Media Overload

Just a quick post. Still here.

Survived the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo last Saturday. Took some pictures. I will post them soon, promise.

I've been down on the Island for the past two days working on some network issues. I was finally able to track down the source of our headache. It felt really good to resolve this particular issue. I was starting to take it very personal.

Anyway...so I get done and start the drive back into Houston. Fog was thick on the Galveston Causeway and it took me almost an hour to get down the backside of Harborside and across the Causeway, then another hour to make it home. Yuck.

On the way home I had a very important stop to make. Yesterday, was the tri-release on DVD of Hayao Miyazaki's three features: Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor, Totoro, and Whisper of the Heart. I was SO excited that these were finally out. I've been waiting since January for them. I didn't have any trouble getting Howl's but it took me some time finding the only copies of the other two the store had in stock. They seemed to have been misstocked. But succeed I did. I also grabbed the widescreen release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I was stoked. Network problems solved, THREE Miyazaki movies and HP:GOF. (Sighs) Couldn't last. When I got home and we had opened all them up, turns out I had grabbed the single disk version of HP:GOF, not the DUAL DVD release version. Alvis has been reminding me of this shortcoming for the past two days now....I guess I'll be getting that one soon... (Jim Thompson refers to the HP:GOF release at his place as the "Zero Day Exploit." I can relate, Jim!

While shopping I also picked up a player's guide to BLACK, that PS2 game I picked up. I really wanted it for the maps. I've been spending too much time lost in a forest. I'm picking the game-play up pretty fast now. The first mission had several stages. (Public notice: I admit I'm playing on the easy level right now.) I got past the first one (pre-guide) on the first day. It took me three days to get past the second stage. I got past the rest in about two hours. I cleared the entire second mission in three hours. There are a total of eight missions (I think). Once I clear these I'm going to replay on the normal level. If you clear all the missions on each higher difficulty level, you get to unlock some bonus treats with "silver-grade" weaponage (ammo never runs out). Clear all of them and you apparently get some super-awesome, mega destructive assault rifle--with unlimited ammo. For massive destruction. Well worth playing them all for. There are lots of strategy tips in the guide, but I really find it most useful (like I said) for the maps since there is a lot of territory to cover and it can get really confusing in all the trenches, pipes, and buildings after a while. Most hard-core gamers would laugh at me, but this isn't really my normal gaming fare. I'm having a real blast. Even Lavie seems to enjoy looking over my shoulder pointing out things for me to take out and collect! It's really funny. It's too brutal for Alvis and she is sulking about that.

We are watching Harry Potter Goblet of Fire right now. I really love the set designs and cinematography but I have to confess the writing and acting is kinda getting on my nerves in this release. It is way too serious--and comes off being almost over the top. We also are heavy readers of the series and this one takes some liberties with the plot and characters (missing in action in the movie). So although we are enjoying it, it is leaving a bit to be desired.

Been noticing some issues with my Roadrunner Cable broadband service. For the past couple of weeks downloads have been petering out halfway through. I am also having trouble loading large media files (ala Rocketboom). I've reset both my router and my cable router. No difference. Page loads seem ok, but it is just the larger downloads that seem to stall out. Happens on both Lavie's laptop and our desktop pc's. I've been too busy with my workplace networking issues to take the time to call TimeWarner, but this weekend I'm going to work the phone system there and get them to run some diagnostics.

Anyone else run into this problem with them?

See you in the skies...
Claus