The Chronicles of the Great Nerd Warrior » novblopomo09

And so ends National Blog Posting Month…

dante8 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:53:02 +0000

This may be rather meta, but this is the end of the National Blog Posting Month. The goal was to post each day for the month of November, and with this post I have done so! Woo, consistency!

I wish this post came with some deep insight or interesting fact, but unfortunately I had a rather mundane day of work. I had some very real difficulty sleeping last night, so I’m working on about 3 hours of sleep. My insomnia let me work on my guitar a bit, and I’m happy to be heading down the Denver dojo tomorrow night. It should be a good time! That’s about all I’ve got right now, aside from TV reruns.

It’s about time the government does something cool…

dante8 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:42:06 +0000

It seems that the government has ordered 2,200 Playstation 3′s to build a giant supercomputer. It seems that Sony’s individual sale of two 3.2 Ghz Cell processors can wrack up a price tag of about $8,000 while two PS3′s with equivalent processors costs about $600. I like this for many reasons: the government is being fiscally responsible for a change and they’re doing so by building a supercomputer out of gaming consoles.

For those keeping track, there are instructions how to do this on your own right here. I wonder what the power draw is on 2,200 gaming consoles all on at once… hmm…

D&D!

dante8 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:19:03 +0000

After spending the morning (and most of the afternoon) sleeping in, it was time for D&D yet again. It was a good session tonight, with equal parts roleplaying and combat. It was punctuated by a Taco Bell run, which was the first time in awhile that I’ve had Mexican.

The weekend is wearing on quite well, it is hard to believe that I still have a whole day off before I have to start thinking about work again. The rest of tonight is going to be spent by the fireplace, surfing the Internet. Not much else to report, aside from a clingy golden retriever on the couch next to me. More tomorrow!

Black Friday…

dante8 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:00:57 +0000

Today was a juxtaposition of our normal routine, I got to sleep in while Tasha had to go to work. Being the dutiful husband that I am, I got up and gave the dog a bath, cleaned both bathrooms, took out the soda cans, and entered in three months of grocery receipts into our tracking spreadsheet. I’ve whiled away the rest of the evening watching TV, playing on the Internet, and working on a few blues riffs on my guitar.

Now we’re watching Criminal Minds re-runs with Teddy curled up on my lap. It seems he forgives me a lot more readily when I give him a bath for some reason.

Tomorrow we’re having D&D with our secondary group. It is weird to have more than two days off in a row, but I’m already feeling myself relax. Another day or two of this and I just might be looking forward to work again!

Happy Thanksgiving!

dante8 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:02:32 +0000

This marks the first year in my history that I’ve not spent Thanksgiving with my family, and I must say it was not the same. We were invited to lunch with one of my coworkers, Jason and his family. His wife, Maria, is an excellent cook so we knew that they’d be a good bet for a great Thanksgiving meal. He was also hosting his other friends, Neil and Theresa and their kids, so it was a pretty full house.

The spread was pretty amazing… Maria does pretty much everything by hand (including whipped cream!) and the turkey was good. There was potatoes, stuffing, all sorts of desserts…

Even with all that good food, it still wasn’t the same as being home with my family. I miss the chaos, Euchre, the food that keeps on going for days… but that will just make Christmas all the more special this year. Well, I’m full and it is time for the traditional Thanksgiving Day nap. By the way: my pumpkin pies turned out very well!

2009 Workout #45: Closer to kumite…

dante8 — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:40:37 +0000

Last night Paul B. and I made our way to the Arvada dojo. We started up with some fun basic drills that involved body shifting. In standing position, we started by shifting to our left (still standing up) and throwing a straight punch with the right hand. The next step was to pivot and bring your left foot back to center, but rotate to face the right while throwing a reverse punch straight ahead. That puts our body facing right, punching forward. From there, we stepped straight forward into front stance and did a reverse punch to finish the combination.

We did this both left and right, then we tried kicking. It was the same pattern, but the first step was a front kick, the second was a side snap kick, and then we finished the combination with a roundhouse kick and reverse punch moving forward. It reminded me a lot of the body shifting drills we do back in Pekin.

The next phase of the class was partner drills, where we did pressing block and punch combinations with a focus on sliding our body in and committing ourselves to the techniques. I wonder where I’ve heard about that before… hmmm…

Before class Paul and I took the opportunity to free spar for a bit. His combination of various styles was a little interesting to face up against, he got a few shots in but had a tendency to telegraph a bit so it helped to anticipate his actions. He’s a lot more circular in style than I’m used to, which made me put outward block to use a little more than normal. It was a good time and we’re going to definitely do that more often.

That’s all for now!

The Return of the Wired Network…

dante8 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:27:48 +0000

It’s strange how trends are cyclical. After having my laptop for so long, I never thought that I’d find myself at Best Buy shopping for a 5-port wired Ethernet switch.

As I’ve investigated my Windows 7 Media Center installation further, I have received advice from far and wide that a wired network is the way to achieve optimal performance so I liberated myself from $27 today and picked up a switch to extend the 10/100 network provided by my wireless cable gateway to the rest of the Media Center rig.

It seems that wireless cards aren’t the only thing that Best Buy is overpriced on. They had Category 6 network cables at the low, low price of $13 for a three foot cable. I turned around and ordered three five-foot cables and a 25 foot cable from NewEgg with shipping for $21. So my entire wired network will be with the new and superior Cat-6 cable. Thankfully, it is backward compatible with standard Ethernet ports so I should be good to go.

This paves the way for an upgrade to enable Clear QAM HD recording after the first of the year, which should be pretty awesome!

Long day at the office, long night of boredom…

dante8 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:11:38 +0000

Today was a very long day at the office. Most of my coworkers are on vacation for the holiday, so the rest of us are left to work on fun and interesting tasks. Paul and I were debugging a particularly thorny issue today, thankfully we got the lion’s share of it taken care of today and should (finally) finish it up tomorrow.

I’ve started my Christmas shopping, I always love this time of year. This year Tasha and I saved all year long and are paying for our Christmas gifts in cash this year and it sure takes the financial sting out of the holidays. So far the shopping is going well, doing most of it online to beat the rush.

The weather is getting cold here in Colorado, so I’m relaxing tonight beside the fire. That’s about all I have going on right now!

2009 Workout #44: Casual visit to the gym…

dante8 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:21:56 +0000

After a very lazy Sunday morning, I headed to the gym with Paul for a casual karate workout. We did some stretching, basics, the combination of the month from the Arvada dojo, and then some kata. I took him through Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan a few times so he could continue learning them, then we did Bassai Dai and Empi just for fun.

We tend to share the aerobics room with whatever other rag-tag group of exercise people, and today there were some guys that looked at first like they were doing breakdancing practice but after awhile it became obvious they were some form of Capoeira. Some of the stretching and bending they do was pretty incredible looking, but I question the effectiveness of some of the techniques they were working on.

And before those of you come here to say “stop being so close minded, other martial arts have value”, I AGREE. However, when practitioners are overheard saying “this is how they get cool kicks like you see in the Matrix” I immediately question the value. Just sayin’.

Ignoring all of that, we still had a pretty decent workout. I got a sweat going and I got to work on some of our combination and timing drills while Paul got to work on refreshing his basics and kata. Much fun was had by all!

D&D Night!

dante8 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:07:05 +0000

Tonight I have a house full of people for D&D! Sorry for the lame one-liner post, but I’ve gotta get to the adventure!