Hirokache

I 'upgraded' from LiveJournal's S1 to S2 the other day without actually looking into what that meant. One thing it has meant is that none of the themes I have to choose from are all that appealling, and most of them are very much the opposite. This one with a tree is somewhat bearable though.

On a related note, I switched my default user pic from the dead scientist from Half-Life to Bob. I loaded up my limited collection of userpics quite a few years ago now, I believe we were still in our first apartment in

I have been listening to various radio streams via Amarok at work lately. The past few days I've kept switching between some death metal station and a "Digital Music" station, which mostly consist of music that sounds like it should be out of a video/computer game. I just heard a tune that was making me think of Dee for some reason ... when I looked I saw it is from Final Fantasy VIII.

Got out of bed at a bright and early 12:30 or so. After getting coffee brewing, I performed my normal litany of intarweb tasks. The order changes at times, and there are a few missing as my feed reader is currently only on the linux laptop, and I was on the gaming windows machine.

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  Check personal email.
  


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  I'm hosting a Civ 4: Beyond the Sword pitboss game, and I played my turn.
  


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  Check up on the forums atitd.net. I'm still an active moderator there, and still pay for the game, even though it has been ages since I actually logged in.
  


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  Logged into cybernations.net to check up on my little nation. My infrastructure investment is slowly starting to pay off. Grabbed a little technology, continued the slow decommissioning of infantry and purchasing of tanks. The little bastards still aren't happy with the religion I've chosen for them, guess I need to do some more research into what the hints are actually pointing to. Amazingly I am still able to keep the tax rate at 28% while my nation is 'in love with me'.
  


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  Check out my portfolio at ppx.popsci.net. I've made a slight gain overall. All of my investments there will take a few months to work out
  


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  Browse Gamers With Jobs forums.
  


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  Browse Slashdot. I ran across this article on 'web engineering'. Nothing new there really, but it didn't make me think how often I stray from some of the 'best practices' mentioned. It can be more than a little difficult to balance doing something well with getting it up and running as soon as possible. Then again, it could be said I do neither ;)
  


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  Check work email. Skim the less important stuff, read the likely to be unimportant but possibly need my attention stuff.
  


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  As happens all too often when I'm not actually supposed to be working, the above item leads me to doing some work. At $work we use ipfw to perform traffic shaping on all of our clients. After setting up a new client on Saturday, he was unable to actually establish any connections until the firewall rules were removed. I had somewhat foolishly copied other examples in the firewall rule script on that particular machine, and added a keep-state argument where none was needed. In all honesty, I'm still unclear as to why that was blocking traffic, but as they were only traffic shaping rules, the argument was superfluous anyway.
  After taking care of a few other things as well I could decided I'd done enough work for the day.
  


After the list was complete, I began cleaning up desks and the area around it. The rabbits being parked right next to my computer definitely has some drawbacks. The largest is the sheer amount of hair they produce ... the cat seems bald in comparison. The floor under the desk was one big mat, with dust and other smaller bits of debris added in for fun. Its been difficult to clean under there in general because of all of the wires. I decided to disconnect my speakers, as I have been solely using my headphones anyway. That removed seven wires, and I was able to organize a few things to clear up the floor to a good degree so that sweeping was actually possible. While I expected the floor to be that covered, I was amazed when I cleaned the desk. It had only been a few weeks since the last time I actually washed it down, but there was still a layer of hair across the desk. The desk is a light color, and apparently the hair blended right in. I managed to go through a good-sized stack of paperwork/bills that needed to be filed. Of course, I have enough stack that needs to be paid, but that can wait another day. In the end, it took me a good 1.4-2 hours just to clean up the desks and under the desks themselves.

My real goal had been to start tackling the pile of crap that takes up the other half of the room. The pile has been around since we first moved in and chose that area for things that we were too lazy to unpack or just didn't know where to put. The contents and size of the pile have changed over the past few years, but somehow its never quite gone away. After the wedding it grew out of control. Over the next hour I managed to make a small dent in it, but by that time both Dee and pizza and wings had materialized, so I was done with my cleaning for the day.

Dinner was followed by a couple of episodes of law and order, and then it seemed like some gaming time was in order. In spite of my pledge to complete Doom 3 by the end of the month (thanks to the GWJ Pile of Shame), I chose to fire up Sid Meier's Railroads again tonight. Its fun, but it can be hectic trying to keep maximize profits on all lines and to monopolize as may towns as possible. It can also be rather tough on the RSI, and the pain in my right hand finally prompted me to give up on the railroad for the night. Only to come posting here ...