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Sunday, November 26th, 2006
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6:07 am - And the CGs keep coming: Sam Storm!
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| Saturday, November 25th, 2006
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2:37 am - And now! Excitement! JPop Number-One Idol Star! Morning Misa!
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| Friday, November 24th, 2006
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6:39 pm - CoH CG: Jen Rogers
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| Monday, November 6th, 2006
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11:41 pm - No CG this week :(
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After managing a CGI every weekend for the last two weeks, my winning streak was halted as quickly as it began, and there's a clear culprit: Neverwinter Nights 2.
Might be more posted about that later. But I am still hoping to ramp up my CG output again. Guess we'll see how successful I am.
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| Monday, October 30th, 2006
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2:03 am - SUPER Silver Gale II: Turbo Edition
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Strangely, I've managed to continue my enthusiasm for drawing this weekend and wound up with another CG from City of Heroes. This time, it's Meagen's primary character, the storm-controlling college freshman Silver Gale, who's recently hit level 50 in the game.
( Image )
Silver Gale's power comes from a powerful spell put on her by her mother and/or a coven of witches some time before her birth (it gets complicated). She commands magic that allows her to bend the power of the storm to her will, summoning powerful winds and rain and ice, and even lightning and thunderstorms. She's also a fledging witch in training, studying magic from the many books she's confiscated during her adventures and attending classes at Paragon University's Parapsychology Department.
Her powers draw from a mysterious source of arcane energy, sometimes supplimented by the spiritual power of those around her. When channelling large amounts of this arcane power her appearance and behavior often change, temporarily.
She's also Shockwayv's girlfriend, so back off.
Let me know what you think, as always.
current mood:  accomplished
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| Monday, October 23rd, 2006
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4:08 am - New CG!
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I start a new job on Monday and clearly I was nervous all weekend. I coped by doing my first CG since February, a portrait of my character from CoH, Shockwayv. Didn't help, I'm still terrified, but I do have something to show for a weekend otherwise wasted on self-doubt and anticipation:
( Image )
Shockwayv's earlier exploits in my LJ can be reviewed here:
With a little luck, and if the new job works out, I'm hoping to do more CGs again soon. Enjoy.
current mood:  anxious
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| Saturday, October 14th, 2006
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10:37 pm - PICTURES!!
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Took me long enough!
I've sorted through almost all the pictures I took with Meagen this summer and made easy-to-navigate galleries complete with thumbnails for them. 205 pictures in all.
> Main Gallery of Meagen's Visit, July-August 2006
> The JFK Memorial, August 2006
> Kevin's Wedding, August 12, 2006
> Touring Downtown Dallas, August 2006
> Building Meagen's Computer, July 2006
> Meagen's Pictures, July-August 2006
I recommend the "Touring Downtown Dallas" gallery first. Lots of cool animals at the Dallas World Aquarium. Please let me know what you think.
In other news, this Friday I reformatted my web server, and since reinstalling it's been about twice as responsive. Should've done this six months ago. To commemorate the revamping of my server, I've also revamped my website. I revamped it so hard that it's just one page now. That'll teach it.
http://draegos.gotdns.com/
Offers all the info of the old, ugly-looking website's five or so pages did, with the added bonus that it doesn't need to be updatedevery other week or so. And the weekend's only half over, so I'm trying to decide what to fix next.
current mood: accomplished
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| Thursday, September 28th, 2006
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10:11 am - Meagen is now once again... 1337
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Meagen's computer -- the one we built over here three months ago -- has finally arrived at her home in Poznan! It was mailed on the 5th of September, and arrived on the 28th. That's only three and a half weeks late, thank you, USPS! You can bet the next package I send Maggie will ship via UPS or FedEx...
Still, it's a huge releif to know that Maggie's finally off that old WindowsME-era computer we'd been nursing along pretty much ever since I first met her. To celebrate, I figured I'd put up the info on her computer, and some pictures we took of it during and after assembly. Click a thumbnail for a browser-friendly sized full picture.
( Specs and pictures! )
current mood:  relieved
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| Saturday, September 2nd, 2006
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4:36 pm
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Meagen's gone home. I took her to the airport with my folks at noon. Her plane left today at 2:40pm local time and her 10-hour trip will see her home about six or seven in the morning, Poznan time.
I cried the entire trip home.
Now I'm back home at my apartment trying to keep myself together, but after living with me for two months, there are so many things and places in my apartment that are "hers" that I see, and every time I do it makes me feel very, very alone. I see the empty chair at the makeshift computer desk we set up for her, I see the queen-sized air matress we've been sleeping on for the last two months, I see the shortbread cookies I bought for her... and I start to sob.
I've lived in this apartment -- alone -- for more than three years now, and I've loved it. And now I can't stand it. I hate it. I hate being so alone. Twice already I've stopped myself getting up to go see what Meagen's reading in the bedroom, and she's only been gone about an hour as of this paragraph's writing.
Words fail properly describing what I'm feeling. I'm missing a part of myself that I won't ever be able to have back for at least a year. I can't ever remember feeling this down.
I told myself I should make thumbnail galleries of all the pictures I took with Meagen these last two months to help myself feel a little better, but there's a ton and it's going to take some time. But I'm going to try punching down all big the memories I have of our time together this summer, before it all fades...
( Summer, 2006 )
As I type this line she's been in the air for just over one hour, on her way from D/FW airport in Dallas to Frankfort, Germany on the first leg of her trip home. Watching her pass through the security line at the terminal gates, give me one final, regretful look, and then just turn and walk away as casually as she appeared off the plane two months previous, was the hardest, saddest thing I've ever had to go through. Tears flowed freely, for a long time, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
When I was leaving Poland after visiting Meagen I was always sad, but also always full of hope for the future and looking forward to being back home. I'm seeing the other side now. I know what it's like when all you can do is just watch the one you love walk off for the boarding terminal, and then leave and go back home and try to figure out how to live without that peice of you anymore. There's no homecoming for me, nothing to counterbalance the blank space. Meagen, I understand what you went through now, those last three times. It's awful. Hopefully, though, this also means that you're having an okay time travelling back home.
I miss you, Maggie. I hope you're well. I promise we'll be together again.
I took lots of pictures, and I still plan to put up a gallery of them all. I might also edit this post later to insert some more images where topical, after they're all online.
And finally, everyone please keep Meagen in your prayers, or thoughts, or whatever you find appropriate, while she travels across an ocean to get home.
UPDATE:
Finally about two months later, I've got all the galleries made. Check out this LJ entry to see them. 205 pictures in all, spread across 6 galleries with thumbnails. We had a hell of a time.
Still missing you, Maggie.
current mood: Still Despairing
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2:39 pm - There's a hole where you were
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See that picture? Something's missing there now, that used to be there, and I can't stop crying about it every time I look at it.
Even after an hour.
current mood: Despairing
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| Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
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4:20 pm
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Meagen and I are currently in a room on the 15th floor of the Hilton hotel in Arlington, just across the street from Six Flags amusement park. There's a great view of the place from our window. ^_^ We ate dinner at the Steak 'n Shake and now we're just settling in.
I've bought us some wireless access, so for as long as we keep it, and as long as I can keep my laptop running, I'm keeping a little webcam operating at the usual address ( http://draegos.gotdns.com/webcam/ ). The top image is the one from the webcam; the bottom image is off a camera back at my apartment, so I can keep an eye on the place while I'm gone.
Having more fun than you're likely to be having!
current mood: happy
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| Saturday, July 1st, 2006
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10:06 pm
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| Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
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2:49 pm
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It's been a long, hard couple of months, and I've been neglecting my LJ. I figured I should update something here. So what's been happening lately? It's been an exciting couple of months. The fact is I've been miserable and fighting feelings that my life's going downhill. Mainly that's because my girlfriend, who is inconveniently positioned on the other side of the planet, and I have been drifting apart for whatever reasons (distance? stress? negligence? apathy?) and all the confusion and unpleasant surprises about trying to get her over here has really ground me down these last months. I didn't start off this period in high spirits.
My internet started misbehaving, and my ISP explained to me that suddenly, magically, my wiring isn't good enough to carry a broadband signal any more even though it's been doing fine for the last three years. After suffering through two weeks of net deadness (at one point I actually borrowed one of the cellular WiFi internet cards we use at work for the Police Department's patrol vehicles just so I could at least browse and use AIM), they finally sent someone to look into it for me and tell me my internet was down since clearly, having called Comcast and told them "my internet's down," I wasn't aware of that.
At work I was told to look into A+ OS certification and started studying for it... for the second time. I'd been putting it off. Finding expensive, vague study materials for the cert is easy... finding out where the heck to get the certification is another ball game entirely. A+ OS Certification curriculum is fascinating; it doesn't matter how much you know about computers, you'll learn something new studying this stuff. Fighting my test scores up above 90% was a challenge for me, though. Most of my computer operation skills are self-taught and came from no structured curriculum.
Meagen and I plumbed the depths of misery as the process to acquire her business visa began to inexplicably grow new requirements and fees every other week. I found an employer willing to hire her for work and tell the Embassy that they were willing to hire her for work, only suddenly the Work Abroad organization that passes out the work visas decided they wanted more money. And more paperwork. Oh, and more money again. What started out as a simple proposition for getting around our troubles getting a tourist visa blossommed into a source of stress that had me alternately wanting to kill myself, and kill everyone who worked at Immigration Services. Diplomatically I'd say Meagen and I were seeing strain in our relationship. Especially since she dealt with it by trying to ignore it (and me), and I dealt with it by badgering her about paying attention to me to the point she was afraid to log into AIM.
My internet connection had gone from unstable to nonexistant at this point; the cable modem could not find a signal. After only three angry phone calls over a period of two days, the geniuses at Comcast finally decided to run a temporary data line from the junction box outside to my apartment... through my front window. They promised it was only a temporary measure to get me back online while they made the arrangements to upgrade my apartment's cable wiring. That was six weeks ago, and to this day I've heard nothing back from them. But at the very least my connection's been solid over this new line, even if it means having to open my window a crack and stuff the opening with towels to keep the bugs out and the air conditioning in.
I hit level 40 in City of Heroes with my main (only?) character Shockwayv, and after immediately taking my 4th costume slot mission had absolutely no idea what to do with it, even now. It was a hollow victory; I was in no condition to get into the game and enjoy the new level of advancement, and Meagen was hard to find online anyway.
Then Meagen got her visa last Thursday. With all the paperwork now done and the visa in her hands, all that's left is for me to send her her plane tickets. Meagen's coming to visit me in July. It still hasn't sunk in, though we're both definately a lot happier now. Geez, I've got to clean the place up.
Then I went in for my A+ OS Certification on Friday. The testing center was Richland College, the school where I earned my Associate's about eight years ago. Hadn't been back since. Man, it's a gorgeous campus. I snapped lots of pictures on my digital camera while I was there, confirmed the Lit hall still smells funny, and that the art department's still a dump. I missed that place. Maybe next year I'll look into a weekend class or two there. Got my A+ Cert. Which means I get a raise next budget cycle, supposedly. We'll see.
Saturday Meagen had a big "roleplay thing" organized in City of Heroes, involving my guy Shockwayv being captured by the bad guys and her character Silver Gale organizing a team to come to the rescue. In practice this meant taking Shockwayv, alone, into a Carnival of Shadows mission and super-speeding past all the bad guys until I found the boss for the level (sorry, the AV for the level), and then letting myself get pummeled unconscious to set the scene so Gale and her team could bust in and do the rescuing. It's as complicated as it sounds, and it didn't work right, but we rolled with the punches and everyone seemed to have a good time with it. For the rest of the weekend I finally let myself unwind and accept that the big crises are either over with, or firmly locked down to be dealt with.
And then yesterday, Monday the 22nd, I get home from work and learn a very important life lesson:
When you let the stress of your life distract you from remembering to pay your utility bill for two months straight, they cut off your electricity.
It's like even when I win.... I don't win. ^^;; But still, it's been a string of very welcome releifs this last week. Meagen's spending the summer with me, finally, and I've got the means to a promotion or to find a better job, now.
(And don't worry. As of 2:30pm today my electricity is back on and my server is serving again.)
current mood: cheerful
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| Monday, April 17th, 2006
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4:31 pm - Dr. Who Review
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This was going to be an e-mail to Vorlon, but I decided it was just spicy enough to inflict on everybody.
I consider myself a fan of Dr. Who, but only a casual one. My understanding of its premise and grasp of its history and characters have more holes than the National Deficit Recovery Plan. But I've always enjoyed the show when I've watched it, the same way I often enjoy a comic book I bum from a friend still crazy enough to pay money for those things. You can't come at Dr. Who the same way you do "normal" science fiction, and that's fitting, I think, because it's Doctor Fucking Who. Somehow conventional standards of sophistication have never applied to this show and it'd good to see they're using that free suspension of disbleif for good and not evil.
So the "New" Dr. Who episode I've been waiting for finally hit the airwaves here in the States over the weekend and I'm going to talk about it. Quit crying, it's good for you. I'm honestly not up to date on all aspects of the franchise (despite Vorlon0010's attempts to educate me), so I'm talking completely from memory here. Spoilers follow, please take note.
( Not to be confused with Dr. Hot. )
So all in all a surprising episode, even if the chimpanzees at the SciFi channel ruined the surprise of the villain's identity with their previews. Certainly I suspect it's one that's pleased the hard core Doctor fans, and it finally gives the series some strong grounding in the larger Dr. Who mythos. Finally, we know what's happened in all this time since we last saw the Doctor, and we know why he's changed. And we got to watch a guy get his face plungered until he died from it. You can't beat that.
Fun fact: the actress playing the bad guy's aide in this episode was also the lady who played the recurring role of Osiris in Stargate SG1. Amusingly, in SG1 she had an English accent, and in Dr. Who she has an American one. ^^
On the side, the concept of a "Time War" makes me wonder how the advent of time travel would affect warfare. In the broader scope, I imagine that war would become one single battle where both sides are continually attempting to go back and change the outcome to their favor over and over again. Reinforcements and new technical innovations continue to change the outcome of the same battle over and over again. Every time it starts over the leaders sit down and analyze what happened last time, and then replay it all over again and change something. The battle grows continuously in scope, both sides continuously trying to go back and change something to influence the outcome again. Beyond that, assaults on the opposition's history would likely begin to occur, attempting to simply re-write history so that the other side was never formed. Pre-emptively, it also means that diplomacy can be introduced to the situation at any point and still be preventive. Being only a casual fan of the Doctor, I don't really know how time travel works in Dr. Who: do they assume that it's possible to change history or do they adhere to the more reasonable premise that since it's already happened there's no way to change it? And if it's the latter... the Time Wars must have been cosmic in scale to effectively erase boths sides from time (and also neatly fix things so neither group has to appear in the new series, regardless of what period of time the Doctor travels to).
It's really a moot point to me. I'm of the opinion that Dr. Who-like time travel is a true, natural imposibility. But it's fun to speculate within the boundaries of the story.
current mood:  blank
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| Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
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10:21 am - Ubuntu
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My head's been throbbing and my jaw's started to hurt really bad (thank you, sinuses), so much so I stayed home from work yesterday. I took the opportunity to try another new OS on my main computer via a removable 20gb hard drive. This time, it was Ubuntu, a 100% free distribution of Linux based on Debian.
I've never used Linux before, and even with its very helpful "Gnome" GUI it's a high learning curve for a Windows-centric operator like me. After about two hours I finally had the internet connection working, and Opera was installed quickly after that and to my delight behaved just like its Windows version counterpart. The video drivers for my 6800Gs card, however, completely crashed the whole GUI and left me at a command prompt. >.< Guess I'll be reformatting and installing from scratch tonight.
Ubuntu is interesting to me as far as Linux distros go, because it was actually put together with an eye towards ease-of-use (something other distros like Red Hat don't really seem to be all that interested in). The big epiphany came when I finally figured out that you have to "Super-User Do" all your commands by prefacing them with a "sudo" at the command line in order to run them with root-level privileges. It was slow going up until that point. ^^;; I also like how there is a "Windows Update"-like automatic update feature, and the ability to actually request a specific software or driver update from the internet straight from the command line with the "apt-get" command. Online documentation of how to enable or install specific features is plentiful, though I'd have preferred a greater deal of user-friendly config menus to having to google for "where to find network settings in Ubuntu". Let's be clear: as far as user-friendliness goes, Ubuntu makes great strides for Linux but doesn't come close to challenging Windows's title as the simplest x86 OS to use. There are far too many vital components to Ubuntu that can only be accessed via complicated command-line entry, and god help you if you don't happen to know what command to enter.
Ubuntu is a 600mb ISO download, and that ISO contains the titular OS, a preconfigured Gnome desktop GUI so you're not trapped at a command line, Sun Microsystems's OpenOffice suite, Firefox browser, tons of device drivers for the best possible compatability, and a self-configuring network stack. It's basically as full an OS package as an off-the-shelf copy of Windows XP Pro. 'Course, it doesn't have Direct3D support so its usefulness to me as a gamer is that much more limited.... or is it?
There's a cute little program out there called Wine and/or Cedega which claims to be able to run dozens Windows XP DirectX games under many Linux distros, including Ubuntu. My long-term goal with this OS project is to learn enough about Ubuntu and Linux to be able to get CoH running under Ubuntu. We'll see if I stick with it or just lose interest.
My short-term goal is to get a firewall installed, because before the GUI crash last night I was running 100% out in the open and that's not supposed to be a good thing, someone told me, I think.
By far my most successful encounter with a Linux distribution to date (and this encounter included an unrecoverable GUI crash, so you can just imagine how bad things went with my attempts at Red Had and Mandrake). Ubuntu was clearly made for user-friendliness, and its ability to detect and configure hardware at install far surpasses any other Linux variant I've attempted to use. It won't replace Windows XP for me any time soon, but I can see this OS becoming a very useful suppliment to it.
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| Sunday, March 19th, 2006
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12:01 am - Vista
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Well, decided to install Vista. We got the beta 2 release up at work as part of our Enterprise agreement, and I have a spare 20gb hard drive laying around, so I installed Windows Vista, Microsoft's upcoming XP-replacing OS, on my main system.
To my astonishment City of Heroes runs great. At least as good as it does under XP.
No sound, though. Neither my motherboard's onboard sound hardware nor my Soundblaster Live card have Vista beta drivers available. That's really annoying.
nVidia did have a Vista driver for my Geforce 6800GS card.... but installing it made the computer unbootable. Had to restore from "last known good settings."
So I ran Vista's version of Windows Update. Lo and behold, it actually found a better video driver, and my Geforce 6800GS was configured automatically. Still no sound though.
For those who are curious, Vista has a whole new architecture and a completely redesigned GUI, meaning it feels very different from XP and XP drivers are not compatible with it.
My 3.2ghz P4/2gb RAM system seems to run it just fine. At idle it consumes 600mb of RAM and only 1-5% CPU cycles. CoH plays nice and smooth. For the feature-monster Vista is, it's very good about keeping performance a priority.
The new "Aero" GUI doesn't seem to like my video card, though. Aero is a 3D-based GUI that uses Direct3D acceleration to enhance the desktop and make things display faster. It also has some nifty eyecandy features like "Windows Switcher" (which tiles all your open windows at a 45-degree angle, so you can see what each of them is displaying and select the window you want to bring to the front), a transparency effect that makes windows fade in and out when opened and closed, and a new preview features that actually displays the window's current contents at the alt-tab menu.
None of the features I just listed are available on my computer, even though my video card is on the list of Aero-supported cards. Strangely, these features all worked fine on my secondary machine's Radeon 9800PRO card, which is a generation behind my 6800GS, when I briefly tried running Vista on it a few weeks ago. And yet, on that machine CoH wouldn't run. Ah, beta software...
On top of this, Vista's Control Panel is arranged totally different from XP's, meaning I'm having to completely relearn all the best practices for using this OS. Windows Explorer is also set up differently. Took me an hour to find the place to configure my network cards for internet and LAN, because there's no Network Connections icon under Control Panel...
So far I've found that version 2.0.1 of OpenOffice runs under Vista. I've found that Opera 8.53 runs under Vista. The latest stable version of GIMP does not run under Vista.
So basically, it's like going from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. It's a huge shift in operating procedure. But I'm intrigued, and I can already see how some of these changes could pay off in the long-run.
Still, won't be upgrading from XP any time soon. If anyone has questions about Vista I'll do what I can to check on them for you.
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| Monday, March 13th, 2006
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3:30 pm - CoH: Shockwayv's Powers Explained
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Okay, to my surprise and astonishment I've had a few people inquire about the use of some of my main CoH character's story elements in their own character's background, so I figure I'd go ahead and chisel out all the details of Shockwayv's powers, how they work, where they come from, and why they're not readily available to anyone else. The technobable level of this little dissertation is at least 8; be warned.
Oh, and to the people who keep asking if/insisting that Shock's powers are somehow magical, just skip to the second part, "The Magic Wave."
( The Beginnings )
( The Magic Wayv (or, The Part You Really Came Here to Read) )
( The Stat Sheet )
( And Now a Disclaimer )
Update 10-22-06: Image!
Amazing even myself, I've come up with a CG of Shockwayv, which I thought I'd add back into this post since it's relevent. See "The Magic Wayv" section above. Also corrected a few bits of info.
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| Thursday, March 9th, 2006
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10:03 pm - Question meme thing
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| Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
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2:15 pm - Unfair business practices and treatment of employees
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So my boss asks us to author a guide to using our city's new web-based e-mail client. We pass it around and submit a final revision to him, and he mails it to each of us asking for one final round of suggestions. Michael, Chris, and John all chime in and are acknowledged. But when I submit what I beleive to be crucial revisions to the document, vis a vis:
I found the wording “Outlook Web Access (OWA) will allow you to access your City email and perform other features within Outlook from home or any PC connected to the Internet using Internet Explorer” to be too threatening. I propose re-wording to the more friendly and user-assuring “Spam the IT helpdesk line one more time and we report your e-mail address to the FBI for porn distribution infractions, you self-centered crybabies. Seriously, what kind of per-hour effort do you estimate you expend hammering the helpdesk line on a given day just because your AS400 interface ‘doesn’t, like, feel right’ or you’ve forgotten your password for the eighth time this week?”
Also, I think it would help the effectiveness of the document’s presentation if we added some animated GIFs of rotating skulls. Like all those progressive emo college students’ web sites do. Give it that barouche look.
...he dismisses it out of hand. What the hell makes the others so important while I get ignored? This is the kind of unfair, preferential treatment that probably causes something really bad to happen, somewhere. Or something.
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| Monday, February 6th, 2006
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8:23 am - City of Heroes: Better Living Through Gratuitous Exploitation
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