Nemesis Destiny: The Blog of Ron Bes

Rock on.

If you were this guy, would you really want your job back? I wouldn't. I wouldn't even dare show my face around there ever again. Hell, I won't even show my face around my old job now, and I never even went as far as to show up drunk with firearms looking to shoot my superiors (though I can't say that there weren't a few times when the thought was appealing...)

On the other hand, if I were in this poor bastard's shoes, I might be looking for blood. Or at least government compensation... assuming that there was in fact a huge miscarriage of justice and he is actually innocent.

And now for something completely different... I bet Sim City never prepared you for this one. I'll stick to playing the game, thanks.

Newsy tidbits

Found some interesting stuff on cbc.ca this morning, and thought I'd take amoment out to share...

• If I were in either one of these chaps' shoes, I'd be heading for an escape pod...
• I'd much rather live in a country ruled by ineffective, lazy liberals than one ruled by bigoted, gay-bashing rednecks. Funny how the article mentions the MP in question being fired from his post as 'family issues critic' but not from the party itself. That says something to me about where they stand; I'm sure they're patting him on the back behind closed doors. It just says to me, 'Oops! Did I say that out loud?!?' So they give him the slap on the wrist. If it had been an anti-semite statement or similar, he'd have no future in politics.
• Personally, I don't care wether or not this map's a fake. Everybody knows Columbus didn't discover North America, or at least anyone who paid attention in elementary school history class. Silly southern Europeans; after the Vikings were finished conquering your pathetic armies and impregnating all your women, they set sail west because they were bored... and discovered North America so you'd all have somewhere else to go and fight over land.
• This is just neat. I'm going to build one of those in my basement someday...
• At least it wasn't Canada dropping the ball for once...
Posted by Ron at 11:44 PM | Comments (2)

I knew it...

I've had my SVX for about a week now, and it's time for a transmission rebuild. I first noticed the flare from 2nd to 3rd gear after I bought it of course, so it was too late to take it back. Hopefully the warranty will cover most of the work.

I'm kind of torn about what to do. Should I just add an inline filter, auxilliary cooler, and have it rebuilt? Should I swap in the 5-speed? or take the plunge and go for the 6-speed? or perhaps I should rebuild the 4EAT but beef it up a little? I just don't know what to do!!!

Black Boxes

Recently I picked up some boxed set CDs, one of which is the infamous Black Box. The Black Box contains a summary of the first 13 years of a record label called WaxTrax records, famous mostly for putting out records from Ministry and KMFDM. I borrowed a burned copy from someone once, but never bothered to listen to it; now I have a copy and I still haven't. Apparently this little gem is quite rare, and I'm told (by the dude that runs the second hand record store) that I'm very lucky to find one in this good shape (it's mint). I have no idea what it's worth, since I can't find it on eBay, but I have a feeling that it wouldn't go cheaply.

The other one is conspicuously more 'low-rent' shall we say... called Undead: 50 Gothic Masterpieces, it contains 'hits' from such übergroups as Bauhaus, Iggy Pop, Echo and the Bunnymen, and many, many others I've never heard of. Most of them sound very... fetish-y? Should be interesting.

In other black box news, I haven't touched my Gamecube in about two weeks. Haven't run a game on my PC recently either. I figured that working less hours would somehow translate into more time for games, but somehow it hasn't. And yet I keep buying more. I got Metroid Fusion for my b-day, and just bought Alpha Centauri, Post Mortem, and Syberia for the PC, plus I anticipate that someone will get me Silent Hill 3 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Replublic for santa day. Then there's the PILE of games that I've started and not finished. Oh, and let's not forget the ones I haven't even cracked the package on yet...

SVXstacy

I'm back from Ottawa; got in about 6am after 13 hours on the road. I have some pictures (the lighting sucks by the way) of the car for those of you that may be curious...

It's not perfect but what do you want for a '92 that was stolen and recovered?

The niggles: CD player is busted, trunk release lever is broken off, needs all four wheels balanced and a full alignment job, interior dome light is burnt out, clear coat on the paint on the front end is cracked in places, transmission occasionally misses 2nd gear, and there is some paint overspray on the headlight assembly and hood ornament.

The good parts: Leather and suede interior, 6 speaker stereo (tape deck and radio still work great), cool half-windows (only found on this car, the DeLorean, and the McLaren F1), All Wheel Drive, more power (and more weight unfortunately) than the Mustang I wrote about previously, the 4 cam, 24 valve, 3.3 Litre horizontally opposed 6 cylinder engine sounds just like a Porsche, power everything, sunroof, climate control, high beams are like "god's eyes in my headlights," and it looks sexy as hell.

It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...

The ball is rolling, the day draws near. Sunday I leave for Ottawa to check out my soon-to-be new baby, a 1992 Subaru Alcyone SVX LS-L Touring Edition (top of the line) in Liquid Silver with Black Pearl detailing.

Kind of old, yes, but a unique automobile to be sure. It has been estimated that there are less than 25,000 worldwide (over 5 model years; 1992-1997) and fewer than 1,500 in Canada. Sounds like lots but when you consider that, for example, Chrysler makes 80-90 thousand PT Cruisers each year, it's actually a pretty special car. It has been dubbed "the affordable exotic," exotic being normally reserved for the kinds of things you expect to see only in Hollywood parking lots with nameplates like Laborghini, Aston-Martin, Maserati, Porsche, and Ferrari.

The next thing you hear from me will be a story of either glorious triumph, or horrible (and pathetic) self-pity.

All done...

Upgrade is complete... well for my part, anyway. That board works like a charm for basic computing, though the BIOS will allow a minimum VGA memory allocation of 16 Megabytes, which in mum's case is too much. Then again, 16 meg out of 512 is not all that much, even under XP.

The only glitch, for my part, was that with the old 300 Watt power supply, the board refused to power up. Turns out that this one actually requires the use of the 12Volt ATX CPU header. So I put that shiny new Enermax into this system... would have been overkill in the Legacy Box anyway.

Speaking of upgrades...

I was just informed by my garage that my other car, which Meghan currently drives, is in need of over $600 in repairs. Time to get rid of it, methinks. Anyone want a 1993 Plymouth Acclaim? Didn't think so.

Like with computers, I'm going to play the "hand-me-down game" with cars. I replace the Blue Ox (as I affectionately call her) by getting myself a new car and donating the 97 Stratus to Meghan. What a nice guy I am!

As I may have mentioned it before (can't find the entry), the apple of my eye is the Subaru SVX. Manufactured from 1992-1997, its performance, quirky good looks, and luxurious amenities earned it instant praise from automotive journalists everywhere. Then all I need to do is swap in a 5-speed manual gearbox and a few other custom parts...

More computer parts!

I love building and tinkering with computers, and to that effect, I have just received some more goodies. I had some credit at ncix.com from my last purchase, which I decided to spend on a new 40GB Western Digital Caviar SE hard drive with 8MB cache and 7200rpm for my mum's machine. Her 8.4GB Quantum Fireball is nearly full, and besides that, I want it for my Legacy Box. Also on the order was a shiny new Enermax 350W power supply. I don't trust the one that was in my main system when it blew its capacitors, since the power supply is a likely suspect. That's what I get for buying a 'topower' PSU.

Add to that, I ordered an MSI KM4M-L mainboard from my workplace for less than $80. Tack on a 512MB stick of 333MHz DDR memory and we're all set.

Why do this you ask? Well, my last order from ncix.com had several AMD 2000+ CPUs on it, one for Meghan, one for my cousin's system, and one for my mum's computer. I hit a little snag when attempting to install it in my mum's computer: despite the fact that she has an MSI MS-6330 v5.0, the board seems to have been mistakenly equipped with a VIA KT133 northbridge rather than the KT133A necessary for operating the CPU at 266MHz FSB. Bizarre.

So instead, I am using that board, along with a slew of spare parts to do some more charity work and build a hand-me-down system for my other cousin, who could probably use it for school (and Diablo 2). Equipped with either a Spitfire Duron 700MHz or Thunderbird Athlon C underclocked at 750MHz, plus 256 or 512MB of SDR memory, a 32 meg Aopen TNT2 video card, and two 4.3GB hard drives, it should be sufficient for his computing needs.

Workin' the POS POS

Yeah, I was supposed to have the day off, but there was a cute little emergency and I had to cover Saturday at the store in the mall. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy staring at software all day long, but I was supposed to play D&D at 15:00. Oh well, a slight 3 hour delay is all. Wouldn't be so bad if this terminal wasn't so bloody slow. At least I have the Minibosses and Friends on CD to keep me company. Oh, and I could really use some lunch... anyone wanna fax me some?

Moonbeams

I saw a beam of bright light from the room down the hall; I thought it was the light on the back porch shining through the window, and that I had better go turn it off. It turned out to be the bright, glowing full moon. Sometimes the simplest things can leave you in awe... I just thought I'd take a moment to appreciate that.

Joining the Club

Today marks an historic occasion: I am joining the Quarter-Century Club. I have officially contributed to global overpopulation for twenty five short years... strangely I don't feel too bad about it.

Anyway, not much to say about it. Happy birthday to me.

A drop-kick in the ass from GOD

Somehow that title is more eye-catching than my original concept, "Redefining Acceleration."

So, to get to the point... Today I took a neat car for a test drive. It was a 1988 Mustang GT 5-point-0h. Kind of a beater by most standards I guess, but it's like Han Solo said when Luke exclaimed upon first viewing the Millennium Falcon that it was a piece of junk, "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid." Exactly.

5 litres of old school american V8 muscle channeled through the rear wheels by a (terribly crude) 5 speed manual gearbox. The acceleration under nearly full throttle was staggering. I honestly didn't have the guts to floor it all the way. Let me just say that the experience was frightening; all that power in such a crude package. The car has character though, punctuated by the roar of the engine under acceleration and the promise of it's throaty 'burble' while idling. First gear is pretty much only useful for doing smoky burnouts. The potency of it is truly intoxicating to the gearhead in me. That car is like a lump of distilled testosterone. All was not boners and burnouts however...

The guy's asking way too much for it at $6500. And it stinks like stale cigarette smoke really bad, plus there's a bit of under-the-paint rust, has a vacuum leak in the engine (it was loping at idle pretty fierce), has a cracked tail light, and smells like it burns oil. Plus I hate the shifter - feels like rowing an oar through a bucket of oatmeal. Sure goes like a bat out of hell though, and it sounds so cool. Anyway, the guy got really mad at us when we got back because he neglected to mention (he swears he did) that there was no insurance on it and we took it on the highway. He was SO pissed. Can't show my face around there again.

Oh well, there are better deals to be had on Autotrader.ca if I should be so inclined. I think I will, sooner or later - that kind of raw power is truly intoxicating. I know how hardcore drug addicts feel now. I think I need another hit of horsepower soon...

Can't find what you're looking for?

Try google. I'm not kidding at all. I know it's probably old, but a friend showed me this last night: type "weapons of mass destruction" into the search bar in google, then rather than perform an actual search, press the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Second funniest 404 ever. Right after homestarrunner.com's "The system is down, yo."

Rock on.

Only a total nerd like me would find this cool. I always wanted to do what these guys do, but dared not ever speak it aloud for fear of being endlessly ridiculed.

Sucks

I nearly blew up my computer. I blame Microsoft. I downloaded what appeared to be an innocent little update to my nVidia nForce Audio driver and BAM! now my nForce audio control panel doesn't work properly anymore. "An unsupported operation was attempted." Apparently. In the process of trying to "fix" the problem, I caused Windows XP to nearly suffer a meltdown and it ended up causing some pretty severe BSOD errors. Under Win9x, a BSOD was a fairly common occurence, and if you did not get them, you were either very blessed or very lucky. Under NT-based platforms, for those of you that aren't in the know, a BSOD is a very, very BAD THING. If an NT system suffers one of those you have big problems.

Apparently I am so affected now. Why the fucking hell did I update that driver? My sound was working perfectly. No amount of driver rollbacks are helping me, so I guess I could either A) reinstall Windows, or B) hope for a new driver release that magically fixes the problem. I think my chances are better wiping out Windows.

Anyway, things are at least working again, for the meantime. I can sleep, maybe. In the process of fixing, my board was failing memory tests, Windows was failing to recognise my optical drive, it was taking several minutes to load all my utilities in the systray on startup (shouldn't be happening with this system; trust me, it's fast), and a host of other difficulties.

Let me tell you, that's the last time I update a driver from Windows Update.