Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Tomorrow, Michele and I are taking a belated Anniversary trip to San Diego. My parents are watching the kids. Traveling together is always a good time.
Gaming
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released this week. It’s a completely FREE multiplayer game based on RtCW with several great additions.
Play it. It rocks. There are both linux and Windows versions available.
The inclusion of the XP system is an interesting move forward in the FPS world. I think this is going to be big. It’s free and it’s good. WHo can ask for more?
To download it I used a BitTorrent link. BitTorrent is a method of filesharing focused on distributed transfer of files in a very smart way. When you start downloading, you instantly become an uploader as well. I was getting around 125kB/s on a 250+ MB file.
Maybe I could find a way to use it at work.
OK, time to go play games.

Time for a ten minute break from working 04 budgets and media technology. Let’s see how much I can write.
This morning I went to Zoe’s school assembly and got to see all the kids dance in various ways. There was marching, a maypole, and Zoe’s class did the mexican hat dance. Michele stayed up last night sewing a special Mexican style skirt for Zoe to wear. The children were very cute and earnest in their presentation. I’ll post pictures later.
Ghyslain
Over at Jish’s site the story about Ghyslain, the Star Wars dancing French-Canadian kid, continues. It seems his lawyer is making noises about suing the kids that uploaded the original video. I’m kinda torn. I still feel good about donating money to the kid, but the idea of suing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I see both sides and it’s not easy to be judgemental.
Notes in a special place
Over at Ultramicroscopic I saw a link to this page about leaving messages on the toliet paper. Hi-larious. I need to do some of this around the office.
OK, ten minutes are up. The link cut & paste takes time. Tonight I’ll post about the Enemy Territory release.

The heat is finally beginning to arrive in Southern California. It’s 9PM and the temp is still in the high 70s inside, even with the air conditioning on. Once the long summer starts, the heat will be a daily battle. I need to install that attic fan ASAP.
I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately. Too much of everything and too little rest. Add to the fact that I’m off of caffiene and I’m dragging. People at work told me I’m looking ragged. It’s mostly my eyes, but I need some rest.
Amazingly, the Planetside servers went down tonight for some emergency patch or what not. I’m playing that game way too much. It’s great, but I need to rest first.
Blogging
I’ve been reading a bunch, but not linking much.
My mother posted a great item on Memorial Day. You should take a look.
She’s using Blogger which I have determined is the suck. Props to the Blogger crew for being innovative, but the archives, tag systems, and lack of flexibility is a problem. I need to convince my Mom to move to Movable Type. MT would solve her issues about wanting to upload and post photos. Blogger just doens’t handle it. Where’s Typepad when I need it?
I hope the learning curve isn’t too steep. Matt’s against it, but agrees that Blogger is a pain in the ass.
I’ve been doing some thinking about reputation system for the net, but I haven’t written them up yet. Soon.
Martins’ Computer
Update on Martin’s hard drive: I prepped a backup drive for him and had him install it. No worky says Martin. I think the computer is toast. I’m guessing a mobo/processor upgrade would fix it up, the OCed Celeron 533A is probably giving up the ghost.
He told me to forget it. When they get to Kansas he’s buying a new computer. He’s going to buy a Mac. Et tu Martin?
Alright, about 30 minutes until I head to bed. TIme to go see if the Planetside servers are up.

I messed with the hard drive for a few more hours. It’s gone sour. No matter how I try to format it, it fails. The software says it’s gone bad.
I go to Western Digital’s site to check the warranty. The warranty ran out on May 24th. Yesterday….
Damn.

Martin’s computer broke.
The computer is a hodge podge of parts going back to ’97 and an old e-Machines box they had. I’ve been the tech support for a while and been able to keep their PC running most of the time.
Recently Martin had problems and it looked like it was time for a reinstall of WinXP. The computer wouldn’t boot correctly and I was hoping the reinstall would fix things up. It did not.
I took a look at the computer first hand today and could get nowhere. The hard drive looked unresponsive. The hard drive home came home with me so I could look at it with a couple other tools.
After bolting it into one of my systems, I saw that the drive was a bit fubarred. Partition Magic kept finding read errors and was unable to even diagnose the problem exactly.
I called Martin and told him the drive looked like the data was not salvageable. He said to go ahead and do a clean install. Even with his go ahead, I tried for another 90 minutes to find a way to save the drive. No dice. It’s hosed.
As I type, the drive is reformatting for a fresh install. I only hope the problem is fixed with a reformat and it’s not the drive going bad…

It’s Sunday and again we are not doing much. I edged, trimmed, mowed the lawn and Michele took the kids to Target for a new mop. I asked the girls if they wanted to go to the play, but they didn’t want to go. We didn’t go yesterday and I was hoping we would get a chance today. No luck.
Mira wanted to play with her new Barbie and Zoe wanted to play her new Pacman videogame.
Zoe has made a clubhouse in the girls room. Here is the sign on the door.

“What is password? Roll the dice!”
If you knew the password, you could gain entrance. Inside you would find this scene.

(clockwise from the left) Kleenex, stuffed animals, books, pillow, makeup head, blanket, rock collection, money stash
Once inside, you were invited to roll the dice. No matter the outcome of the dice, you ‘won’ a hug or kiss.
Good times.
Planetside
I stayed up way, way too late last night playing Planetside. On a trip to Fry’s yesterday, I broke down a bought the Prima Guide to Planetside. Some good info, but I long for a few more details.
This could be my new game that takes hold of me. It has the community that’s fun, but lacks the drama++ that takes over other RP style games. The mission is clear, kill the enemy, kill them all.
Books
I finished the Tranquility Alternative yestday while Zoe was in the bath. I sit in the bathroom while htey bathe reading a book most nights. The ending was OK, but I wished for a little more heroic ending than simply being told that that the CIA had wrapped everything up without any details.
The ideas about an alternative space program were interesting. The path the military would take if running the space program as a defense system as opposed as a pure exploration system. I don’t know what it will take for America to get reinvigorated by the space program. Perhaps it will be the Chinese attempts to reach the moon. I can only hope we get a President with a bit of vision for the future that understands the value of moving forward into space.

In my girl’s minds, the week is divided into school days and home days. Today is a home day. I plan on a quiet morning and am going to take the girls to a play of the 3 Little Pigs this afternoon.
Planetside
The last two days I’ve played Planetside. It’s damn good. They’ve taken the best of Tribes converted it to a MMOAG (massively multiplayer online action game). There’s no role play, just combat.
The experience you gain helps you raise your certifications and gain access to more and more hardware. The skills go in a few different routes. You can rais eup on vehicles or armaments or on utiltiy hardware like hacking and repair tools.
There’s not big delay on getting to a fight. There’s an Instant Action button that takes you directly to a combat zone to reinforce the people already fighting. The actual fighting is good, but not great. It allows for traditional FPS skills, but lacks the fluidity of Quake and UT. Lag does not appear to be an issue. I see occasional lag burst while running from once place to another, but never in combat.
I think I’m hooked.
Pinging
Once again I’m going ask those people that read Cruft to make sure that they ping weblogs.com or blo.gs or blogrolling whe they update their own weblogs. Yes, I’m taking about you Keith, Yoshi, and Travis.
Reading
I’ve been reading The Tranquility Alternative by Alan Steele, which I found on sale at a bookstore in Burbank. Good so far, but predictable. I’m sure there’s a few twists coming, but I’m on the scent of what’s going to happen.
I subscribed to Asimov’s Science Fiction, the pulp style sci-fi magazine. Amazingly, the latest issue has a story by John Varley, one of my favorite authors.
E3
I still haven’t finished the pictures from E3 yet. Too much gaming. I hope to finish it today and post ’em.

Over at Metafilter is more fun with the button stuff. Tay McKnight’s page is mentioned and there is a link to the Kalsey Auto-magic Button Generator-matic. The Generator is extremely fun.
You can make things like this very easily.
Enjoy.

Tonight instead of putting my girls to bed and goofing off, I went to a City Council Meeting.
In South Pasadena, my town, we have a law that prohibits parking from 2AM to 6AM without a permit. Many towns have the same thing. In the past, it was simple for me to get a permit. In 2001, they changed the conditions to get a permit, and I started getting denied. It sucked.
I got a letter from the Police Department telling that the Overnight Parking Ordinance would be discussed at tonight’s council meeting. Michele and I agree that I should go. Those that know me can attest that I can be somewhat of a bulldog in discussions and arguements.
The meeting started at 7:30PM. The part I was interested in was #20 on the agenda. Yuck. I had to sit through quite a bit of business.
The first big deal was the ‘tree crisis’. Evidently at my daughter’s school, there are two trees that an arborist determined should come down ASAP. A second arborist agreed. Simple eh? Not so. THe Board of Education and the City Council came into conflict over the tree issue. If the BoE cut down the trees without consulting the Natural Resources Committee of the Council, there was going to be hell to pay.
The plan was to cut down the tree this Saturday as long as the Planning Commission agreed. At somepoint the Council got so frothed up over the issue they were discussing whether the threat was some dangerous that we ought all run over to the school with chain saws right now so that we wouldn’t have to wait until Saturday. The City Manager, the sanest of the bunch said, “I think the trees have another 24 hours in them.” I see the trees every day. We probably have 5 years before they posed a danger.
After the tree crisis, we moved onto the dramatic issue of filming on Hanscomb. They filmed a movie scene up there and parked two trucks near the filming. A guy who lives on the street, Dr. Yet, was very, very upset.
He did a lot of stomping and blustering. The City Staff knew he was going to through a hissy fit and had all their rebuttals lined up. Dr. Yet was not happy. No matter what they said he got redder and redder in the face. Anger++
Next a guy sat down in front of me with a laptop. He turned it on and linux popped up. No Gnome of KDE for this guy, looked like oldschool window managers for him. I’m wondering what he’s doing and I see him bring up EMACS. EMACS? He then proceed to start fixing code. He did this for two hours while the meeting rolled on. Now I can see taking a laptop to surf or blog in the meeting to kill time, but coding? Wierd.
Finally we got to the parking issue. There were about 10 people asking for changes so they could get permits and 3 people asking for no change so the ‘aesthetics’ would be preserved. I said my peace and sat down waiting to see what they would do.
After much blustering about why change was bad, one councilman presented a compromise plan to allow each household a minimum of one parking permit. More wrangling and talk of garages, bad neighbors, and who’s awake at 2-6AM.
Finally at 11:30PM, FOUR HOURS after the meeting started, the council voted 3 to 2 to modify the ordinance to the compromise. Victory.
You can fight City Hall.

On the way back from lunch the other day we were discussing places to get coffee. The place we had just been, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, had refreshingly clear names for things like Small, Medium, and Large for sizes.
We soon launched into assigning geekness to coffee places. Here’s what we came up with.
Starbucks is Windows
Peets is Mac OS
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is Linux
Doughnut shops & gas stations are DOS
Work coffee is AS400 mainframe
Wrong? Right? Better suggestions?