Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I finished a few books recently. Last week I was in Vegas and finshed Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. On the flight out I started Cadigan’s Tea from an Empty Cup and finished it a few days ago. Here are a couple brief reviews.
Pattern Recognition – William Gibson
I have enjoyed William Gibson’s books over the years, and this one is no exception. Those that are looking for hard sci-fi or futuristic cyberpunk will not find it here. This book takes place in the present day with today’s technology. Gibson is good about showcasing ideas and items that live below the radar of most people. For example, Gibson talks about mechanical calculators called Curtas.
I won’t go into the plot structure, you can read it on Amazon reviews. In the novel, Gibson explores the idea that everyone is searching for something. Be it an answer, love, or a mechanical calculator, each individual is looking for something special in life. Something that has importance to them, but not to others.
The book looks at how these individuals quests intertwine and work together. Gibson also shows how the new technologies available make the completion of such quest easier.
Technology does not change what people desire in life, it just changes how they go about reaching their goals.
If you are looking for a traditional ‘hero-wins-in-the-last-chapter-after-cheating-certain-death’ sci-fi novel, this ain’t for you. If you are interested in thinking about how technology adds or subtracts to the work of attaining happiness, this book is for you.
Tea from an Empty Cup – Pat Cadigan
This the first book of Pat Cadigan’s I’ve read. I can’t remember who or where I heard about it, but a good book.
The novel is set in a near future cyberpunk world where artifcial reality (AR) is commonplace and people regularly fall into lives in AR that are more compelling that lives in the real world. The technology is believeable with enough details to satisfy hard sci-fi readers without delving into textbookese.
Having enjoyed the proto-ARs that are online games, I was interested in seeing what Ms. Cadigan had to say about the future.
Similiar to Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, all the characters in the book are looking for something. The focus is on the role of artifical reality in these hunts. The vision is interesting, but in the end it is difficult to relate to reality.
The book is fun and enjoyable as a quick read, but for more heady cyberpunk, turn to Bruce Sterling.
Other Cruft
Yoshi pointed me to DanO’s post on Shadowbane & the Express Lane. Funny stuff. I’m with DanO. The Cash Only lane is for speed folks. I also hate those damn grobolds…
Martin’s been a crazy weblogger. On his 35th birthday, he blogged 35 times! Next, he wrote a scene from home, Hollywood style.
Go listen to Pat’s Music. The song, The Key, is good.
Blogsprogs is an interesting page about the experience of a few Dads raising their infants. Funny stuff since I’ve been through it.
Lastly, if you eat seven White Castle burgers for lunch, expect to burp them for the rest of the day. More on Cincinnati food later.

Before I headed off into the ether for the night I read mathowie’s post on usernames. Go read it, I’ll wait…
Now Matt is a smart guy with lots of whuffie and all that, but in this case he’s wrong.
Having usernames or as I like to call them noms de net is important to having well balanced interaction with people on the internet.
Many of the newer users of the net that think that weblog comments are the end-all of personal interactivity may think it’s fine to use real names on the net for everything, but it’s not. I think they simply don’t know any better. I view the people who use FirstLast for a username the same way I view people that have aol.com addresses on their business cards. The just aren’t operating on the same plane as me.
There are many ways for people to interact on the net and they each have different social dynamics. Gaming interactions and weblog interactions are two wildly different beasts. Chat rooms and message boards even have different mentalities.
While you cannot ever be completely anonymous, with a few simple clicks you can be fairly untraceable. With enough resources and time, any information can be gathered, but to most people the barrier is too high.
There are many times when anonymity is important. Log into a game of Quake or Counterstrike with your real name, do some serious damage to people and sure enough you have hate mail in our inbox before you quit the game.
Consider games like Everquest or Ultima Online, where much of the politics of the game takes place on message boards. Use your real name there and people will be calling you on the phone complaining about why you PKed them in the game.
Interested in some ‘alternate lifestyle’? Are you going to use your real name?
Chatting in IRC with a bunch of strangers? Are you going to use your real name?
Yes, people could try to track you down, looking for connections, but they don’t in most cases.
I’m sure you all could track down my two main nom de nets in a few seconds, but there are several names I use that no one but my wife knows. Hell, I’ve got websites that none of you even know exist. Any you can’t even find them due to the way I’ve registered them. You can’t google up a connection, believe me, I’ve checked.
Anonymity has it’s place on the net.
People want to be something other than they are in real life on the net. How can I be the valiant swordsman online in a game and be named MichaelPusateri? The net for a large part is about fantasy. They fantasy of being an expert, the fantasy of being a sexpot, the fantasy of being anything but yourself.
To give in to the flavor of the of hour and use FirstLast as your username is dull, boring, and quite mundane.
Have some fucking style. Have a damn story about your name. Disconnect, just a little bit, from the real world and live a little.

The rain came to Cincinnati today. It’s not too cold and a bit refreshing.
The new RAM for the laptop arrived yesterday and the extra 512 MB does make a difference. I need to try Shadowbane to give it a real test.
We had Passover Seder yesterday night and it went smoothly. While I’m not a very religious person, it did help me remember to keep some perspective on what’s going on in the world today. People have suffered under tyranny for hundreds and thousands of years at a time. It clear that you cannot break the hope in people for a better life even under the most terrible circumstances.
I thought while I’m vacation, I’d be blogging more, but I’m just not in that groove today. Later

I’ve been playing with Trepia a bit. The Trepia software is used as an imprompto instant messaging system based on people near your real physical location.
The Trepia software works with wifi to send out a signal that other Trepia users can pick up. If two Trepia users are near each other, a message will pop up telling them that someone is close by. They can then exchange IMs back and forth. I think it will be fun to try this at a larger geek gathering where there are several wifi users willing to play around.
There’s only a Windows client at this time. I asked where the Mac & linux clients were and the CEO told me they were coming in the future once the Windows version takes off.
Cool stuff if you ask me.

It’s the evening here in Cincinatti and hopefully I can catch up on a few things.
NCAA/DVDs
Thanks to Kansas I ended up winning the fraternity NCAA Tourney pool. The prize for winning was a DVD from each of the others in the pool. Here are my choices:
For the kids:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
For Martin who told me to choose Kansas:
The Killers (w/ Lee Marvin)
For Michele
Royal Tenebaums
The Transporter
Big Fat Greek Wedding
The Firm
For me:
Stripes
The Waterboy
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Apocalypse Now Redux
Blazing Saddles
Amazing Grandmother Tricks
When we arrived here, Michele’s grandmother was sleeping. She’s 88 and had traveled from Philly the day before. Michele’s dad, Steve, had flown out before and travelled with her back to Cincy. For her, this was very tiring. So on Saturday, around 4 PM, she went to sleep. We arrived to the house after 4 PM on Sunday.
About 5 PM, the girls woke up Bubba (grandmom). She had slept for 25 straight hours. A full day.
IMHO, this is a remarkable achievement. No matter how hard I try, the most I’ve ever been able to sleep is a little over 12 hours. I wonder how long she trained to be able to sleep 24 hours?
This morning she woke up around 9AM and had some tea and breakfast. She headed back to bed around 11AM, but was up and dressed again by 3PM. After dinner at 6:30PM she went back to bed. Around 10 PM she talked to Michele for about an hour. Now she’s in bed again.
Amazing!
Weblogs
I met Grif at SXSW. We are both GenX geeks with kids and careers that attempt to remain cool in the face of approaching our 40s. He is coller than me. He is starting a counter meme.

Alan is happy to have a Tivo. Chalk one more up for the converted.
Yoshi has finally got his weblog groove on. Go visit him and ask him why the site must be black.
After a three month hiatus, Trikster posted. Fargin slacker…
Lastly Mrs. Diggs details the pre-trip birthday party. Unfortunately, that evening I had a gut-wrenching experience. The next morning, Michele was the one feeling ill. I blame the Mrs. Diggs personally!
Gaming
I got Shadowbane working on the laptop. It’s slow, but I was able to level yesterday. Woot. I’m hoping that the 512MB RAM arriving on Wednesday will help.
Music
The Flaming Lips rock. Go listen to their music, immediately!
It’s 1AM here now. I’m sleepy. G’night.

I’m in Cincy. The laptop is running well, even with Shadowbane. 🙂
Now I head out to get a bottle of scotch with my father-in-law. Life is tough.

After work today, I went to my parents house. The kids were on their last day of official spring break and they spent it with their grandparents.
When I arrived, I found that my Dad was having problems getting connected to the internet. I assumed that it was a simple thing. I sat down and started to poke around. The computer reacted slow and I had trouble bringing up windows. My dad pointed to the DSL modem at the flashing lights and said, “When it does that, nothing works.” The flashing lights are the activity lights.
I called up the network interface and saw no packet coming down and tons going out. It looked like 2 megs a second blasting out. What the hell, I thought. I called up the task manager, and after a long wait, it opened. I looked at the processes and was suprised to see ‘sqlserver.exe’ running at 90+ percent CPU usage.
SQL on my fathers computer? How can this be?
I aked him why he had SQL on his computer. He told me it was for some sales software he had for his company. It couldn’t be what I thought it was.
I ended the sqlserver process. The lights stopped flashing. The computer became responsive. I could connect to the net.
Could my father really have the Sapphire/Slammer worm? Looks like it.
I downloaded the Microsoft Slammer Patch Utility, and sure enough his system was wide open to the worm. I ran the utility and rebooted again. Everything seemed fixed.
One of these days, a virus or worm is going to hit the net that does some real damage and individuals will really get hurt. Consider that two and a half months after the Sapphire worm hit the net, packets are still travelling around in significant quanities that it found my father computer.
OS and software manufacturers are going to have to step up to the plate here. Windows Update didn’t patch his computer. Norton anti-virus didn’t protect his computer. All software is going to need updating of problems built-in.

I have returned home from Las Vegas. I was hoping I’d have the energy for a nice entry, but I’m running on empty. I only have enough for a quick one.
Phone rings
Every cell phone out there has a vibrate or silent mode. Every one.
Why don’t people use the silent mode? While I agree that some of the phone rings are neat, most of them are simply annoying.
I was in a number of meetings this week and in the middle of almost every one, a phone would go off with some song. Switch your damn phone into silent mode or turn it off during meetings!
OK, I need to go get some rest.

Lack of posts lately, I’m in Las Vegas for the NAB convention. Not a lot of time to blog here.
A few quick tips if you come to NAB.
1) Bring lip balm
2) Never allow yourself to be pulled into a meeting in a room on the floor
3) Drink a glass of water for every glass of booze
4) Flash your business card and continue walking into the parties, don’t wait for them to check your name
5) If you like cookies, take the whole tray to the table
Time for breakfast. More when I have time.

After a week of meetings and work I finally have a day to rest before launching off again. Next week, I’ll be in Las Vegas for the NAB convention. I’ve been going since 1990, only missing two years, so this will be my 11th trip to NAB. Nevertheless, I am still a bit excited. The changes in technology and inside Disney promise to make for interesting times ahead.
At the office, I was in a meeting with Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems. He said a lot of interesting stuff. He’s definitely not afraid to think differently. He did make an good point. He said that companies shouldn’t use open source software directly. He means you shouldn’t download source and compile it yourself. Let others handle it for you. Why have a linux kernel expert on staff when you can pay for the expertise instead? The advantage to the company is that the price charged for software with equivalent open source software can never get too high. If Sun was to charge too much for StarOffice, a company could easily switch to OpenOffice. You get the benefit of price control without the headache of software management. It’s a very valid point for larger businesses.
Gaming
I’ve been playing Shadowbane and even got into the beta for Planetside. I don’t have time to go into the details, but I will later.
Weblogs
I’ve been a little out of the loop this week. Between no time at work for surfing and all the tech troubles at home, my blogrolling page is scrolling by unmonitored. I’ll catch up, but I think I’d rather spend time with my daughters than reading weblogs for a bit.
Later.