Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

It really was just a matter of time. I had been fighting the temptation for years. It wasn’t difficult, the offerings were tantalizing, but not enough to really make the committment necessary. And if I was going to do it, I wanted to make sure it was the right decision, at the right time.
Alas, that time has arrived. On Thursday, I made my payments, downloaded my software, and signed into Eve Online, an MMPORG.
For those not into geek anagrams, an MMPORG, or ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game’, is an online game where you as a player are just one element in a large scale universe populated by other gamers from all over the world. Generally these games have thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of players online at the same time, some interacting with each other, some working in teams, some playing individually.
Some of the more famous MMPORGs are World of Warcraft and Everquest. They’ve been enormously successful, with huge player bases and serious player involvement, to the point where the MMPORGs become their own functioning economies, even spilling over into the real world.
Eve Online takes a somewhat different tack on the MMPORG concept. Where other games and environments have focused on sword and sorcery, as well as personal character development and interaction, with characters building skills, experience, collecting items, completing quests, etc, Eve Online chooses a different tack.
The background is the human race expanded out into the galaxy, and found a wormhole to a far remote galaxy. They expanded through that wormhole for many hundreds of years, then the wormhole collapsed, cutting off the huge industry that had sprung up in the remote environs. Large corporations came to dominate the environment, factions grew, and tensions rose. Now a sort of detante has settled, with 4 major clans in control, with dozens of huge corporations, and thousands of small ones, all vying for economic and political control.
The game is enormous… hundreds of systems each with planets, moons, and asteroids colonized and built out. You control your own ship, which can be anything from a small trading frigate up through enormous capital ships. There’s a strong economy and scaled model for how to build up your ship, skills, supplies, connections, and allegiances, with a virtual infinate number of paths a player can take to build up their career.
At the moment, my ship is happily docked in a station while I go through skills training, but next time I’m online, I’ll probably take it out to do some asteroid mining – a relaxing pasttime that allows a properly configured ship and prospector to mine ore and bring it in for reprocessing to generate income. This is just one of many ways to make money in the game, money that can be used to buy new equipment for your ship, buy skills training, invest in trade goods, and continue expansion.
I enjoy the game enormously for any number of reasons. The first is it is absolutely stunning visually. I was unsure about the heavy toll it would extract on my gaming machine (however it wouldn’t be the first time I upgraded my PC specifically for a particular game), but my Athlon 2800 + nVidia card seems to be handling it just fine at 1280×1024. My first take on the imagery reminded me a lot of Homeworld, with the tactical display and ‘jetstreams’ showing ship vectors, but it quickly became apparent the folks doing Eve put a LOT of effort into the interface to support the levels of communication needed to function in the Eve economy.
I’m up to 3 days on the game so far, and I can see very careful metering of my own time will be necessary, though I do like that certain tasks in the game can take up quite some time (for example, laying in a multi-jump course thats going to take me across 5-6 star systems, and setting the autopilot to execute… can take a half hour to complete the navigation. Excellent time to catch up on neglected work.) I’ve found the folks online to be very into the game and helpful, giving good suggestions and help when needed. The hordes of 12 year old kiddies with big swords doesnt seem to be happening in Eve, which I’m eternally grateful for.
Now, here’s the fun part. I’m a paid user now, ergo I have ‘buddie’ accounts I can give out. Interested in trying it? Let me know, I can provide you with a 15 day trial account. Give it a try. First one’s free.

Ah, why not a quick bunch of updates and other tidbits.
The other night I finally sat down and updated the inventory of all my DVD’s and Laserdiscs. Having picked up a crateful of discs from someone on GB-Reuse, I figured it was time to update the listing. It’s just a flat text file – yeah, so retro, huh? Anyway, here it is. I thought I actually had more than that, but it’s a little over 200 laserdiscs, and about 110 DVD’s. One of these days I’d like to integrate my MythTV server and an installation of ReaderWare, the awesome book / video / music database tool.
My Treo has been replaced and I’m up and functioning again after the unfortunate incident. I had insurance on the phone, Verizon’s agent did a replacement / swapout for $50 (since it wasn’t actually a ‘failure’ on the device. I basically abused it. Edgy definition there). Thanks to the wonderful Lisa, I’ll have a new belt case to work with. I’m disappointed in the Seidio shield holster. The treo can pop out of it too easily, and I’m constantly checking on it. Stay tuned for more updates on what I end up with.
Mom is doing much better – she’s home and recovering at her friend Cindy’s house. The recovery in the hospital was longer than we expected, but we figured it was time for her to go home when she had convinced Cindy to bring in “decent food” because the hospital food was so bad. 🙂
The laptop is still out of action, but I’ve done the external 2 1/2″ drive mount thing, and there was no data loss. ‘yawl’ is doing just fine as my desktop machine, and the laptop is basically turned off and tucked away. It’s a little odd not having a mobile machine to work with – I can’t just pack up and go to the local restaurant to work. I’ll need to get the laptop going again soon.
In the funland department, Zach and I dug up some old hardware in the basement and got the DDR setup going on the Playstation again. We last played a lot over a year ago, and he’s improved a bunch since then. I think we’re hitting the sweet spot for rhythm and organization for him, and he’s close to giving me a run for the money. And I’m certainly not going to argue with the exercise. I’m thinking it’s probably time to replace the playstation though. The PS1 is almost 12 years old now, and the Playstation2 can be gotten for $75-ish, it just doesn’t make sense to stick on the old platform, particularly when we’re starting to see some minor twitches. And judging by the games I saw at Ubercon (like Shadow of the Colossus, the PS2 is not only a quantum leap in performance over the PS1, but despite it being 6 years old, the PS2 is still an awesome gaming platform.
Hopefully tonight I’ll be doing some more work on the Myth box to get some of the gaming working again (my Mame emulator stopped working for some reason. Meh!)

Sit down right there, and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…
Okay, not quite that much gloom and doom, but this sojourn down to Florida over the last week has definately thrown chaotic elements into the life of this humble (HAH) geek. First though, lets get the important bits covered…

Continue reading “Of Life, Laptops, and Relatives” →

I haven’t read UserFriendly in a while, but Scoble mentioned this strip, so I checked it out.
Pretty well sums it up, eh?
Edit – This thread apparently starts back a few posts. Story o mah life.

Remember the guys doing the no pants thing on the NY Subway, and getting arrested for it? Well blk pointed out they’ve done another great mission. This time repeating a sequence of events over and over and over again in a Starbucks.
The mission was called the Moebius, where a half dozen events were repeated, in sequence, about every 6-8 minutes in a Starbucks in NYC. The link documents each step, and notes how customers are reacting. For the most part, New Yorkers seemed to take it as it was intended – a public art performance. They were commenting, enjoying, waiting for what they knew was each step, and looking for other small elements they might have missed on the previous go around.

Hello, my name is Dave, and I’m a text-a-holic.
Well, okay, it hasn’t quite gotten that bad, but I must admit, since Cat and I both got Treo 650‘s, we’ve been spending a lot of time just keeping in touch vis SMS messages, more colloquially referred to as ‘texting’.
For those still living in the dark ages, ‘texting’ refers to the SMS Messaging function most modern cell phones support. The protocol and capability has been around for ages, and in fact, in Europe, ‘texting’ is far more commonplace. The Wikipedia article, linked above, has a whole fascinating history about popularity and usage.
But for me, it’s just fun.
I admit that I’ve done enormous amounts of my inter-social-network communicatioin via text over the last 15+ years. From IRC, to Email, to IM conversations, and now to SMS, using text to keep in touch is just the norm. I find the moving of text chatting from the desktop onto my phone a normal step in the evolution of digital communications.
What’s the problem, I hear you cry? The problem is it’s not free. Verizon, as far as I can tell, has no system to roll unlimited SMS messages into their service. It’s not tremendously expensive – a 100 message ‘bundle’ can be purchased for about $6 a month, but even with that option, I can see myself going past that limit quite easily. There’s always the shadow of “I’m over my quota! Quiet!” hanging over me.
What’s the point of all this? Mostly that I see Texting as being the next phrase of digital personal communication. It’s already one of the most popularly used communication mediums in Singapore and Europe, and is rapidly picking up pace in the US. If you haven’t tried it, give it a whirl. It’s fun 🙂
(Want to text me? If you know me, you probably have my cell phone number. Just send an SMS message to that 🙂

Found this interesting article about the Ryugyong Hotel in the middle of Pyongyang, in North Korea. It’s apparently an ENORMOUS hotel (over 1000′ high), built in the middle of this city, and abandoned for 10 years. It was never completed, never occuped.
Further, the population won’t even refer to it. Ask someone where it is, they’ll claim to have never heard of it. But, as seen in the pictures, it’s impossible NOT to see it from just about anywhere in the city.
Fascinating stuff. Wikipedia has an article on it, pointing out that construction of the hotel was estimated to cost $750 million – almost 2% of the countries’ entire GDP. Unusual structures are always intriguing, and this one definately is unusual, not just for the politics and social issues surrounding it, but also because of the very design of the place.
I have to admit that building in concrete can be beautiful and organic. I spent many weekends exploring Fonthill, the home of Henry Mercer, who was active at the height of the Arts and Crafts design period, building not only his amazing home entirely of poured concrete, but also the Mercer Museum, a fascinating collection of antiques and artifacts, also in the poured / sculpted concrete style.

I often enjoy telling folks what I do for my day to day life. They frequently get that wide-eyed “Wow, that sounds perfect and awesome and my dream job”, and for the most part, I have to agree. It’s pretty nifty having a total commute of only 4 1/2 feet, and I can work most of my morning in… err… attire that probably wouldn’t pass as business casual.
However, this arrangement is not without it’s challenges. Challenge of the first part, I’m always home. That means I’m also first in line to get things done that need to be done at home, or can be done best by someone with a flexible schedule. I don’t really mind these things, since I can always flex things around so I’m working a little later, or doing some work at night, but it does make for chaotic scheduling.
Lets look at today’s life-example. This week has seen me ramping back up for deliverables to my current contract – this tends to involve some fairly intense coding and communication with a client that’s over 200 miles away and somewhat email and phone call averse. Layered on top of this we have the following challenges…

• Another client has just notified me they need their badges printed TODAY and overnighted BY TONIGHT. They have not confirmed badge design, layout, or other details.
• Zach is on vacation this week, so is home. Now, this is not as big a challenge as it was when he was, say, 4, but every erg of parental energy in me has to be applied not to give in to the “Zach, go play games on your computer, I’m busy” temptation. The digital babysitter is mighty compelling, but I shall resist. Thankfully, we have other families in Mosaic that are in similar straits, and arrangements for kid-hangings-out have already been made. Rockin.
• I’m still getting over this cold that laid me low over the weekend. I arose saviour-like after 3 days of death yesterday morning, and I didn’t even have to move a big honkin boulder. Alas, I missed something along the way, and my malaise hasn’t totally left me. Must’ve been skipping the whole nailing bit I guess.
• The band continues to limp forward toward a fairly busy March schedule, doing 2 gigs, one of which is a Biggie, playing the Mayoral Ball in Marlborough. I’m naturally worried about how well we’ll be prepared for it, and practice is tonight. Chalk off the evening for catching up on missing work, but practices must go on! (We’re hunting for a new lead singer, btw. Got a strong voice, like being on stage, and want to lead a blues band? Let us know!). We’re also playing the Cottage Street Pub in Franklin (see our gigs page if you’d like to see us. Poke me in email for details and disclaimers about the venue 🙂
• Very few offices include piles of laundry that also need to be put away *waves hands airily* at some point.

Pile all these together, and it sure doesn’t sound like a normal day at the office, but all in all I still wouldn’t give it up for a forced daily march to cubeland.
Coffee’s brewed, gonna go fix me a mugful and start planning the haulout of the badge printer.

Well, I resisted for as long as I could. Everyone’s out there playin it, no way was I gonna get myself drawn in like sheep toward long grass. No way, baybee. Nope, not… say, there’s a nice sudoku game for the palm… well… at least I should LEARN it, so I know what everyone’s talkin about.

Cuz, ya know, the first one’s free.

While Cat is hooked on websudoku, I’m pretty much caught in a very good version for the palm, uncreatively called ‘Sudoku’. It’s currently my “time for bed, one game, then sleep” game. In the past this slot has been filled by Bejeweled or TextTwist, but Sudoku is it now.

The version on the palm times how long it takes to solve the puzzle, but doesn’t rank it on difficulty, so it’s sort of a crap shoot how easy or hard a puzzle will be (they’re randomly generated), but my timing seems to average around 20 minutes for a puzzle. The longest I’ve taken was over an hour (UGH!), and the shortest time, I’m rather proud of, was 9 minutes. Since the palm saves records of all the ones completed, here’s my 9 minute one:

_ _ 2|_ _ _|_ _ 9
_ 9 _|_ 3 _|1 _ 7
5 1 _|6 _ _|8 _ _
-----+-----+-----
_ 3 _|_ 1 6|_ _ _
7 8 _|_ _ _|_ 5 6
_ _ _|4 5 _|_ 7 _
-----+-----+-----
_ _ 8|_ _ 4|_ 2 3
9 _ 4|_ 2 _|_ 1 _
2 _ _ |_ _ _|6 _ _

It’s not too painful an addiction. Sides. I can stop anytime I want. Really.

I generally don’t participate in online polls, intelligent ‘mixers’ that try to find out what sort of soda you like, or whatever. But music is such a big part of ‘who i am’, I think it’s interesting to share a little information.
I talk about Radioparadise all the time, as most of ya’ll know by now. I even interviewed the owner, Bill Goldsmith last year. The station not only has an outstanding music selection, but they have a great forum / commentary system that allows song ranking. You can also view your particular favorites (or most reviled tracks).
Today I took a look at my ‘best’ list – pieces I ranke a ’10’ that have come up in my, oh, 4 years or so of listening. I don’t rank something a ’10’ unless I really mean it, and in 4 years, thousands upon thousands of songs listened to, i’ve only set a ’10’ on a handful. Here’s that list:

10 – Dave Brubeck Quartet – Take Five
10 – Dave Brubeck Quartet – Blue Rondo a la Turk
10 – Beethoven – Symphony No.5 – Allegro Con Brio
10 – Claude Ginsburg and Julie King – Waiting For Snow
10 – Paddy Milner – Unsquare Dance
10 – Nickel Creek – Smoothie Song
10 – Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata
10 – James Horner – Sing, Sing, Sing
10 – Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here

The ‘9’ list is far longer. If you’re curious, here’s the link to my profile. The profile listing also has links to the albums and tracks themselves, so you can see how others ranked the track, as well as find out where to get the album.
I think my 10 list is a great cross-section of “What I like!” – better than I’d probably be able to relate if someone asked me the question on the street.

One of the life-functions I have a massive loathing for is clothes shopping. Rummaging through stacks of clothing for sizes for me, then going through the un-fun process of trying things on. I’d rather attend a republican fund raiser than go through that.
Recently I needed some new jeans. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bluejeans and cotton shirt man, and when I started my business I vowed that if I ever actually had an office and staff, I’d set bluejeans and cotton buttondown shirts as the corporate uniform.
Jeans shopping is a frustrating experience all around. Inevitably I get stuck in the “Right inseam, wrong waist!” and vice versa conundrum. If I luck out, after 15 minutes of searching, I’ll find ONE pair, wadded up under the bottom shelf for stability, that’s close enough to my size that I’ll suck it up and deal.
Well no more! Last week I ordered 3 pairs of Levis regular fit jeans from Denim Express. Cost? $27 a pair, They arrived in just a few days in a nice squooshy plastic package. They fit, have no issues that I can see, and even still stay “$40.00” on the price tag.
Shirts will be another challenge, but I’m done with jeans shopping at the local Gap or Sears or whatever.

“Forgive me Blogosphere. It’s been 9 days since my last posting…”
A lot has happened that’s new an interesting in the last week, but let me touch on a few highlights. I have many interesting postings brewing about various topics, but here’s a few tidbits…
Kubuntu Linux Rocks
Yes, I had ANOTHER hard disk fail on me. This took my home dir with a fair amount of localized twiddling with it, though the way I run my laptop – all my mail files, web work, source code, etc is all stored on a remote fileserver. (Note to the masses – a Laptop is not a permanent storage medium. Always remember that, and design your processes so you can recover your environment within 24 hours). I decided to try Kubuntu Linux, since it appears to be a widely-supported, Debian backed setup specifically designed to streamline KDE operations. Wow is it impressive. KDE 5 is a masterpiece, and just keeps getting slicker and slicker. I haven’t found anything truly broken so far, but I’m still working through it. I’m running the most recent ‘cutting edge’ release, named ‘Dapper’. Updates are coming fast and furious, but for now, I’m up and running (total time from having a new drive in my hand to up and running with a restored home dir, and up on the net with mail, web, IRC, chat, and dev environment: 12 hours. I’m getting better at this.
Arisia Rocks!
This past weekend saw Arisia come to life. This is a great SF convention, and the one I consider my ‘home’ event. I was the head of registration, using my own system and hardware to run things. All went smoothly despite a misfed printer during peak time on Friday, and a great time was had by all. Still slightly sleep deprived, but all in all good.
Treo 650 goodness
Yes, I know in my previous post I railed against the evil that is Verizon. However, my Kyocera 7135 just rebooted One Too Many Times, and it was time to replace it. Despite Verizons evils, I renewed my account with them, picking up a shiny new Treo 650. More chitchat about this later on, but for now, it’s one mighty sexy device, I have to admit.
There’ll be more detailed posts about some of the fantastic tools I’m finding in KDE 5 coming along in the next few days. Now, alas, I must prep for a trip down to New Jersey for a few days. Whee!