Checksum Arcanius

In an amazing turn of events, the Boston Red Sox forced a game seven after falling behind the New York Yankees 3-0, a feat never before accomplished in 100 seasons of baseball playoffs. Then to top it off, they won that game, a feat hardly imaginable four games ago.

That lifted my spirits enough to almost erase the bottom-of-the-class score I got in my most recent math test. Sure, most of the class got high 90’s, and I wasn’t exacly failing, in terms of raw score… but suffice it to say that I was considerably lower than the mean, the mode, and the median. I guess that rushing so I could go see Primer ended up being more expensive than the free that I had previously supposed it to be. I figured there might be some damage, but I sure felt good about the test when I left. Oh well, its only 25% of the grade.

The phone rang. The caller ID said “Friends of Dave.” I figured it meant Dave Reichart or Dave Ross, but I didn’t know which, and I don’t care much for either, so I was just a bit combative when I picked up the phone.

“Which Dave are you a friend of?” I implored.
“Excuse me?” came the slow response.
“The caller ID said ‘Friends of Dave’ – I’m wondering which Dave you’re a friend of.”
“Oh… I’m calling on behalf of Friends of Dave Ross.”
I pressed on – “Are you really his friend, or are you just calling on behalf of his friends?”
But then the caller had his own surprise for me: “Actually he’s sitting just two cahirs to my right.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that, “Cool.”
The caller (I’ll call him Pete, although I don’t remember for sure) continued with his script. We talked about a few issues and ended up on Transportation before I started pressing again. Then Pete had another surprise:
Pete: “In fact, here’s Dave.” He handed over the Phone.
Dave Ross: “I heard Pete here trying to explain some things to you. I thought I could help out.”
Well, I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for this. So we ended up only talking about transportation, and Dave had reasonable responses (bass the $318 billion bill stuck in the congress, mainly). I wish I had more foresight and talked about more general (ie, is government primarily a solution provider or a problem causer?)

Oh well, I guess I have to do my own research on this one. It does make me think that I need more objective measure for candidates. Like a web-based application that quantifies distance between my views (or anyone’s for that matter) and the views of candidates.
Kind of goes along with Theo’s local politics Groklaw idea. Its a good worthwhile project at least.

Being told in a straightforward manner is way better than anything else. It seems, though, that even when straightforward, they have to justify it as not really being straightforward, just obvious. Not that it makes it not striaghtforward. But I don’t know why I’m complaining, I really should be happy. Whatever.

If it can’t be complex I guess its not worth it?

From looking at Apache server logs, it seems that every search engine bot, feed aggregator, and miscellaneous script decided to check out silverfir.net over the weekend. The result has been less than stellar online gameplay on my newly reborn desktop PC. But I guess thats the price of fame.

Thats is the order of the day. On the way to church, I tuned into 710 am to listen to the Hawks last feeble attempts to take down the mighty Patriots. I hate to say I told you so on this one, and hopefully I’m wrong, but we’ll see.

Then was church. I went mostly because I promised a friend I would go. Andrew is a good teacher, and my Palm only has stupid games.

Then I picked up Angela and we did this senior photo thing. It was windy, and some would argue cold outside as well. But we survived. 142 shots later, we were still alive. Hopefully some of them turn out. Cause as much as Angela liked it, I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a model photographer.

Have hope and hang in there.

Everything is going to be ok.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 doesn’t boot on my machine. Thanks to a slipstreamed SP2 installation disc from nifty sources, I was able to confirm this. So, I am staying away from SP2 and have an SP1 install chugging away just fine right now.

Since I was installing my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum drivers today anyway, I noticed the DVD Audio stuff that I had never really played around with, since my last machine wasn’t up to the task of playing it. Well, my current machine is up to the task, and I was quite impressed. Computers are so cool.

It will be a while before I have everything back to exactly how I like it, but I never planned on having a real permanent installation on this computer anyway, so thats acceptable.

Oh, when I reinstalled Steam (one of my first tasks – amazing considering how much I used to detest the thing) I noticed that Half Life 2 Bronze, Silver, and Gold packs are being presold. So now I have to figure out if playing CS: Source is worth it, or if I should hold out for the Platinum Pack that will be available from retailers with a T-shirt. After all, I do have the original platinum pack…