@solitha New rule: cat tax. For every pun you post or repost, you're now required to pay the tax of posting one cute cat video.
Music. Coding. Gaming. Life.
What a day. Or two.
It all started back on Saturday morning when Kathy and I had begun our fixing up the old laptop, Sparky Jr., preparing it for service in Australia with us. Perhaps the fact that it rebooted several times while trying to install Windows was a sign of things to come.
We started running late, and in the process forgot our jackets and the US to Australian power convertor for our powered things. Oh well, too late. We walked into the terminal at 6:10pm, 55 minutes shy of our flight time, and paniced when the kiosks didn't recognize that I had reservations to Melbourne, Australia.
No worries, the attendant was wonderful in figuring us out. So helpful was she that she discovered an earlier flight that had been delayed that we could get on to! We thought we had a great deal.
Instead, we just been had.
The flight continued to be delayed, and did not take off until about 4 hours after it was scheduled to, leaving us in Los Angeles at 11pm, rushing around an airport neither of us have ever been to before to get to a 11:40pm flight. We were in terminal 6, and found out we had to go to terminal 4. When we got to terminal 4, we were told it was for Sydney only, so we had to go to terminal 3.
Terminal 3 was, in short, hell on earth. It was quite simply a sea of people, and I have never been pushed around by people I've never met before. They were just rude, brash, and unapologetic. The lines were all nightmares, and Qantas was over in the far corner of the terminal, causing us to go through this sea of people.
The lines there were not long, but they were slow in serving us. When we got to the desk, we were assured we'd make our flight, and sure enough, after "expedited security" (really, just a shorter line, you still have to do the routine, and getting through it took about 15 minutes), we got to the gate at midnight, just in time to hear our row being called.
Surprisingly, the 15 hour flight was not only event free, but the most pleasant part of the journey so far. Two nice meals, great service, and lots of sleep for me.
Kathy and I finally make it to Melbourne, make it through customs in uneventful fashion, and get to the baggage claim, where we waited.
...and waited...
...and waited...
Finally the baggage collection area shut off, and we were told nothing else was coming. Hmph. We filed a claim, and was told one of the bags never left Houston!!!
So here we were, in the middle of a city we're unfamiliar with, with only a laptop, IDs and passports, and some check cards. No clothing, no extra necesseties, nothing. We left the airport via shuttle for the hotel, where we were told our early checkin was for 11:30. It was 10:30. So we went downstairs, bought some jackets, and had lunch.
I've never had chicken parmesian (don't ask me how to spell that) in a sandwich before, it was actually quite nice. Kathy had some lasagna she was impartial to, but otherwise a good meal to keep us going.
We wanted to go into downtown to hit the Qantas travel center, so we decided to take the tram. Bad idea. First of all, I had no idea that it cost so much to get onto the tram, it was $2.30. Secondly, I had $4.30. Oops. We got off at the next stop, faces red in embarassment.
Then we made it down, via foot, the 3 blocks to the Qantas travel center, and found out that we could get $100 of free Australian cash per bag lost. Cool, $200 quick cash to pick us up new clothes! We hit a target another 3 blocks away, and then walked all the way back to the hotel where Kathy crashed.
I was about to, but then I got on here to document our first day. Now I'm going out to meet with Thorn of TTR fame for some grub. Our bags should arrive tomorrow, though we'll be hitting Surfers Paradise to meet up with some friends of ours and spend the day there. I'll likely report again after that. Until then, g'day mate!
It all started back on Saturday morning when Kathy and I had begun our fixing up the old laptop, Sparky Jr., preparing it for service in Australia with us. Perhaps the fact that it rebooted several times while trying to install Windows was a sign of things to come.
We started running late, and in the process forgot our jackets and the US to Australian power convertor for our powered things. Oh well, too late. We walked into the terminal at 6:10pm, 55 minutes shy of our flight time, and paniced when the kiosks didn't recognize that I had reservations to Melbourne, Australia.
No worries, the attendant was wonderful in figuring us out. So helpful was she that she discovered an earlier flight that had been delayed that we could get on to! We thought we had a great deal.
Instead, we just been had.
The flight continued to be delayed, and did not take off until about 4 hours after it was scheduled to, leaving us in Los Angeles at 11pm, rushing around an airport neither of us have ever been to before to get to a 11:40pm flight. We were in terminal 6, and found out we had to go to terminal 4. When we got to terminal 4, we were told it was for Sydney only, so we had to go to terminal 3.
Terminal 3 was, in short, hell on earth. It was quite simply a sea of people, and I have never been pushed around by people I've never met before. They were just rude, brash, and unapologetic. The lines were all nightmares, and Qantas was over in the far corner of the terminal, causing us to go through this sea of people.
The lines there were not long, but they were slow in serving us. When we got to the desk, we were assured we'd make our flight, and sure enough, after "expedited security" (really, just a shorter line, you still have to do the routine, and getting through it took about 15 minutes), we got to the gate at midnight, just in time to hear our row being called.
Surprisingly, the 15 hour flight was not only event free, but the most pleasant part of the journey so far. Two nice meals, great service, and lots of sleep for me.
Kathy and I finally make it to Melbourne, make it through customs in uneventful fashion, and get to the baggage claim, where we waited.
...and waited...
...and waited...
Finally the baggage collection area shut off, and we were told nothing else was coming. Hmph. We filed a claim, and was told one of the bags never left Houston!!!
So here we were, in the middle of a city we're unfamiliar with, with only a laptop, IDs and passports, and some check cards. No clothing, no extra necesseties, nothing. We left the airport via shuttle for the hotel, where we were told our early checkin was for 11:30. It was 10:30. So we went downstairs, bought some jackets, and had lunch.
I've never had chicken parmesian (don't ask me how to spell that) in a sandwich before, it was actually quite nice. Kathy had some lasagna she was impartial to, but otherwise a good meal to keep us going.
We wanted to go into downtown to hit the Qantas travel center, so we decided to take the tram. Bad idea. First of all, I had no idea that it cost so much to get onto the tram, it was $2.30. Secondly, I had $4.30. Oops. We got off at the next stop, faces red in embarassment.
Then we made it down, via foot, the 3 blocks to the Qantas travel center, and found out that we could get $100 of free Australian cash per bag lost. Cool, $200 quick cash to pick us up new clothes! We hit a target another 3 blocks away, and then walked all the way back to the hotel where Kathy crashed.
I was about to, but then I got on here to document our first day. Now I'm going out to meet with Thorn of TTR fame for some grub. Our bags should arrive tomorrow, though we'll be hitting Surfers Paradise to meet up with some friends of ours and spend the day there. I'll likely report again after that. Until then, g'day mate!
Comments
Add Your Comments
roncli.com Blog
This is my blog where I give my thoughts and opinions on various topics and share my creative endeavors with the world. I run two personal blogs, but combine them here for ease of access.
Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.
Tumblr - Tumblr posts are all about my creative side, containing music, videos, writings, and updates on my web creations.
You can select a category below to view the latest post, or browse thorugh the posts using the navigation found at the top and bottom of each post.
Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.
Tumblr - Tumblr posts are all about my creative side, containing music, videos, writings, and updates on my web creations.
You can select a category below to view the latest post, or browse thorugh the posts using the navigation found at the top and bottom of each post.
Categories
Coding (167)
Life (138)
Gaming (117)
Music (64)
World of Warcraft (48)
roncli.com (42)
Software (36)
Servers (29)
Hurricane Rita (27)
Six Minutes To Release (27)
Screenshot (25)
Hurricane Ike (24)
Projects (24)
Silliness (21)
Trax in Space (21)
Cent (19)
Crystal Space (15)
OSMusic.Net (14)
Blog (13)
Editorials (13)
LibWowArmory (13)
Lyrics (13)
roncli Productions (12)
VB.NET (12)
Descent (11)
LibWowAPI (10)
Descent 3 (9)
Due Process (9)
Backup (8)
CTG Music (8)
Node (8)
Overload Teams League (8)
Six Gaming Podcast (8)
ASP.Net (7)
Azure (7)
Buffalo (7)
League of Legends (7)
NWS (7)
Rendr (7)
SETI@Home (7)
The Nightstalker (7)
Video (7)
Diablo III (6)
Hard Drives (6)
Logs (6)
Windows (6)
BOINC (5)
Cent Credits (5)
Cent Main Theme (5)
D3DSN (5)
Descent: Underground (5)
FreeBSD (5)
Google Desktop (5)
Google Earth (5)
Outpost Music (5)
Overload (5)
Ron's Bronze Plays (5)
Sports (5)
UPS (5)
Birthday (4)
Buffalo Sabres (4)
Constellation (4)
Everytime (4)
JavaScript (4)
Preview (4)
Pwned Print (4)
roncli's Dumbass Award (4)
San Antonio (4)
Sigh of Excitement (4)
Six Gaming (4)
Steam (4)
Stripped Down (4)
The Observatory (4)
trac (4)
Twitch (4)
Visual Studio (4)
Winamp (4)
AJAX (3)
All In My Head (3)
Blackjack (3)
Chess (3)
Crypt of the NecroDancer (3)
D3TL (3)
DCL (3)
Gate (3)
Given Up (3)
Guitar (3)
Inspiration Edit (3)
jQuery Default Button (3)
MAME (3)
MediaTagConverter (3)
ModPlug (3)
NeonXSZ (3)
NetHack (3)
Numbers (3)
Paper (3)
PHP (3)
Rawr (3)
Sift (3)
SQL Server (3)
Tumblr (3)
Vision (3)
Year in Review (3)
AM Browser (2)
Asana (2)
ASP.Net RSS Toolkit (2)
Bicycle (2)
BlizzCon (2)
Cheevos FTW! (2)
Crazy Browser (2)
Descent Champions Ladder (2)
DMTB (2)
Docker (2)
Elbow (2)
Eternally (2)
Evans Blue (2)
Fire In My Heart (2)
Games (2)
GitHub (2)
GTR (2)
Houston Astros (2)
How To Play (2)
Hurricane Katrina (2)
iPhone (2)
IRC (2)
IsItUp (2)
Las Vegas (2)
Legs (2)
LibBeImba (2)
Minnesota Wild (2)
Miss Driller (2)
Module Sixteen (2)
Monitor Resolution (2)
NeKo (2)
New Zepsi Industries (2)
Niagara Falls (2)
Novus Compo (2)
Pittsburgh Penguins (2)
Poker (2)
Pwned Cars (2)
Reinstall (2)
Remake (2)
Retro (2)
roncli Productions Intro (2)
San Francisco (2)
San Francisco Rush 2049 (2)
slammy (2)
Sleep (2)
Solar (2)
SoundCloud (2)
Stress (2)
Strings (2)
Tempurpedic (2)
The Editor (2)
TNS Raw (2)
TopCoder (2)
Troupe (2)
w.bloggar (2)
Wedding (2)
XAML (2)
You (2)
Zepsi (2)
#modarchive Story 2 (1)
#occupygregstreet (1)
Absolute C++ (1)
Achaea (1)
Acronyms (1)
AdAware SW (1)
Adobe Acrobat (1)
AdventureQuest (1)
Alaska (1)
allen one (1)
AMD Settings (1)
Analyze (1)
APIs (1)
app.config (1)
Art (1)
ASSP (1)
Audiosurf (1)
Aveyond (1)
Awakening (1)
Bellaire (1)
BitTorrent (1)
Black Ox II (1)
Blackberry (1)
Blender (1)
Blogger (1)
BOINC Synergy (1)
BoincView (1)
Boom Bitches! (1)
Browserify (1)
Bullseye (1)
Byline (1)
CAD-KAS PDF Reader 2.4 (1)
CAPTCHA (1)
CDBurnerXP Pro (1)
CherryOS (1)
ChessCli (1)
Chick-Fil-A (1)
Child Controls (1)
clones (1)
ColdFusion (1)
Come Back To Me (1)
Compo (1)
Constellation Main Theme (1)
Cooking Lili (1)
Core Decision (1)
Crystal (1)
Databinding (1)
DataGrid (1)
DataGridView (1)
Deadly Drums (1)
Decade (1)
Dell (1)
Demogorgon (1)
Descent Rangers (1)
Diabetes (1)
Diamond Problem (1)
Doge2048 (1)
Doom's Day (1)
Double Buffer (1)
Dr. Jeffrey Masters (1)
Drama (1)
Dreamweaver (1)
Dudley's Dungeon (1)
Einstein@Home (1)
Ellon in the Dark (1)
Elon Musk (1)
EveryDNS (1)
Evolution (1)
Eyes (1)
Fedora Core 6 (1)
FeedPage (1)
Fiddler (1)
FlowDocument (1)
Foobar 2000 (1)
Foxit Reader (1)
Galveston (1)
Geocore (1)
GMail (1)
Google Calendar (1)
Google Chrome (1)
Google Pages (1)
Google Wave (1)
Grid (1)
grl (1)
Grooveshark (1)
Grunt (1)
GTR2 (1)
Guitar Solo (1)
Hackers (1)
HCC (1)
Hearthstone (1)
Heroes of the Storm (1)
HomesickAlien (1)
Houston Aeros (1)
ICallbackEventHandler (1)
If Paige Wins (1)
IIS (1)
Inno (1)
Internet Explorer (1)
Interview (1)
iPad (1)
Iron Chouquette (1)
Irrlicht (1)
Jaded (1)
jQuery UI (1)
jQuery UI Scroll Menu (1)
JW Player (1)
Kado Kado (1)
Kaspersky (1)
KFOS Inner Space Radio (1)
Know What (1)
Kromaia (1)
Let It Ride (1)
Let's Encrypt (1)
Let's Play (1)
LibWowHeroes (1)
LifeCast (1)
LINQ to Entities (1)
Linux (1)
Liquid Wars (1)
ListView (1)
Loading (1)
Lukan Schwigtenberg (1)
Mac (1)
MadTracker (1)
Mastodon (1)
Melbourne (1)
Melt (1)
Message From Beyond (1)
Micro Center (1)
Mistakes (1)
Monitor (1)
Mouse (1)
Moving (1)
Mr. Driller (1)
MSDN (1)
NASCAR SimRacing (1)
Network (1)
New Year (1)
olmod (1)
On Fire Series (1)
Opalus Factory (1)
Open Labs (1)
Open Source (1)
Operation Payback (1)
Overwatch (1)
PearPC (1)
Phony (1)
Piano (1)
Pingle (1)
pogo.com (1)
PowerStrip (1)
Programming (1)
PSP (1)
PXO (1)
Quadra (1)
Radeon (1)
Radio Shack (1)
Rant (1)
RedHeat (1)
Reject (1)
Release (1)
Religion (1)
Rendr Template (1)
Renegade (1)
Retrovirus (1)
RIP (1)
RockMelt (1)
Scott Hanselman (1)
Self-Destruct Sequence Podcast (1)
Showsan (1)
Silverlight (1)
Sitemap Generator (1)
Smoke (1)
Sol Contingency (1)
Sound Blaster Audigy (1)
Speedrun (1)
Spelling (1)
SQL Reporting Services (1)
SSL Certificates (1)
Stanley Jakubowitz (1)
Starbase Arcade (1)
Starcraft II (1)
Starting All Over (1)
Story (1)
Sublevel Zero (1)
Swiss (1)
Tetris (1)
Thanksgiving (1)
The Crossroads (1)
The Time Now (1)
The Wight to Remain (1)
Time and Date (1)
Toronto (1)
Torrent Keeper (1)
Total Bollocks (1)
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (1)
TraxSurf (1)
Trillian (1)
Twitter (1)
Typing (1)
Ultimate Boot CD (1)
UpdatePanel (1)
US Interactive (1)
Video Bob (1)
ViewState (1)
Vince Young (1)
Vincent Lau (1)
Vocals (1)
Voyage (1)
Walter Savitch (1)
Warlords of Draenor (1)
Weather (1)
Westward (1)
What Do I Know (1)
WikiLeaks (1)
Windows Defender (1)
winLAME (1)
Winter Classic (1)
Word Field (1)
World Record (1)
Worst Things in the World (1)
WPF (1)
Xamarian (1)
XBox (1)
XM Radio (1)
XML Web Services (1)
Yahoo! Pipes (1)
Yes (1)
You Are Not Alone (1)
Share This Page
Social Media
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Today was a special day. I scored 1,016,221 points in classic NES Tetris, the first time I broke the 999,999 maxout barrier.
With that maxout, I became the oldest person to get their first ever maxout at 46 years 319 days.
After I scored that, I learned that today would have been 7-time Tetris world champion Jonas Neubauer's 43rd birthday.
I am FILLED with incredible emotion tonight.
https://clips.twitch.tv/AverageImportantGoldfishHassaanChop-bRfUxo4q5SxEgJvI
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
"I'm Sorry, What?!" The biggest bailout in the history of Descent II! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlTk7wa59A
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
βBART anime merch" are three words that I would not have expected to go together, but here we are. https://www.railgoods.com/bart/anime/
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Does anyone else sing the chorus to "Cherish" by Kool & The Gang to themselves whenever they play or watch streams of Balatro? Or is that just me?
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
I'm fact that's what Lingo needs: a "phone" block. The clue is an incorrect autocorrected form of the answer. π
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
It's like my phone knows I've been playing Lingo. I typed in "exited" and my phone was all:
β¬οΈ EXCITED ------
βͺοΈ
βͺοΈ
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
A comparison of the classic Tetris and Descent communities. Not a post I write lightly, either.
https://roncli.com/blogger/3703157809000934742/a-tale-of-two-communities
martin
@luftlesen @mstdn.jp
Aptiz played #Pentis again. In the beginning you can see roncli asking in the chat for the right version. About an hour later, he broke the #PentisRankings record with 60K ! Congratulations roncli π π
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2052528360?sr=a&t=11267s
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Yeah, it's season 11. But the OTL Season 6 highlight reel is up, this time Fireball has taken the reins! Check out this video jam packed full of kills, deaths, silliness, and Sirius puns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXstLVjnaGo
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Over on #thatbirdhellsite, someone retweeted sympathy for the people being laid off today...
...and then said that Amazon Games was hiring. You know, the one that just had layoffs in NOVEMBER.
Honestly? Tech sucks right now.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Seriously. Why is it called Sagittarius, A Star? Clearly, it's Sagittarius, A Black Hole. Silly astronomers.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
This eslint/stylistic breakup is going to give me a headache. Don't developers have something better to do than give other developers busywork?
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Bing is so bad. https://otl.gg is being blocked in their search results, and Bing webmaster tools are absolutely useless, not telling me why it's being blocked.
Does anyone know of some way to get a human to look at this and see what's wrong with it? #bing #microsoft
Olivia W'
@WLivi @retro.pizza
it's not actually common for real hackers to use two keyboards at once; that's just a stereo type.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Me and my wife, despite buying a house of nice size, always seem to get in each other's way, be it in the kitchen, on the stairs, it doesn't matter. She's all up in my two square feet.
I often joke that all I want for Christmas is my two square feet.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Update 2: The record that beat Blue Scuti stood for one day. Blue Scuti got it back.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
I got the honor and privilege of calling the NES Tetris NTSC world record today while running Classic Tetris Wars on my Twitch channel for the very first time. It was thrilling. Congratulations to Blue Scuti for his 6,609,220 level 153 performance. https://clips.twitch.tv/DiligentDeadGoldfishDoritosChip-cx_vDMWAjKaZUK6N
TwistBit
@TwistBit @musicians.today
like, you used to use a phone line to access the internet
now the internet is accessible on your phone
nothing has changed actually
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Six Degrees of Sunday returns Sunday, January 7th, at https://twitch.tv/roncli. Cya there!
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Are you ready to get Six'd Off?
Six Degrees of Sunday, my 6DoF long play Twitch series, is getting revived for 2024. Plus, I will be producing Six'd Off, a companion YouTube series showcasing each game.
Check out the announcement for the game list and more! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeRbjjpQVZY
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
So I started a fresh YouTube channel some time ago, and yesterday I released the first real video to it.
Check out highlights from Argus Industrial Moons' run to the OTL Season 10 Best of the Rest title! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2x-GGW9FYI
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
People at work are calling Kubernetes K8, and I hate it. It's not "Kubernete"!
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Want a preview of what CTWC will be like next weekend from a gameplay perspective? CTL Season 22 finals starting now.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
No airport hell this morning, but you know that lady that talks about security at literally every airport? I just realized, she sounds old AF.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
If this security line posted signs "5 minutes from this point", "10 minutes...", etc., They'd have to post them every foot. #airporthell
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Did I miss Elon making another purchase? https://twitter.com/unity/status/1701650081403842851
Konstantinos Dimopoulos
@konstantinosd @mastodon.gamedev.place
That's a lovely free bundle of books for people interested in getting into games programming: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/international-day-of-the-programmer-2023-free-giveaway
Join roncli on Discord!
Join the roncli Gaming Discord server for discussion about gaming, development, and more! 
Content Β©2000-2024 Ronald M. Clifford
Website Version 2.1.18, Β©2021-2024 roncli Productions
Website Version 2.1.18, Β©2021-2024 roncli Productions
Bugs? Report on GitHub