Life, don’t talk to me about life. (and party stuff)

The only problem with taking a vacation is that when you get back everything at work is shot to heck. Let’s just say I’ll be getting some overtime this week.

Yeah I finally took my first real paid vacation. One whole week of course I had to save the time up for three years to get there but I finally did it. Nothing fancy just caught up on the little things I wanted to do. You could say I did nothing and it was everything I thought it could be.

On to the LAN Party.

1) The cover will be $15.00 U.S. if you think this is not fair e-mail me and I’ll point your error out to you.

2) There will be some basic rules to follow.

a. Have fun. We are here to relax and enjoy the company of others. I am really a nice relaxed guy don’t let the following deceive you.

b. Don’t be stupid. You are to treat every one here with respect and kindness. Trash talking is the exception but don’t take it too far.

c. Cursing is not allowed. This is my personal rule.

d. Any violations of these rules will be reviewed and enforced by me.

e. If my mother would disapprove don’t do it. If you are not sure if something is permitted ask.

3) Thanks to every one who has offered to bringing equipment, things worked better because of it.

4) Thanks to my parents for the use of the house.

5) And finally thanks to Jake for bringing this all together.

more of my input

COOL! It's a good thing we're going all-nighter because my new job is keeping me out pretty late lately. Unless I work out something amazing or take that day off, I probably won't make it to the party until at least 10:30. I hate to miss any second of a LAN party, but I wouldn't miss it for anything.

What I'd like to know, and I realize it's probably still up in the air, but how much will the cover be? Cash has been a bit short for me, what with buying Jake's old monitors off of him, and the sooner I know how much I need, the easier it'll be for me to plan for/save/obtain the necessary ammount.

Finally, Leon, for what it's worth (and it probably isn't worth much), I have a Hub which I will place at your disposal if you can't get enough switches.

More LAN Party Stuff

I can bring a switch and at least a few cables, but I will probably not be getting to the party until later. I will be traveling this coming week, and Friday morning, I’ll be waking up in Florida (Central Time, at least, so that it’s only a one hour jet lag thing). I’ll have to work out details with my secretary, but I will probably have other commitments to take care of after I get back in town before I can come play. I also rarely make it up past 2 a.m. these days, so even if I sleep on the plane (which doesn’t happen that often), I’ll likely not be at my sharpest during the gaming.

All that aside, I think that an all night LAN party is a cool idea, but, as Darth Vader once said, “It’s too late for me, son.” I’ll do what I can to help make it work. Is there anything else I should bring? Money? Food? Goats?

Hear ye hear ye the party is come.

On speaking with my parents an all nighter from Fri. to Sat. is approved. I would like it to start no earlier than 4:00 pm Fri. I still have work that day and ill need time to set up. Dinner should start around 5:30 – 6:00 I will take on my self the burden of the initial payment of food and it sounds like that will be Garcia’s. Gary I want to send you for the pick up again. If there are any special requests let me know. I will not be providing breakfast unless we agree to increase the cover. Milk ain’t cheep.

As for games personally I like:

1) Half-Life

2) MCM2

3) Mortal Kombat

4) Mario Cart.

5) N64 Games

As for equipment ill need 2 more switches and extra network cables. I lost some cables at the last party so my stock is limited. Krys and Eric I would like you to cover the switches if you can if not let me know. I will also need a list of attendees by Wed. So I know how much food to get. Jake I need you to bring over controllers and games for the 64 also I would like you to keep track of the guest list. And I think we will need to have lunch at Garcia’s to hammer out the finial details.

For a LAN-party disk I am going to vote against but I do like the idea of making a utilities folder available over the network. You will not have internet access here so update and scan you computers before arrival. Head-phones are mandatory to keep the neighbors happy and to help provide a better social atmosphere. If there are any questions or concerns or people you want to invite PLZ let us know promptly. And finally thanks for all your help and support for making this happen.

Nicus.

Unkept Insinuations

Last night there was thunder for a brief period. It was a welcome harbinger in the heat of the nearly-summer night. But there was no follow-up of rain, or even more thunder to enjoy on its own. Just a few booms over the course of five minutes or so. Then nothing.

So I was left to add thirty albums to my server's audio collection with the fan droning in the background. It was one of the more dreary music work sessions I've had in a while. But I'm glad it's done. A little over 2GB of music from the thirty albums (comprised of roughly 35 CDs) is a nice little addition. And have I mentioned this? CDs at D.I. (and most other second-hand routes, for that matter) are one of the best music deals running, if you care a whit about legality. License to a full album for $2.00 a pop. Forever. Unlimited burning. Unlimited playlists. Unencumbered, plain vanilla, good old-fashioned, MP3. What's not to love? Go on, tell me.

Now hear this...Ten days. From right now, and only nine if we decide to go overnight and begin on the 24th. That's the kind of time we have left, and with only about 5% of the work done so far.

Leon, it's at your house, and you're the boss. I imagine that you can demand just about anything you like from Eric, Krys, and myself in order to get it all together. Do so. Soon. You know how I worry when deadlines begin to loom.

Accidentally Untitled (But now fixed) (And in the wrong blog! Also now fixed)

Last night (or early this morning, rather) I dreamt that Hugh Hefner (yes, that Hugh Hefner) was running for class president at a high school and I supported his run. No, he did not attend the high school. Yes, he was his real current age. No, there were not any bunnies present (unfortunately?). I don't know why I supported his run, but I thought it was a terrific idea at the time.

Oh, and dream number two was a roller coaster shaped like the graph of a mathematical equation that double-curved in on itself in such a way that the combination of speed and gravity killed the riders on the first run. It looked neat, though.

I think my brain is bored. I hope that planning and executing the upcoming LAN party will be sufficient stimulation for a little while.

I've been working really hard at understanding Windows installs. I've slipstreamed the latest service packs into all of my Windows install discs, and I'm working on pre-configuring my OS preferences, pre-integrating drivers and even activations into the installs, and testing with Virtual PC 2004. It's fascinating, but only to the reasoning side of my brain.

Likewise with all the other geeky pursuits I'm into. So the upcoming LAN party will be good for me.

Oh, and I REALLY NEED TO KNOW...LAN Party Disc or no? If yes, I need to get right to work on it.

Da LAN party

before you read this post, you should read Jake's latest, in which he disusses my idea for making the 25th an all night LAN party.

It being my idea, I am all for making the 25th all night. And I expected a little resistance such as Eric with his comment to Jake's post. I would like to point out a few things to alleviate such anxieties.

1: If you come to the party, it is fairly easy to assume that you don't have work on saturday the 25th. If you don't, you have a whole weekend after the party to get your sleeping groove back on.

2: If you are so dead set in your sleeping habits, we will take steps to ensure you get the sleep you need (quiet rooms, sleeping bags, tents, etc.)

3: If you are uncomfortable sleeping in a strange place, have work the next day, or simply don't want to go all night, no one will stop you from leaving early. Seriously, if you have to leave, then leave. but don't forget point 2.

4: Finally, an all night party is FUN! Even if we only go from 8:00 pm to 5:00 (and we almost certainly will go later in the morning), there will be a ton of time for everyone to do everything they want. Plus it will add the challenge of staying sharp so you can easily pick off tired players!

So there's my input on the LAN party. At the very least, I think we should try it once and if we find we don't like it we don't have to do it again.

LAN Party, Other Stuff

I had lunch with Jeff yesterday. At Garcia's. On him. I'm pretty sure that's a first. Thanks again for lunch, Jeff.

Jeff has a good idea for the LAN party: Why not make it all night? Some random related ideas follow:

1. Gonna be a challenge to get the head Walkers to give the go-ahead.
2. Darken the library for fried players to relax before going back to fragging.
3. Set up a tent or two in the back yard, encourage players to bring a sleeping bag in case they decide to zonk.
4. Will probably raise the cover a bit, as more food/drinks will be required.
   
5. We'll need to figure out what extra food/drinks will be appropriate/appreciated.
6. We need to make sure that our late-night activities have a minimal impact on people who wish to sleep (neighbors, parents, siblings, cops).
7. Would have to re-arrange party date to June 24-25 so as not to run into Sunday.
8. Fireworks? (Unlikely; the Walker higher-ups are anti-firework, and we're missing the legal time frame by at least a week.)
9. Have a relaxing activity the next morning to help along everyone's recovery.
   

None of those things are hard ideas, I just wanted to put them somewhere for later reference. In fact, #2 and #3 sort of conflict logically. No matter. They're just ideas. It may be that we decide that going all night is too much work. Or too much work for now, save for another party.

I'd like to have a good variety of things to do at the party. Half-Life is great, but even Krys will get fragged out eventually. I really liked the few rounds of MCM2 we had at the last party. That was fun.

Maybe we should set up a PC for Mortal Kombat? We've got an emulator, and we've got controllers. We could even feed it out to a TV for the bigger screen. Hmmm.

Ditto for StarFox 64. I've been enjoying the various battle modes on StarFox with Leon and Jeff. Any takers?

Anything else? LAN Monopoly? Anyone know of a good head-to-head Tetris program? I used to LOVE the head-to-head Tetris on GameBoy. I suppose two-player Dr. Mario could do in a pinch.

Do enough people have HL2 that we'd want to do an HL2 Death Match? I would probably be out of this, because I'll be gaming on my Tablet, and a 1.5 Ghz Centrino is respectable in laptop circles, but it and my Nvidia 32 MB of Vid memory just won't cut HL2 without some real sacrificing.

Finally, should we make another LAN party CD? Did anyone find it useful last time? Should we make it a DVD and fill it up with some k1ck455 MP3s? I think that having a disc for the party is nice for getting out patches and such, but then we could also just set up a share on someone's box and call it good.

Talk to me, people. If you're not a Phischkneght member, go ahead and post a comment. I'll be watching.

LAN Party Input

Jake is right. My schedule takes some time to take shape. My June schedule is finally coming together. I have a trip to Florida the week leading up to the LAN party, and a trip to Bear Lake the following week, but I’m free on the 25th. Except that I have some hedonistic solstice party to attend.

I’ll do what I can to recruit players. Roger may be interested, and so may some of his buddies (although I don’t know if we want to see it become a teen party, what with the maturity of bulk of the core group members).

As for Garcias, I concur. It was quite good. I’m not sure if I care about the tournament idea. I just enjoy making things (read: people) blow up. That’s all that matters, really.

Down To Business

So we need to get some arranging done.

We're planning a LAN party for June 25th. It's been in the works for a while, but we really haven't done much about it yet other than talk.

We had to plan the date a fair good distance out, because Eric and some others have tricky schedules. Additionally, we've had Mother's Day, Father's Day, my daughter's birthday, and various other things in a relatively short period.

After some discussion, it was decided that it would be nice to align the LAN party with the Summer Solstice. The Solstice is on the 21st (every year), and the 25th is the first following Saturday.

If you choose to bring goat-skin leggings and dance around in celebration of the Solstice, we can likely accommodate your preference to do so. Pentagrams, however, would be considered over the line and should not be worn. It is at the Walker home, after all.

So, right off the top of my head, here's a preliminary guest list:

Stan
Leon
Eric
Gary
Jake
Jeff
Krys
Roger (Eric?...)
Andrew
...er...really? That's it? Surely I'm forgetting someone.

If you're not listed above and you'd like to be, just say so. I forget things sometimes.

There is food to think of. Here's the tally; once we had Baja Fresh cater our LAN party. It was bad. You can hit the archives if you want details, but it was just bad. Never again. And the store that Baja Fresh catered out of has since closed. A good sign as far as I'm concerned.

We also had Garcia's cater our last party. It was good. Very, very good. They did forget to bring a couple of things, but those were things that the manager was giving to us for free anyway, so it was no big deal. The food was on time (because we sent someone for it), delicious, reasonably priced, hot, and just generally warm-fuzzy-ish. In short, we got a good experience from Garcia's.

So Garcia's is high in the running for catering this next party, but not necessarily a done deal. Talk to Leon or myself if you feel that you have a better idea.

And: Prizes. I want prizes for this next LAN party. I'm not sure how I want it done yet, so I could use some help on how to set up HL tourneys (Krys, are you listening?).

If you have some sort of geeky swag that you're not using, then we'd love to make it a prize. Please talk to me about it.

I wish to foster a community feeling among Phischkneght members and friends in the planning and throwing of these events. If we all pitch in, we can help each other have a great time and probably save a few bucks. And I'd like to point out that our LAN parties are not money-making propositions. The October LAN party ended up costing me around $50, and the December party set Leon back around $60.We don't mind this because we love playing with our friends. And eating good food. They're both great.

So whatever you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.

Post Stub! (Formerly On Multiple Monitors)

Thanks for the tickle, Jeff. I haven't written in far too long, and I've been looking for something to write about.

It occurs to me that blogging (in our case, at least) works best as a conversation rather than soliloquy between man and ether. I stimulate you to write, you do the same for me. Here's hoping for more of the same.

(Edit: This post got huge. So I'm posting to PhischkneghtX instead.)

Dual Monitors and LoZ

Yesterday I did something that's been on my list for almost six months, and I am proud to say that I am now running dual monitors.

I understand that it usually takes a while to get used to dual monitors, but whether it's because I've watched Jake with his so much or because I spend so much time on my computer, I seem to be taking the extra monitor in stride.

Unfortunately, all is not well with my display. My 17' flatscreen, which has served me extraordinarily well for three years now, has begun picking up electromagnetic interference from the new monitor, which creates a small line of interference going down the screen. annoying, but in order to fix it, I'd need to risk my life putting a shield in the monitor, and I don't have a death wish. That and the 15' secondary monitor is a POS.

In other news, the long awaited name for the 2005 Legend of Zelda has been released. Jake downloaded a trailer for it and we agree that it's one I'll need to get. Seriously, it looks great!

That's it for now.

Typhoid Mary strikes again

This weekend, I went down to my in-laws’ to install a wireless network. While installing a USB wireless adapter to a PC, I noticed that it was running slowly and had a lot of extra programs on it. There was a particularly suspicious registry run entry that had a lot of random looking consonants. After I deleted the entry, it came right back. So, with the wireless card fully installed, I set out trying to clean it up.

First, I ran an anti-spyware program (Ad Aware), which identified 706 objects (probably mostly cookies, you know how AdAware is), but stopped running while trying to delete the items it found. So, I installed and ran AVG anti-virus, which was partway through its scan (it found at least 19 viruses) when the computer crashed. It gave an error to the effect of “Unable to read from disk”. When I tried to reboot, it was unable to read anything from the hard drive.

The good news is that the viruses and spyware are gone, and instead of having hundreds of problems, her system has just one. The bad news is that her hard drive, including all of its data, is gone. We have plans to replace it and upgrade from Win98 to WinXP. This time, I’ll make sure that she has some better virus protection during the OS installation, as well as more secure browsers and such, so that she won’t be as likely to be infected again.

By the way, I usually don’t do nuke-n-loads by frying the harddrive.

Good Thing It Wasn't 10 Million More...

Re This:

Buyout mania continues: GameStop snaps up Electronics Boutique

By eric@arstechnica.com (Eric Bangeman)

It must be something in the air, as the second major acquisition of the day is announced. GameStop will acquire Electronics Boutique in a US$1.44 billion cash and stock deal. What does this mean for gamers?

I'll tell you what it means. It means that the money will just barely fit on a cash floppy disk.

I know, such a bad joke.

Long Time, No Post (And Some Product Reviews)

Too long. I'm not very happy when I don't write. And I don't write when I'm not very happy.

I'm on yet another experimental drug regimen. Is it helping? I dunno, you tell me. No, I really mean that...would someone please tell me?

So a very dear friend of mine, Diane in (near) Milwaukee, called me last night. I wasn't able to answer the call at the time, so we got in touch today.

Diane is only semi-digital, so at times she has an email address, and at times she doesn't. Well, now she has one again and I'm thrilled because that's just about the only way I can bring myself to communicate with someone on a regular basis nowadays (and it's cheaper than long-distance calling). Diane, it was wonderful talking to you today. I hope that you and I will know one another again as well as we used to.

Jeff and I have been going to Leon's to play billiards on the weekends. Last time we went, it was decided that Leon was getting too tired and needed a Slurpee. So we went, and as Jeff and Leon both owe me Slurpees, they decided amongst the two of themselves that Leon was buying.

We got there, acquired the desired Slurpees and went to pay. As we were standing in line, I glanced at the magazine rack, and out of the corner of my eye, saw something looking like money. When I looked directly at it, there was a five dollar bill tucked neatly in front of one of the magazines.

I picked it up, showed it to Leon, and tucked it away. Leon presented his debit card to pay for the drinks, but the lady ran the card wrong, so it declined. He was taking a while to get the card back out of his wallet again, so I quickly presented the found $5 bill.

I still think it's amazing and incredibly unlikely that we just found three Slurpees and some change sitting in a magazine rack like that.

I just finished reading "How To Find The Work You Love," by Laurence G. Boldt. It was an utter waste of paper and ink, because the title of the book and the description on the back cover are simply incorrect. A more appropriate title would be something to the effect of: "A Collection Of Quotes Meant To Inspire You, That Unintentionally Come Off As Cheesy, And Some Thoughts On Ignoring The Discouraging Voices In Your Head So That You Can Pursue What You Really Love, But That You Would Already Have Heard From Your High School Career Counselor, Had You Been Listening."

Fortunately, I paid a dollar for the book on clearance in the university book store. And now I see why.

I recently found a Canon PowerShot SD100 Digital Elph refurbished for about $160. The review linked to lists it for its original retail price, $499. So yeah, $160 is a screamin' deal, and I buy refurbished electronics all the time with good results overall.

Aside: Here's my theory on refurbished goods. I don't understand why they cost less, but I like it. I've got oodles of experience in buying electronics, and the refurbished items I've bought don't break more than the new ones do, they break less. No, really, it's true. I figure that any item that's been through quality control twice instead of once is likely to be in pretty good shape. And that's why I don't shy away when the words "refurbished" or "factory reconditioned" are thrown around. I dig the concept.

At any rate, the refurbished version comes with everything but a memory card, and it's actually a good thing, because the card that's included with a new one is only 16MB. Well, I burn through 16MB in about 14 seconds, so I was going to have to buy a new card anyway. I found a cheap Kingston 512MB card and bought it (of all places, from Dell. Who knew they had such good prices on items other than embarrassingly underpowered PCs? But I'm still testing the ice with them.).

Anyway, I got the camera and LOVED it. Excellent feel, excellent interface, superb picture quality, and a price that made me feel like the cops will be here any minute. Loved it. And then it broke.

Yep. The darn thing broke. I suspect that it simply did again what caused it to be returned in the first place. The lens mechanism jammed open while powering it off. The first couple of times, I cycled the power over and over, and the camera figured out the problem and fixed itself. But the third time, no amount of power cycling fixed it. Ah well. At least it jammed permanently while still in warranty. I was grateful.

So, I returned the SD100 and found a new, not refurbished, SD110 at Amazon for only $10 more. The next model up, new, for just ten bucks more. And at Amazon too, so free shipping.

So now I'll have a 16MB SD card and nothing at all useful for it to do. It's too small to use as a bookmark. Too fragile to pin up on the wall with a thumbtack. Not recognized by the US Postal Service as actual postage, even though the makers of such cards compare their size to postage stamps, so I can't mail a letter with it. Not even with tape. Hmph. I guess it'll go into my drawer with electronic odds and ends. Can't Amazon just keep it and discount me the $10? I suppose not, as it's already at the local UPS office and will be delivered tomorrow, along with the camera that I hunger for. Grrrrrrrrr...

So, you ask, why no posts for so long? I'm choosing not to say for now. But I think things will be better for a while now.

I can see clearly now, the grain is gone...

We just bought a new 17” LCD monitor. It’s probably a low-end one (we got it on sale for half off at $150), but it was immediately obvious just how much better it is than my old monitor. It’s embarrassing to use them in a dual monitor configuration. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to CRT.

Setec Astronomy

It has probably been about 3 months since I first stared looking at PGP. I downloaded a PGP client (note: I downloaded a free version from the PGP Corporation website that I cannot find again today, so this is the MIT site that my wife downloaded from, and our versions look identical and are compatible), tried to find a plugin for my mail client (note: a plugin now exists, called EnigMail, although it looks like it may be buggy), and tried (halfheartedly) to get a few friends to try it too so that we could exchange encrypted messages. Nothing happened. I didn’t even install any software.

Then yesterday my wife told me about a project she was doing for a class where she had to use PGP to encrypt a message and send it to her teacher. So, I finally downloaded it and used it to exchange a message with her. I don’t think that PGP will catch on between us for several reasons. First, it’s difficult for us to do, since I have only been able to encrypt files, rather than email messages (if the email extension works, then that might remove this issue, making it feasible to use). Second, we hardly ever communicate via digital writing or files. Third, we don’t anticipate that any person or organization will try to snoop on our messages.

I’d still like to try PGP exchanges with fellow Phischkneght members. If EnigMail works, then maybe I’ll push for it again, but harder this time.

Cosmetic Update

Since Phischkneght changed its face some time ago, I've been disappointed that the links on the right hand side didn't survive the change. Well, tonight, I've finally got around to fixing that. I've added links for every blog (that I know of) that's written by Pnet contributors. Conspicuously absent is Jeff's blog/commercial site that seems to be missing.

If anyone sees anything that should be added, let me know.

Factor away your troubles!

Saturday night, I was sitting in a dark room listening to some speakers. While they were fairly interesting (one guy started out telling about a drug bust that almost went bad), I found myself getting very bored. I always do when I’m just listening to people talking, so this came as no surprise, but this time I had nothing that I could really do. I had no useable electronics on hand, and it was too dark to use something that didn’t have backlighting. So, I remembered a problem that I had been working on a few days before:

r is a root of x^4-x^3+x^2-x+1=0. Evaluate r^40-r^30+r^20-r^10+1. (The original problem stated that the latter equation was equal to 0, but that was incorrect.)

I had tried a thing or two on paper before, and fallen asleep before making any headway when trying to work it out in my head. While we still had a bit of light from the dusk, I tried out a few more things on paper, but I soon found myself working entirely in my head in the darkness.

Quickly I could eliminate -1, 0, and 1 as possible roots. I did realize though that the product of the four roots is 1, and that their sum is -1. From this, I assumed that all four roots had magnitude 1 in the complex domain. If a root is complex, then the conjugates must cancel. From this, I assumed that the imaginary part of the x^4 term corresponded to the imaginary part of the x term. I let r=e^it where e is Euler’s number, i is the imaginary number, and t is an angle (in radians). If -(e^it)+(e^4it) is real, then pi+t=2*pi-4t. This gives 5t=pi (actually, 5t=pi+2k*pi, where k=0, 1, 3, or 4), and so r=e^i*pi/5, or (back in degrees), r=cos 72+i*sin 72. This means that r^10=1, and the desired solution is 1-1+1-1+1=1.

The cool thing about this is that I correctly factored a quartic function with complex roots in my head, and it took less than an hour, leaving me free to learn about the evils of poker later in the meeting, comforted by the fact that r^40-r^30+r^20-r^10+1=1<>0.

Happy Anniversary, Phischkneght!

One year ago, in an attempt to introduce a friend of his to the blogging world, a novice blogger started a second web log and invited his friend to join. One year, 6 (or has it been more) members, and 122 posts later, it has become more than he ever hoped for. Thank you everybody for participating, either by contributing or by reading.