So here I am, entering week three of the instructor from hell’s class. The class is computer networks and, as I stated in the before post, the teacher has a very un-orthodox grading practice. Well I went a number of rounds in the boxing ring with Him and my Advisor and the teacher’s supervisor all bout this grading policy. Since there was no other class I could transfer to, they advised that I should continue with my current work and they would look at the policy. Well, I wasn’t too enthused but I went ahead anyway. My heart was not really in the projects I did and, while I am not sure I would have earned a C on the papers, I think I did some good solid B work. I was expecting the inevitable C or lower from the teacher, to which I would come back with a grade review and start all over again.

Well, I logged in yesterday to find that my projects have been graded. My IP (Individual project) I got a 120/120 and my DB (Discussion Board) I got a 60/60.

Color me WTF!

Outside of that, this last weekend was pretty standard. Saturday, after the homework was done, I nursed a whopper of a migraine that pretty much shut me down for the rest of the night. I curled up on the couch with the lights dim and watched Forest Gump (because it was on, and the music rocks) with the volume turned down way low. On Sunday I woke to find the sky had fallen. There was about 3-4 inches of snow that fell on Sunday. I had no clue it was coming and the reporters all on TV said “Oh there will be no accumulation!” Umm, did you happen to look outside guys? Regardless, Don, Andrew and I went out to play pool (I love having a truck). While we were out I went ahead and picked up my Pre-Order for Lord of the Rings Online. I am in beta now and it looks pretty damn good. I don’t know that it will be a WoW killer, but the game is a lot of fun, the graphics are amazing, and they have a niche with the Tolkien fans. Expect more on this subject later on.

Ok, so I am pretty frustrated. I got stuck with a teacher that I was warned about by a few other students. He is the only one teaching this course right now so there is no switching and he has the worst grading theory ever. His idea is that if you do exactly what is tasked, you get a C. If you go above and beyond, you may earn a B, if you quote war and peace while solving world hunger, maybe a B+. I have never heard of such an absurd grading scale and have certainly not seen it in any other AIU class. So I have been e-mailing back and forth with the teachers supervisor and my advisor and such to see what I can do about this. Odds are I will be submitting a grade review for every assignment, so won’t that be fun. Ugh, I just want to scream!!!

Deep breath, ok better now. On the flip side, I got a new game for the 360 called Crackdown. They had a demo available for a while now and I really liked the game. It’s like Grand Theft Auto, but you are a cop instead and are fighting gang members. The cool things about it are that 1: it’s a completely open environment, no loading times between areas, and 2: the look of the game is very comic book like. If you get the chance to check it out, do so! And back to reconfiguring servers for me!

Ok, I am writing up the weekend report but I have to interject an idea to get the mind juices a-flowin. Auditions for “Who Want’s to be a Super Hero” Season 2 are coming to the DC area. Dulles Town Center to be exact. (right around the corner). Those who know me know that I am a HUGE comic book fan, and I actually really enjoyed the last season. So I ask you, WHY NOT?? What do I have to loose? (I lost my dignity the last few times I donned the Green lantern outfit). Seriously, It’s not like I have to travel, and Costuming should be a breeze! (Especially if I can get Cricket to help!) If for nothing else, it would be a blast to go and see everyone trying out!

So, here is what I need. Give me Ideas for a great, catchy, and easy to pull off Super Hero! Leave comments, E-mails, IM’s!!!

Well, so many different things happened this weekend that it was almost weird going back to work today. The first main thing, of course was Farpoint! (the weekend is going to be out of order, get used to it). We decided that I needed a little bit of a vacation so Andrew spent the night at his friends place and I took off for Farpoint on Saturday morning(ish). This got me up there just after noon and I was actually able to get a room! (this came in handy for multiple reasons later on). After checking in I went about seeking the rest of the Ghetto Garrison. It was great to hang out with everyone again and just kind of cut loose and relax for a change. It seems like the last few months have had me wound a little tighter than normal.

The first place on the list to check was, of course, the Bar! This is always the central meeting point for any of the GG members, and it held true as always. I met up with Cheeky Monkey Boy, who drove his insane butt up from Atlanta! The conversation came up about Wegmans (located across the street) and Robert (monkey) had never been to one. As we all know, http://www.wizzer.org/2005/02/phase-i.html Wegmans is Glorious. So Naturally We had to go for a visit. On the way back we picked up a large amount of cider (because everyone always brings beer and I don’t drink beer). When we got back (after the Monkey fully admitted how glorious it was), I jumped in line to get an Autograph from Ron Glass. (He played Shepherd Book on Firefly). Then it was game on! Everything after that was kind of a blur, not because I was drunk, but because it all happened so fast and mix together. Most of it was just hanging out and having fun. We got a sound warning while partying in Steve and Rain’s room so we moved to My room which was large enough and in an Odd location, it made it perfect. We had a blast till around 3-4am when I finally crashed out.

The next morning was a little rough, slow start, fond farewells, and a long drive home. I spent Sunday recovering. Monday was set that Doc and Diz would come by to watch some Battle Star Galactica. Before then, though, I headed out to catch Ghost Rider. My Mini review: It was Okay. Not great, not bad, just Okay. The special effects were awesome. I am not a big Ghost Rider fan so I am not sure how close it was to the comics. I was just not all that impressed with the Acting. I guess I would really have to see an issue or two to see if the acting paralleled the comic (if so, I know why I wasn’t reading the comic.)

The last thing to touch on would be a little more personal. Emily and I are no longer together. The final verdict came down on Friday. Whether it was the distance, or personalities, or just too much else going on in our lives, it just wasn’t meant to be right now. This once again shows that Fate hates me as per usual. This is not a spiteful break-up. We still talk, (hopefully more after the hurt on both ends dies down). The idea may be right, but the timing is wrong. In the meantime I have many wonderful memories that are a part of who I am now. I also have lessons learned that help me to grow as a person.

Life goes on.

Well, I know everyone is eagerly awaiting the test results from my Doctors appointment. After a week of waiting I finally got a little slip in the mail. Now they took like 4 vials of blood and were testing for everything. EVERYTHING! Cholesterol, Glucose, Lime Disease, HIV, etc. When I got the slip back, it just talked about the Cholesterol so I was still curious about the other tests. Well, I called and talked with the nurse and EVERYTHING came back golden. Not even any trouble areas that I should look out for. While that may be good news on the surface, the downside is that anything that actually may be wrong with me is most likely in my head. Because you know, that place was spic and span to begin with right?

So this weekend I am taking a little bit of a vacation. Andrew is staying at his friend’s house on Saturday night, and my homework is all done so I am heading to Farpoint! I talked it over with Andrew and he is really looking forward more to DragonCon. So I plan on heading out Saturday morning up to Hunt Valley and with any luck I may be able to pick up someone’s canceled room. Maybe….. if not I am going to be scoping out a floor to crash on if at all possible. Anyone have spare space? I will probably bring my Scout Trooper, but I am not sure if I will be getting geared up. I am mostly going to visit with friends and hang out. So what are your plans for the weekend?

So I have a guilty pleasure. (ok, who doesn’t). Emily had been talking about this show that she thought I should check out. Normally I wouldn’t watch something like this, it’s not my style. I am more of the 24, Bones, Heroes type with a little How I Met your Mother thrown in for the laughs. Reality shows are not my bag. I can barely sit through an episode of American Idol now (though I did watch the first season fairly intently). I never even got into survivor. So when Em said I should check out “Beauty and the Geek” I kind of rolled my eyes.

Then I watched one. I got sucked in by the megalomaniacal machine that is reality TV. It was actually pretty good! It breaks the mold of the reality’s prettiest home videos. For those that don’t know, they took a bunch of Beauty queen types, Models and such, and paired them up with a bunch of Geeks. Geeks that would make me look like Tom Cruise. They team up and do different challenges and such to help round out each other as a person. The girls would have to do things that would be outside of their norm, like build a dog house. The geeks would have to follow suit by getting a girls phone number in the park. Granted I came into the show late in the game, but I was able to identify a little too well with some of the characters and it was cool to see the development non both the guys and the girls.

Well, last night was the end of the competition. There were two teams left and at that point, you see the growth and such of each person, you are usually pretty happy for whoever wins. Except one person. Cecille. She was one of the girls and from the start she approached the show for the stand point of “a reality show where the goal is to win” (they did a lot of flash backs and such so I could see from most of the start of the show). It seems like all the other people were there for the experience and were enjoying the time they had. Well, that came back to bite her in the end. The downside is that she was teamed up with Nate. Nate is the epitome of the nice guy. Heart of gold, helpful to anyone, and a huge star wars fan (always a plus). The other team, Scooter and Megan, were just all around awesome. They look and act like they had grown as people through the whole experience.

Well, as you can tell, I really started getting into the show. Andrew even came out to watch (hopefully he learned a few things and wasn’t just watching to see cute girls). I won’t ruin the ending for those who have DVR’d it and haven’t seen it yet. Not that I think it would be a surprise at all. Next week is the Reunion show and re-cap so catch it if you want to see what I am talking about!

Remember way back when I bought that ½ cord of wood that Don and I split? No? Oh yeah, I didn’t blog about it, but I did send a pic to the photoblog. Well anyways, as you can see, ½ a cord of wood is a lot. And ½ of that (1/4 cord) ended up on my patio. I remember looking at it and saying… “I will finish with this before the winter is done”

Guess what.

It’s gone! I threw the last few logs on the fire and it’s all gone. I may run out and get another 1/8th this weekend (or next week). Well lots of snow brought everything to a grinding halt around here (as usual). And it’s all supposed to re-freeze tonight for all the more fun tomorrow. Meanwhile back at Stately Wizzer Manor, It’s Valentines Day and I am here all by my lonesome. If anyone knows any hot red heads that want to venture up, from what ever warm tropical un-disclosed location they may happen to be in, for maybe some cuddling and smooches, please let me know!

Snow!
Originally uploaded by wizzer2801.

Yup, this is what I walked out to find this morning! My truck has a nice candy coated shell around it! It snowed a great deal, and then the sleeted, and then it froze! But then….. I LOVE IT! The roads were still being cleared so I was able to have some fun with the 4×4 on the way in to work.

Yet another weekend goes by at the speed of light. In some ways I feel I got a lot done, in others, not so much.

I am not even sure I remember what I did on Friday night. (woah, now I remember, I did the Happy Hour with some of the people from work! And learning how gross some of my work mates can be!) It was mostly just recovering from one heck of a week. High stress at the work place with some inter-personnel issues, and some rather sad news on Lee’s end. One thing I did try and do was throw in the new Vista disk and start an upgrade. Yeah, that didn’t go so well, but that leads into Saturday.

Happy Vista Day! I say that because Saturday was pretty much all Vista All day! Yeah I am doing the whole vista thing and going all the way, I have the Ultimate version. (No really, it’s called ultimate) Well, as I stated earlier, I started the install on Friday night. Well it wouldn’t upgrade, but it did give me the option to install to one of my clear drives. You see, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. SATA1 = 500gb, SATA2 = 300gb, and IDE1 = 100gb. My main drive is SATA1, so it said it would install to IDE1 and do a multi-boot. Silly me, I believed it! After the initial copy and configure, it needed to reboot, so I let it.

NTFS Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

Oh crap

So I try and repair using my XP disk. No Dice as the XP disk doesn’t see the SATA drives without special drivers (which can only be loaded via floppy disk, ……what’s a floppy disk? I haven’t had a floppy drive in years!) So I finish the install to the IDE drive and am able to see all my sad lonely files on SATA1. I start the move of the 100gb of personal data to SATA2 for safe keeping. This is going to take a while so I take a break from the PC and watch The Producers! Great movie/play/musical. Really makes me miss doing theater. Checking back on my copy…. Nope, not done yet.

When the copy finally finished I was able to install Vista to SATA1 and do all the updates and such. I cleaned off IDE1 and started the migration of my data back to SATA1 from SATA2. (copy, not move. Just in case). I also went about installing any excess drivers I needed for the network card and such. I also got to play with the Media Center stuff (the 360 acts as an extender). I also had to reinstall my Zune and such, which meant a wipe and reload on the Zune as a new association with the new OS. So now I am copying 100gb back to SATA1 and copying 30gb to my Zune. Time to run to the mall!!

I managed to find a gem at the mall too. At the FYE Movies they sell some used DVD’s and I uncovered a $6.99 gold mine! The 2 disk Animated full series of Clerks! Yeah, I had to pick that up. Andrew and I also took some time to have dinner (yup, it was around 6pm by now) at UNO’s and visit some the usual stores.

When I got back home, I checked on the copy. It was only ½ done!

“Windows requires administrator access to move this file, do you want to allow access?”

Ugh! Yes, allow access. Well, now I get to watch some Clerks! 3 episodes later, the copy is done and I can start re-configuring my machine to like it was. Installing Office, installing Money 2006. Moving all the My Documents files to their right locations (Vista has a new layout for all the files). Ok, take Vista disk out of drive so I can install, install program, reboot……

BOOTMGR Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

What?

Ok, drop the Vista disk in and reboot to the disk, run the Starup repair utility and reboot, all is good! More installs, take Vista disk out, install disk in, another reboot….

BOOTMGR Not found
Press CTL + ALT + DEL to restart

Ugh! Vista disk in, reboot and distracted with Clerks…..Machine boots up. But I didn’t boot to the DVD? Ok, so a few searches on the internet (on my Powerbook, how’s that for Irony) and I found that Vista uses a new boot tech called the BCD (Boot Configuration Data) and that mine was all borked up. You see, I could boot up fine when the disk was in, but not without it. I was able to find a utility that showed me what the problem was. My BCD was written as such: (edited down for important parts)

Windows Boot Manager
——————–
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager

Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier {default}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

So, my BOOTMGR was looking at the D: drive (IDE1) and my windows was installed on the C: drive (SATA1). After looking at 2 different utilities and many different forums, I found the proper way to use the BCDedit program that comes with Vista and changed the Boot Manager device to C:.

For the record the command I used was:
bcdedit.exe /set {bootmgr} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit.exe /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:

Then I moved the hidden directory of [Boot] and the hidden bootmgr file from IDE1 to SATA1. After that, I booted to the DVD and ran the start-up repair utility again. This time it found an fixed a problem. The big test…..reboot! I took the disk out and crossed my fingers.

YATTA!! It worked! 2 hours of diagnosing and I finally fixed it! That was the big hurdle. Everything else is just tweaking to personal specs and such. I imagine I will write up more thoughts on my Vista experience after I have used it for a few days. I was exhausted.

Sunday I took it easy. I picked up the VGA cable for the 360 because I heard that’s the only way to get it to upscale DVD’s. It also makes some of the games a little crisper as well! While I was out getting that I picked up BeerFest on HD-DVD! I had to sit and watch that. It is probably the most ultimate guy movie I have ever seen! And absolutely hilarious. It was the much needed laugh that I needed after the last two days.

I probably flatter myself that I have 3 whole readers. Anyways, I made it to my appointment and was nervous as all heck. First thing in the nurse asked if she could get a Urine sample. This was a good thing as I had waited on going all morning and I had a good sized glass of water the night before. How many jars did she need filled? I got a little worried though, there was this metal hatchway between the bathroom and lab that she said to set the sample in. This is all fine and everything, I did my stuff and capped it, when I opened the door to put it in I was a tad apprehensive. You see there was another jar there. And I didn’t remember her telling me to wrote my name on the jar, Thoughts racing through my head of some weird lab mix up, I finally broke down and asked. Then I had to learn to write sideways on a jar of my own juice. FUN!

Once in, the Doc seemed fixated on Ticks. I hate ticks. More than frogs! This of course led to a rather embarrassing story of geo-caching and stripping down on Doc’s front patio. Ask me if you really want to know. The doctor told me I should spread that story around too much though.

The suspense part comes in that, while outwardly I am very healthy (albeit with a strange sense of humor) but the blood work will take a while to come back. The verdict is, a Card in the mail means I am all clear. A call from the nurse means something mild, a call from the Doctor for a new appointment means I start freaking out. Either way it’s going to be about a week. Cross your fingers everyone!!