Animator vs. Animation.

It's even officially available from the company's OSS toolkit: Vim. Well, I use the gVim part. It did help me find the typo I'd made that was apparently the source of all frustration. Probably gonna use it instead of TextPad for all my future .sh editing needs. It doesn't validate scripts per se, but that simple context highlighting provides a lot of improvement.

(Turns out UltraEdit woulda done it too, but (a) we don't have it available here for install and (b) it isn't free either. Might be interesting to give the trial a shot at home, though—for things other than shell scripting 'cause I don't do that at home generally.)

I'm fully not expecting this to get answered, but I figured it's worth a try. Is there a tool that will either validate a (Korn) shell script, or failing that, can do some sort of context highlighting to show me what "if"s match with what "then"s, "else"s, and "fi"s? The damn thing I have won't run, the line number error isn't accurate (gee, surprise there...), and with plain black & white I can't tell what I fucked up that's causing the problem. I also cannot post the script out for anyone to look at, 'cause I'd have a fairly good chance of getting in trouble. Already had a 2nd pair of eyes here looking at it with me, too.

(An aside: good lordy but did I get some mega deja vu for a second there, editing the "here" into the very last sentence. Good thing I was sitting or it would've knocked me flat. Gone now, though.)

I don't want to live anywhere that gets that hot, but I do want an affordable A/C unit that will do that well at cooling my house.

(Source: article on ksdk.com)

I couldn't let this pass, though it does show just how geeky J and I are.

J's been saving up for a 5k craftable... belt, I do believe. As of last night he was one, maybe two days away from having the gold to obtain it.

He couldn't think of a single thing to surprise me with for my birthday. Know what he did? He insisted on giving me 2k to add to my 3400 so I could buy epic flying skill (yeah, I still didn't have that, no time to do dailies or questing, daily) and a flying mount, plus a few hundred to spare. I tried so hard not to accept the trade (I'd logged out in Ogri'la for, what else? daily quests, and he'd just flown there to finish up his). I tried to talk him down in amount 'cause it was more than I needed, and even tried to convince him down to half because that'd leave me close enough to get it on my own in short order, but he was having none of it. So, I now can really zoom-zoom and have a swift blue gryphon, plus I've finally started the Netherwing "prequel" quests that lead up to the the dailies and netherwing drake line.

I can't quite say how sweet that was. He's set himself back on that goal a good 2-3 weeks, just so that I wouldn't spend another month or more getting it myself. Yeah yeah, just a game, not "real" stuff, but he worked for that gold all the same, so it means a lot.

Now to figure out how to help make sure he's able to see WoW content beyond Gruul's lair. He's really saddened by not getting to even see Mags, and the fact that he doesn't get to raid with all the old pre-BC crew because the raid size shrunk and he didn't hit 70 quite fast enough. It's kinda dumb that I probably have a better shot at that than he does, when I didn't hit 60 and sufficiently geared fast enough to see anything beyond MC before the expansion hit. So, I dunno how I could possibly help him, but if there's a damn thing I can do I'm going to be doing it.

I've been prompted to make a list of games I'd like, and so I went through GameSpot's list of games for ideas, then schlepped over to GameSpy to check out their reviews for what they thought and more details on the games. This is the list, only vaguely ordered to have more wanted ones near the top (and no clue which stores may or may not have them):

• Touchmaster
• Tetris DS
• Planet Puzzle League
• Mario Kart DS
• New Super Mario Bros
• Clubhouse Games
• Picross
• Nervous Brickdown

I also saw one I am seriously going to ask for come Christmastime (doesn't come out till mid-September): Super Collapse 3. I love Collapse, and I have a computer copy. The game play should be well suited to port to the DS. (Brain Age 2 is coming out next week, so there's a good likelihood I'll snag that well before the leaves turn colors. Edit: Yep, got it.) I also need to find out from J what game it is that isn't out yet, that includes Dr. Mario, because I would also play the crap out of that. Edit: I was wrong... Brain Age 2 has Dr. Mario as part of its unlockable content.

(In case it wasn't clear, this isn't here to encourage everyone reading to go out and buy me stuff. This is fulfilling a specific request to post a list, crossing off anything I get as I get it. I'm really not a greedy bastage, I swear. )

Edited on Sept 24 to cross off the games I now own.

So, I didn't end up buying a new mobo/cpu. Wasn't worth the ~$20 or less in savings to scramble to find a mobo that'd take all my old crap (i.e. some non-SATA hookups for all 3 HDs) fast enough for that weekend to end. I'd probably have found out it'd be a mobo I'd have to order online anyway, since it'd probably be too old to still stock in stores. Plus I got lazy.

In case anyone else was thinking about it, no, I don't have my /pictures folder or anything in it set up to show indexes. For a reason. Oh yeah, and I do have 403s email me. So, I'd appreciate it if people would quit trying, it's a bit annoying. (Though, it's more irksome to find that a search engine thinks it's a fabulous idea to try indexing a cgi-bin folder. WTF? You'd think search engines would be programmed not to do that, because any halfassed host shouldn't allow something like that, right? I mean, duh! Yet there's Yahoo's "slurp" search engine, trying to index my cgi-bin. So stupid. Oddly enough, it doesn't try to index my /pictures folder. Go figure.)

Warning, birthday ramblings and whining about the month of August being busy straight ahead.

So I'm gonna be 30 tomorrow. Yea? I still have days where I feel like I don't have myself together enough to qualify as a 30 year old. I don't always feel like a fully capable adult, just kinda winging things sometimes. However, I do have my shit reasonably well enough together, and while I "act my age" where it counts (i.e. no child like temper tantrums when the store doesn't have the cheese I want, or crap like that) I also still laugh at silly things like bodily function humor, and indulge in games and so-called "childish" things. I'm not with it by any means; I couldn't name you off anything that's "new & cool". But, I dunno if I could even do that when I was still in college, so... that's more me being oblivious.

Of course, with another birthday comes the inevitable incoming swag, which I'm definitely not too old to appreciate just yet. I am hoping to get a DS game or two, or maybe just the cash to buy 'em. I can't really think of anything else off the top of my head. I suppose if Breck's has gift certificates they'd also be appreciated, in order to feed my burgeoning (but still lackluster, as I've yet to become a green thumb) gardening habit.

In other news, I'm quite ready for August to be finished. Not so much because of my birthday and new demographic angst, but everything else. The month itself has been ridiculously busy, to the point of having to choose this activity over that, not to mention the stupid record-approaching heat. I'm seriously considering using a life vest Wednesday on the float trip, so I can spend more time in the river instead of in the canoe, 'cause it's going to be insanely hot, but I'm not a strong swimmer nor am I comfortable unaided in water higher than about 4'6". We'll be floating the Current, which is spring fed and therefore likely to both have water in it (we haven't had much rain in the last month) and be decently cool. So, I'm thinking a lot of swimming, while tiring, will be a lot more comfy.

We got to see my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's new daughter, as well as them and their son naturally. At less than a month old she's still so little. Also got to see what additions J's folks are adding to their house; they're adding quite a lot, plus redoing some of the inside. It'll be interesting to see everything when they're completely done; we may not even recognize it.

Courtesy of my dad linking their latest article, I bring you Worse Than Failure. Some of 'em (see the "Error'd" section) don't require much if any IT or programming background to appreciate, others do. Either way there are hilarious nuggets to be found all over. And yes, like reading a Dilbert cartoon, I find myself shaking my head and totally getting how many of those things can happen.

I've noticed that the weakest link for my comp is the motherboard/CPU. I've got some old AMD with a 1.3GHz CPU that takes PC133 RAM (though I did buy 2 512MB sticks to have a GB instead of half that). Yeah, quite slow by today's standards. I've upgraded pretty much everything else in the 6 or so years I've had it. The video card is pretty shiny, even if it's also not up to today's standards (I've upgraded that twice, actually).

It's tax free weekend in MO, and there's a local shop called J&B Tech that is in a city that's also participating (Maryland Heights for those who're curious). Figure showing a local business support is good, plus they're a lot closer than the nearest Best Buy in a participating city (not to mention teh ebilness that is BB ).

However, I don't recognize the stuff on their list of mobo/cpu combos. Or more accurately, I don't recognize the AMD stuff, which is what I'd prefer to stick with. Other than Asus, which I've heard so many bad things about with incompatibilities (particularly with nVidia video cards...) which makes me leery of those. I also can immediately rule out the priciest ones, 'cause I'd rather stick with the $400 or less range. The top two choices (first section) are obviously older budget stuff, so I guess I'd be looking at the following:

• MSI ATI RS482 & w/ AMD XP 64 Bit CPU (Socket 939)
  • 3200-MSI K8NNeo - $296
  • 3500-MSI K8NNeo - $346
  • 3700-MSI K8NNeo - $376
• MSI K8NNEO4 Non SLI w/ AMD XP 64 Bit CPU (Socket 939)
  • 3200-MSI K8NNeo4 - $336
  • 3500-MSI K8NNeo4 - $386
  • 3700-MSI K8NNeo4 - $416*
• ASUS SLI w/ AMD XP 64 Bit CPU (Socket 939)
  • 3200-Asus A8N SLI Deluxe - $373
  • 3500-Asus A8N SLI Deluxe - $423*
  (for Asus A8N SLI Platinum add $12.00)

*slightly over budget

I also need to see what slots I need to see if any of the newer mobos have them.

Can anyone offer a little help? I plan on updating this with the other guts I have that need to work, but I can't do that from work so that'd be plenty of hours. Mostly I wanted to write this now so I don't forget, and so I get the question out there. I can say I don't have any PCI Express cards, 'cause the mobo I have doesn't have those slots anyway, so any PCI cards I have are regular PCI (two I can think of for sure are the ethernet card and the USB 2 expansion card; the former might not be needed if the mobo already has it built in, but the latter is required).

So, even though I don't yet have any games for the DS that play over the intarwebs, I figured I'd go ahead and research how to set up router connections (which, I guess you only get options for with a game plugged in that is internet capable, because I couldn't find it anywhere in the main options). Well... apparently that's the one thing Nintendo overlooked: support for routers set up with WPA. All I found were lots of grumblings about that lack, and doubts that there will ever be support for it. On Nintendo's official site on how to set it up, all I found was WEP info. (And, they know how to do WPA because the Wii supports it fine.)

When we got our new router to replace the crappy one, I went with WPA instead of the WEP we had because WEP is such a joke security-wise. So, that means that currently, even when I get a game that can play over the internet, there's no hooking it up to our system.

The only way I've found that might work, is to buy and set up an access point for it to use. I'm assuming I'd plug that into one of the wired connections on the router (or are they, themselves also wireless in that as well as providing wireless?), then have the DS connect to the AP. This is something I've actually not done before, so I'll have to research that as well. Heck, if I'm lucky, maybe that'd be amongst the computer equipment included in tax free weekend this weekend, and I can get it then.

Damn shame the DS doesn't do it though. I really don't understand why, to be honest; WPA isn't some bleeding edge wifi tech, after all.

Edit: Or, since I doubt the DS needs mega download/upload speeds, I could just have spent 2 more minutes looking and found all I need is the Nintendo WiFi USB connector to plug into my PC. *facepalm*

Edit 2 so I can find it again: Found info stating that Zone Alarm can't even be installed, let alone running, for the software for the Wifi USB connector to work properly. However, I also found instructions to keep ZA running and allow it at the same time. Thanks go to timotab for starting the USB connector legwork which prompted continued followup.