Time for a change... in time

If you've been living under a rock you may not have noticed, but it's now 2010. I don't really see what the big deal is considering the Earth can make it annual orbit of the sun just fine without us, but whatever. Happy New Year.

Let's try to recap what's happened since my last post: Christmas was mostly uneventful, my sister's taken over my other sister's old room below mine, I spent more money that I don't have, and I managed to get intoxicated a few times.

Christmas was pretty lacklustre this year.

I got some USB-rechargeable AA batteries, but they're 1300 mAh NiMH batteries, so they don't hold much of a charge and they suffer from the 'memory effect'. Sure, there isn't as much room to store the energy since they have to leave room for the USB plug and whatever tiny adapter they have inside, but they could've at least tried to use lithium polymer batteries or something if they're going to be charging almost 20$ a pair. Oh well, still cheaper than buying 20$ worth of batteries every few weeks.

I got the new Super Mario Bros Wii, which is pretty fun. Even if it's mostly a do-over of the original Super Mario Bros, they'd changed and added enough that the game is still a lot of fun. I also got Wii Sports Resort, which has a few cool games, and a few not-so-cool games. Not really worth the money, if you ask me. Maybe if they dropped the price closer to 20$

Still no SATA-to-USB adapter to retrieve the files from my failed enclosure's hard drive, but it's been ordered. It should be here soon. I also got the Griffin AirCurve, which is an acoustic amplifier/dock for the iPhone. It works as advertised, but I find it to be best for when you have an alarm set and want it to be louder than the default volume levels allow. Even the stocking stuffers were kind of lacking this year. Chocolate orange, tooth brush bristle replacements, gum, and some Lindor chocolate.

Just a side note: Lindor chocolates are amazing when you're high. Then again, what delicious food isn't amazing when you're high?

Once Christmas was over, though, Valve decided to throw an end-of-the-year sale. Guess what that means? Cheap games, that's what that means! Crysis and Mass Effect, to be exact. Crysis (the whole pack) for 15$ and Mass Effect for 5$. If I ever get my keyboard and mouse working in Boot Camp, and if the games ever manage to finish downloading (a whole week and I'm at 35%) I'll be sure to have some fun with that.

My sister moved back in. Her computer croaked during the move, so daddy got her a new one. It's got an i5 (I think), a 4650, 6 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB drive. Not bad for 800$. Actually, closer to 600$ since my step-dad gets a discount thanks to his work. All connected to her old less-than-1080p monitor, USB speakers, macro-enabled keyboard and non-Magic mouse, which she apparently didn't like using while she borrowed my computer to keep her WoW guild informed about her moving misfortunes. But that's okay, because she stays up later than I do, so I don't have to turn down my volume or wear headphones when it gets late. That's always a bonus.

On a different note: I absolutely hate phones. Mostly because of the people on the other end. Especially when it's some kind of support line.

Apple support isn't so bad. They seem to get more training (and a bigger paycheck) than anyone else, which usually makes a call to them about as pleasant as a tech support call can be.

Northern Tel (a division of Bell Aliant™), on the other hand, doesn't really seem to know what they're doing. I finally decided to call so they could do something about our horribly-slow connection speed ("up to 5 Mbps" but getting less than 1 Mbps, with a 100+ ms ping). They took note of my complaints and said they'd see what they could do, and if they had any follow-up questions they'd call back. About a week later we got a new IP. Our ping went from over 100 ms to about 30 ms. The speed still sucked, but at least our ping was better. Now to see if they can fix the speed, which is what I was actually complaining about.

UPS support seems to be... very isolated, in that nobody in any one place seems to know what's going on anywhere else. They might as well be sending all their messages alongside their packages, which seem to take forever to get anywhere and have a tracking feature that is less than useless.

On an equally depressing note: Classes started again! Oh boy! Most days I have 4-5 solid hours of class with no breaks. They changed the curriculum again, too, so now I have to re-take Voice and Data Cabling. You know, the class that's supposed to be for electrical students that they just happen to stick on the computer science students because "we deal with cables". It's complete bullshit, but whatever. Oh, and I'll probably have to stay an extra semester to take 2 more classes. That should be fun. But then hopefully I can take a few months off before going off somewhere else, spending more money, and taking more classes I don't want to take so I can learn things that won't apply to my future career.

Can you tell I have issues with the way the current education system works?

Oh, and I finally got my bracelet fixed. Well... 'fixed'. Apparently the jeweler's definition of 'fix' is 'use pliers'. I complained that the locking mechanism was too loose and that it kept unlocking from things as simple as moving my arm. So what did they do? They took some pliers, scratched the hell out of the locking mechanism, dented it slightly, and bent it so that it would be 'tighter'. Unfortunately it's too tight now, to the point where you can't even open or close the lock without pliers (yeah, ha ha). So now I've got a scratched-up bracelet that I can't even wear (or if I do wear it, that I can't take off). I'll be taking it back so they can replace the locking mechanism at their own cost, and hopefully without damaging the rest of the bracelet.

That's about it for now. Congratulations on another successful trip around the sun, everyone!