StaffChat: Devik says, "Yeah."
StaffChat: Devik says, "Now I've seen some pretty fucked-up stuff there"
StaffChat: Zirik says, "I've seen horrifying here. I haven't been there."
StaffChat: Devik says, "But this takes the fucking cake, the table that cake is on, the oven it was baked in, and the baker who made it."
StaffChat: Devik says, "Taps isn't that bad. I keep to myself and my group of friends. It's more of a place for me to hang out and be shocked and horrified by the depths of human depravity."
StaffChat: Devik says, "But then every now and then something comes along that kills a bit of my soul."
StaffChat: Zirik says, "You still have some of that left?"
StaffChat: Devik pffts. "Like hell. It's a figure of speech."
StaffChat: Devik says, "You can't kill what's already black and rotten to the core."
StaffChat: Devik says, "Oh, and you know what's worse?"
StaffChat: Devik says, "someone is going to have SEX with that thing."
StaffChat: Devik says, "AND LIKE IT."
StaffChat: Devik, going directly to hell, not passing go, not collecting $200.

...the Exterminator has acquitted itself admirably.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at some of my photos in my userpage.

For those of you who still don't know what I'm talking about, be purified by His wrath.

A bit of nuclear apocalypse could be interesting right about now.

Without going into too much detail...

The network printer will not retain the IP address we set on it through its menu interface. Set the IP, and within two minutes the printer has lost the configuration. Called HP's tech support to get the jetdirect card/system board replaced. I can understand a certain level of computer incompetence from home users, but for a technical support employee - even tier 1 - the level of stupidity I encountered is inexcusable. Here's a couple of the stinkers I was told:

1. I need to use a different IP address. Because, what? An IP address burns out, like a lightbulb? Needs to be changed every few billion packets? I could see the point if this was on a network with more than 5 nodes, all with static IPs. Being that it wasn't (and nothing was giving a ping response to the IP we were using), this step is completely pointless. What made it a real gem was the fact that she worded it as if the IP was bad and needed to be replaced.

2. I need to update the drivers on the computer. The printer isn't even hooked to the computer through any direct method. It's all through the network. If the printer won't even retain the static IP address that we're setting, it has no way to communicate with the PC and thus there's no way that updating a driver would have any effect.

3. Perhaps the best one here: the technician insisted that the printer itself had no software on it. At this point I nearly lost it. Is it magic smoke and pixie dust? Perhaps little leprechauns that are poking at buttons and pulling levers? It is a near-impossible feat to find a printer that does not have at least some basic form of interpretation software on it (after all, something has to decode the datastream and turn it into usable information that the printer can direct its mechanisms with). For a network-aware, self-checking, multifunction printer, it's absolutely impossible.

Number three also gets the gold-star for the fact that the on-hold music mentioned attempting to upgrade the firmware for the machine. Who knows what firmware is? You guessed it: it's software, a specific form of software that is loaded into the NVRAM/flash on a device and is almost always a complete software image loaded entirely into the onboard flash, as opposed to an application which can be installed or removed at will without affecting the core stability. Hence the use of the term firmware - the code is a "firm" set designed to be changed infrequently, if at all, as opposed to a "soft" set which can be updated, added, removed, appended, etc, without interfering with the rest of the system.

The worst part about this is that I had to wait on hold for 50 minutes in order to listen to the wonderful verbal diarrhea she spat at me.

In honor of our recent Talk Like a Pirate day...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI

I'm sure a lot of people have already seen that. Still, though, what the fuck? Moreover, what the FUCKING fuck?

Life lessons: To be a pirate captain, you must use LSD and meth simultaneously.

So...
So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for the cool breeze?
Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish... how I wish you were here...
We're just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl, year after year...
Running over the same old grounds...
What have we found?
The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

Anyone out there who knows where I can find a good looking werewolf miniature, drop me a line. I've checked out a few, such as the pureblood warpwolf from Hordes, and some of the wulfen from Rackham minis. I'd appreciate any other links that people can give. I'm looking for something not so monster-ey. Scale isn't really important. Let me know if you chappos happen to know of one.

Danke

For those of you who don't already know, my mum had a heart attack last week. It was minor, and the doctors believed that it was caused by a collapsed artery coming off of her heart, and put in a stint to prevent it from happening again. They also found some damage to the cardiac tissue and weren't sure if it was new or old; if old, it was no problem, because her heart has been working just fine with it for a long time. If new, it has a chance to heal up and be just fine.

Unfortunately, she had another two heart attacks last night, again, thankfully, both were minor. She's currently in ICU, and the doctors performed an operation (not sure the name of it, where they insert a cable with a camera through a vein in the leg to explore around the heart) -- they had done this last week, too. They're not sure what the cause is. They believe there may be more partially-collapsed arteries around her heart causing the problems. They considered two options: medication, or bypass surgery. My heart sank when my sister called me to tell me this, this morning. The fact that she was in the hospital (again) to begin with was bad enough, but bypass surgery? She's very healthy, she always eats right, and she exercises regularly, so it shouldn't even be something I'd have to think about. The doctors even commented that her arteries were mostly free of any unhealthy blockage.

I called my mom earlier, she was pretty tired and groggy from the surgery, but she was able to talk for about half an hour. The doctors are going to try medication first and hope that it'll prevent another incident from occurring. But they remain wary of the damaged cardiac tissue, and are wondering if that's partially to blame. If so, I can only imagine what the course of action might be, and my imagination can be a dangerous thing. I assure you, few of the outcomes I conjured were happy, healthy things.

The events of the past week have driven home just how much I miss my family. She was in good spirits, on the phone, and talking about the next time we'll be getting together, either Thanksgiving or December. It's hard on me that she lives so far away, far enough that it's cost- and time-prohibitive to visit her. Even when I lived just across the state it was sometimes hard, but I knew that in an emergency I could be there in just a few hours. Now, that 'just a few hours' is more like a day, half a day at best, and around $300 for a plane ticket. In the past nine months, I've seen none of my family save for my mum and stepdad (they came to visit around easter, and again in early July), as well as my cousin and great grandmother who live down here.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I wanted to get my thoughts down, and wanted to write this somewhere so I didn't have to keep typing it out 20 different times to all the people who've asked how I am.

I feel like I'm really torn. I moved down to Arizona at the beginning of last December. Prior to this I've lived my whole life in Wisconsin, always within just a couple hours of my family. I grew up getting together with my family on just about every holiday, we'd have a get-together every month or so. Now, it costs me a few hundred bucks and lots of time in the air in order to see them.

That hurts me. I never really thought I cared a whole lot for that family thing. It never seemed hugely important to me. But now I see how much I miss it. I've told people that I didn't care for a lot of my family... that was a lie, though I don't think I knew it at the time. I look at it now and I realize how much I wish I was able to be with my family, though money and work are prohibitive on that. I also miss all of the friends I left behind. I still talk with most of them... but some I have barely seen in the past year or two.

The logical choice is to move back to Wisconsin, right? If only. I've made some real good friends down here, too. I know that if I move back to Wisconsin, I'd miss them as much as I'm missing my WI friends right now. And I have family down here, too... though honestly only one that I see on any form of regular basis - my cousin. He and I enjoy hanging out. Or, at least, I enjoy hanging out with him and he doesn't seem to object to it. I have a job down here... a fairly good one, too. On top of it... I hate Wisconsin winter. It was one of the chief motivating factors for me moving away. I made the decision in October - or was it November? I don't remember. Either way, it was nearing the winter season... and I knew that I'd despise that. Freezing temperatures, snow, ice, salt on the roads, blizzards... no thank you. And the summers.. ugh. Humidity off the scale. 115 degrees here feels cooler than the 85 in WI. I'm serious. It's much more tolerable.

I don't know what to do. It hurts to sit where I am, and I know that either way I go with this decision it'll hurt me still.

PS: no, this is not an emo sympathy rant. Just trying to unload all of this stuff off of my chest, hopefully help get a better idea of what to do by getting it all out there.

So, started noticing a clunk/click in my vehicle as I'm turning and moving. Signs point to a bad CV joint. That's less than two weeks after I got it back from the shop for the fuel injectors. Groovy.

Fortunately, it's going to be cheaper - unless they find something else. Here's hoping they don't.

Turned out it was a bad injector, and the other three were getting pretty grungy. Took it to the shop my uncle works at, he cleaned the three (the shop wanted to just replace them but he told them no) and replaced the bad one. Ended up saving me almost $400 by not replacing all four. Engine's running great, now all I have to do is get the brakes replaced!

So my car died today. This (late) afternoon to be precise.

I should probably count my blessings that I took a sick day from work, because I would have been in the middle of nowhere when it died, rather than just two miles from home so that I could 'limp' it back. As near as I can tell, whatever problem I've been having with it just got worse.

So here's the problem. It was running "okay" - as well as it's been running, which was basically on three cylanders. Then suddenly, fuel flow to the engine cut out. If I lightened my foot up on the pedal, it resumed, but if I pressed it down even a bit, it cut out again. Starts back up and idles *really* rough, like it's running on only two cylanders. Pressing the gas causes it to cut out once again, though every now and then it'll actually rev up (sounds real horrible in the process too, real uneven as a car running at half power generally does), and allow me to move it until it cuts out again. Obviously I'm not driving the car anymore now that I've got it home.

If anyone can tell me what they think the problem is, that'd be cool. I'm no mechanic. It sounds to me, from the problem, maybe a fuel pump, but I'm not sure. I originally thought a coil or an injector, but since pressing down on the pedal causes it to cut out entirely, it's making me think it's the pump. That, or the computer could be shot, but I consider that far less likely.

Doesn't really matter, because I'm taking the thing to a professional mechanic. Can't really afford to, having to take out a parental loan for it, but my mum was nothing but supportive - which was sorta surprising to me. I think she knew that me turning to her was sort of a last resort, rather than a first one as it would have been a few years ago. She knows I've been trying - really trying - to get my life, finances, etc on track, and by all rights I've gone by leaps and bounds over the past year, and even more so in the past 2-3 months. I've barely spent anything that wasn't for food or gas or other neccesseties, only doled out maybe $15/wk for luxuries. And looking back on it I can cut out a lot more money by adjusting my eating as well, by making my own food instead of buying packaged meals or fast food, etc.

Hopefully, though, I'll come out of this with a zero-interest loan that I'll slowly pay back over a few months, (or maybe shorter, depending on how much the repairs cost - hopefully very little), and a car that works top-notch as it's supposed to. I can live with the worry of paying back my mum. She's not going to give me harassing phone calls threatening to repossess my vehicle if I don't pay her. What I can't live with is the worry of "is my car going to survive my next trip to/from work?"

Da orks had us a crushin' victory over dem pink 'umies today! We done chopped and stomped 'em but good! Da big boom from dere bazy-lisk kannon we looted weren't no good neither, cuz it wasn't made by da Orks! We's gonna get dem grot-lovin' mekboyz to take a look an' make it Orky, den we'll be da biggest and da greenest!

Another glorious victory for the near-undefeated brothers of the Ultramarines chapter. Fighting side-by-side with loyal Imperial forces, the Ultramarines held their ground against a vicious assault led by traitorous Imperial Guard legions. Helping to hold the loyalist positions was a Baneblade, its devastating firepower laying waste to scores of enemy forces before they could bring their heretical weapons to bear on the heroic defenders.

Despite catching the defending force largely by surprise, Marine reinforcements were quickly mobilized from the nearby base and arrived on-scene within minutes. The heavy firepower lent by the Space Marine armored column was able to lay waste to the northern flank of the invading force, while the Baneblade delivered the Emperor's Wrath upon the southern flank.

Among those cited for bravery and dedication are the crew of the Baneblade, as well as Brother Kyriakos of Tactical Squad Thanos who single-handedly broke the heretics' will as by annihilating the traitorous commander and his support personell with his heavy bolter. The survivors of the 4th Platoon of the Imperial force are also commendated for bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, despite taking heavy losses in the initial advance.

Despite hundreds of casualties on the side of the treacherous heretics, loyalist losses numbered only one Marine and eight guardsmen.

May the Emperor's Light shine for another ten thousand years.

His Humble Servant,
Master of Sanctity Devik

Okay, for the two of you who are actually watching my journal... I propose a challenge. I borrowed this from someone else's journal, and decided to change it a bit to suit my current thoughts. I will list a number of books that are currently on my bookshelf or my desk. In addition, I will include three that are NOT on my bookshelf. You get to guess which ones aren't actually on my bookshelf.

Sounds hard, but for those of you who know me well, it should be fairly cake. :)

1. Shadowrun 3rd Edition, by FASA Entertainment
2. A Guide to Covert Ops - A BattleTech Companion, by Fantasy Productions
3. Werewolf: The Apocalypse, by WhiteWolf Games
4. Interview With the Vampire, by Anne Rice
5. Codex: Black Templar, by Games Workshop
6. The Book of Mormon, by Joseph Smith
7. Fallout: The Unauthorized Strategy Guide, by Prima Games
8. Lethal Heritage: Blood of Kerensky Volume 1, by Michael Stackpole
9. Flight of the Eisenstein (Horus Heresy Series), by James Swallow
10. StarCraft: Speed of Darkness, by Tracy Hickman

Okay, so I threw a couple of twists in there. But I'm allowed to, damnit. :3

Some people should be shot upon birth. Seriously.

Both of my roommates had their cars broken into today. Tops slashed open and the insides looted. Stereo grabbed out of one and a bunch of other stuff out of the other. I'm glad I wasn't home when this happened, or whoever did it may also have smashed my windows and looted mine - though it looks like they were just hitting soft-tops.

Seriously, though, what the fuck is wrong with people? What we need is an anti-theft system like the ones they have in Shadowrun, where if you get *close* to my vehicle, it tells you "GTFO noob". If you get closer, it tazers you. If you try to force it open, explosive charges go off and remove your face, and the faces of anyone else who is working with you.

Fucking thieves. This is precisely why we're moving out of this neighborhood. The neighborhood itself is nice, but all of the nearby neighborhoods are pretty ghetto.

Some things were not meant to go together.

Acid and the music video to The Avalanche's "Frontier Psychiatrist" are two such things. You will never be the same.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

(note: no, I haven't tried this -- and neither should you)

Okay, so I've had a problem with my car for a while now. I'm getting a steady misfire on the same cylander. Once my turbocharger spools fully, the misfire goes away. I drove about 20 miles today and when I pulled in back home, decided to pop the hood... cat was glowing red hot (literally).

Anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I'm ruling out fuel flow and any compression problems for the moment, as the fact that the cat is glowing seems to indicate that it's detonating the fuel that didn't ignite inside of the cylander. I'm betting that I'm getting a weak spark, so either the plug is bad or the coil is bad.

Anyone out there with some mechanical knowledge have any idea?

Okay, two songs that I need to get:

"Space Station 22" by D-Tek
"Sunrise" by Etnoscope

If ANYONE knows of a CD these are on, or a music service I can buy them from, or whatever... LET ME KNOW! Both are amazing songs that I gotta have to add to my collection. Go forth my mighty minions and collect me music!

If you've never heard of di.fm, you should check it out. If you like electronic music, that is.

Currently listening to the Goa/Psychadelic stream on their site.

WMP: http://www.di.fm/wma/goapsy.asx
Winamp/compat: http://www.di.fm/mp3/goapsy.pls

Hells yeah.

Found a really awesome psychadelic/tribal trance mix online while doing some random searches. Check it out at http://www.free604.com/files/basili.....Wanderlust.mp3 -- it's freely distributed by the artist.

For those of you who are wondering about the mix artist, their website can be found here: http://www.ektoplazm.com/section/ektoplazm/

Lately been into a lot of the darker and more obscure side of trance, listening to a lot of Goa, Psychadelic, and Tribal stuff. There's some real gems to be found in these genres, just like any other. But on the whole I seem to enjoy everything I listen to, rather than grating my teeth through certain tracks, like I tend to do with a lot of modern music. Reference nearly any "modern rock" station. Ugh.

As a side note, I also picked up a copy of DJ Tiesto's album "Nyana" a while back. I'm going to go on the record stating that this is one of the most unbelievably amazing albums I've ever heard in my life. It's expertly mixed, and the songs flow nicely from one to another, and it has some absolutely incredible tracks on it. "Mistral", the last track off of disc 1, is a perfect example of nearly EVERYTHING I like best in electronic music. It's astonishing. My jaw nearly hit the floor the first time I heard it. I love it. Even after several months, I can't stop listening to it.

I'm watching MST3k... "Manos: Hands of Fate"

This is so horrible. I don't want to live in a world where this atrocity is allowed to exist. Whoever is responsible for having made this movie should be hung by the ankles and flogged, then kicked in the face until his head falls off.

The sad part about this is... I'm not even exaggerating. This is the worst movie I've ever had the horrible misfortune to lay my eyes upon.