WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

Yesterday I took Sienna shopping and we bought 3 shirts, a pair of shorts and some new shoes for kindy. It was good timing as they had a sale on at KMart. Buy one kids clothing item and the second is half-price! She needed new clothes for kindy and shoes as the old ones were… well.. old and dirty.

Also, I found this on the net… Implausible Mission! It’s a remake of Impossible Mission which I was talking about before. It’s a very good version and close to the original, so I’m way happy :)
Go get it and try it out and let me know what you think!

Last night I decided to do some testing of 3 broadband before my Bill Anniversary on Feb 4th. At the moment it’s 10c/Mb.
It worked fine for a few hours on Full Strength signal and in the 3 broadband zone. Then, all of a sudden it dropped off the 3 zone, went to roaming on the Telstra network and could hardly get 2 bars of signal. It remained like that for the rest of the night, so it was back to dialup.
I don’t know what brought that on, but today it’s back up to Full Strength and 3 broadband again?!?
The new Mobilink software from 3 doesn’t work so luckily I had their old software saved on the server. I installed the 3 Modem Manager software (8Mb) and it connected fine. First, I had to disable the ‘mrouter’ application from reserving the COM port for the Motorola A1000 USB connection and download the ‘Connection’ Software from My3 on the phone. Once I did all that, it all worked fine.
The only issue is the software can’t count. After only a few hours just doing some minor browsing and the occasional MSN message, it said we had used 4,096Mb of data!! Up AND downloading. Crazy thing.

Not much planned for today. It’s been very hot lately. Last night I ended up blowing up the blowup bed and slept in the dining room under the Air Conditioner.

Yesterday I went to a couple of shops and they tell me if I want Windows XP Pro OEM I can get it for $250. Some guy in the city told me $150 so I wonder if he was talking about Upgrade Only or was confused, but tomorrow I will see him and if it’s correct I’ll buy two from him. He said he had an order coming in last Thursday afternoon.

Yesterday I went with a friend from work to see Pan’s Labyrinth. We both enjoyed it. I gave it about 4/5 stars as most places I’ve read reviews have. She didn’t think it was worth that much, but I guess everyone has their own opinion. Another friend of mine gave it the same as I did. It’s a dark story but very good. I like the original Henson’s Labyrinth but this is as good for other reasons. Some scary and some gross parts but all worthwhile.

Yesterday I figured out something with my calculator. I’ve been spending $106pm on Gloria Jeans coffee! Holy cow! I’ve decided to just buy a tin of Moccona (thanks Chris/Jo) for $11pm or less and spend $50pm of the money I save on 3’s 3G internet. 1Gb pm for $50. Now I can stop complaining about no broadband in my area hehe. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Telstra, though! Can you believe that? Telstra good for something? Well, 3 had their 1Gb/pm internet at $130pm until Telstra brought out theirs at $45pm so competition really IS a good thing. I’m currently downloading the mobile connect software from 3. 13% done and only 25mins to go 3 also has 2Gb/pm for $69 if it’s not enough but I think it will be.

Some asshat in a house behind me was up at 7am with his bandsaw. Luckily I had to get up anyway to get Sienna to swimming school by 8:30am or I’d be more annoyed. I also woke at about 2:15am and got back to sleep after 3am. I opened the windows to get some cooler air in the room.. or, more to the point, to let the hotter air OUT!

I tested the old Linux server’s WiFi card in my Windows XP box and it works fine, so it’s Linux which is limiting the connection’s distance. If I have the Linux box turned on, I can’t get to it from my PC unless the Linux box is right next to it, yet if I put the WiFi card in my XP machine I can go to the other end of the house with my PocketPC and the WiFi works perfectly. So this should mean that when I put XP Pro on the Linux box to make it a games machine everything will work fine. I might get a RF keyboard and mouse so I can control the games box from the couch to watch DVD movies and surf teh interwebbeh on my 26″ LCD TV

* Pay off credit cards (transferred debt from old card to new one with 0% interest for 6 months. Should be paid off in 2 months)

* Save money for the rest of the year and buy a new home by end of year / start of next year. (Prob 2br around $190k or so)

* Instead of buying any electronics I’ve talked about recently, use my old server as a Windows games box. Buy 2x OEM Windows XP Pro and put on my PC and old server. Buy cheap joystick and wireless mouse for games machine. Games machine to be DVD player as well. Download free games and get some kids games for Sienna. I can buy cheap games from EB etc if I want or download free ones online. Can’t do that with Wii/360/PS3.

* Put big HDDs (180Gb & 200Gb iirc) into my PC and the 80Gb from mine into new games machine.

* Don’t buy Vista for a couple years.

I was going to get a new car this year, then that laptop thingy, then Wii, then car stereo for my car. Now, I’m cancelling all those. Who says it’s only women that change their mind often?
I figured I’d be more responsible and get a new home. Homes go up in value. Cars do not. All the rest do not and I figure an XP Pro machine is just as good as a games machine as anything else I’d have to spend $400+ on anyway. Plus games are not all $70-$100.

I’ll give you a clue.. it starts with a Wii…

I visited about half a dozen stores in Brisbane today and not one has a Nintendo Wii for sale. One shop said they will have some next month, the rest said they have no idea when they might get another one.
Apparently Nintendo has created a fake demand for their device and didn’t release enough to go around. One release before Christmas and once they were sold out, it’s all gone. I think it just pisses off staff at stores and customers and that’s about it. No fake demand happens. Just because a device is not available, it doesn’t make me want it more.

I don’t know if I’d ever get one, but I know for sure if I did get something, I’m not paying $600-$1000 for a Xbox360/PS3.
I like the idea of the Wiimote device. I think that’d be fun and also add some extra exercise to my day. I was reading today some guy lost 8kgs just playing his Wii. That sounds good to me. They would need a lot more funky games before I was completely interested. I was reading recently that Impossible Mission is coming out for Wii, DS & PS2.

An Impossible Mission game has been announced for the Playstation 2, Nintendo DS and Wii, though little information is available. It is scheduled for release in early 2007, and whether it will be a remake or a sequel is unknown.

Also, if it had Lemmings. With both of those, I’d probably be sold. I’d also like an adventuring game, perhaps like Oblivion. What are the chances?
Am I retro-man or what?
Pity the current Wii does not support playing DVDs. I don’t currently have a real DVD player besides my Linux server, so it’d be nice. Apparently a new Wii is coming out later this year in Japan which has an addon to play DVDs. Bit of a crap way of doing it. Shoulda done that from the start in the standard unit.

I knocked off halfway through Friday and met up with a friend from the VZ Emu mailing list (link from VZ-ALiVE if you want to see the list).  We had lunch at Sizzler and had a great chat about retro z80 emulators and games, etc.  Intertek was the guy who wrote the first VZ200/VZ300 emulator for the PC.  He told me about future plans for his emulator “VZ’Em” and his progress with the PocketPC version “PocketVZ”.  After lunch I headed for the train and went home again and watched some stuff on Foxtel with Striker (aka StrikeL). 

Striker and I picked up Sienna Friday afternoon and brought her home.  Saturday morning we went to swimming lessons and she had a fabulous time, as usual.  We came home and had a shower and watched a little TV then all three of us went shopping.  We played at home with Sienna for the afternoon and evening, giving her shoulder rides and blowing huge bubbles for her to chase around.

Sunday morning we went to the local computer markets and I was tempted to buy a Toshiba Libretto:

Type: Ultraportable, Business

Operating System: MS Windows XP Home

Processor Name: Intel Pentium M 753

Processor Speed: 1.2 GHz

RAM: 512 MB

Weight: 2.1 lb

Screen Size: 7.2 inches

Graphics Card: Intel 82855 GME

Storage Capacity: 60 GB

Networking Options: 802.11g

Primary Optical Drive: External