Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

W0000t: DarkPanic lives!
Everquest Screenshot

Wooot!! Got some time to play my new wizard on the new progression servers last night... almost 200 people in Nektulos! crazy stuff! Halfway through level 5 already though!

Not too bad for a few hours work!

DarkPanic! lol

Ok... so, I mainly let my SK charge last night and today is my first full day with it....

Two slightly negative thoughts so far... among many things that just impress me. Tons of people have raved about the cool new things... the trackball is actually really nice.. and the speed of the menus is noticably faster and the fact that things are grouped in the main menu makes a lot of sense. Briefly played with the mp3 player which seemed cool but not too useful for me and the internet (when i had decent service outside of my office) was noticably faster, especially when dealing with text based pages. I haven't played with the camera yet so can't really comment.

My two concerns though are... the device in general 'feels' more fragile then I was expecting. Maybe its just because I want to be careful with it, but I dunno. Secondly, and more importantly, the keyboard bothers me a bit. I liked the feel of the rubberized keyboard on the SK2, and I often typed with the tip/nail of my thumbs. That doesn't feel quite as right on the new keyboard because the keys are harder. So instead, I use the pads of my thumbs and find that i often press adjacent keys when I don't mean to.

Maybe it will just take some getting used to.... Otherwise, I'm quite pleased!

OK... I'm impressed... and maybe its just a classic case of underpromising and overdelivering to provide a great customer experience.. but i'm loving tmobile right now.

Not only have then been awesome with my 1,000s of questions over the last week or so with repairing broken Sidekicks... if there are any fees to move phones onto another plan (there aren't any... wow... screw you Sprint and your $35 activation fees)... and details about what I can do with my new Sidekick3.... but.. on top of all of that.. i placed an order for one at 11:08pm central time... got the express shipping... which said 3 business days... i was prepared for it showing up friday... or maybe monday (or maybe even wednesday due to the holiday)...

Buuuuuut... I was able to look up my UPS tracking number (using my phone number as the reference number... how clever!) and I saw that not only did it ship out today... but its being sent NEXT DAY! So I'll have it Thursday!

Wow... After all the crap I dealt with from Sprint for years... I can't tell you how awesome T-Mobile has been... I'm sure that some people will have some horror stories about them... but they have been awesome to me!

Wheeee... just after midnight eastern I was able to place my upgrade order for the new Sidekick 3. Was hoping for a better deal on the upgrade price, but can't really complain too much. Express shipping for $15 (less then 5% of the price of the phone... doesn't bother me much!) should hopefully get it to me on Friday.

I (along with countless other nerds in this world) am hitting UPS's tracking page a bit too often to see when my phone is shipped and when its scheduled for delivery.

I know that UPS won't deliver it on Saturday... and Monday may or may not be a holiday for them. Oh, and I have a replacement hard drive for my server downtown. Almost exactly when i was ordering my SK3, one of the 4 drives failed. $90 later (wow.. hard drives got cheap! a Server quality 250GB hot swappable SATA drive.. wow...) and NewEgg has a replacement drive on the way. Gotta find some time to get that swapped out, probably on Saturday. Yay for the machine not even blinking through a hard drive failure!

Yaaay! a little bit of good news! Now if I can just get through all the other crap work I need to do so that I can enjoy SummerFest up in Milwaukee. (Sid Maudlin and Cowboy Mouth on Friday and Nine Inch Nails on Sunday) everything will be perfect!

Oh, and new EQ server opens today! guuuh... too much to do.. and not enough time! But yeah, back on the topic here.. my SideKick3 is inc! and I'm sure I'll be posting more about it.

New EQ progression servers open on Wednesday! Soooo gonna be ready for this! Got a wizard all set to go on the Sleeper server..

Just need to find time to wrestle away from all the other crap going on in life... ahh.. such fun!

So much to do! Take 4 days off of life.. and its amazing how much crap piles up. I probably won't be caught up until next week and I really want to post something about the trip but I already feel the details getting fuzzy... all the little stories just don't seem as entertaining anymore.. but I'll do what I can to post about it...

bah

Well, its finally over! I'm sitting in airport now awaiting the return flight to Chicago!

Was finnally able to relax.... Unwind... And let all the burdens of day to day life just drift away. I was able to stop worrying about stuff that wasn't done yet and focus on actually enjoying myself... Ya know.. Doing what I want to do... When I want to.

Its probably not a coincidence that my most relaxing moments where those when my sidekick was dead (poor thing! It definatly got a workout!). Normally, I panic... Wondering what messages were lost... And when ill be able to get it charged again.

But in the new frame of mind, I just let it go... And I haven't felt that rested in quite some time.

I'm gonna try to remember lots of the craziness from the few days in florida... And I want to post those... Gonna really need sleep though... My clock is going to be way screwed up... And I know this weekend is not going to help matters.

Anyway... I'm reaaaallly tired... Hoping to get a good hour or two of sleep on the flight... Then I'm heading home to shower and change and spend all day at work catching up from the 3 days I've been out.

Vacation updates soon! While they are still fresh in my mind!

Oh, and check out my flicr page for vacation pics if you haven't yet!

Well... 8:30 came and went.... And there was a long line of people trying to figure out what's up... 8:45 and I get into line... And by the time I get up to the front, they are putting people on standby for a 9:15 flight... Great... So I get on that because I don't have too much time to waste...

I make it over to the other gate just in time to hear myself called... I got a seat on that flight... And my original flight got an announcement that they were gonna begin boarding and they completed all the work on the plane...

So.. Might get in a minute or two earlier then my original flight...

Yay for not checking any bags though... So, its just a minor setback... About an hour... Lets home that's it for the crappy stuff... But I'm not holding my breath! More to come...

Soooo... I almost expected crap to go wrong with this vacation I'm taking... After a crazy weekend with two friends in from out of town, Ben from Vegas and Sara from LA, plus the company party on saturday.... And the things I had to turn down.... Air show with my dad (company party conflicted) and fathers day (oops, planned this vacation without realizing)...

It was a huge headache putting this little trip together... And as much as I despise Florida, part of me was actually looking forward to getting there and unwinding for a few days.

Well.. My flight was supposed to leave chicago at 8:05am... I pulled an all nighter because I just had too much to do and was just looking forward to getting on the plane so I can sleep...

But they made an announcement at about 7:45 that some part on the plane needs to be replaced... And again at 8 that they will be making a decision by 8:30 if they can fix it or not... There was a bunch of maintainence guys scurrying around the plane.. But they are gone now... At this point.. I have no clue what time ill get into florida.... But its a fantistic start!

Why does ANYTHING remotely related to florida go to shit in unexpectedly creative ways. I really shouldn't be surprised... And I'm trying to adopt an attitude of just laughing at it just enjoy how crazy the situation is...

And yeah... Before anyone has any smartass comments about how I should be glad that the found it before they took off.... I'm a pilot... Its called a preflight checklist... If its missed, I would be even more pissed! Its called aircraft maintainance... And this isn't some rinky dink airline... Its united... At the airport they are headquarted at...if they can't get the part here, installed, and tested in an hour... They should have another plane laying around that they could swap out...

Oh... And to make matters even more enjoyabale... They just paged a 'Robert Boender' for the second time.... Or a name that sounds a lot like it over an airport speaker.... How entertaining would THAT be... Stuck in an airport on the same delayed flight as HIM!!

Haha... Well.. At least I'm laughing... 8:24 now... Gotta rest my hand... Ill probably post that story sometime soon (I know... Ya can't wait!!)... 5 more minutes and I get to find out what's up... Yay! At least I managed to kill 20 minutes.. Yay sidekick! Will have to post about that too... And the new ones due next month...

Ok, so my company is having its summer party at Great America, a Six Flags theme park near Chicago. I was pleasantly surprised that despite it being one of the first summer weekends, with temperatures in the mid 90s (and humid, yay humidity!), the park really wasn't all that crowded.

A park employee offered an explanation: many high school age kids had graduation parties. I think that the HUGE new waterpark that they opened had something to do with it. I'd saw about 1/4 to 1/3 of the park is taken up by 'Hurricane Harbor'... And it actually looks like it would be a lot of fun. The place was packed... But the real reason I'm writing about this is simply because I was more impressed by the sheer size of the PEOPLE here.

I really should have taken a picture of some of them... And I wouldn't hesitate to post the nasty ass behemoths here.
Now... Its no real secret that americans are waaaaay overweight. And, yeah... I can't put on any weight if I wanted to... But wow... These people have no shame!

There were faaaar too many 300+ pound women in bikinis strutting around like they were supermodels. They actually looked PROUD of their appearance! I'm sure some of them have issues that go beyond laziness and eating everything in sight... But unless there was some convention that rented out the park, I really think this was an honest cross section of the american public.

Was it always this way? I don't seem to recall seeing this many GIGANTIC people, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. I was a lifeguard for 4 summers and haven't seen this many disgusting people in all my days lifeguarding, combined!

Now, I'm really not a shallow person... And I'm sure that some of them are fantastic people... But wow.... They should have people in whatever store they got their swimsuits that watch these people and use a cattle prod on them when they get close to the bikini section....

Wow... I just don't get it.... Enough rambling.... Next time.. I'll get pictures!!

Oh, and this was also posted FROM Great America while I was waiting for a ride... Yay for mobloging from my Sidekick!!

OK, I finally got off my ass and got my blog stuff reinstalled... Between Google's Cache, and stuff I can dig up on archive.org, I think I can get most of my old posts back.

I kinda waited to long to back up MY database from my old host and it was gone before I did anything about it. They wanted me to pay $75 to get an old backup back. HA! good thing I'm not with them anymore. This is running on my own server now hosted on a PHAT connection in downtown Chicago.. but more on that later!

I know everyone has dearly missed my ramblings so I'm going to be posting a few more catch up type posts since it's about 9 months now since I last posted on here...

Good Times!!