The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I pre-ordered Enemy Territory: Quake Wars from Best Buy's website. The game tag registration came in the mail quickly. They shipped the game on the 28th as it was coming out October 2. I didn't get the game until today because they chose to use the UPS to USPS service. The post office sat on it it for 3 days in allen park!!!!! Best Buy did not give me an option for faster shipping and they held me back from gaming for several days. I'm unhappy.

Refer to the following interview (page 1) for my comments
http://games.kikizo.com/features/gabenewell_valve_iv_sep07_p1.asp

Valve claims that there are no games for the Mac. However, every id game is ported to the Mac that is shipped for Windows. EA has released all of their new titles on the Mac since June or so. World of Warcraft and every other blizzard game run on the Mac. Microsoft has even allowed third parties to port their games to the Mac. Age of Empires 1 and 2 and Halo have made appearances on the Mac. Many AOE engine games were ported. (star wars for instance) On that subject, often LucasArts games are ported to the Mac.

So, the pattern here is that most people port to the Mac eventually. Some do simultaneous releases. Valve is the only gaming company with a series of popular games that has not ported to the Mac. It's just them.

If they wish to argue how great DirectX is, I could live with that. I just don't see the blame should fall upon Apple. Obviously if everyone else can do it, then it's not Apple's fault.

Caryn and I had preordered Dance, Dance Revolution on Amazon.com.  I haven't felt much like playing the last two days, but I did get some time on it Friday night.  I thought it would be a lame chick game, but it's fun.  The pad reminds me of the old Power Pad add-on for the NES.  It uses the game cube ports on the Wii and then you use the wiimote + numchuck to do arm movements.

Today I had an interesting experience with a script kiddie.  They started attacking this site.  I've always hates captchas because they make it impossible for blind users to use websites.  A few offer audio clues, but that is very difficult to pull off in UNIX.   It's doable in Mac OS or Windows based servers.

I added a captcha to the signup page successfully.  It was a shock as I've got a terrible cold.  Cough medicine tends to make me very illogical.  I have great difficulty concentrating on programming work. 

I'm at least half way done with my programming assignment for Tuesday.  The server piece is almost done and the client requires very little modification.  It's a C based client -server messaging system.   The client connects via TCP to the server and then waits for the server to process the incoming message.  It's stateful.

Have you ever noticed the old adage "when it rains, it pores" is very true in the accumulation of work. My CS professor has assigned a programming assignment, two sets of problems and as of last night a test next thursday. If his course were the only one I had to worry about, it would be no problem. However, things don't work that way. I have three other courses to worry about.

To top it off, I've got at least three tasks at work to accomplish. I'm wondering when I can start that assignment.

I guess everyone likes a challenge.

I've played with Wii Play for several days now. For $50, you get a second controller and several mini games on one disk. The games are not the same level of quality as Wii Sports, but some of them are fun.

One game is a shooting gallery that is in some respects similar to Nintendo's Duck Hunt game packaged with the original NES. It does not let you pick your targets like the Duck Hunt game, but it instead gives you cans (Hogan's alley style), Ducks, and clay targets. There are also bonus items and pictures of your player. If you shoot your mii's face, you lose points.

Another game is a hockey like game with neon coloring. It is a bit difficult to aim at times, but still fun.

There is also a tank game where you try to destroy another tank. Ammo can bounce off the walls in some cases and you can move and aim with the wii controller.

My favorite mini game is a pool game. It is quite fun in two player. That game is worth the $10.

There are several other games in the package. Most are not very interesting to me. One is a where's waldo style finding/matching game.

I got a wacom tablet for my Mac. I'm not very good with it yet, but I'm trying. Here's a cat I drew earlier.

At work we've got a 20 inch Intel iMac with four gouges in the screen.  It looks like someone hit it.  On the Internet, people refer to the behavior as the "white screen of death."   By using the external video port, we proved the system is booting and the display is broken.  I'm very unhappy with that outcome.  I suspect my boss will be even more pissed.  I hope whoever broke it can pay for it.  The computer isn't very old. 

I haven't been blogging much.  Here's a brief rundown.

• Caryn and I went to Kalamazoo for our anniversary.  It was very nice.  We went to the chappel at K college where we got married, out to dinner at the Blue Dolphin (rehersal dinner location), etc
• Back to school.  I'm taking networking, stats and two English courses. 
  
• My computer flipped out on Friday.  The display was black.  Part of the problem was a lose cable as the connector isn't very good on the video card and it doesn't hold.  However, the card is also not initializing the display (two different ones) sometimes regardless of the cable position.  The fan was clogged and cleaning that has minimized problems, but not completely stopped them.  Once the computer is up, it works as expected.  Very strange. 
  
• The monitor on my Mac is cycling through blue, green and normal periodically.  The color is not consistent.  I'm waiting for a replacement.  It was bought in 2001.  15 inch displays suck anyway. 
  
• My father had a birthday this month.  So far I haven't done anything for it just as he didn't send me a card or acknowledge my birthday.  He sent me an anniversary card, but that has a sore spot with me for another reason.  I don't feel like talking about it.  I had a few drinks on Sunday night and actually prepared an iCard with a picture of my cat's ass for him.  I didn't send it though.  .Mac allows you to use your own pictures.  All I wanted at my birthday was an email.  That's free.  I realize he doesn't have money.  I know the anniversary card was a ploy to get a good birthday gift. 
  

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/18/student.tasered.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

This student was tasered for asking questions.  How dare he!  I'll agree he was emotional and perhaps they did have to ask him to leave, but it was clearly excessive force when 6 police officers were there.  Even the miranda rights state that you have the "right to remain silent" not that you must remain silent.  He asked them what he did wrong and got a shock for it. 

This guy didn't commit a crime.  They could ask him to leave and that is about it.  If he refused that request, they could escort him out. 

In case you missed it, I was interviewed for bsdtalk. You can hear interview 126 at http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/

bsdtalk is a podcast about and for the BSD community. This interview is about MidnightBSD of course.

Caryn and I went to see the most recent Harry Potter film in the theater today. I know it's a bit late, but we finally got time to see it. I liked it, but it seemed different than the other films. Obviously the tone of the book is different, but there was something else I can't put my finger on.

Some asshole decided to cut in front of us at Meijers today. He felt it was OK because we looked young and he was much larger than me. He ordered his girlfriend to "cut in front of these nice people". There were a lot of U of M students buying cartloads of alcohol and he assumed we were part of that crowd. Regardless, it was uncalled for.

I've seen a lot of negative activity at Live Journal. They seem to be banning users for links to adult content in friends and private posts. That seems unfair. They used to have very loose rules about blogging material.

NBC and Apple are fighting about pricing structure and DRM. NBC does not want to allow users to keep content and they wish to charge $5 an episode. This will effect NBC content and Universal content. You will see no more Monk, Psych, The Office, or NBC News clips. They also partially own the History Channel and A&E. I don't know what will happen with that content. I'm mad because I buy Monk and Psych episodes on iTunes. I have every episode of Monk to date (season 2 is on DVD) and almost every episode of Psych. I don't want to wait for DVD sets nor pay the premium for DVD versions. I may get a PVR or just record on VHS or get a TV tuner working on my PC again. Screw them. Universal is the reason we have a format war. They support HD-DVD along with Toshiba.

I'd complain about this to NBC, but their contact forms are very selective. Perhaps I should complain to their parent company, GE.

I just cancelled my blockbuster online service. For several months, it was a very good service. They offered unlimited in-store swaps of DVDs and I had absolutely no problems with DVDs playing. Over the last two months, I've had nothing but bad DVDs. At least 5/9 discs have been cracked and glued back together. They won't play in any of my players or computers. I'm sick of reporting the discs and waiting for new ones to come. I'd complain to them, but they don't offer a lot of feedback options on their website. It's possible that it is just my service center (in lansing) or bad luck with the discs I'm renting. I may go back to netflix, but for a few months I'll just buy DVDs. At $10 a month, I can walk into best buy and just pick up a movie or two. I actually bought one movie for $4 recently there.

Caryn sold my original xbox on Ebay for ~$65. It included two controllers and 14 games. I found that I'm not playing games as much with mbsd. When I do, it is often the Wii now. We need a new tv stand anyway. We'll put the money toward that.

I saw this out of fortune today:
My mother wants grandchildren, so I said, "Mom, go for it!"
-- Sue Murphy

Nintendo has been promoting their new Metroid game for the Wii. They've put the original NES game and the SNES game "Super Metroid" on the Wii shopping channel. I really liked the original Gameboy game "Metroid 2: The return of Samus". A lot of people don't realize that Samus is a chick! It was one of the first games that had a female character in the lead role. Consider other games of the era like Zelda (link), Super Mario Bros (two male plumbers), etc. It was a big deal back then. Most of the games targeted at women were Barbie games. How lame.

My mother just got her financial aid so she can attend MCC. I'm so happy for her. It's hard to go back to school when you've been away. I know she is nervous about her age. She'll do fine.

I watched Sideways again.  I remembered why I found the movie interesting the first time.  It was very weird to see the cheap gas prices when they stopped for gas.  $1.71 in California! 

Caryn's set to teach an HTML course at the local community college this fall.  I talked to her about my experiences in my summer classes.  I'm sure she'll do fine. 

Just Journal was moved to a new IP address the other day.  I got a free SSL certificate from GoDaddy.  They offer them to select open source projects.  I doubt Just Journal would qualify, but MidnightBSD did.  It saved me some money and I can now offer SSL for certain operations like CVSWeb browsing.  I'm very happy about that. 

Our Wii is working great with the new television set.  It looks much better on a widescreen TV with component cables.  The two recent Wii updates were quite helpful in terms of network connectivity.  I've isolated that something upstairs is causing the random wireless disconnects.  I suspect I need to pick a different wireless channel.  I just don't know which one to use. 10 and 11 are saturated with five other networks.  There are advantages to owning a house.  You don't have as many neighbors very close to you.  Then again, I'd probably use wired connections in a house as I could run cat 6 through the building.

MidnightBSD 0.1-RELEASE has been released.  I've found a lot of issues with the ports collection included, but the actual release is pretty good so far. 

The semester is drawing near.  I need to go over my checklist of things to do before it starts.  Oddly, I'm very stressed.  I could talk about it, but somehow I don't feel it's a good idea tonight.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070814/ap_on_go_pr_wh/rove_resigning

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070814/ap_on_go_pr_wh/rove_quotes_4;_ylt=AtZEsHhWxmk5c75FD6TZaxwGw_IE

Great news isn't it.

One of my annoying neighbors setup their wireless without any security.  Many of my other neighbors are taking advantage of it.  Worse yet, their wireless router is changing channels periodically which causes interference on our wireless router.  As they are fairly close, it is really causing trouble for our network this weekend. 

I had to reboot both wireless routers twice.  Now I've put both airport express units in the same room.  The signal is very strong now and I can surf.  I think my neighbor is pissed as I hear him pounding on things upstairs.

I really need the network solid as I'm preparing an OS release.  I'm hoping it all goes according to plan.  It would put me in a great mood and I won't have to worry about it when the semester starts up again. 

I got an opportunity to see 10.5 on Friday.  For a beta, it was shockingly fast and stable.  The UI improvements were not as impressive as the demo videos led one to believe.  The floor aspect of the dock is very lame.  The tabs and other enhancements to terminal are awesome.  I did not get a chance to play with time machine as we didn't have a drive to configure it with.  It was actually OS X server so there was a lot of other extras. 

I'm going to suggest the upgrade to others just because I think it is much more consistent than 10.4.10.  It's an odd release and we all know those are the stable ones.