Saturn's Ramblings

You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.

(Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.)

Dunno where this came from originally, but it recently crossed my email inbox...

1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on each side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat gently in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, pick up and throw soggy pill away.
   Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for count of ten.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse in from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into cat's mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill out of foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep up shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set on one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with a pencil and blow into drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply Band-Aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor’s shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door just enough so that head is showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with plastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw t-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Call fire department to retrieve cat from tree across road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie cat's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Push pill into mouth followed by a large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 2 pints of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room. Sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearms and removes pill from right eye. Call furniture shop on way home and order new dining table.
14. Arrange for ASPCA to collect cat and contact local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

Tue May 02, 12:19 PM EST - Yahoo News Canada - Click for original web listing
By Stefanie Kranjec

TORONTO (Reuters) - A mocking announcement about the prime minister, "Stephen Harper Eats Babies," was flashed on electronic advertising signs on Toronto area commuter trains for several days, and technicians were still scrambling on Tuesday to get the signs fixed.

"Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," started to appear every three seconds across some LED screens late last week. The signs usually carry transit updates and advertising spots.

"It appears that this was a case of electronic vandalism," said Stephanie Sorensen, corporate communications and media specialist for the GO Transit commuter system. "We assume it was a hacker. We haven't identified the person who did this but we're working closely with the contractor who runs the signs to fix the problem."

Screens on GO Trains have been shut down since Monday. Sorensen said she expects they will remain off line for a few more days until password-protected technology is installed to protect them from computer hackers.

"We regret that it happened and we're sorry if anybody was offended, including the prime minister," Sorensen said.

GO Transit carries 47 million passengers every year on its network of buses and trains in the Toronto region.

[RANT]
For a while now I have shunned the game World of Warcraft with a vengeance, and have repeatedly mocked friends and acquaintances for getting "sucked in" to this thing.

Seems like anyone who starts playing it loses all track of life -- they suddenly become unavailable for anything social, and tend to even put their own hobbies and life on hold, preferring instead to play this stupid game!

And of course, there's the other matter of the COST of playing... Roughly $60 to buy the game itself, then (I haven't looked it up for myself, but the reports I hear are) $10-25 PER MONTH to actually play it!

The game is designed such that your character(s) and stats are all stored solely on the SERVER online, and so the part you install and run is simply the engine for displaying your world. The server controls every aspect of the actual game flow itself! Therefore, if you want to play this game AT ALL, you must be connected to a server. This means you have to have a working internet connection, as well as cross your fingers that the servers at Blizzard (the folks who host WoW officially) are actually online. Not to mention the cost.
[/RANT]

OK now for the nifty bit.. A friend of mine online (SB you know who you are) was talking about how he'd scored a copy of WoW and had been playing it for a while. For free. Intrigued, I asked him how, and that's when I discovered that there are thousands of "Private" WoW Servers out there! Free-to-play servers.

I did some sniffing around and found a great Torrent for the game itself (2.64 gigabytes total download, plus any needed patches). In the torrent are 4 .ISO CD images. You can either burn all 4 as CD's, or just use Daemon Tools to mount the images on a virtual CD drive.

Next I found (after much patient searching and further research) copies of and instructions for setting up an actual Private WoW server! It's running now, in fact.

Now the trick to these servers is that they all work for only specific versions of WoW. The geniuses at Blizzard have released something like 60 patches so far. The basic game is version 1.0.0 ... There are "major" patches for 1.1.0, 1.2.0, etc. There are also sub-patches for these majors, eg: 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc.

My server (Titanium Realm) is for game version 1.5.0 .. After installing the game (and if you already installed the game and want to try this, you have to install the game again - you can just install a second copy in another directory and have both versions installed - and re-apply the specific patch. The current game version release is 1.10.0 or something...) You can get the 1.5.0 patch here (176 megs).

Once that's installed and patched you must perform the next step BEFORE LAUNCHING THE GAME. If you load the game first, it will attempt to connect to Blizzard servers and will almost immediately start trying to update your WoW to the very latest version!

In the game directory, where the wow.exe file lives, you will find a file called realmlist.wtf - simply open this file in notepad and edit that first line. The first and only line of realmlist.wtf should be: set realmlist saturn.bounceme.net
Lastly, you need to create an account on the private server. The above instructions will let you connect to MY private server. I don't guarantee 100% uptime, but and downtime should be very minimal and for only brief periods of time (minutes, not hours). Note also that when you go to a private server, and since all character info is stored BY the server, each new server means creating a new character.

Since the first 15 levels or so are pretty damn boring in this game, if you decide you want to play, please let me know and I'll gladly upgrade your character to and reasonable request. Money too.

So, back to creating an account... Simply visit the server status webpage, http://saturn.bounceme.net:8080 and register a username and password (with your VALID email address). Remember: the username is just your logon. You can then create any number of actual CHARACTERS under your login.

Anyhow, I figure the server can handle up to 20 players at a time, though I'd like to keep the typical peak down around 13 or less. The PC this is running on also serves as my Media PC, and will soon have more RAM added. The server auto-saves the World and Guild and Player info every 20 minutes, and I have noticed a brief lag during each save, as it's a HUGE dump to the hard drive each time (around 250-350 megs of data each time!)

Lemme know whatcha think!

We recently got all hooked on the series Angel after having enjoyed (I'm shamed to admit) Buffy the Vampire Slayer..

Angel was the spin-off show that ran 5 seasons with the character (vampire-with-a-soul) Angel in the lead role.

The Intro song on the show always struck me as very sad, wistful, almost despairing song, with a hint of "we'll make it despite it all!" attitude in it.. Well, to me anyhow...

Holly turned to me one day and said "Here, now I'd be interested in THIS remixed..." (obliquely referring of course to my dabblings with anime music, which she doesn't much care for.)

So here we go. I don't know if it's good or bad, but this whole track took me about 45 minutes to complete. I might tweak it more, but I don't think so; I quite like it the way it is now. (Note the fun effect on the music toward the end, with the transistor radio thing and the echos..)

Anyhoo, check it out and please post your comments =) It's about 1 minute and 20 seconds long. The original music was 43 seconds long.

Download here: David Taylor (Saturn) - Angelis Reloaded

With thanks to Wiggles.. this was just the epitome of stupidity.. Totally different kind of situation from what I deal with daily at work .. and yet, the stupidity factor is pretty much the same...

Takes about 10 minutes to read through -- try and keep track of the author of each email.. the whole page is presented in chronological order, so it's somewhat easy to follow.. Either way, this is damn funny!

Click here (opens a new window)

Note: CentOS (www.centos.org</a>) is the most awesomest Linux brand out there! I run it, and I love it =)

Had to post this, too funny not to.......

Click image for full size view...

Haven't posted in a while but I had to blog about this....

http://www.nationstates.net/purple_valley

That right there is my new country! Purple Valley.

The Rogue Nation of Purple Valley, to be exact.

Our motto? "What are we doing tonight, Brain?"

...that's our flag

UN Category: Moralistic Democracy
Civil Rights: Few
Economy: Strong
Political Freedoms: Below Average

Overview:
The Rogue Nation of Purple Valley is a tiny, pleasant nation, renowned for its complete absence of social welfare. Its hard-nosed, hard-working population of 5 million are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The tiny government juggles the competing demands of Defence, Law & Order, and Commerce. The average income tax rate is 3%. A large private sector is led by the Furniture Restoration industry, followed by Pizza Delivery and Retail.

Crime is a problem, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Purple Valley's national animal is the mouse and its currency is the narf.

Come by and visit my country....

Signed by His hand on this day by:
His Honourable Ultimate Ruler Dave
Supreme Controlling Elected-Dictator-for-Life of the Rogue State of Purple Valley

With thanks to Wiggles....

Click pic to view full size...

Lower score than expected.... =P

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