In case anyone is interested, DreamHost is doing a July 4th sale where one -year- of hosting is $9.24. Just in case anyone who missed it the first 314 times they did this sale wanted in on it...

Since the promo page doesn't seem to load when an affiliate link is used... you have to use promo code "777" when signing up for shared hosting.

... but Death Smiles Limited Edition is back in stock at Play-Asia.

I played it a bit, and had a good time with it. Going to try to get back to playing it some more after the latest work crunch subsides.

I just received a spam email so bizarre that I had to post it here:

Subject: Hamburgers - please read. (5/12/2009)
From: "Liz Monteroso" <lizmonteroso@socal.rr.com>
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:23:26 -0700
To: "starcreator" <starcreator@juno.com>

Hello,

I represent a company called Star Position, a company that does what's known as advanced search engine placement. We reach a Network of over 35 million people who are predominantly US based. Our Network is entirely opt-in, and the users on our Network allow us to present them with a preferred choice whenever they are looking for anything on the top sixteen search engines. (GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN and thirteen others.)

I seek one source to send the users on our Network, from the major search engines, for different types of premium hamburgers.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I am in the office daily from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific time.

Best regards,

Liz Monteroso
Business Segment Analyst, Star Position
Phone: 800.481.2979, ext 2002

... what?

On Saturday, after dim sum and the Gamer Symphony Orchestra performance, I went with my family to eat at McCormick and Schmick's Seafood Restaurant in McLean. They offered valet parking, and I didn't see any signage for self-parking, so the car went off with the valet.

On Sunday, my dad tells me after mowing the lawn that there is a dent on my bumper, and asks if I hit anything. I hadn't.

The dent.

Last night, I called the restaurant and obtained the phone number for the valet contractor (Metropolitan Valet, 703-243-1959). I am now awaiting a call back as their office had already closed for the night.

Figures that the foglight set I was going to install on the bumper arrived last night too...

EDIT 12:30pm: Called again since they hadn't responded, and the person claimed they no longer handled valet service to the restaurant. I was given another number to call, this time to a Metropolitan Healthcare at 703-243-3739, where I was again told to call another number - a risk management director that apparently uses her cell phone as her work number rather than working in the office. Called it, got sent to voice mail, and now am awaiting a call back yet again.

Dear Jack Hsien-Jen Wang,

A final review of your academic record has been completed for the University requirements as well as completion of major/minor/certificate requirements. This is to inform you that you have met all of the degree/diploma requirements to be eligible for the award of a bachelor's degree in December 2008.

Degrees will be posted on January 21st and your diploma will be ordered January 23rd. It will take 10 business days for your diploma to be processed and mailed directly to the address provided on your graduation application. Please be aware that diplomas and official transcripts will not be issued to students with outstanding financial obligations to the University.

Congratulations and we wish you the best in your future endeavors. If we can be of any assistance, please e-mail the Office of the Registrar at graduation@umbc.edu <mailto:graduation@umbc.edu>.

Sincerely,

Steve Robinson, Ph.D.
University Registrar

[22:38] <g0lfer18> !record
[22:38] <GGSBot> g0lfer18's record: -363 [12/23/2008]
[22:38] <g0lfer18> !newrecord -364
[22:38] <GGSBot> Your record is now: -364 [12/29/2008]
[22:42] <StarCreator> !record
[22:42] <GGSBot> StarCreator's record: -262 [06/15/2008]
[22:42] <StarCreator> ;-;
[22:42] <g0lfer18> just scored -31 bl ^^
[22:42] <g0lfer18> with a par on 10 xD
[22:44] <Sega> g0lfer18
[22:44] <Sega> shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
[22:45] <g0lfer18> (lol)
[22:47] <g0lfer18> i chipped holes 2,3,4,5,6,8,13,16,18
[22:47] <g0lfer18> nike'd 1,7,12, and 15

I went to Il Mee Restaurant with Chris, Shiene, and Alison today. When it came time to pay the $92.20 bill, I gave them my card. After what must have been 5-10 minutes, they came back with a receipt for $9.22.

I could have totally just signed it and left, but I instead told the waitress and waited again for them to void it and bill me the correct amount.

Maybe I'm too nice.

Lately, my PC of over four years, Kami, has been hanging inexplicably. The problem seems to be hardware-based, as nothing shows up in the event logs. The problem only occurred occasionally when it first started happening a month ago, but now the system can't even stay running for more than a few hours at a time.

I'm not completely without a computer as I have both my laptop and the desktop I built in February, but I was still using Kami for a lot of my daily functions. Hopefully I'll have enough time to get to the bottom of this over Thanksgiving.

Well, it's almost the usual, except I managed to come down with something over the weekend, so I probably couldn't even sleep well even if I had time to. It's not going to be a fun week...

I don't normally get political at all here, but skuldchan linked to a rather stunning argument against McCain/Palin (which, by the way, is not the same as being for Obama/Biden, just to throw that out right away). Everyone who plans to visit the polls next month needs to read this.

I'm posting this on the last day to register to vote for the election in Maryland. The last day to register for an absentee ballot is a bit later.

For now, I've put a stop to the LoudTwitter updates. Facebook already gets updated with my Twitter status, so I didn't see a need to have them here too.

• 17:10 randomly browsed to woot.com right when they listed the bag of crap, and managed to snag 3. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 17:59 Gotta find a way to keep up with Twitter better. What clients do you guys use? I have way too many messages to get them sent to my phone. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 17:49 I need to stop dozing off in class... #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Yesterday, my roommates and I went to Giant (a dominant supermarket chain in this region) for some pre-hurricane grocery shopping. Among our varied purchases was a dozen of extra large Land O'Lakes eggs. On receipt notation, this appeared as: LOL XLG EGGS DOZ.

lol eggs

• 13:22 The curse of long eyelashes - three of them were in my right eye this morning >.>; #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Earlier this week, I made a spec for a budget gaming cube build for a friend, Sean, who subsequently purchased the parts. The parts arrived today:

• APEVIA (ASPIRE) X-QPACK-NW-BK/420 Black Computer Case
• GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
• CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Desktop Memory
• EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
• Antec earthwatts EA430 430W Power Supply
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
• SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223F

So, most of the afternoon was spent building the computer. For the most part, it went well - the only major hitch was the computer initially experiencing a bout of repeated random reboots, which had us fearing the worst before we figured out the reset switch wire had to be reversed.

The total cost of his build's parts, including shipping, was $635 before $95 in rebates. Now he just needs a good monitor to go with it...

• 21:49 Hardee's sweet tea track record: Sunday = perfect, Monday = sugar water, Tuesday = no sugar. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I've already written about the story of how we were originally convinced to purchase several dealer-offered aftermarket options for the Civic (the undercoating and the extra alarm), just to cancel and get a refund on both after further research. This morning, I went back to the dealer to cancel the Honda Care, after the benefits to said program were grossly misrepresented by the finance representative. By my count, this means we have returned every extra we purchased on the car, aside from appearance options that were already equipped on the car before we even took it for a test drive.

We were sold a "Sentinel" plan for $499, which was to last three years or 42,000 miles. My entire family was present when we purchased the car, and all four of us were led to believe that Honda Care included "Service A" and "Service B". Of course, upon receiving our Honda Care service contract a month after actually taking the car home, we found neither of these services were included. In fact, aside from the AAA-like road coverage, Honda Care only offered $25 towards each scheduled oil change (every 5,000 miles). Under the terms of service, only eight such oil changes were covered, thus we would be paying $62.38 for $25 worth of service... and any charges above said $25 per visit would actually come out of our pockets!

So, per the contract, I took the entire thing to the dealer to have them process the refund, as we are still within the 60 day full refund period. Of course, it's going to be yet another check in the mail, which is going to take who knows how long...

In any case, what does "Service A" and "Service B" actually mean? With Honda Care canceled, we're falling back to our long time mechanic sooner than expected, but I'm not entirely sure what should be done at these service points, if anything.

... and I forgot to ask about the gas cap while I was at the dealer. Damn.