For once I found a way to run Windows for free that wasn’t a scam! Turns out the Microsoft makes VMs of Windows XP through Windows 8 available for free. The point is for you to be able to test how your websites will look in different versions of IE and different versions of Windows. Now, because of this, they’re time-limited - you can renew them ever 30 days until 90 days and then you need to regenerate them. So you can’t really use it as a complete replacement for buying a Windows license. However, if you wanted to test how well Windows would run on your Linux computer it’s perfect for that. My short-term goal is to be able to run Windows within a VM for everything but video games and therefore not have to run two computers if I want to, say, work on my photos. (I use Lightroom although Digikam is pretty awesome if you don’t already have your workflow setup in Lightroom) So to me this is the perfect way to make sure all the programs I want to run on Windows (mostly Lightroom, but occasionally some others) will work well in a VM with my current hardware (before I spend the money to buy a Windows license). Another nice thing about running windows in a VM instead of its own computer is that it’s easy to create a new VM when a new version of Windows comes out and then have the VMs side-by-side as you migrate over to a fresh install. It actually wouldn’t be a horrible idea for my main Linux distro either, but then I wouldn’t have ANY OS taking advantage of being the main OS that’s not virtualized.

First of all, here’s my referral link. Click here to sign up and they’ll give you a $25 credit you can use on a phone or against your bill.

The account sign-up was painless and pretty quick. The part where it did a bunch of stuff to my phone took a couple cycles to take, but once that was through it worked perfectly sing. I decided not to do VOIP for calls at home as I thought I would. As I went through the instructions, it turned out to be too complex and unreliable. People complained that it turned off their alarms (which I use to wake up for work) and other strange nonsense. I decided not to stress it. I barely talk on my phone anyway - ever since my parents became business owners, it’s been a lot harder to get a hold of them. At the end of my fist month I only had used a little over half of the smallest chunk of voice minutes that Ting sells. I’ve decided that whenever Hangouts for Android gets feature parity with iOS and allows VOIP calls, I’ll investigate that. Strangely, the one time I tried to use Hangouts on a desktop to call, it didn’t work as a touchtone phone.

“What Mailer told me is that the CIA is basically a white Christian Protestant organization," Fellwock said. “And white Christian Protestants have to find a devil in order to justify what they do. Their Christian values say they should help the poor, like the Communists were. But they were not helping the poor. They were helping the very rich. And this created a conflict inside of the white Christian Protestant mind that could only be resolved by them seeking out a devil and making that devil into an exaggerated thing. Thus, they exaggerated the threat of communism just like they’re exaggerating the threat of Islam today.”

It’s December and I should have gotten all of my Kickstarter products by now. But that’s not exactly what happened. Every single one of my Kickstarters was late except the one I had the least faith and relationship with - Random Encounter’s Let Me Tell You a Story.

I Fight Dragons – Project Atma (music): Holy COW! This band - my first Kickstarter - nearly disbanded over the Kickstarter! I thought they were the surest bet. They’d self-published their first few albums and they had rented a studio and had a producer and everything. However, they clashed over the direction the producer was taking them and almost broke up.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post (ok, I think this’ll probably be the last one in a row…I’ve been busy!) . For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

The National Christmas Tree (it’s too bad that because of my schedule I won’t get to see it this year) and a few other random shots from last year’s period just before Christmas.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post (yeah, they’re back to back this time). For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

More Scarlett - this time getting the Christmas tree. It made me sad that we didn’t do the lights on her again this year. Then again, she might have wanted to do it all the time - so maybe that’s a good thing.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Once again a focus on Scarlett. Looking back on these photos I realize how easy it was to get to smile back then. It sounds ridiculous to say she’s gotten more jaded - she’s not even two, for Pete’s sake. But she does spend more time brooding and is a bit more specific about what makes her smile. Perhaps this is part of the reason why some couples decide to have more children - to get back that ultra-innocence of baby-hood before the slightly less innocent toddler-hood what with its tantrums and such.

Civ V (<1hr): Continued to play with Dan and Dave. Again, hopefully there’ll be some updates soon.

[caption id=“attachment_7512” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] Skullgirls[/caption]

Skullgirls (<1hr): This game is a ridiculous fighting game that doesn’t take itself too seriously when it comes to the story. It’s a return to the fun of fighting games of the 1990s. At the same time, the mechanics of gameplay are no joke - we’ve been in a fighting game renaissance for the past five years or so and this game does not ignore that. I played it during a Steam free weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had the time to dedicate to a fighting game, I’d buy it in an instant. If you enjoy games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but think they’re a bit too self-serious, this game should definitely be checked out. Also, if you’re into anime (and I think there’s a lot of overlap between these groups), there’s a lot of poking fun at tropes of both fighting games an anime.

[caption id=“attachment_7503” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Back to the Future: The Video Game - The Pseudonym Fun of the series continues[/caption]

Back to the Future: The Video Games (5 hrs) - As is the usual situation with these types of games, I figured out I had to get to the 1920s about 2 hours before I had triggered the right series of events that would allow me to get there. Got to see the sense of humor of the writers as I ended up meeting the high school principle’s sister who’s just as crotchety as he is. Apparently Doc is in trouble for starting a fire. Other than that I don’t know much as I wasn’t able to play very much of the game beyond the first 1920s scene with the principle’s sister.

When I was in middle school in Oregon I was introduced to the concept of non-worship Christian music for the first time. Up until that time the only English music we listened to was Oldies and 70s music. I’d catch a pop or rap song here or there - mostly because the public school buses I rode would listen to the pop or rap stations - but that was it. I think it was like 10% shielding us from the “bad messages in pop music” and 90% my parents just listening to what they enjoyed - which was the music they grew up with. And since those stations were always on when we were growing up, that’s what we grew to like. It’s why I’m the only person in the circle of friends in my age group that knows all the Doo-Wop standards.