|
|
Monday, August 29th, 2011
| |
2:29 pm - Still alive.
|
|
| Monday, April 11th, 2011
| |
10:19 am
|
About 25 years ago, I got a copy of the WW2 submarine simulator GATO from some place. I was nine or ten years old, and the few families in the neighborhood with PCs would all swap software willy-nilly, so I don't really remember where I got it ... but there was the 5.25" floppy with the hand-written label "GATO 1.1" on it.
It's not exactly a graphical tour de force (written in 1983 - CGA graphics, black, cyan, magenta, and white) but what always stood out was how each mission started. You controlled a diesel/electric submarine in the Pacific, and received your orders via radio transmission. At the easy difficulty level, the game displayed it in plain text. At the medium difficulty level, you got the orders as text, one letter at a time, associated with Morse code. At the highest difficulty level, you only got the Morse code.
Of course, as elementary school children, we never really played it at the highest difficulty.
Related to this- today I ran across http://lcwo.net/, a website that help you learn Morse code online. Suddenly I want to learn this archaic skill, if only so I can play an archaic game at its most difficult and find out if I'm supposed to intercept a convoy or escort a sub tender across the map.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, April 7th, 2011
| |
7:06 pm
|
Sometimes religion inspires beautiful works of music.
Sometimes religion inspires ... less beautiful works of music.
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
| |
10:18 pm
|
|
| Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
| |
10:24 pm
|
|
| Thursday, November 4th, 2010
| |
9:52 am
|
|
| Friday, October 22nd, 2010
| |
3:10 pm
|
|
| Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
| |
10:32 am - Another fluff entry
|
Eleanor's 20 months old and rolling along. Go little Nor.
It's a quieter house without Valen around to let us know that he's hungry or on the wrong side of a gate. I still miss those trills.
Vikings are terrible, but pickems and fantasy are going well. Now if I just do the smart thing and start picking against the Vikings, I'll start doing better.
Civ 5 is a lot of fun, but good god, even with four gigabytes of RAM it's still paging like a motherfuck. This might be enough to get me off my ass and get Windows 7 64-bit installed.
The marathon was fun, and I finished in about the same time as last year. I could definitely tell that I didn't do nearly enough miles of training during the year; I was never out of breath, but at the halfway point my feet were just killing me from the impacts. Hopefully next spring/summer I can either find more time to get out there and run, or I can nut up and get out of bed at 5:30. (It's tougher to get up so early nowadays, as there's no doggy alarm clock with a full bladder in the middle of the night.)
Time to get ready for shorter days and longer nights. At least we've got enough firewood to last us the winter.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
| |
6:12 pm
|
I miss my doof dog. Poor ol' duffer, he had a good life, and an excellent retirement. When the end came, it was pretty much as quick as could be. He bounded up and down the steps happily to pee before dinner, and then the lumps got the best of him.
I'll miss him waking me up at 2 am to let him pee again (didn't I just let him out two hours ago before bed!?) and his screaming when his routine was broken and his prancing if there's food out of reach and his whining if I'm on the other side of a gate from him and his inability to realize how loud he's being because of his deafness. We had said it a year ago, and it's still true today; as much as we hated his crying, we'd miss it when it was gone.
Godspeed, ol' doof. There's Banquet(tm) chicken pot pies on the floor for you wherever you are.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, September 20th, 2010
| |
4:12 pm
|
|
Civilization 5 is released tomorrow, but I vowed not to play it until after the marathon on 10/3. I'm suddenly regretting that vow.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
| |
12:01 pm
|
Finally all caught up to the current episodes in Mad Men ... just in time for the football season to start and all other television programming to be demoted. Sigh.
But Miss Blankenship can dominate my office any time!
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
| |
9:41 pm
|
|
Finally catching up on Mad Men, and have watched the first three episodes of the first season. Don Draper, you are truly a king among men, and misunderstood by those who cast stones at you.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, June 21st, 2010
| |
6:27 pm - Confit update
|
|
| Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
| |
9:53 am
|
Obscure bit of family history. Michael A. Lyga is my great-great-grandfather on my mother's mother's mother's side. Mrs. Agnes Schneider is my great-great-aunt. This is from the Friday May 25 1934 copy of the Winona Republican-Herald, covering news in southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
( Gypsies Nearly Steal $24 From Independence Man )
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
| |
2:26 pm
|
After eight weeks of not running, my knee pain has finally cleared up. Patellofemoral pain syndrome was no fun. What's the most frustrating about it is I didn't push myself harder than previous years, I had the same style of shoes as previous years, I ran on the same surfaces as previous years... but I'm older than previous years. Just something to keep in mind going ahead, I suppose. If I keep running, maybe I can stay a step ahead of the grim reaper.
Also, after three years, I finally cancelled my LOTRO subscription. I hadn't had much time to play in the last eight months, and the inclination was also trickling away. In retrospect I should have bought the lifetime subscription in 2007, but I had no idea I'd play it longer than six months. I still want to see where it ends up and will likely re-up once some more content has been added, but that's six months to a year off, at best. I definitely got my money's worth for the first 2.5 years, though.
Also also, after two weeks I'm still meeting the goals for the StickK contract referenced in my last post. This extrinsic motivation is finally working out well for me. Now I just need to keep it up for the next ten weeks or lose $50 each Thursday.
Also also also, after some twenty years, I'm jonesing to own an IBM PCJr again. It's all fine and good to play King's Quest III in DOSBox, but it's not the same as playing it natively on the keyboard that required a function keypress along with an arrow key to move in any diagonal direction. Sadly, nothing on eBay, but maybe someday.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 17th, 2010
| |
10:22 am
|
Raised bed garden ready to go for the year, featuring massive quantities of: green bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, cilantro, basil, tarragon, and several maple trees from the inevitable whirlybird seeds that flutter into my beautiful tilled soil.
If history is any judge, this means we have a massive hailstorm coming in the next few days.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
| |
1:46 pm
|
Four weeks of marathon training done, and 67 cumulative miles have been run. Twelve weeks to go until the Minneapolis Marathon, which will put me to 418.2 cumulative miles. Then I take a week off and start over again at week one of training, run for another sixteen weeks, and do the Twin Cities Marathon, which will put me to 836.4 cumulative miles of running in 2010.
Then if all goes as it usually does, I'll stop running for six months and gain thirty pounds.
It's good to have some traditions in life.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, February 18th, 2010
| |
4:46 pm
|
* Civilization 5 comes out this fall. If it's before October, I'm in trouble, since my free time is supposed to be spent running outside, not running an empire.
* Eleanor's getting her molars. Soon we'll give her a 4oz strip steak to gnaw on.
* Poor Zap threw out her back about a month ago and is only now starting to feel healthy enough to move around without too much limping... but if she follows us downstairs, she won't brave going back up. Hard to really comprehend that she's 8 years old and a "senior" dog now. She definitely doesn't act like it.
* Speaking of senior dogs, poor Valen is still deaf, still lumpy, and coming up on 13 years old... for a breed that lives 12-14 years. Other than the hearing loss and the benign tumors, he's happy as a clam, so all is well on that front.
* I joined SnapFitness to get some running in before the snow melts, given the Minneapolis marathon is the first week in June. I was pleased to see that my health plan gives me a $20 rebate if I swipe my card at a SnapFitness 12 times in a month. So far I'm actually swiping my card and going inside to run; what do I do when I run outside instead of on a treadmill if I still want that rebate? The obvious solution is to run the 1.5 miles to the local SF, swipe the card, and run home. The nice part is that obeys both the letter and the spirit of the law.
* Rancourt's ready, it's time to take to the ice, so tie down the jersey 'cause it could get ugly tonight.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, February 7th, 2010
| |
3:33 pm
|
|
Happy birthday, little Eleanorallama. The last year has been omg fast. Try to slow down a little bit so I can keep up.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
| |
4:37 pm
|
Last night, Elly and I dined at Forepaugh's (dinner menu) and enjoyed it thoroughly.
This Saturday, we're feasting at Gasthof's (dinner menu) and will enjoy it thoroughly, as I am going to tackle the meterbratwurst, featured on Man vs Food. The last time I was there was in 2006, and their menu bragged that those who finish the meterwurst would receive a certificate of their achievement ... and I was very disappointed to find out that while the meterwurst was a meter in length, it was about as thick as my pinky finger, and was no challenge at all.
Apparently times have changed, and the meterbratwurst is approximately 40 oz of sausage.
I likely shouldn't do this the night before Eleanor's birthday, but hey, your daughter only turns 364 days old once, right?
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
lno's journal