Neverwinter Nights is out! A friend, his girlfriend and my roommate all bought copies on the first day. Thankfully, I got to play for about an hour yesterday. The single player mode is a bit dry so far, but I only played for an hour! I really can't decide whether or not I like it.

The interface is a bit clunky due to the Sims-esque circular navigation. If you haven't played either of these games, the navigation starts by clicking on an object (right-clicking for NWN). The click brings up circular icons in a circular pattern around whatever you clicked. You are then required to click on one of these circular icons. If there is more than one such level of navigation, a new set of circular icons in a circular pattern pops up. If not, then your selection has been made.

Belanger and I discussed the merits of this game and decided that multiplayer games with a DM on an isolated server are where this game will shine. People are going to start making modules soon, too. This could be the next Counterstrike.

I saved myself $100 yesterday!

I bought a fairly nice Sony CD Walkman last summer (the previous version of this model). I only used it probably 30 times since I bought it, mostly working out. Back in the day, I would bring a CD player wherever I would do homework, but now I just bring my laptop. Well, sometime last semester, something in my CD player broke. The lid would never stay shut. If the lid is open, the player automatically turns off.

Yesterday, I probably killed two hours just looking at new CD players. I finally decided on this one since it is a Sony, thin, and can play MP3s. Yes, it's in girly blue, but I like girly blue! (You should see some of the shirts I have...) Before ordering it, I thought I might as well try to fix my old player. How could it hurt? I was going to buy a new one anyway! I ripped it open, moved the lever a bit and it worked! Well, by "worked" I mean the lid would stay shut. I got all excited and decided to go work out, just to try it out. After changing, getting a Nalgene bottle ready and downing some Creatine (you think I am joking?), I tossed some batteries into the old player. Nothing. Press play. Nothing. Sigh.

I ripped it open *again*. I couldn't see anything wrong, though I did have to disconnect a cable to reset the lever. I reseated said cable. Nothing. Just then, I noticed a little piece of plastic sitting in my lap. How it stayed there for the fifteen minutes between when I first opened the player to when I noticed it is beyond me. I figured where it went (another lever that pushed down a little button when the lid is closed) and wham. I was off to the CCRB listening to Trail of Dead.

The Register offers mad linkage today:

• Monday night at the Single's Club? Apple's Real People
• Sun's low-end server fight with Intel
• Sun delivers Cherrystone UltraSparc-III servers
• Apache admins screwed by premature vuln report

I would attach some insightful commentary, but I just got swamped at work.

Perl is frustrating me. Stupid websites are frustrating me.

Whenever a site doesn't include a feature I need, I usually end up including it for them. OpenBSD.org doesn't have a search engine, so I fired up ht://Dig. Now, a certain music review site lists old reviews alphabetically. What a mess! I am trying to use perl to spider through the entire site and dump most of the info to a database. The main perl module for web data harvesting is LWP, but it took me about 3 hours to get it installed. It has 35,836 different dependencies and it just would NOT install on an OpenBSD 3.0 box through CPAN. I finally got it to work using CPAN on a 3.1 box. I should have tried the port first, but oh well. More to come.

In my opinion, once you hit the age of 22, no one will still consider you young. 21 is an odd age: you are old enough for almost all responsibilities but society does not consider you an adult. This summer I will hit 22 and it is about time to start saving for my retirement.

With the little research I have been doing so far, there have been two main points driven into me:

1. Diversify your portfolio.
2. Have a 6-12 month cushion in liquid assets in case of emergency

Most households have less than a years worth of income in total wealth. (Actual values: Income: $42,148. Wealth: $40,200.) How scary is that?