Jeff Billimek’s Journal

I found this really funny flash video making fun of the long server queues in World of Warcraft.

(Long server queues are not so fun)

Yesterday evening I tried to play WoW on my desktop down stairs for the firs time. I’ve been using my MS Bluetooth intellimouse explorer with my laptop but have been pairing it with the desktop when I want to use the desktop. This is a bit annoying because I can’t find an easy wait to have the mouse paired to both the laptop and the desktop at the same time. In other words when I want to switch to another computer, I must ’search for’ the mouse and pair it up every time I want to switch. It would be nice if there was an easier way to have it paired with multiple computers simultaneously.

Anyway, when I was playing WoW last night, it crashed hard with a video driver error after only about fifteen minutes of playing. Just a few days ago I installed the latest reference drivers from Nvidia so I knew the video drivers were fine. I’m running the Nvidia Geforce Ti 4600 video card and haven’t really had problems with it in the past.

I read today that some problems can be fixed by adding the ‘-opengl’ flag to the command when launching WoW. I tried that today and it seemed to work as I was able to play about an hour with no problems. I was pretty disappointed to see that the video performance was close to the same as my laptop which doesn’t make sense. I know the GeForce 4600 is an older card but it should still be beating the pants off the laptop’s ATI 9200.

This week has been blowing by so fast it’s amazing. I really thought the week back after my long four-day vacation would be long & rough. I’m a bit concerned that it seemed to go by so fast.

Today we took Brian out to lunch for his birthday. We went to Smokey Bones down by southlake mall. For the first time ever the ribs weren’t perfect. They tasted as if they were overcooked and had some sort of caramelized syrup on the surface. I wonder if this was a one-time problem or indicative of something else?

I had a couple of meetings this afternoon and found out that we had a severity 2 defect detected in the integration test environment. Casey quickly coded a fix and I kicked off a build.

When I got home from work I finished off the last piece of cake from our wedding shower. Jen showed up around 6pm and she was starving. We both had a bowl of salad as well as some chips & salsa.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me in the mail: a $300 check! A while back I was contacted by an agency who wanted to license one of my photos for use in a brochure. We went back & fourth a bit and finally came to an agreement for a two-year licensing agreement for $300.

Originally they wanted a photo of the fall colors I took in New Hampshire, but they changed their minds and wanted one from Banff instead. It’s a great feeling to get some payment from my fun hobby.

Jen and I left the house around 7pm and drove up to OfficeMax near town center mall. We picked up some more metallic sharpie pens and looked at office furniture. I’m in the market for a nice wooden ‘writing desk’ with a simple thin drawer to use as a computer table downstairs. Traditional ‘computer desks’ are horribly overcomplicated and not fun to sit at. I want a nice large surface with lots of legroom. They had a 60-inch writing table on sale for $180 but the construction was pretty flimsy and I wasn’t impressed.

Afterwards we drove over to Taco Mac for our weekly Thursday night out with friends. I had a vanilla vodka & coke while Jen tried the Sweetwater Blue beer. She had veggie nachos and I had the chicken ceaser wrap. Lynne showed up and we talked about her school stuff. A little while later, Jen’s friend Brad showed up. He’s a good friend of Scott’s and will be helping us out with doing DJ work at our reception. Tom and Terry showed up a little while later.

The six of us had a good time talking and enjoying the evening. Lynne and Brad seemed to have a good time together too given that they had never met each other before.

I was very tired when we finally left and Jen drove home. We immediately went to bed once we got home.