Showing posts with label mario kart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mario kart. Show all posts

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Miss me?

Sorry I've been away so long. As you probably know, I'm losing my job at the end of June. My department is being moved to our corporate office in Stamford, CT, and the group taking our work has been a little slow on learning how to do things (we were first told in September about our impending job loss). Now that the time is getting closer and closer, that group is realizing they have a lot more to learn than they thought (i think they thought we did nothing) and on top of me still doing my job I am now showing them how to do it as well.

Plus, with me leaving in 3 1/2 weeks, some people here in my Rochester office are trying to suck me dry of all sorts of excel and automation info. I enjoy that, but I wish I had more time in the day. But it has been fun, giving people some excel classes, both to groups as a group level (usually basic) as well as a one-on-one level. I have given a few classes here and there for people within my building before, but I am really starting to enjoy it. I wish I could do it full time! Maybe I'll play the lottery and hope to strike it big, so I can teach people for free for the rest of my life.

I know some of you think I'm crazy for that. Why not try and get paid for it? Well, for one, I just love to help people. It's why I love the forums. Beyond that, I live in a smaller market (200,000 people in the city of Rochester, 1-1.5mil in the metro area) and I don't think there is much interest. Then again, I'm probably wrong, so I'll have to look into that. Then again, if I move out of the area (looking at the DC area) I'd probably have many more opportunities. Of course an area like that probably has job openings for people like me, not for training but for automation/etc.

Either way, just wanted to give a reason why I've been gone. I did realize one nice thing about teaching people things: you learn stuff yourself. Someone showed me an XP keyboard shortcut (I'm a total keyboard guy), I believe it was alt-up-up or alt-down-down, I don't remember at the moment as I'm on a win2k machine. It wasn't anything earth shattering by any means, but always good to learn new stuff :) Another one I found was Alt-Home to go to the home page in a browser. Makes perfect sense, but oddly I never knew it existed; I use it all the time now.

I'll try and post some more tonight, I've been exhausted in the evenings but I should start trying to do more.

And for a treat for you, I'm gonna post a subroutine I wrote a while ago that I still love. It is very simple, it just returns a list of all "found" cells in a specified range as a range object. Very useful :)

Function FoundRange(ByVal vRG As Range, ByVal vVal) As Range
Dim FND As Range, FND1 As Range
Set FND = vRG.Find(vVal, LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlWhole)
If Not FND Is Nothing Then
Set FoundRange = FND
Set FND1 = FND
Set FND = vRG.FindNext(FND)
Do Until FND.Address = FND1.Address
Set FoundRange = Union(FoundRange, FND)
Set FND = vRG.FindNext(FND)
Loop
End If
End Function


Unrelated to VBA, I wanted to give an update for mario kart wii. I got it when it first came out, and played the hell out of it for a week. So much so that my wrists started hurting :( So I have only played it I think twice since then, and both times were less than a half hour. Maybe I'll buy a gamecube controller to play it during my upcoming mini-retirement (aka: severance) to avoid further damage.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mario Kart Wii

Great game! If you've ever played a mario kart game before, you'll love this. It keeps most of the same gameplay from previous versions (less some character specific items, and unfortunately no 2-player grand prix), but adds internet play!

I tried the wheel for a while and got pretty good with it, but honestly I prefer using the wiimote with a nunchuck. The little white or gold wheel next to my name online does nothing for me, so I see no benefit to using it.

It does take quite a few hours to unlock everything in it, and I don't even have it all just yet (all but 2 characters and 1 car -- out of the 16 unlockable tracks, 16 unlockable characters, and 18 unlockable vehicles {9 karts, 9 bikes}).

Overall it is immensely fun. I just need to get more people I know to buy it...


Got the game? Send me your license number!

New Computer

Well, I got a new computer a couple weeks ago and have been slowly integrating it into my normal usage. It didn't help that the parts came over the course of a week (most in the first 2 days, save some necessary sata cables that rendered the rest of it useless), and that my pretty new monitor (hp w2207) worked well with my old pc, delaying my motivation/installation. For those that are curious/bored, heres the specs on my new computer:

  • CPU: Intel E8400 -- 3.0ghz core 2 duo, fast goodness
  • Motherboard: ASUS nForce 750i -- Does everything I need and much more (everything I may need someday?)
  • RAM: G.Skill 4GB -- Nothing too special here, 4gb of DDR2 800 PC2 6400. Works very well though and no issues installing it at all
  • Video Card: eVGA GeForce 8800GT -- Sweeeeeeeeeet card. I'm immensely impressed at what this thing can do. PCIx 2.0x16, 512mb, 256bit, GDDR3, HDCP, SLI; this should keep my graphics near-high-end for years
  • Monitor: HP w2207 -- Great monitor. Get one. Actually, why not get two? 22" widescreen LCD, 1680x1050, 1000:1, DVI or VGA input, even has USB ports and can be easily rotated to be in Portrait mode instead of the usual landscape mode (VERY useful for long spreadsheets and web pages)
  • Hard Drive: WD Caviar 500gb sata 7200/16mb --Just a big hard drive.. I had read a bunch of good reviews, so I got one. Actually I bought this last Friday and should get it tomorrow hopefully, currently have an old 120gb drive in the machine right now (which will stay, my OS is on it)
  • DVD/CD drive: Samsung DVD burner -- Just a fast, robust, sata dvd burner. Lots of good features on it, though I've only used it so far for reading cds/dvds and haven't burned anything yet. Soon enough, I'm sure, as I can't wait to try the dual layer. Hoping the lightscribe isn't just marketing hype
  • Case/PSU: CoolerMaster RC-690-KKA1-GP -- Big case (bigger than I was expecting :/), lots of great tool-less features and lots of room for fans. Included a few fans to begin with, as well as a 550w PSU, plus external ports. And it is black. I guess the only thing I don't like is the neon blue glowing in the front, but certainly not enough to want a new one. Way too many positives outweight it.
So yeah, that is it. Installed XP x64 on it, Firefox, Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007 ultimate (woo!), and Guild Wars. Haven't tried that other than just a quick check to see how it looked, which was much better than my old pc. The release of Mario Kart Wii kinda curbed my enthusiasm for the new computer, it'll return soon enough I'm sure.

Oh, and I got a USB wi-fi adapter for it too, in case I decide not to anchor it near my router. Much better than the one I had anyways for my laptop, so it was money well spent.

Overall, the computer was a little more than I had planned to spend, but if nothing else I can thank the $600 economic stimulus refund I got, and simply write the monitor off as a personal 30th birthday present.