It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, so I thought I’d give ya’ll (can you tell Texas is rubbing off on me?) a little update as to what I’ve been up to. (Or properly, “Up to what, I have been.” But ya know, that’s just a little too grammatical for me.)
Spring semester is over, finally. I expect probably two As and two Bs, though I didn’t do so hot on 3 of my 4 finals, and didn’t do very well on the midterms in those classes either, but my class work was excellent, so I think that will make up for it.
I’ve been playing a lot of Day of Defeat lately. Two weeks ago I submitted an application to join a clan with a nice, friendly server. Even though their web site said they were recruiting by invite only at that point, they interviewed me before the end of the week. (Yeah, I actually had an interview… go fig.) It only reinforced my positive feelings about this clan. They’re not all about m^d 1337 sk!llz! and ‘tude. They’re about sportsmanship, fair play, “honor” and just having fun. Admittedly my in-game skills aren’t the greatest, but they’re more interested in personality and can you play as part of a team. I was invited to practice with them that week (they play as part of Eagle leauge and are currently in second place with 2 matches left in the season.) then in 2 different scrims against other league teams. If all goes well in a few weeks I might get accepted into the clan. They don’t let you in right away. They invite you to practice with them for a few weeks, scrim, etc, to see how you play. It’s not about kill ratios, but can you work with your teammates, follow a game plan, back up other players, “take one for the team”, etc, as well as your attitude, can you get along with everyone, etc.
They’ll be coming out here in July for the CPL Extreme Summer Championship, so I’ll get a chance to meet some of the peaple I’ve been playing with. Maybe I’ll cook them a meal or two. 
This next weekend I’ll be volunteering at the Richardson Wildflower Festival, but don’t look for me in any of the booths. I’ll be helping out in the kitchen. But I’m looking forward to checking out some of the musical acts, such as Cheap Trick (about whom I know very little other than their a rock / pop band who’s been around forever), and Starship (I’ve been a fan for many years, since I saw them live at a United Way summer campaign kick-off at National Semiconductor), Miranda Lambert, Julie Roberts, Terri Hendrix with Lloyd Maines, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band(because I’m a fan of brass and jazz / bluegrass music) and Pure Prairie League. And if you notice that many of those are pretty young woemen, well, call me a sucker if you want. Sex sells and I want to see (and hear) ‘em perform.
Closer to home, a new CPU and motherboard I bought months ago, then somehow managed to kill some time earlier this year, are confirmed dead. I bought an AMD Athlon 2800+ XP processor, Soyo SY-K7VME motherboard and some Centon PC2100 RAM, but wasn’t getting the performance I thought I should. I tweaked a jumper setting, didn’t see any change, kept experiementing and eventually it wouldn’t boot. Wouldn’t even post. Not even a beep to tell me what was wrong. I finally took it all back to MicroCenter yesterday to see if they would test it out for me and tell me which part I fried. Unfortunatly it looks like both the CPU AND the motherboard are toast. Oh well, I bought them as a combo, so by the time I pay the cost to replace either one alone, I’d pay just about as much as the two together cost originaly. Luckily the RAM has a lifetime warranty. If it turns out to be bad, I can still get it replaced (as the guy said “As long as there are no scorch marks on it, we’ll replace it.”)
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