JamesonRobert.com

So, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy X for the past couple weeks. I’ve put about 55 hours into it now. Just got access to the airship last night. At this point, I’m making a pledge to myself to complete as many side quests as I can before I finish the game. So I need to get every legendary weapon, capture 10 of every monster in the game for the monster arena, and get every aeon in the game, just to name a few. We’ll see how long it takes me.

When it’s finished, I’ll post some screenshots on here.

I finally made it back to work. I’m feeling a bit better, and I got my blood work back from the doctor. All clear. Apparently my blood is “Perfect”. No colesteral problems, nothing wrong with my thyroid, so I just had a nasty flu.

On a side note… I’ve put Windows 2000 back on my gaming PC. I’ve got a dual-boot setup going now. Linux has about 200GB of HD space, Windows has the other 40GB. I put Winblows back on the system for two reasons.

1. Windows has much better gaming support. I’ve been using Cedega for my Linux gaming needs for a few months now, and I guess I’m a little tired waiting for better DirectX 9 support. Playing Guild Wars under Cedega, I can’t do any antialiasing or postprocessing effects because I have to run the game with DirectX 8.
2. I couldn’t get my new bluetooth headset and USB webcam to work the way I’d like them to in Linux. It’s a bit easier to get bluetooth working in Windows, and recording video from a webcam in Linux takes a bit more work than I’d like to devote right now.

I’m still using Linux for everything else… web browsing, audio/video stuff, CD/DVD recording, and programming when I have the time. Now that I’m not using Cedega anymore, I can stop my subscription and save $5 a month.

I should be able to post a video of my juggling tomorrow. I would make the vid tonight, but Heroes is on, and that gets my devotion tonight.

Came home sick from work today. I’ve got the flu. I stopped by Walgreens on the way home and picked up some TheraFlu. Hopefully I’ll feel good enough to work tomorrow.

The good news is, I finished orientation at work before heading home.

Update 02-13-07: Still sick today. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

A few months ago, I switched from Windows XP to Linux. Here’s a list of why, so if you’re fed up with Microsoft, pay attention.

Linux is free: Both free as in speech and free as in beer. You pay nothing to get it, and you can freely distribute it.

Linux is open source: Linux, and the majority of software available for it, is open source. You can modify the code however you want, or compile it specifically for your system so it runs faster.

Linux is stable: Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP is pretty stable compared to previous versions of Windows. I rarely saw the horrid blue screen of death (BSOD) when I last had Windows installed, but how many Windows systems have you seen that you could run for months or years without rebooting and not see any slowdown?

Linux has similar applications to many of the ones you’ve used in Windows: There are Linux programs for web browsing, instant messaging, email, photo editing, audio & video editing, you name it! You can even open your Microsoft Office format documents with OpenOffice. Much of the Windows software that doesn’t have a Linux equivalent, you can run through Wine (the windows emulator). I play the MMORPG “Guild Wars” through a gaming-specialized version of Wine called Cedega, and it runs beautifully.

Software installation and updating is simple: All software installs and updates are done through one central program, depending on which distribution you use. You select what software packages you want to install, and they are automatically downloaded, along with any prerequisite packages. When any software installed on your system has an update available, that same software management program will notify you and perform the update for you.

Linux is hard to infect: There are very few viruses and spyware in Linux. Spyware is rare due to the open source nature. Viruses are rare because they would need root user priveledges in order to install themselves. The root account is not necessary to use day-to-day, so the main user accounts have limited privledges.

Linux is fast and stays fast: Linux is built without much of the bloat that is included in Windows, so it runs faster. Windows tends to slow down the longer you’ve had it installed. This is often due to spyware, viruses, and hard drive fragmentation.

Linux hard drive partitions don’t need defragmenting: Data is purposefully packed loosely on a Linux partition. This means when files are resized, the new data can be placed next to the old data on the hard drive, instead of wherever the next empty space is. When new files are created, they are put in a large section of contiguous free space, instead of the earliest open spaces.

Linux is not reliant on its graphical interface: Almost anything you can do graphically in Linux, you can do with the command line, and vice-versa.

Linux is customizable: You can change everything about the appearance of Linux. There are 3 popular Window Managers, and many others. The Window Manager is what gives the desktop and program windows their appearance and behavior.

Linux supports more hardware than Windows: With Windows, drivers for older hardware are left out of newer operating systems, and older drivers are incompatable with new systems. Linux doesn’t have this limitation. Most of the drivers are written by end-users.

Linux is easy to install: Linux is on par with Windows on ease-of-installation.

You’ve waited long enough. Check out http://www.ubuntu.com for an easy to install Linux. You can even try it out before you install it.

I ordered a webcam on Woot.com today. Once it gets here and I get it set up I’ll start doing some video blogging. Proabably gonna show off my juggling first.

Today wasn’t too bad. It snowed, which has been a love-hate thing for me lately. Love, because I like snow. Reminds me of Christmas, and I like the way the trees look all covered in white. Hate, because I work an hour away from home and people in southern Wisconsin / northern Illinois forget how to drive in the snow every time it snows.

Today when I left work, I had trouble stopping for the first stop sign. The road was just a little slick. Tapped the person in front of me. Now here’s the nice part - we both got out of our cars, made sure the other wasn’t hurt and the cars weren’t scratched or anything, then we said goodbye and went our separate ways! Looks like there are still some nice people left in the world.

I’ve been working at this job for about 9 months now as a temp. Data Entry. They’ve finally hired me on full time. I started a week ago. I was supposed to have new employee orientation today. Would’ve had it when I started, but I’m one of two people with my job, and the other was starting the same day. Couldn’t let the extra work build up, so only one of us could go to orientation last week. I tried to go to orientation today, but got pulled out after an hour and a half because someone was home sick. So now I have to do the rest of orientation next week.

The worst part is, when I got to my desk to start working, I couldn’t log in. My windows login had expired. The IT department where I work is incredibly slow, so I didn’t even have a working login by the time I left for home. I had to work all day on another computer under my bosses login. From what I hear, it could take up to 5 days to get my login back. I don’t understand why it should take so long. They really need to hire more people in IT. God knows they hire enough elsewhere in the company. Seems like every other day I’m seeing a new email announcement of a new hire or promotion.

So, I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for many years now. I’ve always been a little afraid of being the DM. Mostly just because I was afraid of working in a pre-existing campaign setting that I didn’t know enough about. Forgotten Realms, Grayhawk, you name it, most campaign settings have a lot of history to them, and that’s a lot for me to commit to learning and working with.

I bought the varient handbook “Arcana Unearthed” a few years back, and since then have wanted to try playing a game in the Diamond Throne setting. The DM I’ve been playing with for a while needed a break, so I decided to run an Arcana game. Picked up a few more books for the setting:

• Arcana Evolved - an updated and expanded “Directors Edition” of Arcana Unearthed
• Spell Treasury - a few hundred extra spells for the setting
• Legacy of the Dragons - a bestiary for the Diamond Throne
• Ruins of Intrigue - a city sourcebook

The cool thing about this setting is that, besides the new rules, there’s only a basic outline of world history, a couple maps, and a few names and places. Only about 30 pages of actual setting content. This leaves a lot of room for me to do my own thing with the setting, and makes very little that someone else created that I need to remember, while still giving me somewhere to start from.

I started the game a week ago, and it’s starting to go well. I hope I can work with this for a while.

Welcome to the new and improved JamesonRobert.com! I’ve been thinking for a while that I should start my own blog, and finally got around to doing it. I plan to post my thoughts on life, a little bit of a personal journal, as well as links to things that I just like. I’ll also talk about my experiences with Asperger Syndrome. I recently discovered the existence of this, and everything I’m finding out about it seems to describe me.

I guess that’s all I’ll post for now. Keep checking by for regular updates!