Rory's Journal

Ahhh, so today I am 25. Not that I welcome it. Starting to feel a little old. dodge A quarter of my life has come and what list of accomplishments do I have to show for it? duck That's what I had been thinking about lately. But, I've actually found the answer. It's just the beginning. I have a lot more potential and ability now to make things happen, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to do great things no matter what it takes. I just need to do it right. It's important to do things right. Those are the stepping stones to accomplishment and respect. You build a solid tower and stand atop it. Perhaps that analogy is a little deep and serious. So, you can all go fiesta mode now.

I just finished fixing my motherboard on my computer. I come home after having it off all day and the damn thing had reset on me. All the settings in the BIOS were defaulted off. Gah! That is a lot of settings to configure since my board was hand tuned by me from factory default to perform better.

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Too much time on your hands?

The old sword had it's nicks and cuts, but the blade had held it's own in the years it had seen by his side. Liguyus had never let the sword slip from his side since the battle that took his son. It was his last real connection to him, more so for the vengeance it had claimed that foul day than for the memory it invoked.

The cave Liguyus walked down now was sparsely lit with torches every few turns, lending as much darkness as they did light. Turning one tight corner of the slimy walls allowed him to see the end. A chamber brightly lit with rows of candles and hollowed out larger than any of the previous rooms. Inside stood his goal. Amagaster.

The dark robed, sickly pale Amagaster was an evil wizard that the word old paled in comparison for a description. Only the wizard's reputation had outlived him. Thus, the reason Liguyus now stood to face him.

"You bastard!", shouted Liguyus. "I saw those people. I saw deir corpses! Why!? They done nothin' wrong 'cept try to live off yer poisoned lands!"

Amagaster pulled back the hood of his robe, "No one lives if they do not bring me their dead kin."

The smell now began to sink in and caused Liguyus to look around. Their were dead bodies in the room, bent in grotesque posses and ritual magic placed around him. Liguyus had heard the stories of the dark wizard being a necromancer. But the proof almost made him sick.

"No more! No MOOOORE!", screamed Liguyus.

The trusty sword was in his hand like a faithful companion. Hungering for the first cut of righteousness. Liguyus swung the sword up to cleave the wizard's head off in a single smooth move. Amagaster flicked something out of his robes and a hellish blast of fire threw Liguyus against the back wall of the cave. The wizard's hand flicked again, now visible with a wand. The bodies began to move all around the cave. Liguyus knew that he must move with haste and picked himself off the floor. His plate armor was restrictive, but he practically lived out of it now. Two steps, then three and he was again at the wizard's side. Swinging again the sword struck against a barrier of magical energy. Liguyus caught the step and swung around to cleave his sword through one of the dead, a young woman it seemed. Caught off guard by the suddenness of the undead woman Liguyus stumbled in his steps. The dark wizard took the opportunity. His wand swiftly shot out at Liguyus and a quick word was all that was needed to send a bright blue stream of energy out to strike.

The energy hit it's mark. Pain was blinding as it found it's way to every corner of Liguyus. Uncontrollably he shook for only a moment. Just enough to let his trusted companion drop to the floor with a metallic chime. The ringing tolled clearly in his mind, while his vision clouded.

Just then, from the entrance of the cave three yellow, glowing balls of energy errupted forth and slammed the wizard. The shock of the event caused Amagaster to drop his sacred implement before it could finish Liguyus. Liguyus hit the floor, but remained conscious.

Through his clouded vision only sheets of yellow and blue could be seen. He tried to clear his mind, but the pain was still fresh. Before he could get up a wave of warm energy washed over him and the sound of many bodies hitting the floor could be heard.

"Hasn't anyone told you? Fighting undead means you should have a priest by your side!" The voice was familiar in some way. Ah, yes! Liguyus' vision cleared to see the face of the young man looking down at him and smiling. It was a distant memory, but a happy sight indeed.

"Morganus? How the hell did you get to these lands?"

"One tale at a time, my friend. One tale at a time."

So, I was building a Linux Media Center from an old PC we had here at the apartment. I installed SuSE Linux on it and it went on really easily. Except that the old BIOS on the computer didn't recognize the drive size, so I had to get an extender card to go with it. Then Linux didn't like the ATI video card S-Video out to the TV, so I found an even crappier nVidia card and through it in. At least I had a picture on the television after that. After taking a week to setup all of the very specific programs needed for the DVR part of the Media Center I finally got it all to run together. Except there are a few quirks.

First, the crappy video card is underpowered and can't keep up with the digital recording of the TV capture card. This means everything looks distorted at every few frames of video and the sound isn't aligned with the picture.

Second, the IR remote that came with the TV capture card only has a few buttons supported. So, now I need to program my LIRC to like it.

Third, the quality of the picture is so bad that I need to get cable to really appreciate how it works.

Forth, the sound card isn't even recognized in Linux. Even though it's a pretty standard card. Blah!

Fifth, and lastly, if I ever upgrade my TV, I am going to need to get an external serial IR programmable sensor to remote control change the cable box if I want to use only one remote for everything. Blah!

But, most of that isn't really Linux's fault. ATI sucks at it's driver support, especially on the S-Video out option. The sound card is actually the only thing really being Linux's fault. I was impressed I got as far as watching TV on the damn thing. I am thinking of dropping it and putting Windows on the system. But, I'm really wonding if that's a good idea. Linux is almost there, and it will be more stable and have a nicer system control when everything gets going.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I have been using Linux on my Laptop now for a full week. That's longer than I've ever used Linux as a full computer install. I've had it installed along-side Windows before, but I always ran Windows first before it. So far, I've managed to pull off some pretty specific stuff on it. First, I actually got my wireless card to work, something that is a feat because wireless support isn't great for hardware vendors. Second, I managed to install a DVD player that played these off-beat DVDs that my brother had. The DVDs seemed to have an unusual encoding that only works on smart DVD players. Just recently I started a little project of mine to create a TiVo box out of an old computer with Linux. There are a couple packages that help you do this, so I've started to try it out. You never know, Linux could become my full OS.