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Different weekend (Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - 12:15:36 AM)
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The weekend turned out differently than I expected. Carolaina didn't want to head down to Lake Ouachita, so we ended up celebrating the holiday with our church group.
During our usual rounds to the video game stores and Thackerland flea market, I hit the jackpot! At GameXChange, someone had traded in an Atari 2600 system with a bunch of games. Get this: each of the games had it's origional box and manual--all in near mint condition! I posted a question about it over on the AtariAge forums, along with photos of some of the items. With those and tons of other games I found there, my Atari collection could have easily doubled this weekend. Now I need to go and catalog them all--a daunting task. Once I go through them, I'll probably sell any duplicates on eBay.
We went to see Spiderman 2 yesterday afternoon. It's awesome!
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Random Funny Stuff (Friday, July 2, 2004 - 5:49:55 PM)
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I came across a hilarious new take on Tetris: Tetris 1D
Read the "vaction!" news post on Penny Arcade.
This weekend, we'll be heading back down to Lake Ouachita once again. We're making too much of a habit of this. We'll enjoy the 4th of July with the Dream Chaser crew and watch (and hopefully photograph!) the fireworks show on Sunday night at Mountain Harbor.
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We stopped by Bedford Camera & Video on the way to Dream Chaser Houseboats on Lake Ouachita this weekend. We got Carolaina a Minolta DiMage G400 digital camera for her upcoming birthday. Unfortunately, the thing stopped working for us in less than 24 hours. By now, Carolaina will have gone by Bedford today to try and get it replaced.
Before the camera died, I got these pictures on Saturday afternoon on the lake. One of the neat features of the camera is a sepia tone mode--check out the last picture at the bottom. Another neat feature is that it can take a few minutes of video with audio. I tried to get a good panorama video of the lake when we visited the Hickory Nut Mountain Vista overlook, but the camera refused to take pictures by then.
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I came across this on Slashdot today: the author, Cory Doctorow, gave a talk to Microsoft's Research Group about the evils of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and why it should not be implemented.
I agree with him wholeheartedly. There is a technological change in the wind happening right now, and those companies that don't change with it will die. You might wonder how music artists will be compensated if everyone copies their music for free. I ask you, how do classical music artists make money now? You see, the music they play has long since gone into the public domain. So, by holding concerts they get paid for performing the music. That's the only way current music artists make any real money, anyway. The greedy corporations that sponsor them hardly give them anything.
When will companies get so greedy that you have to pay through the nose every time to want to relax with your favorite entertainment? (They keep trying to foist such things on us: remember the failed DivX hardware standard, the upcoming Phantom video game system, and the ever failing degrading DVDs.) When will they get so paranoid about piracy that it becomes impossible to do anything but pay them through the nose every time you want to listen to a song or watch a movie or play a game? This is already happening with some games--the anti-copying software they use keeps a great many legitimate customers from even installing the game, much less play it.
We're going to have to start standing up for our FAIR USE rights as consumers, or greedy mega-corporations will take it from us. What you can do now is only buy products that allow full and free use of the entertainment media you buy. Avoid games & music CDs that use abusive anti-copying technology. Don't upgrade to the evil empire Microsoft's next heavy-handed DRM operating system when it finally comes out a few years from now.
Anyway, read the text of the talk he gave--it's very enlightening.
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I had a bit of car trouble Friday morning--it's battery had died. It hadn't given me much of any indication that it was on it's last legs. We figured that because of my long drive to work & back, the battery had a chance to recharge each day. Because the car's power got temporarily interrupted, the CD/radio's anti-theft feature kicked in. It wanted a 5 digit code that I couldn't find anywhere.
We had another relaxing weekend. That makes three in a row; seems we're making a habit of this... Anyway, we went down to Lake Ouachita to see where Carolaina's Dad works at DreamChaser Houseboat Rentals. We got to take a look at their largest houseboat--it is really nice! Just a wonderful, wonderful place.
Carolaina got in some fishing off the pier and ended up catching around 30 bream Saturday afternoon. While she did that, I continued to play The Lost Vikings. Some of the later levels in that game are getting really difficult, but it makes it that much more satisfying when I do complete those levels.
That evening before supper, the owner of the place (an old friend of Carolaina's Dad) took us out on the lake on a party barge--so pleasant. You can see a picture of Mr. Borland and his son, Tanner, on the site.
The trailer that her Dad stays in is nice. I really liked the numerous windows and the view they gave. I may sound like a broken record here, but overall, it was a very pleasant and extremely relaxing weekend.
During lunch today, I went out to the car to try and find that code the radio wanted. After digging around in the glove box, I found it buried deep. I've reset all my pre-set radio station buttons, so I'm happy. Now that it's working again, all I need to do is change out the spark plugs and my car should be happy.
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