Dear lazyweb,

Of late I have been thinking of replacing my sound card. It seems that sometime recently, my venerable SB Live (now by far the oldest component in my machine, being at least seven years old; it's old enough that it doesn't have the PC System Design Guide color-coding scheme on its jacks, which is often a source of consternation) has developed problems with DirectSound acceleration, to wit: Oblivion gameplay sounds like this (the music in the menu is fine, oddly). Or at least it DID, before I turned hardware sound acceleration down to "Basic" (after dropping it down to "Standard" from "Full" and still experiencing that problem). At first I thought the K-Lite Codec Pack and its version of ffdshow was to blame, but then I realized: I had a similar problem with GTA3/VC/SA and switching to my onboard sound fixed it. Of course, my onboard sound also has its own set of problems, namely that it's tinnier than a tin mine.

So if I were going to replace my sound card — which, admittedly, I'm probably not going to do for a while since I can limp along on basic acceleration for the foreseeable future — what would you recommend? Something that has a LiveDrive-style breakout box or that can be connected to the front audio jacks on my case would be strongly preferred.

Yours,
zed

Like gretzilla (and, indeed, because of gretzilla), I too have caved and started using Twitter. I actually created an account a while ago, but only now have I bothered to start posting.

I just nudged a bunch of people. I bet none of them will update in response, though!

It's that time of the year again! The time when I get a sinus infection. The timeline is a bit hazy in my mucus-filled head right now, but I think it all began with increased levels of sneezing and a slight increase in congestion Wednesday evening, which I initially chalked up to allergies. The sneezing continued through Thursday, this time accompanied by a sore spot in the back of my throat, and by Friday my sinuses were full of snot and giving me a headache. My mom and I went to CVS last night and got some CVS brand allergy medication ("compare to the active ingredients in Claritin-D® 24 Hour"), which seems only to have mitigated my runny nose; I'm still approximately as congested as before I took it, which further bolsters my "sinus infection" theory. Well, that and the fact that the snot that comes out when I blow my nose is occasionally greenish.

While at CVS last night I saw some nasal irrigation kits. The thought of buying one seriously crossed my mind for a moment, but no matter what health benefits it may provide, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea. I might feel differently if this keeps up much longer, though.

I think I was going to write more, but I'm kind of in a fog right now, which is somewhat exacerbated by me having gotten up to microwave a can of chicken noodle soup. So I'm just going to post this and eat my soup.

It turns out Japan really does look like Jet Grind Radio.

It's hot.

Lately I have been giving serious consideration to ditching AIM, and probably other instant messaging services, in favor of Jabber (or XMPP as it's also become known since becoming a Serious Business Internet Standard). The reason for this is that I've been getting an increasingly annoying amount of spim* on my AIM and Yahoo accounts.

The only flaw with this plan — and it is, regrettably, a fairly major flaw — is that it would require people I want to talk to to use Jabber as well. Now, those of you reading this on LJ** as well as those of you with Gmail accounts already have Jabber accounts (LJ users see here for details; Gmail users just install the Google Talk client); for those of you who don't, it's easy enough to get started. The question is: how many of you (who actually talk to me) would be willing to go to the trouble?

If you actually would be willing to go to the trouble, then just go ahead and set up an IM client, add me (my Jabber address is in my LJ profile, if you're logged into LJ) and start IMing me!

__________
* It should perhaps be noted that I consider any amount of spam (or spim) annoying, so this should be interpreted merely to mean that I am receiving a nonzero amount of spam/spim; it is not meant to suggest that the amount of spam/spim I am receiving is particularly large.
** It is possible that people may be reading this outside LJ, as I am importing my public LJ posts into Facebook's "Notes" application and of course non-LJ users could be subscribing to the RSS/Atom feeds.

Fight the power!

Some of these power supplies weigh as much as 65 pounds. I can certainly handle it, but it's a pain in the ass.

Objects that contradict themselves.

DO NOT DISPOSE IN FIRE

Despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to completely avoid the news of Jenna Bush's wedding. I recently saw a photo of Ms. Bush, and she looks so much like her dad that I thought someone had actually photoshopped his face onto her head. It was only this morning, when I wandered through the living room when my parents were watching Fox News and they showed a picture of her that I realized she actually looks like that.

Today I saw a Jeep with a decal across the top of the windshield which read "if you can read this, flip me over". It was, of course, printed upside down.

I guess "if this is right side up, flip me over" isn't as funny.

I discovered recently that there is an actual Leif Erikson Day. I had previously believed it to be merely a joke made up by the writers of SpongeBob SquarePants, so I was surprised to learn that it actually exists.

Naturally, I added it to my calendar.

You may recall that I recently upgraded my machine, and that I bought 4GB of RAM, only to find that only 2GB would work at a time in my motherboard. Well, I finally got around to updating my BIOS, ( and that fixed it. ) But of course, since I am running a 32-bit OS, ( that last .75GB is inaccessible to the OS. ) Oh well. It's still better than only having 2GB!

Here's a funny story about the BIOS upgrade. I really, really didn't want to install MSI's Live Update crap just to update the BIOS. But I couldn't make my USB stick bootable, don't have a floppy drive, and didn't want to blow a CD (all I have are Lightscribe ones and I don't have many left) for a BIOS update. I found that it is possible to netboot a floppy image, using PXELINUX and MEMDISK, which was convenient since I'm already set up for netbooting (the router's DHCP server instructs clients that wish to netboot to load PXELINUX from the TFTP server on arianne). So I grabbed the "driver free disk for BIOS flashing" image from bootdisk.com (God bless the owner of that site), wrote it to a virtual floppy (the image was distributed as a WinImage self-writing image, so I couldn't mount it directly), copied the BIOS image and flashing utility over to the floppy image, saved the new image, copied it to the TFTP root, set up PXELINUX and MEMDISK for my machine appropriately, and rebooted. It booted the image flawlessly (dork that I am, I recorded a video of it, so if you want to see it, let me know), but when I ran the flashing utility, it just...froze. I sat there staring at the blinking cursor for a good 10 minutes, wondering whether I should reboot or not. Finally I did, and to my great relief, my BIOS was not hosed. It was at this point that I sucked it up and decided to use Live Update, but fortunately, MSI has an online updating thing now so I didn't have to actually install anything but an ActiveX control. Then I shut the machine off, put in the second 2GB stick, and it worked!

Guys! I have learned precisely enough Lojban to be able to tell someone to cram it. Specifically: ko tisna zo'e. Literally this means "[act so that] you stuff yourself with [some unspecified or unimportant] it".

Some of you may recall that I got an Oregon Scientific ATC2K video camera for Christmas. It does not have a standard tripod mount, which, in addition to preventing me from mounting it on a standard tripod, also prevents me from mounting it on one of the many suction cup camera mounts which exist and which I believe would be more stable than either of the mounting methods provided with the camera. I have found an adapter that would allow me to mount it on anything with a ¼" screw mount, but it is sold by a company in the UK and they want £10.95 for it. With current exchange rates that comes out to nearly $22. It is basically a small chunk of metal with the appropriate screw threads on it, and I'd feel like a chump paying $22 + shipping for it. Perhaps my Google-fu is insufficient but I can't find any other place that sells such a thing. So, lazyweb, can you help me find it elsewhere, or give me ideas about how I might fashion such a thing myself?

Had a dentist appointment today. Just a cleaning, as usual.

So I was looking at the receipt after I left; having the dentist poke around in my mouth for a couple of minutes and tell me that I need a filling and I need my wisdom teeth extracted was $40. Having the hygienist actually clean my teeth was $65. Someone's work is being grossly overvalued or grossly undervalued here, I think.

Oh, Windows, I love you so.

I seem to recall there being a big fuss being made some months back about the fact that T-Mobile had trademarked the color magenta. While waiting for the database here at work to finish grinding on some task, I happened to read the fine print on the UPS Ground time-in-transit map on the wall: UPS has trademarked the color brown. I do not recall any outrage on the Internets about this. Perhaps no one knew?

I never wrote about my shitty Friday!

What made it shitty was the fact that I had to be at work 3 hours earlier than usual, and my scooter was dead.

I noticed this as I was wheeling it out into the driveway — the gas gauge did not move when I turned the key to "on", nor was the clock on, as it usually is. It was too late at that point and I was too cheap at any point to call a taxi, so I managed to kickstart it. It was kind of low on gas, so I rode it up to the BP on York Street and filled it up.

I was not able subsequently to kickstart it again.

So I had to push it home. Fortunately, home is not that far from the BP on York Street, but it's still kind of a pain in the ass pushing 200something pounds of dead weight that can't balance itself. Anyway, I pushed it home and my dad came and got me and gave me a ride to work, and that was that.

I have no idea what the problem was; clearly the battery was dead, but why? I'd had the charger plugged in since the previous weekend up until Wednesday night. The battery couldn't have gone flat in a day and a half. And it's held a charge since this past Saturday with me only riding it today.

Ah well, whatever. I'm going to try not to think too hard about it!

It's pretty awesome how SUP has killed off free accounts. As of yesterday, all new accounts must be either Plus (i.e., ad-ridden) or paid. Up until now I was giving SUP the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not they were completely evil and/or incompetent.

And of course, this comes just a month after I had renewed my paid account. Unfortunately paid accounts aren't refundable so I can't show my dissatisfaction with this move by canceling and get a refund on my remaining paid time. I suppose I could have my credit card company do a chargeback, but I suspect that would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

In any case, as much as I'd like to ditch LJ because of this, just like every time something happens that makes me want to ditch LJ, I probably won't unless everyone else does first.

I got Super Smash Bros. Brawl. My friend code is 0473-7484-1927. What's yours?