snow days, neverwinter nights, and a boring general “life and times” update
Been a while since I had anything interesting to write about, and … well … I’m still there :-p.
Work is work. It’s basically the same thing every day. I go in, I run some update scripts, I do some random experimenting, I document some random piece of what I do, and I wait for someone to tell me that something’s broken. Recent breakages include the color printer (the network card flaked out, causing it to hang. Installed a print server machine and moved away from using the print server in the printer itself, as a diagnostic solution which looks like it’ll probably stick). Really pretty boring.
I guess the most exciting thing that’s happened recently would be the NUOTB project that’s starting up. Basically, Raytheon, the DOD and IDHS are collaborating on this statewide simulation-backed live-action urban operations testing and training program… where they simultaneously develop and deploy new techniques, tactics, and technology. It’s really pretty neat. I’m involved only in that I’m the sysadmin for PHSI, and the Raytheon people needed to get some info about how campus was networked and what sort of computing resources we had around… stuff that I got them. But even that, I mean … I’m not really involved in the development or the meetings or anything as far as I know. So it’s kinda … slow.
Tuesday and Wednesday got some fairly heavy snow. Campus shut down for a day and a half, which is also entertaining. I’ve been sort of relaxing, doing nothing, playing Neverwinter Nights 2. The game looks decent, but it’s a bit of a pig – I think there’s some graphics engine techniques that most games these days have learned to employ to get better and more consistent 3d performance that nwn2 doesn’t use or something. And since I’m playing the 1.0 version with no updates possible (yeah, broke, sue me :p) there’s a lot of glitchiness and performance hitches that indicate not-so-great testing. By far the biggest problem I have with the game though is the spell “incendiary cloud” … it’s just too damned many particles, and it drags my framerate down to slideshow levels.
Anyway, I’ll probably finish the story up over the next couple days and then go back to my gaming hiatus for a while.
I’m learning LaTeX. It’s also good times, ‘cause it’s something of a new thing to learn. See, databases has been kind of boring, because I already have a pretty solid database background. I don’t want to get arrogant and stop going to class only to get blindsided by something, but … to be honest, if class wasn’t cancelled Tuesday I’d probably have elected to go to work and stay there, rather than going to lecture. Or maybe I’d have convinced myself that the professor’s rambling anecdotal sketch of E-R modeling is worth seeing, and gone, exponent sudoku in hand.
I’ve got an exam coming up next week in environmental ethics. Not sure how the snow day’s going to affect the schedule there, but either way I’ve got a decent chunk of reading to do over the next couple days. 10:30 is harder to make than I expected it to be.
And lastly, there’s the forum drama. But I’m not going to get into that – it’s downright tedious, even by “life and times” standards.