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Running Diablo 2 on Mac OSX Lion

by on March 18, 2012, in Internet, technology/yes I am a geek, video games

In between bouts of frustration with my piece-of-crap scanner today, I got on a retro video game kick. It started with playing a few rounds of Tetris, and then I beat Super Mario Bros. 2 in about 30 minutes.

Then I decided to fire up the Diablo 3 beta, but after seeing it was still in maintenance mode and not available, I got the bright idea to see if I could get Diablo 2 to run on my MacBook Pro. With the release of Lion, Apple killed their support of PowerPC (read: pre-Intel processor) applications, referred to as Rosetta. Diablo 2 is a PowerPC game, which should mean that I am unable to play it on my MacBook Pro that runs Lion.

But the Internet is full of resourceful, clever people, and it didn’t take me long to find a way around this. There were many solutions that involved Boot Camp or partitioning my hard drive and installing an older operating system on one of the partitions, but that seemed like overkill just to play a video game for a few weeks out of nostalgia.

Luckily, I found a blog post by a guy who had a much easier way. All I had to do was download the Windows (not Mac) installer from Blizzard (made possible by entering my original CD keys at Blizzard’s Battle.net), download the free trial of an application called CrossOver by CodeWeavers, and then use that program to install the Windows version of Diablo 2 and play it.

It’s not perfect—I can’t play the game in fullscreen and the default window is pretty tiny. I couldn’t play through the whole game like this for sure. The application is $40, too—not an investment I would be willing to make unless fullscreen was available, and even then I don’t know that it would be worth it. I’ve only got to wait a couple more months for Diablo 3, and I have plenty of other video games waiting on me to play them.

But it was neat to revisit Diablo 2 and my favorite of its classes, the Amazon. I logged onto Battle.net in-game, too, and it was kind of sad to see how the chat had devolved into nothing but spam. I’d heard Blizzard wasn’t really policing their servers, and it shows. Hopefully Diablo 3 will be better managed.

Running Diablo 2 on Mac OSX Lion

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Oh, Bonnaroo

by on February 18, 2012, in Internet, jump aboard the crazy train, stupid assholes

You’d think after 11 years they’d get that when tickets go on sale, a lot of people are going to want to buy them. Today at 10:30 a.m. I perched in front of my laptop, dutifully waiting for 11 a.m. so that I could buy tickets for Ian and I, hopefully at the lowest price point ($20 per ticket lower than the highest price).

Oh, Bonnaroo

After two and a half hours, I shut down the computer without a single ticket. I felt kind of insulted; I’d been kicked out of the system, given “unknown error” pages, had my browser(s) crashed multiple times. The one time I finally made it to the page where I could enter my credit card information I was told I’d taken too long and had run out the 15 minute clock. It literally took 14 minutes and 40 seconds to get through three pages to the final stretch, and then I got the big middle finger.

Eventually Bonnaroo took their ticketing system offline and replaced the fun graphic on their website’s home page with a note saying they’d be back later to let us know what’s going on. Around 8 p.m. I found a message on their Facebook page saying they’d let us know by Monday night when tickets will be going on sale. Again. Let’s hope they can get their shit together by then.

Otherwise, Ian and I are going to The Hangout festival instead.

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Believe it or not, I need to practice my smack-talk

by on September 8, 2011, in but in our house we never get bored, Internet, media, stupid assholes, technology/yes I am a geek

A week ago, the closest I came to caring about football was getting excited about tailgating before the MTSU games and then stumbling into the stadium in just enough time to buy popcorn and catch the end of the fourth quarter.

And now, all of a sudden, I’m playing in two fantasy football leagues and trying to figure out when I need to scream at the TV and when I need to silently plead with my players to not fuck me over. Ok, I’m also trying to figure out how to remember who all I have on my teams.

Also: A big middle finger to whoever designed the UI for the Yahoo and ESPN fantasy football sites. It’s as if some assclown with a master’s in annoyance was given full-reign over Microsoft FrontPage and decided to try for his PhD in confusing the ever-loving shit out of anyone who would access these sites.

As if fantasy football isn’t stressful enough already.

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And once again, life gets in the way

by on April 18, 2011, in blogging, but in our house we never get bored, Internet, life etc., travel

I know nobody cares, but it bothers me when I’m bad about blogging. Because ultimately I’m keeping this record of my life for myself, as selfish as that sounds, so that in 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years I can look back and see what I was up to at a certain moment in my life. And laugh at myself, undoubtedly.

So I was going to recap my New Orleans trip and talk all about how awesome the train was, at least for the first couple of hours, and how I liked walking back through the cars as the train was moving, getting jostled from side to side and seeing the world fly by me out the windows the most. And I was going to tell funny and scandalous stories about the times my friends and I had while in New Orleans, starting with how Ian and our friend John started drinking about 8 a.m. on the way down there, and how by the time we got to the train station in Birmingham John had consumed seven beers and a 4Loko and was yelling out the car window as we drove through the ghetto to find a parking lot.

And I was going to detail how excited I was to be in New Orleans and run into an old, old friend of mine—like, someone I was BFFs with all through elementary school—made possible by checking into a bar on Facebook, of all things. And I was going to recount the fun we had at the St. Patrick’s Day parade that night—old friends, current friends, and new friends all celebrating together—and then how Ian got lost for a short period of time and once again Google Maps and GPS on my iPhone saved the day.

But time has passed, and some stories are better recounted in person, told time after time in bars and at cookouts instead of immortalized by the pen of the Internet. Some things are best held close by the people who experienced them, and not everything has to be validated by blog entry or tweet or Facebook update.

But mainly I’m just lazy.

Comments { 2 }

May 18 | Happy Birthday to ME!

by on May 21, 2010, in happy happy joy joy, Internet, music is like air, but for my ears, photography, Project365

May 18 | Happy Birthday to ME!

Ok, so I might have tweeted saying that it would be the best birthday ever if Steven Page would wish me happy birthday. And he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it.

BUT IT STILL COUNTS. Steven Page still wished me happy birthday. How fucking awesome is THAT?!

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The funniest thing on the Internet. Ever.

by on December 7, 2009, in hahahahaha, Internet, TV, video

Those Skeksis are ca-raaaaazy assholes.

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What's in a (domain) name?

by on November 24, 2009, in Internet, quandaries, technology/yes I am a geek

In the nearly four and a half years that I’ve been blogging, my blog’s URL and name have changed a few times. I know it’s annoying, and I thank you for sticking around. And I’m sorry for the following question, but I am having a bit of an identity crisis and I need help.

Regular readers of this blog know that last year I got married, and subsequently changed my name from Megan Goodchild to Megan Morris. While Megan Goodchild was a great name to use online, where consistency is key, it was a pain in the ass in real life most of the time. (“Oh and are you a good child? Heeheehee!” Yeah good one there, Dane Cook, you’re totally the first person I’ve heard that from in 30 years. )

Megan Morris, on the other hand, is an awesome real-life name (I realized shortly after changing my name that I was flinching before saying my maiden name out loud. And as a bonus, Megan Morris has a nice alliteration to it and kind of sounds like it could belong to a redheaded siren holding a pint of Guinness in one hand while punching a leprechaun with the other), but nonetheless it has posed some problems for my online identity.

When I registered this domain, I was trying to decide between megmorris.com and meganmorris.net. I decided against the .net convention, and was somewhat OK with megmorris because 1. my mom and sisters call me Meg, and 2. if you take into consideration my initials including my maiden name, megmorris accurately reflects my name (Megan Emily Goodchild Morris).

But here’s the problem: I don’t want to retain my maiden name. And nobody but my mom and sisters (and the occasional old friend) calls me Meg, so when I get emails or tweets from someone I barely know calling me Meg, it kind of freaks me out a bit.

Several months ago I set up a new Google ID and Gmail account for this new name, which was tricky in itself. Google doesn’t allow you to use IDs that are anywhere close to what someone else has, so even though someone had already taken meganmorris, I couldn’t be megan.morris. I think even megmorris was taken, so I eventually decided to incorporate my middle name and selected meganemilymorris. I have never used my middle name for anything, personal or professional, but it seems to work and I like it just fine for a secondary email address and a Google ID.

Which brings me to my current quandary: Do I keep this blog here and build out my main website on megmorris.com as well, even though I’m not super happy with the domain? Or do I move everything over to meganemilymorris.com, which I already own, to kind of make things more consistent (and reflect my name more accurately)? Or is there something else I should do entirely? I’m looking for a solution that keeps search-engine optimization in mind but also reflects me.

(And waiting for meganmorris.com to open up doesn’t seem to be an option. There’s a chick blogging there who doesn’t seem like she’s going to quit any time soon. And I think emailing her to ask if she’s married or planning on getting that way seems a bit, um, creepy.)

So what say you, Internet marketing specialists? Or anyone? Thoughts?

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Apparently Murfreesboro Electric Department thinks it's Ticketmaster now

by on November 13, 2009, in around town, Internet, WTF?

To whom it may concern,

I visited your website to pay my electric bill today and noticed that you have instituted a “convenience fee” for online payments. I have been paying my bill online for a long time now and today is the first time I have seen this fee. I am curious as to why your business model now includes charging customers for something that is easier for both them and you, but also cuts down on waste? Have you had to hire additional employees to handle the online bill processing? Have you had to hire additional IT professionals or pay more in database or web hosting? I’m just wondering what the extra $5 is being used for.

The customer service rep I spoke to on the phone when I called to ask about this new fee made it painfully clear that Murfreesboro Electric Department has no intention of embracing any kind of technology (she was not aware of how email addresses worked, telling me I should send my email to “murfreesboroelectric.com, there was no ‘anyone @’ in this email address”), despite almost every other business in the country encouraging its customers to move to paperless billing and online bill payment not only to help cut down on paper waste but to make things simpler for everyone involved as well.

I realize that Murfreesboro Electric Department is a monopoly and I am going to have to either pay your convenience fee or suck it up and buy more checks and stamps, but I wanted to voice my displeasure as a customer in case you put any stock in your customers’ opinions. It’s sad that when Murfreesboro is making such great strides in moving toward being a more progressive town, its largest utility company is working to hinder its progress.

I look forward to your response, as I’ll be sharing it on my blog, Twitter and Facebook with other Murfreesboro residents.

Best,
Megan Morris

Apparently Murfreesboro Electric Department thinks it's Ticketmaster now

——

UPDATE: See below for the email I received back. You’ll notice it doesn’t answer my question as to what the $5 is going toward. Also, apparently I can use a check, but not a credit card, and that doesn’t require a convenience fee. (Who the F uses checks still??) I guess my answer is that the $5 charge is to cover the cost of processing credit card payments to their processor. Which is still bullshit. EVERY merchant that accepts credit or debit cards pays a processing fee. Would you pay an additional fee at the grocery store or a clothing store to be able to use your credit or debit card? Why is it OK for the electric department to charge one, then?

Apparently Murfreesboro Electric Department thinks it's Ticketmaster now

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I take back all the curse words I screamed at Movable Type at the time

by on October 21, 2009, in computadores, Internet, technology/yes I am a geek, the first rule is you do not blog about work

I found out today that a website I built won two awards!! We won’t know what level of award (gold, silver or bronze) from each of the award programs until their respective banquets, but just knowing the site won something is enough to make me giddy.

This was the first client site for which I was responsible for the web development (it was designed by my coworker Ben, and Summer, Rex and Megan were responsible for content and overall strategy), and I will not lie: It was overwhelmingly difficult at times. Going from kind of knowing CSS and not ever having built anything in Movable Type to Oh Hi Let Me Build This Site Quickly Now was a challenge, but looking back I see how much I learned from the entire experience.

Luckily I had a lot of support from Patrick (we hired him as a consultant to teach me how to write my own CSS and built in Movable Type–all in like a week) and several super-smart coders and Movable Type users on Twitter who were so responsive and willing to help.

According to the notification we’re not supposed to officially announce anything until the awards are actually given out, so I’m not going to tell you the site name or the awards. I tried to stay as cool and collected as I could at the office—oh who am I kidding, I blabbed to whoever would listen how all those times I said I was going to jump out the window because Movable Type wasn’t working and all those times Ben threatened to kill me because I wouldn’t stop asking for more images in different sizes and colors TOTALLY WORTH IT.

I’m so lucky that I work someplace that lets me do what I am interested in and trusts in me enough to understand that if I don’t know how to do something, I sure as hell will find out. And I’m so proud of the team that worked so hard to make this site so awesome. Even if it didn’t win anything we would still understand its value, but it’s always nice to have validation.

Now, I wonder how I can weasel my way into a trip to accept the awards? ;)

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Best comment I've read in a while

by on October 20, 2009, in around town, hahahahaha, Internet, music is like air, but for my ears, pop culture will suck out your soul

From the Nashville Scene’s Nashville Cream blog post “Kings of Leon at The Sommet Center, 10/16/09″:

Can’t we all get along? Stop this arguing. There’s too much sand in your collective vaginas. This world should just be one finger-bangin’ party, where angular haircuts, men in capri pants or “lands end sweaters” and girls in fresh “American Apparel hoodies” and “tote bags bigger than their midsections” can cohabitate with rock critics and rock stars. You know, ride the minivan people–two fingers up front, three in the back!

Amen, brother. A-fuckin’-men.

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