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The drawback is that writing all of the game files to the primary hard disk can take up gobs of space in a hurry.  This problem can easily be alleviated if the user has a separate hard drive installed.  My own setup consists of a smaller hard drive for my operating system and application files and a much larger hard drive for media and projects.  With Steam games taking up more and more space on my OS drive, I decided to move them to a new location on my larger drive.  A simple copy and paste won’t do the trick, however.

This tutorial explains how to create a link between the main hard drive with Windows 7 installed on it to the larger hard drive with more space.  It will involve deleting folders and using the command prompt, so if you’re not comfortable with either I would recommend exploring other options.  That said, the process is fairly straightforward and easy to do.  (The good news is that Steam allows unlimited downloads of purchased content.  If you truly manage to bugger things, simply reinstall the Steam client and re-download all your games.)

1. Copy the “Steam” folder from your primary hard drive (located in either “C:\Program Files (x86)” or just “C:\Program Files”) and paste it to your new hard drive.  I put it in the root directory of the new hard drive.
2. Delete the “Steam” directory on your original hard drive.
3. From the Windows Start Menu, go to Accessories and right click on Command Prompt.  Select “Run as Administrator”.
4. Enter the following command, inserting the original and destination directories to fit your computer.  The quote marks are necessary:

   mklink /J "old directory" "new directory"

For example, on my computer I used the following command:

mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" "E:\Steam"

The mklink command creates a symbolic link between one directory and another.  Whenever Windows goes to look for the original directory it will be redirected to the new directory on your second hard drive.  You will know the command is successful when you see what looks like a shortcut in the original Program Files directory.  If you ever want to remove this link, simply delete this shortcut.

The good news is that because Windows is simply redirecting itself, your original shortcuts will all still be functional.  Steam and all the games it monitors will continue to function as normal.  If you download a new game in the future, the symbolic link will send the new games to their proper destination.

I had used Xmarks in the past (it used to be a Firefox exclusive, Foxmarks), but lately I hadn’t been as synced up as I could be.  I will openly confess to using Firefox almost exclusively for my web browsing needs – so the ability to sync across several browsers seemed unnecessary.

The big option for Firefox users right now is also made by Mozilla – Weave.  Taking advantage of the assumption that the intended user is browsing with Firefox exclusively, Weave does bookmark synchronization and a whole lot more.

Obviously, bookmark syncing is present.  Expanding on that, Weave will also sync the Firefox toolbar settings as well.  Example: I have my toolbars tweaked so my bookmarks are just icons on the top menu bar, next to the Help menu.  I think it looks nicer than using the standard bookmark toolbar and frees up some screen real estate on my laptop.  When I make changes to this toolbar (or any toolbar, for that matter), those changes are saved to my Weave profile.  If I add a shortcut on my laptop, the next time I load Firefox on my desktop computer said shortcut will automagically appear.

Continuing in features exclusive to Firefox, Weave will also sync the settings of your Personas, or user themes, assuming the necessary add-in is installed on the computers being use.  The Awesome Bar will also be updated, so typing in the same words or phrases will get the same results on all computers.

And if you could possibly want more, Weave also allows you to use the history and even the closed tabs from other Firefox installations.  Firefox recently added the ability to recover closed tabs, meaning the user doesn’t have to worry about accidentally closing a tab and then having to root through the history folder to find it.  Once Weave is installed, a new item is added to the History menu: “Tabs From Other Computers”.  It’s a small addition that turns out to be more useful than most would assume at first.

I have three different computers I that I use Firefox with, two at home and one at work.  Weave has proved to be a pretty handy tool for keeping my user experience consistent across all of them.  Mozilla is always hard at work, making sure that Firefox is a world-class browser and also working on other special projects like collaborative coding, browser enrichment, and giving everyone the ability to write extensions.  Check out the Mozilla Labs site to see all the neat things they’re working on.

Whenever someone asks me what the day is today, I can reply: “10-4, good buddy!”

…yeah.

Disbelieving mother/father: “I don’t understand – we’ve all led completely unremarkable lives, and come from a humble background in which we are made to believe that none of us are special.”

Guy: “Be that as it may, your little {name here} is very, very important.”

Mother/father: “Why?”

Guy, possibly removing glasses: “… because he might be the savior of the world as we know it.”
—

STOP. JUST STOP.

“Ugh, no.  That’s so incredibly bad for you.”

“Sure, if you eat the whole plate.  I’m talking about having one piece.  Try some!”

“I can hear my arteries hardening already.  That’s gross.”

“Really?  You want to go that route?  Here’s a question for you: Do you know what’s even worse for you than a piece of chocolate covered bacon?  Two pieces of normal bacon. It’s true.  If you were to separate the two principal ingredients and put a piece of bacon in one hand and the five chocolate chips that constitute the coating in the other, you’d have more sugar than two pieces of bacon, but a lot less fat and sodium than if you had two pieces of bacon.

And let’s be honest with ourselves.  Have you ever had a plate of bacon in front of you and eaten just one piece of bacon?  No, of course not.  But don’t feel bad, nobody in the history of the world has.  You’ve had no qualms eating three, four, five pieces of bacon in one sitting.  Do you know how much fat is in bacon?  Don’t look, you might not eat it anymore.

Similarly, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you eat a cheeseburger plenty of times in your life.  What’s the thought process here that says eating a quarter pound of ground animal meat and fat topped with melted animal fat is somehow a green light, while 1 oz. of bacon and 1/2 oz. of chocolate is going to send you into cardiac arrest?  Let’s get some perspective here.”

“But why would you do that?  What possessed you to combine the two?”

“First, because I saw it on the internet.  That’ s pretty good reason to do anything.  Second, because it’s awesome.  It’s taking two awesome things and putting them together.  Doing something completely ridiculous for the sake of doing it is a completely valid reason.  That’s what makes it fun.  It’s like playing football with jetpacks.  Sure, it doesn’t make any sense, but how sweet would that be?”

“What’s it taste like?”

“Kind of like a chocolate covered pretzel.  You get salty and sweet together.”

“Isn’t it gross?”

“No, just make sure you cook the bacon to the crispy state.  Soggy bacon makes it kind of chewy, which is less appetizing.”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

“Because I spent two fucking hours last night making this stuff, and if you’re not going to at least try a piece, don’t be the douche at the party loudly proclaiming how something I made as a novelty is the end of Western Civilization as we know it.”

Chocolate Covered Bacon:

Ingredients

• One pound of your favorite bacon
• Bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Bag of white chocolate chips

1) Cook the bacon.  You can fry it in a pan, or bake it, or microwave it.  Whatever you want.  As I said above, though, just make sure it’s crispy.  Let it cool and/or dry before dunking it.

2) Melt the chocolate.  I like using the microwave, because dinking around with boiling water is a pain.  Put the chips in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave on half power for about a minute, stir, and repeat.  Do it as often as you need until the chips are melted.

3) Dunk the bacon in the chocolate.  I use tongs.  Shake off the excess chocolate.

4) Optional: Melt some white chocolate (which isn’t really chocolate) and drizzle it over the bacon.  This is an aesthetic touch.

• The newspaper is fairly useless I certainly don’t blame the Journal-Sentinel for being biased towards the Packers/Brewers/Badgers/Teabags.  That’s their job.  We don’t get the JS on weekdays anyway, so the paper is not a viable solution.
• We don’t have cable This one I can’t really complain about because obviously it’s my own choice.  Even if I did, however, I would either have to watch the WGN news or a half hour of Sports Center on ESPN to see the highlights of Chicago teams.
• AM radio is only so helpful When I’m in the car with AM on, 9 times out of 10 I’m listening to a Chicago station.  AM radio in Milwaukee is somewhat lacking, as the only station moderately worth tuning into is 620.  Their news coverage is okay, and they have the Brewers games.  (Some baseball is better than no baseball.)  Typically, though, I’m listening to 720 WGN (Cubs!) or 780 WBBM (the best news around, and, of course, the Bears).  This means that 1) I am extremely up to speed on the traffic conditions of the greater Chicago area and 2) I occasionally get blips about Chicago sports.  That is, unless the Bears or Cubs are being broadcast, coverage on those stations is few and far between.

So what’s a displaced flatlander to do, besides whine on his blog about the unfairness of it all?

I’ll tell you what, it’s go to ESPN.com.  Why?  Because all I have to do is put a little “/chicago” at the end of the URL and I get a page that seems like it was written specifically for me.

ESPN’s Chicago site has all of the scores, headlines, and articles for all of the Chicago teams aggregated into one spot, which is outstanding.  Not only that, but they have a specially-recorded ESPN.com Chicago Sports Center reel that gives me a high-quality five minute broadcast of highlight reels and scores for Chicago.  It’s like having Sports Center on, whenever I want, with only the content I want sifted out.

Which makes me so, so happy.  The video update is ad-free, so I don’t even have to sit through any mildly annoying Hulu-esque “This video was brought to you by Snuggies” advertisements.  I would be happy to, though, as I think that the experience ESPN.com is offering is extremely useful.

End result: One Happy Hermes.

Anywho, I took a bunch of pictures at a few different locations in the track with the thought of stitching them together in GIMP and creating some panorama shots.  It turns out there’s a program that does that for you automatically, and it’s stupid simple to use.  The following pictures were done with Autostitch.  Had I know I could have gotten such good results, I probably would have taken a lot more (and perhaps tried a little harder regarding the actual shots).

Click to enlarge.

Heh, note the guy in the above picture that appears twice.