Hawk’s Babble-Log

Yaaay! [ItsYourTurn.com](http://itsyourturn.com/) is back online, at last!

For about 10 days, they were having some technical problems with their main data, and lost both the production data and the backup data. I think they’re going to learn the word “redundancy”. At least, I hope so, because I support the site.

Their timing is good, I was starting to go through withdrawls!

I’ve been watching the first (and, unfortunately, the only) season of Firefly by Joss Whedon (of Buffy fame). I like the show and can’t understand how it could have been cut short after just one season when something like Farscape goes four. The universe is a strange place.

Anyway… Somehow–I honestly don’t remember how I found it–but somehow I ran across this:

A look at one man’s obsession to build Joss Whedon’s firefly-class ship Serenity out of LEGO bricks. A tale of woe, and whoa. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss fifteen minutes or so of your life goodbye as you wander through the following pages…

And *DANG!* I’m impressed! The sucker even lights up!

Chris Doyle Presents – Reasonably Clever! Wasting your workday since 1995

Haaaa! I love this guy!

Last night, just as I was about to drift off to dreamland, I noticed a recurring sound over the background music I was playing. I usually play some light music like Yanni or [Enya](http://jedihawk.com/musicstore/) to help me sleep. But there was this strange recurring sound like water leaking out of a huge faucet.

I got up, checked the kitchen, nope. I checked the bathroom, yup. It was somewhere in the bathroom. I was about to pull the shower curtain aside when I realized it was right there, in the middle of the bathroom. Water was leaking through the light fixture and down onto the edge of the toilet.

Dang it, I was almost asleep! From there, it was just a matter of calling management and waiting around for them to fix it. My roommate, bless his soul, took care of everything after that. I waited around a little while, taking the time to clean up some of my email, but I was so tired. My roommie told me to go hit the sack, and that he’d take care of everything. So I did. I crashed pretty hard and before I knew it, my alarm clock was buzzing.

Well… at least it’s Friday!

Outstanding!
=

I love each and every one of these episodes. In each one you’ll find thought-provoking dialog, mystery of character, some action, sometimes some politics, and occasionally some humor.

I started this series last year, believe it or not. I started renting the discs via Netflix. Both I and my roommie loved ‘em, so we kept at it. Unfortunately, it was many moons between discs, and I’ve somewhat lost the original running theme for this set, which was the Laughing Man.

But now that they all have *finally* been released, I got the set! And I’m gonna watch ‘em all over again, just as fast as I can. 26 episodes on 7 discs. Check it out:

I can tell that this is a really great collection because after each and every episode, I want more! I love the universe, I love the stories, and I love the characters.

*Bravo people! Keep up the good work!*

[Amazon Link](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?path=ASIN/B000A5TETI&link_code=as2&camp=1789&tag=jedihawksrecomme&creative=9325)

[My Anime Movies Page](/moviestore/anime/)

I’ve been with Cingular for a while now… probably over four years. Their service has been okay at the best times.

Now, don’t get me wrong; customer service is great. They really try to help you out. Well, mostly.

But the service I’m talking about is my cellphone. Actually working.

My cellphone gets really crappy reception in the two places I’m at most: my home, and my work. When they joined up with the AT&T network, this improved somewhat. But still, if I make a call from home, I have to go sit by the window. And even if I do this, the call will still mostlikely drop a minute or two into the conversation. Which means I’ll curse my phone, go over to my land-line, and call the person back. Then I’ll have a nice long conversation with no interruptions.

Another mild annoyance is that when I pick up a call, there is a 1-in-10 chance that the phone will turn itself off… three seconds into the conversation. This is *so* annoying: “Hello?” “Hey there! Listen, I was just…” Silence. Phones goes off. They wait just long enough for us to *think* we have a conversation going, then cut us off.

Virtually every time I call customer service, they tell me to “hardshock” the phone. A “hardshock” is when you take out the battery when the phone is on. This–apparently–solves all problems… at least, according to customer service. If this is their only tool, then they ain’t gonna be fixen too many problems.

Just to be on the safe side, I hardshock my phone every morning. It has not made any difference that I can detect.

Also of note is the little $20 credit fiasco. Now this is not really a customer service issue, even though it seems to be. Let me explain:

Cingular mailed me an offer: I get a free Motorola V220 phone, plus a $20 credit on my bill, and I get to sign up for two more years. (They like having me hooked–this way, they can deliver moderatly stinking service and not worry about me switching to another provider.)

So I took the deal, like the fool I am. They sent me the phone. I liked the phone (it was a big improvement over my old Motorola T720). But they never gave me the $20 credit. I called ‘em over and over again. They claimed that the $20 credit was never part of the deal. None of the customer service reps that I spoke with saw anything about any $20 credit anywhere in the deal. I was holding the promo piece in my hand while I was on the phone with ‘em. I was holding the letter which Cingular had sent me, and they wouldn’t give me my lousy $20 credit. Customer service continued to suggest that I take the “so-called letter” down to a Cingular Store and show it to a salesperson.

So I did that. On one of my days off, I rode down to a store. It was a nice day, and it was a nice ride, but I think they should have done what they promised me in the first place (in writing, I might add) and just given me my $20 credit. Well, as it turns out, the guy in the store was *no help whatsoever*.

But, I’m a stubborn bastard, even if a stubborn fool. I just kept calling and bothering them about it. I wanted what they had promised me (in writing) and for some reason, they didn’t want to give it to me. But, finally, I spoke with a very nice customer service rep and she did, indeed, give me my lousy $20 credit.

This is why I say that the customer service reps really do *try* to help you. The problem is elsewhere… maybe with the company, or maybe with the service, or maybe some other aspect.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be sticking with ‘em, despite the 2800+ rollerover minutes I’ve accumulated. How have I built up so much? Simple: I can’t use my phone most of the time; no reception.

It’s a real bummer that itsyourturn.com went down a few days ago. I know how hard a dual-RAID crash can be, so I’m patient with them, and I’ll probably re-subscribe when they come back up again.

I miss the site and hope they can retrieve all their data soonly.

- [itsyourturn.com](http://itsyourturn.com/)

- [itsyourturncom.blogspot.com](http://itsyourturncom.blogspot.com/)

I installed WordPress today (July 31st, 2005) and I like it!

But I didn’t want to re-enter all my old posts from b2. So, over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a PHP script to import all my old posts over from b2. I finished it today (Aug 21st, 2005). Yay!

Had I a few hours, I could have banged out the script in just one day. But, my time these days is somewhat limited. So it took me a few weeks.

This is, mostly, why I haven’t been posting lately.

But now I’m up and good to go! So I’ll be blabbing at you much more now!

That’s it for now. TTYL (Type To Ya Later)

At last! I’ve finished Half-Life 2! It was bloody difficult, and I was playing on the easy difficulty level! Dang, I’ve been away from computer games for too long.

Part way through your quest, a chopper starts harrassing you. This bastard chopper from hell is persistent, nasty, and really began annoying me after a few levels. And just to make it even more annoying, none of your weapons are effective against it. So you’ll go along like this, being harrassed by this annoying bastard chopper from hell, until FINALLY–at one checkpoint–a good friend of yours installs a gun on your hovercraft. It’s the same gun that the chopper has. Bingo; GAME ON. From this point onwards, I had one hell of a time giving that chopper a run for it’s life. It takes a while, and it takes a few more checkpoints/levels (because the bastard runs away if you damage it too much), but eventually you reach a large area with lots of boulders where you can stand off against the bastard chopper from hell. The bastard chopper from hell will make bombing runs at you nearly continuously. You’ll take turns running for cover and shooting it as it goes by or circles around for another run. If you can last long enough, and hit it enough times, you’ll eventualy bring it’s annoying bastard ass down. And lemme tell ya, it’s SO sastisfying when you do bring it down. “Oh yeah, baby,” I thought, “I just brought your annoying bastard ass DOWN.”

MMmmmmm… grilled bastard chopper ass…

Anyway… the advanture is huge. At one point the way forward is blocked and you have to take an alternate route: Ravenholm or something. It’s a city like land of the living dead. Just before this point you get the gravity gun, and lemme tell ya, YOU’LL NEED IT. In this city, there are so many evil dead baddies that you’ll run out of ammo before you even meet the insane caretaker priest. He helps you along the way a bit, but he’s still insane for staying in such a place. With the gravity gun, you can pick up object and launch them at the evil stumbling dead–which, by a happy coincidence, all have it in for you. Some of these monsters are very, very nasty. You’ll need the quick save / quick load features. A lot. At least, I did.

You’ll know you’re getting near the end when the evil fortress takes away all your weapons except one; the gravity gun. The evil fortess doesn’t know what it is, and so can’t get rid of it. Also, from this point onwards, the gravity gun is supercharged! It’s a like a gravity gun on steroids. Much fun. You get to toss evil minions around like rag dolls. And the rag doll physics are decent/pretty good.

I’m glad I bought it, I’m glad I played it, and I’m going to play it again. On difficulty level normal next time. Ouch, I can fell the pain already. But it’ll be better next time around because I’m more familiar with it, and I have some idea how large it is. Before, I was running along blindly wondering how much further it would be.

Oh yeah… game on!