Benign Thoughts

So I figured I’d post before going to bed real quick. I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like to, but it’s at least more often than before. I’m sure if you actually read this site, (which you probably don’t given the complete lack of readers I have since my huge hiatus) you’ll have noticed some changes. First of all, instead of using images as my post titles, I’m now using text. If you’re using a browser that supports CSS fonts, your browser will automatically download Gentium Book Basic, and use it to display my post titles. It won’t install it on your system or anything sketchy like that, just download it like it’d download an image. Also, I got the google ads working finally. It was some stupidity with how my pages were being sent as XML+HTML instead of HTML. They’re still all XHTML, completely valid, like always, but now the google ads work.

Also, you should be able to see my twitter status in my sidebar. Just a tiny feature that I’ve been wanting for a while. I got Wordpress working properly finally by basically deleting it and reuploading it. It had some issues with constantly being upgraded, and no fancy javascript was working in the admin area, including managing widgets. Sucks, but now it works.

I’ve been watching a lot of Dexter recently. All 3 seasons are on Showtime on Demand, so I couldn’t resist. Plus, it’s HD, which is great! Verizon consistently impresses me. In case you didn’t know, I use Fios, which is Verizon’s TV/Internet/Phone over Fiber service. On Demand stuff uses the internet on TV, so you’d think that it might adversely affect my internet service. It doesn’t. Somehow they count the bandwidth for On Demand differently than the bandwidth for my internet. So I can watch Dexter in HD whenever I want, while uploading all my photos from the past year to my “new” flickr account (not really using it yet, so I’m not posting it), while downloading the latest version of Arch Linux for my desktop which isn’t handling the latest Ubuntu quite well. For the record, it took less than a minute. I’ll set it up tomorrow.

Since I posted that I was going to fix up the site a bit after finals, I’ve been getting an unbelievable amount of spam. I’m talking well over 100 spam comments per day. It’s completely retarded. Defensio wasn’t really doing its job well, so I switched over to Akismet and so far so good. I actually have reworked the site a bit, though it shouldn’t really look any different. However, I did recently upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 and I must say, it’s pretty nice

Speaking of upgrades, Linkinus 2.0 is out over at Conceited Software. For those Mac users who are wondering whether it’s worth the 10 euro upgrade, it is. It’s a lot less buggy than 1.3 was, which is fantastic, though they really should release a free bugfix release for 1.3. I only have a couple complaints: The “Identities” functionality is a bit strange for IRC. Basically, each nickname you use is an identity. If you use the same nickname with the same password across multiple networks, you’re golden. If not, you need to set up an identity for each nickname, which includes your User Name, Real Name, Nickname(s) (in priority order), and Passwords. If you use the same nickname across different servers with different passwords, then things can get confusing but you’ll manage. Also, when upgrading from 1.3, Linkinus does not know what kind of nickname authentication service any manually added networks use, so you have to set them up in order for Linkinus to identify for you. Also, the current themes available are a little buggy, and some are ugly, though user-created themes should be on their way. I personally have no complaints on the appearance of the default theme, Whisper, except how actions look, which is really just a minor annoyance. So basically, Linkinus 2.0 is worth the upgrade. If you don’t feel like spending 20 euro for an IRC client, however, LimeChat is also worth taking a look at, Adium added IRC support in the latest beta, and there is always Colloquy. Linkinus is my favorite though.

Quitting WoW quite frankly isn’t an option.

Remember when I said that? Well, I quit WoW. Figured there are better places to put my time, and frankly, World of Warcraft is a waste of it. However, I did not leave my guild. I’m still fairly active in talking to friends I made in the guild and posting on the forum. I’m still not going to play WoW again anytime soon, though.

Instead, I’m playing The Sims 3! I am, of course, kidding. I’m not playing it as a substitution for WoW. I’ve always been a big fan of The Sims franchise, and I’ve owned every release since the original version. In fact, I recently found my Prima’s Official Strategy Guide for The Sims. I forgot I even had it. Anyhow, with the Sims 3, Mac support is through Cider (smooth enough on my mac, but a lot of people are complaining), and it’s missing Sims classic items like hot tubs, diving boards, instruments besides the guitar, and some other things. But even though there are a few things I don’t like, I really do like the improved Sim customization, traits, moodlets, and the new neighborhood. In fact, I might go out on a limb and say that it’s possibly the best Sims game ever. It is at least better than The Sims 2, and I can’t wait to see what the expansion packs bring.

That’s all for now. Feel free to follow me on twitter at Twitter.com/LouisC.

Yeaahhh so I haven’t been updating the site. This is understandable since, you know, I haven’t really updated the site regularly in years. However, I want to be more active. It’s just with my poor time management skills and lack of the ability to overcome my habit of procrastinating things, well, I procrastinate. However, this semester has, quite honestly, sucked. Previously I was worried about my performance in Calc II. Now I’m worrying about failing CS140 because of spending too much time on Calc II and putting shit off. Plus, I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, which takes up a massive amount of time. However, I try not to make that time conflict with time spent studying, with friends, etc. Quitting WoW quite frankly isn’t an option. And I’m not leaving my guild either. My current raiding times are fine. I just need to get past procrastinating, and do work when I get back from class instead of putting it off until the last minute and I run out of time. And I also want to get this site updated more regularly.

So, in an attempt to get back into the swing of things on this site that is, starting once finals are over (tomorrow night), I’m going to look into possibly redesigning the site, but definitely revamping the site. There’s still a lot of old-wordpress stuff back from when I started using wordpress (pre-1.0), and a lot of stuff that breaks because of it. I just got around to deleting the contact me form on the contact page. Why? Because it uses a captcha system that has been broken for about a year. The images it generated were practically impossible to decipher. I’ve known this, but have just never gotten around to fixing it or removing it. That’s how bad I am. Anyway yeah. Tomorrow night after Calculus I’ll get started. Probably.

So I’m posting again in less than a month. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Granted, my previous post wasn’t really a full post, but meh. It was still more than 3 sentences. Anyway, in the past almost-month, I’ve been playing WoW, like always. You know the deal, Naxx, H. Naxx, Malygos, Sarth, etc… Well, we couldn’t get enough people to do H. Naxx and decided to server transfer. People chickened out, others decided to go to other servers since they were transferring anyway, and everything was a mess. So, since basically the guild is defunct, I’m leveling an Alliance mage on Lightning’s Blade named Tassels. I’m at level 23 I think now. I’ve been distracted from leveling…. by what you ask?

By Monk, of course! It’s such a good show, and I wish I had started watching it sooner, but I had always just … excuse me a second. I need to talk about something that just came up.

Apparently it’s basketball season. so my roommate, Austin, has been watching Basketball whenever possible. I got dragged into a fantasy basketball league, but yeah. I’m not entirely thrilled about it. Actually it’s been brought to my attention that he’s just playing a game at the moment, but the point still stands. My suite is loud when they’re watching sports. I thought it was bad during football, but Austin yells and talks to himself while he’s watching a game or playing the video games. It’s very irritating and while I was typing about Monk, he went into a yelling spree with another suitemate (Ryan). Anyway, back to Monk.

It’s a good show.I had just written it off as silly, but I’m actually enjoying it as a good detective show. The cases in it are less far-fetched than they are in Detective Conan at the moment, and it’s quite refreshing to watch a good show again. Also, I’ve been watching Dollhouse. The first episode aired last friday, and I’m really looking forward to this friday’s next episode. Hopefully it won’t get cancelled any time soon.

I think I’m done here now… I don’t have much else to talk about, just wanted to post a quick update. I’m gonna continue leveling Tassels again right now.. Hopefully I can reach 25 or 26 tonight, since I have no class (again) tomorrow. (:

So while I didn’t post for the last few months, I basically did my finals, played World of Warcraft, went on break, worked at panera again, then came back to school. I’m good at not keeping promises to post again.

My world of warcraft guild split. My half created <Sanity> and the other half remains as <From the Internet>. We’re still friends but the west coast section is now its own guild. Our website is at SanityDentarg.com. It’s badass.

Really not much else to say. Seriously, that’s why I haven’t been posting. Fail, I know, but whatever.

So I now have the best raiding schedule ever. I am in my guild’s West Coast raid, which means we start raids at roughly 1am, and finish at about 4am. THIS IS FANTASTIC for a few reasons. Firstly, while this semester I have to deal with waking up at 9 (which isn’t even a big deal going to bed at about 5), next semester I do not have class until noon at the earliest. Plus, the time conflicts with nothing I am doing in real life: By 1am I am finished with my schoolwork and I will be finished at Panera for sure; I have meetings for hall council and college council at 8 and 9pm, which will be finished by 10-ish; and, well, yeah. 1am guarantees I will be able to make it to any raid, which was an issue with my last guild (7pm raids suck). A video of us killing Patchwerk is below. We’re currently up to Sapphiron (who owned our asses this morning). If you click the video, you can watch a higher quality version over on youtube. If not, you have to deal with the crappy quality.

Oh yeah, I’m still alive. Forgot to mention that. Will post tomorrow after studying for music. Toodles.

Yeah, so I stopped blogging again. My bad. Didn’t mean to do that. Anyway, some shit went down in the last few days so I figured I should cover it.

My suitemate Colin, started a Facebook group against the “Saved by Zero” commercials last Sunday. This previous sunday it had 400 members and was featured on a news blog. Now it has almost 2000 members, an AP article written about it (Colin even got interviewed), and is in tons of news sites nationwide. It has completely blown up. Redonkulous.

Obama won the election. Personally, I don’t care about the result. I wanted Ron Paul, and he didn’t even get the nomination. Hopefully he’ll get it in 2012. Obama is at least for net-neutrality, but I hope he doesn’t place regulation on TV and Radio. We’ll see what happens. If he does anything too extreme, I’m sure republicans will get voted into congress.

So yeah, I’m out. Useless! Oh yeah, also I should probably say that I broke up with Caitlin this weekend. Just as a followup to my June 13th post where I said I have a girlfriend now and I quit WoW, both of which are now null and void. Funny how things work out. Or don’t, rather (long distance makes you realize things you’ve been in denial about). Oh well, shit happens and the world goes on. Toodles!