Hello, if you are looking for the awesome fellow who has been posting here the past week while Patrick was out of town, you’re out of luck because he is gone. Instead, you got me, the miserable lout who couldn’t even manage to post every day like he said he would. I can’t believe that I missed yesterday! Now my city won’t get the fabled Braun Llama Dome. (In my search for an appropriate image, I came across a picture of a floating llama that has quickly become one of my favourite images on the ’net.)

Oh. Oh wow. Someone built the BLD in Minecraft. That someone is my new hero. Bravo, someone!

Speaking of Minecraft, which can be a horrible addiction for me sometimes, I had only started playing the game again for a couple of days before my wife’s laptop’s power cord died (which was probably a blessing in disguise, actually). So, although we’ve been without the bestest computational powered machine in the house this past week, I feel as though I haven’t been wasting any time.

Speaking of wasting time, the reason I didn’t get around to posting anything yesterday is because I managed to get a copy of Windows 3.1 running under DOSBox on my USB stick. It took multiple hours (probably because I was doing other stuff at the time), but it was worth it. I even managed a quick sketch in the local drawing program while I was at work (remember when it was called Paintbrush? Yeah!).

And finally, speaking of drawing at work, I have the utmost pleasure (or embarrassment) to present to you a comic drawn by a fellow comrade about my exploits at work: it is called King of Freeze Pop, and I’m just going to leave a link to it instead of making it pop up, because it’s kinda big. Warning: it’s also rife with the sort of in-jokes that can crop up over a year of working with the same people. You have been warned. (See? Just a couple sentences ago, you were warned.)

I think that’s all for now. A pretty productive week, I guess. Back to the ol’ drawing board for the website design update coming up. I think I’m going to leave that banner up forever. Or at least until Pat gets home and sees it.

Take care of your gonads,
–me.

P.S., oh what the heck, I drew a comic too. It comes in two flavours: original and super-sized. Sorry, these are the only two sizes, offer may not be used with any other deal, offer void in at least three provinces that we know of, any information gathered when using offer can and will be used against you in a cole of slaw, no substitutions, while quantities last.

Hello? Is this thing still on? I suppose I didn’t give myself enough time today to write anything substantial today, but I did say I’d try to write everyday, and it’s not all about quality, is it?

After a week of starving myself of sleep, I thought I’d stay up after work (an unscheduled shift, even) and head down to the Portland Street Superstore to pick up a game for my wife’s birthday (belated, maybe, but I got her other things too, don’t worry) but the electronics section didn’t open until nine so I ended up going to Subway and wandering near-empty aisles until then. Needless to say, I was quite tired by the time I got home. I slept almost all day. :)

The game I purchased was Disney Universe for the Wii, and I gotta say it’s pretty neat. You run around as some sort of alien thing and can change costumes based on various Disney properties and play levels based on other various Disney properties. It’s fun with two players. It’s supposedly anarchy with four though, according to this review.

Side note: I bought a knock-off Wii-mote Plus off the eBay on the cheap. It came with a jacket and a nunchuck, and combined with shipping it still cost less than buying an official one (which doesn’t come with a jacket or a nunchuck, by the way–those cost extra). The nunchuck is wonky, though. The pins don’t always line up correctly. Good thing the aforementioned game doesn’t force you to use it, unlike that insultingly simple Up game that we got.

Another thing that I want to point out is how my wife bought the Wii under the pretense that playing the games that make you move around a lot will assist in getting fit, yet the first thing I did was obtain some Wii points and acquired a few old NES games (SMB3, Zelda 1, Mega Man 1, and Alex Kidd in Miracle World [which is Sega Master System, actually]). The whole design of the system is quite deceitful in that regard (in my opinion): it was made to try to get as many people playing games as possible, gamers and non-gamers alike. I think I’m slowly converting my wife into some sort of gamer, but there’s no way she’d be able to play something like Mega Man. The hand-eye coordination isn’t there, but neither is the patience. That game frustrated me, even.

I think that’s all I have time for.

Peas and carrots,
–me.

P.S., no postscript this time.

Hello. It is I again, if that’s not at all surprising. Since I shouldn’t have even been up this late, you’re getting a short banal piece today. Also, since I found out leaving the camera connected to the computer will actually drain the batteries (good thing they’re rechargeables), you’re going to have to settle for a hand-drawn pic today.

In the spirit of amusing spam messages, I got this sent to my email a couple of weeks ago:

Quote of the Day!
either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way.
from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead.

Um, what? Turns out both lines are from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and not even in chronological order. I suppose it might be considered Halloween-y for the season, but it just comes off as creepy. Which may have been the point, but since the email told me I just won a $250 gift card to Outback Steakhouse, I would have figured you wouldn’t want to scare potential customers (read: suckers) off.

Haiku!

Chili Con Queso
Guacamole, Sour Cream
Salsa, Beans: Dip Wrap!

I just want to point out how disappointing it is not to be able to take the fotergrafs today, since I can’t even include a picture of my cat again (and I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste any more time drawing right now). However, I did find I pretty spiffy no-frills camera today, and it’s cheap enough (and payday enough, and on Amazon enough) to splurge on. Anyway…

I’m tired, leave me alone,
–me.

P.S., bonus unpixellated pixelly picture!

P.P.S., I didn’t even play any SimCity 2000 today, what is wrong with me?!

Hello. If you’re wondering, I, Marq Edward Gould of Cole Harbour, a suburb of Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, murdered the body of PDR, of the nation Patrick D Ryall, then proceeded to eat his soul and take over his website. Events may not have happened in exactly that order. The idea that he is travelling in New York is a ruse, and you all have been duped.^[1] Also, condiments for souls are not an easy thing to find.

Yeah, right. As if I would admit that on the Internet. No one can prove a damn thing!

In coming up with ideas for Website Takeover 2.0, I had a pretty good list of things I wanted to talk about that fell into two categories: the technological ones, and the pretty banal ones. Although I thought of flipping between the two for the week I own this site, I’m going to do another technologeek one today. I just wanted to make sure I got in everything I wanted to talk about before I had to hand this sucker back.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’m surrounded by the slowly aging corpses of computers, cameras, and personal information managers (LifeDrive, yo!). My desktop has been so ridiculously slow this past year, it takes multiple hours just to do things in any program more complex than Notepad. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but when multiple programs are running at the same time, it’s a friggin’ disaster. So much time wasted.

This past year I’ve also been trying to update Pat’s website, both behind the scenes with a much-needed WordPress update, and a brand-spankin’-new updated design. Between working nights, trying to keep this apartment clean, that darn cat, and the aforementioned entropy, it’s been taking ages. Like, a year. Or more. Egads.

However, progress of late has taken a turn for the better, with one of the major hurdles finally being achieved (that being, the transfer of all of this website’s content from one database to another so that WordPress can do its thang), and now progress on a new design is coming along (here’s the current snapshot). With old technology slowing me down, though, I needed a solution to speed things up for me, so I fired up an old USB drive I had (half a gig bought in 2005 for $50, price reduced–isn’t irony sweet?) and loaded it with portable applications, a few from here and a few from here. With a few essential programs that I figure I would need wherever I may be (DOSBox was installed for educational purposes only!), I now have a portable workstation at my disposal.

Now I can tap into my wife’s laptop’s computational power without having to install anything, and off I go programming. My desktop coupled with cordless headphones becomes a viable solution for listening to music while working (if it’s the only thing running, WinAmp does a fine job). I’ve even taken my portable workstation into work and plugged into the computers there, but it’s a bit risky. I don’t use anything that requires passwords, for one. I may not leave any files behind, but I’d be delusional to think that I’m completely invisible. (For the record, the stuff I drew at work is still on that one computer. If anybody knows I mess around with them, they’re certainly not letting on.) I have actually managed to solve a couple of programming problems while at work, so the benefits are certainly outweighing any concerns I may have.

I think… I think that’s all I got to say about that. These posts are taking a ridiculously long amount of time to make. I hope they’re worth it.

¡Buenos Día de los Muertos a usted!
–me.

[1] “you all have been” gets 83.4 million hits on Google, while “you have all been” gets 34.8 million hits. “This is the [thing] you have all been waiting for” sounds better to me than the other way around (probably because “you have” is usually contracted as “you’ve”), yet it seems people are using “This is the [thing] you all have been waiting for” with equal aplomb. Call me baffled.

P.S., today is my wife’s birthday. I DID NOT FORGET! Time to bake a cake.

Hello everybody! It’s me, Marq, and I guess it’s that time again to take over Pat’s website. Of course, the last time I did it was over three years ago, and I don’t even live with the guy anymore, but I’m sure it’ll be fun, for both you the (three) readers of this online buffoonery, and hopefully for me as well. I must once again point out the fact that it has been quite some time since I did any real “blogging” (guh, I dislike that word), but I’m TOTALLY going to give it a go for my totally rad ex-roommate.

(By the way, I did not mean to have an all-caps “totally” in there, but I was all-caps-ing in another program and failed to remove the Caps Lock before typing here again. But I like it, so it’s staying.)

Let’s see: that photograph there, it was taken today, something else I have totally been not doing in amounts that probably add up in year lengths. It was taken with an Olympus D-250 Zoom, a 2.0 megapixel camera from nine years ago. Manipulating images such as that and the super spiffy banner up there has taken place on a seven-year-old Cisnet packaged computer, a device that is quickly becoming slower due to years of defragging neglect. And I was totally listening to music on the Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager, my favourite electronic brick that was discontinued three months after purchasing it in October 2006. (Of course, that last one was a complete and utter lie: I was listening to music off my desktop the whole time. I just like bringing up my LifeDrive.)

I guess my point is: I’s kinda poor, kinda like Pat, and I’m not so up-to-date with the whole technology as some people are. Except I must also point out the hundred dollar cordless headphones in that pixellated picture that you may or may not be able to make out. Let me tell you, those were an essential buy if there ever was one.

Last time I took over this website, I had the luxury of time (which I totally squandered). This time, though, not so much. I think I have a week…? I’m not exactly sure when Pat’s coming back. He’s probably home in time for next week’s comics update, since there isn’t any additional future-dated stuff going on in the WordPress. Anyway, I guess I plan on writing something new for each day that I can–something that Pat’s been pretty good at doing lately as well. I’m going to keep that trend going. (*crosses fingers*)

Totally seriously,
–me.

P.S., I will be unable to comment on the arrival of any small animals in the (old) apartment this time around. I have my own obnoxious critter running around. I also hope I don’t forget anybody’s birthday this time around…

P.P.S., after researching titles for posts, I started typing this up and accidentally left SimCity 2000 running in the background. It’s currently 1975 and everybody’s left town. Taxes must have been too high. I’m seriously in the red now.