Not for Children

There has been some debate in Cruft Manor about the appropriateness of Adult Swim cartoons for the girls. For a while we were watching Futurama, but now it is once again disallowed.
Tonight Zoe and I watched the end of a show around 9PM when the following scene took place:


DAD hits guide on remote, sees Aqua Teen Hunger Force on and switches to it,
hoping to see the talking french fries, ’cause talking french fries are funny.


ANNOUNCER
… and let’s seen what happens when we blow this nun’s brains out with a shotgun …


DAD switches the channel before the shotgun fires.


DAD
Um, I guess that Adult Swim really isn’t for kids…


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha! They said “blow this nun’s brains out”! Ha-ha-ha-ha!


DAD
Your mother is going to be so mad at me.


ZOE runs to find MOTHER.


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha! They said “blow this nun’s brains out”! Ha-ha-ha-ha!


DAD
(attempting not to laugh)
Ha-ha-ha-ha!


ZOE
Ha-ha-ha-ha!


MOTHER shoots flames from her eyes at DAD.

Lesson: Do not switch to Adult Swim while children are present.


No excuses

Some may have noticed that I have not been updating my blog reguarly. This is mainly because I have not been updating my blog regularly. No excuses, I’ve simply not been doing it.
In the latest round of ego boosting into the stratosphere, I’m quoted in Information Week blathering on about RSS and all the hard work other people did at the office that I get to take credit for. There’s even a picture of me looking serious with baggy eyes. I guess I need some sleep.
Here are few sites to read that will keep you entertained. Go, read them, blogroll them, and leave some comments, my faithful droogies.
My old friend from high school, Kirill is blogging away now. Kirill is the smartest person I’ve ever met. Through high school and college we were as tight as brothers. We’ve drifted apart over the years, but I’m happy to see he’s doing well and already retired before forty.
My co-workers Mister P. and Travis have also been posting regularly. Do be sure to check out Mister P.’s site Neoprene Wedgie about his preparation for a triathlon.
Even my friend Paul has posted a bit on his site about Terrible News.
Scott “Lum the Mad” Jennings always keeps me entertained over at Broken Toys.

Camping with pyros

Back in the days before children, Michele and I used to go camping. In fact, we got engaged on a camping trip up through Big Sur.
For whatever reason, laziness or busy-ness, we hadn’t taken the girls camping. So last weekend I took the girls up to Millard Canyon in the local hills for their first outing. I had picked up a new huge tent and a pair of air mattresses to make things a little less spartan than my old two man tent and 15 year old foam pads.
Once we arrived in camp, the girls were excited and ready to begin. They were intrigued by the campfire ring and wanted to play with the fire. They gathered a few twigs and tossed them in. Shrieks of glee filled the campground as the tinder ignited. Soon they were tossing everything not bolted down into the fire ring.


The camp host Lonny showed them a pile of old lumber that he said they could burn and they went to town, hauling and burning. Poking and prodding at the fire, they were grinning ear to ear. Of course, they burned themselves with hot poking sticks, as all children do, much to my chagrin.
They started to clamor for the marshmellows to roast. I threw a few clean burning logs in and soon set them up to cook a traditional S’more.
Giggling like the schoolgirls they are, they roasted the marshmellows while I prepared the chocolate and graham crackers. Soon enough they were chowing down on S’mores.
On the second batch, I was able to snap this quick photo before they wolfed it down.

Throughout the trip, the girls were enthralled with the fire. “Daddy, can we feed the fire?” was the most oft heard phrase of the day. Once they realized they could burn the baby wipes I brough to keep them clean, they became the most hygenic children around constantly finding excuses to wipe up and toss it into the fire.
True pyromaniacs to the core. They are truly my daughters to have such fire loving genes in their DNA.
When I asked the girls what we should on our next camping trip, their answer was, “more wood”.

Newegg Lanfest 2K5 ftw !!!1!!1

I went to the Newegg Lanfest yesterday at the Pasadena Convention Center. It was mainlining PC gaming direct to the brain, and not for the faint of heart. BTW, the acronym ‘ftw’ stands for the gaming term ‘for the win’, denoting something that leads to success.
There were three main parts of the Lanfest. First was the trade show of probably 20+ vendors of high level PC hardware. There are some truly impressive monitors out there if you are willing to part with the cash. The high end LCD screens are truly fantastic. The vendors helped contribute to the gooie bag given away to each attendee. Full of swag, and even including a t-shirt, the goodie bag was instantly put to use by the gamers.
Second was the Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) area, where you can bring your gaming rig from home and match it your skills against others in the room. At the Lanfest, there was room for over 400 BYOC computers. When I sat down at 4PM on Saturday, it was hard to find an empty seat.


The third major part was the tournaments. Newegg was giving away over $70,000 in cash and hardware to the winners. The tourneys were run on the hardware provided by Newegg to ensure that everyone had a level playing field when it came to the computers and made sure that skill was the deciding factor.
People are damn serious about these tourneys. Teams compete in most of the tourneys and they had practiced a lot for this. I heard several heated discussions aobut performance by teams that were sitting next to me in the BYOC area.
The tourneys even had their own play-by-play provided by Inside the Game. To a gamer like me, this is just as compelling as any other sport on TV.
Turning to my experience, I had a good time, but the next Lanfest I go to, I’d like to go with friends. I did talk to many people, but it would have been nice to have a few buddies around to eat with and watch my gear when I wandered around.
I arrived at around 4PM and setup my computer. The Lanfest goes all night, so I told Michele I didn’t know when I’d be home. I started gaming with Call of Duty, just to see what it was like. It was pretty much like playing on a public server, with uber-chaos in Deathmatch.
After about a half hour, I moved over to Battlefield 2 and had a good time. People were using a little voice communications, but for the most part it felt like a very speedy public server with minimal coordination. The lack of coordination could be frustrating if the other team got a hold of most of the aircraft and rained down destruction.
In the evening, Newegg brought in pizza for everyone and it was all-you-can-eat. Watching hungry gamers wolf down free pizza is not a pretty sight. Also, thoughout the night, Newegg had scantily clad young women doing give aways of free stuff based on your wristband number. They must have given away a hundred different items. I didn’t win, 🙁 .
Around 2AM, I realized that I had been gaming for ten hours straight and was having trouble staying alert, as I nodded off while waiting to respawn. I decided to go home. I packed up my stuff, made my way through the three levels of security that made sure I was only taking my stuff.
Overall, a good time, but would have been better with a friends to squad up with. Newegg did a great job in pulling this thing off and it was well worth the entry fee.

Lanfest in LA

I’m planning to attend the Newegg LanFest 2k5 this weekend.
It looks like a lot for fun with a Bring Your Own Computer section of over 400 seats for gaming. With Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty being played, I’ll be in heaven.
So if you are a gamer, maybe I’ll see you at the Lanfest this weekend.

Pure Pwnage

Being a Pro Gamer (like me) means that I’m always up on the latest stuff on the intraweb.
Previously I have mentioned my love of Xfire, the gaming IM client. Recently, they added a downloading feature to auto-download movies and other large files. Since I’m Pro, I download the good WoW & FPS movies and watch them regularly.
The Xfire crew recently added the Pure Pwnage movies, and they OWN. Pure Pwnage is the story of Jeremy, a Pro, and his brother Kyle, a noob. Kyle like works the camera and stuff and Jeremy just basically owns noobs all the time.
Pro recommendations:
If you are an all-around Pro (like me), then start at Episode 1
If you are Pro in FPS, then start at Episode 5 (BOOM! Headshot!)
If you are Pro in WoW, then start at Episode 6
Go NOW and download the episodes at Pure Pwnage.
If you don’t play games (that means you Mom), this will be incomprehensible stuff. Mainly because you are a noob and don’t understand the joy of owning.
Seriously Mom, don’t download these movies. It will take way to long for me to explain it to you.

Chocolicious Wonkacakes

Loyal Cruft readers, I am quite vexed with you. It was only this Saturday that I stumbled across Chocolicious Wonkacakes at our local 7-Eleven. After reading my previous treatise on Sno-Balls, and knowing my love of gaily colored treats, not one of you had the decency to inform me that such a tasty new Wonka treat was on the market.
Note the freshness date is about to expire any day now. Had I not found the Wonkacakes, they might have been whisked off the shelves without any testing being possible.
Have no fear, I have done my research and can present the secrets of the Chocolicious Wonkacakes.


You simply can’t resist this packaging. I mean really, if it’s got Johnny Depp’s face on it, you have to buy it.

Looks like the standard Hostess cupcake except in purple and orange. The flavor was not different that standard chocolate & white frosting. I was eager to taste some unique Wokna flavor like a Snozzberry, but no such luck.

The true beauty of the Wonkacake is revealed once inside. Yes, a purple creme filling is at the heart of the Wonkacake. Once again, I hoped for a delightful new Wonka taste and strained my tastebuds for even a hint of berry. Alas, it tastes like the standard white creme filling.
You don’t think that Hostess is simply using the same recipe as their normal chocolate cupcake and only changing the food dye color? Naw…

A year with Prius

I recieved the new car registration sticker for the Prius this week. Hard to believe it’s been a full year since I first drove the Prius.


After 14,000 miles and a year of driving the car around town, to and from work, and several long road trips, I have to say it’s the best car I’ve ever driven. My Saturn, the first new car I ever had, still remains close to my heart from all the memories, but the Prius is a superior driving machine.
While the whole electric hybrid car is the first thing people think about when considering a Prius, I kinda forget about it most of the time. After spending the first few weeks watching the Info screen with the charging and mileage info, it got boring and I stopped doing. After Michele had the Prius up at 105 MPH on the I-5 with plenty left in the motor, I stopped thinking about performance.
For those that do concern themselves about mileage, I get 44 MPG pretty consistently. Yes, I know people can get 60+ out of a Prius, but I’m unwilling to do things like leave the air conditioning off, drive at 62.5 MPH, and fiddle with my tire pressure depending on the weather. That’s still phenomenal mileage for a sedan that seats 5, even several six footers.

The Good

What makes the car good is that it handles many of the little things well. There are three main tasks that the Prius handles in exemplary ways.

Keyless Operation

The keyless entry and ignition is fantastic. I simply walk up to the car and it unlocks. I don’t have to grab the keyfob to push a button. The car realizes I’m there, unlocks the doors and lights up the car interior. Once sitting in the car, I simply push the Power button and the car starts. Again, the keyfob can remain in my pocket. Once you do this for a while using a regular key seems old-fashioned and useless.
Bluetooth Integration
The implementation of Bluetooth in the car is nearly perfect. Once again, you simply start the car and it automatically connects to your mobile phone and now the car acts as your phone. There are buttons on the steering wheel to answer and hang up on calls. The car even accepts Bluetooth transfers of contact into a car based Address Book. There are three pages of one touch dial buttons you can configure.
The intergration of the phone is tight with the stereo so that the car mutes any audio, even pausing a CD, when a call is occuring. Hang up the call and your music starts right back up.
The only drawback is that you can’t switch between mobile phones while in motion. You have to be < 5MPH to get into the settings mode to do that. Not a problem for most people, but I carry a work phone and a personal phone, so it's an issue for me. Navigation System/Electronics
Toyota didn’t invent the GPS/Navigation system in the Prius, but they did integrate it well. Currently, I don’t like driving a car without a Nav system. It’s simply too nice to let the computer worry about exits and the details. I punch in where I want to go and the computer tells me how to get there and info about the the route. If I don’t like the route it chooses, it’s no big deal, I simply drive the way I want and the computer continuously reorients to the situation.
The deeply cool stuff is there in places like the location search. It’s easy to type in the name of a place and call up it’s location for use as a destination. But they went a step further and included the phone number as well. So when you call up a destination with a phone number the phone part of the car recognizes this and allows to dial that number directly. Who needs 411 when your car can do it?
The Bad
There are a few drawbacks to the car, but they are minor. Not enough to get rid of the car, but since you loyal Cruft readers are infohounds, I’ll include them.
Motion Lockout
When the car is in motion ( > 5MPH ) many of the menus are locked out on the display screen. You can’t enter a new location into the nav systems, dial a phone number, or adjust many of the car settings. The idea is that when you are driving you should not be typing. I agree to a point, but when you have a passenger in the car, they should be able to do this.
There is a third party mod you can do to the car from Coastal Electronic Technologies that fixes this, but I haven’t done it.
It’s not a computer
I use a lot of electronics in my daily life and most of them improve over time due to software revisions. Problems are fixed and slowly things get better. With automobiles it’s a different story. The car is forever locked into being a 2004 Toyota Prius. I’m not going get an email one day that says that an auxilary audio jack is been added if I just download a patch. I wish that the car could get more features over time without resorting to the 3rd party haxxoring. In theory Toyota could rev the software int he car and provide improvements, but it’s not in their plans. They’d rather have me buy a new Prius.
If you are considering buying a Prius, just do it. You won’t be disappointed.