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Journal: OS-tan msgina.dll hack

Journal by skadus

Got tired of seeing that last entry on my profile page... so I'm posting to get rid of it. Heh.

Yesterday I finally found out some Windows graphics I'd been wanting to hack are located in msgina.dll. So last night I went to work with Resource Hacker, Replacer, and the GIMP.

I'm not an artist, so I wound up assembling a Windows XP logo (like the sticker tag they place on new machines running XP, the little white tag) and a wallpaper of XP-tan, an anime girl that's a personification of XP.

It looks pretty cool. I like how it turned out. It's not as ... odd as some graphic hacks you find online. I'm not that fond of the poorly-made pictures of biohazard symbols and Tux firing a Quake 3 rocket launcher at a Borg Bill Gates. This winds up being a little more tasteful, while still declaring that I'm running Windows XP.

I made another one on 2K, but I don't like how it turned out. I couldn't find a good pic for it, and the 2K logo I did sucks.

Anyway, check it out.


Journal: Chat logs

Journal by skadus

Yes, I'm a jerk for posting a chat log. Especially one where I'm clearly being a ranting asshole. But I'd probably make a journal post about the subject anyway. This saves me time and blood pressure. :p

(22:07:55) Xxx Xxxxx: "Last night the voice of the people was heard. I will refrain from imititating it.. for respect for the mentally retarded"
(22:11:11) Skadus: .... kay... it really bothers me that the side that lost accuses every person who voted for the guy who won as being stupid.
(22:11:52) Xxx Xxxxx: ::shrug::
(22:12:09) Skadus: it's that same smug 'i'm smarter than you' yankee liberal bullshit that would make me never vote for a democrat.
(22:12:21) Xxx Xxxxx: That's where we differ, I s'pose
(22:13:07) Skadus: that's what's dividing the country. both sides are so blind they can't see why someone would disagree with them.
(22:13:17) Skadus: and then they call each other names.
(22:13:30) Xxx Xxxxx: I see why people voted for Bush. I just don't agree
(22:13:46) Skadus: then don't insult them.
(22:14:14) Xxx Xxxxx: I don't care. I'm going to insult them. I'm in that mindframe right now and there's not much I can do to change that. ::shrug:: And, again, I don't really care.
(22:16:47) Skadus: calling someone retarded for making their choice doesn't really endear you to them. and it makes it a lot harder down the line if you try to sway them to your side.

that's part of why i think bush won. kerry and michael moore and everyone else just bashed and bashed and bashed and never tried to go 'this is why you should agree with us' ... no, instead they go 'and this is why you're stupid for agreeing with them.'

what does that solve? nothing. at best you get a few people on your side. at worst you get a landslide of people voting against you in spite.
(22:17:24) Skadus: .... i'm sorry. it's just... frustrating. BOTH SIDES do this shit all the time and i'm sick of it.
(22:17:42) Skadus: i don't even know why i'm complaining about it. thjat's why i voted third party anyway.
(22:17:45) Xxx Xxxxx: Oh yeah, they could have campaigned a lot better. I'll give you that. Obviously - they lost. But they lost by very very little.
(22:19:14) Skadus: and that's why they lost. it was a weak candidate. it was a shitty campaign. they swayed no-one away from the opposing side. and then they perpetuate it for insulting the opposition when they lose.
(22:19:23) Skadus: .... i'm done. i'm sorry.
(22:19:38) Xxx Xxxxx: ::shrug:: Say whatever you want, I dun' care. We're both set in our ways and we're just blowing steam.


(22:37:10) Skadus: see... i can understand being upset with people that vote blindly. that just go 'eh. i'm republican. ::punches ballot::' without thinking. if you want to call them retarded, fine. but there are people, real, thinking people, who looked at both sides, and actually agreed with one side more than the other... and voted after thinking about it. they aren't blind, they aren't retarded, they aren't evil people... they just think and act differently.
(22:39:03) Skadus: i like pie.
(22:39:11) Xxx Xxxxx: Oh, no I agree. They aren't retarded
(22:39:48) Xxx Xxxxx: I'm talking about the Christian people who didn't even GLANCE at any statistics. Who just voted because their church/mate/sibling/parent told them to vote Bush. My parents knew NOTHING of any of the issues. They just voted Bush because... just to vote Bush.
(22:41:06) Skadus: see... that's fine. i don't mind that.

it's just everyone else acts as though they're one and the same.
(22:41:30) Xxx Xxxxx: Nah. I know there are specific reasons that some people voted bush.
(22:41:40) Xxx Xxxxx: However, I don't feel it was the majority of hte people that had those specific reasons.
(22:41:50) Xxx Xxxxx: I think most people were scared and didn't want to go for anyone new.
(22:42:02) Skadus: which is often the case during a war.
(22:42:19) Xxx Xxxxx: mmhmm


Journal: ::sigh::

Journal by skadus

(This is a rant. Most of it is train-of-thought. Portions of it will make no sense because of this. Leave me alone.)

The political commentary of the last 24 hours, summed up:

OMFG! The sky is Falling! The sky is falling! We're all gonna die!

.... Y'know, deep down a part of me wanted Kerry to win, because people would stop bitching.

Hell, one of my friends told me last night that she felt like a German Jew in 1932. WTF? When was Kristallnacht? Why didn't anyone tell me? Where are the Concentration Camps? I don't see them, do you?

Yes, it's bad that Bush is a neoconservative. Yes, the economy is bad. Yes, the war is bad, and I can't wait until the Iraq elections so we can leave.

But Jesus Christ, what's with all the gloom and doom?

People speculate shit all the time. 'Bush is going to start a nuclear war and not be able to pronounce it'. 'Bush is gonna hunt down all the gay people and lobotomize them.' Blah blah blah.

Okay. Neocons bad. I prefer people having their own choice over what they do. I'll give you that.

The economy was going bad before he went into office. It got worse from things beyond his control (Enron and 9/11 weren't his fault. Take off your tinfoil hat. If people say he's so stupid and has a low IQ and everything, why do they turn back around and compare him to a supervillain?). War makes things worse (Afghanistan good, Iraq bad, I know.). Things are looking up. And before you say people lost jobs, ask them the next time you see them what Bush's handshake was like when they got their pink slip handed to them by him. Oh, wait, it was their COMPANY that fired them, not Bush.

War. Bad. Peace. Good. I want out of everyehere we are as soon as possible. But we aren't done in Iraq. If the insurgents weren't fighting the American Military they'd be fighting Iraqui Police. We won, it's not Vietnam, and there's a thing called reconstruction. When you remove a virus from your (or someone else's) computer, you put up a virus shield/scanner/whatever up, right? Or do you just walk away and say 'good luck'?

If Tom Clancy novels have anything right, nuclear war is not likely to happen, merely because of all the people between the president and the button. Christ, we spent God knows how long in some city in Iraq, with some guy cornered in a mosque with all his men, and we didn't fire on them because we were afraid of pissing people off for damaging a mosque. I'm not a Highlander, but I'd imagine the moment people with assault weapons enter Holy Ground and turn it into a fortress, it ceases to become Holy Ground. I doubt the same leadership that is intent on fighting a 'sensitive war' would go to nuclear strikes without thinking long and hard.

The gay marriage thing is dumb. I'll grant you that. But at least the States voted on it and not the Fed. At least you can still potentially move somewhere else to get married. My opinion is we need a separation between Church marriage and State marriage. Don't like it being called a Civil Union? Fine. Call it a State Marriage. Whatever. You're two people that love each other very much. Now go get your tax credit (in an ideal world).

This is why I voted for Badnarik. So I wouldn't have to defend Bush. I could just say 'Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy.' ... Guess It'll just be four more long years of people bitching at me for being right of center.

Red Hat Software

Journal: Well... Problem Solved... Somewhat.

Journal by skadus

Why can't every distro install work like Red Hat?

After all my problems with Debian and Gentoo and their derivatives, I pop in my old RH9 discs and it just works.

Got apt-get, had a little fun with that, though then I decided to upgade to Fedora 3 Test 3. Bad idea.

So now I'm re-installing RH9. Possibly going to download Fedora 2 and upgrade to that. But after wasting a DVD-R on Fedora 3 I'm probably going to look into other options.

MythTV's not working, either. But I'm sure it's just a step I'm missing.


Journal: WTF?

Journal by skadus

Linux in general seems to hate me.

A few weeks ago I wanted to try Gentoo on my second computer. I tried a stage1 install, because I figured it would be a good learning experience. When it got to compile tags I just... gave up. I'm too impatient to mess with it, and I was afraid of breaking the install with the wrong tags.

After giving up on Gentoo, I tried Yoper. Of course, the 'easy install' was fine, except for a few partitioning problems. And I was a bit hardheaded about wanting to try ReiserFS. ReiserFS requires LILO. It was going to be a dual-boot system. And I knew nothing about LILO (no, I didn't RTFM. Yes, I'm stupid. But I figured I'd get some help from the installer)... So then I wound up with LILO. Wouldn't give me boot options, couldn't figure out how to add them to LILO once Yoper booted up. So I decided 'no big deal, I'll just reformat, put ext3 on there and replace LILO with GRUB.' Ha. LILO wouldn't go away. And I got a kernel panic every time I tried to boot into Yoper after that because LILO was looking for ReiserFS, which was now ext3. I reformatted with Win2k and declared I would never install Linux again and would stick to LiveCDs.

Except for some reason going from Win2k to botched Linux to botched Linux to Win2k, MediaPortal decided not to run. MediaPortal is like MythTV for Windows. I use my second computer as a media box.

So this weekend I decided to try Linux one last time and install MythTV (Removing Win2k entirely and going single-boot).

Got Debian Network Install, Sarge Pre-RC2 (or whatever the non-stable version is). Apt-Get broke. Off the fucking CD. It kept giving me dependency errors. I manually Apt-Get KDE. I think it broke too, or XFree did, or something. I gave up on it, and got Debian full, CD 1. Installed that. It installed Gnome as part of the Desktop install. Gnome install broke. Off the fucking CD. Debian worked okay, until I went to install MythTV, where dependencies and whatnot prevented it from installing.

That's when I found out about KnoppMyth. It installs a base Debian install with MythTV to HD off a Knoppix disk. Great idea! Except it broke too. I got a string of error messages before it proudly announced that KnoppMyth had installed to HD.

Right now I'm staring at:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.
GRUB Loading, please wait...
Error 15

Back to Win2k I go. I'd like to think I'm not a complete idiot, but every time I pick up a Linux disk I begin to question that.

Fuck Linux, Fuck MythTV, Fuck Debian, and Fuck KnoppMyth.


Journal: Wishlist Thingy... Again.

Journal by skadus


Not the prettiest thing going, but It was my first time [strike]stealing[/strike] writing PHP code and setting up PHP on my Apache server.

Bad side is, my cool XML idea doesn't work because all the individual elements have to be inside one master element. Appending lines won't work if I have to insert them before the last line.

So I'm going to have to figure out what other format to use so I can actually read what I put in. And password protect the input page so I don't have to worry about people finding it and trashing it.

User Journal

Journal: SelectSmart.com - Religion 2

Journal by skadus

Eh. Friend of mine made me take this one...

Your Results:

# 1. Mainline - Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
# 2. Liberal Quakers (98%)
# 3. Unitarian Universalism (89%)
# 4. Bahá'í Faith (82%)
# 5. Reform Judaism (82%)
# 6. New Age (78%)
# 7. Secular Humanism (78%)
# 8. Neo-Pagan (72%)
# 9. Mahayana Buddhism (69%)
# 10. Taoism (67%)
# 11. Orthodox Quaker (66%)
# 12. Non-theist (64%)
# 13. Theravada Buddhism (64%)
# 14. Sikhism (62%)
# 15. Orthodox Judaism (61%)
# 16. Islam (52%)
# 17. New Thought (48%)
# 18. Jainism (47%)
# 19. Mainline - Conservative Christian Protestant (45%)
# 20. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (40%)
# 21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (39%)
# 22. Hinduism (31%)
# 23. Scientology (31%)
# 24. Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
# 25. Eastern Orthodox (28%)
# 26. Roman Catholic (28%)
# 27. Jehovah's Witness (13%)

A couple questions rendered wrong in Firefox and repeated (and unclickable), so my results may have been skewed. Not sure what my 100% means, but I vaguely remember Liberal Quakers being kinda cool and laid-back. My kind of religion. :p


Journal: SelectSmart.com

Journal by skadus

Your Results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Badnarik, Michael - Libertarian (74%)
3. Bush, President George W. - Republican (58%)
4. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (43%)
5. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (41%)
6. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (39%)
7. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (37%)
8. Cobb, David - Green Party (36%)
9. Nader, Ralph - Independent (36%)
10. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (36%)
11. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (35%)
12. Peroutka, Michael - Constitution Party (35%)
13. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (32%)
14. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (31%)
15. Brown, Walt - Socialist Party (30%)
16. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (27%)
17. Hagelin, Dr. John - Natural Law (20%)
18. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (19%)

The questions were a little skewed. I mean, my definition of 'racial equality' is probably not the same as the NAACP's, and stuff. And nothing about stem cells and such.

Not to mention if you've been 'programmed' to like somebody, it's easy to skew the results. But then, it's made for undecideds, I guess.

(EDIT: Re-graded the test to include all the excluded people... Al Sharpton? Howard Dean? Above Kerry? Yeesh... :p )


Journal: XML Wishlist... Thingy...

Journal by skadus

Had an idea recently... Basically, I'd make a simple XML database to replace wishlists online.

Instead of having like 15 wishlists on 15 different sites, some of which die after awhile or are linked to a specific computer, the XML file would have a few simple classifications, and a URL to the item online. The XML would be hosted online... well... somewhere... and I could format it so it's not too ugly.


  • PHP or ASP or some kind of web code to append the XML file with new entries.
  • Code like at the List of Linux Live CDs to filter/sort the list. Like, say I want to only show the Gamecube games listed. Click. Boom. Done.

Now if only I knew how to implement such a thing. :p
