tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61708212024-08-28T21:58:30.172-04:00Just random stuff. Thoughts, notions, and other stray things that creep into my head during the day. Interesting things that happen in the library.Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-35764570758530390672015-01-08T09:00:00.000-05:002015-01-08T14:44:52.817-05:00

With a busy schedule keeping us on the run, it's harder and harder to catch all of the Wildcat basketball games on TV.  Sometimes I'll take a small radio with me and listen to the game, but there are times where I can't pick up a station that broadcasts the game. I've discovered that I can use an app called TuneIn Radio on my phone to listen to the games.  Once you have the app

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-84712800700211628852014-07-13T23:41:00.000-04:002014-07-14T00:27:28.776-04:00

Getting paid for writing fan fiction... now there's a neat idea.  Kindle Worlds is Amazon's implementation of that concept and offers writers a similar royalty structure for their stories that take place in the "worlds" of the original authors. The current selection of intellectual properties available is an odd collection, at least from my point of view.  If I took the notion to write

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-9908454562251068562013-08-05T01:35:00.001-04:002013-08-05T01:35:07.950-04:00

Time to pay the "idiot tax" again.  No, I don't regularly play the lottery or Powerball or Megamillions or whatever other name you want to call the lottery by.  I'm one of those people who doesn't believe in the tag line of "It's never small" and waits for a huge payout before trying. Will I win?  No, but it's hard to win if you don't at least try to win.  Was there something

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-79882724246567840222013-05-20T09:57:00.000-04:002013-05-20T09:57:52.756-04:00

Yahoo's press release gives the full scoop about how the search engine giant acquired the social media site, but my first thought was "Oh no, Tumblr just became the new Geocities". The first line of the press release reads "Promises not to screw it up" with the emphasis taken directly from the release.  According to the details, Tumblr will be ran separately under the same management as

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-639603282819231572013-04-24T14:58:00.000-04:002013-04-24T14:58:30.648-04:00

The web (or at least the parts where gaming prevails) is abuzz with news that the newest generation of Microsoft's Xbox console will be revealed on May 21st.

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-87199160485287533112011-12-01T10:02:00.001-05:002011-12-01T10:06:08.854-05:00

We were traveling for Thanksgiving this year, and we usually try to stop somewhere like Walmart for restroom and "leg stretching" breaks.  When we pulled into a parking spot, I noticed that the maroon car next to us had an autobot decal in the back window.  Upon pointing it out to my 4-year old son, his eyes got really big.  He thought we had parked next to an actual Transformer.

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-9792884402929787252011-08-09T22:10:00.022-04:002011-08-09T22:10:00.251-04:00

So I was helping someone with a printer issue a while back. This person had typed out something work related, but it kept printing out sideways. Everyone was befuddled as to why it was doing that, which of course means that I get called in to work my magic. Evidently, my magic was on the fritz because it took much longer to fix than I would have ever anticipated.  After what seemed like

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-67619303055302944312011-08-09T17:38:00.001-04:002011-08-10T14:32:19.325-04:00

Ever find yourself sitting in front of the computer with a blank word processing document open and no ideas about where to start?  Neither research papers, book reports, nor the next great novel can write themselves, so how do you go about breaking the ice that's formed over that blank document? Start writing!  Is it really as simple as that?  Yes and no, but mostly no. There's

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-52912027282019323102011-08-05T22:29:00.001-04:002011-08-10T14:31:09.657-04:00

When I read about D3 offering an auction house which allowed players to buy and sell in-game items with real money, the first thing I thought was that they were trying to cutout all the businesses from D2 that traded in runes, items, and pre-leveled characters.  The second thing that I thought of was a scenario where my character would be running around wearing rags wielding a tree branch,

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-45064519200146019092011-08-04T22:59:00.001-04:002011-08-10T14:31:36.242-04:00

Writing is like any other activity; you have to keep doing it to get better at it.  I read an interview with the late Robert Jordan where he talked about being a writer.  I can't find the interview anywhere online now, but it went something like: "If you want to be a plumber, plumb. If you want to be a singer, sing. If you want to be a writer, write."  I think he also mentioned

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-85275825757574794162009-11-16T11:37:00.001-05:002009-11-16T11:37:00.414-05:00

Rumors of a fourth installment of the Scream series are apparently true. How will the latest flick live up to the original Scream? Probably about as well as the last couple. What's that mean? Well, the first Scream movie was a hoot. It managed to poke fun at all the traditional horror movies with the rules of things that you didn't do in a horror film. The best part of the movie was that it

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-63182323332259262662009-11-16T10:00:00.004-05:002011-08-05T22:30:34.169-04:00

When I was little, we briefly had a ColecoVision, which was the first gaming console to grace our house. Not sure why it didn't hang around for long, but I ended up getting an Atari 2600 for Christmas. The Atari provided about as much fun as one could experience with one joystick and a button. When the NES came out, everything changed. I'm probably no different than most people who owned a

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-33339050300278202052009-05-01T16:14:00.002-04:002009-11-15T21:37:54.649-05:00

Assuming that I haven't totally blown my final in my advanced web programming class, I should be done with my masters degree... finally.All the extra work that it has taken has left me feeling like I have been missing a lot of the kids' childhoods.And then let's jump ahead 6 months... Apparently, I was so glad to be finished with my Master's Degree, that I've completely forgotten about finishing

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-50727087563206465232009-02-06T21:13:00.003-05:002009-02-06T22:08:30.152-05:00

We are in an economic crisis -- aren't we? Open a newspaper, turn on the TV, navigate over to any news site, and you'll most likely find something about how bad the economy is. A word like "recession" makes enough of an impression to spin most people into a depression. Yeah, I know that was very bad on my part -- sorry.My question though is this: Are we really in such bad economic straits as

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-56662318433972951572009-02-04T13:10:00.002-05:002009-02-04T13:31:50.004-05:00

I was having a discussion about using Google's Adsense with a friend, and he asked how much had I earned. I popped over to the Adsense site and took a look. Since I started back in August 26th 2004, I have earned a whopping.. wait for it... wait for it... $3.10. Go ahead and take a moment to laugh; I'll wait.It makes me chuckle every time I see it too. From looking at their reports, my best

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-34846809460665915842009-01-07T09:37:00.002-05:002009-01-07T10:02:33.364-05:00

Swayze said that in the year since his diagnosis, he had defied the statistics and "trash magazines" that predicted he should have "already been dead a long time," but he acknowledged that time may be running out.I can't say that I'm a huge Patrick Swayze fan, but I've seen a number of his movies. I also have nothing but respect for anyone battling cancer. I'll admit that when I first heard

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-20719098818841914352009-01-06T11:57:00.002-05:002009-01-06T12:08:12.786-05:00

So it turns out that Amazon's best-selling MP3 was actually from Nine Inch Nails's album that they pretty much gave away for free. A few questions come to mind:Why was Amazon selling it? I guess the answer there is that people were buying it.Why were people buying it? Hopefully, they were supporting Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor. Is giving things away a good business model? It seems like a

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-76279871919127942312009-01-05T11:29:00.002-05:002009-01-05T12:03:07.885-05:00

Given the fact that there are so many Playstation 2 consoles out there, it isn't a huge surprise that the PS2 is beating out the other consoles in terms of usage.Rank Console Usage Minutes % 1 PlayStation 2 30.2 2 Xbox 360 18.3

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-51968480558477512562009-01-02T13:26:00.004-05:002009-01-05T11:17:41.926-05:00

I'll admit it: I did watch a few episodes of "Melrose Place" and "Beverly Hills, 90210" back in the day. No, I wasn't a closet addict to either series, but there were times when nothing else was on. Anyhow, why in the world are these shows being brought back? 90210 is already on the air with who-knows-what kind of ratings (I'm sure someone knows though). Why bring back Melrose Place also?

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-14084270599045219792009-01-02T06:54:00.002-05:002009-01-02T14:32:37.029-05:00

Bowl games. They don't really inspire me. Not like the NCAA basketball's March Madness. Fill the brackets and let them play. Upsets, Cinderella stories, career-making games, and down to the wire goodness. Sure, there are some problems with the way teams are picked and seeded into the basketball tournament, but it's far less arbitrary than the football bowl system.I'm sure I'm not the first

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-35893712303651906362009-01-02T00:25:00.005-05:002009-01-05T11:18:43.758-05:00

So it turns out that I'm always looking up the abilities that the mercenaries from Act 2 in Diablo 2 have. Well hey, I figured that I would just post it here so I could find it more easily.Available Auras Normal: Combat = Prayer Defensive = Defiance Offensive = Blessed Aim Nightmare: Combat = Thorns Defensive = Holy Freeze Offensive = Might Hell: Combat = Prayer Defensive = Defiance Offensive =

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-66716158694913955972009-01-01T23:25:00.005-05:002009-01-05T11:18:18.352-05:00

I'm not sure what I think about the early info about Diablo 3. It's probably too early to really get worked up about it, but I'm afraid that it will be given a World of Warcraft makeover. The mechanics of the barbarian class appear to go along with how the warrior is handled in WoW.I'm still amazed at the number of players still playing Diablo 2. Create a Baal run game, and watch it fill up

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-52648904851310146112008-12-31T20:34:00.003-05:002009-01-02T14:33:30.640-05:00

If you are into video games, you probably know all about the ridiculous price tag associated with Sony's PS3. (Sure, you get a blu-ray player and a lot of bang for your buck, but the system is a massive hit to the wallet.) I bet you have even heard how each generation of consoles tend to sell at a loss, forcing their parent companies to make up the difference through licensing fees, game, and

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-69847487713088843252008-08-27T12:36:00.002-04:002008-08-27T13:33:27.537-04:00

Once upon a time I ran a mud named SkyDain. People came, they played, and life was good. Now, it is nearly 10 years after the fact, and I was feeling nostalgic enough to google the mud name. Only a couple hits for "skydain" turned up, and one is actually a coding mailing list question that I vaguely remember posing.With the popularity of MMOs (World of Warcraft and such), I'm surprised that

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6170821.post-44874590372749771682008-06-25T13:51:00.003-04:002008-06-25T14:07:19.859-04:00

I downloaded Firefox on their "set the record for downloads" day, and the way that was handled seemed odd to me. I'm in EST, meaning that downloads opened at 1pm. Okkkkkk, if the goal was to have the most downloads during a day, it seems like starting the download window at midnight and running through the following night would make the most sense to me.Anyway, no huge differences to the

Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03293032009694334278noreply@blogger.com0