Digital Dave

4 Years of active duty service + 4 Years of the IRR = End of Service Contract.

I don’t really know what to write.  Serving in the Marine corps has been an awesome ride.  I can’t say that I really enjoyed it while I was going through the 4 years of active service, but now that I am done with it, and I can look back on it, I’m really glad I did it.  I worked extremely hard for those that were responsible for me, and earned my stripes from very high motivation, determination, and initiative to be just an excellent, and reliable, person.

I do plan on writing something in length about my active duty service.  Hopefully I’ll do that soon, before I start to forget.

For now, I’m free with no worries of war anymore and I can really concentrate on the next ladder I’m beginning to climb. (Unless I’m drafted, god forbid)

Semper Fi

They had an informal competition going on over on their forums that asked for people to create a World of Goo level. I have really enjoyed the first part of the game, and I thought that it would be fun. If you haven’t had a chance to read about the game, your goal is get balls of goo to an end destination on the screen by using goo to build structures. Any unused goo, will be sucked away and sent off to the world of goo corporation.

Very clever game, and if you follow the IGF at all, it picked up a couple awards for technical excellence, and something else.

I revolved this idea around teamwork. I wanted to have two separate starting areas, where both would have to come together to get to the goal. Pretty Marine’ish of me.

Seriously.

This hardware issue has turned into a real pain, but luckily I’m a pretty relaxed guy and take things for what it’s worth.

They replaced my RAM, Video Card, Motherboard, LCD screen.  The blue screen of death is gone, and the graphical issues with the LCD is gone.

Well, sort of.  I boot up my computer, and it doesn’t matter if I go into Ubuntu, or Windows, the screen goes black either A) after the desktop has loaded, B) Before the Windows screen, or directly after, C) Right after the system has been given power.

If it sits on the black screen for long enough, it’ll actually reboot the system, or just hang.

But the black screen seems to be random.  I’m thinking about 1 in 10/15 start ups, I’ll actually get windows to load (hey, I need things off this thing!).  This problem even stalks me in safe mode.

Anyway, time to contact Dell again. Hey, they are a great company, and they’ll figure this out.  In the mean time, this stinks and thank God for my warranty.

So, my lovely Dell XPS decided to begin being a pain in my side a few days ago while my girlfriend was playing Peggle on it (awesome game, by the way). My immediate reaction was that it was probably a screen issue, or a graphics card issue. But, once I restarted my computer, I got a gem of an error in addition to the graphical problems: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA… Computer 2, Me 0…

Great… So now I have a memory issue? I ran a memory test outside of windows, and it passed. I ran windows recover console, and while it found some problems, it didn’t fix the error…

I let the laptop sit for a while and booted the thing up. Poof, windows booted. Yay! Hey, no graphical problems, either! Woohoo! Computer 2, Me 2!

Well, there’s no escape from the hardware gods. The computer went crazy on me after a few hours. Screen went black, green dots everywhere. Computer 4, Me -2837454746.

Anyway, I contacted Dell. Someone will be paying a visit to ‘Lil-Lappy’ next week. Warranty FTW.

My life revolves around this laptop. If I didn’t pay so much for Windows Vista, I might be using my desktop for more than just gaming. ;|

It’s amazing for me to look at this picture. While many started their journey through the Atari, Commodore 64, and even before, this is where I started to get my inspiration.

‘Your present plans are going to succeed’

I love some reassurance during a critical, life changing, year…

Yes, I’m a bit shaken up.  I graduate in 9 months and then it’s go time.  Thank god, but yeah, I’m still really curious to know where I will end up.