Upgrading SuperMario to Fedora 23
Now that it seems the nvidia driver that deals with the latest Xorg is available, I decided to try and upgrade my main computer, SuperMario. I started with the dnf commands:
dnf update --refresh
dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=23
As usual, old packages reared their ugly heads. They’d made it this far, but it was time to banish packages from Fedora 20 and even Fedora 15 that had survived this long.
Sam and his Maternal Grandmother
Been taking lots of shots of the kids, but one finally came out nice!

(edit: Ah, I figured it out, I can’t let the blog create resized versions of my giant files. To get the original size file (for printing) click here! It will look horrible in your web browser)
November Video Game Report
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (11 hours):
https://youtu.be/zRYruIvgd5w?list=PLEJrELYLxNgVMLzx98YPIGhKdSDiGFjaU
There are many times that The Giant Bombcast or other video game podcasts have led me to discover games I wouldn’t have otherwise considered: Peggle, Saint’s Row the Third, Assassin’s Creed, and The Witcher. But there was one time they did me wrong: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. They made it sound like it was just an exercise in frustration in which you died at every turn and it since it was made by Firaxis, I thought it was just going to look like Civ. Nothing wrong with that, but I already had Civ. But Dan got an extra copy at some point and gifted me this one. It’s been a blast and I’ve loved playing it even as it has started to kick my butt as the difficulty ramps up. If I had more time, I’d be playing this game A LOT.
So apparently this is a thing...

Although, if you aren’t judgemental, I guess it’s a good thing it exists. I know some women (not Danielle, we both rarely drink alcohol) who had miserable pregnancies because they couldn’t drink. So at least this way if they want to drink now that the baby’s out, they can make sure the milk is alcohol-free.
Dina's Wedding
Finally got the change to post some shots from Dina’s wedding. I didn’t take too many photos since I was shooting the official video. Enjoy:

Here Comes the Bride Sign

Dina's Dress and special hanger

Dina

Brian and Dina

Brian kisses Dina

Brian kisses Dina

Brian and Dina at the Gazebo

Kissing at the Gazebo

Leaving the Gazebo

The Bridal Party

Dina and Bride's Maids

Dina and Bride's Maids

Marlene and Noah

Daniel and Scarlett

Scarlett

Feeding Noah
And a couple videos of the kids dancing with Fran:
Testing out the new ring flash
Mom got me a new LED ring flash for my birthday. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they were always too expensive for a niche subject (they’re mostly only useful for macro shots). But with an LED ring flash, the flash can be cheap because it doesn’t need to be TTL or E-TTL. It is always on so the camera just uses that light as the ambient light calculation. Again, it works best when you’re doing a macro shot. As a test, here’s my mom’s eye:
Donald Trump Supporters in Maryland
These guys show up during rush hour every Friday. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with their views, but it’s so annoying that it backs up traffic as people try and read the signs.

Thanks for the RAM, Mom
18 GB RAM on Bowser
Thanks to mom, now I have 18 GB of triple RAM on Bowser. Incidentally, it’s the first time I’ve used the Task Manager in Window 10 and it’s really slick! I like it - it matches the look/feel/usability of the similar utilities in KDE’s Plasma 5.
