Author Archives: The500footBuddha

Laptop Problems

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My laptop isn’t working, but this time it’s a little more serious than a broken USB port on the side. I would have gone through the computer services at the university, but honestly it took about 2 weeks last time. While the guy I was working with did everything right and made sure everything was working I just don’t feel like I have that kind of time. I went ahead and called Dell.

Calling Dell is not much fun. First they asked me for a number off of my laptop, and I entered it in wrong, but no big deal right, because the prompt at the end reads back the number and says “is this correct?” and I can just answer “no”. Well, it wouldn’t turn out to be that easy at all. I said “no” the prompt said that it didn’t recognize what I said or something and this went on till I was finally transferred to a real human being who transferred me to technical support.

The technical support people were kind of hilarious. Here I am with a laptop that turns on, but doesn’t really do much else. The LED’s aren’t coming on and the keyboard doesn’t do anything. So, the steps were kind of completely inappropriate. Take for example asking me to open Microsoft Word or Notepad and type something in or restarting and hitting F2 at the Dell screen. Yeah, neither of those are going to work when the keyboard isn’t working.

It reminded me why I never want to do phone technical support again. This poor worker isn’t deviating from the script because they are incapable, it is because they probably get a hundred calls a week from people who don’t have a legitimate hardware problem and are just too stupid to restart their computer or something. It’s real and it’s not fun.

I am supposed to receive a phone call from a local tech who is going to come out and replace the motherboard, the keyboard, and the hard drive bracket, and that last thing is for something completely unrelated to today’s events.

Thursday WoW Update

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With the holidays comes a lot of free time to play the games that we all love, but it also means traveling, family, bad weather, and time spent at parties and all sorts of get togethers. While people are still playing World of Warcraft in my circle of friends, and might I add that I have actually logged a few hours as well, for the most part things are just sort of staying the same.

Maybe some time we will all have the time to all get together online and play our characters and stuff. Until then Final’s week is getting closer, Christmas break for the kids, and many other distractions.

A Chance to Stay Home

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The kids mother took them out to see a movie. She also got them dinner while they were out. They went and saw the latest Disney movie, Bolt, which seems like a neat movie and all, but I wasn’t going to be the one to take them. Especially with the cold I had yesterday.

Patty really wanted to see it, because Miley Cyrus did the voice for the little girl in the movie. Everyone had a great time and I didn’t have to do anything.

Thursday WoW Update

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Not a lot happening on the World of Warcraft front lately. Lot of people just not even checking in to see what’s going on. I don’t know if anyone is still playing. Well let me take that back I know some people are still playing.

Steakems hasn’t logged in quite a while, and matter of fact at the time of typing this the armory wasn’t able to bring up his character. I’m not completely sure this character still exists. I know he’s been playing though, because he was bragging on some bitcast that he got to 80 on some other server. I don’t know what’s going on with this character though.

Remana is still playing, but not so much recently. I know that this is still an active character because I get reminded that there is a deficit in funds that needs to be corrected in order for this character to get a mount. This I’m sure will be corrected sooner or later.

Grotesk was supposedly leveled a bit, and I know this because Umori told me so. On the other hand there was an apparent migraine that forced the delay of getting some time in to level Rhenzaburou and Tsugutoshi might be playing, but I don’t know. If it’s anything like how I play then I’d hardly notice, because I gain some experience and then log off and go do something else.

I’ll have to get all the names of Umori’s other characters and list them all here sometime. There are a bunch. I think there are at least 5 level 70+ characters in all.

Xandrov and Romany continue to play those characters and some other characters together, and they would have to be stupid not to since their 3x refer a friend experience credit is going to run out eventually. That means that Rombus has been put on the back burner for awhile, which is fine, since technically I have two alts that need to catch up to him.

Rombus, Romany, and Xandrov actually have their own more in depth weekly updates that you can find if you follow the Rombus link on the left hand side of the page. No credit needed for the idea, because none was given, well it was sort of given. 😉

Movie Night

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Netflix provided another good opportunity to sit down and watch a movie. My son, Andrew, and I all watched Get Smart, which is of course based on the television show, which spun off the cartoon show Inspector Gadget, which was all just a comedic take on the Bond movies in the first place.

The movie was terrific and I strongly suggest giving it a rent if you can. It was extremely funny.

Thanksgiving

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We had a pretty good Thanksgiving this year. My neighbor gave us a larger table for the dining room than what we had, because they got a new one. I’ve had the table we threw out since… well since I can’t remember. It seems like I had that table for forever. I won’t miss it at all though, it had definitely run it’s course. We could all sit at the table without having to move anything around. That was really nice. I could even have a few people over and there would still be room.

I bought glasses this year, so we didn’t have to eat off or drink anything out of plastic. I find it to be a much better experience dining on more glassware, instead of having plastic.

The turkey was good, mash potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce, which is a personal must for me. Next year we won’t burn the marshmallows on top of the yams.

College Update

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I know I haven’t said a whole lot about what has been going on at the University of Akron, but I thought I’d take a moment to update a few things before I head into finals week.

My observation hours are over.  I have to get the teachers signature, write a paper, and type up the log of what I did during the hours I was observing.  I’m going to continue to show up to referee the flag football, but that’s coming to a close as well, so my whole commitment to this thing is basically over.  A freshmen actually was a bit disappointed that they won’t be seeing me any longer, because I am not taking a class that requires observation hours next semester.

I have a mock teach to do next week and then I am done with the Classroom Management class.  It was a pretty great class, and I’m glad I took it.

I have to write a paper, teach a class on strategies for getting students to read in social studies, and finish up an interview with a circulum director for another class.  That and a final.  It’s going to be a busy two weeks for that class.  Really coming down to the wire.

My politics class is coming to a close with a final, and I feel really confident about it.  I enjoy classes that are laid out in a certain way, and this professor had that flow.  It was easy to take notes, it was easy to figure out exactly what he expected, and so I feel good about this class.

The only final I’m actually concerned about is the Reading in Secondary Schools final, because I have been having a hard time studying for that class.  It seems on the midterm I focused on things that ended up being really irrelevant.  That class has given me a ton of ideas and I’m glad I took it, but it would be nice to get a good grade as well.

I guess the next time I’ll be posting about what I’m doing with my classes will be after finals.

Where is the Update?

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I was going to do a Thursday WoW Update last week, because I actually had things to update, but then the wowarmory.com had some sort of bug going on that when you would go to a character it would give you an error. It was affecting half the people I wanted to update about, so I just felt it is better to wait till they get that cleared up.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

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Rick picked up his copy of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on Saturday so on Sunday we actually got a chance to play the multiplayer. To be honest I was expecting a pretty mediocre experience. I know I’ve seen reviews that basically summarize the multiplayer portion of this game as something that feels tacked on and not fully developed. After spending a few hours winning and losing at it I feel I can safely say that the multiplayer is a full experience that everyone should try out.

First you all join a room. In this room you can run around and load up vehicles that you have created. Then if you don’t have it locked, which is a simple press of the A button on the main multiplayer screen to turn it on or off, other players can actually take pictures of your creation and those will be saved to their system as a blueprint. That way they can create the vehicles they see.

What is there to do? There are many different kinds of races. Races in the water, air, and land. There are also sports, and that’s where it would seem that vehicle creation is going to get awesome as you have to develop a vehicle that is good at catching a ball and holding it or pushing another vehicle off a ledge.

You get an appropriate vehicle for every race. The host decides whether everyone starts with a default vehicle or if everyone can bring in their own. Rick and I played with the default vehicles, because we have barely played enough to unlock the parts in the single player game to build our own awesome vehicles. I’m sure we’ll both remedy that soon.

One of the coolest things about the multiplayer is if you are having fun just playing around showing someone your vehicle and the host starts a match, well then you don’t have to join. You can just keep hanging out doing what you want until the match is over. Gives you some control over what game types you want to play as well.

This game is $40 new, so I imagine that a whole lot of people can afford this. With how cool the multiplayer is and how really social it is I am hoping that it’s the next Midtown Madness for this generation. It certainly seems like it, and I’ve already given the game to two other people, so I’m helping that cause along.