my wife will just have to deal with being very large for a few more days at least. while we'd like to actually get this done, it's not really for us to decide when she'll be born. although, it does give us some more time to do some last minute cleaning and preparing. yeah baby!!! we gonna be heading over to a friend's house to visit with some other friend's that just got back from a trip to paris, france. they should be bringing some photos to check out. all i know is that we're gonna eat skirt steak, potatoe salad, green salad, corn and home-made ice cream. this is the type of food that i really like so i expect to gain about 5 pounds tonight. hot diggity!!! time to go get fat. later. peace, spudwrench web log - tuesday, july 17, 2001 day 2 of my heart-pounding web log. woohoo. you know, as an systems admin, i interact with some real dumb users. but today's user was especially annoying. not only is he a crotch-ity old man, but he actually thought he knew more than me. now i ain't saying i'm all-knowing but this guy knows squat about anything... let alone computers. first he wanted to know what the problem was and then proceeded to interrupt me several times to say that's what he thought it was. if that's so, then why the hell did he call me to fix the damn problem. i mean, if he wants to help me do my job... go for it. bonehead. anyway, no baby yet. everyone i talk to says it's either great having kids or they wish me luck in dealing with them. honestly, i'm excited. i can't wait to have a little girl running around my feet, calling me "daddy". i think it's awesome. oh, you may notice that the screen "blinks" as you access my page. that's for a couple different reasons. first, i'm capturing a snapshot of all the files on your system... no, no, i'm kidding. first, i'm stopping an ad script that my current web space provider forces all their users to put on each page. second, i'm removing the top ad frame that my re-direction service places at the top of this site. how lame is that? i'm violating both TOS's but... who's cares? what are they gonna do? kick me off their service/server? there are loads of free web space providers out there (each with their own scripts and/or pop-ups) so that doesn't bother me. and the "free" redirection service is gonna force everyone using their "http://i.am/" service to start paying for said service. what the hell is up with that? what part of "free" don't they understand? "but you can sign up for our 'http://come.to' service... blah, blah, blah." screw that. i wanted and got my "http://i.am/spudwrench" and i wanna keep it. so i'm removing their top ad frame from my site while it still works. boneheads. playing quite a bit of ut (unreal tournament) nowadays. i keep looking for some good mods or tc's but i haven't found any. half-life seems to have a serious corner on the kick-butt mod/tc department. i'm gonna start working on the graphics for this site tonight. it'll give me something to do without upsetting the wife. she hates the fps's that i play. they're too violent for her. i can see her point; they are. but i'm no more agressive after playing 6 hours ( <-- exaggeration) of ut/half-life/quake than i am after 6 hours ( <-- no exaggeration) of watching cartoon network. so i use headphones (so she can't hear it) and try to only play when she's gonna be watching tv for a couple hours (so she can't see it). i'm such a nice guy. ok, off to make some graphics. peace, spudwrench web log - monday, july 16, 2001 welcome to my web log. some of you know me by other "nicks" but for this page i will refer to myself as "spudwrench". don't like it... tough. i will definately add some more interest to this page without getting too "geeky". i hope to add an entry to this web log every day. since my wife and i are expecting a child (a girl) this week, i occasionally broadcast music over a shoutcast server, i review maps for a ut map site and i'm a systems administrator for a 70 computer outfit i don't think i'll have a hard time finding stuff to write about. thanks for dropping by. peace, spudwrench