iPhone Update, Conan, and Computers, Oh My!

So, a few things. Most recently (read: within the past few hours), I updated the iPhone to 2.0 and then went crazy downloading free apps. Sorry Ari, your drinking app has already been made, but I bet you could do it better. One of the cool ones was this game that claims to be the start of an iPhone only MMO, which sounds neat in practice. The game plays like an odd, timed version of Puzzle Quest, but instead of pieces automatically falling in, you wait for them to show up. Oh, and it is tilt sensitive, which I didn't realize until I was ready to move on and try something else. There's a few other fun things, but some are just hokey. Still, I <3 the Cowbell app :D

Today I picked up two books: The City of Ember and The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. City of Ember looks interesting; a kids novel being turned into a movie that Bill Murray is going to be in. I dunno how much you know about Billy Murray, but he's swimming in dough. He doesn't make movies anymore unless he wants to, which means this must've blown his socks off for him to want to take the part in the movie. Needless to say, my hopes are high. Conan. This is the stuff of legends. This is the original 13 short-stories. This is classic pulp fiction. I'm looking forward to reading it, although there's enough appendices in here to rival my annotated T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, and that's saying something huge. I happen to love T.S. Eliot and have these super-referenced and annotated versions of his stuff. The Conan book has even some of the letters Robert E. Howard wrote to and received from H.P. Lovecraft. How come I didn't know the two of them talked until today?? Meh, my literary knowledge must be on fumes right now. Time to go read.

But before I do that as I pack off to bed... I solved the problem with my brother's computer. I helped him pick out parts on Newegg.com and he bought them. I received them and began putting them together. Well, things were going okay until I tried to turn it on. And nothing happened. No smoke test, at least. I was afraid I'd have to buy parts over again from short-circuiting, but alas. I was succesful in that regard. It turns out I didn't realize I had to put a 12V wire into the motherboard for it to succesfully turn on all the way. I was being taunted by a 2-second turn-on and the shut-off. But it works now, so the next phase is to buy Vista and let me baby-sit it as it installs. That's what Conan is for.

Dark Knight this weekend! I'm excited. I might try dragging the brother back home to go see it with everyone. Or I might just go see it with the parents. Either way. I have to watch my little cousins on Monday during the day, but it really just means I get to go swimming for the day and making sure they don't kill themselves.

I also will most likely be attending part-time classes at Villanova this Fall/Spring and I'm excited about it. It means I can finally do something with computers that's not me breaking my head in with ECE crap. Well, I'm getting there. We'll see how things pan out. Now to find a job nearby, maybe on campus. I still want to go back to CMU and visit my Brothers at KapSig, but we'll see when I can have free time and afford the gas, let alone deal with the parents.

That's it for now. It was a long post, but it kinda' summed up the week. I promise more shorter posts in the future.

Later,
-Bagger