Friday Notes... Christmas Eve...
Anybody have a tradition of opening a present up on Christmas Eve? We do here. Usually open up what grandparents get us and one other present. Grandparents were nice as usual, and since I knew what presents I was getting I picked out Metroid Prime 2 to keep me occupied while I'm up at odd hours tonight :) Anybody have any interesting traditions out there?
Despite that I'm going to be playing Metroid Prime 2 a lot, Nanoha will be going up as usual whenever I get it :)
Hope y'all have been good this year.. hopefully nobody's Christmas presents will be put up for sale on eBay because you've been bad, right? ;).
Nothing really to do now.. so I'll throw out a few weather geek facts for the area around Christmas and winter in general.
- The last Christmas with recorded snowfall for Athens is 1993, with 0.2 inches of snow.
- Athens averages 2.5 inches of snow a year
- The greatest 24-hour snowfall is 8.7 inches, recorded on March 24th, 1983.
- The highest snowfall for a season of 14.5 inches occured in the winter of 1981-1982.
- The area is also prone to ice storms due to a "wedge" of cold air at the surface sometimes developing (or technically, cold air damming). We had a minor one earlier this year in January, but the most recent one to really cause some major problems in the area happened in January of 2000 (actually 2 weekends in a row). We lost power here for a couple of days. That wasn't fun :(
- The record low temperature for Christmas is 3F (-16C) in 1983. The high for the day was 22.
- The record high for Christmas is 77F (25C) in 1982.
- The all-time record low for Athens is -4F (-20C), recorded on January 21, 1985 (previous day was -1F/-18C). Atlanta also recorded its all-time record low of -8F (-22C) the same day (-6F/-21C the previous day).
- The most memorable storm for me is, of course, the Superstorm (aka "Storm of the Century") on March 13th, 1993. The area only received 2-4 inches of snow, but high winds and cold temperatures created blizzard conditions. A tree fell on my house (but didn't cause any damage). Areas in the north Georgia mountains received upwards of 2 feet of snow and Birmingham, Alabama recorded over a foot of snow.
Okay, I'm done.. Perhaps I'll take a nap.. ;)
Once again up earlier than I ever would be normally ;) With Rozen Maiden finished, that leaves Nanoha on Saturday, then Futakoi next Thursday left to finish. Everything's ending :(
Anyways, Ten posted her Christmas wish list, so I'll do the same. Though I already know what I'm getting for the most part since I picked it out myself as I said earlier :)
7. Nintendo DS Import Games - Sawaru: Made in Wario and Band Brothers. I'm going to end up giving in and getting one of those sooner or later ;)
6. GameCube Games - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (getting that), Paper Mario 2, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (import)
5. Bigger hard drive - Check, got that. 120GB should last me, right?
4. DVD Burner - Still be useful to have one to archive and backup things even with the big hard drive.
3. Everything on my amazon.co.jp Wish List - Tsukuyomi, Gakuen Alice, Rozen Maiden, Ichigo Mashimaro, Tsubasa, Innocent Starter single, so on.... Though I should be able to get that stuff myself in not too long, hopefully. See how much I can afford :)
2. Dell Axim X50v - VGA screen, CF and SD slots, 802.11b wireless. I want it :) Though my Axim X5 Advanced works good enough for now and I'd rather wait for the next version of Windows Mobile to be released before upgrading.
1. Faster Internet Connection - I've suffered on this 384kbps connection long enough, dangit! And after having just about a year of a 2Mbps connection... shoot, when we first got the cable modem it was 512kbps. But no matter how much I beg, parents won't listen :(
So there you go. What's everybody else out there getting for Christmas (or whatever holiday)? How about those who don't know exactly what they'll be getting? :) Last year, I got what I wanted.. you can guess what it was... All of the first season Cardcaptor Sakura DVDs :).. though it got here a week after Christmas, lol..
Anyways, as usual, no white Christmas for us here this year. That system that seemed like it might bring some stuff here is going to stay way far south. Anybody out there in those places that absolutely got slammed by that storm (up to 2 feet of snow in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky)? However, it is snowing in a place you wouldn't expect. In deep south Texas, around Brownsville. Some wintry weather in the western panhandle of Florida as well. Lucky :)
I'm in one of those places that got slammed (am in Cincinnati, OH and I think we got 18 inches). I will say that that amount of snow hasn't stopped people from shopping for Christmas either (I work at a Best Buy and we've still been very busy).
We got missed too up in East Tennessee, sucks, I was hoping for a white Christmas too. :) I remember that winter of 1993 though, I was living in Cookeville then and we had 5-6 foot snow drifts all over the place. I think we got around 2 feet total but the wind made it even more fun. I'd never seen snow piled so high! ^_^ (Course the downside was my poor car was essentially buried and I couldn't get it out of the parking lot for a week.)
This is one of Jeff Lawson's sort of aquaintances from one of the forums that he posts at. I have been reading your blog (among others) regularly for a number of months. I felt like commenting today for some reason.
>120GB should last me, right?
Actually, if you keep raws on your hard drive for extended periods of time, it probably won't. I can go through 120GB easily with raws, games, fansubs, and other video. :p
You should have went for a 250GB, not that it matters now. Hard drives are so cheap these days and rebates from the usual stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax, etc.) can make them even cheaper.
>DVD Burner
Like hard drives, DVD burners are cheap. You can get a good DVD burner for $60~ from Newegg. Try http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-106-959&depa=1 (beige drive) and http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-106-962&depa=1 (black drive). Even less on rebate as with hard drives. I think that my DVD burner was maybe a bit less a few months ago.
Link
Thanks, Link, I'll keep that in mind when looking for a DVD burner (sooner or later) :)
Howdy, Link.
I have a total of 190 GB to work with on my desktop here at home, and I find it more than adequate. But I don't keep raws and fansubs on my HD for extended periods. Most stuff, I just delete - if I want to watch it again, I'll wait for the DVD release. I do, however, horde soundtracks and the like...something like 60 GB worth. I hope that particular drive never croaks on me.
Forgot to mention that with that new hard drive I'll have 240GB of storage on the network ;)
I've only got 120GB available on my computer (well at the momeny about 5GB free) but manage to work with that. I keep new series burned off onto CDs as soon as I get enough episodes to do so. I'm finally getting a DVD burner though (for Christmas, yay!) so I may change my behavior some, for one thing I know Princess Tutu will go onto a DVD instead of multiple CDs as it would have in the past. ^_^
For music, I managed to get a free iPod back in August so I keep most of my music on it. I bought a program, Anapod explorer, that works much better with the iPod under Windows, and will even let me play music directly off the iPod without transferring it. I love the thing, and it sure let me clear up hard drive space! ^_^
I still want to get a copy of Taito Drum Master sometime, I got to play the arcade version and loved it. :)
It all really depends on how you use the space. I usually keep games, fansubs (until I get them on DVD or feel like deleting them), and other video on my hard drive for a long time, so a smaller hard drive wouldn't suit me well. I am using 97.5 right now, so a 120GB drive would be somewhat close to full.
But yeah, Matthew, you will be fine with 240GB including your network. Heh.
>I bought a program, Anapod explorer, that works much better with the iPod under Windows, and will even let me play music directly off the iPod without transferring it.
I prefer the Winamp iPod Plugin. When I first bought my iPod, I found that I disliked iTunes, so I went searching and found it. It is great, since I always use Winamp for playing my music and now my iPod integrated with it. I use Sharepod for transferring music and playing directly off my iPod (Winamp can do the same, but it can be buggy for transferring music).