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So the boy wanted to get the PS3 online. That’s not exactly a technical challenge, but hey. I needed an excuse to go digging.

So I go into my cable bin. Yes, I have a bin with a collection of cables. Phone cord, co-ax, AV cables, and other miscellaneous items. So I check, start pulling cables out of the bin. Nada. At this point, a 3 foot radius around me has the appearance of a radio shack explosion. The Boy comes into the room, takes one look, and says “I don’t know you…”

He’ll thank me when I save the world using co-ax and AV cables twisted around a 50-foot phone cord.

Also – to the consultant whos’ client called me today? I hope like hell you didn’t charge them for the two hours you spent looking at their network like a monkey trying to fuck a football before leaving and telling them to call me on your way out. I fixed their problem in 4 minutes.

Y’know, it’s not like I’m running out of material on this thing. But I keep having this weird feeling like I’m being judged by my wordcount.

So I’m mucking around with catching up on things. The D&D session podcasts with Penny Arcade are officially awesome, and I have reading to do for friends. And then I have a friend who wants me to watch his improv skills. So yeah, that plus working and commuting makes for far too much fun.

Root: Okay…so listening to a podcast of Wil Wheaton and the creators of PVP and Penny Arcade playing D&D rates a what on the nerd scale?
Friend: On a scale of 1 – 10?  54,345,756,234.005
Root: But they’re swearing!
Friend: Oh…okay.  In that case, 54,345,756,234.003

But it’s a damn good Podcast.

Microsoft is now opening their own stores, kinda like the Apple Store.

The only thing I can think in my little techie brain now is “SWEET JESUS YES!”

Not because there’ll be oodles of hardware. Not because there’ll be kind, helpful people to tell me which of the 6 versions of Vista is right for me…

…but because then I’ll be able to have a face to go with the brand. A kind, loving, generous soul who’s going to get the crap kicked out of them by angry mobs. I can smell the torches already.

So today, it’s my day off. I’m all content, thinking “Clean the fishtank, little housework, and we’re set.” Easy day, right?

Wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong if I were the king of all Wrongovia and wearing a shiny hat to prove it.

So I run to the pet store. Tank 1 needs lighting. I get the one I think is the right size, and then haul ass to another store where I can get some other fish tank cleaning and treat supplies I needed.

Hop in the car to go home. Car doesn’t want to start. Hop out, try it again. Still no thrill. Finally I gave up and called Wonderwife for a jump-start. Jumpstart doesn’t work. So finally, I get out and stared at it. (Little known fact. Men can pretty much fix anything mechanical if they stare at it long enough.)

During the last crank it over episode, I’m told to stop, as there’s some smoke coming out of the engine. Knowing that the magic smoke that makes the car go comes out of the tailpipe and not the engine compartment, I dutifully stop. And yes, there’s wisps of smoke coming out where there ought not to be. More staring.

Finally, tow truck gets there, and they haul it off. Hour later, I get the estimate. $380. They don’t take Monopoly money.In the meantime, I’ve got a fishtank that needs cleaning. I got a new hood. It was too big. But workable. Fast-forward, and the pipes under the sink decide they’ve had quite enough and don’t want to do their job anymore. Water starts backing up, and the sinks are kind enough to do their job.

So after 30 minutes of draining and gagging on fumes from water that was stagnant in the Bronze Age, I finally get everything drained and doing what it’s supposed to do. I’m not fixing another goddamn thing this weekend.

For those of you following along at home, here’s the thoughts. If you haven’t seen it, here there be spoilers. Deal.
Cavill is seriously disturbed. It’s interesting how he can remove some subroutines, but not others. It’s like he gets a kick out of being the leader and making others suffer, but he plays the victim card as the excuse for his own failings. It’s also kind of interesting that the Cylons don’t know enough about their own resurrection technology to be able to rebuild in the event of hub-fall-down-go-boom.

Ellen has achieved a third dimension. In some ways it’s kinda creepy. Lee may actually be forced to have a spine in an occasion that doesn’t require him to shoot. This could be a good thing.

Tyrol kicks so much ass. I mean, he’s working on saving a 70-year-old battlestar that was being turned into a museum. And damn he’s doing a job.

And they still haven’t figured out the deal behind “that frakkin’ song.” To be honest, neither have I. Anders has until Friday to wake his ass up.

So baseball really does amuse me. It’s almost comical to watch the commissioner waffle and try to bury the screamingly obvious problem of steroids in baseball. Yeah, A-rod did a bad thing. So did 103 other players. It does kinda make me glad that the NHL’s incompetent commissioner came from the NBA. So now the real question; punish the theoretically anonymous, or give them a free pass? If you punish them, then the players union has a conniption because the results were supposed to be anonymous. If you don’t punish them, then the fans get all honked off.

And of course, at the heart of the matter is money. The bare minimum salary for someone in major league baseball was $390,000 last season. That’s as low as it gets. Which can quickly become millions and even tens of millions. Seriously, the financial incentive of an 18-million dollar salary jump? Who has morals that are that rigid? When the punishment is enough to remove the financial incentive to the players and the owners, then we’ll see some change.

Brief proposal. Joe Ballplayer gets busted for steroids. His contract is immediately invalidated and reverted to a minimum salary. The team owners get fined an amount equal to the contract, payable to a local charity or a fund for retired ballplayers. Probably never fly, but hey. A guy can dream.

Okay…so today, we received letters in the mail. One was to tell me that my insurance rates are going up…based on my credit report. Admittedly, it’s going up by about 6 bucks a month. But I’m still a tiny bit confused as to the logic of this.

Also, the fastest way to make me drop a credit card is to bump the rates up about 8% without any explanation beyond “because we still can”. I can get better rates from a loan shark.

That’d be us right now. WonderWife is taking a day off since she’s approximately at Deaths’, well…not door, but along the block. The Boy is coming back, and doesn’t look terrible. And unfortunately, I think I may be there just in time for the weekend. Loving every minute of it.

On the up side, I got to make dinner last night, thus improving my cooking skills from “Barbecuing and boiling water” to “Barbecuing, boiling water, heating meatballs, and warming sauce”. The world is full of awesome.

I do some techy-ish things.

Also, crazy bicycle-nerd person I know (See link to madness and joyrides) is looking at Ubuntu. This brings a small amount of joy to my heart. The liveCD has been tried, and I’m going to shamelessly plug a free pdf over here, which is kind enough to be free for download and also available in deadtree form for about 10 bucks. Honestly, if you’re looking at ubuntu linux, it’s a nice read.