Kevin & Joanna Graham

Wedding this past weekend was great. My little brother finally got hitched. Just for posterity's sake here's my Best Man's speech:

I guess it's time for me to make the traditional speech as Kevin's best man. And since he knows just how much I love getting up and talking in front of a crowd, I'm sure he'll forgive me for making this brief.

Kevin was the best man at my own wedding 10 years ago. It is my incredible honor to return the favor and be by his side today when he married Joanna.

I've always been proud of Kevin and all he has accomplished, and as time goes on my admiration of him just increases. He's an incredible lucky man to have convinced a woman of Joanna's intelligence, quality and class to marry him; and Joanna, though apparently quite gullible, is lucky to have married such a great man.

I do wish them all the best of luck with all the love in my heart.

Here's to Kevin and Joanna Graham.

All my best, guys, and have a wonderful honeymoon.

id Software's Official DOOM3 Benchmarks

Much of the gaming and hardware community has been waiting with bated breath for DOOM 3 from id Software. That time is almost here, but before the game goes for sale on store shelves, id Software has been kind enough to do some things for the community so we can all hit the ground running and be ready for our DOOM3 experience from the moment we open the box.

According to the article, they were playing DOOM 3 on a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 box with a GeForce 4 MX440 video card and having a surprisingly good gaming experience. Even a subtle jump to an AMD 2500+ with a GeForce 3 video card that is two years old delivered a solid gaming experience that will let you enjoy the game the way id Software designed it to be.

w00t!

Upgrade successful, woohoo! Now running WinXP Pro on Neuromancer (and it's called that now instead of BET1003 or whatever stupid thing it was before...). I'm still having issues with switching between home and work workgroups, haven't found a seamless way to do it.

On the plus side, getting the laptop to connect with the wireless router was never easier! And with WPA now, to boot!

Email Post Test

OK, so I'm just testing to see if the email posting works. This is a really cool setup. Don't know why I didn't do this before.

I need to work on my own template, so the blogger page looks more like my homepage.

Oh, and I haven't done the upgrade yet, I was too busy this weekend with other stuff. I'll try to finagle it today.

Wish me luck...

This weekend I'm planning on taking my work laptop (Neuromancer) and replacing the Win2K partition with WinXP Pro. Hopefully I won't lose the data partition or the Debian one, but I'm worried I will mess up the boot loader and won't be able to get into Debian again... we shall see...

I have quite the list of items to install. I didn't realize I had so many programs in use. I won't be deterred, though, as every time I wait 10 minutes for Win2K to boot, or another 10 for Outlook to load, I am more firmly set on my path.

First Post

So here we are. I finally jumped on the blogging bandwagon. Not that I have much of interest to say, but I like to keep track of things in writing. Therefore, this is mostly for my own benefit. Infrequently updated, and relevant to few. But hey, at least I can pull off the old rants and such from my homepage. So even though there is old material here, this is in fact my first post on Blogger. Yay me.

NationStates

Man, this game is cool. I have it set to give me two issues a day, and based on my response to those issues I determine the course of my nation. I went into Anarchy briefly, and then back to Civil Rights Lovefest as the UN Category. Now I'm a "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise". Heh. Here's the blurb from today:

The Rogue Nation of Dongyrn

"No matter where you go, there you are."
UN Category: Scandinavian Liberal Paradise
Civil Rights: World Benchmark
Economy: Fair
Political Freedoms: Very Good
Location: Moperville

The Rogue Nation of Dongyrn is a huge, environmentally stunning nation, notable for its punitive income tax rates. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 231 million enjoy extensive civil rights and enjoy a level social equality free of the usual accompanying government corruption.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, liberal, socially-minded government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Equality, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 57%, and even higher for the wealthy. A small private sector is dominated by the Arms Manufacturing industry.

Space research funding has hit a recent high while several military bases are being closed down, major cities are suffering under water rationing, crowds of flag-burning protesters tend to accidentally become crowds of burning protesters, and politicians are losing their jobs in a plan to make the government 'leaner and fitter'. Crime is well under control. Dongyrn's national animal is the wolf, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the dongle.

Verizon DSL (Redux)

Still working out the kinks. Sent an email to billing to ask just what the heck my speed is supposed to be. Also looking at MapQuest again, and using a ruler (how low-tech) I'm estimating 12,600ft to the CO from my house. Sweet.

Now, there is a rumor about increased speeds to 3/768 by end of summer... most likely cost more tho...

UPDATE: Got an email back. Feh.

Thank you for your recent email, and we apologize for the untimely response. Due to the June promotion and the recent Credit Card scam, we have experienced an enormous volume of emails that have delayed us in responding to your emails within the given time frame. For this, we greatly apologize.
Your speed is at 768/128, and unfortunately you do not qualify for the 1.5/384. For assistance, should you have further questions about this, we ask that you contact our tech support at 800-567-6789.