I just got back from a long trip to Las Vegas.

I will try to post some pictures later.

this past weekend i got married (again, lol).

while the last marriage was more about doing the right thing my daughter (born out of wedlock), this marriage was more about loving each other and being in love.

hopefully this one will last longer, as it is something we both wanted.

a few days ago, i posted about a robbery i was the victim of. after taking all my money and cell phone, the robbers used my cell phone to rob a neighboring pizza store. as per the police request, i left my cell phone on for a week after the robbery.

my cell phone company recorded all of the calls they made, and using reverse lookup, several addresses were found of the places that were called. using this information, the police made an arrest. i’m still waiting to hear from a detective if there is anything more i need to do with the case.

someone from Webster University interviewed me, and the interview was printed in their local paper. you can read the article HERE.

the local Channel 4 news ran a story on the mine and another robbery, you can read the story HERE, and view the video segment HERE.

Thursday night after i made a pizza delivery, two black guys in their mid 20s surrounded me. one pulled out a small, silver-ish hand gun, and demanded money. the other grabbed me from behind and started pulling stuff out of my pockets.

i told them they could have all my cash, but i wanted my wallet back because of the pictures of my daughter and my family. i told them this repeatedly, and eventually they gave the wallet back, sans money.

they then told me to run back to my car, or they’d shoot me.

i lost over a hundred dollars and my cell phone. now they’re using the cell phone to call other pizza places to try and rob them.

my thermostat was bad. it wasnt regulating temps, causing my car to overheat and my air conditioner to turn off.

$20 part, $120 labor.

my vent fans would go off and on with a “click” and “pop” sound. sometimes they’d stay off all day. my air conditioner would be on, it just wouldnt be blowing on me.

turns out the wires going to the fan were all burned up and melted. why? i dont know. i was told the vent blower fan had shorted out, causing it to overheat. the popping sound i head was BARE WIRES touching each other from the rubber and plastic melting, causing sparks to fly.

$110 for a new blower. i couldnt find a pigtail plug to put on it, so i have some other plug clamped down on the wires.
i installed it myself (it was painfull trying to bend and work under my dash).

things seem to be working ok now. after about 10 minutes of full blast, the wires were a little warm. i dont know if its because the motor is warm, and that is normal - of if there is something overheating again.

so $230 to fix fans/heating/cooling issues that all popped up when another car hit me. my insurance company, their insurance company, and the auto body place all say that it cant be accidently related, and that it was all electrical issues that just so happened to pop up at the exact moment when i got hit.

I went to a big Microsoft event (St. Louis) yesterday with my girlfriend (how many girlfriends are willing to go to such nerd events?) - it was to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2005.

The guy talked for 4 hours, with two breaks in the middle. We were there 2 hours in advance to register and stand in line. I had pre-registered and had a ticket already, but my girlfriend didn’t (due to some mix up, she had a ticket for the SQL Server even). They had a raffle for a DVD player w/ built in screen, an iPod, some MSDN books, and a $50 gift certificate to an online Ticket retailer. We didn’t win any of that. We did, however, get free copies of some software.

They gave us each a free copy of the full version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard ($299 retail), SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006. I also got a bonus DVD with some extra software (like IE 7 Beta 1) and sample code for pre-registering.

I already have a little experience with Visual Basic 2005 Express, but now I can play around with the more “full” version of the product. I already have legit copies of Visual Basic 5, 6, and .NET 2003.

During the event, a presentation was given showing some of the new features of Visual Studio 2005, including some great advances in the ASP.NET web developer program, and some insight into their “no-code” ideas of programming (supposedly, you can reduce your code by up to 70% when you write programs with VS2005 and the .NET 2.0 Framwork).

The event was rather boring - a lot of people fell asleep during it (including me and my girlfriend!), and some people even left before it was over. They obviously didn’t care enough about the subject material or the fact they were going to get free software to stay the entire time!

Even though there were a lot of parts that really dragged on, it still had sparked enough interest in my girlfriend that she decided to keep her copy of the software to “try it out.”

a few months ago, i started playing World of Warcraft. “WoW,” as its called, is a massive multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. it has many elements from the WarCraft universe, and is in direct competition with other MMORPGs such as EverQuest 1/2, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, Asheron’s Call, and many others. the basic purpose of the game is like many others of its type - basically just keep leveling up a character while getting cool stuff for the character to use. again, like many other games of the same time, WoW costs money each month to play. the money is used to pay bandwidth bills of the company that runs it and to pay for continuous updates and support.

i had been playing WoW a lot until recently when i discovered a new game, Guild Wars.

Guild Wars isn’t as massive as a MMORPG, so it’s just pretty much a MORPG. it is more like Diablo II or Phantasy Star Online than EverQuest or World of Warcraft. basically people meet up in towns, form groups, and then once they venture into the world, they play in an instanced, private copy of the world. because of that, server/bandwidth costs are lower for the company that runs it, and so there are no monthly fees. GW feels more “massive” than Diablo II or PSO because of how it plays. guilds are a big part of the game, and continuous guild chat makes you feel like you’re still part of a big group, even when playing a local copy of a map. towns can be entered at any time and are loaded with merchants, NPCs, and tons of other players constantly auctioning off items or just chatting generally. GW relies on skill use more than levels, and so has a very low level cap (currently at 20). the instanced dungeons and game world allow for a lot more detailed and complex quests that simply arent possible in games like WoW and EQ. to many people, this makes for a more fun adventure since their character’s actions result in permanent changes in their game world. with its single player experience better than that of games like WoW and EQ, and with its multiplayer experience similar to those games, while getting rid of online fees make this game very attractive for many people to play.

thursday at school i passed the OS half of the A+ Certification test. last week i passed the Hardware half.

a buddy from a certain 3dfx newsgroup read what i had posted about never having a decent router, so he hooked me up with this router pretty cheap:

it’s a Linksys BEFSR41 v3.

here you can read some of the product information:
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=34&scid=29&prid=561

ive had issues every now and then with dealing with routers…

i guess it started back in 2000 or so when i got DSL.

- when i first got my “PieceOfShit SpeedStream 4060 USB” DSL Modem. i used something like “WinGate” software to share the connection over my network. WinGate or whatever its called didnt like closing connections. refreshing a server list in Half-Life only was able to ping half the servers since the WinGate’s NAT table was full or some shit. it left a connection open to each IP address it pinged and didnt disconnect. Half-Life couldnt ping anymore IPs because all connections were full.

- i didnt have to deal with that for too long, because in 2001, i got a SpeedStream 5260 DSL modem. the 5260 used with the “RASPPPOE” software was a lot better than the USB modem and its shitty proprietary software. i still had to deal with Windows handling all connections (so a PC had to be up and running 24/7 for all other network stuff to work), but i could use things like the Windows built in Internet Connection Sharing to have it act as a router, which worked better than the 3rd party internet sharing/DHCP software i used before.

- a lot of 5260 modems were just 5660 Routers with cippled firmware. lucky for me, my 5260 was really a 5660. flashing it with 5660 firmware enabled router-like features like PPPoE Dialer, DHCP, NAT/firewall/port forwarding stuff, etc. that paired with a cheap hub made a somewhat decent router.
it had issues with resolving DNS though. visiting a site ive been to before the same day would sometimes just totally fail. “unable to find site xxx” or whatever. some games couldnt connect either through it.

- in 2002, i got a Netgear RT314. i purchased it refurbished direct from Netgear. i got one after using the same model at work and seeing all that it could do. it could forward whole ranges of ports, had a Dynmic DNS updater built in, a friendlier web interface, and it of course was a “real” switch, and not a “dumb” hub/repeater like i had been using (better for general PC to PC network traffic). it also was reported by a lot of people to work just fine with all kinds of games.

the Netgear RT314 served me and my family for a long time.

…fast forward to when BitTorrent came out. opening lots of connections with a Torrent made my whole internet connection just DIE. i tried limiting connections and messing with settings, but the Netgear RT314 would just throw up when any number of connection attempts were made with BitTorrent.

no matter what i use, something is always lacking. i had been going with Windows XP w/ its Firewall acting as my home’s router. but after playing with various installs of Linux and x64 Windows (and my computer rebooting several times a day, which of course prevented it from working as good router), i had my Netgear RT314 set up to act as the router. i just queued up a bunch of torrents last night and had to deal with the network going down for everyone because of the Netgear throwing a fit, so i have my 5660 Modem acting as the router right this second. so far, so good.