MotD

First Impressions: Ubuntu 11.10

2011-12-14T04:03:00.000-06:00

After about two hours of prep and download time, I've got Ubuntu 11.10 up and running on my old TravelMate 2420; now triple booting Oneiric, Fedora 15, and Windows XP.
After the headaches that 11.04 gave me, I've been a bit hesitant to install the newest version of the distro that introduced me to Linux. The 2420 is not a performance computer, even with the memory maxed out. Onboard graphics and a Celeron M processor really limit this to being a work machine. That said, it will run Office 2010 and Visual C++ Express Edition; and according to MS, has enough oomph to run Windows 7 without the Aero interface.
Installation
I didn't have any blank CDs or USB drives handy, which is another reason I've put off installing. I was eventually able to find instructions for using the contents of the Network Install disc to install from the hard drive, and it was right there in Canonical's online documentation. Not recommended for first-time installers, though; but if you've used Debian's Expert Mode install, you'll feel right at home. The only snag I hit was on the task select screen. Apparently, sometime between the installer being finalized and now, the task for installing extra fonts has gone bye-bye from the US Mirror.
Since this install method was based on the netinstall CD; I'm gonna warn off anyone with data caps or dial-up. Besides, you'll get a much quicker install from the Live CD; since you don't have to download the system on the fly.
Running
This is where I saw the biggest improvement. The early Ubuntu One integration really slowed down my computer while syncing; whether because of better load handling, better network drivers, or something else, it's not nearly as noticeable in 11.10. I haven't had a chance to test the Atheros wireless drivers; which were a big fail for me with 11.04. The combination of issues really crippled my laptop. Since the issues with the wireless driver were fixed with a kernel update, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it will work, unless it just doesn't.
Aesthetic
Ubuntu has really taken to a darker default color palette in recent releases. It's not a bad thing; but it is noticeable especially coming from the blues of XP and the silvers of GNOME-3 on Fedora.
For me, the launcher/dash/dock on the left doesn't really impress me, but it's not a distraction either. The auto-hide feature is nice, and relieves my biggest concern: screen space. The other thing you'll probably notice right off is the lack of menu bars on your Windows. Mac OS 9 (if I remember correctly) did the same "single menu bar" thing across the top of the page. This will probably take more getting used to just because it isn't used much.
There's also a load of icons and menus in the top right corner; which have some interesting integration: Banshee (the default Music Player) can be accessed through the volume control; Chat and Mail applications tie into the messaging control; and pretty much all of your system settings can be grabbed from the gear in the corner. Also on that gear are options for Suspend, Shutdown, and Hibernate; which are noticeably hidden in GNOME-3.
I do keep coming back to GNOME-3, don't I? It's for a good reason: Unity really split the Gnome community and garnered a lot of hate when it first debuted. Not unfairly, either. As big a change from previous versions as GNOME-3 was; Unity split off and went in a similar, but distinct direction. Personally, I haven't decided which I like more, if either. I have been leaning to GNOME-3, but again, it stems from my problems with the cloud service less than Unity.
Overall Impressions
About the only thing that really bothers me about Oneiric is the "Apps Available for Download". Other than the fact that most are full-fledged programs, I'm not sure why we need to have them on non-admin accounts -- the ones that can't install software through the base interface anyway.
Otherwise, I found it to be user-friendly and usable. The things that your basic user is going to look for are already in the launcher, save for the email client (Thunderbird) which is stuck in a envelope on the top bar. The log-in takes longer than I'd really like, but that may be a function of my older hardware rather than Ubuntu.
Recommendation
If you've got some time, and any interest in Linux or computers in general; there's no reason not to burn a copy of the Live CD and try out Ubuntu.

Lessons from Dad, or thoughts on school prayer and the Pledge

2011-12-13T05:05:00.002-06:00

My dad wasn't around a whole lot when I was young. As a kid, it was just the way things were. Dad would wake us up for school as he headed out the door; and was usually home for dinnertime. As I got older, it was less noticeable...and if he wasn't home in the evenings, he either got hung up on a service call or because there was a fire or ambulance run he had to go on. And even if the service calls were annoying, the other was okay, because he was helping people.
That was always a source of pride for me. Not only was my dad a fireman, he was an EMT, too. Yeah, he was a mechanic -- and a damn good one, judging by the customers that followed him the few times he changed companies -- and he would eventually let his EMT certification slip for reasons that were his own, but there's still a set of bunker gear in the back of his truck, in case his pager goes off.
A lot of who I am, I owe to my father. Not just the opportunities his hard work afforded me, and not just the things he tried to teach me.There are mannerisms that I've picked up over the years, from giving long-winded explanations to never answering an obvious question without trying to get the person to work it out for themselves. Dropping his voice when he was frustrated instead of raising it. Trying to find the causes for a problem instead of treating the symptoms.
And then there are the things I picked up from watching how he acted. The times he would give people second chances, and the reasons when he wouldn't. The way he never seemed to get angry -- upset and frustrated, yes; but very rarely angry -- unless someone was going to hurt another person. The importance of keeping promises, even implicit ones.
I think that last one is something that gets me in trouble some days; or at least keeps my mouth shut. So, if you really want to know...
Prayer in Schools
I'm all for prayer in schools. But I'm also dead set against the faculty and staff deciding which god (or, if you rather, which version of God) to pray to. And while that's a good part of my reasoning behind it (would you be for prayer in school if you knew that on Wednesdays, your kid would be praying to Hermes at the start of the Public Speaking class?), it really comes down to the basic "give you the answer" vs. "give you the tools to figure it out" debate. That said, as long as there's a belief that it will give them some sort of edge, there will always be prayer in school. Private prayer, between the child and their god; as it should be.
Pledge of Allegiance
When all is said and done; two of the few things it is truly fair to judge someone by are the promises they've made, and the promises they've kept.
Without even getting into the history of the flag salute, or the McCarthy-era changes to it; the Pledge of Allegiance always bothered me growing up. It never felt patriotic, just vaguely disturbing; and that was before we learned what the words actually meant. Why "pledge", and not "give my", "swear", or just plain "promise"? And why "allegiance"? Why swear to the flag first, instead of the nation; and why to the nation instead of the people, or even the ideals? These questions bothered me. And maybe I thought about it too hard; maybe I should have just stood and said the words like everybody else. But the thought of doing that bothered me to; that was making a promise that I didn't really mean. Not that I wouldn't keep it, but without really understanding what you were saying -- and really, what K-4th grader really understands what allegiance is? -- it's just rote memorization. Which is good for multiplication tables, not so much for ideology.
It's the kind of thing that makes me cringe/laugh when I hear the phrase "liberal indoctrination" used in relation to schools; in a "pot, meet kettle" sort of way.
I guess my point is that it's not about trying not to offend other people. But it's not about going out of your way to try to offend them, either. A little consideration is all that you really need, the realization that not everyone thinks or believes the same things that you do.

Super Mario 3D Land

2011-12-07T05:56:00.001-06:00

There are very few things that can make me ragequit so hard I don't want get back in and replay the game. Insane difficulty isn't that big of a deal; awkward controls can be overcome; bad camera angles can be compensated for. But I've noticed one thing that sets me off.
Collection quests, or rather, unexpectedly needing to complete a collection quest. Now, I'm not talking about the old MMORPG grind where you've got to get so many of that odd drop from a hard-to-get-to enemy; that's something different. Let me explain.
I haven't played a Mario platformer in quite a while, I'll admit. Although I do like the genre, it's not my favorite, and if I have the time to play, I'll probably pop in a JRPG instead. But since I haven't had the chance to try out many of the new games for the 3DS, I thought I'd move Super Mario 3D Land up to the top of my rental list. Now, part of this may have been the fact that you don't get the booklet with a rental; but I really didn't feel the need to search out every Star Coin on every level. And yes, I did notice that on the course select screens some of the levels required you have a certain number of the Star Coins to play them. The majority of those, however, could be skipped. I didn't, because I always had enough.
Until the end of World 5. What had been optional became mandatory, and to enter the castle -- and keep playing the game -- I would have had to go back and find 50 of the damn Star Coins. What I thought was a side quest was now the main mission; with no foreshadowing. If you would have had to collect 10 coins in each world to proceed, I wouldn't have minded. It would have even made sense in what little story there was. But to show up as a condition to continue halfway through the game was a bit more than I was willing to take.
That said, getting to most of the Star Coins is fun and challenging; though experienced platform gamers shouldn't have a problem with it. Heck, I don't play platformers that often and other than the 3D perspective being a bit tricky in places (tip: watch the shadows), I wasn't having that much difficulty with the game. But that one design choice just ticked me off to no end.
Graphics are bright and cheerful, exactly what you'd expect from a Mario game, and the classic enemy designs still translate well to 3D models. All in all, it's probably a game I would mark as a keeper, and from the Black Friday numbers, a lot of people are thinking it is a console-seller. I can't disagree: it makes use of the hardware. The 3D effects are well done but not cheesy; and there are sequences that make use of moving the 3DS to get a better view of the stage, which I assume uses the front-facing camera to track location. It's a solid title, and I think a good addition to the Mario library of games.

Feeling My Age

2011-11-02T21:32:00.002-05:00

Every day I look in the mirror. Thanks to a combination of time, a high-stress job, and said teenage daughter; there's a little less black on top of my head and a little less brown in my beard. And no matter how many times I change the lights above the bathroom mirror, there's a little more gray there every day. The lines around my mouth and eyes are a little more pronounced. There's a little more of my grandfather in the mirror when I look, too. Not my dad; instead of turning his hair gray, apparently us kids just made him tear it out. But every time I look it's the same story.
I look old.
Tomorrow afternoon, my daughter will (hopefully) play in her first junior high basketball game. She's an 8th grader; 13 years old this year. In 9 months, she'll be a high school Freshman.
I feel old.
I regret that I'm not going to be able to make it to all of her ball games. Between my working nights and my wife working a few towns over (which requires taking our one vehicle), it's a bit tricky to get me to any of the out of town matches. But every home game, I'll be there in the stands. I will say that it helps that she's on the JV team, which means she'll play at 4:00 most days instead of "maybe around 6, depending on if the early games run late, or finish early."
I don't know if she'll get to play. I don't even know if she's any good; at a small school like ours, every warm body that tries out for the team gets on -- playing time is a different story, but everybody makes the team. But I don't care. I will be there, in the stands; every chance I get.
And I will try not to be *that* dad. You know the one I mean. The dad who, even at a Junior High Junior Varsity game is riding the refs and the coach like he's at an NBA game. The dad who jockeys for more playing time for his kid, regardless of how good the kid actually is. The dad who "encourages" by doing the coach's job for them; who berates his kid for every missed shot and errant pass instead of asking "Did Coach tell you what you need to do to get better?" and "You gonna do it?" then leaving it at that.
My daughter could practice her jump shot from now until she graduates, and she still probably won't be the next Jackie Stiles (the former WNBA All-Star who played basketball in our league when I was in high school). And as far as I'm concerned, that's fine. She doesn't need to be. As long as she's having fun, keeping her grades up, and doing the best she can every time she steps on the court, there will be a proud old man sitting up in the stands.

Making a Change

2011-07-30T18:46:00.004-05:00

It took working with 11.04 to finally make me jump off the Ubuntu bandwagon and onto Fedora.

I don't have much bad to say about Ubuntu, don't get me wrong. They are innovative in all of the right ways: personal cloud storage that's accessible through Windows; pushing the limits of UI design; keeping timely software updates coming.

There were, however, two hurdles for me. The first I can't complain too vigorously about: WiFi. Due to differences in the wireless chipsets, 802.11 has always been a bit of a boogeyman for Linux. In my case, it was a regression with the Atheros 5000-series kernel driver... my wireless stopped working outside of 15 feet from the router, sometimes less.

The other, and quite frankly the dealbreaker for me, was a performance hit. I have an older laptop, a TravelMate 2420 that I've maxed the memory on. I don't know if it was the Unity desktop or the CouchDB backend they used for their UbuntuOne cloud service, but as soon as I installed 11.04, I began experiencing periodic stalling, CPU spikes and network traffic (which is why I point to the UbuntuOne).

As for the much debated Unity desktop; I was pretty indifferent to it. For the most part, it did its job. My biggest problem with it is probably its biggest feature. I'm not the biggest fan of "quick-launch bars" in general, and by default Unity puts a great big one down the side of the screen unless you have a window maximized. I've said before, this is a great idea for touchscreen interfaces where menu navigation could be a little tricky, but for my preferred method of keyboard and mouse, it feels redundant. It works, but I wasn't a fan.

I chose Fedora because of Gnome 3. The Gnome 3 desktop is similar to Unity in quite a few ways; not surprising, since Unity is built on many of the same libraries. I chose Fedora over OpenSUSE (the other major distro offering the Gnome 3 as a default) because of familiarity: one of my first Intro to Linux books dealt with Red Hat Linux; so I at was a little familiar with the RPM system. When you boil it down, the difference between the majority of Linux distributions is how software is delivered, and what software is easily available. Most up-to-date Linux distros share the same kernel.

Wait, you say. Hold up. Didn't you say that a kernel bug was screwing with your WiFi? If everybody is using the same kernel, wouldn't the bug be present on all of them?

Yes, I did. And yes, it was; which was why I said I couldn't complain about it too much. The biggest difference was where I was trying to install it. When I tried to install Ubuntu, I was at home; where I had wireless access and -- because the Debian/Ubuntu installer has wireless support built-in -- I was going to use it during setup. Except 11.04 shipped with a kernel version that had the bug. Which meant the install failed where I was until I fished out an ethernet cable. When I installed Fedora, I didn't have access to a wireless network, so I didn't notice it right off. And I was able to update to a kernel release that worked with my wireless -- before I got home and back to my network. Serendipitous, yes; but it is one of those things that is offputting.

And when I say that they share the same kernel, I'm generalizing a bit. Not every distro is going to release every point release (i.e. one distro might not release 2.8.24.36, choosing to wait and test 2.8.24.37 instead, or simply patching and releasing a custom 2.8.24.36_custom): it's the end of July and there have been nearly a dozen since April: they will be doing some testing before releasing it into the wild.

But, I've made my choice, at least until... October. Both Fedora and Ubuntu are on a 6-month (April/October) release schedule. And really, outside of disk space, there's nothing stopping me from installing both (after a thorough backup, of course). This laptop is a testing rig, for all intents and purposes. Besides, this is Linux. It's not about brand loyalty, it's not about being afraid to change. It's about figuring out what works best for you and improving the experience for everybody.

Now, since I've grabbed a copy of NetBeans; I think I'll try and teach myself some JAVA.

Gnome 3 Wallpaper Switcher

2011-07-26T04:39:00.004-05:00

Every once in a while, I don't feel like looking at the same thing over and over again. Call it a geek version of wanderlust; but I like to have my desktop wallpaper change frequently. And I like it better when I don't have to choose, but a new background pops at random.

And with Gnome 2, the default window manager for a good number of Linux distributions, that wasn't hard to do. There were daemons (small background programs) that you could install, or you could create XML files that told GNOME's settings manage exactly which background you wanted for exactly how long.

Gnome 3 featured a major rewrite of the underlying controls. And while this created a great number of improvements -- visibly and performance-wise -- a few features were removed. As of 3.0.2, one of those was the ability to set those wallpaper slideshows as a background.

My google-fu is strong, though; and I soon found that it wasn't the ability to use the slideshow files that had been removed, it was the ability to select the file. The underlying mechanics were the same, as was the syntax of the XML file. It was simply a matter of "You can't get there from here." You could, however, get there from the command line; and that's where my python-fu came into play. Hopefully, Google Docs doesn't mess with my code too much here....

Gnome 3 Thoughts

2011-06-30T11:31:00.003-05:00

After about 2 weeks of testing it out; I've come to some conclusions about GNOME3 on Debian.

1) The Installation is a Pain. Actually, this is probably the least of my complaints, but it comes first because it was encountered first. Debian prides itself on being stable, almost to a fault. In fact, the default "stable" installation (6.0.2 Squeeze at this writing) gets security updates and that's about it. It's designed to just work. Not surprisingly, GNOME3 isn't available on Squeeze (not enough time to test it before the last release). It's not in the "testing" (Wheezy) set, either. It's in "experimental"; along with all the other stuff that Debian maintainers don't figure is stable enough for Testing. That said, it is in experimental, and you can get it if you are careful and know what you're doing.

2) Things are Locked Down. Again, I can see the upsides and the downsides to this. On the upside, locking down things like title bars and panel guarantees a consistent experience. On the other hand, if the user doesn't like the design -- and is used to being able to change it -- it can lead to frustration. That said, there was a semi-official UI/system tweaking tool available, but as it isn't built-in to the command center where you'd expect it to be, it doesn't get full marks.

3) The "Desktop" is more like a work area. This is where we run into one of those "paradigm shifts", I think. Since Windows XP (likely since Windows NT, but since it didn't have as wide a release as the 98/XP line, we'll say XP), users have come to use the desktop as part storage space, part launcher. Not in GNOME 3, though. Unless you use the tweak tool to "allow [Nautilus] to manage Desktop", the only thing you can do with the desktop is look at it. There's no left-click, no middle-click, no context menu on the right click that lets you set the desktop background. If you click on the desktop, you've exercised your clicking finger, but that's about it. Again, it's not a bad thing or a good thing; it's just different than what you're probably used to.

So, what do I think about it?

1) I'm not blind, guys I don't need the huge title bars and menu icons that come with the default (and unchangeable via GUI) interface. I can see where they might be useful for touchscreen interfaces, giving users a bit more leeway on where they tap, but on a laptop, it seems like wasted space.

2) What will it take to convince people hot corners are a bad idea? If your mouse wanders into the top left of the screen, the activities pane takes over. While that sounds like a good idea, it's also a bit distracting if you accidentally bump your mouse, or if you like to shuffle your pointer into a corner out of the way.

3) The Activity Pane is a good idea. Two things about how they implemented the Activity Pane/Menu. First, dynamically spawning work areas are a great idea. If you want a clean "surface" to work on, you open the activity pane and either click on a blank work space or drag an open window to a new surface. Once you clean up the surface, it disappears until you need a new one. Second, the search as you type function. If you pop the activity pane and start typing, you'll get a shrinking list of programs and recent documents that match your search. And though I haven't double-checked, it appeared to be pulling additional info about the programs from somewhere (probably .desktop files) so you didn't have to search by name alone.

4) Network Manager didn't like me. I don't know if it was something I did while setting it up; but network-manager-gnome did not like my wifi setup, rejecting saved passphrases, and not even displaying the BSSID for my home network until I was right on top of the router. Which was odd, because after reinstalling GNOME2, I automatically connected (after entering the passphrases) from halfway across the house (around 45-50 feet).

I've switched back to GNOME2 for now; at least until 3 drops into testing instead of experimental. It shows a lot of promise, and feels like something I'm willing to use; but I'd rather have the guys more experienced than me go over it a little longer before I jump in head first.

Links

The GNOME Project Desktop Environment

Debian GNU/Linux

Update:

The Network Manager deal isn't a Gnome3 thing. From everything I've read, it appears to be a kernel issue -- which makes sense: when I upgraded to Gnome3, the new kernel came along with it. However, the same change in frequency/connection ability happened with Ubuntu 10.10 vs 11.04 as well. Smarter people than I seem to have narrowed it down to a kernel patch for Acer hardware. I didn't go diving that directly.

PSO -- 11/2

2010-11-03T01:06:00.004-05:00

Well, Day one of the November PSO did not go as well as planned. Two middle of the pack finishes (literally: I placed around 660/1400 and 700/1300) did not mean good things for my score. And when I looked yesterday morning, lo and behold, I was sitting in around 2400th place. And while part of the 783 place jump between the 10pET tournament last night and the results posting of the 8pET tourney can be attributed to an increased number of players, I was able to regain all of the 10.27 points I lost on the first day... So I guess hooray for not digging too deep of a hole? I'll check again in a few hours to see where I am after the 11/2 11pET tourney posts.

October's payout also landed on the 11/1, so there was $30 in my account. Which is good, because a couple really bad days at the table had totally wiped me out. I say bad days, my cash game was shit during the last full week of October, because I wasn't focused on poker. And tilting is deadly to a bankroll even at 5/10c limits.

Update: OK, so the results (10pET) tournament got posted. I'm not happy with where I'm sitting, but I know it could be a lot worse. Again, I finished on the wrong side of the bubble, about 60 places out of the money; but I picked up a dozen points, which puts me as far out of the hole as I was in it when I started the day.
Not surprisingly, I'm on the outside of the league's bubble as well; but only by about 220 people. How close is it? The money starts at 1,000th place, who currently has 1522.15 points. I have 1513.60. Yes, 220 people are within 8.55 points of the Active player prize pool.
Two things are coming into play here. Every month, the bubble number has gotten bigger. Part of that is probably due to an increased number of players -- bigger tournaments mean bigger point payouts. But I can't discount increasing skill levels of the rest of the field; theoretically, that's what this league is supposed to be about. Last month's cutoff was 1635.06; and the difference between 1st and 1000th was 307.44 points

October PSO, 4 days to go

2010-10-28T05:28:00.002-05:00

Well, with 4 days left to go in October, I've been on a decent run in the PokerSchoolOnline.com Skill League. After 36 tournaments, I'm up 305 points; with nearly half (140) of those coming in the last week (10/21-10/27). Barring a complete meltdown between now and Monday morning, I should be in the money. Not to blow my own horn, but I'm in 201st place out of over 10,000 players; which puts me square on the bubble for the next prize jump: less than a half a point is between me and doubling my prize.
Like most tournament payouts, the big money jumps occurs on the final table; the guy in first (currently thatsmysky 1930.90) will take home 1500 dollars, while the guy in tenth (ESSY ARMEN 1908.06) only gets 100. Now, I hear you, and you're saying Deege, you've collected 140 points over the last week, putting you at 1805, you're only 103 points away from the big money jumps. And when you say that, I laugh in your general directions because, I don't have 4 days worth of tournaments to rack up 103 points; I've got 4 days of tourneys to make up 103 points and if you don't think there's a difference there, you've never tried to hit a moving target.
And the thing is, I've played with a number of guys on the first page of the leaderboard; at least 6 of the top 12 in the last week and a half. They're good; and they're not going to wait for me, or anybody else to play catch up. Personally, I'd be happy if I was on their radar... you know, my smiling mug shows up in their screen and they go "oh hey, it's dingo."
After 10th place, the next 88 people get $50, unless they aren't "Active"; earning at least 20 VIP points from Pokerstars in the previous month. Surprisingly enough, two of the top 10 (11SCORPIUS11 and stuckinit) are not "Active" players. For them and any other Whitestar player, the payout drops to 10% of the Active player's cash. 99th place (Choas Evo21 1840.78) gets $30, and 201st (dingodeege 1805.14) drops to $15, and Whitestar players are out of the money. It's a bit disconcerting to have two payout structures, but hey, I'm Active (and with over 100 VIP points this month, will be again in November), so I don't really mind.
Here's the fun thing about the point system: it's variable. The more points you have, the harder it is to get big point payouts. Now, there's still a massive jump for hitting the money; I have a finishes of 163 and 139 in tournaments with similar number of runners (that you didn't have to take. And it cost you money. Yes, making a move on the bubble is good strategy, and it's profitable, when it works. If you got into an all-in situation that you didn't have to, especially when you're that close to the money, you better have the nuts.

Playing Poker again.

2010-08-31T08:57:00.002-05:00

Been a while since my last post. I haven't been too busy; I've reworked my laptop to a dual-boot Ubuntu-XP hybrid and my desktop to more of a local file server.

Since I wrote last, the Boot Hill Casino over in Dodge City has opened and is running well: lots of money getting put into the state's education coffers. But I haven't been much.

I can't: I have an addictive personality; and I simply can't afford to make the half hour trip and drop a $50 or $100 into the slot machines or blackjack tables. And if I can't afford to play 21, I sure as hell can't afford to buy in to the poker game. Their small table is a 50 BB buy-in; that's $500 to even sit down -- or just shy of a paycheck. I'm not that good.

So I've been getting my fix on Pokerstars. I had busted out on Full Tilt playing their Rush Poker. Rush poker seems like a good concept, you can see over 150 hands per hour, compared to a regular online room at around 50-60. The idea is you're put on a table, and as soon as you fold your hand, you're shunted to another table. The Big Blind is paid by the person who has seen the largest number of hands since paying the big blind. This appears to be determined after the players are seated, so you may -- like I was -- be put in the small blind multiple times in a row, only to be dropped in the big blind the next hand. Yeah, I had that happen more than once.

So, why'd I jump over to PS? The PokerSchoolOnline.com Skill League. Basically, you watch a few lessons, take a few tests, and are awarded an ticket. That ticket buys you in to every PSO Skill League free roll. When I started, it was a $50; but then they cranked up the league. Every month, the PSO is putting $17,500 (plus $40 a day in freerolls) up for grabs. How do you get a piece?

Take the test, get the ticket. Play the free rolls. Place well enough in the free rolls (usually top 200 or so, depending on the number of runners) and you'll get rating points. Do poorly and you'll lose them. At the end of the month, the ratings are locked in. Finish in the top 200 and win cash.

But wait, there's over 9000 people signed up for the tournaments. Only the top 200 get paid? Yes... and no.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. There's two prize levels: Whitestar and Active. Active players earned at least 20 Pokerstars VIP Points in the month prior to the league's month. So to be an Active player for August, you will have needed to earned 20 VPP in July. If you didn't, you're a White Star. To win as a White Star, you need to have finished in the top 200 ratings for the month.

Active players have an advantage. It makes sense, in the scheme of things: one of the things they tell you in the lessons is you need to practice. So they are rewarding players that put in the time outside of the league... doing their homework, so to speak. What's the advantage? A 10x multiplier on the payout. I'm not kidding: the 99th rated player will receive $3, unless they are Active, in which case they'll win $30... All the way up to $150 for first place changing into $1,500. Also, more Active players get paid: While only the top 200 are guaranteed money, any Active player who placed in the top 1,000 will get paid.

Needless to say, I put in the time to qualify for Active this month.

But see, I have a dilemma. I've got 1755 rating points, with 4 tournaments left in the month, putting me in 277th place. I'm just shy of 8 points ahead of the 300th place player... but 301st place pays 1/3rd of what I'm at. On the other hand, I'm 36 points behind the 200th place player; which represents the next prize level, and double my cashout. 36 points isn't insurmountable... Simply cashing can usually gross you 30 points. On the other hand, finishing outside of the quarter could actually cost me points.

So... is it worth the gamble? I think I've got to at least play -- and do well -- in one of the four. A thirty or forty place climb isn't unheard of -- heck, my top 20 finish last night jumped me over 70 places -- and if twenty people in the 300s manage it I could drop.

A Gentle Reminder

2010-02-23T06:19:00.003-06:00

I was gently - ok forcibly - reminded yesterday why I appreciate the Network Install Disk concept.

The Network Install Disk is a concept that says, this CD will give you a very minimal system, just enough to get the basic commands working and then hook up to the network. From there, we'll upgrade the underlying architecture if we need to, and then install the most recent version of the programs you want to run. The benefit to this is you don't have to install the program, then download and patch using Security Update 1, then Security Update 2, ... then Security Update 347 (you get the picture). This is in comparison to the Snapshot or "Gold" concept, where the installation always contains the same version of every program.

Why did this come up? Well... I reinstalled Windows on a PC at home. This is a box I've been playing with for a couple years -- the one that my Mother-In-Law gave me. It was time to retire my daughter's computer (which wasn't top of the line when Windows 95 dropped), and seeing as she was probably going to need Word to work on schoolwork next year; I figured I might as well bite the bullet.

At this point, I had two choices. I could either try and track down a English-language version Windows XP OEM disc image that had SP3 on it, or I could use the system recovery discs that came with the computer. At one time I had an SP3 disc (my laptop has a valid license); but I couldn't find it. So again, I gritted my teeth and went through the process of restoring Windows.

For reference, using a network install disc, I can go from a wiped hard drive to a completely updated Debian or Ubuntu system in slightly more than an hour. I can get Puppy Linux up and running in about half the time. Gentoo takes me a little longer, but that's because I have to compile Xorg.

Did I mention that the recovery discs don't even have SP1? Yeah, it took me over 6 hours from putting the first disc in the drive until Windows quit wanting to install more security updates. And there's no reason to not install the security updates for Windows -- and every reason to do it as soon as possible, especially when it's connected to the internet.

Sometimes, I hate...

2010-01-23T03:00:00.000-06:00

Poker. Especially for a while after what (on the surface) appears to be a bonehead play on the part of an opponent pays off. And when it pays off against me, it puts me off my game -- or "on tilt", as it were.
The other day, I was doing fairly well in a 1-table DON[1]. Two players had already been knocked out, and the short stack was to my right (before me in line to act) and fairly nervous. Or rather, he had been opening up his starting hand requirements and pushing all-in with marginal hands, and had built his stack from 2 BB to around 5. This was late in the tournament, and I was bubbly[2]. I had around 10 BB when I got dealt pocket Queens in the small blind.
Action folded around to the nervous short stack in the dealer's chair. He pushes all-in. Now, his play until now has been erratic; any more so and I would say he was giving chips away... except when he actually had a hand, where he would flat call. Based on his play so far, I put him on either suited connectors[3] or a small pocket pair. I had been cultivating a tight-aggressive persona, so when I pushed over the top to encourage the BB to fold, he did.
If anything, I was giving Dealer too much credit. I was doing a happy dance in my head when he showed his 9-3 off suit. Dude was trying to steal a pot and I caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.
He pairs his 9 on the flop. I get a little nervous, because pair vs pair is a lot dicier than pair vs two unders, even with only 2 cards to go. No worries, I've got 8 cards in the deck which will improve my hand -- two of which will seal the deal -- to his 5. The turn is no help to either of us, save the fact it gives me a couple more cards that can't hurt me. Still, he has 5 outs, which will hit about 10% of the time.
Of course, the river card's a three, giving him two pair to my QQ. I fight my way back, but run out of chips against bigger and bigger blinds, finishing in 7th place, two out of the cash.

[1] Double-or-Nothing. A tournament format where all winners receive double their entry fee back. I.E., in a 10-player $1 DON; the top 5 players will win $2.
[2] A player near the last paid finishing position (both above and below) before the last non-paying position has went out is considered 'on the bubble'. The "bubble bursts" when the "bubbleboy" is left "outside the bubble".
[3] Two cards of the same suit which are less than 5 apart, usually less than 10. Combine the limitations of "Straightening cards" (pocket cards which, with a draw, put you in position to make a straight, but not much else) with the hidden strength of a flush draw and you get the idea.

Laptop setup

2010-01-18T06:45:00.000-06:00

So the laptop I picked up is an acer TravelMate 2420. Nothing special, but enough for what I intend to do with it: some light browsing, casual gaming, watching videos, and as a background-music generator.

What I've noticed so far:

Installing Windows from OEM is a pain in the ass if you don't know which device drivers you're going to need ahead of time.
If you want to connect to the internet through a router with MAC filtering, be sure you've whitelisted either your eth0 (wired) or wan0 (wireless) MAC address. Or at least spoofed a whitelisted address.
The BIOS that acer used on this model can boot from a USB drive. However, it recognizes it as a Hard Drive which defaults to a lower priority than the actual disk. Therefore, you have to re-set the boot order each time.
On an existing Ubuntu install which had been upgraded (9.04 -> 9.10), using the kde-minimal package to try out KDE4 wiped everything from my home folder except for the Pictures directory.
That said, the TravelMate 2420 is capable of running KDE 4 point whatever; with a decent set of visual effect. Which is better than my desktop with a dedicated video card.
It can also -- according to the upgrade advisor tool -- run Windows 7, with a limited Aero interface. It won't be running it here -- I'd use the money to buy/build a new computer designed for it -- but I could.
I should have written down my home IP address, I could have pulled some of the music from my home computer to listen to tonight.

This morning, I reinstalled Ubuntu. I wanted to drive the fresh install and take advantage of the encrypted home directory (which I hadn't the first time around). The USB Startup Disk Creator from 9.4 worked smooth as butter, and once I figured out about the BIOS, everything went smooth. Take that back, there was a hiccup with udev when I used the LiveCD ISO. The Alternate installer came out without a hitch. After another 20 minutes worth of updating (including a restart for a new kernel) I'm up and running -- and rebuilding from a week-old backup the one important file I lost from the kde debacle. More later.

Computer Repair, 12/27

2009-12-28T19:58:00.003-06:00

M__ hollered at me Christmas day; her computer was broken. With the power problems we had that morning, I really wasn't surprised: surge protectors aren't foolproof.
So I run over and take a look. Sure enough; it was just as she described it to me: press the power button, the light would come on, but nothing happened. Great. Best case, the power supply's borked; worst case, the whole box is fried. I brace her for the worst, and told her I'd take a look at it Saturday morning. To tide her over; I hooked her up with a replacement rig: my new laptop won't win any speed awards, but hook her monitor and mouse up and it's a serviceable email kiosk. No, this isn't something I'd normally do, but M__ is a good customer.
I get this thing to my makeshift workshop and hook it up to a spare mouse and monitor (and power cord, just in case) of mine. No surprise, still didn't work. Was worth a shot, though; a power cord is a lot less expensive than a new computer.
I shut'er down, crack open the case, and get to troubleshooting. All the connections are good, and nothing looks scorched off hand. Power supply is cheaper than a new box, so I hit the test button. Nothing. Now, this power supply is supposed to spin the case fans when you hit the test; but all I get is a twitch and a green LED.
I don't have any spare power supplies on hand, but I had just replaced the power supply in my own desktop. Normally, no problem; hop on New Egg, pick up the part, wait a couple days. I give M__ a call, see what she wants to do. And for some reason, I offered to just leave in my power supply at replacement cost. Normally, I wouldn't have even thought about putting parts from my own PC in a customer's computer, but like I said, M__ is a good customer: she's already shopping for a new computer with me. And since I have the laptop, there's nothing on the desktop I actually need for a while. So, she's up and running, I've got my laptop back. And I've got a customer who knows I'll go the extra mile.

New Comp

2009-12-22T07:49:00.002-06:00

Picked up a free laptop this weekend. It cost me bout $125.
Yeah, i know. Sounds like a contradiction, right? But when something is "free", there's always a catch. The laptop itself was crap. And I don't say that lightly. The guy who sold it to me told me it was crap.
So, the rundown... Lappy's an Acer TravelMate 2420, with an Intel Celeron D 1.5GHz, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB Hard Drive, 14.1" screen, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, WiFi, Bluetooth, USBx3, Modem, LAN, PCCard (Type II), VGA out.
Anyway, this thing has never been a "top-of-the-line", and frankly, never will be. That Celeron is just powerful enough to run XP (what it originally came with); 7 isn't in the realm of possibility.
If it was, I wouldn't have gotten it so cheap. Of course, I wouldn't have gotten it so cheap if it weren't DOA anyway.
I can already here you asking, "Wait, if you knew that the laptop wouldn't work, why in the world would you spend money on it?" And I would reply, I never said the laptop wouldn't work, it didn't work. And while I wouldn't go so far as to compare myself to mechanic rebuilding an engine, the basic idea is the same. I take the shell of a computer, salvage what I can, replace what I can't, and wind up with something I can use, give away, or sell. Usually the first.
Before that mechanic begins his rebuild, he figures out the problems, decides if it would be worth the work, then makes a plan, including contingencies in case something new crops up. And like our imaginary mechanic, I did the same thing.
What Was Wrong
The damn thing wouldn't start.
I've ran into the same trouble with my car enough times, I think I'm drawn to things that don't want to get going in the mornings (something, something, wife, something... love you, honey). Of course, just like a car, there are dozens of reasons why a computer won't start. The diagnostic screen wasn't much help at first: some esoteric (read: I didn't recognize them at first) error codes and the dreaded "Operating System Not Found" message. That isn't good. It's the equivalent of getting into the car, putting your key in the switch and the car looking back at you and saying "Where's my power train? I can't find my power train!"
Yeah, that's not a Good Thing™.
So, first things first; I googled the error codes, and found out they were network boot errors. "Network boot" is way of starting the computer where the operating system is hosted on the network instead of on the computer itself. So, into the BIOS we go.
This is where I found part of the problem. The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) was able to notice the hard drive, but wasn't able to identify it. Modern BIOSes are able to read the serial number from drives, and they display it. In a desktop computer, this can be a useful tool when you have multiple hard drives. This laptop was able to grab the basic manufacturer information from the drive, but not the serial number. Just to be on the safe side, I double-checked the boot order: Optical drive, Hard Drive, Network, Floppy. Pretty standard; and pretty much what I expected -- the previous owner was your typical computer user: he isn't one to poke and prod too much; and I knew the other guy he took it to would more than likely return things to base if he couldn't find the cause.
That concerned me a bit... since we were polling the Hard Drive before searching for a Network, the fact that we got the network connection errors were a problem, but not totally unexpected: the previous owner had reported having some corruption issues. I popped open the case, made sure that the memory and hard drive were properly seated -- always a concern when looking at a laptop. I reseated both, and no change. Again, it wasn't a surprise; but double- and triple-checking the simple stuff can save time, money, hassle, and face-palming on a job.
Since I knew the hard drive wasn't accessible at the moment, I went to the next option:
booting from CD.
Luckily, quite a few Linux Distributions have what's called a "Live-CD". Live-CDs are complete operating systems contained on a CD (or in some cases, a DVD). A Live-CD is used to demonstrate the OS or just test hardware for compatibility before actually installing. Booting a live environment is also useful for providing a way to get into an otherwise unaccessible computer (assuming there's no encryption).
Because LiveCDs run completely in RAM, I went ahead and grabbed a memory upgrade; luckily, previous owner had already bought an upgrade. I bought the two 1GB sticks off of him, along with a soft-side carrying case for $50. Sans laptop, he wasn't going to need it, but I gave him fair market for the upgrade anyway.
I fire up a CD called MacPuppy Opera. This particular distro is a variant of Puppy Linux; and one of the major selling points of Puppy is that it has a complete graphic environment, loads completely into RAM, and has the underlying tools to work with a broken computer.
So, I fire up gparted (GNOME Partition Editor) and ask it about the hard drive. It does find it, but like the BIOS, it couldn't actually access it. Seems it needs a disklabel. Unfortunately, I can't seem to create one. Block 0 is unwritable. Crap.
I went ahead and picked up a new hard drive (newegg.com, since nobody seems to have a spare 2.5" ATA HDD lying around.
When it comes in (probably Monday after Christmas), I'll update again.

Misread headlines

2009-12-19T06:30:00.002-06:00

Had to double-take this headline; I wondered what was so bad about getting someone a cooktop for Christmas. Then I realized, griddle != girdle

Seriously, can I smack Luke Wilson now?

2009-12-15T03:19:00.004-06:00

You have a product. You want to sell your product. You'd like to sell your product to me.
So you advertise. You try to convince me that your product is better than the other guy's similar product. And you make compelling arguments. But there's a catch. See, if I use your product where I would need to use your product, you'll stop me from using your product. So why, pray tell, are you advertising to me?

You see, AT&T, we're at a bit of an impasse. According to your map, I'm in the middle of a great big "Partner" area. And, according to the footnotes linked, "excessive use of Partner coverage may subject [my] service to early termination... Data services may not be available." To get out of the Partner coverage area, I have to go at least 75 miles from home. Besides, we can't very well count your non-affiliated partner's coverage in with yours, now can we? And as for that 3G coverage you keep bragging on, we're talking 130 miles before you say I can even get the signal.

So why, AT&T -- nee Cingular nee SBC nee Southwestern Bell -- do you keep advertising to me?

Hell, I can't even browse your calling plans... because you don't have any for my area. Or Dodge City. Or Larned. Or Greensburg. Or Jetmore. Or Great Bend. Or Pratt. Or Hays. Or Liberal. Or Garden City. Or any other damn city within an hour's drive. I should know; I entered their zip codes to your finder, too.

So please, stop getting Luke Wilson's smug all over my living room. Because when all the comparisons to other cell phone companies you throw up can be shot down by a single answer -- that being, "Maybe so, but if it doesn't work where I need it to, it's useless to me" -- all your ad accomplishes is to piss me off... enough that I switched away from your landline service.

The World Ends With You

2009-11-22T06:42:00.003-06:00

I picked up a game last week when I was in Wichita, called "The World Ends With You". Cheery title, huh? But I thought; hey, it's by Square-Enix, and they've got a pretty good track record as far as I'm concerned.
TWEWY (as the forums have taken to calling it) is a recent title from the Square-Enix's RPG offerings. RPGs or "Role-Playing Games" is a fairly broad category which pretty much boils down to "characters get stronger by gaining experience, usually by winning fights".[1] I usually prefer turn-based to aRPGs[2], but I figured I'd give it a shot. If I didn't like it, I could always sell it back to Gamestop and not totally be at a loss.
TWEWY's unique battle system takes some getting used to; it's also something that probably could not have been done a system other than the DS. While Neko (your character) fights on the bottom screen using the various touch commands, you direct your partner's top screen attacks using the D-pad or ABXY buttons[3].
You start out with a limited number of spells/attacks/useful things to do, each signified by a different pin. Yes, your magic powers are fueled by casual-dining restaurant flair; oh, excuse me... designer casual-dining restaurant style flair. After the tutorial battles, you'll equip two of a half-dozen fairly standard fantasy tropes. You've got your sword swing, a wall of fire, a magic missile, a hand to throw obstacles with, lightning, and a limited-use cure spell.
But because it's an RPG -- at least in my opinion -- the story is at least as important (if not more so) as the combat. So, you wake up in the middle of Shibuya, basically Tokyo's version of Time's Square. Nobody interacts with you (which suits Neko fine) but you start hearing people's thoughts. Your phone rings and you get a mysterious text message. A countdown timer appears, burned into your hand. And then the giant frogs with skeletal back feet show up. And start attacking you. Over the first hour or two of game play, you learn that you're a player in the "Reaper's Game"; you're dead in the real world; and if you aren't able to finish the mission from the daily text message, you not only lose the game, you lose your right to exist.
It's a Square game, so you're going to have a bit of philosophy injected. And with this one, it's in the title. "The World Ends with You", meaning your view of the world is limited by your own perceptions and biases. By challenging those biases, expanding your perceptions, letting other people in, you'll be able to change -- if not the whole world, then your part of it.
Saying much more would be saying too much, giving away too much of the story. It's worth picking up.

[1] Contrast this with Adventure games like Legend of Zelda or Metroid, where you can fight all the enemies you want and won't get stronger, you have to collect items/weapons to do so. Or with Action title like the early Sonic games where your character has set abilities throughout, and can temporarily gain extra powers -- invincibility, take extra damage -- by picking up power-ups along the way.
[2] Action RPGs; games that mix traditional console RPG prep-screens with real-time battles.
[3] If you get to fighting on the touch screen and forget about your partner, there is an AI option that will take over after so long.

Tipping

2009-11-08T22:36:00.003-06:00

I've been reading through the Waiter Rant blog (link above) archives. Two posts right in a row -- one about tipping baristas and the other basically about jackass customers causing the people around them to tip less -- caught my attention for a little longer than most and got me thinking.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a great tipper. When I tip, it's usually around 15%, but can vary from 10-20 depending on the overall cost of the meal and the service; but then again, I don't make a habit of going places where tipping 20% is the norm, either. That said, I'm not even halfway through the archive and I'm already making mental notes to bump my normal tips a bit.
But the story about a jerk customer negatively affecting his server's tips got me a bit introspective. Two reasons; first, I try not to be that guy. The Waiter (author of the above blog) generalizes them as Yuppies; basically, the "I'm right, you're not; everything must be the way I want it and if it's not there will be hell to pay" guy. Anyone who has worked anything resembling "customer service" knows at least one. If you're my server, I try not to be your that guy for the day. And if that guy is in your section while I'm there -- and the service is still decent -- you can almost be assured to be palmed a extra fiver when I pay the tab. Doesn't sound like much; but when my bills normally come out to $50-60, it is what it is.
But the tipping for baristas sent me back in my own mind. I know it's their job to make those ten-option drinks[1]; but I still feel slightly bad ordering anything more complicated than an iced latte. Besides, your barista is your friend -- or at least you should treat her like she is. Especially if they're busy and you're intending on ordering something more complicated than "Large Coffee, Black".
Which is why I've started wandering a little further down the road from the Starbucks I usually frequent[2]. Usually I try to be as economical as possible when I go shopping: it's about a four hour drive to Wichita and back; even a "quick" trip might as well be an all-day event. Besides, I get lost in downtown Wichita (Kansas City, I can handle, but I just haven't got the hang of Wichita yet), so I tend to stick to the outskirts and places I know. That means -- for me -- Maize, Tyler, Rock and Kellogg. And since Maize Road has the distinction of being the closest to street to home with restaurants and a grocery store, it tends to be my last run when I'm in the "big city". Plus, on the way out of town, we tend to stop at a grocery store, and because of the location -- and since the wife really likes the chicken and gnocchi at Olive Garden that's across the street -- we usually ends up at the Maize SuperTarget.
And inside, there's a Starbucks.
Great location, too... I can grab the few things from SuperTarget we can't get here or in Great Bend, then grab a humungo coffee for the 2 hour trip home (usually with a pit stop in either Hutch or Stafford). But the last few times, I've been driving back through the shopping center (which basically amounts to a 5-block long strip mall) to get to the stand-alone Starbucks on the other side.[3] I've done this for one very important reason.
The in-store Starbucks (or, more likely; Target, which leased space to the Starbucks) wouldn't let me tip the barista.
Now, I haven't always tipped baristas. Mostly because of what I normally drink: either black coffee or iced coffee. And there, I'd tell the wife what I want and hit the restroom; by the time I got back, she'd already taken care of the tab. But when the barista told me that, my mouth kinda hung open. I was really shocked -- though I had noticed the lack of tip jar, I'd just chalked it up to the majority of customers being credit cards instead.
We kinda stopped going to that one after that. There was always an excuse -- it's raining and the stand-alone has a drive through; it's getting late and I'm pretty sure they close the in-store shops early -- but I was of a mixed mind. On one hand; good for Starbucks/Target (the baristas always had Target branded nametags, so I assume they were actually Target employees rather than Starbucks) for paying the baristas enough they didn't need to rely on tips. On the other, if an employee is good at their job, and goes out of their way to make me want to come back (and then spend more money), why can't I -- as the customer -- thank that employee as well? Money may be a base way of saying thank you; but last time I checked, thank you cards don't pay the rent.

[1] You know, the ones they make fun of in the Dunkin Donuts commercials. Yes, I know it's how they make sure the customer gets exactly what they want. But I never know when to actually quit ordering. I've actually gotten intimidated by listening to the guy in line before me order... instead of a cup of coffee, I wound up with a venti half-caff vanilla macchiatto with extra foam.
[2] I say frequented. Not quite accurate, since it's not a daily, weekly, or even monthly thing for me. It's when I make it over to Wichita -- usually once every two or three months.
[3] Yes, there is a Starbucks about 5 blocks from a Starbucks. Don't believe me? Check Google Maps "Starbucks, Maize KS"; between 21st and 29th on Maize. Apparently, if you go down the road a ways, there's another 3 on Central between Maize and Ridge; and another couple on Maple. All west of I-235.

Gentoo: X Update Problems

2009-11-01T07:31:00.004-06:00

When building xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2 with the "+hal +evdev" USE flags:

X -configure will give you your base xorg.conf.new file

Use "evdev" as the driver for both keyboard and mouse

X -config no longer automatically starts twm. Instead, you'll end up with a black screen. This is normal, expected behavior for Xorg.

Instead, use startx to test your configuration. However, the current version of startx seems to require an existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf to run. So move your new config file over (backing up the old one first if this is an upgrade); and if all goes well, you'll see three xterm and an xclock.

Why is this important?

I spent about 3 day trying to "fix" the new default behavior, attempting to get twm to startup with X -config /root/xorg.conf.new . And since the Gentoo Xorg How-To still uses the old default behavior (as of this writing); I figure I had better write this down for the next upgrade. And since knowledge is just information unless it is shared... I'll put it up here in case someone else needs it, too.

Technicalities

2009-09-22T04:00:00.003-05:00

I was watching some TruTV at work tonight -- one of those follow the investigation shows -- and something one of the officers said struck me as just plain wrong. He said something to the effect that they were absolutely positive that the guy was their murderer, but he was able to 'get off on a technicality.'

Quite frankly, there's no such thing as a technicality. Either you (as a cop) did your job correctly, or you didn't. You either filled out the application for a warrant fully and correctly, based it on valid (i.e. legal) observations, and executed it within the letter of the law; or you didn't. There was no technicality, there was a fuck up; and it's on you. You broke the rules that allow the prosecutor to present your evidence to the court -- whether it was continuing questioning after a subject asked for a lawyer, stopping a vehicle without a valid reason, or just plain not dotting your 'i's and crossing the 't's on your report -- don't blame the court for finding that the defendant was right on challenging how you did your job.

Reinstalling Windows a distinct possibility

2009-09-14T01:12:00.002-05:00

Really, the one of the few things that's sticking in my craw about my plans to go back to school next year is the possibility of having to reinstall Windows on my PC -- or pick up a notebook that can run the programs I need (most likely Office 07+, Visual Studio.NET, that sort of thing).
The other things weigh on my mind as well, don't get me wrong; but this is a concern too. It's not that I don't like Microsoft products. OK, part of it is. Helping my wife with her database homework has been a lesson in frustration when I know that the operation is possible (because after a 5 minutes refresher I can do it with the basic SQL functions[1]) but the lack of coherence in the instructor, instructional material, and online help made the same task next to impossible in Outlook 07.

The other part is -- if I have to use my current computer -- I'll have to find more space for my media server. Not that it's actually 'serving' much (ftp only right at the moment, but hey). Speaking of which, I need to make sure that I have anon read capabilities enabled there, too; or figure out how to get it to follow links. If nothing else, I may have to mount the drive inside my home folder.

[1] SELECT * FROM table
WHERE value=(SELECT MAX(value) FROM table)
OR value=(SELECT MIN(value) FROM table)
will display the largest and smallest 'value'

All Systems Go.

2009-08-10T04:06:00.002-05:00

So, I did it. One of the few remaining computer geek rites of passage is complete. I have successfully configured and compiled the Linux kernel for my personal computer; and booted into a GNU/Linux operating system. And since that has been checked off my list...
I went in, reformatted the hard drive I used, and installed Gentoo instead of LFS[1]. Why? Let's just say I have an overwhelming new respect for the packagers at Canonical, Debian, RedHat - compiling isn't the most exciting thing to do, and they do it extremely well. With that said, I like the flexibility of on-site compilation that Gentoo provides. It stands to reason that an executable that is compiled specifically for the hardware it's run on is usually going to outperform the same code when it was compiled for a standard architecture. This won't hold true for all cases, but I've noticed quicker start-up time with lynx (a text-based web browser)[2].
Gentoo took me about 5 hours to get up and going from start to finish (in comparison, it took me around 20 hours to get LFS going, 2 the last time I had to reinstall XP from a rescue disc, and about an hour for Ubuntu). And I mean from the start of formatting the 20GB hard drive until crossing my fingers and rebooting. The crossing of the fingers was fairly important: I had done the entire install over VNC[3], chroot-ed in a terminal from inside of Ubuntu. Basically, that means I built a sandbox in the living room, and a new set of tools. The tools would only affect things that were in the sandbox -- in other words, just the new operating system. I was being doubly careful, because if I messed up building the sandbox I could have totally fscked[4] my entire system. I wouldn't be able to test the setup of three fairly important programs: GRUB, dhcpd, and sshd.
GRUB is the bootloader. A bootloader is a very low-level programs that tells the hardware where to find the operating system. Every computer has one, and you usually don't think about it -- until you mess something up so badly you have to go into "Recovery Mode". That F10/Esc keypress during the memtest? That tells the bootloader you need to change something. If your bootloader isn't configured correctly, you're pretty well locked out. You can change the configuration temporarily -- if you have access to the machine itself. I'm at work. The machine's at home. If GRUB ain't working, I'm SOL.
The other two programs are daemons: small background programs that monitor and take care of a fairly specific task. Think less Beelzebub and more Maxwell. dhcpd is the daemon that asks for and records a network IP address from the DHCP server in the local router. Without it, you don't see the network because the network doesn't see you. sshd is the other half of the remote login requirement: it listens for incoming connections and authenticates the user trying to get it: it's the lock on the door. Actually, it's more the like a hotel's stairwell door: if you have the key, you can get through, but if you don't, tough luck.
If I missed a step setting up any of those three programs -- using the wrong format (sda1 instead of hd0,0), forgetting to rc-update, pointing to the wrong device (wlan1 vs eth0) -- I'm locked out until I can get home and fix it. For the two minutes or so that it took to shutdown Ubuntu, run a full memory test, wait the 10 second delay I built in in case I want to change GRUB, and complete the Gentoo boot sequence, finger-crossing was inevitable.
So, what's next. Well, I haven't had a chance to emerge[6] X Windows yet; and I probably won't until I decide on a Window Manager. I could stick with GNOME; since that is what I'm used to. KDE4 was sluggish on my system, but that was 3 point-upgrades ago. I tried out the new version of Enlightenment (thanks to the latest build of MacPuppy-Opera) and was fairly impressed, though I've been wanting to give Fluxbox a try for a while now. Not to big of a decision, since I can always go in and change my mind later. In fact, I'll go ahead and load Fluxbox when I get home this morning; it should be done by the time I get up this afternoon. (X11 is a fairly large program; I have no doubt it will take a while to compile. Best to start it while I'm sleeping.

[1] Linux From Scratch. They give you a bunch of C and C++ code, and walk you through putting everything together. To extend a baking metaphor... Ubuntu (like most other LiveCD distros) is like going down and picking up a chocolate cake from the bakery. Unless you do something very wrong between the time you pick it up and when you put it on the table; you're going to have a tasty cake that looks good. Gentoo would be around the level of your grandma's handwritten recipe: a lot tougher than the local baker, but if you read the directions - and follow the little notes she made in the margin - you'll be okay. You may end up with something that looks more like brownies than that bakery cake, but it will still taste delicious.
Linux From Scratch - then - would be like someone giving you a pound of cocoa, a jug of oil, a sack of wheat, a cow and a chicken. You can still make you cake; but you have to milk the cow (download the packages) yourself, mill the wheat (make the tools themselves), and wait for the eggs to be laid (compile everything) before you can even think about getting started. That said, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything; it only took me two tries, and that was because I didn't follow the directions I was given the first time.
[2] So, you're probably wondering why I still use a text-only browser? Aesthetics; really. I like the way it renders pages more. Especially pages like google or wikipedia; where it's mostly text anyway.
[3] VNC is the generic version of Remote Desktop: I open a connection to my computer, so I can see (and control) what happens on my screen at home.
[4] Yes, that's what I meant. It's a computer pun. fsck is a command to check - and in some cases, fix errors in - the file system. If you're having to run this command very often, back up your data, because something may be f****d up.
[5] Yes, your standard Windows installation has one as well. You just don't see it because it's limited to standard and limited/recovery modes.
[6] emerge is the front-end to Gentoo's Portage packaging system. Installing a program in Gentoo is fairly simple:
USE="<flags>" emerge <package_name> <options>

Linux From Scratch

2009-08-05T06:24:00.003-05:00

So, when I already have a working computer, why in the world would I partition my hard drive and spend what may end up being a couple of days compiling and futzing with the command line?

I'd say it's the same reason that a car enthusiast will spend hours rebuilding an engine. There's something incredibly satisfying about the whole "getting your hands dirty" thing; knowing that the things you've done are what makes the things you will do possible, and at the same time taking responsibility that if something goes wrong it's your fault, and your job to fix it; or break down and ask for help.

Don't Ever Give Up

2009-07-15T05:40:00.002-05:00

It snuck up on me this year.

It touches everyone. Chances are, you know someone who has -- or has had -- cancer. And every year -- if I can't donate myself -- I try to make it a point to at least give you a link to donate to one of the few charities that every dollar you give to them goes to cancer research. Charity Navigator has given it their 4-star rating for the 6th year in a row: the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Please, if you have ten dollars, if you have five dollars, if you have a dollar that you can spare; send it their way. Nearly 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer sometime within their lifetime.

So, go to JimmyV.org, check them out, and help if you are able. If you can't; at least repost the link.

DON vs SNG

2009-05-10T02:13:00.004-05:00

OK, gonna try and work this out, so bear with me.
PokerStars "Double or Nothing" Sit and Gos are 10 seat, and pay each of the top 5 places 20% of the prize pool. The payout for a standard 9-seat SNG is 50/30/20.
But let's take a closer look. The entry fee for the cheapest DON is $1.10. So, we're not talking 100% Return On Investment, which is what you'd expect from a 'double-or-nothing'; we're looking at 2/1.1 or about a 81% return[1] when you win. Regular micro SNGs aren't any better: If you cash every time, you're looking at 1.8/1.2, which is only a 50% return. Getting heads up is better: 125%, and winning knocks it out of the park -- of course -- at a 275%[2]. But frankly, the higher numbers are irrelevant; we're looking at 81% for 1/2 the field vs 50% for 1/3rd.
It seems, then that the DONs, at least at the micro-levels, are the better bet.

[1] That's for the turbos, the standard DONs are 2/1.15, or about 73.9% return.
[2] Again, that's assuming 9-handed tables. The return values differ slightly depending on the actual number of players and individual tournament's payout structure, of course.

Ubuntu 9.04 Continued

2009-04-24T20:10:00.003-05:00

Writing from Work
The install did not go as smoothly as I would have liked. It actually took three tries to get everything up and running, and two and a half hours later (when I finally gave up and went to bed) it still hadn't gotten exactly what I was hoping for.

What went wrong.
Well, the first two installs both bombed out at different places. Truth told, the first try I was actually expecting to fail exactly where it did... It got all the way through the install process, then crashed and burned on the reboot. Same spot that it did when I first switched over: the error messages were a little more helpful this time around, but it seems that the old Presario does not like to boot Linux when the BIOS's default video adapter is set to PCI instead of the on-board. All sorts of low-end memory conflicts. The prescribed fix -- to disable the motherboard video completely -- is not available with my particular BIOS. I've ran into this problem and enabled my video card before, so I know how (lspci to find the address of the video card, then adding the card's address and driver - ati - to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file), but even if they knew what was causing it, a novice wouldn't know the fix without hitting the support channels.

Instead of fixing, I purposefully went the n00b route and tried the install disc again. This time was a little different... the fail was actually unexpected. GRUB failed to install. So I tried the LILO bootloader. It ran, but apparently didn't actually take, because I was given a "Welcome to GRUB" message on restart. I had also played with the install options, and apparently messed up X enough that it wouldn't redisplay the log-in screen.

Third time, I thought, I'll just let it do its thing. So I leave the preseed ubuntu-desktop. I hit the noapic, nolapic, acpi=off options, but not the expert. I answer the setup questions (Language, Keyboard, Time Zone) and let it do it's thing.

So What's Missing
Whenever there is an 'alternative', there are going to be differences. Aside from the obvious (and changable) things -- font differences, menu and quick-launch bars at the top of the screen, color palette -- there are some working differences - or at least inconveniences - out of the box.
The most noticible of them are the multimedia codecs: wmv, mov, and mp3 all require codecs that aren't among the initial install. Flash and Java get the short shrift as well. All are easy to get running, most with one or two clicks and a password. iPods are more of a problem - or so I understand... I don't have one[1].
Really, that's it. Silverlight would be a problem, but there really isn't that many websites using it, and the Moonlight replacement works nicely.

After I quit jerking around and actually let the installer do the work, it was a breeze, took maybe 40 minutes. Most of that was waiting on the mirror; not a big surprise within the first week of a release. Local install and DVD options are available that would have eliminated that.

Not the best experience in the world, I will admit; but even with the two false starts, it still took me less time than the last non-recovery install of Windows did.

[1] My wife does, but it's synced to her computer, not mine.

Ubuntu 9.04 Install log.

2009-04-24T09:40:00.001-05:00

Posting from Windows
After much consideration, I decided to wipe the Debian part of my home system and install Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackelope). The main reason being I love to tinker - I hate leaving well enough alone.
So, I backed up my files (a DVDs worth of tarred MP3s, some pics, and some old writing samples I've lugged around since Win98 was shiny and new) and decided to approach installing from a fresh point of view.
I don't think many people are going to have a spare hard drive lying around, so I (surreptitiously) checked to see what programs I use -- if any -- don't have a version or equivalent available for Ubuntu. For me, the list was short: Windows Media Encoder 9 -- which muxes video for my daughter's MixMax -- is a MS only thing requiring a registered version of Windows to download and use. A lot of Windows-native programs that don't have an analogue can be run with WINE. And you can find out if a program you want to use will work by looking it up in Wine's application database. Unfortunately, neither my WME9 or Full Tilt Poker client (which has a Mac version, go fig) play well with WINE. No big deal; I can dual boot. [1]
First things first, I went to ubuntu.com and download the Jaunty alternate-install disc[2]. Like most distibutions, it came as an ISO file. ISOs are bit-by-bit copys (images) of a CD or DVD -- in this case a CD. XP doesn't handle ISOs natively, and if you don't have a program like Nero that can burn an image to disc, I'd recommend a program like InfraRecorder. From Ubuntu's download page, you can choose which version to download and grab the file directly from Canonical's servers. Down the page is another couple options. I have uTorrent installed on my windows side, so I used the torrent download. For me, this has a couple advantages. The most important for me is built-in MD5 check-summing. MD5 is an algorythm that creates a number (a sum) based on the contents of a file. If the contents of the file are changed even slighty - for example, say from packet loss or corruption during download - there is a large change in the MD5-created sum. By checking the sum of your downloaded file against the sum of the source, you can ensure that the data that was received is the same as the data that was sent. This becomes especially important when dealing with programs and the underlying framework that will run your computer. The difference is multiplied: doing a checksum just at the end means you would have to redo the entire ~700MB download if the checksum was wrong. The torrent protocol's incremental checksum means that you the client (program) can discard corrupt sections as it's downloading -- meaning it only has to re-request 1 or 2 MB at a time instead of 700.
There are other advantages of using the P2P transfer; One, once a file is sufficiently seeded it takes a tremendous burden off of the original servers, and two, it is often faster than the single-point download.
Once the ISO was downloaded, checksummed and burned; I used the disk cleanup and defrag utilities to make room on my hard drive for the install. I come up with 15 GB of free space on my first hard drive. Since this is a dual-boot system, I'm going to use that 15GB to store stuff that I'll want to be able to access from either platform - music, small vids, etc. Since XP can only natively access FAT and NTFS file systems, I'll format that as NTFS and make it a shared folder -- since it is a single-user system, there should be no problem with permissions. If there comes a time where I need more users, I can change that at a later date.
Since I do have a second HD, I'll just use it as my bootable linux partition.
It's 9:38, and I'm shutting down to do the install now.

1> Yes, I already knew all this before. Just like I knew that my particular model of Presario (SR1103WM) doesn't play well with LiveCDs, and needs the noapic nolapic acpi=off flags in order to actually install the Linux kernel. All this info -- and probably the ones for your computer as well -- is fairly easy to find with google.
2> See [1]. One other issue that poppe up on a google search: This presario model -- and linux on Compaqs in general apparently -- have had a problem in the past with kernel panic if the BIOS defaults to something other than the onboard video. We'll give it a try both ways -- it's a bug that's harder to find, and maybe the latest kernel has addressed the issue.

Mad Merlin

2009-04-14T04:40:00.002-05:00

I've always been a bit enamored with the Arthurian mythos --- to be totally honest, that would be myths and legends as a whole, but the stories of King Arthur and his knights in particular. And as a country founded primarily by [former] citizens of the British Empire, I suppose that it is natural to explore the stories that shaped our culture.
Which is why I picked up - and read with interest - J. Robert King's retelling entitled "Mad Merlin". The plot will be no surprise to anyone remote familiar with the mythos - even half-remembered from the old Disney movie Sword in the Stone. All the pre-Lancelot standard set pieces are here. Arthur is born, fostered by Ector without knowledge of who he is, goes to London, pulls Excalbur from the stone, builds Camelot, marries Guennivere, sires a son (Mordred) by his half-sister, and defeats the Saxons at Badon Hill.
Where Mad Merlin differs from many retellings of the legends is in the origin of Excalibur and the treatment of Merlin himself - and injecting a rather post-modern sentiment about the power source of gods in the process.
What drew me in was the same thing that drew me into the old AD&D Planescape setting -- that for the gods, belief is power. Here, when the Saxons invade the Roman Britain, they bring with them their pantheon -- in particular Wotan (Odin), and Loki. With the Roman pantheon already displaced by Christianity and the Brittanic gods driven underground by the Roman conquerors, the visible -- and very deadly Saxon gods would be free to decimate the Brittanic forces.
How author King (not Arthur, King) uses these facts is a treat for the comparative-mythologically inclined and a spoiler I'm not willing to share, but it is safe to say that the wizened Merlin is much older than he first appears.

Pick it up, give it a read. It's pretty much supplanted White's The Once and Future King as my interpretation of choice.

New addition

2009-04-12T22:31:00.004-05:00

The task I find myself doing the most often with my computer is probably one of the most banal exercises known to man. If I had stuff on there I needed to keep private, or if the possibility existed someone might hack into my computer, I'd feel it would be one of the most important things you can do.
Of course, it is entering my password.
A mix of settings encourages -- actually, it requires -- this situation. Not only do I enter my password when logging in (for both CLI and GUI[1]), I enter it whenever I make changes to my system, when I pipe the view from my monitor up to the office, and even when I let my screen saver kick on.
So, I got to thinking. I'm entering 16 keystrokes every time I put in my password. Is there anything I do normally right after restoring my screen that I could automate?
The result? weatherd.py


#!/usr/bin/env python
# weatherd.py v0.3: Current Weather Conditions when you return
# to your desktop.
# Stolen ruthlessly from
# PyGlue's Pause_Rythmbox_on_XScreensaver
# http://code.google.com/p/pyglue
# And the PyNotify Examples
# /usr/share/doc/ptyhon-notify/examples
# GNU GPL 3 licensing applies.
# http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

import dbus
import commands

try:
import dbus.glib
except ImportError:
 from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
 DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)

def screensaver_changed(state):
"""This method is called
when the screensaver starts/stops"""

import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import pynotify
import sys

if not pynotify.init("Basics"):
 sys.exit(1)

currentweather = commands.getstatusoutput('weather ddc')
n = pynotify.Notification("Current DC Conditions", currentweather[1])

if not n.show():
 print "Failed to send notification"
 sys.exit(1)

session_bus = dbus.SessionBus()
session_bus.add_signal_receiver
 (screensaver_changed,
 'SessionIdleChanged',
 'org.gnome.ScreenSaver')

def main():
 import gobject
 loop = gobject.MainLoop()
 loop.run()

def daemonize(func):
import os
import sys
try:
 pid = os.fork()
 if pid > 0:
     # exit first parent
     sys.exit(0)
except OSError, e:
 print >>sys.stderr,
   "fork #1 failed: %d (%s)" % (e.errno, e.strerror)
 sys.exit(1)

# decouple from parent environment
os.chdir("/")
os.setsid()
os.umask(0)

# do second fork
try:
 pid = os.fork()
 if pid > 0:
     # exit from second parent,
     #print eventual PID before
     print "Daemon PID %d" % pid
     sys.exit(0)
except OSError, e:
 print >>sys.stderr,
    "fork #2 failed: %d (%s)" % (e.errno, e.strerror)
 sys.exit(1)

# start the daemon main loop
func()

if __name__ == "__main__":
 daemonize(main)

So, what does this do? Well, a lot of programs on my computer send a signal when something happens. That session_bus stuff listens for those signals, and when it hears the screensaver saying "I'm turning off", it tells the function called 'screensaver_changed' to do its thing.
In this case, I've decided to take advantage of the National Weather Service's automated feed -- that's the 'weather ddc' line. 'Weather' is part of the weather-utils package available for Debian. 'DDC' tells it to grab the current conditions from KDDC: the Dodge City Municipal Airport. Then we use feed that information to pyNotify, which makes it look like this:

Useful? Right now, that's debatable. It saves me from opening a new terminal and searching, or Firefox and getting the radar. But, writing this thing three different ways before making it work gave me some time to work on my programming skills.

TODO:

Change the Notify template from Basic to Markup, add hyperlink to a radar site.
--Note... possible with www.crh.noaa.gov/[TLA]
Un-Hard Code weather station, make it user selectable from command line.

WISHLIST:

Grab and use the most recent weather radar image as the popup icon.

Now, you're probably wondering right now, Deege, why didn't you go out and -- for example -- grab the Linux version of WeatherBug? Now, I could say that my intent was actually finding something useful to work toward while trying to improve my Python skills. Or, I could say that I'm not fond of having Java programs running constantly on my computer. Or, I could say that the amount of junk mail I got from registering the Windows version turned me off to it. Or, that I'd rather use the bandwidth for other things than keeping a connection open. All of which would be true - but none of which would be the real reason. ***Sheepish Grin*** I just didn't know there was one until I started looking for the link for the weather-util package. It's Creative Commons License instead of GNU Public License, which means it's not in Debian's repositories, which means I really didn't know about it.

[1] CLI: Command Line Interface. Like DOS, if you were using a computer that long ago. I use this when I need to get results quickly: type in a command, get an answer back. Graphical User Interface. It shows the pretty pictures. I use this when I need to see what I'm doing -- photo viewing/editing, surfing the web (for the most part).

Importance of pre-flop play

2009-04-08T13:48:00.002-05:00

Poker is a game of skill... at least according to a number of studies done by various researchers world-wide. Luck plays into it, of course; but out of every conceivable way a hand could be played, there is only one situation when which of the 2652 different starting card combinations you were dealt have any bearing on the outcome of the hand: the Showdown. Which is why good poker players avoid going to a showdown as much as possible.
I had a hand this morning that reinforced Chris Ferguson's advice from FTPA... if a hand is profitable for a call, it is more profitable for a raise:
The game is a $2+.25 No Limit Hold'em SNG. We're on the bubble -- 4 handed, 3 pay -- and blinds are getting a little higher than I'm comfortable with: 80/160, and I've got 1600 after posting my big blind. UTG folds, Button smooth calls, SB folds, I check my 9-4 off suit, with every intention of folding to the first bet.
Until I see the flop. 9-6-4 rainbow. Just like that my hand o' crap becomes two pair. I lead out, putting 300 into the 400 chip pot, figuring I'm short stacked anyway, this is probably going to be my best bet to get my money in. I haven't played very many hands to this point, and I figure a 3/4-pot bet will either push him out or make the pot nice for me.
The Button raises to about 1000. I trip my time bank and think. Dude has played so many hands in the last two blind levels I don't think he even has a starting hand range. What I don't put him on are pocket pairs -- I'm pretty sure he would have raised preflop with 6s or better, and I figure odds are that he doesn't have 9s or 4s. Which to me means he has done one of three things: 1) paired the bottom half of his Ace-rag, 2) picked up a straight draw, or 3) is trying to price me out of the hand with 2 over cards. Best case scenario, he's looking at a 6-outer, that's about 76/24 in my favor. What don't I put him on? A 9-6. I've got to figure, even with him limping in, that my hand is good. So I push.
He quick calls, shows 9-8. This is good news and bad news. Good news is that there are 6 cards that could make his hand better than mine right now -- any 6, any 8. Bad news is that if a seven comes, he goes from 6 outs to 13 outs (28% to hit) -- any of the three remaining 6s or 7s would give us the same two pair with him having the better kicker, any of the three 8s gives him a better two pair, any of the four 5s gives him a straight. Now, if the board paired 6s on the turn, I'd be behind, but I'd have a lot more outs: even though only the two 4s would give me the win, I'd be happy with a split pot, which meant any of the four 10, J, Q, K, or Aces left in the deck would save my arse: 22 outs, or about 45%.
Good news was, I doubled up when the final two board cards missed both of us.
You could see button steaming through the wires, I didn't have the heart to tell him if he would have raised instead of limping, I would never have seen the flop.

Poker: 4/7

2009-04-07T21:14:00.007-05:00

After post last night, I ponied up into a few SNGs and picked up a few bucks. Bankroll to start the day sat at $12.93 / $T9.00.

An aside on FT Bankrolls: FT pays out in 5 different currencies. Most people will play with "Play Money", which is just that: you bet play money, you win play money. On the real money side, the base currency is the standard US dollar ($), and you use them like you would cash in a casino. The rest are a bit more involved.
First you have Full Tilt Points (FTP). They're Full Tilt's version of a customer loyalty program. Garner enough and you can enter into points tournaments, or trade them in for prizes -- a range of things from branded apparel to instructional videos and courses to electronics to a car (a Mini Cooper S, only 6,000,000 FTP). You earn FTPs by playing real money games: 1 FTP for every dollar raked in a cash game you're involved in, and 7 FTP for every dollar in tournament entry fees you pay.
Then there's Satellite Tokens. Available in $26 and $75 denominations, these prizes are awarded for winning certain satellite or points tournaments. Tokens can be used to enter any $24+2 or $69+6 tournament (respectively). I don't have any of these. Mostly because I don't want any of these. Even if I won a $26 Token, it'd have to sit. There's no way I'm good enough right now to play in a $26 tournament. I'm doing good to place in the 1.25, 2.00 and 2.25 tournaments I play. Strange thing I've noticed though. I do better in the 2 and 2.25 tournaments than I do in the 1.25s. I think its because I've got enough theory under my belt that I start looking for my opponents to have recognizable betting patterns, or some logic to their play and starting hand range. I can't count the number of times in $1.25s I've reraised the flop with top trips only to be outdrawn by what at the time was a middle pair that turned into a boat.
Finally, there's tournament dollars ($T). Certain tournaments - notably points tourneys - pay out in $T instead of cash. You also get credited $T (instead of cash) for winning a satellite and then un-registering from the main tournament. $T can be used to enter any tournament, but $T can only be used to enter tournaments. If you want to play in a ring game, you'll need to exchange the $T for cash. The exchange rate is $T1 = $0.95; or rather, there's a 5% commission (rounded up) on a tournament dollar exchange.

I managed to bust out of the $100 US Freeroll really freaking early. Trip 10s vs. a board set to flush that I did not see until after I had pushed all-in.
The Daily Dollar isn't going nearly as well for me, either.
150/300/25, I'm sitting with 8350 chips, putting me in 849/(1418/5773)[1]. Good news is my chair position, most hands I'm acting directly after the high stack on the table - who's sitting in 7th place in the tournament.
200/400/50 Pocket Rockets just doubled me up. Button -3 I raise 3x bb with AA. Big Blind calls me off. Flop comes Q/rag/rag. She bets, I push, figuring she has top pair (to my over pair), she calls; showing Q5. Aces hold up, I double up and put her on tilt. She goes out the next hand on A-rag vs A-J to the big stack, and the table breaks up. I've bumped my position up to around 400/(1200/5773)
250/500/50 Less than 30 people below the bubble. The current bubble boy has 1340 in chips.
300/600/75 Woo! I'm In the Money! --470th currently, but the blinds keep getting bigger...
400/800/100 A tense double-up (KK vs AQ) vaulted me up near 200th position as another prize level falls. I'm at 29K, next prize bubble currently has 6.5K .
500/1000/125 As the blinds keep getting bigger, my stack is holding up fairly well. We're into the $3.00 prize level (720-541); I'm in 275th with a 25.5K stack. I haven't been able to play many hands because of a lack of cards; though it seems the 23o I was just holding would have been good against the pusher's A10. Right now the next prize bubble is around 10K.
600/1200/150 Another blind level, another prize level. 260/530, next cutoff is 360th. Again, need to make some moves if I want to stay in the competition -- I've only got 7K on the bubble boy.
600/1200/150 A8 in the big blind vs A4 in the small, A on flop, SB leads, I raise, he re-raises, I push, he calls. Safe river and turn mean I double up and bounce myself up to about 125th /460. Don't feel too bad for the SB though; he doubled up the next hand.
3rd Break (800/1600/200): 133/436. After a slow start, I'm doing much better than I had imagined I would be at this point. I've locked up $3.50 -- a 350% ROI -- and with 49K chips, look pretty good to make the next prize level (360th place, currently ~16K). And the best part is, I'm not doing anything special: I'm making good lay downs, playing position fairly well, and keeping a low profile.
1000/2000/250: Another run of dry cards. I'm still holding in with 40K, thanks to some timely folds; and I've made it to the next prize level (next cutoff: 270th, ~20K). Still, with 20BBs, I should probably think about loosening my starting hand requirements a bit.
1200/2400/300: Still on a dry run. Down to 30K, I'm well below the cutoff for the next prize level. So at the moment, it really doesn't matter if I bust out: I just don't have enough chips to stall through this prize level. So we up the agression a tad. Still not gonna play crap hands, but I'm gonna have to actually play.
I'm holding KQ off-suit UTG+2. Action folds to me, I raise 3 times the big blind, and everybody else folds. And that's how you steal the blinds.
**sigh** Got a little too anxious. Reraised all in from the big blind with AK. The board gives my one caller a pair of jacks. Oh well, I still upped my bankroll 5 bucks. Now, I need to scoot over to the ring tables to pick up a FTP, to qualify for the $5 bonus for the Take 2 promotion. I was dumb, didn't read the rules closely enough and pissed away my chance at the $25 bonus. Oh well.

06:32 am Quick update... over the past 24 hours, my bankroll has went from a combined 21.93 to a cash only $32.28. So, discounting the $5 for the Take 2 bonus and the $5 from the Daily Dollar tourney, I netted about 35c on SNGs and rings tonight. That's not as bad as it sounds, though. I'm not good at cash tables and the only reason I have been playing ring games at all was to pick up that Take 2 bonus. I even had to re-up on one table because of a misread (didn't notice that the board paired threes, so I didn't take into consideration the dude might have raised preflop with A-rag in early position). Cash games just play differently - and take a different set of assumptions - than tourney play. And I know that, I just failed to take it into account.

[1] That is, sitting in 849th place out of 1418 players remaining in the original field of 5,773.

Poker: 4/6

2009-04-06T20:57:00.003-05:00

8am. After some good luck building both my bankroll and FTP balance, I had busted out of a $1+.25 SNG this morning on what I thought was a bad beat. Big blind, J2. Cutoff smooth calls, and there's no way I'm raising with a Jack-duece. Flop comes 2-2-8. I bet my trip 2s, dude raises me all-in. I call, thinking Ace and face card, or at worst over pair. I show my trips, he shows pocket 10s. Turn's clean, but dude hits a 10 on the river. Good news, I had the right read on him and I got my money in when I had the better hand; bad news, he sucked out and knocked me out in 5th when top 3 pays. Balance: 9.97.

9:20 pm: Generally following the FTPA[1] advise has gotten me in decent position as I'm creeping up on the second break -- and cashing -- in the Daily Dollar ($1, $10K guar, 1080/6119)[2]. Right now, with blinds at 300/150/25[3], I'm sitting at 14.6K chips, and sitting around 463rd out of the 1502 players left in the tournament. I've been doing fairly well, and have seen an inordinate number of pocket jacks. Best part is, they've been good to me. I've only not won with them tonight once:
UTG+1 smooth calls; I'm cutoff (Button -1), raise 3.3x, dude calls. Flop comes K9A; dude bets pot, I fold. With the Ace/King falling on the flop, there's no way I can really call with just Jacks. When someone in early position calls, I'm thinking he probably has either and A or K, and when he calls a raise from late position, I'm thinking he probably has A/Face or KQ, something of that nature. That makes a pot-sized bet really hard to call with AK on the board. Now, if it had came AKQ or AK10, I'd have considered it longer because instead of 2 cards that would improve my hand, I'd have 6 outs, which would be about 1/4 chance of improving my hand rather than less than 1/10.
9:37 pm: 200/400/50 Knock-out! BB's antes all-in. I'm UTG+2, and I raise to 2000 (5xBB) on AdKd. Cutoff raises to 4800, I push All-In 13,560; Cutoff calls AI, shows AcKs; big blind has 6s2d. Best cutoff can hope for is the flush to go his way, otherwise we're looking at a split pot.
Board comes 6d,8d,9h; pairing BB, but I'm more interested in the 25K side pot than the 270 chip main pot. Turn gives me 3d and the diamond flush. I'm over 26K chips and top 200 with around 1200 left in the tourney.
9:55 pm: 300/600/75 I'm In The Money! As the first $2.20 prize gets paid, I'm sitting in 226th position. The next payout level is 900th.
10:07pm: 400/800/100 I'm In The Money! As 900th place gets paid $2.50, I'm sitting in 230th Position. The next payout level is 720th.
10:23 pm: 500/1000/125 I'm In The Money! I wasn't even paying attention as 720th paid out, right now, i'm sitting at 293/661... 540th is the next cutoff, which will earn $3.50.
10:36 pm: 600/1200/150 I'm in the money! 3.50 is mine now, as I'm sitting in 348th as the 540 place player goes out. 360th is the next cutoff, so I should probably look to play some more hands.
10:42 pm: Third Break. OK, I've made the third break, and I'm still playing as 398/472. I'm happy with my play so far tonight; not only have I at least tripled my entry fee, I'm playing smart poker. No bad beats either way, and even though I'm down to about 13 BB, I can tell I'm not in 'panic mode' yet. I'm playing for another 70c - a 1c/2c table starting pile, really.
11:05 pm: 1000/2000/250 Lucky Break: I get dealt JJ sitting in the big blind. Fold to the small blind who raises 3x, I raise all the other couple hundred to put me all in, he calls; shows A3o. Flop AJ10. I ride the river out to almost triple up because of the antes. This puts me just far enough ahead that I scoot past the 360th position into $4.20. 270th pays $5, but I don't think I'll get there. A few more good hands, though; and who knows?
11:12pm: 1000/2000/250 A 4x bet in early position backed by QQs nets me some blinds, I'm at 17K in 300th place.
11:13 pm: 1200/2400/500: Got my money in from the button on a 60/40 shot. My AcJs/Kc3c. So of course, flop comes 2 clubs, turn shows club (his flush), and the river... Qh. Damn. Out in 302nd quadrupling my entry fee. Not bad for about 4 hours work.I'm gonna hit the Late Night Happy Hour for double FTPs a while (trying to cash out that next $5 on my first deposit bonus).

[1] Full Tilt Poker Academy. Basically, their advice involves what hands to play in what position, how much and when to bet/raise.
[2] That is, a $1 entry fee, $10,000 guaranteed prize pool, and 1080 places pay out of the 6119 entries.
[3] Ante of 25, 300 chip big blind/minimum bet, 150 small blind.

My Computer Prefers Linux

2009-03-13T19:21:00.003-05:00

So instead of finalizing with the release of stable Lenny (Debian 5.0) on my home rig, I went ahead and apt-get updated/upgraded to stay on the Testing (now codenamed "Squeeze") track.
I still dual-boot Debian and WinXP, because as much as I prefer Debian for 99% of what I use a computer for, there are still 2 things I can't get to work right under Wine (so anyone who has tips on encoding to Windows Media Video 9 format or getting Full Tilt to spawn new windows correctly, please send them my way).
When I went to bed last night, I left my box running XP. Pure laziness on my part, really; I had played poker after getting the little one off to school, got busy with other stuff, and never went back to the computer. Get up this morning, and what greets me? My Debian desktop. (Yes, I know. Automatic login is not good security. And as soon as I can figure out how to get either a VNC server to show the login screen, I'll turn it off.)
My first thought was power outage. But I look around, Chel's comp is still pulled up (she has the auto-on after power loss disabled); the kitchen clock is still right.
Then I figured it out: Windows Automatic Update. The last time I worked, MS pushed an update which required a restart. I fought for two hours against those Restart Now/Remind Me Later timeouts the other night. Since I hadn't actually been on the XP side for about 3 weeks, it loaded them in the background and restarted. No big deal, except my GRUB defaults to Debian instead of last used.
So, when Windows shut itself off, my computer decided it would rather work than play games: it loaded Linux.

The Gift -- REPRINT

2008-12-11T22:14:00.002-06:00

I was doing a quiz earlier this evening, and came across question 13^FNa. I was flippant in my answer, but the asking hung in the back of my mind. And the question turned on me, and asked itself again and again - as such things are wont to do. And I knew in that moment I had not been honest, not in the post, and not in my own mind. I had never truly appreciated the gift I was given - better to say I realized not the gift it was - nor to this day do I begin to say I understand how (or as important, why) it was passed.
As such, I never truly knew how to thank the giver. A simple "thank you" seems now as it did at the time; totally inadequate in scope. What she gave that cold night in December as we danced by firelight -- it seems to have happened another lifetime ago -- was nothing less than the key to my own soul.
How do you thank someone for opening your eyes? Like my own private Road to Damascus, that starlit night pried the scales from my eyes. I was stripped bare of the doubts and self-pity I had swathed myself in for so long; and was set free from the coccoon of self-loathing that had long shadowed my soul so deeply that in the night I feared the darkness within. By the light of the fire, she burned away the dark mantle with friendship I have cherished daily.
That night, so long ago, she gave what noone else could. She showed me love, the love given freely between friends who trust one another fully [no matter how I later tried to decieve myself thinking it was more]; but more important, she healed the scars left by another by showing that even stripped bare of all the trapping, I was worthy of being loved. And in that, she gave me the greatest gift of all.

She gave me hope.

In that hope, I found a true love of my own. It will never be enough to just say "thank you", it is a soul-deep debt I can never truly repay.

^FNa Dead Link, text follows:
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Yes, but the terms of service say I can't tell you about it.

First Post -- REPRINT

2008-12-11T22:00:00.001-06:00

Ok, Chel & Barb. Here I am. I have finally made a myspace page. You happy now?
Yahoo!Messenger is scheduled down for another hour, so I'm stuck up at the office with noone to talk to. Now, normally, that's a good thing - I still maintain that nothing good is happening when I'm talking to people at work; or when I'm people are talking to me so I can work. I guess there's a difference, isn't there.
I finished reading the book I picked up at the library this afternoon. ... Hold up. Swap for time reference ambiguity... This afternoon, I finished the book I had picked up at the library yesterday. The story was good, and I was fairly impressed. Then again, I like urban fantasy. I've been impressed with the fantasy coming out of Harlequin's Luna imprint. Yes, I know. Harlequin is primary a "chick" publisher: you've probably heard of their romance paperbacks. Until I looked it up, though, I didn't notice any connection between the Harlequin (romance novels) and Luna (fantasy novels) imprints. Then again, I also never noticed that Ballantine and Doubleday were both Random House labels either. Anyway, digression over. In the Author's words...
"A Seattle cop with no use for the mystical has a near-death experience and is offered a choice between dying, or life as a shaman. When she chooses life, she finds herself neck-deep in a murder mystery and up against a couple of old Celtic gods."[1]
Which I thinks sums it up pretty well. I came out of it thinking about a lite version of Neil Gaimon's American Gods, if that tells you anything. If not, well pick either one up yourself. Both are good alternatives to all the happy sappy crappy that I can't seem to avoid during the holyday season.

-- Author's Note. First published to http://blog.myspace.com/djayhogan on 08-Dec-06. Urban Shaman is ISBN: 0373802234. I still recommend going to pick up Gaimon's American Gods.

2008-11-26T22:10:00.002-06:00

So, my daughter's getting her computer upgraded for Christmas. Actually, let's say that for Christmas she's being given (suspendable) internet privileges on the computer in the living room. There is only one problem with that...
There is no way I'm letting her get on my home network with a Win98 computer. The last thing I need is my daughter running a honeypot. Which leads me to my second, more expensive problem. Her computer wasn't top of the line back when Win98 was new; XP would just point and laugh.
So, I could drop ~$150-200 on a entry-level computer, hook it up and call it good; or I could provide a object lesson in cost-effectiveness. For $62 (including S&H), I'm maxing out the memory and adding a wireless card. Cost-effective? Well, the memory isn't gonna transfer anywhere -- PC100 isn't in high demand these days -- but the wireless card... while 802.11b/g isn't gonna win any speed awards any time soon; N is backwards compatable and if/when she actually gets a new computer, the card can travel -- or get put into mine if she doesn't need it. :).
And the best part is; this is what she wanted!
What's even stranger; she doesn't want XP -- or Vista, not that it could handle that monster -- on her computer. She wants Ubuntu. She's gonna have to settle for Xubuntu, though. The lower footprint (1.5 GB vs 4 GB) isn't going to burn through the late 90's size hard drive (which will get replaced or a second drive added sometime around April); her music files (actually, probably most of her home directory) will be on the network.
Now, it's just a waiting game. Wait for a late night that I can install the card, memory, and OS. Wait for Xmas to put it back out and boot-er up.

All Aboard the Meme Train

2008-11-13T18:29:00.001-06:00

From http://theironlion.net/blog/book-meme/

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

At the fdisk prompt, type a for a list of commands.
--Using Linux Third Edition, Special Edition.

One More Thing

2008-11-05T03:43:00.002-06:00

One of the things I took away from Tuesday night's election coverage was the astute observations by FoxNews contributor Karl Rove.
Yes, I was watching Fox News. It's not something I do very often - I'm not conservative by any stretch of the political definition. That said, the actual news portions of their broadcast day - such as Live Desk - are reliable and watchable, and as long as I stay away from the op-ed/"analysis" shoes (Hannity, O'Rielly, Van Susteren), my TV screen remains remarkably free of footwear flung in frustration. That said, I feel the same way about MSNBC (Olbermann : O'Rielly :: Kettle : Pot). I'm really politically homeless: moderate to conservative fiscally, extremely liberal when dealing with social issues, damn near libertarian on the Federal Gov'ts role.
What caught me while I was switching between the big 3 cable news outlets last night was Rove's evaluation of where Obama found votes. Sorry, can't find the video anywhere. I'll recap like the cohost did; Obama took votes from the various demographics with a scalpal, not a hatchet.
In other words, he built a coalition; instead of trying to win over whole blocks of voters - like Kerry did in 04 - and risk alienating his core constituency, Obama won over small portions of the traditionally Republican demographics: 2, 3, 4% of the vote compared to four years ago. Enough little steps, and you make large strides :).

A Time for Change

2008-11-05T01:15:00.002-06:00

An Open Letter to Democrats:

Congratulations, my friends. The candidate you selected to represent your ideas to the American electorate has won. He won with a simple message... that it is time for change.

Savor the victory. Allow yourself a little time to gloat; but get over it, and do so fairly quickly. As of this writing (approx 2:30 am Eastern Time), you have 54 seats in the Senate, and cannot reach a 60 vote super majority without the help of Leiberman and Sanders. You've made gains in the House, but you've probably lost KS-2 (Boyda: D-Topeka), and perhaps others... I'm not going to search state by state to double check right now. I know it's just one seat in a heavily Republican seat, lost to a popular state Treasurer when your fairly popular Democratic Governor wasn't on the ticket to boost turnout for the incumbent. But it is there.

Soon - maybe not tomorrow; but soon - the real work to enact Obama's Change begins. Moreover, it must begin on a local level as well as the national stage. And quite frankly, it means doing many of the same things that another Democratic President asked us to do: work together to build better communinities, volunteer; make ourselves better.

And encourage our lawmakers - Democrat AND Republican - to do the same. Build coalitions; use diplomacy; prioritize, and use those priorities to reduce wasteful spending. Reinvest in our elementary and high schools; find effective ways of keeping kids involved in school and learning, so we can compete in the Science and Mathematics fields. And yes, raise taxes when there is no more fat to cut.

And maybe; just maybe, we'll be able to turn 4 years into 8.

Say What???

2008-07-10T23:16:00.003-05:00

I wasn't really paying attention to what was on the television when I heard the announcer say

"And the win puts Kansas City in a tie with New York for the position..."

This totally confused me. I knew that the Yankees had lost tonight and KC had won (on the strength of an 8th inning Mark Teahen inside-the-park home run). But a quick check confirmed that the Royals and NY are not even in the same division, and even if they were, neither are lined up for the Wild Card berth (if the playoffs started today).

Then I remembered what I had been watching. This was the Major League Soccer news (during halftime of the Chivas USA / LA Galaxy match).

Kansas City Trip

2008-07-06T03:55:00.001-05:00

Well, it's been a week since we got back from vacation in Kansas City. I had a heck of a time up there, let me tell you.We took out Thursday morning after I got home from work. It Was a quick turnaround, no time for a nap between getting home and leaving again; so I grabbed a shower to recharge and let Chel drive so I could doze while we were on the road.Timed it about right, too; got out of Kinsley around 8:30-9:00, which meant we were able to grab lunch at in Emporia with Daph on our way through. I didn't realize it had been that long since she had seen Aubrey; but we hadn't had a chance to see her at Hannah's Graduation and that was the first time in a long time Aubrey had been back.Back on the road, we made pretty good time on up to KC. This time I really was able to nod off - which is a real trick when I'm in the car. And it was still pretty early when we got to the hotel. I crashed while Ada and Chel tried in vain to find the Wally-world that had apparently closed since the phone book in our room was printed.When they got back we loaded up and gave Aubrey her reward for straight As this school year: a trip to the Rainforest Cafe there at Oak Park Mall.For those of you who haven't been heard of it, Rainforest Cafe is this jungle/wildlife theme restraunt with animatronic animals, trees and vines, rock textured walls, waterfall, the whole nine yards. Little bit more expensive than what I'd normally suggest to go out - ended up being about $25 a head for one appetizer, four entrees and soft drinks - but it was a treat for the little one.Got done there and went back to the hotel room; where I actually had time to take a look at the room itself. I won't say that it was the worst place I've ever stayed. That distinction goes to the motel - which is under new name and presumably new management - that I worked at oh, almost ten years ago. But the counter was falling apart, the door handle to the bathroom was falling off, the towel rack was coming out of the wall; there were scuff marks in odd places, for some reason it felt like the furniture had been positioned to conceal something, and it had a mildewy musty smell - not what I was expecting. I was expecting the smell of stale cigarette smoke that is the bane of housekeeping in hotels which still have smoking rooms.We didn't complain about it, though. Mostly because we were already set up, I was bushed, and the bed and shower both worked. Sometimes, just sometimes, that's all you really want out of a hotel room.Friday, we went to Oceans of Fun; where I made a decision that would haunt me for the next week or so. Yes - like the idiot that I know I can be - I decided that I didn't need sunscreen; we were only gonna spend 4, maybe 5 hours out there. Just a reminder; water has the ability to both reflect and magnify skin damaging UV rays, depending on the water's shape and angle to the sun. As a result of forgetting that little tidbit, I ended up with not only sunburnt shoulders, but blistered shoulders that over a week later are still like fresh from the oven Grand's biscuits: hot, tender and flaky. I did get to ride a couple of water slides I've been wanting to ride, even if I was pushing the weight limit just a bit.After a round of shopping and introducing Aubrey to sushi from the Oak Park food court - she had a slice of pizza, and I gave her maki roll to try from off of my plate - we went back to the hotel. Where I tried very hard to sleep without moving too much.Aubrey really didn't care for the sushi too much - something about the nori and the sticky rice together - but she did seem to enjoy the "gari", that pickled ginger that's used as a palatte-cleanser/digestive.Saturday, we went to Worlds of Fun. Which probably would have been more fun - and definitely would have been more roller-coastery - if I hadn't been so sunburnt. Not looking for sympathy mind you, it was my own damn fault.We finished Saturday off by hitting the combination A&W/Long John Silvers with one of Chel's old friends whom she hasn't seen in years. Probably one of the few places where your order can have both "fish and chips" and cheese curds.Sunday was the long drive back home. We stopped at Emporia for lunch, and toodled on back before it got dark. It was an early night for all of us; everybody was tired by the time we got home.I had a wonderful time, and I think everybody else did, too.

Going on Vacation

2008-06-26T05:47:00.003-05:00

So, we're going to Worlds (and Oceans) of Fun this weekend. I'm taking a couple days vacation, which got me looking at my paystub for this last check.
Square at the top (where you'd find a return address on a "modified block" style letter) are the leave balances for our vacation and sick time.
At the county, our sick leave accrues at 4 hours a month (a half-day for most) and 8 hours (a day for most) a month for vacation. I understand that; what supervisor wouldn't want to give you an incentive to schedule leave time in advance? Pretty much every supe who has to cover shifts, I suspect; which is probably why I get 96 hours of vacation time a year and only 48 hours of sick time.
I only have one problem with the whole setup; and that is vacation time is capped. Admittedly, I can build up to 3 weeks worth of time before I hit that "use it or lose it" ceiling. And most people only get 2 weeks per calendar (or in some cases, fiscal) year. So I've got it good. But even after this weekend, I'll have over two weeks of VC left on my next check. Which means - assuming I don't take another vacation (which I don't plan to any time soon) - by the end of the year, I'll be back at the ceiling.
Our sick time, on the other hand, doesn't have a ceiling. At the end of July, I'll have 3 full weeks of sick time built up -- even right now, I've stored up the sick time from over 2 years worth of paychecks.
Which - for me - helps to offset the lower wages. That, and the health/dental/Rx/vision insurance that the county pays for (no insurance fees out of my pocket), the retirement plan and life insurance.

I'll be back on Sunday night.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T09:55:00.003-05:00

Well, today is Memorial Day. More precisely, it's right around 10 am on Memorial Day and I'm sitting in my drawers, eating a breakfast treat.
The answer to both questions that are probably popping up in your head right now[1][2] is one and the same... I mowed the lawn this morning after work.
I absolutely detest mowing the lawn. Not because of any particular love of a tall lawn, nor of the oddly-shaped flowers that appear on said lawn when it reaches a prerequisite height. Quite frankly, mowing the lawn kicks my ass. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm allergic to mowing the lawn.
OK, maybe not quite that far. I'm not allergic to mowing the lawn per se; I just don't get along with the sheer volume of pollen and dust that gets kicked up when the lawn gets mowed. Even when I wear a dust mask, in order to function the rest of the day, I pretty much have to shower as soon as the lawn is done.
This past week, an old acquaintance of mine tracked me down. She and I were fairly close at one time. It took me a very long time to get over how the two of us parted ways. But we played email tag for a bit and started IMing on Yahoo Messenger. Long story short, she's moving back to the general area - about an hour's drive away - and we're friends again. I'm not going to air my dirty laundry anywhere other than need-to-know, but I'll say this: being willing to discuss your feelings honestly with someone you care about makes things a lot easier
Well, by now, the lawns been mowed and I've finished my breakfast. I'm going to bed.

[1]"DJay, you work the night shift, what are you still doing up at 10?"
[2] "Why in the world are you sitting in your underwear?"

Tornado near-miss

2008-05-24T05:33:00.002-05:00

Last night was fairly active for tornados in our part of the state. At least three touched down in eastern Edwards County, and at least one in the western half. We lost a couple houses near the Pratt county line (no injuries there); on on U50 at the Stafford county line (1 leg injury), and some outbuildings, power poles and trees along the Arkansas river.
We got lucky; a tornado took out a couple of outbuildings out at my cousins house, and put a 2x4 in the outside wall. They live about 3/4 mi south of town. A half mile north and we wouldn't have a football field, about a mile northwest and we'd be out a hospital (and my house).
Other tornados skirted around Greensburg and Haviland, and Protection made CNN's front page.
We got lucky.
The best part; the forecast for tonight [Saturday] is more of the same. I think, when I get home, I'm going to pop open one of my delicious Boulevard Unfiltered Wheats before I go to bed.

Poker Experiences

2008-05-11T19:32:00.003-05:00

I like playing poker. And I play online quite a bit. There's really only one problem with it.

I'm not that good a poker player.

That's not to say I'm a bad player; I'm just not that good. I'm probably giving myself too much credit when I put myself in the category of merely average. Which is the other reason why I've never funded an online poker account.[1]

Which is why I'm really enthused about playing poker at Bodog.[2] Because they literally pay you to play. Admittedly, it's only a penny an hour and it takes 500 hours of play to reach the first payout; but it's there. Let me back up.

I found Bodog because they have play money online blackjack. I'm better at blackjack than I am at poker[3]. I played there a while and then tried out their poker client. While most poker sites I've been to have real money and play money; Bodog accounts have a four-'currency' structure: Play Money (PM), Poker Points (Pts), Tournament Credits (T$), and eCash ($). Play Money is just that. eCash is your real money balance, and you can withdraw it by check or have it deposited into your bank account. Tournament Credits are a dollar equivalent that are usually awarded to winners of qualifier tournaments[4] can be used to pay entry fees for scheduled tournaments.

The interesting part of Bodog's structure are the Pts. Pts are basically Bodog's loyalty program, and can be earned in 3 ways: rakes, fees, and time. Playing in a raked pot gives you up to 1 point depending on the amount of rake (the fee taken out of the pot by the house). Paying an entry fee also nets you poker points, for every $1 paid in fees, you get 3 pts. And the best part, for every hour you play, you get a point. So what are they good for? Entry fees for one; there are both sit-and-go and scheduled tournaments that use poker points instead of cash. They're also transferrable to bonus cash, which you have to roll over into real cash by betting/paying fees.

I worked the play money sit-and-gos for about two weeks before cashing out in a guaranteed freeroll.[5] It wasn't much - $3.00 - but I placed in the mid-30s in a 2000+ player tournament. Right now, I'm sitting at $3.22; I cashed in a sit-and-go, then missed the money in another, and conned myself into a rebuy and an add-on after losing the last hand before break in another free roll. Missed the cut by about 100 (in a 3000+ field) in that one. So, I'm back to the freerolls.

Tell you what; rather than me trying to explain it; go sign up for an account. Hit http://www.bodoglife.com/ , sign up for a free account (use referral number P10F115A), download the client, and boom, you're on your way. Or, to paraphrase a commercial...

I'm "DJay Hogan", and I play on Bodog Poker.

[1] The primary reasons being that A) I'm a cheapskate, and B) I've always found other things to do with my fun money.
[2] And no, this isn't a paid advert. When I find something I like, I tell other people, simple as that.
[3] It's the only game I've actually won money in a casino on.
[4] 'Qualifiers' are tournaments where the prize is a seat in another, usually more expensive or exclusive tournament.
[5] 'Sit-and-Go' is a type of tournament that starts when a certain number of players have joined; as opposed to a 'scheduled' tournament that starts at a certain time. 'Cashing out' refers to winning money in a tournament; usually this means finishing in the top 5-10%, depending on the tournament's payout structure. A 'freeroll' is a tournament with no entry fee. Most freerolls have the option of re-buying (obtaining an additional starting stake) or adding-on (buying additional chips) within a certain time frame. The prize pool is determined by the number of re-buys and add-ons. In a 'guaranteed' freeroll, the host guarantees a minimum payout, basically pocketing the re-up cash up to the guarantee level.

On Caleb Campbell

2008-04-28T05:38:00.002-05:00

Even if you follow college football, chances are that until Sunday, you hadn't heard much about Caleb Campbell.
It's not surprising. The 6'2" safety was the only player drafted from his team; a teams not affiliated with a major conference (and having only one nationally televised game), one whose 3-9 record - while disappointing - tied for their second best finish in the last 5 years, and a team who hasn't had a player drafted since 1997. Campbell - taken by Detroit as the 218th player in the 08 NFL Draft - is far from being a household name.
No, what makes him the focus of attention this morning is not necessarily his play on the field, but the fact he will be playing on Sundays this fall. He is - for all intents and purposes - the first major athlete to take advantage of the Army's 2005 alternative service option program.
Basically, Army grads sign up for 5 years of service after the academy. Athletes who qualify for the alternative service option program are considered on active service as a recruiter for the first two years of their pro career. If they're still playing after their second year, they can swap the remaining three years of active duty for a six-year stint in the reserves.
This program is not without controversy. Yes, as an officer, there is a very good chance Campbell would have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan or any of the other places we've stuck our armed forces' collective nose into. There is also a good chance that he would have been put in an office job at the Pentagon, become a training officer at one of the many bases here at home, or even been assigned as a recruitment officer going to schools and college campuses trying to get more men and women signed up for service in the army. Which, if you'll look closely; is exactly what he'll be doing in Detroit - or somewhere in that general area - on Tuesdays (the NFL's off-day).
The bigger question is why the United States Military Academy would enact this sort of policy.
And I think I know why. During the first two years, assuming Campbell makes the team as a starter - and starting a new safety on a defense that ranked 31st in pass defense last year isn't that big of a stretch - every week that Detroit shows up on local TV, you'll hear somebody combine the words "Caleb Campbell, Safety, Army" at least once during the game. And if - by some ungodly chance - the Lions make the Superbowl with him as a starter, the biggest television audience of the year will hear "Caleb Campbell, Army" come across the screen.
And this rule wasn't put in for Campbell; imagine what would happen when West Point finally fields a decent team again, or gets a David Robinson-like basketball talent (Yes, I know Robinson went to Navy. Bear with me for a moment.) who in his senior year, leads them to even a Sweet Sixteen game and jumps to the NBA. And if even in half the 92 NBA regular season games during the year, one of the TV announcers works in that whats-his-name is serving his country with this recruitment effort. You know that'd be Sportscenter fodder for at least a good six months. That's publicity; and publicity for the army means increased recruitment numbers, plain and simple.
And perhaps that's the point of the program. Increased exposure through athletics means increased enrollment means more volunteers.

Am-I-Dumb.com

2008-04-27T22:02:00.001-05:00

Am-I-Dumb.com - The Dumb Test

MotD: Seen on a T Shirt...

2008-04-17T08:06:00.000-05:00

Bad Grammar Makes Me [sic]

In and Installed

2008-03-24T23:59:00.003-05:00

I'm going to put this in big bold letters so you remember - and more importantly, so that I remember it.
OEM Hardware Does Not Come with ANYTHING!!!
We will call that Rule #1 of Building a Computer. So DJay (that is, me), remember the next time you buy anything that is appended with letters standing for Original Equipment Manufacturer that it is up to you (meaning me) to find the cables, the mounting screws, the software and the drivers to make it run. Which is what ultimately decided that my new DVD burner was going to be a swap job instead of an add-on.
The actual physical installation was a snap. I was half-afraid I would have to go in and remove the power supply in order to get the thing in. I was saved from that hassle by popping off the case's plastic front cover and sliding it out the front. I have very little good to say about Compaq (though I'm a bit kinder to them since they were bought by HP), but their cases were well-made.
So out goes the old, semi-functioning CD-RW drive and in pops the DVD burner. I fire up the Windows side, pop in a DVD (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, if you were wondering) and am promptly reminded of Rule #1. And it's corollory: if it's an upgrade, the software to use it won't be on the system restore disc.
To quote from the Windows Media Player website[1]: By default, Windows does not include a DVD decoder. "Not a big deal," I think as I follow the provided link; "I'll just download the decoder and call it good." MS offered three links for DVD playback on their WMP site: Roxio, CyberLink, and InterVideo. Get DVD playback capabilites added for $15.00.
And I thought for a second, and I decided I'd go with VLC. This free (as in Libre) video player can handle DVD natively. It can also handle pulling the video from the DVD but that's a whole other story. Only one problem, the VLC isn't a plugin, and so I have to run VLC instead of WMP, but that's not a big deal. A quick change to the context menu (changing the default action for DVDs to Open with VLC) and we're good to go. A quick press of the play button and I'm hearing the strains of So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. Grab the universal drivers for the Lightscribe system (which uses the DVD burner's laser to engrave a label on the top of the disc) and I'm done on that side.
Now, over to the Linux side. Again, less trouble than I was expecting. Ubuntu recognized the drive as a burner, and recognized the DVD that was in it.[2] Again, I run into the same problems as on the Windows side; neither Kaffeine nor Totem could read the disc, complaining it was encrypted and that I lacked the necessary library. Totem went ahead and told me which one I needed, but couldn't tell me where to find it. By that time, it was time for me to go to work, so I've done some research. I found the driver necessary, and have installed it (I love being able to use SSH to log in at home). Now, just to be on the safe side, I haven't played it, and won't until I get home. Chel may not appreciate a DVD going off behind her back for no apparent reason (I still haven't figured out how to route the sound through the remote computer's speakers. Oh well.). We'll see if it worked first thing in the morning.

[1] MS Play CD or DVD FAQ
[2] Or, at least, the fact it was a DVD, and the volume label.

NCAA Tourney Day 1

2008-03-21T04:58:00.003-05:00

This is one time of year I actually do enjoy watching basketball; and after one day in the NCAA Division I Championship tournament (March Madness), I am fairly impressed, and feel good that the teams I were really wanting/expecting to win did. I'm not in any pools this year; I don't have a "Bracket of Integrity", I just watch the games, and pick a team as I go.

So, a look at the headlines...
Blue Devils need last second magic to beat Belmont
It took the Dukeys the entire game to beat the 15-seeded Bruin. Down 71-70 with 4 seconds left, Belmont had the ball out of bounds under their own basket and mishandled the inbounds pass. Duke will face West Virginia (def. Arizona 75-65) early Saturday afternoon (2 pm Eastern)
No rain delay for Bulldogs, Musketeers advance
One of the best stories this year, the #14 Georgia Bulldogs had to win two games in one day in the SEC tournament to even qualify for the big dance. (The severe weather in Atlanta - don't know if they ever confirmed as a tornado - damaged the arena and forced the schedule back a day.) But the Dawgs ran out of steam against #3 Xavier, losing 73-61.
Bears Boiled
I was kinda hoping for an upset here, but 6-ranked Purdue was 11 points better than #11 Baylor. Was hoping to see a Big XII team advance here, but oh well. Purdue and Xavier are on tap for the later Saturday afternoon game.
Aggies hold off BYU
I did get my wish of a Big XII team advancing in the west regionals, but what a reward huh? As a prize for knocking off the #8 Cougars, #9 Texas A&M will face off against #1 UCLA (def. Mississippi Valley State 70-29).
Wildcats slip past Trojans
Yes, I know it was a 13-point win; but anytime #6 USC plays, the headline has to include some sort of condom reference. Except for a strech midway through the second half, #11 K-State looked really good in the upset. Beasley will play (at least) one more game for the Royal Purple, and it will be against the #3 Badgers of Wisconson.

Kansas beating Portland State doesn't even deserve a headline, though it was closer than I would have liked... they may have a hard time in Saturday's noon game against UNLV.

Games I'm keeping an eye out for today, ...
Assuming of course, that I'm 1) up and 2) in control of the remote. Both of these are fairly doubtful.
7 Gonzaga - 10 Davidson Raleigh, NC; 12:55 pm ET. Intriguing little matchup here, and another good spot for an upset. Davidson is riding a 22-game winning streak, has a better record, averages more points, and allows fewer points than the Bulldogs. Their losses? North Carolina, Duke, at UCLA, at Charlotte, at Western Michigan, and at NC State.
2 Texas - 15 Austin Peay Little Rock, AR; 3:00 pm ET. Austin Peay hasn't won a tourney game in 21 years, and I don't think that streak is going to end this year. Texas will not want to be the first #2 seed knocked off in the first round since '01; and after Duke's scare yesterday, you can bet that Texas coach Rick Barnes is gonna have his guys ready to play.
6 OU - 11 St Josephs Birmingham, AL; 7:10 pm ET. Another homer game for me. I want to see all the Big XII teams do well (because if they do well, then KU/K-State look better by comparison).
8 Indiana - 9 Arkansas Raleigh, NC; 9:40 pm ET. The late game I'm keeping an eye on because of the story surrounding it. If you didn't know, Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson resigned quite suddenly amidst allegations of recruiting violations. Pretty much the same thing he was caught doing at Oklahoma - making calls to recruits in ways that were against NCAA rules. Indiana basketball really hasn't been the same since they parted ways with Bob Knight. One thing I will say about coach Knight. You may not like him, you may not like his coaching style or interview style or on-court persona. But he did his job well, and he did it without the barest whiff of impropriety. So I take a goodly amount of Schadenfreude in IU's recent troubles. But with the resignation of Sampson, I'd like to see them do well.

A long and boring night.

2008-03-20T03:14:00.003-05:00

Normally, having a slow night doesn't bother me much. I mean, I can usually find things to do... but in Kinsley a slow night is a slow night.
On a normal night, dispatch usually handles two officers - one PD (city) and one SO (county).[1] Sometimes on weekends, the PD sends out two, but usually it's just me, the radio, and two guys on the other end.
Tonight was a little different. Everybody (but me) went home by midnight. That's means 7 hours where it's me, the computer, and the slight chance the phone might ring. It's been a long shift.

[1] Day shift is a little busier, 1 PD and 2 SO.

DVD update

2008-03-19T15:35:00.002-05:00

So, with permission from my lovely wife, I went ahead and bought that DVD burner from Newegg. If my date-crunching abilities are on, it should be here on Monday. Total spent: $65. That includes S&H, three GB (3x1GB) memory cards for the little one's media player, and a stack of DVDs. Now the only thing I'm concerned about is whether to just add the DVD drive or replace the existing CD-RW.

Simply adding the drive has a certain desirous quality to it. I have a free 5 1/4" outward-facing bay open, and the power supply is more than capable of handling a second optical drive. Bsides, since this is technically a "combo" drive[1], it would make certain procedures much less painful and disc swapping a more palatable alternative.
But to do that, I'm gonna need to grab a new IDE cable, right now I have a Single and a Double, and I'd need two doubles (I remembered this only after I put in the order; thankfully, dad has a room full of such cables, I bet that I can swipe one). [2] Hopefully, this won't mess with my setup too much... I have things working pretty much how I want them, and this may mean a half hour or so of changing symbolic links. That is one thing that I will give Windows; the relative ease of adding new hardware[3]. We'll see what I can figure out between now and when it comes in.

[1] It can write to a number of different media types, notably here (multiple formats of) DVD and CD.
[2] There's probably a specific name for them, but I don't know it. The one's I call "single" have two connectors - one on each end - and let you attach a single drive; the "doubles" have three connectors, to attach two drives to the motherboard.
[3] I like Linux, and I prefer to use Linux. But I'm not a zealot; I can and will admit when something else does something better. And assigning locations to devices by UUID (and having the OS recognize them) is something that I have more experience on Windows than on Linux systems [A]

[A] Gods do I have experience with it. A tip for all of you setting up Windows networks; Assign network drive letters closer to Z than to E. Hotpluggable devices - digital cameras, flash drives, basically anything that Windows treats as a hard drive - starts assigning drive letters with D. And manually assigned network drives are dealt with second, but take operating precedence. In other words, say you've got a hard drive (C:) and a CD drive (D:). Then you mount a network share (Map Network Drive) as E:\.
Now, plug in your digital camera. You'll get the found new hardware, and it'll attempt to autoinstall. And it will automatically mount the camera as the next drive. The mounting routing, however, doesn't check for mounted network shares; so the memory card in your camera becomes E:\. But, since the network drive assignment takes precedence, the drive designation (E:\) is taken back by the network share. And you can't find or eject your camera. Great jorb.{i}

{i} The way to fix that is by right clicking My Computer, Manage...; and then going and reassigning the device to a new letter.

$25 DVD burner

2008-03-18T12:59:00.002-05:00

For every new computer tech, there comes a point where I say one of three things:

Forget it, there's no way I'm dropping $X on that.
Ooh, ooh, ooh; gotta have it, gotta have it now; or
Well,I guess this is the new standard. Time to invest in it.

Actually, that's usually my thought process on anything, not just computer tech. But Newegg sent out their Deals of the Day feed, and it hit me. While I wasn't looking, DVD went from #3 to its swan song.
Now, outside of a few things here and there (Nintendo DS being the prime example), there's never been any confusion between me and a hardware early adopter. I don't have HDTV, hell, I don't even have a DVR. But perhaps its time I got a DVD burner for my computer.
Hell, right now, I could pick up an internal DVD burner for my computer for slightly more than a special edition DVD [1].
Probably the biggest reason I never bothered with a recordable DVD was all the different choices of format, and the limitations of actual readers in using them. DVD-R, DVD+R, +RW, -RW, -RAM, +R DL; and it's a crap shoot whether your living room player would even be able to read it.
For the 30 bucks, I really thought about getting one. But then I did what I always seem to do... I said to myself, "Deege, you were wanting to build a media center PC anyway. Why not just put the money away and save up for the combo BluRay drive/DVD burner instead?"

[1] No, I'm not exaggerating, by much. LG DVD burner @ newegg.com, $24.99; "I Am Legend" 2-disc Special Edition @ walmart.com $22.87

New Game

2008-03-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

I've been spending some time doing something that I never thought I would. I've been playing an MMORPG[1].

For years, I've avoided this type of game. Mostly because - in all honestly - I have an addictive personality. So, mindful of the horror stories of "Evercrack"[2], I dipped my toes into the world of Puzzle Pirates. Mostly because, well, it's one of the few that isn't pay-to-play.

Most MMORPGs are along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons: a magical fantasy setting, and killing monsters (or other players) makes your stronger. And this formula has worked well for everything from the old text-based MUDs to the latest upgrade to World of Warcraft. And the problem I have with them isn't that I don't like the setting or gameplay; it's that I do. And when I like something, I tend to go overboard on it.
But I decided to try my luck at Puzzle Pirates. It's less of a traditional MMORPG; it's a series of puzzle minigames connected by common theme and graphics. There are still the basic MMORPG elements to it; you can go solo or join a clan (crew) or guild (flag) to attack (pillage) roaming monsters (either actual sea monsters or Non-Player Character pirate crews) or other even other players. But what makes it interesting to me is the free (as opposed to subscription) servers economies. Goods (except for raw materials and cash) are all controlled and produced in-character. That means if you want a sword, you either have to find someone who has the sword you want and buy it from them, or go to the blacksmith and have a sword made. Want a ship? Go to the shipyard; if they have the raw materials, they'll make you the ship.
The only thing that really isn't produced in-character (or via the spawning system which controls commodities and cash) are dubloons. Dubloons are a higher-priced currency, that are created by purchasing them on-line, around 25 cents per dubloon. Dubloons are used for delivery costs on things like ships, and to unlock certain puzzles for a month or so. You can trade for them at the banks; the exchange rate is around 1000 PoE for a Dubloon, though it varies quite a bit.
As for the puzzles themselves, most of them are fairly familiar. If you've played Bejeweled, you'll be comfortable Bilging, Dr Mario fans will grep Sailing fairly quickly; Bubble Bobble masters will rock at Rumble. As for the more esoteric puzzles, there are help guides and in-game tutorials readily available.

Tell you what, click the logo to download and try it yourself. The download may take a bit, but I think it's worth it. The software is free, playing is free. If you go through this link (or the widget at the top of the page), you get 500 PoE to start your piratey lifestyle - and Gilles De Rais (my pirate on Hunter ocean) gets some cash out of the deal as well. Give a "tell" on the bottom bar if I'm online. I'll hear you anywhere on the ocean.

[1] That is, a Massively Mutliplayer Online Role Playing Game.
[2] A play on the actual name, Everquest. It was one of the first "mainstream" MMORPGs, and got a lot of publicity when some younger players would neglect friends and family in favor of the game.

290 and other updates

2008-03-07T02:49:00.004-06:00

A Note about Notes
Following the style of two of my favorite authors (being Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett), I've decided to include asides in the form of footnotes. Mostly because they make the text itself easier to read: otherwise I'd have all sorts of appositive phrases offset with nested brackets and braces and parenthesis and dashes. You know, [something like this {or this (or even this - though this one may be a touch ridiculous-)}].

Weight Update
I've not been keeping up on writing this, and that's alright. But I hit a milestone weight this last week. I'm down to 290, which is pretty much the lightest I've been since I moved back to Kinsley. Five more pounds and I'll be as light as Chel has ever known me.
She, on the other hand, has hit a bit of a mental plateau. Not that I can blame her though; between running the Girl Scout cookie sales, troubles at her job, and me being well, me; stress has become a major part of her life. That and a major setback to her weight loss - an ongoing medical problem which is going to limit her somewhat.
All in all, I've got about 15 pounds to lose before the second weekend in April.

Computer Update
Used the cash I got from my birthday to buy an upgrade for my tinkering rig. Jumped from that 256MB module I had left (see my last post) to a full GB of RAM and plugged in a 80GB second hard drive. I installed Xubuntu [1] on the new drive, so now I'm dual booting between that and WinXP.
Also trying a neat little XP program called VirtualCD (it's not freeware, btw). It lets you emulate a DVD/CD burner. Which means I can burn to CD [ending up as the 'image' of a disk] without actually using a CD. Will be very useful for getting those nice Apple proprietary files to work on A's media player. Which was the entire reason I put WinXP on in the first place!

Vacation Updates
Spring and summer is the time for vacations. And night shifts' Vacays start the first weekend in April. Nothin' like pulling a 7 on/7 off to start a month, eh? Not that I'm complaining too much, mind you. That mid-April paycheck should have 122 paid hours on it[2]. Combined with the dispatch-wide raise we got[3] will make sure anything I put off before our first trip to KC will get paid for. The next one will have 96 paid hours - still a boost compared to my normal 88.
I get more boosted checks for June: the one coming right before BOM will be another 122, mid-June will be 128. Since I'm taking Vacay to take Aubrey to Worlds of Fun over the 4th of July weekend, I won't get holiday pay; but if I end up working like I've offered to, that's 140 paid hours to get me from the 21st into August.
Sometimes, I just love working the system.

Hobby Update
I'm of the firm opinion that every man needs a hobby[4]. You know, something that he can be passionate about[4]. An activity that he can grab onto with both hands and really get into[4]. One of my coworkers actually has two: motorcycles (which didn't surprise me) and photography (which kinda did).
Mine is computers - if you hadn't guessed. I've got my tinker rig going pretty well, and over the next year or so, I'd like to save up the money to build my own computer. You can help. Click the Donate link to the left, and help me get the money I need to build my own computer.

***
[1] That's the Xfce desktop environment on top of the Ubuntu distribution of Debian Linux. If you're willing to switch to a Linux environment, Xfce is fantastic solution for working on a computer with a slower processor or limited memory - in other words, a rig that chugs trying to actually do stuff on WinXP. I've since installed the K Desktop Environment. KDE a bit more of a memory hog (still pales in CPU usage to XP), but since I like the interface and workings of a lot of the KDE programs, I figured I'd go ahead and switch over.[a]
[2] I consider a 'paid hour' the amount of time worked to earn an hour's pay. For time and a half overtime, every 40 real minutes, you are paid as if you worked a full hour. [b]
[3] Our sheriff convinced the commissioners that it would be

Cheaper than training a part-time newbie
Cheaper than paying benefits for a new supervisor; and
Much cheaper than paying the Deputies time and a half to sit in dispatch

[4] Other than the obvious.[c]

****

[a] Not that you can't run K* (most KDE-based programs) under XFCE. In fact, I did for a while. But when you "apt-get install" a program (the preferred way of doing things) in a Debian distro (such as Ubuntu), all the program's dependencies - the files containing the instructions and other programs it needs to run - are installed as well. In Linux, the libraries (instruction files) are shared between programs[A]. Which meant by the time I had installed the few programs that I really like using (Kontact for email, Konversation for instant messaging, Amarok for tunes), I had pretty much installed KDE anyway. version 3.5, at least. I'm not in the mood to help beta-test 4.0.

[b] Which makes paid holidays kinda suck. The county awards holiday pay equally across the board: everyone gets 8 paid hours. Even if you work a 12-hour shift that day (like I have to when I work), you get 8 additional paid hours for the holiday; for a total of 20 paid hours [holiday pay does not count toward the 40 hrs/week OT start]. Which means that on a holiday, the exchange rate is 36 real minutes::1 paid hour.

[c] Masturbation.

***

[A] This makes patching some security issues much easier. If you fix a problem in a shared library, that fix extends to everything that uses that library. Compare that to Windows where nearly every program ships with its own sets of drivers and libraries.

Having Fun Installing WinXP

2008-02-21T03:00:00.000-06:00

Or, I Really Need to Take Better Notes

As much as I like using Linux, I freely admit that there are tasks that it is not at all well suited for. And since I was faced with such a task a while ago, I had to dig out the old Compaq system restore discs and put XP back on my tinkering system.

All fine and dandy for a week or so. Problem was, I got a missing file message when I finally got around to uninstalling all the resource-hogging backlog that HP/Compaq[1] feels compelled to install during a system restore[2]. A dozen unplanned restarts, a virus scan that can't read much of anything and a CHKDSK later, I've come to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong with this computer. (This was a week ago, Wednesday)

Rather than fuck with it overly much, I decide to just dig out the restore disks, grin and bear it. Like I've said, this is a tinkering system. I don't have anything on there that I need to keep.

So, I get them in and low and behold, I get
!(< =)

Actually, it said IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Since that particular jibberish made as much sense to me as that did to you, I got to looking and found that the likely cause was the computer having problem communicating with the expansion cards. When removing both of my expansion cards[3] didn't let me proceed (with either the restore discs or the XP Pro install disc that I located elsewhere), I went even more drastic. I went in to the BIOS and turned off everything that wasn't absolutely necessary to starting the computer. In other words, I let the computer use the processor, talk to the CD and Hard Disk, and put stuff on the monitor. At least this cured the IRQL. In it's place, though, was a BSOD[4] telling me the MEMORY_MANAGEMENT module failed. So I took a hint.

I pulled all 512 MB of memory.

Now, anyone who knows the basics about computers will tell you that - up to a certain point[5] - the more memory you have, the faster your computer is going to go. Conversely, the less memory you have, the slower your computer will go. You can use this to run a very - very - basic test to see if your memory is working. Basically, one at a time, in the first slot, you plug in each module and see if it even tries to boot, or if it fails.

You guessed it, one of my modules failed. Which wouldn't bother me so much if it hadn't have been the newer one.

So, I learned two things this week. The first being that after cleaning all the crap off of it, Windows XP Home Edition can and will run respectably for web browsing - albeit fairly slowly on anything multimedia - on 256 MB of RAM.

Of course, I didn't find this out all at once. You see, when I got everything sorted out, I went to connect to the internet. All my connections were snug, my ATI was pushing a strong signal at 1280 x 1024, and the modem was sitting unused, as usual. But for the life of me, I could not find my freaking network adapter. Or rather, I found it, plugged it in, and the computer ignored its existance.

By this time, it was closing in on bedtime last night, so I said fuckitall and went to bed. First thing when I got up, I sheepishly returned to the computer, entered the BIOS, and turned back on the onboard LAN.

Which brings me to both the second thing I learned, and the opening of this post...

I really need to remember to take better notes.

[1] Actually, it's not just HP. It's anyone who tries to sell you a computer these days... Dell, Gateway, IBM. I have no problem with preloaded software straight out of the box. But for goodness' sake, I wish they would package it separate from the operating system on their system restore disks (HP's practice of not including separate restore disks with your computer is an entirely different rant). When you reinstall - or repair - the OS, you shouldn't have to spend a half hour aborting various branded shite.
[2] I'm ont talking about the Welcome to Windows thing. To give you an idea of this, I turned on the computer. Windows Messenger; to be expected, that's an actual XP component. Then the little connect to the internet graphic pops up, which won't go away until you run through their options trying to sell ISP subscriptions. I don't need an ISP, I'm hooked up already. Then comes Compaq Organizer - a heavy-duty program that could have been a widget - which is basically your Start Menu's most used programs list, a free-floating search bar, and your bookmarks folder. A dozen shortcuts to WildTangent; gone. And then I can start getting rid of the trial software.
[3] An ATI Radeon 7200 video card and an Agere Modem, if you were curious.
[4] That is, Blue Screen of Death.
[5] That point being the top end of what the mainboard can recognize and deal with. Any more than that, and either the computer is going to start throwing errors or just ignoring what it can't see. In my case, that point is 1024 MB (1 GB) of memory. Actually, it's probably 2GB, but the manufacturer says limit it to 1. This is a tinker-toy, not a gaming rig. I don't need to go all that fast.

What I try to be...

2008-02-16T06:00:00.000-06:00

"...is fundamentally a person.

He fears he may be a bad person because he knows what he thinks rather than just what he says and does. He chokes off those little reactions and impulses, but he knows what they are. So he tries to act like a good person, often in situations where the map is unclear."

--Terry Pratchett, referencing his character Samuel Vimes, Oct 2004.

Saw that quote this morning wikisurfing. I hadn't heard that frame of mind - which I admit to sharing - phrased quite so well before. The quote was in response to someone saying that "Vimes is not fundamentally a good person."

You ever feel like that? Like you're one lapse away from becoming what you [feardespiseinsert verb here] most? You see your choices laid before you and you can't help but be tempted by all the choices. And the only thing keeping you on the straight and narrow isn't the internal rewards of being of a good person; but the fear of what you might become if you stray. And the sickening realization that you're entirely capable of choosing the 'bad' path, and that a part of you truly wishes to fall from grace.

There's another concept that Pratchett uses when referring to Vimes. It's the opposite of drunk. No, not sober; it's as far from sober as drunk is, only in the opposite direction -- you have knurd. Knurd is about two drinks short of stone cold sober; it's where that nice haze that people live their lives in gets blown away; where all the illusions and assurances we fill our eyes with in order to function as decent human beings is wiped away. When you're knurd, you can't help but see the world as it is; and more importantly, you can't help but see yourself for what you truly are.

Say what?

2008-02-13T06:18:00.002-06:00

You know, there's some things I never thought I'd hear on a morning sports talk show.

The phrase "there's a bunch of sexy tentacles coming off of this thing" was near the top of the list. But that's the phrase I heard this morning watching Mike & Mike in the Morning while they were discussing the Roger Clemens congressional testimony this afternoon.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm exhausted, or maybe I'm just perverted, but isn't there a number of phrases that might be -- I don't know -- more appropriate than "sexy tentacles" when discussing tangential stories from an interesting news story? Unless the lead story -- and I hope you pardon my word choice here -- explicitly involves Japanese women in schoolgirl uniforms. Then who knows, 'sexy tentacles' may be entirely appropriate.

Pedro and the Cockfight

2008-02-08T06:41:00.000-06:00

Video surfaced on Youtube this week of NY Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez and MLB Hall of Famer Juan Marichal at a cockfight in the Dominican Republic.
First some facts.

The video - which is over 2 years old - shows Marichal and Martinez acting as honorary "soltadores".In other words, they were the ones that put the animals into the ring.
Right or wrong, cockfighting is legal in the Dominican Republic. In fact, the fight took place at the nationally known Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo Cockfighting Coliseum).

U.S.-based animal rights groups are - predictably - up in arms about the whole ordeal. And the gods know I don't blame them. Cockfighting is a particularly barbaric practice, and there are a number of very good reasons why it's illegal here in the US.
So why can't I get worked up over this whole thing?
Well, I think the biggest reason is the knowledge that other people don't hold the same values as I do. And apparently Hispaniola is an entire island filled with people who hold strikingly different values regarding the morally and ethically correct treatment of animals. So much so, in fact, that a practice most Americans would find viscerally repulsive is not just tolerated; it is to baseball in the Dominican what pro baseball is to pro football in the US: the second most popular spectator sport.
Should we condemn Martinez and Marichal for their involvement in an activity that is perfectly legal where they observed it? Perhaps. Perhaps that outrage would be better directed toward your local congresscritter in a call to pressure the Dominican Republic (and other nations) into discouraging - if not outright eliminating - the practice.

The other thing. Harris Interactive released a poll earlier this week (2/5). US adults who follow one or more sports were given a list of sports and asked to name their favorite.
No big surprise, professional football was the favorite of the biggest chunk of the pie: almost 30% of respondants named NFL as their sport of choice. Football is very popular in the US, an additional 12% of those with a preference preferred college football, making it the third most popular.In second was baseball (Harris didn't separate college from pro) with 15%.
Fourth is where it gets interesting. In 1985, when Harris started the poll, fourth and fifth were a tie between pro and college basketball. Not surprising, this was during the great Celtics-Lakers matchups and Michael Jordan's rookie year. Today, fourth place is Auto Racing (including both F1 and NASCAR), and fifth is - of all things - hockey. The basketballs are in a 3-way tie for sixth with men's golf.

Oddly Enough, Continued

2008-02-07T20:20:00.000-06:00

The damn disc was scratched. Oh well, we'll try again in the morning. The more I think about it, the more I realize I should have just told 'Brey to deal with it until April rolls around. That's when the new version of Ubuntu (my OS of choice for this computer) comes out.
Basically, the disc was smudged before I started. I tried to use it and it burned ok, then it failed the verification. I still tried to use it. Didn't get very far, but no big loss since the box is FUBAR at the moment anyway.

I'm down another pound, a few ounces over 298 on the fitness center scale. It's not fast going, but I never expected it to be. I probably won't be down to 275 by the time we go to State, though I think Chel will be. I did a half-hour workout this morning, a mile on the treadmill, and some light weight-work for my shoulders, back and abs. But my shoulder's a bit sore tonight; no big surprise, I've had trouble with it after workouts since back in high school. Depending on what Chel has planned and how I feel after my shift, I may go do another round in the morning. Or maybe when Chel gets home from work. Either way, while I don't particularly like working out, I do like the feeling just after I get done.

Oddly Enough

2008-02-07T02:30:00.000-06:00

Subtle:
Has anyone else noticed that the people in the background of the ad for that PMS-symptom easing birth control pill Yaz are singing "We're not gonna take it!"?
Not-so-Subtle:
I haven't been on for a few days. And to be quite honest, there's a couple good reasons. Mostly that I haven't been keeping track of what I have been eating. Ever since last Sunday, I've just been gnoshing more and more. I know, I know. Back on track, though. Since I got up, I've only had a ham sandwich, a small handful (~1 serving) of Harvest Cheddar Sunchips, and a Green Giant vegetable blend package. Around 3-4, I'll have a lean cuisine steamer bowl (whiskey steak, IIRC).
The other reason is that I did something incredibly stupid and messed up my computer.

Best of intentions, right? Aubrey uses my computer, too - complete with her own username and password. So, anything she does is her business, and not mine. I trust her to make good decisions about things.
Then again, I'm not completely stupid. Because even though she's only supposed to get on when mom or I are around, she conveniently forgets early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. So I installed parental controls, IP logging, that sort of thing. I also made sure that she has a limited user account, without sudo access. Which means that she can't install or uninstall programs, turn off my logging daemons or really hide anything. And every once in a while -- after she goes to bed -- I read the logs. It's intrusive, it's sneaky, and it shows an appalling lack of trust in my only daughter. It's also good parenting. I check up on her. I've told her what kind of people get online, that not everybody is looking out for her. I don't want to scare her, I just want her to be aware of it. And she knows that there are some sites that we don't care if she looks at, some sites we'd rather her not look at that we aren't going to get upset about, and that there are a whole lot of sites that we really don't want her to look at until she lives another 8-10 years. And she knows that I'm going to be checking on her at times.

But, while she was going to the sites we approve of, her browser (Firefox) would crash. A combination of too many flash ads and just plain bad coding, really. So I had her back things up, saved my stuff, and tried to fix things. And I finally said, "you know what, screw it;" and went to reinstall. Which was all fine and dandy, until I realized that all my install disks are scratched. In a spot that doesn't come into play until after the disk is formatted (bye-bye data) and everything else is installed. I don't know how all of my disks lost the same program (the program that controlls the installation stuff), but it's made it hell trying to get it back up and running. So I'm sitting up here at work, trying to ride a torrent for a new disk, and it's a bit slow going. I'm down to about an hour left. Hopefully, this one will work.

Splurge Day

2008-02-02T20:30:00.000-06:00

I have a feeling that tonight is going to be a 'splurge day' on my quote-unquote diet.

Evening Meal: 810 Calories
1/2 pie of Kashi roasted chicken pizza (450 Cal)
Sugar-free Pudding Cup (60 Cal)
Dr Pepper (300 Cal)

Second Meal {planned}: 860 Calories
Wendy's Ultimate Grilled Chicken Sandwich (320)
Side salad w/Ranch (240)
Dr Pepper (300)

That's 1670 calories already. Those sodas are a bitch to the bottom line, aren't they? I have a microwave dinner if I get really hungry before the night's out, but I really don't think I will. A couple glasses of water should tide me over until I get home and to bed in the morning. So, if I know that the soda is going to crash the ride, why drink it? Quite frankly, I didn't care :P. I want a freaking soda.

Final Weigh in, 2/1

2008-02-02T07:30:00.000-06:00

So, apart from that 528 Calorie breakfast sandwich I had before I slept the day away, I've really eaten quite sensibly, I believe.

Evening Meal (Burrito Scrambler & OJ): 601 Calories

Tortilla: 120 calories
2 eggs, scrambled: 154 Cal
Ham: 51 Cal
Dijonnaise <1/4>: 1 cal
Orange Juice (~20 oz): 275 Calories

Snacks (2 oranges, Ritz Mix): 190 Cal

Ritz 100 Calorie Pack: 100 Cal
2x Small Orange: 90 Cal

Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Select Salisbury Steak (Early Morning meal, 3 AM-ish): 270 Cal

Since I'm drinking water exclusively tonight at work, there's 0 calories there. For a total of 1589 calories. A little less than what I probably should have had, which would explain the bellyache I had this morning (either that, or that mushroom gravy just did a number on me).

Opening Lines

2008-02-01T19:23:00.000-06:00

A list of book opening lines I found enjoyable (there's a link to an update on the page with more opening lines) http://classicilliterature.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-start-book-off-right.html. Take a read (middle-clicking will pop it in a new tab), and come back. I'll wait.

You know, he's right. Some of my favorite books I've known I'll like from the first line. One that comes up again and again in the comments is probably the best example.

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
--The Gunslinger, Stephen King

Even the first time reading it, I could hear it in my mind. Actually I heard the voice of Sam Elliot drawling through the line, putting nearly a full stop between the words "desert and" to put that narrator's air of inevitability to the chase that ends -- and truly begins -- with the conclusion of the book. Or Stephen Fry saying:

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western
Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small un-regarded yellow sun."
-- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

in that impeccable accent of his. I don't know why I 'hear' things I read. The way my mind processes information, I guess.

Half Day

2008-02-01T09:00:00.000-06:00

The last day of my 'weekend' is always an odd day out.
Tonight I go back to work, so I've got to sleep most of the day. Which is all fine and dandy, except it messes with my calorie counting. I mean, I have about 4 hours of wakey-time, and then I go back to sleep. It'd probably be a lot easier if I kept to my work schedule on my days off -- you know, awake at night and asleep in the day. And I would, except there's something that's just 'right' about sleeping alongside the person you love. I guess I just crave that presence next to me, even when I'm not conscious of it. But, Chel works days, so I sleep alone most of the time.

Anyway, i woke up hungry as an ox today, so before I go back to bed, i fixed me a breakfast sandwich:

Breakfast: 528 Calories

2 Slices bread: 90 Cal
Ham (3 oz): 151 Cal
Fried Egg (no oil): 92 Cal
Curley's Hickory BBQ, 1 tbsp: 35 Cal
Miracle Whip Light, 1 tbsp: 20 Cal
Apple Juice: 140 Calories.

My BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, amount of calories burned by spending 24 hours at rest in a temperature-neutral environment) figures out to be right around 2700. Basically, for me, today will be about a 36 hour day, when I got up this morning (~5am) until I wake up Saturday (~5pm). Since my self-inflicted target intake is 1500-1800 (between 1/2 and 2/3 BMR); my range for a 36 hour day would - mathematically - be 2250-2700 Calories. So, I have about 1700-2100 Calories to get me through the night. I should be okay.

Calorie Counter's Toolbar

2008-01-31T19:04:00.000-06:00

If you're using Firefox to surf the web (and if you're still using IE, shame on you), you probably know all about the various toolbars and extensions available to help customize your browsing experience.

Well, if you're trying to keep track of your caloric intake, this toolbar may help.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3357

It's the CalorieKing/Joslin Diabetes Center search bar. Type in the food item you're looking for, and it'll look it up through CalorieKing's database.

Oh yeah, if you are still stuck using Internet Explorer, you can find a link for the IE version on this page:

http://www.calorieking.com/toolbar/

300 Game

2008-01-31T19:03:00.000-06:00

Chel got us a membership to the local Wellness Center. We've been talking about signing up for a while, now, and Chel finally got around to it. Heck, we've lived on the same block as the stupid place for the past year and we've never went. It's about what you would figure for a small-town fitness center: various weight machines, treadmills, stationary bikes, some free weights.

And, of course, the dreaded scale.

I like this scale better than the one at work, and the one over at Grandma's house. The one at Grandma's, which we've been using, is a standard bathroom scale; and it works fine, but with all spring-type scales, there's the problem of warping with age, and at higher weights, they're not as accurate. The one at work is a slider scale (like the ones you might see at the doctor's office). Only problem with that one is the fact that it's only calibrated to 300 pounds. Unfortunately, that's not quite enough for me.

But I stepped on the scale at the Wellness Center; and weighed in wearing a pair of cloth shorts, sweatpants, a T-shirt, socks and shoes. I tickled the scale until the bar balanced on its own in the middle of the range, just like you're supposed to. And to my surprising, I had to move the 50 pound weight back a slot.

At 7:40 this morning, I weighed in between 299.5 and 300 pounds. And that was before the 3/4 mile treadmill and mile bike ride.

I haven't been at 300 pounds since well before my wedding. If I remember right, the last time I had to look up at 300 was shortly before Chel moved to Kinsley, and that was 5 1/2 years ago. Since last Christmas, I'm down 25 pounds. My next goal is to get down to 285. That's 15 pounds, or 5% of my current body weight. It also represents between 12 and 14% of my heaviest weight ("Between" because I didn't weigh myself regularly; so I'm not exactly sure what my starting weight was; though I know it was at least 325 pounds; at Thanksgiving I was probably closer to 330.)

And yes, yesterday's post was accurate. That ham sandwich was all I had to eat yesterday. Today is going to be a little bigger, if not better.

Breakfast (5:30 am): 270 Calories
10 oz Apple Juice: 140 Cal
Kashi Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie: 130 Cal

Lunch (11:30 am Burger and Tots): 769 Cal
Hamburger Bun: 84 Cal
1/4 lb Burger: 320 Cal
Ketchup: 45 cal
Mayo: 90 Cal
Tater Tots: 220 Cal
Dr Pepper (24oz ): 300 Cal

Dinner (6:00 pm 2x Roast Beef Sandwiches & OJ): 676 Cal
4 slices Bread: 180 Cal
Roast Beef (5 oz): 301 Cal
Mayo (1/2 tbsp): 10 Cal
Curly's BBQ (1/2 tbsp): 20 Cal
Orange Juice (12 oz): 165 Cal

Total Calories: 1715

Not a bad day. I'm inside my target range (1500-1800 Cal/day) with a little bit of room to spare. Enough room, in fact, to have a homemade iced coffee (6 oz brewed coffee, 4 oz milk, <1 tsp sugar; ~68 Cal) before I go to bed if I'm thirsty. As for what I could have done better; I probably could have done without the tots at lunch, but other than that, I did pretty good.

Food Diary 1/30

2008-01-30T18:57:00.000-06:00

Considering I've slept most of the day, it's not really surprising that I'm eating fairly light. One decent sized meal is about it today...

Dinner (6:45 pm)
Ham Sandwich: 245 Calories
2 slices, Sara Lee 100% Multigrain Bread: 90 Cal
6 slices, Deli sliced Oven Roasted Ham: 60 Cal
1 tbsp Miracle Whip Light: 20 Cal
1 tsp Hellman's Dijonaisse: 5 Cal
1 slice Swiss Cheese: 70 Cal
Sunchips Harvest Cheddar (~20 chips): 190 Cal
Dr Pepper, 24 oz Bottle: 300 Cal

Total Calories for day: 735 Calories

Food Diary 1/29

2008-01-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

Well, If I'm gonna do this, I might as well do this right. Gonna keep track of what I've eaten during the day, and see if I can identify problem areas.

First Meal (5:15 pm)
Lean Cuisine Spinach & Mushroom Pizza: 330 Cal
Orange Juice, 1 1/2 cups: 165 Cal

Snack (8:00 pm)
Banana: 72 Cal
2x Starlight Mint: 120 Cal

Snack (Midnight)
Banana: 72 Cal
Hershey Dark Chocolate bar: 60 Cal
Creamy Ranch Dip (1 tbsp): 30 Cal

Lunch (3 am):
Healthy Choice Grilled Turkey Breast dinner: 270 Cal

Dinner (7:30 am)
Breakfast Burrito: 340 Cal3
2 eggs: 120 Cal
Ham: 80 Cal
Tortilla: 110 Cal
Cheese: 20 Cal
Taco Sauce: 10 Cal

Total calorie count: 1459 Cal.

Losing Weight

2008-01-30T03:27:00.000-06:00

I'm losing weight, and I feel like crap.

While both of the above statements are completely true; in this case, the first has nothing to do with the second. I've been sick the last few days, which really isn't surprising if you think about it. The whole damn town seems to have come down with this crap.

But the important thing, at least long-term, is that I'm losing weight. Saturday morning I weighed in at a svelte {that word, I do not think it means what you think it means} 305 pounds. Which means I'm down around 15-20 pounds in the month since Christmas. I'm not losing as fast as Chel is; but then again, I haven't actually been 'dieting'. I've been 'following along', as it were. Am I serious about losing weight? Yes, at least as a long-term goal.

I do have some... misgivings about the whole thing; but nothing I really care to put into words at the moment. Maybe later.

Video Game Sales Numbers Released

2008-01-29T05:06:00.000-06:00

Yahoo News is reporting $17 billion was spent on new video games in 2007.

That's 'billion'. With a "B". For comparison; the 2006 gross domestic product of Iceland was around 16 billion US dollars.

The news wasn't the dollar figure itself; rather, the news was the gap between video game sales and box office returns. It widened again this year. People spent $9.7 billion on movie tickets. And no, I'm not sure either number is worldwide or US only. Y!News didn't feel it was important enough to say.

Doesn't surprise me, really. The National Association of Theatre Owners reported that the average ticket price in the US for 2006 (the most recent number available) was $6.55. Which, by my math, would be around 1.48 billion trips to the movies each year. Taking a look at most of the movies released lately, I'm finding running times between 80 and 120 minutes, so I'm going to figure, at 100 minutes per movie, that's about 2.5 billion hours of movie time per year. Compare $17B, at $60 a head - figuring every game at the high end of the console game-only market - is 283M games sold. Still an impressive number, but dwarfed by the box office trips. But then again, compare the average straight playthrough time of a video game - discarding RPG[2]s which can offer anywhere from12 to over 200 hours of play and MMORPG[3]s - I'd guesstimate 6 hours per game bought, or 1.7 billion hours, which is comparable.

But truth told, I don't know why they are comparing those two (VG sales vs BO return) numbers.

First, we don't know - or rather, the article doesn't differentiate - if that $17B figure is software only; or software and hardware. Which would seem to make a hell of a difference; even discarding the secondary market for accessories (controllers, memory cards, etc.) and the growing gaming-PC market, the cost per console runs about 5-10x more than the software (150-600 per console vs 30-60 per title, discarding for a moment games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and the Singstar series which are bundle packaged with specialized controllers), making a significant difference in weighing and comparisons.

But that's not addressing the more fundamental problem with this sort of comparison. A more telling comparison - in my eyes, at least - would be VG sales against DVD sales. Because, quite frankly, a video game purchase is much more akin to buying a DVD than going to the movies. Especially given the movie house's explanation of the rising costs of tickets: you go to the movies for the experience of going out to the movies. Quite frankly, you would buy neither a video game nor a DVD for the experience of buying it, you buy it in order to use it. So, I'd like to see a comparison of the units sold for DVDs vs Video Game software. Quite frankly, I put the hardware in the same category as DVD players anyway. You get the XBox 360 in order to play one format of games and the Wii to play another format; you buy an HD-DVD player to play one format and a BluRay deck to play another. The only reason to choose one over another is limited availability of software titles. That is one place where I'll give the electronics industry some credit. Format wars are decided fairly quickly (the writable CD extension mess notwithstanding). Heck, even the movie rental services have an analog in the MMORPG subscription service.

Where was I actually going with this? Hell if I know. I just thought it was interesting.

[1] http://www.natoonline.org/statisticstickets.htm
[2] Role Playing Games. Game genre characterized by the player's characters gaining abilities based on the number and difficulty of enemies faced, see Final Fantasy, Pokemon; compare 'Adventure' games where additional abilities are gained by reaching certain plot-points (Legend of Zelda) or locating 'power-up' items (Super Mario Bros, Halo3).
[3] Massively Multiplayer Online RPG. Sub-genre of RPGs featuring persistent online worlds in which a player's character is able to interact with other players' characters. See Everquest, World of Warcraft.

Competitive Gaming on ESPN?

2008-01-21T03:03:00.000-06:00

Out of all the things I've read this weekend, the fact that ESPN is going to be covering Major League Gaming isn't the strangest, but it's close.
Now, maybe I'm biased. The only competitive gaming I've actually watched was an afternoon show on G4 a couple years ago and that Madden video football league that ESPN has shown the last couple years. MLG's got corporate sponsors (XBox 360, natch; and Gamestop) and backing from some big sports name backing (such as Gilbert Arenas).
And you know, depending on the scheduling, I might try to catch an episode or two. My only problem is the games they are playing. Halo 3, Call of Duty 4. First Person Shooters. Not my preference in games to watch people play.
Now, the sports games, I could see televising. You plug into a Madden 08 (or for a better determination of skill, some mid-majors in NCAA Football 08) contest, and it's not going to be that much different - from a viewers standpoint - from watching a real football game. Keep the 'camera' on the 'field', and cut to the gamers only to show celebrations/strategy discussions.
I could even see real-time strategy games - Starcraft, Age of Empires, that sort of thing - getting some airtime. I could see then televising like they do the poker tournaments. Instead of hole card cams, they show a defogged map as your main screen, and use cutaways to particular bases/players to show unfolding strategies; and run interviews after rounds. Pro Starcraft gamers are pretty hot right now in South Korea, actually; comparable in popularity to other major S. Korean athletes.
And no, I have no illusions of being able to compete on that sort of level. But I have to admit, it sounds like it will be a lot more interesting than it probably is.

MotD: Corporate Telephony

2008-01-19T03:03:00.000-06:00

In the beginning was the DEMO Project. And the Project was without form. And darkness was upon the staff members thereof. So they spake unto their Division Head, saying, "It is a crock of shit, and it stinks."
And the Division Head spake unto his Department Head, saying, "It is a crock of excrement and none may abide the odor thereof." Now, the Department Head spake unto his Directorate Head, saying, "It is a container of excrement, and is very strong, such that none may abide before it." And it came to bass that the Directorate Head spake unto the Assistant Technical Director, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide by its strength."
And the Assistant Technical Director spake thus unto the Technical Director, saying, "It containeth that which aids growth and it is very strong." And, Lo, the Technical Director spake then unto the Captain, saying, "The powerful new Porject will help promote the growth of the Laboratories."
And the Captain looked down upon the Project, and He saw that it was Good!
--from fortunes

I hate to bitch like this, but I don't feel good this morning. I've got a headache from hell, a sore throat that won't go away, and the running commentary in my mind is just plain pissing me off at the moment.
The headache I can understand. My primary symptom of caffeine withdrawl, no big mystery there. I haven't had caffeine of any type since 3:30 PMish Thursday, so that means it's been about 36 hours; that's about right for me. Only another 5 or so to go before it subsides.
The sore throat is a little more vexing. I'd like to blame it on sitting around in the same room with Chel smoking all day on Thursday (since I woke up with it Friday morning); but she has the same deal, so I'm wondering if it isn't a touch of the crud. Just what I need going into my weekend to work, right?
The commentary, though; that's another story. Sometimes, I wish my monkey mind would just shut up with all the chattering. But no; I can't even get my own head to leave me alone. All my fears, failures and regrets; pounding my mind's ear in an unending litany of doubt and self-loathing.

And no, I'm not schizophrenic. The whole "voice in my head" thing is just a metaphor; or rather, a framework that internalizes my current predilection for learning aurally (by hearing) opposed to visually (sight) or orally (by speaking). When I was going through a visual phase, I "saw" the thought processes as an internal 'ticker
a la the continuously updating 'crawl' at the bottom of a news, business or sports channel; right now its manifesting as a soft whisper from over my ear. I've even had internal dialogs with the cliche shoulder devils/angels.

Long Night

2008-01-16T06:39:00.000-06:00

I found myself watching the Australian Open this morning.

Watching televised tennis - for me - is a sure sign that I am bored at work. At work, because if I'm bored at home, I'll read, play games, or - if nothing else - stretch out and nap. Unfortunately, sleep is but one activity that is frowned upon while at the workpace. But I usually have the same opinion of tennis that I have of golf and many other sports. If I'm not there, I don't care. If I could have gotten gallery tickets to Prairie Dunes in the past few years, I would have happily walked the course and watched golf. But don't ask me to watch it for too long on television. Same with baseball. If I could get Rockies tickets to Coors Field, I'd be driving to Denver a lot more often. Hell, if I could get seats at Kauffman, I'd be watching the Royals get beat every chance I could; but please don't make me sit through Joe Buck calling another Cards game. Hell, please don't make me sit through Joe Buck calling anything. Even listening to Madden at his worst moments of self-parody is better than listening to Joe Buck's inanity.

But the Aussie Open. It was great. Andy Roddick was taking on Michael; and Roddick hit a perfect smash setup. Berrer steps up to the net, hefts his racket, sizes up the shot, leans back...
and flubs it into the net. It looked like something I had hit -- and there's a reason I haven't picked up a racket in 10+ years. Gave the courtside reporter a case of the giggles that lasted the rest of the set.

I'd like to think I'd know better....

2008-01-13T18:15:00.000-06:00

There's a lot of things you do when you get a call as a dispatcher, and - depending on the situation - there's a lot of things you don't do.
Common sense says that one of the things you don't do when taking a '91-home' call (breakin at a residence in progress) would be to ask to talk to the intruder. Now, I don't have a copy of SanFran's priority continuum handy. But you'd think a home invasion would be near the top of the list, with or without weapon confirmaiton.
As a computer guy - and having used different Windows versions - I also find it funny that our code for a "fight in progress" is 95, while a "mass disturbance" is 98.

Sunday Morning Blues

2008-01-13T10:45:00.000-06:00

This is a throwback, I tell you what.
One of my coworkers called in sick today, so I'm sitting up here at work, collecting an extra 11 hour shift of OT for the week. Not that I'm really complaining, mind you, the money is definitely welcome. But this was my weekend off; I had planned on spending today doing very little.
Actually, that's not quite true. Though I may have planned on doing very little, Chel had planned for me to take down the Christmas tree. Yes, our Christmas tree is still up. I don't feel too bad; as long as it's down by Valentine's day, I'll be happy.
I'm glad I have one of those jobs where I don't actually do much "work", per se. I'm not out there making things or moving things or selling things. I've said before that my job is to wait, and that's pretty accurate, really. Now, if I were in a bigger town, it'd be different; but here in Kinsley, all I really do is wait. I wait for a lot of things. I wait for my shift to be over, mostly, but I don't know of anyone who's working on their scheduled day off that doesn't feel like that. Part of that is I rarely get to talk to people who are in a good mood.
Noone calls me at work because their happy, ya know? I don't get to hear from people who are having a good day. I hear from people because their house is on fire, because their car is wrecked, because they're sick, because someone they love is stuck in jail, because something has happened they can't deal with by themselves; because - in a way that is unique for every caller - some sort of hell has broken loose in their little corner of the world, and they need help to deal with it. So, yes, I'm more than happy to sit up here and wait entire shifts never having to talk to anyone on the phone.
But I'd still rather be home with my wife.

A New Way of Working with Computers

2008-01-11T06:45:00.000-06:00

When you first buy a new computer, you're pretty locked in to one of two choices to run the basic system: OS X (Apple) or Windows.

Well, that's not quite true. If you're willing to put in a little time and effort, there is another choice. Actually, there are a hundred choices out there, but it boils down to one family of OSes: *nix. You'll usually hear them all referred to one of the more popular branches, Linux.

You can look up the history of Linux (and the difference between it and BSD, and all the other OS options) if you're interested, but suffice to say, the basic impetus is that of all innovations at college: perceived necessity, available time, and relative poverty.

FLOSS Regularly

Free/Libre Open Source Software is a movement within the software industry away from proprietary software. Basically, it's a move to make computer science more of a pure science than an applied science: more like astronomic research and less like pharmaceutical research. The basis of FLOSS is the dissemination of knowledge; so that what one person knows, everyone can know. In software, the basic knowledge is the "source code", the behind-the-scenes programming that tells the computer's processor what to do. Share the source code - the building blocks of the program - and let people use it to build on your ideas. The upside to this mindset is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to build a wheelbarrow. The downside is that such dessemination makes it much harder to make money off of the initial work.

With the tax season just around the corner, we're provided with a rather prominent example of how this works. The IRS distributes a set of static (unchanging) calculations, and instructions on how to work the calculations. And that information is available freely; anyone can go down to the local library or to http://www.irs.gov/ and pick up a copy of the calculations and instructions and do their taxes themselves. Or, they can go to a vendor who specializes in doing taxes (an accountant), give them the information to plug into the calculations, and no-muss, no-fuss the taxes are done. It's the basic premise of open source software. {OSS is slightly different than FLOSS, if taxes were "Free as in Libre", you would be able to change the underlying calculations in order to get it to work better for you. Try that with your taxes and you're looking at an audit.} The same situation with closed-source - or proprietary - software would be analogous to the IRS setting up kiosks, making you enter the information at a kiosk, and then printing out a bill or check. Yes, it gets the job done; but not disclosing the underlying methods prevents the taxpayer from being able to question or confirm that the calculations were made correctly.

Now, the next observations and comments I make solely on my own experiences with Linux. And a little effort and a little time was exactly what it took for me to get up and running.

A Little Effort

No matter what we're talking about, learning a new system takes some work. And a computer running Linux isn't running Windows, and it isn't a Mac. It's Linux, which is probably a system that's new to you, and so will require a little effort on your part to learn. And probably a little more than the first time running Windows.

Why? Well, the biggest reason is that you can change nearly everything. Which is why the mantra of back up anything you change should be running through your head constantly. Of course, the same is true when you are tweaking the workings (like the registry) of Windows.

A Little Time

Everything you do will take a little more time the first time through. Because customization is so prevalent in the Linux mindset, you can spend a more time getting things to work exactly like you want; and, well, that's just the way things are. The flipside of the coin is that because things are so customizable, once you have things set up how you want them, you're golden.

The second "time" factor comes into play when you buy accessories or upgrades. Now, in my less than humble opinion, the purchase of computer accessories and upgrades should never, ever be undertaken without first researching the part and confirming that it will work with your current computer. You wouldn't buy a program without first making sure your computer could run it; likewise, you shouldn't buy a camera, a printer, a new video card or a DVD burner without at the very least googling it to see what kind of problems you should expect and that you're going to have to deal with.

For Linux users, the step goes from optional, but recommended to absolutely necessary. It should be understood; as far as most hardware manufacturers are concerned, providing support and drivers for Linux take a distant second to making sure their product plays nice with Windows. {Drivers are the code/programming that lets the computer 'talk' to the new device.} Some manufacturers provide their own drivers for Linux; others offer nothing except well wishes. Still others will provide the specs to the Linux community and let them write their own drivers.

A Little (less) Cost

Even something that purports itself as "free" isn't. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. So what (other than time and effort) is the cost of installing Linux? Well, let's take the distro (version of Linux) that I installed, Ubuntu.

You can get Ubuntu Linux in a variety of ways. The first is to download a disc image from http://www.ubuntu.com/ and burn it to a disc yourself. If you're using Windows, you'll need a program like Nero or ImgBurn -- Windows XP doesn't handle ISO files natively -- and a CD to burn it to. You can get the download in two different install modes (LiveCD, a bootable CD that lets you try Linux without removing your existing Windows installation; and the Alternate install CD, which works on older computers, those with less memory, and select computers like HP/Compaqs that really don't want you to remove Windows) and two releases (the current 7.10 and the Long Term Support version 6.6).

The second is to actually buy the CD or DVD. Various retailers, including Amazon.com for the US, sell the DVDs. The difference between the CD and DVD is the amount of "extra" programs that are included. Of course, if you don't mind waiting 6-10 weeks, you can get single discs shipped free of charge from Canonical (the company that distributes Ubuntu); or packs of 20 for around $34 per pack.

Which is where I should probably let you in on the secret how companies expect to make money off of it. It's the same way an accountant does. The rules and regulations, the policies and everything else are out there for everyone to use if they want. Canonical - and Debian, Fedora, and all the other Distro vendors - put it together in an easy-to-use package, and are making their money by showing people how to use what's there, and providing support for companies who can't justify a full-time staff to fix things. For around $900 per desktop and $2750 per server (or $4000 for a thin client and cluster setup) per year, Canonical will provide 24/7 phone and email tech support. Compare that to anywhere from $70K-$130K/year for a senior systems administrator (Careerbuilder.com, for Dallas, TX area), and you can see why there's a market for it.

So, should you switch to Linux? Maybe, maybe not. The choice of which operating system to use is a personal one, and if you don't have a problem running Windows, there's no real reason to switch. I would suggest, though, that you at least try a LiveCD version of one of the popular Linux distros. Yes, an OS running strictly from CD will be a bit slower because you don't have access to a swap partition/virtual memory (an area of the hard disc used as/mimicing additional RAM) and because you're limited by the optical drive's capabilities (which are going to be considerably slower than your HDD). You may find that you like it better and - more importantly - can get more use out of your computer when it's running Linux.

MotD

2008-01-05T22:56:00.000-06:00

So, what does MotD mean?

Probably the most common translation is "Message of the Day." From the BSD help page

The file /etc/motd is normally displayed by login(1) after a user has logged in but before the shell is run. It is generally used for important system-wide announcements.

MOTDs appear pretty much everywhere you go on the internet, but it's not often they're identified as such. The Yahoo! Messenger Insider is a form of MotD; basically any "welcome screen" that shows up when you log on to a service would be a MotD.

It's also the Mind of the Dingo, or now, Mind of the Deege. Is it something important? Probably not. A relic from when I actually could look at what I wrote and be proud of it; from when answers were simple, and all you had to do to change the world was make enough people believe in the idea that was right. So why bring it back?

Who knows. Maybe, just maybe, something I write will touch someone's mind or heart, make them feel good about themselves, or convince them to believe that a good idea is the right idea. Or maybe its just more verbal diarrhea clogging up the internet.

Lorem Ipsum

2008-01-05T05:08:00.000-06:00

"…neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"
Lorem, lorem ipsum

"Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?"

Yes, that's what (the original of) that odd little lorem ipsum placeholder you see occassionally in layout templates means. If anyone wants to send me a copy of the original - Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum - as a birthday gift (next month, BTW), I would gladly accept it. I don't read Latin, though; so an English translation would probably be appreciated more. The title translates as The Purposes of Good and Evil (loosely; literally it's On the Ends of Goods and Evils). Actually, the more I find about Marcus Tillius Cicero, the more I'd like to read his work; especially De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of Gods), De Officiis (On Duties/Obligations), Laelius de Amicita (Treatises on Friendship and Old Age), and De re pubicla (On the Public Matter [Government/the Republic]).

Hell of a way to start a new blog, eh?

Well, that's what happens in the mind of the Deege. I tend to go wikisurfing. Basically, I look up something I'm curious about on Wikipedia, and the read applicable article. While I'm reading, I middle click (that is, open in new tab) interesting-links, making a tree of sorts that gives me new and (usually) interesting things to read about. Kinda like googlesurfing, only I tend to end up at fewer pictures of boobs. But that's how I got from the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text to typewriting monkeys.
That would be the infinite monkey theorem, you know... "An infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters hitting random keys will -- over time -- almost surely type a particular chosen text", usually the combined works of Wm. Shakespeare. Since the odds of randomly producing even a sequence of 20 letters (discounting spaces and punctuation) would be the equivalent of hitting 4 consecutive lottery jackpots (1 in 26^20th); the IMT is usually used as a way to express that something is so far-fetched as to never happen.

Tonight's Wikistring:
Lorem Ipsum -> Cicero -> De Natura Deorum -> Infinite Monkey Theorem
Tonight's Games:
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (DS)
Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2)
La Pucelle Tactics (PS2)