So awesome! https://t.co/ga2z1xsnlQ

— Timothy Hanson (@timothyhanson) March 3, 2016

My resistance to setting up Instagram is that someone stole my username already and thinking up a good name is agonizing.

— Timothy Hanson (@timothyhanson) February 14, 2016

My sister called and let me know she took my cat to the vet because he had been sick since Saturday. It turns out his kidneys had failed and he had to be put down. Out of the history of all my cats he’s the first one who didn’t mysteriously run away or get run over by a car.

He was so hilarious, he pretty much acted like a dog, always so curious and never afraid to go up and investigate things for you. He was my anti-alarm clock. Before the alarm would go off, he’d hop up on my chest and sleep so I would feel guilty about getting up. He had so much personality and he would always talk back to you if you spoke to him. I carried on outrageously long conversations with him as silly as it was. He loved watching me play Rock Band and would always encourage me to keep practicing. He loved cotton candy and cheese. He would watch me play on the computer and always had advice for me. He was the most unique cat I have ever met and more than that he was truly my cat.

The main things I’ll remember of him are asking him to take care of Mattie while I’m away

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28934183@N02/4549246047/in/photostream

Always being at my side even if it’s inconvenient

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28934183@N02/5072235529/in/photostream

Doing dumb cute things

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28934183@N02/4161225660/in/photostream

And just generally always being around for me

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28934183@N02/3602086376/in/photostream/

He never realized he grew up, he acted like he was the world’s most curious kitten even though he was way too big to do the things he would do. I regret not going to visit over the holidays now but there’s nothing that can be done about that. I’m worried about how Mattie will get along without her life-long buddy. Goodbye Rex, you were my best non-human friend I ever had.

It’s been a busy, brutal, but surprisingly quick year so far. I’ve done tons and tons of stuff, most notably graduating from college (finally!) but also I feel like I’ve seen a lot more movies this year than usual. I even read a book! Here’s my quick rundown.

• Rango: Saw it over Spring Break and enjoyed it. Recommend seeing it.
• Tron: Legacy: It has been a super long time since I saw the original. It probably would have been better had I done a fast rewatching of the first movie but it was ok. I think most people are right in saying that it’s basically a 2 hour long Daft Punk music video and there’s nothing wrong with that.
• Baki the Grappler: Suggestion from a friend. Fighting style anime. Entertaining but I feel like the show loses focus and direction. The second season seems like a totally different show.
• Rurouni Kenshin Jinchuu Arc: I finally got around to buying the manga, so to present this as new is slightly deceiving. If you’ve only seen the anime, you’ll know that after Shishio it all goes downhill. If you read this, you’ll realize how amazing that series was.
• 5 Centimeters Per Second: I had just been dumped and was looking to drown my sorrows in something and this popped up on a top 10 list of shows to watch somewhere. I find the parallel between the plot/moral of the story and the time in my life incredibly coincidental which might bias my opinion. However the animation is incredible if you can find it on blu-ray. Out of anything on this list of stuff to watch, this is probably the highest of recommendations.
• Whisper of the Heart: I’m going through the Studio Ghibli collection so this was on the list. At this point it seems like the themes of all their movies is very familiar. It was an ok flick but I wouldn’t recommend anyone go out of their way to watch it.
• The Name of the Wind: A book! For the first time in forever was I pressured into reading something again and it was pretty great. It has a Harry Potter kind of feel although that is a poor description since it is basically totally different. I was very hesitant to read this finding out that it is part of an unfinished trilogy, but now I’m stuck having read the first and beginning the second to be waiting for the final book to come out. The measure of how much I enjoy a book is based on how quickly I read it I’ve discovered. Once I got to a certain point I was just tearing through it trying to figure out what would happen next.
• Nausicaa Valley of the Wind: Again, going through Studio Ghibli movies, and again feeling very familiar. However unlike Whispers, this was was more entertaining. This one I think I watched in English for some reason which was interesting because it has Patrick Stewart in it. It was also just ok though.
• Thor: This year is the year of super hero movies and this was the movie that kicks them off. This is also the year of much more fantastical heroes which will be very tricky to deal with. However I’d say Kenneth Branagh did awesome. Anthony Hopkins is totally amazing and it just seemed to work out well. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did! It’s cool because unlike most origin stories, Thor always knows who he is, he’s just put in a weird situation that he has to deal with, so you don’t have to see how he becomes who he becomes exactly.
• X-Men First Class: I wasn’t excited in the slightest for this movie until about a week or so before it came out. I rewatched Inglorious Basterds just before this and found out Michael Fassbender was going to be Magneto. Then after seeing it, I basically realize he’s one of the greatest actors of this time period. He made Magneto a total badass. They were not afraid of using their powers in this flick which it seemed like was true in the other X-Men movies. I dunno if that’s a budget thing or what. Anyway, it turned out totally awesome.
• Green Lantern Emerald Knights: In order to psyche myself up for the live action movie I picked this up. The execution of what they’re going for with the multiple short story format kind of didn’t work well on the whole. It was entertaining but I think it may have been made for hardcore fans rather than casual ones.
• Green Lantern: I love the Green Lantern so I was so excited to see this finally come out. However it was probably the weakest of the super hero movies all summer I hate to say. It wasn’t bad though, but they jammed too much into this movie. Blake Lively is hot, Sinestro was well done, but it falls short on various other points. I think First Flight was a much better movie in terms of telling the origin story.
• Community Seasons 1 and 2: This show is super hilarious. You should be watching it. Alison Brie is super hot.
• Horrible Bosses: Hilarious. Recommend watching.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2: Watched it back to back. Overall a good ending to the movie version.
• Captain America: The First Avenger: I actually thought this would be the worst of all the super hero movies but it ended up being pretty great. The end is unpredictable which is odd because it should be super predictable. I rank this probably after X-Men, then Thor then Green Lantern.
• Cowboys and Aliens: It was entertaining. Not a must watch but not as bad as people make it out to be. I mean you shouldn’t expect Shakespeare or anything, the name alone should set you up for the absurdity of what’s going to happen.
• Thundercats: io9 or some reader share I linked put it best. It’s totally awesome. A great reboot for a super campy and silly 80’s cartoon.
• Plants vs Zombies: I was addicted for a good while. I appreciate games that can run in small windows while I do other things.
• Marvel vs Capcom 3: I was also addicted to this for a good while after it came out. While the roster lacks some of my more favorite characters from the older games, it’s still incredibly fun and deep. Watching it played at EVO was incredibly entertaining as well.
• Bastion: I really and honestly can’t say enough good things about this game. It is totally killer and delivers for it’s price point. The music, the delivery of the story, it’s just excellent.
• Tiny Tower: This now currently what I spend any free gaming time doing. It’s not even a game so much as a diversion which is a point of contention between people that enjoy it and people that think it’s dumb. I’m addicted for practically no reason though.

Traveling

• Spring Break: Dallas – Went to visit a now ex-girlfriend. Had a total blast and met a lot of cool new people. I ate great food too.
• San Francisco/Irvine – Took a tour of the Google campus and the Blizzard campus. Pictures are up on Picasa. I hung out with old friends and ate some of the most amazing food.

I’ve gone to a classmate’s wedding and a friend’s wedding is coming up. So many people getting married, I’m practically a professional wedding attender. I’ve been told my time is coming up soon and it probably is, but I’m still a child I guess when it comes to such things. I learned  an incredible amount of things dating someone for the first time in forever this year. I even undid some things I thought I knew about myself from the past. My perspective of things had gone from stale to clean slate nearly.

And finally I graduated from college. I’m not proud of taking so long, it’s almost quite embarrassing. However I can close the door on that chapter of my life and move forward. My parents bought me an iPad 2 for graduation and I’ve been on that thing non-stop. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I actually do, but the battery on that thing is amazing. I’ll probably have a separate post talking about what apps I use and recommend.

I joked that this year is the year I have to grow up and become an adult and it felt like I did so much this year that despite it taking as long as it has to graduate, it was only the last few months where I learned what it  meant to have to take up the responsibilities of being an adult or at least make adult like decisions.

Now I’m basically applying to jobs, finishing my current job, and packing up for my unknowable move. Hopefully I find something soon but you never know with how things are. That’s how my life has been these last 7 months, hopefully the final 5 months finishes strong.

• 5 classes this semester, 2 of which are killing me. Most important one is Senior Project Design
• In my sparse spare time I’ve been checking out Marvel vs Capcom 3 (awesome, looking forward to EVO action), Rock Band 3 (still great), Magicka (hilarious and fun), and Plants vs Zombies
• Cleaning up the old resume for job hunting
• Preparing myself for moving out of the city which is a drag and sad
• Trying to get my fill of McAlister’s sweet tea in, just in case
• Converting my iPod Touch into a working cell phone. I’ll have a larger update on this later but basically as long as you have Wi-Fi you can have a cell phone (even with your own number) out of the iPod. Even if you don’t have Wi-Fi there’s a cool workaround for this. It will be awesome to save $80 a month (after tax) on not having a wireless carrier.
• Pining for a Kindle/Nook
• Pining for an iPad/Xoom
• Watching Archer, Young Justice, and the final season of Smallville

Things I should be doing

• Recreational programming
• Reading books to prep myself for said Kindle/Nook
• Actually applying to jobs

It’s been a crazy year already. It’s nuts to think it’s March already with so much left to do before May and yet it’s crazy that it’s only March. I’d practically forgotten about the page with all the work and projects I had at the tail end of last semester which I should put up here. Anyway, back to homework!

That’s all I have left. I had 3 weeks in May too but they seemed so short. I’m heading to San Antonio and Austin later this week to hang out with the family and to a friend’s BBQ so should be nice and relaxing. Lots of Rock Band, eating, possibly movie watching going on. I may try to read all of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood or watch it on youtube maybe. My remaining to do list is as follows:

• Upgrade computer
  • Add 300GB Velociraptor hard drive
  • Move to Windows 7 64 bit edition
• Beat Borderlands
• Beat Super Mario Galaxy 1
• Beat Dragon Quest 9
• Get all the Starcraft 2 single player achievements
• Catch up on various movies (Toy Story 3 perhaps)
• Clean apartment

The computer upgrading is going to be a huge pain as I’m moving from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Win7. This means a full format and reinstalling all my junk. My actual main concern is iTunes as my library is scattered across 2 drives so in order to be sneaky I have to preserve some of the file structure so when it opens the library file it’ll still see everything in the same spot. I also just downloaded and installed 30GB of Steam games so it will suck to re-download all of that. I’m hoping to cheat by just moving the Steam folder and seeing if I can still launch games.

My secondary concern is that I should probably be using the velociraptor as my primary drive but due to how the upgrade process will probably play out, I will probably be stuck using my current drive as the windows drive and I’ll install all my games onto the raptor.

It will be so confusing in the end. I’m currently setup on a 2 drive system. One 300GB internal with all programs installed, one 750GB external where data files are kept. The future plan is going to be a 3 drive system where the slow 300GB drive will house Windows/regular apps, the fast 300GB drive will house games, and the external will still just be the data/backup. I actually have another external I use to backup the external drive as well. It seems kind of crazy how much storage I have for practically nothing important.

Borderlands I’m somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 way through. It’s pretty fun and great so far but on PC it does feel like a port of the console version. The menus are a little clunky to work with the mouse. The game does this rollercoaster in difficulty at times where you’re breezing through because you have such awesome guns, then you hit a new area and it’s outrageous because now everyone has like 9x the health. I played a little single player and the difficulty is laughable at best. Coop is the way to go with this one.

Super Mario Galaxy I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I’m just not motivated to play the rest. It’s fun, but because I’m playing in very erratic spurts I’m not drawn to it. Lack of achievements also makes me want to get the minimum number of stars and call it a day. It’s strange, I want to play SMG2 so bad because of it’s incredible reviews, but SMG1 likewise had incredible reviews. So maybe I’m just building it all up too much.

Dragon Quest 9 I only just started. I’m determined to like it. Billions of people love this series and I don’t know why I can’t get into it. I always give these games 2-3 hours then stop playing. I really liked Dragon Quest 8, got stuck, then quit. Again I only gave it about 3 hours or so. I started 9 and it seems enjoyable but very classic turn based RPG. My recent experiences with Mass Effect have really shown me the differences in Eastern/Western RPG implementation. With ME2 being so cutting edge, it’s strange to feel like I’m sliding backwards when I play Dragon Quest 9. Again though, the game has exceptional reviews and I have to find out why.

I haven’t talked about it much but I do love Starcraft 2. It really is the game I’ve been waiting for for 12 years. You can check my profile here: Shockwave.759. I’m drawn to achievements for some reason. Maybe it’s that feeling that when I was finally able to kill Emerald and Ruby weapon in Final Fantasy 7 all I could do was talk about it. Who knows if people believe me. With achievements now you have this record of permanence. Some games do horrible things with achievements but I find that Starcraft 2 hits just the right note with them. I’ve finished over 75% of the single player campaign achievements and I’m determined to get all of them. I’m almost NEVER inclined to replay a game, especially if it lacks new game + features, but I’ll gladly replay SC2 to knock out some of the more elaborate achievements. My first run through I chose options/tech upgrades on my needs, but the next runs will be more achievement focused.

I have a backlog of movies I need to churn through in addition to TV shows and anime to watch. I lost my DVR due to my cable company moving to all digital broadcast which cut out my computer’s TV tuner, which really sucks because the tuner has a digital tuner but Windows Media Center doesn’t pick up the lineup. I’m hoping that the upgrade to Win7 will fix this but who knows. I would like to see Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me but I’m guessing I’ll only catch those when they hit DVD.

Rex and Mattie will be 9 (I think?) on Saturday and I won’t even be here. Hopefully they don’t have a big party while I’m out. This is most assuredly the longest I’ve ever had cats. Mostly because as a kid we had indoor/outdoor cats and they would eventually end up roadkill somewhere along the line. I never let my cats out for fear of instant car death scenarios. However since I’m graduating soon and plan on moving I feel like my time with them is soon coming to an end. I’m pretty sure I’ll be giving them to my parents but I’m not really sure if that’s for the best. I feel like I should give them to someone locally but the likelihood that I’ll ever see them again drops off substantially. The situation I’m trying to avoid is having to have another roommate that will deal with my cats, but if I can live alone then I’ll probably keep them.

I actually have so many more things I’d like to do but I doubt I’ll even have the time to get to half of this list. My fall semester is loaded with more classes than I’ve ever taken and they all range from moderate to hard with maybe only 1 class of busy work. I am however looking forward to it for some reason. I think by the time May rolls around I’ll finally be able to put it all behind me and take my next steps feeling like a new person.

Intermittently I have problems with my cable connection. The last time I had a problem some guy came in, questioned why I had my setup the way it was setup then said something outside was broken and giving me poor signal quality. They replaced it and my net was working fine again.

This time I had a very super weird problem. My net connection to any single thing was always terrible (200Kb or so) but I could have tons of connections and it will max out my connection at around 4Mb. Meaning if I have 1 youtube video up, it sucks. I have to start it and hit pause and wait for it to download a bit. But if I had 10 youtube videos up they would all max out my connection up to about 4Mb but each be individually slow regardless of how much other stuff I was downloading. Things like Free Download Manager and bit torrent were still great and able to download things super fast.

So I finally have free time and call up the cable company and they came by yesterday. I explained that last time some weird thing outside had to be replaced. So he checked that thing and said he replaced all the connectors. But before that he also questioned my setup.

My apt has only one cable connection in the living room on the farthest wall. So what I do is I split it at that source 2 ways, one to the TV and one super long coax to the bedroom. In the bedroom I split it 3 ways, one to the modem and two to my TVs (one physical and one TV tuner on my computer). It’s a pretty nasty setup I imagine to have it split so many times.

Ok so he grills me about it and says that I should strongly consider moving my modem to the living room at the first split. The problem with this is that I have a super long ethernet cable back out to the living room supplying my Xbox with net. So I’d have to do some of crazy things to that working. Strangely on my 3 way splitter it turns out the modem was on the wrong prong and that matters as the splitter isn’t evenly balanced and one gets better signal than the others. This helped a little. In the end he left as he had done all he could and I was looking at 5Mb connection or so.

Thinking and knowing my setup was suboptimal I decided to go ahead and move the modem to the living room. It wasn’t a huge pain but I had to bring the router out there as well. This left me with the long ethernet cable I had been using for the Xbox now going into my PC but then the bedroom wouldn’t have any extra ethernet ports so I added a switch in there.

Ok once all this was done the modem was awesome. One speed test showed 11Mb which is 1Mb faster than I should get and what I would chalk up as a fluke, however most other tests showed I was at 10Mb which is what I should be getting. However now my bedroom TV reception sucked. I’m totally boggled but at the same time this is probably the same phenomenon that was making my modem suck in the bedroom.

So I look at the super long coax cable and I had forgotten it was like 50 feet too long. So I have this huge bundle of coax hiding in the bottom of the end table of my couch. Well I pick it up to see if maybe my cats had eaten it or something and it looked fine, then I put it back. Well after that the TV reception in the bedroom was flawless. I suspect there might have been some kind of kink in the cable or something and my messing with it unkinked it. The idea that all of this stemmed from that is kind of ridiculous but I wouldn’t put it past reality.

Interestingly I asked the guy before he left about these Motorola signal boosters I always see on sale and if they worked and he said they work great but the problem is you don’t want too strong a signal coming into the modem so there’s some weird caveat there that I don’t fully understand but it is interesting to know that those things work.

Anyway, the main lesson here is manage your cables well and make sure they’re in good condition. Also put your modem as close to a wall outlet and before as many splitters as you can.

As usual each May I trek down to San Antonio to celebrate the combined birthdays of my sister, brother and myself. I picked up Uncharted 2 for my brother and my sister requested Star Trek Season 2 on blu ray.

I watched my brother cruise through Uncharted 2 and it was totally awesome. I can see why people love that game so much. He blew through it in 2 days, both school nights, so the game is overall really short, however the experience is nearly unparalleled. I think the way they presented the game is phenomenal and extremely polished. If I had one gripe, and this is really silly, it is that they used depth of field blur heavily. It adds a sense of realism but not really. I mean when you look at an object in real life you don’t really notice everything else is out of focus. When you do that in a game it seems more like a technique to force the player to look at a specific thing. I had this problem with Avatar (the movie) as well. Let us look where we want please and our eyes will do the blurring for us. Other than that very minor problem the game was totally excellent.

I made my sister and brother watch Summer Wars. Summer Wars was made by the same people who made The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which I thought was excellent. Actually both are excellent. Anyway I let them watch GWLTT but it was out on DVD and they watched it in English (which the dubbing is really good actually) and they loved it. Summer Wars hasn’t had a DVD release to my knowledge so I made them watch it subtitled. I think that was too much for my brother plus I don’t think he was too invested in the story so he quit halfway through but my sister liked it. I guess 50/50 isn’t so bad.

My sister picked me up the second disc of Gurren Lagann so my collection is now complete. She also picked me up a Green Lantern shirt which I need to shrink down a little. Overall a nice haul since I don’t ask for things really anymore.

Coming home however was kind of a mess. Important facts before I continue:

• I left on the 16th and came home on the 20th.
• I just signed a new lease starting in May. Every time I sign a new lease they give me $50 off my first month on the new lease.
• I don’t usually read my utility bill I get in the mail. I wait for them to post a note on my door. This is due by the 18th
• They usually post said note on my door around the 10th-12th.

Ok so I get home and I see two notices on my door. One saying that I owe nearly $300 and the second one saying that after “multiple” times trying to collect from me, they’ll begin the eviction process at 10AM on the 20th if I don’t pay $180. I read these before I tried opening my door. As I put the key in I wondered if they changed my lock, but it slid right in and opened. As I opened the door I was wondering if they took all my stuff and if so if my cats were still somewhere. I opened the door and there were my cats sleeping on the couch watching TV (automatic timer to deter thieves and entertain my cats).

So an interesting side story is that the past few times I renewed my lease I always get a crazy overdue bill of like a million dollars because they forget that I had 50 dollar reduction for that month so they do like 50 dollars plus 10 dollars it’s late after the 4th so it balloons to some crazy amount. I go to the office and they go “Oh yeah! Forget about it.” then I go about my way.

Combine the above story with the fact that I actually hadn’t received my utility notice yet before I left I guess they added both the 50 I forgot plus utilities plus 10 dollars a day every day it was late and it was nearly 300 bucks. I went in the next day and they say “Oh weird. It shouldn’t be that much. You just owe 30 bucks for utilities.” So I paid and that was a huge sigh of relief. I usually get myself something cool for my birthday so if I had owed 300 bucks then I guess I would have bought myself rent.

So on the topic of getting myself something cool I’ve been needing a computer upgrade for a while. I feel like when I got this processor (Core 2 Duo E6600) I did a bad thing. I have a fairly cramped case and the area where my CPU goes is a total hotspot (800W power supply and a GeForce GTX 280 just below) with cables cluttering everything. I thought it might be great to try some mild overclocking since the motherboard has all these nice autotuning utilities built in for it. Well after a week or two the CPU goes up to like 75 degrees celsius. The rating for the E6600 is like 80 max and eventually it reaches it. I’m thinking that there’s no way this setup should be so hot. I open the case and the 3rd party heatsink had the fan fall off. So I was basically frying the hell out of it. I put it back on and go about my business then a few days later same thing. I open it up and it had falled off again! I’m sort of thinking the thing I bought was junk but I have an epiphany as I’m putting the side back on. The side of this case has this air intake duct that is made for stock coolers. It’s designed to help pull the heat off the CPU and direct it out the side. The problem was with the 3rd party one it was way too tall. So the air duct is like pushing against the apparatus and just knocking it off when I slide it on. Ever since then I feel like my computer has never really performed very well under full load. Clearly no scientific method applied here but in various situations where I feel like I should be getting killer frame rate in an app vs someone with a weaker system, I’m actually underperforming.

So long story short, I’ve been eyeing the Q9400 for a while now. However my motherboard explicitly states I need a BIOS update. BIOS updates being possibly the most frightening thing you can do to a computer because if some weird thing interrupts the update you can basically brick your system. I’ve had a great streak of updating my own and never destroyed a system however the software for updating the BIOS didn’t want to take. So I found I could update the BIOS via floppy. The crazy thing is my floppy disks are freakishly old. I’m kind of risking a lot on a floppy that I have no idea if it’s in good condition or not. I throw caution to the wind and go ahead, right before work. I apply the update and the computer won’t restart. I sort of freak out. I didn’t have time to mess with it unfortunately and had to go to work.

In my spare time at work I looked at the worst case scenario of having to get a new CPU/Motherboard/RAM because why just replace the motherboard and not go for the whole thing if I was going to get a new CPU anyway. The total was like $450 for a cool i5-750 combo which is quite a bit more than the $189 for just the Q9400. I still had hope though for fixing the motherboard though it was very slim. My board comes with something called dual BIOS. Basically it has a backup of the original BIOS and in the event of a bad flash process it will kick in the original BIOS and take you back to square 1. So I broke out the manual and read up on restoring from dual BIOS. The thing says it should work automatically. So since it hadn’t I felt like I was screwed. On my laptop I do more research on the problem and someone said it could be a RAM thing. So my last light of hope was that maybe I had a bad RAM stick. I did some swapping around, which is the worst experience ever with my case/motherboard as I have to remove my video card every time to access the RAM. It worked, I took some sticks out and it reset to the original BIOS.

So did I want to try to get that BIOS update again and risk the headache of this whole thing all over again? Yes. However this time I discover I can put the update on a thumb drive. The update goes without a hitch so all my hopes for the i5 system are dashed. However in addition to getting a new CPU I feel like I need to get some replacement RAM sticks as well.

So my welcome home consisted of a near eviction and nearly destroying my computer. I did avoid both but I feel like this crazy trend of horrible news with near total saves is going to just keep up. I dunno if I can keep up with this rollercoaster!

In movies often the protagonist is setup in a slump and as the viewer you’re forced to sit and watch him come to his senses or make an “aha” moment. I hate that part in movies. I hate knowing that the main character has to drag himself out of his deepest darkest moment since I already know he probably will or the story would just be over.