Spycraft LARP VideoSpycraft LARP Video
 Posted at 8:38 PM
The Great DivorceDuring my trip I finally read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Although he is better known for the Narnia series, it is considered one of his better books. He considers the fact that we know relatively little about the afterlife. In his fantasy world the afterlife is a strange and dangerous place where souls take a phantom shape. Residents of the strange world try to coax the phantoms into repenting and entering into Heaven. Interestingly he compares a soul's time on Earth to being in Hell. It is an existence of joyless, friendless unhappiness. Hell is represented by "grey town". an ever expanding metropolis that is grey and grim. In some ways it reminds me of playing some MMORPGs. I am looking forward to the arrival of Prince Caspian in theaters. Although the critics have panned its overt Christian references, that is exactly what makes it interesting and, yes, refreshing. Posted at 8:43 PM
JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 4: FridayI woke up Friday and decided to skip the final keynote address and remaining sessions. I had a raging headache and was anxious to get home. I did a little shopping for Mother's Day. Then I took the subway to the airport to see if I could catch an earlier flight. Unfortunately, I did not have luck and settled in for the four hour wait before my flight.
The JavaOne conference team has been notified by the San Francisco Department of Public Health about an identified outbreak of a virus in the San Francisco area. Testing is still underway to identify the specific virus in question, but they believe it to be the Norovirus, a common cause of the "stomach flu", which can cause temporary flu-like symptoms for up to 48 hours. Part of the San Francisco area impacted includes the Moscone Center, the site of the JavaOne conference which is being held this week. We are working with the appropriate San Francisco Department of Public Health and Moscone representatives to mitigate the impact this will have on the conference and steps are being taken overnight to disinfect the facility. We have not received any indication that the show should end early, so will have the full schedule of events on Friday as planned. We hope to see you then I feel much better today. I am catching up on chores and preparing for my week. I am looking forward to discussing some of the interesting things I saw with coworkers and friends. Posted at 9:52 PM
JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 3: ThursdayWell folks, this is gonna be a short entry. Tomorrow is the last day of JavaOne. I need to pack up all of my stuff and swag in order to be check out tomorrow. Posted at 1:58 AM
JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 2: WednesdayOk, I just got back from the Sun Developer Network Party. I am going to make this short. My plan is to revisit these blog entries once Sun releases the videos and slides from the JavaOne sessions in the near future. Here's my brief recap of today's fun. Posted at 1:44 AM
JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 1: TuesdayI made the trip out to San Francisco for JavaOne. The first day kicked off with a speech entitled Java + You. I came in late because, well, I had an issue finding the right conference center.. not Moscone West, not Moscone South, but Moscone NORTH, whew! I enjoyed the talk until they trotted out Neil Young, the ancient musician and liberal crackpot. try {
// stuff
}
catch (X1, X2 e) { foo(); }
catch (X3 e) { bar(); }
Safe Re-thow
try {
// stuff
}
catch (final Throwable e) {
logger.log(e);
throw e;
}
Switch on String
switch (value)
{
case "red":
foo();
break;
}
Modules
module org.netbeans.core;
package org.netbeans.core.utils;
Annotations (JSR 308)
Adds annotations on generics
List <@NonNull String> strings;
Adds annotations to casts
endRegex = (@NonNullPattern) endRegex;
I went to a session on Grails that was pretty similiar to the class I attended at No Fluff, Just Stuff a few months ago. Following that I went to a class on GWT where the only thing I picked up was that testing GWT classes in difficult. Then I ended the night with a session on writing plugins for Eclipse, NetBeans IDE and IDEA. The main takeaway from that session was that Eclipse uses plugins in SWT and everybody else uses Swing. It has been a long day. I have classes tomorrow on Groovy, Struts 2, OpenSocial and Comet. So I'm off to bed to do a bit of reading before calling it a night. Posted at 12:56 PM
Groovy Credit Card Number ValidationBack in March I attended a software conference hosted in St. Louis called No Fluff, Just Stuff. The lectures introduced me to some cool new technology. It was small and intimate. I had an opportunity to speak to the instructors and conference organizer. class LuhnValidator {
def isValidCreditCardNumber(number) {
def sum = 0
def alternate = false
number.reverse().each { value ->
if (value =~ /\d/)
{
def n = value.toInteger()
if (alternate) {
n *= 2
if (n > 9) {
n = n % 10 + 1
}
}
sum += n
alternate = !alternate
}
}
sum % 10 == 0
}
}
Posted at 9:16 PM
Wish You Were Here
Posted at 10:09 PM
Love NoteDo you like me?
[ ] Yes Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Posted at 1:00 PM
Improving Cell Phone ReceptionI have Verizon. A coworker described how to improve cell phone reception. The cell phone has a Preferred Roaming List (or PRL). This list tells your card which towers to look for when establishing connection. As new EVDO towers are installed, your PRL will become out of date because it won't know to hunt for these new towers. From http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/howTo/prlHowTo.jsp Updating Preferred Roaming List(PRL) Verizon Wireless is constantly advancing its roaming technology to provide you with superior roaming capabilities. By updating your PRL every few weeks, you can be sure you have access to our enhancements. As a result you may experience: * Longer battery life Instructions for updating your PRL: 1. Power on your phone within any Verizon Wireless digital service area. Posted at 7:15 PM
Here Another Year Friends, thanks for your birthday wishes! Seeing as how we are twins, today is also Kevin's birthday. Happy Birthday, bro!Posted at 5:03 PM
Cowgirl
everything.
I'm invisible. an eraser of love. an eraser of love. why don't you call me I feel like flying in two. I'm invisible. an eraser of love. an eraser of love. why don't you call me I feel like flying in two. an eraser of love. an eraser of love. I don't dream. (ice cream.) I scream so much. "Cowgirl" - Underworld Posted at 11:07 PM
I Know What You Did Last Labor DayWell, the word is out. I am leaving my current client, Lockheed Martin, for a position at Express Scripts. The past week or two has been a blur of phone calls and meetings. My Linux box was being temperamental. It would not allow me access to my email. I have it set up to download the email from my gazpacho.net domain as well as yahoo.com and hotmail.com. Then all mail is filtered through a custom-configured SpamAssassin. I then use Mozilla Thunderbird to read it via imap. Well, somehow the imap database became corrupted. Also, one or more Berkeley DB binary files may have been corrupted/deleted. I took the opportunity to upgrade to Fedora Core 7. It was a painful process that took me most of the Labor Day weekend. I'm not going there. I ordered a Dell laptop with Ubuntu Linux on it. My plan is to migrate my files off of the Fedora Linux box.. and be rid Fedora and its RPM madness for good! I watched signgirl's dog while she went up to Chicago. Her dog was an angel. But she made me concerned because the silly thing would not eat her food. Signgirl has been selling some of my junk things on eBay. It is amazing what people will buy. A sealed box of Lord of the Rings Risk went for more than I paid for it at retail. A bag filled with Gregory Horror Show miniatures went for approximately $30 to a lady in the United Kingdom. Somebody wanted the copy of "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" DVD I won as a prize at a LARP. Who knew? Posted at 10:36 AM
The 100 Best MemeSince I have been back from Gen Con real life obligations have colluded to prevent me from posting the planned Gen Con recap blog entries. Or, maybe it was the mullet I borrowed from Kentucky Fried Gamers. My IQ dropped the moment I put it on and has not yet recovered.
Currently the internal network is down at work leaving me with a moment to crank out a quick entry. One of the cool things I missed at this year's Gen Con was Green Ronin's Hobby Games: The 100 Best book. The following meme lists the hobby games found in the book and asks the blogger to indicate their level of personal experience. Boldface if "I own this game." Bruce C. Shelley on Acquire Clearly I have more gaming to do! I will attempt to post the recap entries later this week. Posted at 12:28 PM
I Could See the Squirrels
Sometime last year I was interviewed by Google. Theirs is a consensus-driven decision-making process involving a multitude of interviews. I made it through a total of two telephone interviews. The first was a screening interview where a recruiter asked me some career oriented questions and finished with a quiz of technical questions. The second interview was conducted by an engineer working in the department in which I most likely would have worked and was a technical interview involving low-level networking and Linux operating system details. Since they do not have any opportunities in the Midwest -- a glaring oversight on their part I might add -- I asked for a position at the Googleplex, its Mountain View, California headquarters. I was told that they might not have a position for me there but they did have openings in Zurich and Dublin. I told the Google people I was not interested in working outside the United States. Just between us, maybe I'd consider it if Hillary Clinton succeeds in her attempt to become our next president. Speaking of politics, Google is too cozy with liberal politicians. Environmentalist crackpot and failed presidential candidate Al Gore serves as Senior Advisor to Google. Also, in the 2004 federal elections a staggering 98% of employee's campaign contributions went to Democrats. Are they building a culture of innovative engineers or ideological cronies? According to an article in Forbes magazine Google and its recruiters doubled its head count to 20,000 from 10,000 at the end of last year. The article goes on to say that Google disappointed Wall Street after admitting it overspent on new hires during its latest quarter. So, if you have a copy of your resume online, do not be surprised if you get a phone call from their people. Honestly, I wish you the best of luck. Perhaps you will be a better fit than this conservative computer scientist who loves life in the flyover states. Is there a job you should have gotten? I would like to hear about it. Posted at 6:11 PM
Gen Con Indy 2007 ScheduleFriends, it is time for Gen Con. I will be there from sometime Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning. As I type this I still don't know in which hotel I'll be staying or what time I'll be arriving. So, who's going? Give me a shout out if you see me, even if I am zoned out in my own world. I *love* to hear the words: "I read your blog". If you'd like to join me for lunch, I plan to be at the RAM for lunch after Killer Breakfast on Saturday. Those of you who have been to the Indy Convention Center know that cell phones do not get good reception and the ambient noise in most places make phone conversations impossible. If you try to call me, please leave me a voice mail message. Or, send me a text message. Here is my schedule for this year's convention: Wednesday, Aug 15
Posted at 3:57 PM
Howdy Neighbor
How well do you know your next-door neighbors? I do not really intend to be anti-social but I have seen quite a few families move in and out of my block over the last five years. In fact when my house was built most of the surrounding lots were just muddy plots. Careers bring change and people move on. While I try to be a good neighbor, I am just not a very social one. I don't know my neighbors very well. I am okay with that. Posted at 12:30 AM
Wedding Bells Are Ringing
He and his wife wished for a church-sponspored ceremony that only Mormons can attend. Since Larry is Mormon and his ex-wife has not filled out the proper paperwork, then the ring ceremony may turn into a full-fledged wedding. What was the last wedding you went to? Mine was a coworker's wedding almost a year ago. They had a nice reception in the Gateway Convention Center. It is the same center in which they have Archon. I asked folks at the reception to picture the place filled with Klingons and nerdy gamer types. It was funny to think about a dude with Spock ears standing where a dude in a tuxedo was standing. One of the cool things I witnessed was that the photographer took the wedding photos digitally. The bride and groom were able to review them at the reception. I think that is a wonderful idea. Posted at 3:48 PM
What A Character
Today we went to the Saint Louis Science Center. They had a special exhibit with Marvel Superheroes that D enjoyed. They had several Playstation 2s set up for kids to play Marvel-based video games. This got me thinking of a question: who is your favorite video game character? My favorite video game character is the space ship. I really enjoyed playing space shooters such as Wing Commander and FreeSpace 2. It is a shame that there has not been any innovation in this genre since FreeSpace 2's massive capital ships and foggy plasma clouds. Graphical hardware and CPU horsepower has improved to the point that it would be possible to have battles with massive ships and have it highlighted with dramatic interaction with your teammates. Recent history has shown that a smart company can breathe new life into a underappreciated genre. Role playing games had been given mediocre treatment for years when BioWare came along and blew everybody away with Baldur's Gate. The company breathed new life into the genre and continued rolling out successful titles for years afterwards. They gave us these gems: Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I would love to see some company buck the trend of Resident Evil clones and Grand Theft Auto knock-offs. Making a space shooter is a risky proposition but could be profitable for somebody willing to take the risk. Posted at 9:55 PM
Ode to the iPhoneThis poem is dedicated to those who possess the iPhone and those who wish they did: ODE TO THE IPHONE Twinkling No keys Look there Cellphones Our world Posted at 1:29 PM
Real Life Music VisualizationPhysics rocks! Check out this demonstration of a Ruben's tube. In this video a foil lined PVC pipe gives a real-world visualization of sound. Remember friends, PVC at this temperature can melt and emit noxious fumes. Posted at 4:51 PM
Caffeinated Soap
Now I wonder if I can find more bars of caffeinated soap for a reasonable price. Posted at 10:18 AM
Disconnected My Home PhoneI disconnected my home phone. I seldom received calls at that number other than telemarketers. The line was often filled with static to point of being impossible to hear the conversation. The "new" AT&T had the nerve to tell me my cellular phone might have issues with its quality of service. Oh k. If you want to reach me, please use my cell phone number, friends. Posted at 2:29 PM
Am Quietly ManKevin bought me a copy of a book entitled 52 Fifty-two Poems for Men. It inspired me to try my own hand at poetry. This one is dedicated to the lovely Signgirl. AM QUIETLY MAN We left for You drove your We always Posted at 10:09 PM
Software for a Blue Sky
I realized at a young age that computer software could indeed be beautiful and have a positive impact on our world. In grade school I was put in a remedial reading class because I had difficulty reading out loud in class. It may have been because I can be incredibly shy in intense social situations. Well, having my peers listen to me read was intimidating to me back then. Anyway, I aced all of my remedial reading lessons usually finishing early. Since I had extra time, the instructor let me write some simple programs on the computer that was used to run some teaching software. That is when the programming bug bit me. I was hooked. That enthusiasm followed me to college where I studied computer science. The sun shone brightly in my blue sky. I ravenously studied algorithms and software architecture. I read books outside of the assigned course material. I experimented with new ideas. I wondered what software was like in the real world. I was excited by the promise of working on computer software that could make a significant impact on society. In real world there are storm clouds in the skies. While I hate to say that my enthusiasm has diminished, I prefer to say that I learned a number of lessons over the years. There are problems that computers cannot solve. It has been shown that it is impossible for a computer to decide whether statements in arithmetic are true or false. Computer software is written to tackle real-world problems. A vast majority of software is written to meet business problems. I do not believe that custom software will become a commodity because business problems are never the same long enough for the proposed solutions to be economical. The ultimate product of a software project is an executable. But that product is not useful without good documentation. Documentation is often overlooked. Open source documentation is underappreciated. I will never forget the sinking feeling the first time a colleague told me he did not need documentation since his code was self-documenting. Writing great software involves managing complexity and balancing design decisions. Programmers tend to eliminate redundancy by refactoring common code. So, if new code is necessary, it will be unique and will increase the complexity of software. A good design will mitigate how complex a system needs to get in order to meet its goal. Writing software is limited by time and budget. For example the work on Y2K software had a deadline of New Years Day 2000. A disciplined company has a regular release schedule of software. As a manager put in once at some point you have to cut the baby and deliver a product! For all of the dark clouds there is still a reason for software architects and engineers to get out of bed in the morning. There are problems for which elegant algorithms do not yet exist. In fact there are problems that people have only imagined for which no software exists. Futurists imagine a world, for example, with flying cars. In order for flying cars to be as easy to use as conventional automobiles we need sophisticated computer software. I do not think the futurists picture a generation of people spending time to learn to use a vehicle that is as complicated as a helicopter to operate. I regain my enthusiasm when I think about the challenges that the world continues to face. Friends, I want to write the computer software that rises to meet them and makes life better for us all. Posted at 4:21 PM
We Got the BluesI went up to the Chicago Blues Festival with Signgirl this past weekend. The weather was great. I met her friend Karen and got reacquainted with her parents. My brother was in a weird mood, but seemed to enjoy himself at the festival. We also checked out some used books at Printer's Row. Signgirl bought some Dr Who books. I would have bought some, too, if we hadn't had to carry them around all day. The Scott Air Show will be July 7-8 this year. It includes a display of a B-2A Stealth Bomber, the most technologically advanced bomber in the world, which is rarely seen outside of its home base, Whiteman Air Force Base. Posted at 3:34 PM
DieCon 7 Recap
I wrote and helped run the Spycraft LARP for Atomic Squash. In all we had about 22 players and wrote 35 characters. Sorry Jirel, but the Cynthia Pride character was cut due to lack of players. Thanks again for writing up the information on the collectible card game. Our biggest asset for LARP development was the wiki. I believe the ability to work online and see the edit history and recent changes made us more productive. It took some time to become adjusted to the wiki-style formatting. But everyone who used it seem to pick it up fairly quickly. We published a guest list, a list of characters, on the Atomic Squash forums before the game. The feedback to the list helped us gauge player interest. We were better able to select which characters to put in the optional column in case not enough players showed up. For a three to five hour game I feel that a 300-400 word character description worked well. It gives the player a good feel for the character and improves their game. For example I gave the Doctor Lo character a family. It was not important to the immediate events of the game, but helped define the character. There were not big stories that encompassed a large number of characters. This allowed us to safely cut characters and augment the game by playing the museum curator and auctioneer as non-player characters (NPCs). Most players had at a couple goals that encouraged interaction with other players. Making Otto's disappearance a mystery discouraged players from sticking to their small circles and encouraged them to circulate among the other players. A couple players told me how much they enjoyed their characters. Seeing them enjoy the game made all of the hard work worth it. I was thrilled to see Signgirl laughing and enjoying the LARP. Big points for you, sweetie! Now I'll have to draft you to help me write a new Kobolds LARP. Posted at 3:43 PM
Spycraft LARP Gets a WikiI am continuing to work on the Spycraft LARP for Atomic Squash. Our setting this year is an art auction. Here is the description of the game if you have not read it yet: "Invitations to high society events are commonplace in the world of celebrities, world figures and spies. What's interesting, though, is that the event's host, Otto Beisheim, hasn't been seen by anyone - including Mickey took twenty eight pictures of art items for the game. I spent some time last night uploading them to our game wiki and creating pages for them. By the way while I think wikis are terrible for software project documentation, we have succeeded in using one to organize our character sheets, art items, game rules and reference materials.
his wife - for over a year. Coupled with rumors of Otto's death and the donation of certain mysterious pieces of fine art, this makes for a very strange series of events. Join the fun and intrigue of another Atomic Squash Spycraft interactive event. Black tie dress is suggested but not required for play." Atomic Squash Spycraft LARP When: June 2nd 2007 We are also trying to think of some nice items to give away as prizes for players. Last year for the Fight Night game Atomic Squash gave away a pair of boxing gloves. Cool, huh? Ideas? I saw this on a fortune cookie yesterday: Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness. Don't panic! I just found out today is Towel Day, the annual celebration of the life and humor of Douglas Adams.
Posted at 1:50 PM
This Just In
Posted at 6:57 PM
Signgirl at SWICxtySigngirl and I went to the Southwestern Illinois College sixtieth anniversary dinner. We were messing around with the disposable cameras on the table. Halfway through you can see the flash from another camera go off. Posted at 5:59 PM
Geeks, Nerds and Dorks Here is the definition of geeks, nerds and dorks from the Dojo Toolkit documentation:
Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks: A geek has a very focused knowledge of a subject (that guy that memorized the language of myst), a nerd is a master at many subjects (that girl you go to when you need homework help), and a dork is just plain socially inept (Napoleon Dynamite). *insert nerd laugh here* Posted at 3:57 PM
Dork Gets a Date Earth Day?! Does the Earth need a day? It's my favorite place to be. Dreamhost, my web provider, posted a blog entry about now being a so-called green company. So see, I did something good for our planet. My gazpacho.net domain is green. Sure beats rationing toilet paper.
Tonight I saw Richard Stallman give a lecture at University of Missouri Saint Louis. Expect for some political digs it was pretty close to information covered in the book Free as in Freedom. The question and answer segment was entertaining with guys asking about the latest draft of the Gnu Public License (GPL) 3.0. I usually don't kiss and tell. I don't like to jinx a good thing. Last week I had a "real life" date with a woman I met over the Internet. It doesn't seem to bother her that I'm a computer nerd. Who knew such women existed? :) We had fun; I'm looking forward to seeing her again. Anybody wanna give me pointers on dating a single mom? Last night we had a "cyberdate". We both watched "Monty Python's Quest of the Holy Grail" at the same time at our respective homes and traded IMs about it. LOL. Friends, you can call me a dork. I enjoyed it! I added a coworker as a MySpace friend. Then her 15 year old son sent me a friend request. I've decided not to friend anybody under 18 (unless maybe they're family). When I told her about his request, she seemed a little surprised. She told me she's gonna go through his friends list with him tonight. I downloaded a copy of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. I plan to migrate my Linux server from Fedora to Ubuntu. My biggest challenge is going to be setting up email and configuring the Cyrus IMAP software. I spent a lot of time configuring my existing Postfix mail server. I have aliases and made tweaks to get it to work with SpamAssassin. So upgrading may be tricky. Posted at 10:23 PM
Quick UpdateI've been doing more writing for the Spycraft LARP. I added information to our wiki about the now defunct Spycraft Collectible Card Game (CCG). It was difficult to find the information. As recently as two years ago there was an active community around the game. Now there is hardly a trace of it. I had to go to the Wayback Machine to find information on the game's factions. When a game dies, it disappears. I went over to CptSquash's place Monday night. We played a game of Power Grid. I have had a copy of the game for two years now and haven't had the opportunity to play. It was a fun game, but I lost terribly. The terms of my mortgage were different than I had discussed with the company before the closing. They are redoing it with terms I like better. That means I have to close again. Yeah, more paper signing! LOL! Thankfully they are waiving the closing fees for the redux. Posted at 10:16 PM
Chili and BergamontFriends, I've been productive lately. I refinanced my house and closed on the new loan on Friday. If you have never experienced a closing, then let me explain what's involved. You and an agent sit down with a mountain of papers. You then proceed to sign, sign, sign. I discovered that refinancing has even more paperwork than buying a house. I think it took 1.5 hours for me to sign 20+ documents totaling over 120 pages! Whew! Last night Jason and Adam came over to work on the Spycraft LARP that Atomic Squash is putting together for DieCon 7. Before the meeting we were log jammed on ideas. I think we made progress establishing the premise of the story and fleshing out about twenty characters and several art items. I made chili, cornbread muffins and oatmeal raisin cookies. The chili was average. Adam gave me some ideas to improve it. I asked somebody if she can make neon green soap with the words "Atomic Squash" on it. I'm thinking we can give them out as prizes at the Spycraft LARP. She sent me a list of scents that are available. So, what does Atomic Squash smell like? There are fragrances on the list of which I have never heard: bergamot, frangipani, yuzu and pikake. I must live a sheltered life. Posted at 9:35 PM
Dots Are Famous!I decided to attempt to make a movie of a simple Java program I wrote and upload it to YouTube. Nutty, huh? I used a program called Fraps to capture video of the program in action. Fraps is relatively inexpensive and is a breeze to install and configure. So, I uploaded the resulting AVI file to YouTube. YouTube gave me a "processing" message and later gave a "that part of the site is down for maintenance". This is what kills me. My customers would blow a fuse if their website showed a maintenance message instead of serving their needs. Imagine visiting Google only to see a terse message about the site being down. Digg, YouTube and Myspace are notorious for making their sites inaccessible due to maintenance. How many billions of dollars are these sites worth? Can't they hire engineers who are smart enough to handle redundancy and fail-over while accomplishing maintenance? *cough* Hey, corporate owners, if you need some assistance, you can always examine my resume. The movie failed to upload due to an issue with an unsupported codec. So I spent some time on the site reading the help pages. I learned that for best results I should resize the video to 320x240. So, I fired up Microsoft Movie Maker. In addition to resizing the video I added a title screen, credits and some music my brother Kevin gave me sometime last year. I saved it as a WMV file and uploaded it to YouTube. This time the file was successfully uploaded. Here is the end result. In this video I am clicking on the screen spawning dots. The dots are affected by gravity and fall to the bottom of the screen. I hope you enjoy the cheese factor. Posted at 9:26 PM
Sick AgainUgh. I'm sick again. A nasty flu is going around at work. Unfortunately I picked it up. Bummer! Posted at 8:04 PM
Tom Gets a Dollar CoinMy mother, a bank teller, sent me a new George Washington Presidential Dollar coin. I'm thrilled! I know, it doesn't take much these days.  Posted at 8:27 PM
The Engineer Gets a WeekOur break room at work had some yummy baked goods today: a giant cookie, some doughnuts and a cake that read "Thank you Engineers of Lockheed Martin". Our site manager sent an email that mentioned National Engineers Week and thanked us for our contributions and support. w00t! So to all my fellow software engineers out there: Happy Engineers Week! I decided to troubleshoot my dead Linux box last night. It booted up right away! It lives! I stayed up late installing over 200 updated files. So far it seems to be running well. I plan to continue to watch it and replace it sometime in the near future. When my mail software came back online, I caught up on my email and realized I missed a memorial service for my best friend's mother this past weekend. Words fail to describe how terrible I feel. He drove to my home town to pay respects when my father passed away last year. He's probably disappointed; I'm a bad friend right now. I'll give him a call tonight to try to make amends. I'll see if he wants to go out for drinks and will make a generous donation to a charity in his mother's name. UPDATE: I took my friend out for drinks. We had a great time. I'm going to give a donation to the American Cancer Society. Posted at 4:07 PM
ConvalescenceI'm alive. I'm convalescing from a nasty flu that has had wiped me out for a little more than a week. Sadly, my Linux box died around 8:30 AM this morning. It was my DHCP, DNS, LDAP, mail and file server. I had several Gb worth of music, photos, documents, email and source code stored on it. I was planning on replacing the box sometime this year. It looks like the timetable for the server replacement has been moved up. Hmph. I've switched to an alternate network configuration here at home. I have to read my email without the benefit of my beloved Postfix+IMAP+Spamassassin configuration. So bear with me while I adjust. Posted at 2:42 PM
Burns Night 2007I went to the St Louis Tap Room for Burns Night last night just like I did last year. It is a fun celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. I had some excellent Scotch Eggs. My buddy Adam joined me. He had the haggis, nips and tatties. We got there too late for the recital of the late poet's "Address to the Haggis", the best poem ever composed by a man to a meat product. Even more regrettable is that we missed the Lassies Response delivered last year by an attractive lass who was very amusing. We were entertained by a band of kilted performers who marched into the club room playing drums and bagpipes. They performed a number of traditional songs and an impressive drum piece. Unfortunately I had to cut the evening short because I had a morning meeting. I had a great time hanging with friends and enjoying the food and music. Posted at 5:08 PM
Underrated Items of 2006
Monday, January 8, 2007
Category: Computer Games | Family | Food and Drink | My Life | Science Fiction | Technology It is time for my third annual list of underrated items. The past year, 2006, once again gave us its share of hype and hero worship. This is my list of underrated items that I feel deserve some exposure.
Most Underrated Items for the Year 2006
Last year I mentioned a gazpacho dot net podcast netcast. I am still toying with the idea. I am especially inspired to produce something light-hearted and funny. Posted at 10:10 PM
Merry ChristmasMerry Christmas, y'all. I hope your 2007 is great. Posted at 4:00 PM
Thinking Outside the BridgeI don't often talk about work in this blog. Well, that's because I like my job. I'd like to share a story about Engineering Day. Some time ago Lockheed Martin invented three teams from local junior high schools to tour our facilities and compete in an engineering contest. The contest was this: build something that will suspend ball bearing two inches off the table. Each team was given a budget with various items costing differing amounts. For example, paper clips might cost 10 points, a cup of sugar cost 2 points, string costs 5 points, etc. They were also given a limited time period for construction. I think it was an hour. They allowed to work with an engineer in advance on their design. One of the teams built a box tower out of toothpicks and paper. This structure is the first thing that pops in my head when I think about suspending anything above a table. Ultimately, it didn't hold up to the weight of the ball bearings. It tilted to the side and collapsed. The second team was made up almost entirely of girls. We marveled at their plan. Since we did not specify that the ball bearings were to be two inches above the table, they decided to construct a sling made of string, tape and paper to suspend them two inches BELOW the tabletop. It is a shame that women tend to get steered away from engineering careers. The girls seemed to enjoy the competition and took pride in their solution. Unfortunately, gravity won out and the sling snapped under the weight of the ball bearings. The winning team had the simplest solution. Since sugar was cheap, it was central to their design. They made a cylinder of paper and tape. Then they filled it with four inches of sugar. They completed their project in about ten minutes. The cylinder held the ball bearings easily. The cheapest and quickest design won in the end. I would like to think the children learned that engineering involves the challenge of balancing time and budget while meeting project goals. It can be an exciting and rewarding career choice. Also, while creative solutions are often needed, managing complexity is important. I have seen professional engineers struggle with their solutions. After a review of their software, I often tell them to eliminate unnecessary complexity and redundancy. Posted at 8:48 PM
Enclosure to YouMy father passed away earlier this year. This summer my mother dropped off a PC that he used as part of his business. She asked me to take to a look on it for anything important. I've been avoiding taking a look at it. I wasn't sure what kind of feelings looking at it would bring. Also, I've been dreading the holidays without him. But it is time to summon courage and deal with my emotions. Lately I've suffered with bouts of not sleeping well. But I'm going to be okay. I bought an enclosure. This is a device to which you can connect an IDE hard drive. This one supports USB 2.0 so I can attach it to my computer by USB. I don't need to open my case to install the drive. Well, I took a look at the drive. So far I haven't found anything interesting. I did find evidence of a sneaky spyware program that had installed itself. Also, I saw that the drive was badly fragmented and could perform better after running a defragger on it. The Windows directory has about 1.1 Gb of data. That seems a little unusual for Windows NT. I'll take a closer later. Posted at 4:55 AM
No Power, No HeatA terrible ice storm hit my area last night. About 11 PM just after chatting with a friend I lost power to my house. This morning I'm still without power and consequently without heat. The power company predicts an extended outage with four to five days to get power fully restored to all customers. I'm writing this entry from work right now. I plan to stay with a friend tonight. Temperatures are expected to drop to 10 degrees overnight. I pray my water pipes don't freeze and burst. UPDATE (7:00 PM): Power is back on. My Linux box is now acting strangely. It failed to power up and then failed to initialize the network card. I finally coaxed it back to life. Yeah, Internet and email access is restored! Also, my pipes are fine. Posted at 1:29 PM
Whipped Cream!I went back to Centralia for Thanksgiving. My mother's place is so cluttered. I have a picture of the cramped room where I slept while I was there. It was once the bedroom shared by my brother and I. It is now filled with restaurant toys and, well, clutter. I really do not care for the clutter. In Centralia there is a laundromat that has the tail of an airplane embedded in the roof. I don't remember the story but I believe that a small aircraft once crashed into the building. I think they patched the roof and left the tail. I wish I had taken more pictures but my camera's memory was filled. We had Thanksgiving lunch with my aunt, uncle, cousins and their children. One of my cousin's daughters was raving about how much she enjoyed a home video my brother and I made when we were teenagers. I had completely forgotten about the wild-haired hand puppet named Moses. While the adults were taking turkey-inspired naps, my brother and I entertained ourselves. It seems Moses had a predilection for whipped cream. In fact he would look at the camera and exclaim: "Whipped Cream!" I told her she wasn't allowed to watch any more home movies. Heh. Click on an image for a larger version
Posted at 10:36 PM
The Next Sound You HearIt started last week. As I settling in for a fine night's slumber I hear a sound. It was a chirp. Not a bird's chirp but the unfriendly chirping that can only mean that the battery on a smoke detector needs to be replaced. I played a game of hopping from room to room to find the offenders. I needed a 9V battery! Sadly, I found none. I even checked the alarm clocks in my bedroom and the guest rooms. Their batteries, it appeared, had been salvaged long ago. Cranky and exhausted I settled for an unhappy night of restless sleep. The next day I stopped by the Walmart and picked up eight 9V batteries. When I got home I replaced the battery. Then I heard it again. How can a chirp annoy me so much? I replaced another battery. Satisfied, I returned the ladder back to the garage. About a half-hour later my ears were once again greeted with another chirp. At that moment I decided to replace all of the batteries in all of the smoke detectors. That is when I discovered I had nine detectors and eight batteries. Fortunately, the chirping went away when I replaced eight batteries. On Sunday the last smoke detector decided to start chirping. No problem I thought. I replaced that last battery. Peace returned. The world was sunshine and roses once again. Last night I was watching TV after a long work day when my friend the chirp returned to greet me. What?! I had replaced every single battery in every single detector. Or, so I had thought. In frustration I raced out to buy eight more batteries (backups are good). To my surprise I found there was a smoke detector in my furnace room. I had no idea! I have no less than ten smoke detectors in my house. Their batteries went down around the same time. I felt great this morning after a comfortable night's sleep. What a difference undisturbed sleep makes. Posted at 4:00 PM
Addresses for Holiday CardsI'm gonna try to send out Holiday Cards this year. If you'd like to receive some holiday cheer, send an email with your postal mailing address. Email: tomc@gazpacho.net Posted at 6:36 PM
Nice Election You HaveI voted! Sean Puffy Combs did not die. But Citizen's Change, his not-for-profit organization, did.
Post your own picture on your blog! FoXXtail did! Go vote right! Posted at 6:58 PM
NaNoWriMo, Part 1I decided to give National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) a shot.
I'm feeling kinda tired so I decided to start with some stuff I wrote for the Kobolds LARP last month. Why do I make so many decisions while I'm tired? Here is my novel so far: Kisses for the Kobold Queen Written: November 2006 It was a day just like any other day. It was a Tuesday. Monday had run its miserable course. Wednesday was preparing its hump. Somewhere in a dark musty cave lived a creature called a Kobold. Kobolds have silly, short-lived lives. They are a race of little dog-like humanoids. They stand only two feet tall, are covered in bristly orange hair and have large mouths filled with sharp, pointy teeth. They are stupid creatures who spend their days causing mischief and when attempting anything remotely complicated usually fail miserably. A little known fact is that Kobolds are gourmets. The food that they eat must be the best available. A typical Kobold Feast includes interesting dishes such as Emerald's Cheesy Chicken Casserole, Blackened Elf Shank with Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Rosemary, Rat Filets Roasted with Coffee Beans, Red Peppers and Creamy Grits with Greens and Mushrooms, Braised Dog in a Bordelaise Sauce Garnished with Truffle Pate and with a Fried Egg on top and, of course, a yummy HUMAN BABY, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICH! If these fines foods are not available, cannibalism is encouraged. Kobolds are terribly tasty when seasoned with chile pepper and garnished with cave crickets. There are no words for "personal hygiene" and "aerosol deodorant" in the Kobold vocabulary. Kobolds carry a stench that smells like a cross between a wet dog and a school cafeteria. Although the odor is quite repugnant, Kobolds seem unaware of its existence. Creatures with weak dispositions have been known to become nauseated and vomit in the presence of the scent. Gusts of wind in the wrong direction have spoiled many Kobold surprise raids and fancy Fey creature celebrations. On this particular Tuesday a Kobold named Belzak was lounging on a mound of dirt in the St Louis Zoo. Strange thing is that Kobolds do not normally live in Human zoos. They almost always live in caves. But much like a grade school student's homework project, Kobolds are not exempt from strange and twisted fates. Months ago rival Kobolds disguised as the famous Kobold chef Emerald and his kitchen staff visited Belzak's cave. Kobold chefs are fanatical about Emerald, a celebrated gourmet chef. The learned sage Dorf noted in his autobiography that Emerald once cooked a feast for the Kobold King that lasted three weeks. Recipes from this epic event have become staples in Kobold kitchens everywhere. Due to his influence many Kobolds have chosen to dedicate their lives to cooking creative gourmet meals. Dorf wrote that if Kobolds had bigger brains, they might realize that most dishes smell like unwashed gym socks. Contemporary sages say that Dorf was a mad crackpot and an outrageous liar. The sneaky rival Kobolds arranged a cooking demonstration. When Belzak and the rest of his clan showed up, they were taken by surprise and captured in a huge wooden cage. In a display of ravenous and arrogant dominance, the clan leader was cooked in an epic-level BBQ. While their enemies dined, a strange Gnome arrived. He said he was Phil T. Olaf, an entertainer and entrepreneur. In exchange for two pairs of shiny boots, a bag of cheesy doodles and a yummy Human baby, the Gnome acquired the entire clan! Then he transported Belzak and his clan to the St Louis Zoo where they are sold and put on exhibit as a rare type of prairie dog. Now the Kobolds spend their time digging holes and dreaming about fancy dishes they once prepared at their feasts. There wasn't much for Belzak to do this Tuesday. But that would soon change. Suddenly the ground begins to swim under Belzak. He hops up and looks around. The earth seems to jump up before him. With a ripping sound a wide crack appears in the ground just a few feet in front of him. The earth continues to shift. With a loud roar the crack closes again. "What?! Hey, did anybody else feel that earthquake?", Belzak says as he spins around. "Come here. There was this crack right here!" Frightened Kobolds back far away from Belzak as he points to the ground and tells his story. Nobody is sure if the word "aftershock" ever existed in the Kobold vocabulary before this day. About ten minutes after the earthquake there was a horrible splitting, tearing sound. A giant crevice opens under the spot in which he was standing. It is was not for the yelling and the screaming the darkness into which Belzak fell could be considered peaceful. In a way Belzak felt the rush of air and the sensation of free-falling were a welcome relief from months of captivity. Terror only struck him when he thought about jagged rocks bringing his fall to an end or the idea that the crevice could close again burying him alive. Eventually he fell into a tube just barely wider than himself. He starts clawing and cursing. The cussing does not really help. But Belzak manages to slow down his descent to a complete stop. As he gazes downward he sees a light! Slowly he climbs down until he finds a ledge leading to an opening. It is bright as daylight. There is green grass and river flowing into a waterfall. There is nothing like a climb to work up a thirst. Belzak dashes toward the river to take a drink. As he drinks, the earth grumbles violently. Pieces of rock start to rain around him. As he shields himself a large rock lands on his head. Belzak's vision narrows. Then all colors turn gray. Finally, darkness settles in his clouded mind. He has lost consciousness. [Ed: I'm not happy with this.. It could be better. And I need to fix the past/present tense in some paragraphs.] Posted at 12:46 AM
Invasion of the ScavengersEarlier this evening I celebrated the installation of my work project on the production system. It has not been easy. But I take pride in knowing that our customer has a quality product. I found out a coworker is running for governor of Illinois in next week's elections. He did not gather enough signatures to make it on the official ballot but is a write-in candidate. Funny, huh? Did I mention that my site manager was in a band called the Aging Hippies? I work with some interesting folks. Tonight my doorbell rang. I opened the door to see two teenage girls standing there. One of them explained that they were on a scavenger hunt. She asked if she could take her picture with me. "This isn't going on the Internet, is it?", I asked. "Nah, it's just for fun." she replied. Somewhere, a teenager has her picture with a very tired Tom. Posted at 9:52 PM
Happy HalloweenI handed out candy to the neighbor kids who came by for Trick or Treat tonight. I didn't try to "guess the costume" this year. Last year I offended a youngster by asking if he was a Power Ranger. This year I didn't wear a costume but instead wore my Rob Zombie concert T-shirt. One young boy asked, "Rob Zombie? Somebody has a last name of Zombie?" I responded, "Yep. He's a pretty good guitar player." He said, "What's he play? Oldies?" Haha, wise guy! Happy Halloween! For my Party Hard Corps friends, Heil Stan! Posted at 9:25 PM
The Power of Schoefinkel Compels YouShamelessly ripped from my brother Kevin and in time for Halloween is the creepy quiz, Serial Killer or Computer Language Inventor?. I scored a 4 out of 10! Posted at 7:03 PM
FC6 PanicI installed the latest Red Hat Linux distribution, Fedora Core 6. The kernel paniced on me! This causes all of the Windows boxes to not see the Internet since the Linux box hosts my DHCP server. Grr, my Internet access may be spotty for a few days until I determine what I want to do. Posted at 4:27 PM
What the Wiki Monday night I augmented the Wikipedia entry for Kobolds Ate My Baby (KAMB) to mention the LARP that Atomic Squash ran at Archon 30. I also added an entry for Atomic Squash. My writing was reverted so fast that my head is still spinning. The wiki admins decided that my KAMB entry was "a vanity post" and that Atomic Squash did not rise to the level of a notable organization verified by reliable sources. I am angry and hugely disappointed.
I had lunch with my boss Tuesday. I was pleased that she promised to find me a teammate for my projects. I have been fortunate to work with some bright and talented coworkers. Other managers, of course, have recognized my teammate's accomplishments and have lured them away with promises of exciting research projects and their own teams to lead. I couldn't be happier for their accomplishments, but it represents a brain drain from which I have to recover. My buddy Raeliste sent me a Halloween card. It really lifted my spirits! After my birthday plans fell through last week, I spent the night dining alone. I have been a little down since then. Getting a card from a lovely woman boosted my self-esteem and libido. Lucy nee Annie sent me a video of herself clucking like a chicken. It started with a meme that linked to page that would sloganize your name. My slogan: What would you do for a Tom? She responded that she'd cluck like a chicken. I followed up with a message telling her I'd like to see that. She sent me a video a little later. Too funny! Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is love. Built-in crash recovery and spell checking is a solid improvement! Posted at 4:25 PM
Archon 30 ReportThis past weekend I attended Archon 30. It was good to see friends and have some fun gaming. This year Cpt Squash convinced me to run a Kobolds Ate My Baby (KAMB) Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game. I named it Kobolds on a Plane! I stayed up late Wednesday night writing characters. In addition to the 9th Level Games KAMB books -- Kobolds Ate My Baby Super Deluxx Edition and Kobolds the Charades -- I drew influence from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frank Baum's Ozma of Oz, White Wolf's Werewolf: The Forsaken and, of course, this summer's hit movie Snakes on a Plane! :: THURSDAY Since I pre-registered for Archon 30 I had a relatively short wait to pick up my badge. While standing in line the topic on most folks mind was next year's Archon. Convention organizers plan to host the 9th North American Science Fiction Convention (9th NASFiC) in place of Archon. They have also decided to hold it two months earlier than the normal Archon, on August 2-5. I met up with my buddies Jim and Adam. We decided to to go to Applebees to grab some dinner. Adam showed us a movie of his new girlfriend out with him at dinner. Jim and I launched into talk about politics. We expect things to really interesting with some important elections only a few weeks away. I decided to run back home to work on the Kobolds on a Plane! I put together a spreadsheet listing every character in the game, another listing all special abilities and finally a list of items in the game. Then I put together three pages of horrible death charts that the player might encounter. I put these in a binder for Cpt Squash to read in preparation for the Saturday game. Cpt Squash threw a room party this year for his gaming club Atomic Squash. Adam was rocking out on a game called Guitar Hero. He showed off by playing with the guitar behind his head. Several of the Hex Games guys stopped by including Steve Johnson and Colin Thomas. Elonka also stopped by. She told me she had given a talk earlier about Archon's Wikipedia entry and noticed my picture. I took a picture with her and Colin Thomas, uploaded it to wikipedia and changed the caption to read "Patrons enjoy Archon 30". I saw Kelly, formerly of Memphis and now in Seattle. She looked cute. We talked about her weekly game out there. It was funny when she apologized to me for being too geeky. Sorry to say, most of the rest of the year it usually is me apologizing to an uninterested female for gamer dorkiness. I made ribbons for the badges that say "I Hugged Gazpacho". I gave out a bunch during the convention to the brave who actually hugged me. I have lots left over. Oh well, I guess I have some for Gen Con next year. When I left the Atomic Squash Party about 4 AM, Britt was laying on the bed in there asking why the ceiling was moving. Uhm, he was drunk. :: FRIDAY I slept through the Fury of Dracula game but made it for the Elasund game at 2 PM. It was my second time playing the game and the first time I actually finished one. I won! I think I'll have to play it again. After running out to try a Mexican place with Adam, I found my way to the Mississippian Room for the SLUGS Vampire LARP briefing. They gave me character by the name of Michael Collins. There was a Father Collins in the game a few years ago. This character was an excommunicated priest. My goal was to protect a character named Rev Teddy and see the end-times Apocalypse happened. The most serious problem I had with the game was the negativity I got from a player (name isn't important). I had my holy symbol out Friday night. "Do you have that holy symbol out?!", she asked. "Yeah. You can see my holy symbol.", I responded. "Is this your first year or something?", she had a look of contempt. In fact it is my ninth year playing the game."No, this isn't my first year.", I responded. I secretly hoped she didn't treat any first year player this way. She was not friendly. I did not care for her role playing at all. I role played away from her group. I didn't want the confrontation on the first night. Before the LARP began I wandered into the Monroe Room where the Visioncon group were holding their Mojo Tasting Party. They had samples of their namesake drink which that drink after saying this salute: "Quick! Before it eats through the cup!" Seanta Claus was DJing the dance hall again this year. He and his crew decorated two conference rooms like the Carousel scene from Logan's Run. It was quite remarkable. I left the convention around midnight to go back home and do more work on Kobolds LARP. I printed out character badges and item cards. I put together the booklets and printed out copies of the character sheets. I wrapped up around 4 AM and managed to get some sleep before I had to get up to get to the game. :: SATURDAY I had about 12 players for the Kobolds on a Plane! LARP. Everyone seemed to have a great time. I was blow away by how enthusiastic and creative all of the players were at 10 AM on a Saturday. There was a good mix of new players and veterans. In the game you could save a hit point by barking like a Kobold. The bark, though, had to be better than the last player's bark. I will never forget the attractive purple-haired werechicken hunter. She let out a high pitched bark that I think broke glass! There were also some great one liners. For example when asked where a Kobold had put his dead snake, he responded by pulling out the folded item and saying: "My snake is right here! in my pants!" Vux, the elderly Kobold, had a spell which would summon water from cupped hands. I had no idea how hilarious that would look when he held his cupped hands just below waist level. The Kobold that jumped from the plane actually got the "Undesirable High-Speed Air-Ground Interface!" from the Random Horrible Death Chart! Here is some news. I plan to release PDF versions of the game files on koboldslarp.com as soon as I proofread them. I can't release the horrible death charts because I borrowed them from the Kobolds the Charades book. I will make my own charts if I write and run another game the year after NASFiC. At 2 PM Ed of BYOV ran Ill Met by Moonlight, a Fey LARP. It was a beautiful game. There was a ton of background information. Even though we were short players the game turned out great. I had a great time playing it. I am looking forward to more playing more BYOV LARPs at Gen Con next year. The second night of the Vampire LARP was a wreck. The character playing Rev Teddy did not show up. I was a little surprised to find out that a new player was playing him. The refs did not let me know. I had spent three hours pestering any judge I could find if Rev Teddy had made it back into the game. Eventually I found the character and played the rest of the night. The game ended with my character living; only the second time I've managed to do that. The Zombie Squad crew was back with a room party. I had traded emails with one of the hosts on MySpace. He promised that this year's party would be bigger and better. They delivered! They had three hotel rooms converted into an entrance area, a dance hall and a refreshment room. It was awesome. I wish I had more time to enjoy it. The Party Hard Corps was out in force. They were playing their games, roaming the halls and patronizing the various room parties. Babypants was giving out Jelly Bellys. I wish she had warned me about the popcorn ones. It was great to see General Dissent again and have the opportunity to social with him for a bit. I talked with Tom J about Hogwarts LARP. He assured me that this year's game will be different. He also told me that the player with whom I had an issue was actually a decent fellow. I trust his opinion and agreed to try the Gen Con Hogwarts LARP again next year. :: SUNDAY Well, three days of sleep deprivation caught up with me. I slept through the SLUGS Vampire LARP debriefing and awards ceremony. Sunday is also the day I usually register for the next year's Archon. Unfortunately, I just couldn't bring myself to spend $90 for a convention which is a week before Gen Con and is probably not going to be attended by the regular group. My only regret is that I did not make it to the dealer hall this year. Perhaps that is a good thing. I didn't spend any money on new games. I wanted to pick up QAGS 2nd Edition and Munchkin Impossible. Perhaps I'll ask for them for Christmas. Click on an image for a larger version |
