Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Many weblogs dwell on the inner thoughts and feelings of individuals, allowing readers a glimpse into the psyche of the writer as they move through life. Cruft has never really been a place to talk about my life in such personal terms, mainly a place for Cruft Labs research and other whimsical thoughts. Prepare yourself for something just a little different here.
Today I write about a significant personal transformation for myself. I’ve had this issue for years but few knew about it. Only those deep into the subculture could relate to my dilemma. Even my wife was unaware of what was going on. Recently, I’ve taken the tough steps to rectify the situation and approach normalcy.
Please don’t be shocked by what I reveal here, though it may make some of you queasy.
Enough of the preamble, onto the story. It’s been a tough three weeks for me, but I’m past the worst of it now.
I’m sure surprising to many, I broke my habit of using ‘ASDX’ for movement in games and finally switched to ‘WASD’.
Yes, I can admit it freely now that I used ‘ASDX’ for movement in video games for well over five years.

For those not deep into the video game subculture, most people use the traditional ‘WASD’ to move around.

For some reason, lost in my troubled past, I began using ‘ASDX’ instead. Oh the trouble it caused…
Imagine my shame at going to E3 and not being about to pwn newbs since the ‘WASD’ default setting was in place on every game. Sneakily, I would reassign the controls and hope no one would notice my ‘problem’. I mentioned it casually to a few co-workers, hoping someone would help and see my pain, but all I got was rolled eyes and few ‘Dude, that’s just wrong.’ comments. At home, my daughters would ask about the keys and I would lie and say, “That’s simply the way it is…”
Recovery
A little over three weeks ago, a corrupted Windows registry led to me deciding to do a clean install of Windows on my desktop. As a result, I had to reinstall my games. I loaded Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft and was ready to play. It was at this point I mustered all my courage and refused to change the key bindings. Oh, the horror of getting pwned over and over and my fingers tried to learn how to move again. Time and time again, I’d futilely hit the Q and E while getting mowed down. I really wanted to give up and give into the call of ‘ASDX’. Instead, I drank a nice glass of scotch to steel my nerves and continued to endure the pain of ‘WASD’.
Steadily I kept at it until my very muscles relearned their tasks and I began to pwn again.
Today I feel much more comfortable with my new habits and no longer want to give up and go back to ‘ASDX’. To anyone that is trapped in the world of ‘ASDX’, I can offer hope that you too can get through your issues and find some peace in ‘WASD’.
Thanks to you Loyal Cruft Readers for your support as I continue through this significant personal transformation.

There is a bit of dispute as to whether a headshot kills a zombie or not.
Please take the poll: Do headshots kill zombies?
Comment as to your reasoning. Linkage to proof is encouraged.
Results can be seen here.

I have been watching several podcasts, including Ctrl-Alt-Chicken. Recently they did a short segment on making Cheese Pie. Go ahead and watch it. This entry won’t make a ton of sense if you don’t watch it first.
The girls love cheese, so I thought it might be fun to make the Cheese Pie per the Ctrl-Alt-Chicken recipe.
Enjoy the first episode of Control-Alt-Children:

And yes, our video camera really did break during filming. I think the CCD itself blew…

From time to time, the blogging here at Ye Olde Cruftbox gets sparse. I tend not to want to post what-I-had-for-lunch entries just to fill space.
Between my expanded role at work and the start of school for the kids, my energy can get used up well before I have a chance to do quality blogging, TV watching, or even video gaming. For the last month or so, I’ve even stopped playing Warcraft since it takes up more effort and energy than I’m willing to spare.
Lucky for me, my work does not run at internet speed (for the most part) and when I start to burn out, I can slow down and reenergize. I won’t be an internet billionaire, but at least I won’t have a heart attack.
A lot of friends DO run their lives at internet speed. Constantly multi-tasking. Constantly scanning the web. Constantly reading syndication feeds ’cause the web is just too slow. Constantly updating dozens of sites.
I understand the feelings. You want to keep people entertained, even at the expense of entertaining yourself. When I find myself racking my head to come up with something to blog about, that is the time NOT to be blogging.
Actually, I’m glad to see that Jason realizes that you can’t live this way indefinitely. Jason’s taking a break for the blogging grind to find himself a little sanity. I wish more people on the A, B, C, and Z-list blogs would see the same thing and step off the merry-go-round and recharge. The bloggers might not see it when they lose the passion, but their readers do.
Props to Jason. Of course, it may just be a ploy for him to have more time to prepare for the Burning Crusades expansion in World of Warcraft…
And now for a drawing of my lunch today at Famima !!

I finally put my Pluto Protest video up on Revver.

Pretty cool that Revver will host the video for me and if enough people watch it, I can actually make money.
Update: Revver died. So I re-uploaded the video to Vimeo.

Bacon is favorite in Cruft Manor. Typically, bacon is cooked in the microwave here. It is quite a production with separating the strips on a plate and careful placement.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Infected, and Martin, Joey, and the Gator were discussing how to cook bacon. Gator suggested that you cook bacon “like a man” and toss the slab in without separating anything.
Now Gator ain’t a man to steer me wrong, so I gave it a try.

I tossed about a quater of the slab in the pan. The pan was nice and hot.

Sure enough, the bottom slice started to cook and it peeled off the slab quite easily. I simply moved the slab off with no trouble and the bacon continued to cook.

Quite rapidly, the bottom slices each began to cook and shrink down, peeling themselves off the slab. It was trivial to seperate them now.

The bacon cooked up just great. I cooked a second slab to test again with the same results.

Of course the final test was if the girls liked it. As you can see, they both rated Gator’s bacon cooking method and superb.

So the next time to cook bacon, cook it “like a man” and just toss that slab in.

We here at Cruft Manor do not do triathlons. We engage in huge amounts of mental exercise to compensate.
But my co-worker, Mr. P., is participating in a triathlon for charity tomorrow. Please consider being an Athletic Supporter and donating to Mr. P as he does a half-mile swim in the Pacific Ocean, 18-mile bike ride along the Pacific Coast Highway, and 4-mile beachside run for your donation.
The money goes to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS. So please, toss a few $ to Mr. P’s effort.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat with a few of my colleagues in Amsterdam and we discussed what Apple was going to announce today. I wrote down our guesses and emailed them out to timestamp them.

Cxxxxx: New service that integrates movie rental/download with Front Row. Possible rebranding of iTunes into Showtime. Launch of a new iPod video with touchscreen. Steve Jobs is leaving the company. Lion King & Pearl Harbor on the iPod
Dxxxxx: New iPod with wifi access. Movies on iPod. New DRM.
Michael: Movies on iTunes. Airport for video that uses wifi to move video to near the TV.

I do believe that I made the most correct prediction.
For those so unlucky as to work with me, I have been predicting (ranting some might say) this type of move from Apple as opposed to the computer centric “home theater PC” mindset. The idea to place a fully fledged computer next to your TV. As someone that runs multiple computers in the house and has their media on a server, this is the last thing I want. Heat, sound, cable, and simply a place to put it make the HTPC a bad idea.
Microsoft tried some thing kind of like this with Windows Media Center PC but got caught up in their own rules. If you had a Media Center PC, there were extenders that allowed you do basically do what iTV will do. The problem is that Microsoft made it extremely hard to actually use Media Center Edition. Basically you had to buy a whole new computer to get the software. There are ways to get the software now without a new computer, but it’s far from easy.
Apple got two things right that Microsoft got wrong. First, they give away iTunes for free on both Mac and Windows. Microsoft, best case, will sell you the software for $109 for Windows only. Second, Apple had the content people wanted ready to go. Microsoft did not.
Let’s compare the score cards:
Apple – Free software for Mac & PC, online media store with music, television, and movies
Windows – $109 software for PC only, online media store with music
If Microsoft really wants to compete when Zune (their supposed iPod killer) is released, they should included the features of Media Center into Windows Media Player and release a Mac version of Windows Media Player and allow Zune, Media Center Extenders, and Xbox 360s to attach to it. That would level the playing field. I doubt that Microsoft will do this since they specialize in doing things only halfway right.
Apple is willing to fulling commit to new ideas and take on the risk of walking away from their existing safety zone. Microsoft has not been willing to do this. The biggest change they have made since releasing XP is to launch the Xbox. They have done a great job, but they seem to lack the will to really go in for the kill and make the Xbox the dominant machine in the home. Their focus on PCs running Windows in the home is keeping them from achieving the larger goal of Microsoft in the home.
This is the key point Apple gets and Microsoft misses.
Look, I like Microsoft and think they have some of the brighest people in the industry. But they really need to take the gloves off and let their product people stretch the limits, even if it changes some of their core focus on selling copies of the OS. The fact that they are walking away from the Mac is silly. They should be embracing the new Mac line with a version of Windows specifically for the Intel Mac. Windows Media Player should be just as available and useful on a Mac as on a PC.
Best case scenario, a media war between Apple and Microsoft for the living room with escalating volleys of neat new technologies. In that case, the consumer wins.

I’m sitting in Frankfurt Airport on my way home from Amsterdam. After landing in Frankfurt, I went through Passport Control and then had to go through another security checkpoint.
This checkpoint was serious.
I was told to remove everything from my pockets, including wallet, passport, everything. Case, computer, and my shoes also went through the x-ray. I was then hand searched instead of going through a metal detector. In fact, there were no metal detectors at all. Everyone was hand searched. The hand search was extremely thorough. I’ve been searched by the police before, and this was even more complete than that. They checked everywhere including inside my belt and the soles of my feet. Most of the time I feel it would be trivial to slip something by security, but not this time.
Once that was complete, they went through my bags and found a small bottle of saline and another of eye drops. Both are OK to travel with, but they made me squirt them on my hand to show them what they looked like.
After finding the liquides, they then pulled out all my electronic gear to look at closely. Power supplly, cables, etc. It all came out for inspection. Next, the pulled my mobile phone out and walked over to the explosives detector. They swabbed down the phone to check for any explosives.
Only after that exhaustive search was I allowed to proceed to my plane. Remember, this is after my first security screening in Amsterdam. Also, everyone was was undergoing the same process.
Usually I feel that airport security is more theater than actual security, but not so today. The security at Frankfurt Airport was rigorous and yet the staff carried thing sout pleasantly, explaining to me everything as it happened.
When I think about the airport security in the US, it seems almost childlike in compairison.
OK, time to go catch my plane.