Dirk's Blog Thing

Is livejournal loading slow for anyone else?
Actually, I think it's been doing that for days ...

Foursquare, anyone?

Thought updating the driver might be a good idea. The manual that came with the network adapter explicitly stated not to install the default driver, but my Win7 does, without even asking first. The driver that came with the card is hopelessly outdated too, so much in fact that the website URL the config tool provides is wrong. That's the reason I've had trouble finding an updated driver at all.
Anyway, in the end I did. Latest driver, updated config tool. No outages since then, but then I don't actually know what caused them in the first place, so I can't be certain.

I guess I'll see in the next few days ...

Bed now, work tomorrow.

Instead of going for that real pricey D-Link setup, I instead bought a Digitus WLAN router and PCIe card today, for a mere ... 105€ I think.
...
Anyway, setting up the router was quick and easy. Though for some strange reason, it worked fine after plugging in, but stopped working after configuring it. Nothing to worry though, resetted it, fixed the config, and it worked like a breeze.
Setting up my phone to use the WLAN was about as easy as it gets too. Select WLAN, enter passphrase, done.
The PCIe card was a bit more difficult though. I guess I could've gone with a USB dongle instead, but I only have two USB ports free, and those aren't on the back of the PC but on its side. And those two really are for quickly connecting / disconnecting stuff like phone, music player, camera, stick, etc. Nothing permanent should go there, just doesn't look good.
Anyway, I've got two free slots in my PC that look PCIe'ish. The short one fits the network card quite nicely, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work in that. Got power, and its LEDs even showed an active link, but the comp didn't notice the card's presence at all.
In the end I changed to the longer slot, which looks more like an extra graphics card should go there, and this one works. Windows found new hardware, drivers installed almost instantly, and no networks could be found.
...
Fixed that by installing the drivers that came with the card instead of Windows' default ones.
And now it works quite nicely.

Satisfied with the results. Of course it'll be a few days before I actually really need the WLAN router ...

So I read about the Mafia II demo being available. I liked the first one, and the second is one of the few games I'm currently looking forward to.
But first, in order to even be able to download the demo, I had to install Steam.

I've read a lot of good things about Steam, on /. among other places, in particular about the DRM being considered non-intrusive and therefore acceptable.
Anyway, I'm tempted to just go right ahead and uninstall it again. What a piece of bloatware that is. First of all, after installation, the first thing I saw was an error message. Couldn't connect to server, couldn't update, aborting, etc.
Not a good start.
A few hours later it worked, and I set up an account. Subsequent attempts to launch it mostly resulted in it not logging me in. When I cancelled, and closed it, the task remained, seemingly zombified. Occasionally, it would pop up suddenly logged in a few minutes later (stealing focus an thus crashing Fallout 3 which I was playing at the time).
When I then tried launching the demo it sat there "preparing to launch". Turns out it was downloading parts of the demo, and being very slow about it.
Anyway, Steam will be kicked off the system as soon as Chrischi has seen the Mafia II demo.

As for the demo itself ... How long did it take to play through it? 15 minutes? Not much of a demo IMO. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure yet whether this will be as much fun as the first one. There're certain things about the first one I disliked (some controls, sneaky missions, gameplay quirks etc). The second one seems to be "Mass Effect"'ified, same as many games lately. You have basically the same cover system which to me still feels unnatural. Maybe I've been playing games for too long, but when I want cover I run behind cover, I don't press a "use cover" button. Just as bad is being unable to leave cover by trying to walk from it - you have to press the "use cover" button again. And let's be honest here: The only real point to this is so that the developers can have cool looking, realistic, cinematic animations of the characters ducking into cover. If you didn't have to press a button for that they wouldn't know when to trigger the animations.
Other than that? The game looks really really good. And feels very console'y, but I guess that was to be expected.

Is StarCraft II being released for PS3 or XBox 360 anytime soon?

According to my time sheet, I've had 26 consecutive work days. Those include Saturdays and Sundays, which I call "almost a day off" because they're only 4 and 2 hours, respectively.

Anyway, since it's been a month since I took my wallet out of the vest I wear at work, I of course entirely forgot to take it with me for grocery shopping today. I only noticed when I tried to pay.

Oops, I guess.

Anyway, other than visiting the store twice today, I had breakfast, and then cleaned my place and washed some clothes. That's what I usually do on weekends. I'm mostly done now, so I guess the remainder of the day will be spent listening to music, watching some TV, and playing Fallout 3 which I re-installed a few days ago.

I've started using twitter btw. Does that mean I'm twitting, or twittering, now? Anyway, I'm @ http://twitter.com/inanedirk so please make me feel important and add me d;

I guess I kinda dozed off on the couch.
I only noticed that Germany was ahead 1:0 at the end of the first half of the game ... o_O

I still hope Argentina shoot a goal or two, I don't want to lose any (virtual) money I bet on crowdpark.de ...

I bought some gadgets for my phone on May 31st via eBay. That's a docking station and a holder thingy to use in a car.
Now, on the 21st of June I got a note in my mail that I could come pick it up from the local post office. Once there I was told that no, it wasn't here, the delivery guy had made a mistake in notifying me because he was supposed to deliver to the customs office instead of directly to me.
So I had to wait another few days for a note from the customs office that I could come pick it up.
I got that one today and went there right away. Now I still don't have those items I'd ordered because there's "a bit of a problem" with them. First, the officers can't confirm whether the items are actually genuine. Since they've got "Google", "Nexus One" and possibly "HTC" written all over them they need to get confirmation from some lawyers that they're not actually fakes that need to be destroyed. The officer made some pictures and e-Mailed them somewhere for confirmation, but they even might have to send them somewhere else to get checked.
Secondly, they need yet another confirmation that Google is actually okay with the items being sent to Germany. Or some such thing. I don't quite see why this is neccessary.
*shurgs*

The customs officer promised to call me once she knows for sure. Possibly tomorrow, or Monday. She also said that "Made in Taiwan" suggests they might be fakes.

Yeah right. Because the manufacturer, HTC, is totally a taiwanese company ...