SA Road Trip: Day 2

This morning was the beginning of the conference, and I am bored to tears.  After about an hour I have found out how to route around the Hotel firewall and get Internet for free. How come nice hotels charge $10 per day for Internet access while cheap hotels give it away for free?  Oh, that's right: because they can.  Well they're not getting my money, the bastards.  Speaking of rip-off, the hotel provides bottled water (Aquafina) for $5 a bottle . Five fucking dollars for bottled tap water. Not only that, but they charge you instantly when you remove the bottle from its special holder. The refrigerator is rigged the same way.  I skipped the bottle and just got water out of the tap last night.

Back to the conference ... oh god am I bored.  After a few more of these talks the Linguist goes on stage, and afterwards we will be setting up the hardware for our demos this afternoon. Three hours of pain and glory, and our work here will be done.

(10 hours later ...)

Pain? Yes.  Glory? Not so much.  The demo went well for the most part, but of course there were some snags. We brought only personal laptops, so when it came time to set up I was asked to lend my computer to the cause. I could not explain, but I was strongly hesitant.  I soon realized why ...

We spent from about noon until 2pm tweaking settings on my laptop (which I'll have to revert tonight), and got things working.  We actually had two demos running (overkill), one to a remote server and one locally.  The most significant snag involved difficulties with my hackish subversion of the hotel wireless Internet and a certain Smurf cleaning my baby room carpet at home.  Very confusing and complicated, but the full story is too embarrassing to not tell in person.

After the demos, we packed up and shoved all the hardware into our hotel room before going down for the "awards ceremony", a.k.a. "The Wake".  This was an exclusive event, requiring a $35 prepay to simply attend.  Naive as I am, I assumed this sum would include some sort of celebratory drinks. Alas, I was sorely mistaken. It was $35 just to get into the door, and another $7 for shitty beer. I once again gave a hearty "F You" to the hotel (existentially), and vowed to take my drinking money elsewhere. Each one of the teams were awarded cute little "homemade" trophies, and then we GTFO.

When I first heard of a restaurant named Mexican Manhattan, I laughed.  I've eaten at enough out-of-town Mexican food restaurants to know that I wouldn't want anything of that genre in some place like New York.  Unfortunately the conference directors obviously haven't the same experience, and that is where we were to go for dinner.  The peeps and myself did a bit of scouting to confirm the suspicions. "It's like a Mexican Waffle House," I stated as we peered into the dirty windows of a truck-stop style diner. We cringed, and we laughed. Soon over 50 academics and government officials would be cramming into this tiny shithole of a Mexican food restaurant.

We needed drinks, and we had to keep moving to avoid being mugged. Around the corner and back towards the hotel we found a fantastic restaurant along the Riverwalk, called Ácenar. We told our waiter that our final destination was Mexican Manhattan; he rolled his eyes in an "Oh god that place is nasty" kind of way, and seemed motivated to ease us through the pain with servings of alcohol. The Linguist bought us a couple of rounds, I personally partook of a Three Citrus Magarita and an Amaretto Sour.  I was sufficiently intoxicated at this point to encounter the rest of the group and take my chances on the sketchy MM.

It turns out that the place had a lot more seating than originally advertised, including a balcony overlooking the Riverwalk where we all sat.  The locals gave us serious "WTF" looks as we all clamored towards the back. The six of us sat with the Big Boss and had good conversation along with our awful food.  The Linguist ordered nachos but instead got a big vat of cheese with a few chips thrown in.  J-Dub and myself both got cheap dinner plates that looked and tasted straight like Pancho's. I had another margarita (hey, why not?) but it was extremely salty (oh, that's why not ...)

After dinner we embarked on a quest to find The Alamo.  It didn't take too long for us to find ourselves lost walking around downtown San Antonio looking at the confusing street signs. At one point The Skeptic pointed out that we were headed towards the Alamo Dome, which we had to explain was actually a sports arena and not a historical site.  We backtracked a bit, and almost as soon as we were back at our hotel, we found the Alamo. Apparently the Hyatt is only a block from it, and none of us knew.  The Skeptic took some pictures, and The Captain was scolded by a Texas Ranger for touching the outer wall.

Filled with new inspiration, we crossed the roads like chickens and wandered into the little tourist shops along Alamo Plaza. The Captain bought a shirt to send home to his parents, and the Big Boss bought something as well.  I made the most of the opportunity by purchasing some Ozarka bottled water for $1 a piece, practically a steal considering the hotel prices.  We then triumphantly stumbled a block west into our hotel, up the elevators, and back to the room in which I now sit.

Tomorrow morning will be filled with more boring presentations, but at least we have no demo to set up.  We will be leaving here around 5pm tomorrow, hopefully arriving in Richardson by 10. I may need a ride from the airport since I haven't exactly made arrangements for dropping off the rental van yet.

SA Road Trip: Day 1

Last night a group of coworkers and myself embarked on a business trip to San Antonio.  We decided to rent and drive a minivan down rather than fly, due to costs / difficulties associated with flying, especially since we had to bring a bit of hardware for this trip.  I took it upon myself to drive, since I have motion sickness as a passenger.

Since yesterday was "Steal a base, steal a taco" day, we hit several Taco Bell restaurants on the way down.  We hit one in Hillsboro, two in Temple, and one in Belton.  We arrived to the last one at 4:55, 5 minutes before the free taco deadline.  It was surprisingly adventurous, and hopefully the Linguist will get the video edited and posted to YouTube sometime tonight.

The trip took about 5.5 hours, which is still pretty good time considering our TB excursions. We got checked into the Hotel, then went to dinner down on the Riverwalk.  Mexican food was absolutely out of the question, but in San Antonio that severely limits your dining options.  We were finally lured into a tiny Italian place by gaudy holiday lights.  There were about 8 tables inside, of which we occupied 2. It just so happened that our arrival corresponded with the beginning of a belly dancer's performance, of which we were highly encouraged to watch and be entertained.  The result was that I was annoyed more than anything else, and really just wanted to eat and leave.

Eventually we did eat, and we did leave.  We stopped by a pub along the way back, and enjoyed beers and healthy conversation in the open air along the river.  When I sat down to have a beer, my initial thought was, "I'm out of town, so they probably won't have Shiner Bach."  Of course my you're a dumbass reflex reminded me that we are still in Texas, and in fact much closer to Shiner, TX than in Dallas, and I got one on draft. TJ ordered some frys in curry sauce, which was damn good snackin'.

Fail

The first half of October has been rather disappointing.  Things started to go downhill with the cancellation of a test, and ended with me drowning my sorrows in a pint of Shiner last night. So, from the beginning ...

The first two days of the month I spent preparing for a test on the third.  Having studied and worked problems for several hours, I felt adequately prepared for the exam. Unfortunately, the exam was suddenly and inexplicably canceled at the last minute. A short game of telephone revealed one of the most bizarre works of non-fiction that I've ever heard.  Confounded and disappointed, I skipped my workout for that day.  Incidentally, I haven't been to the gym since.

On the way home, my wife informed me that she had punched a hole in the wall and flooded the kitchen (all by accident, of course), and that we needed to take the cats to the vet.  I attempted to solve those problems to the best of my ability, although we still have a hole in our bedroom wall. Wednesday was also most likely the day I acquired a contagious flu-like virus, which punished me from Thursday through Sunday, including a missed work day on Friday.

The following Wednesday I "aced" the test for which I had prepared a week earlier.  From this point the over-indulgence in useless crap (i.e. playing Civilization IV) impeded my progress on more important tasks. I completely screwed up my sleep schedule by playing past midnight most nights, and until 2:00am at least twice.

I had planed on playing in the PokerStars WBCOOP tournament on Sunday, but failed to even get in the door because tried to sign up about 4 hours too late. I take comfort in knowing that I would not have won anything even if I had managed to register.

My favorite sports teams have aided in my disappointment, since both the Stars and the Cowboys have played pretty awful. It could be worse, I suppose ... I could be a Buffalo fan.

Last night I got the results back for the test, and my results were less than satisfactory.  I demonstrated that I completely understood the problems, but was significantly discounted because I didn't show my work in the 'proper format'. Angry and disappointed, I strongly suggested to a friend that he join me for a beer.  I vented while he offered advice on how to adjust the test situation.

I continued my venting / contemplation with my wife after I got home.  She had been on vacation for the past few days, so it was good to see her again, but I'm sure I offloaded quite a lot.  At that point I came to the conclusion is that my main problem is with myself, and I need to make a concentrated effort to succeed in life, and not continue to procrastinate or otherwise waste time with useless endeavors. 

The Stars won last night with an overtime shootout, having never lead during the entire game.  I suppose if they can rise up, so can I.

Declaring My Eligibility

This post is to declare that I am, indeed, going to participate in this year's PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker ... damn that's a long event title. Last year I did pretty darn well in this event, making it all the way up to 36 out of a field of over a thousand, winning the iPod Nano to which I now listen every day.

My poker skills are a bit rusty these days, since the U.S. Congress knows what's better for me and my gambling "problem", although I still play the government-sponsored lottery a few times a month (go figure). I am hoping that I can at least make a show of it, and not do something incredibly stupid. I don't mind losing straight up, and I don't mind a bad beat, but I don't want to defeat myself.

Luckily I don't have to go through any hoops to deposit money for this event, since it is 100% free for anyone that has a blog. Yes, even you! As a matter of fact, you should sign up, because the worst that can happen is that you spend a couple of hours with good friends such as me and Wil, and win nothing. The best that can happen? Well I'm shooting for 3rd place, where the big screen TV, SLR camera, and nice camcorder come as a prize package. I wouldn't mind a new iPod either, though ...

Sign-ups end tomorrow at 6p.m. Eastern (that's 5:00 pm for us in Central)

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 8795382

Craigslist Fun

One of my most delightful discoveries over the past year was craigslist. I had heard about it for several years but never really checked it out.  When there came a time to buy and sell large furniture and workout equipment, I knew where to go.

These days I check CL periodically: the electronics, the computer stuff, and of course the free section.  Today, however, I took a random jaunt onto the 'best of' section.  That is where I found this little gem.

Godspeed ...

Burrito for 20070921

I'm now calling my summary posts 'Burrito's instead of 'TwitterWrap's, because they really don't have anything do with Twitter.  Why "burrito" instead of something more exotic like "gyro"?  Well, the site is called Don Juan's Romantic Mexican Food, not Theo's Mediterranean  Cafe, now isn't it?

Now that we've gotten that trivial clarification out of the way ...

Sports

My throat is sore and my body exhausted from attending my first Stars game of the (pre)season.  Both Wife and myself had a lot of fun, but not quite to the level of a regular season game.  I think during the preseason there should be a general admission cost of $10, and seats should be FCFS. It's stupid to have the lower bowl almost completely empty, with the upper bowl sparse. Let the upper-deck people move down and see what they're missing, and build a stronger atmosphere in the building. A variant of this would be to allow people to sit in any available seat after the second period.

Ian 'Lappy' Laperriere, in a totally classless act, cross-checked Jussi Jokinen in the face after play had stopped late in the third period.  I seriously hope that the league is reviewing the incident and hands down a 1-2 game suspension.

Baby

Tuesday night we went to this huge consignment sale for babies / expectant parents.  It started at 9:00pm, which means we didn't get out of there until near midnight. We got some good deals on furniture and clothes, but I have been pretty exhausted ever since.

We've been looking at names, using a Google Spreadsheet to consolidate names we've found from NameVoyager and Nymbler.  I'm hoping we can negotiate a deal during the off-season so that we don't have to take the name selection issue to binding arbitration.

Game Review: Dungeon Runners

Title:  Dungeon Runners
Publisher: NCSoft
Genre: MMORPG
Price:   $0.00 USD *
Rating:  B

Sometime last week I caught a link to a review of NCSoft's new MMO, Tabula Rasa, on Ars Technica. Inside that review was a link to another review, for Dungeon Runners. If not for this fortunate clicking, I may never have even heard of this game.  I know that my readership is slightly smaller than Ars, but I figure it can't hurt to put out my own opinion.

Acquiring the game was as simple as downloading and running the installer from the website. The installer downloads the modules needed for Dungeon Runner and the PlayNC launcher. The entire process took about 10 minutes on my ridiculously fast Internet connection -- your mileage may vary.

The most luring feature of this game is it's price: zero; goose-egg; nada. It costs no money to start nor continue playing for as long as you like, but of course there's always a catch. You do need a PlayNC account, so you can either create one or enable Dungeon Runners using your old City of Heroes login. I chose the latter, and was soon building my very own Dungeon Runner.

The character creation is lacking quite a bit.  The male models all look the same, except for their facial expression.  The hair colors and styles add only a slight bit more variety.  You can chose to start as one of three classes: Ranger, Fighter, Mage. This selection is only significant in that it determines your starting attributes and skills. Once in the game, you can purchase skills from any of the class trainers to become a "hybrid" character.

After creating your character you will be taken to the server selection screen. Dungeon Runners is different from many MMOs in that you can play your character on any server. On a Friday night, which is usually a "peak" time, each of their 6 PvE servers had between 100 and 150 players logged in, and the single PvP server had less than 50.  I have not played on the PvP server, as it's never really been my cup o' tea.

Upon selecting a server, you appear in Dew Valley, the newbie zone, with all of your fellow "n00bs". After walking around for just a few seconds you find NPCs with big yellow exclamation points ! over their heads, exactly like World of Warcraft. The quest system is intuitive if you've played any MMO since EverQuest, and by your interactions you will soon observe that this game is more about humor and fun than seriousness.

After obtaining a few quests, it's time for your first jaunt into a "dungeon", your very own instance of Dew Valley Forest.  With your cardboard sword and paper armor you set out to fight - you guessed it - wolves and rats. From this point, you will notice striking similarities between Dungeon Runners and Diablo - the "click-oriented" combat system, the square grid inventory, and your increasing dependence on health and mana potions. Dungeon Runners also expands upon Diablo's multi-level item rarity system, with "rainbow colored" items being the pinnacle of loot achievement.

By this point you've probably noticed, either on the website or in rainbow-colored text on the game UI, something about "membership". This is the "catch" that I mentioned earlier in this review. To become a "member" costs $4.99US per month. Membership benefits include: login queue priority, access to a bank vault, ability to use stackable potions, and "access to the highest quality in-game items".

While it is optional, soon you begin to realize how limiting it is to not be a member.  The login queue priority is insignificant, since even at peak times you can easily find a server on which to play. The bank access and potions may be much more significant at higher levels, but not right away. However, what the website means by "highest quality" items, it really means that if you do not join, you can't use anything beyond the equivalent of common loot.  By level 4 I was already acquiring items that were "membership only", and it must only get worse from there.

Overall this game is fun, and I find humorous the amount of parody this game plays against other MMOs. The environment feels like a graphical MUD, in which you can have "World Chat" enabled and not be completely spammed. I would enjoy getting together with friends once or twice a month for some "Dungeon Running", but I don't think it's worth five bucks a month to me.

Burrito for 20070918

Didn't quite have time to post last Friday, I know you all have been waiting in eager anticipation.

Sports

It's finally sports season again. The Cowboys have been posting up the big points for their first two games, and tonight is the first pre-season game for the Stars. Wife and myself are actually going to the hockey game on Thursday night against the Avs. I'm not going to follow hockey quite so intently this year ( i.e. I may opt to not watch a few games on TV, specifically west-coast weeknight games), but I'm still looking forward to it.

Games

I got in a little bit of game time over the weekend, though I should have been working on homework. I tried a new game by NCSoft called Dungeon Runners , and I plan to post a review soon. I am also wanting to have a look at Tabula Rasa, but haven't gotten to that yet.

Random

I spent an unreasonable amount of time on Amazon's Mechanical Turk trying to find that idiot Steve Fossett. I'm disappointed that he hasn't been found, and is probably distributed amongst the stomachs of several large buzzards now, but he really should have requested a radar follow.

Google Transit added DART routes to their system today. I didn't even know Google had a module for mass transit systems. Now I'll know exactly which train I must miss in order to be late for an event.

Apparently someone at work found the motivational posters, and Tina hanged them on the walls at the end of the rows. You know the ones; a random picture juxtaposed with a single large word and a silly phrase beneath ... like these, but not funny.

For the hell of it, I briefly looked at pet social networking sites, mostly for my own amusement. I think my dog can have his own Dogster page sometime after he learns to send email. During my research into this subject, I found SNIF, which is probably about the closest you can get to having the pet build its own social network. Interesting idea, and I look forward to seeing how it looks when they "go live", but it's currently an order of magnitude too expensive for widespread adoption, I think.

Burrito for 20070907

Critters

Friday morning we had an uninvited guest sneak into our house. Wife called around 10am to let me know there was a rat in the computer room ... but it has large eyes like a racoon, so maybe it isn't a rat. Oh by the way, it's hanging by its tail on a desk beam. "It is a Opossum?" I asked. "Yes, that's it, a Opossum!"

She had to leave for work, so I told her I'd look for it when I got home. After several minutes I couldn't find the little bugger, so I gave up trying. A little while later I found him tucked up inside one of our bookshelves. I grabbed him by the tail and dropped him into the waiting pet carrier. Not being park rangers, we had no idea what to feed it so we dropped in some string cheese and headed out to dinner.

We contacted a wildlife rehabilitator for relocation, which is when we found out that apples, not cheese, was probably better for its diet. It wasn't until Monday that we were able to transfer our little marsupial to a better home.

Speaking of critters, FatCat is finally back from his hospital stay and seems to be slowly recovering. He's on meds currently, and will possibly be put on a special diet next week.

Sports

Saturday night I attended my first ever professional soccer game, FC Dallas vs DC United, thanks to free tickets supplied by The Captain. The company was excellent, the environment was fun, and the game was awful. The keeper, "Super Dario", was quite the opposite of super and gave up 4 weak goals. The team was demoralized after the second goal went in during stoppage time of the first half.

I went walking all three mornings of the long weekend, and played tennis with Smurf and Fabio on Sunday evening. My feet, calves, and butt were all quite sore Tuesday morning. I didn't get in a full workout at the gym on Wednesday due to insufficient H 20 resources.

School

There was only one class this week due to the holiday, and my professor was out of town. So instead of a substitute lecturer this time she put together a 75 minute vlog lecture for us to watch. I've got homework due on Monday which has progressed very little but I don't anticipate having much trouble with it.

iHype

Wednsday, of course, Apple revealed its new iPod / iPhone line-up and pricing, much to the dismay of all the suckers that spent $599 on a telephone, only to have the price drop $200 less than 2 months later. The only iPod I've ever really been interested in is the nano, and I am not yet sold on the widescreen edition. The iTouch looks neat, but not within my reasonable price range. After all of the pricing announcements there was a huge wave of Apple products on Craigslist trying to sell to other suckers before the new pricing was well known.

Random

This is the most beat up vehicle I've ever seen. It's hard to tell from the picture (camera phones suck), but it has no doors, no windshield, and looks like it's been rolled a few times. It definitely caught quite a few stares from people traversing the parking lot. It was gone after lunch - we theorize that it was either towed or simply disintegrated on the spot.

Burrito for 20070831

As stated before, I'm going to start compiling weekly wrap-ups, with elaboration, on my twitter posts (which are apparently called tweets) into almost useful blog posts.

Technology

First, I want to express my frustration with Twitter, because it appears to be flaky as hell. I've subscribed to several news and technology feeds and I am not getting IM notifications when they update, despite having all of my notifications enabled. Furthermore I am having problems completely removing feeds; instead I have just been disabling notifications. Boo, Twitter.

I've been working on my sister-in-law's PC over this week. I think I've finally narrowed the problem down to a hard drive failure, but it's taking a really long time to transfer all of their files so that I can reinstall Windows and all of that crap. I'm hoping that this is the last time someone asks me to work on a Windows PC for them. There are people who get paid full time salaries to work on this stuff, and I'm not one of them. I don't mind working on linux systems since I can do that remotely and they don't break very often.

Ignorance

My favorite technical bookstore, nerdbooks.com, happens to be located about 1/2 mile from work. Not only are their books always cheaper than on Amazon, but being able to walk into the store to browse and examine the merchandise is an extreme bonus. Recently, however, they've been forced to close their doors to the public because some people are "afraid of dogs", even though the two dogs in question are extremely well behaved and docile Labrador Retrievers. Nothing bothers me more than when I'm affected by the ignorance of other people. Luckily they are allowing existing customers to still enter through the side shipping entrance.

With regard to ignorance, I can't say that I'm surprised to hear this week that SAT scores are dropping. "No child left behind" my ass. I've got about 6 years to figure out how I'm going to finance at least one private school education.

School

Speaking of school, my class so far has covered no material that I'm not already extremely familiar with (depth-first tree search, queues, etc). I know at some point things will get interesting, but I'm glad things are simple for now. I should be using this lull to work on my independent development project.

Health

I've started going to the gym now that school has fired back up. I awoke at 6:00am on Wednesday to go secure a locker at the facility. I was able to procure a medium-sized locker; I wanted a large but they had only one available and The Captain was in line before me. Even if I had arrived before him I'd have surrendered my spot to him; he needs a large locker more than I do. The Smurf was mysteriously absent from the gym on both Wednesday and Friday morning.

Life Ambitions

This week's moon eclipse was fantastic even though it was way too early to be awake. Neither me nor my wife were able to get great pictures. It also got me thinking about solar eclipses, and I've determined that I must see one before I die. Unless I make a special international trip, the next most likely opportunity will be on Monday, August 21, 2017. I figure we can drive to the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska, set up a tent, and get in some great viewing / photos. Even better will be the event on Monday, May 8, 2024 in which the path of totality includes my house.

Friday

I haven't been productive since about 2:00pm today; it's been a long week and I'm out of GAFF ("Give a Fark Factor"). We had our monthly cake today , but not after we resisted their feeble attempts to move the cake up to the third floor. Our company split has been finalized (their keys are deactivated after today), yet they still had the nerve to try and steal our sugary goodness. My cake, damnit ... it's a good thing I worked out this morning. Finally going to see HP5 tonight; better late than on DVD.