Weekend Warriors

by | Jul 21, 2002 | Imported Entry

Another Saturday, another “game night” for us to enjoy. Somehow everyone was in agreement this time as to what game to play. That usually doesn’t happen. Counter-Strike was of course our game of choice and we were on fire. We soundly thumped another team ([F.o.R] I believe) for a total map score of 11 rounds to 4. We weren’t planning on having a clan match, it just sort of happened that way. Either was it was very fun indeed.

As for today I’m just going to sit around and relax. My stomach isn’t feeling so great and AMC is running some good movies so I think that excuse enough. You just can’t beat having some toast and Sprite and watching Terms of Endearment and Breakfast at Tiffanys.

Later.

Perry family photos

by | Jul 20, 2002 | Imported Entry

Today was Perry family photo day. The family had decided that for our grandparents we were all going to pose for a nice family portrait. I was told, or rather hinted at, that I might be taking these photos. It turns out that it was a tag-team effort divided between my uncle and myself. Myself with my 35mm and my uncle with his digital. Things were going well until a wedding group arrived in the park we were shooting in. The wedding photographer had the balls to walk up to me and say “you and your group are going to have to move, I’m shooting a wedding.” Then I was given a condesending look as if to say “look at your puney equipment, you’re not a professional, get out of my way.” Fully realizing that this was perhaps the rudest person I’ve ever seen behind a camera, I, never looking away from my camera, said simply “tough luck lady, you’ll have to shoot elsewhere since we were here first.” This merely enraged the photographer who was acting very very unprofessional in my opinion and she had to return to the wedding group and say that they’d have to move a little further along. Now, I can fully understand the stress of being a photographer, especially one being paid for a shoot. I can also understand the wedding party wanting to take their pictures were they had planned. It’s their “special day” and I know I wouldn’t want any inconviences on my wedding day either. I felt bad for the wedding party but the unprofessionalism of this photographer had pretty much doomed any hope of them getting the shot they wanted. You also have to understand that this is a HUGE park. About the size of Forsythe Park in Savannah. After some disappointment, they moved a mere 50 yards away. Close enough for me to over hear things like: “Now everyone make an angry face at these people for taking our spot” and “the nerve of these people thinking they own a public park.” I thought the last one was perticularly funny given the fact that they were the ones being picky about a public place. It’s not like it was ropped off and there was a sign saying “a wedding party is coming.” Plus, we had been there for 45 minutes already. We were 80% done with taking pictures and they could have just asked how long we would have been. That would have been the professional thing to do. If I were shooting the wedding, I would have skipped the bride/groom shots and moved on to the less important 3rd cousin/random family memeber shots and then gone back and done the important ones when the spot opened up. Anyway, at this point there were obvious insults and jeers coming from the wedding party and my family was begining to understand what was going on. When a groomsman called us a*holes, there was almost a brawl. You insult me, fine, you insult my camera equipment, you’ve crossed a line, but when you insult my family, you’d be lucky to leave without physical harm. However, bloodshed was avoided and feeling bad for the bride and groom, I did my best to finish the family portraits in a reasonable amount of time. After all, they weren’t the one’s acting unprofessional. If it’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a arogent photographer.

Anyway, I ended up taking 3 rolls of film and I’ll be getting them developed sometime soon. The plan is to have them printed around here for the gift for my grandparents but to them have me print the others at school so that the rest of the family can have copies. I actually feel better this way. Now I’m not under any pressure to make prints before I leave and I can have more control over the prints I do make when I’m in Savannah.

After all that dramatism, we did manage to get some nice shots: cousins, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, immediate families, extended families, all the guys, all the girls, etc. It’ll be interesting to see how they come out. My camera was metering a whole 3 stops away from what my really expensive light meter was suggesting… so I took both shots. Safer that way.

So, for the rest of the day I’m just going to relax a little. Until game night that is. Tonight hopefully we can get in some good CS time and maybe a few Warcraft 3 games. I’m also going to pick apart the news replacement game model packs from Game Fusion so that I can make my own. They released 3 sets of game addons in the span of 1 week and none of them are any better than the others. I like some aspects of each. So, I’m going to pick them apart, choose the ones I like best, and repackage them with NullSofts installer software. At least thats my plan. Perhaps Chip’s already done it (I know he was talking about it) and I won’t have to. Either way, they’ll be some CS on the old town tonight.

I’m also really excited since there’s now only 11 days until Lauren comes to visit. I can’t wait. It’ll be a great vacation. I just hope that the weather is nice and that we can have some fun. I know last time she visited it rained for a few days and we almost didn’t get to go up to the mountains.

Arrg…

by | Jul 19, 2002 | Imported Entry

See… this is the shit that I’m talking about. Screw you DRM. Take your friggin’ corporate agenda crap elsewhere.

Gamespot.com, a popular games download site, is promoting a “download accelerator” which will place a digital-rights-management (DRM) and spyware package on your PC.

themes, icons and fonts, oh my!

by | Jul 19, 2002 | Imported Entry

After working on the deck today, I come home, shower and sit down to check my email. Thankfully, the nice people at TGTSoft responded to my email and I have my answer. It seems that despite a complete registry cleaning, a reference to StyleXP still existed and that was to blame for my inability to reinstall the software. What I would like to know is WHERE exactly these references are being hidden. It certainly isn’t in the registry anywhere, I’ve looked. I’ve cleaned, uninstalled, cleaned again and still the reference is there. What if I’m trying to get rid of a program all together. You’re telling me that they’re hiding registry entries on my and not telling me? I think that’s a little bit recockulous (nagle, spelling?), don’t you?

So, after putting my anger/computer conspiracy issues aside, I brake down and actually register the damn thing. The way I figure it, I’m using it every day, it works well, it’s small and unintrusive and it’s only $20. So, now I’m the owner of a nice and legal copy of StyleXP. Fantastic.

Of course, this means I need to find thousands of new themes to use with it… and I figure, if I’m finding themes I might as well find logon screens… and if I’m finding logons, I might as well find backgrounds… and icons… and screen savers… and fonts. As you can see, today is “windows make-over day.” I’m already halfway into downloading stuff from ThemeXP, DL icons, Deviant Art and DaFont Font Archive. At least it’s giving me something to do while I wait for Rio Bravo to start on AMC. Which, by the way, is a fantastic movie. A great western staring none other than John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson. Simply awesome. Then again, I have a soft spot for westerns, so maybe it’s just me.

That is all.