2003

Mom got me a Game Boy Advance for Christmas. I didn’t ask for anything this year, so this awesome gift really blew me out of the water. I really like the GBA as a platform because there are so many games for it that have been ported over from the Super Nintendo. Two games in particular that I’m incredibly excited about are Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The first game I went to buy was Zelda since it really is my favorite game of all time. (I have beaten the game at least 2 times a year since I got it in for SNES in 1994.) The hunt for the GBA version of Zelda proved to be as elusive as the hunt for the Triforce itself. I started off going to the Wal-Mart here in Hazard. Not a trace of the tiny cartidge, even though I had seen one there not more than two days before Christmas. In an effort to find it, Mom, Dad, and I loaded up and went to the Super Wal-Mart in London. Again, no dice. We proceeded to the Big-K. Nada. On the way back, we passed by Manchester, which has the smallest, most decrepit Wal-Mart I have ever been to. Mom suggested we try there.

I merely laughed but Dad pulled off the exit anyway. I went in, navigating through the puny store to its proportionally matched electronics section. In the GBA case, there lay eight copies of that which I sought. Just as in the game, sometimes the most unlikely place will hold the key to a query.

Taco Bell has brought back the Chili Cheese Burrito. CCBs were the first thing I ever ate at Taco Bell. They have so much more flavor than a bean burrito and they’re nearly as cheap. Yay!

Beyond that, the break has been very good thusfar. I have watched the 5^th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know, I know…Trav watches too much TV. (At least it makes more sense and is cheaper than zipping around some God-forsaken strip job on a four-wheeler.) I have also been playing a lot of video games, specifically Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Tron 2.0. I have loved the Castlevania series since I was a kid, having spent countless hours beating my head in the carpet each time Dracula roasted me. The latest Castlevania has some of the best creepy fugal music I’ve heard in a long time.

Tron 2.0 picks up where the classic 1984 movie left off. The visuals are simply amazing. The black contrasting so sharply wiht all the neon colors is amazing. (I found out last night that the visuals are accomplished using the latest pixel shader technology.) There’s plenty of jumping, shooting, and puzzle solving to make this a good FPS title. I don’t say this enough, but at the momment, Life is good.

When I go to sleep each night, I simply must be facing the closest wall. This ritual, as far as I remember, spawned from my childhood when I was extraordinarily afraid of the dark. I figured that if I didn’t see the monsters, they wouldn’t see me. The best way to keep from seeing them without smothering under the covers was to just make sure I faced the wall before I went to sleep. Fast forward about 15 years and I’m still doing it.

This semester, I decided to see whether or not I could manage to go to sleep without facing the wall, so I forced myself to lay on my side that doesn’t face the wall. I laid there for about an hour and a half and finally dozed off. I thought I’d won, but I woke up about 15 minutes later, I was looking square at the wall. So much for change.

We all probably use Internet Explorer (IE) several times a day. It flawlessly renders our pages while allowing us to seemlessly download helper apps so we can experience sound, video, and animation. It truly is the easiest browser out there. However, I am seriously considering not using IE anymore not because it isn’t great for its purpose but because it makes me so vulnerable to a barrage of online attacks. Almost every single week since Windows XP launched, Microsoft has released patches to keep IE from providing script-kiddies access to my system. The most recent security hole, which hackers to spoof the URL of the current page very easily, is the last straw. No more IE for Trav.

You may be wondering what I’m going to use to acess the Net. The answers are Mozilla and Opera. Mozilla is the free open-source alternative. It has thousands of people around the world continuously pruning its code and finding the security bugs that IE is plauged with. It offers tabbed browsing and a fully-featured email client. Mozilla supports many of the plugins that IE does and it is very standards compliant. Ocassionally, you’ll run across a page that won’t render correctly in Mozilla, but most of the time, it’s not the browser’s fault: Some crappy webmasters worship only at the feet of IE.

The free version of Opera is ad-supported, meaning that there is an ad that always stays at the top with the navigation controls. Opera is absolutely the best for those of use who like to use the keyboard to navigate the web. One key allows me to instantly go back and forth without ever touching a mouse. Opera’s tabs are, in my opinion, better than Mozilla’s because they are easily accessible and opened from the keyboard. Opera also has a “Hotbar.” With the Hotbar, you can visit a site and add notes about it which will become available whenever you access the site they were written from. This is very handy for reasearch. Opera also has a nifty download manager that is a little more user-friendly than Mozilla’s. Opera’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t handle DHTML very well. (DHTML is the technology that allows for some of the neato menus that can be found at many sites.) Its DHTML support has gotten better over the years, but Mozilla is still stronger in this area.

In conclusion, let me say again: IE puts you at risk while you use the Internet. Consider using Mozilla or Opera.

This article recently posted on MegaGames suggest that the gods of Redmond have a dirty little secret: They’ve been cheating on their own Windows 2003 Enterprise Server!!! That’s right, boys and girls. Bill G. and company have apparently been using Linux in order to provide downloads to its London customers. I guess they need high reliability, which is something that the in-house bit jockeys have been unable to provide.

Life is currently good. I found out today that I got out of a nasty final I was really dreading. I also got $78 for selling back two books. That’s awesome. I’m heading to Lexington tomorrow to do some Christmas shopping with a pocket full of money (not really…but it is more money than I’ve had in awhile).

At times like this, it’s easy to remember why it’s fun just to live. School has largely taken away all the stuff I love lately. I haven’t had time to do anything fun that I enjoy. It’s stupid to let something take you over like that, but in a few short months, I’ll no longer have to worry about it. A real job is nothing like school. With a job, you work on projects that have meaning then get paid for it. I can’t wait.

According to this CNN article, it is apparently possible for high-tech and industrial terminology to offend people. Using the terms “master” and “slave” to refer to two devices on the same channel has apparently pissed somebody in Los Angeles off. This is the most ignorant thing I have ever heard. For one, the devices aren’t being deprived of any rights. The “master” device does not value itself over the “slave,” nor did it purchase the rights of the “slave.”

I seriously wonder what’s next. Are we no longer going to be able to refer to hardware which has been intentionally been told not to function as “disabled?” These poor pieces of hardware are just abled differently. Am I going to be subpeonaed into court for asking someone to hand me a “female DIN plug?” Everytime the male DIN plug is inserted into the female DIN plug, the female DIN plug is objectified and denied the basic feminine freedoms. Philips head screwdrivers better watch out: The Coallition for the Women named Philipa wants to know why Philip has the right to claim the four-way for his own. Give me a break.

Why is it that there is Braille notation on most public things in America? I realize that it is an attempt to give blind people some independence. I have no gripe with that; however, there comes a point when you have to ask, “Why?” I can almost guarantee that the rest of the civilized world does not suffer from being overly-accessible to the point of it becoming stupid.

There are a couple examples of where you can find Braille that really gets to me. Putting Braille writing on drive-up ATMs is absolutely the most ridiculus thing I have ever heard of. Granted, the same ATMs that are found at a walk-by location are probably installed in the drive-through, but still, it certainly begs the question…

Putting Braille writing on bathroom doors of public restaurants is also slightly odd. In order for the blind to successfully navigate, things must be in the same place, standardized in such a way that allows for rote memorization. I have never been in two restaurants, even from the same chain, where the bathroom was in an identical place. So unless the blind plan on feeling out an entire building until they feel the notation for “Male” or “Female,” what is the point?

Sometimes I wonder how much of success in life boils down to luck. Dad always told me that no matter how skilled you are, you need at least one break in life in order to make it. I think he was right. In a few short months, I’ll be striking out on my own trying to find a job. I hope my break comes sometime within this period. If somebody will take a chance on me and believe in my skills, I know I can make a name for myself.

I hope all the favors and help I have provided to others over the years comes back to me soon. Honestly, I don’t help others with the expectation of getting something in return, but I do believe there is something to kharma. I’m pretty sure I’ll get my break, but I just hope it comes sooner than later. Dad didn’t get his until he was a little older, and as a consequence, he had to work much harder. Only time will tell whether my hard work up to this point will pay off.

I have tried out iTunes & Napster over the last couple days. Each service lets you pay $0.99 for a song or $10 for an entire album. Once you have paid, you download your tracks. You can then burn the songs to a CD if you like. Considering how much flack the RIAA has given to those who download illegaly, this isn’t such a bad system. Besides, when is the last time you bought a CD where you liked every song on it? Most of the time, I concentrate on two, maybe three tracks. Instead of paying $3 for a single at Wal-Mart, now I can download the sucker at my lesuire for about a buck.

I like Napster better because you don’t have to put in your credit card info until you actually make a purchase. iTunes requires you to give credit card information up front before you can even get an account through them. I felt that this was too invasive. The interface for Napster is pretty quick and its easy to find groups, albums, or individual tracks. And the speed and quality of purchased tracks really is better than the illegal downloads we all know and love.