Stupid XBox Wireless

I just briefly checked my Google Analytics and it seems that most of the people viewing this blog are looking for information about the XBox 360 Wireless Adapter and Verizon FiOS's ActionTec router. I don't have any more information about a potential fix; I emailed ActionTec again (since they were the only one of the three companies actually acknowledging the problem) and got the same form letter response. Great.

I did successfully nest my two wireless routers to allow me to get online with an open NAT. First I connected my 360 to my extra D-Link wireless router. I logged into the D-Link with my laptop, set the 360 to a static IP address, then made that IP address the DMZ. Then I plugged the D-Link's WAN port to the ActionTec's LAN, logged into the ActionTec, made the D-Link static and DMZ. Bam, open NAT and hello Halo 3.

A friend suggested an alternative to this that ideally would be even easier to set up. If I connected the D-Link's LAN to the ActionTec's LAN, then the two networks would be at the same level, and ideally you could use either wireless network to connect to the same network. I tried this, and for some reason the D-Link wasn't playing nice. To be fair, it was the cheapest wireless router I could find three years ago, so maybe if you have some better equipment, you'll have better luck. 

Video Game Log: Heroes of Mana (DS)

Real-time strategy on the DS? Impastabowl! But they did it. Despite the massive dissapointment of Children of Mana (the first in this "World of Mana" series that takes place in the same universe as Secret of Mana but managing to leave all the good bits out), I decided to add this game to my wishlist and give it a swing. I mean, RTS. It has to be good, right?

1/2/08: I've played maybe four two hours so far, and I kinda wish I hadn't. You control a ship that's a carrier of sorts. You build your buildings inside of it, so you don't ever have to worry about space or power or that stuff. There are two resources, Gaia and Treant (which you might remember from CoM if you were unfortunate enough to have played it), and your one worker unit can gather them. You control a series of hero units with equipable items and talents. You can bring three of the heroes on to the battlefield, and the rest provide you with a "Support Aura" bonus of some sort. You can select units by tapping them with the stylus, or by tapping the "group select" button, which pauses the game and allows you to band-box select a group of units. It works... sorta. My hand cramps up while playing HoM on the train. Combat is simple; there is a "balance of power" of sorts where each unit type has another type it's strong against and one it's weak against. Anyways, I'm going to play more and see if it gets any better.

1/3/08: Adjusted the play time above from 4 to 2 hours; apparently time goes really slowly. I noticed a few things in my 30 minutes of HoM on the train this morning. The control scheme is actually quite useful ONLY if you always deselect the units (tap the "C" button on screen) when you're done ordering them around. This is because, unlike a mouse, you only have one control action (tapping), so there's no right or left click to deselect units like a PC RTS. Also I noticed most resource sources only have something like 5-10 of the resource in them, meaning that you have to move your ship around a lot or have your gatherer units (rabbites!) travel far.

Video Game Log: Mass Effect (XBox 360)

I received three video games for Christmas: Mass Effect, Lego Star Wars 2, and Heroes of Mana. I plan to create posts for each and update them as I play the game. So, without further ado, my log of Mass Effect begins here.

1/2/08: Log started. Perhaps a little late, as I am already about 12-20 hours into the game. Still, there appears to be plenty of the game left. Love the game; stayed up until about 2AM playing last night. I like what BioWare kept from KOTOR (varying degrees of depth of dialouge, mostly free range of movement) and what they added (separate meters for goodness and evilness, actual real-time control of your character, a usable journal, an ignorable "codex"). Plus my ship is so much cooler than the KOTOR ships. So that's good.

1/3/08: Two things are really friggin annoying. When you die, the camera looks down on your corpse from above while rotating and the screen goes to a red tint. The problem is that you have to look at your corpse for a good 5 seconds before you can select "Resume", "Load", or "Quit". Resume loads from your last save, so that's nice. Also, you can carry a max of 150 items, but any item can be sold to a merchant or converted to "omni-gel" (a resource that you always have more than enough of) to make room. Items are only viewable where you can use them: weapons/armor on the equipment screen, upgrades on the upgrade screen (those are the only items). Of course, this means to find and get rid of your weakest/worst items, you have to go to multiple places. And just to be mean, the upgrades are sorted by level in descending order, but when you convert one, the current selection jumps back to the top (this doesn't happen when selling to a merchant, thank god).  The worst part of this inventory management is when you reach the limit and acquire some new items. You have to choose which of the new items (or possibly all of them) you want to convert; you cannot choose any of your existing items or put the new ones back down or anything. I've lost out on some badass armor because of this. 

1/10/08: I beat the game the other day. It was a less difficult ending than I had hoped, but the story was good. John told me that apparently the game has "New Game+" built into it in a Diablo-2 style (Normal, then Hard, then Insanity). That's certainly a plus for replayability. The achievements also support this; one of them is simply "Complete 2 Mass Effect Playthroughs on any setting." As far as I can tell, you would need to play through the game at least four, possibly five times to get every achievement. I think that's great; on my first playthrough, I got 430 gamer points (by my reckoning, I missed 205 potential points). My general rule is that at least 50% of all gamer points should be unlocked by a basic playthrough of the game. So this works. And I do play to play through at least one more time.

1/15/08: My second play-through as pure evil is going well. With the different dialogue and different order of tasks, the story flows quite different. Garrus is becoming much more of a badass, and Wrex is quite fond of me. Not sure if I really want to [[SPOILER]] on Virmire (note to self: implement spoiler Javascript). This will probably be my last update, since I can't imagine too much more can be added to my thoughts. 

If you like RPGs, and especially western-style ones, you should buy Mass Effect. If you hate RPGs, then stay away, obviously. If you want an introduction to the genre and don't want to step backwards in time, Mass Effect is a good place to start.

Two Cents Is Too Much: I Am Legend

Holy carp what a movie. I can't say anymore without ruining it but go see it now if you haven't. 

Nothing In Proportion, Everything In Moderation

I continually verbally spar with Eric about various code conventions, procedures, frameworks, ideas, and whatever else related to programming. Strong vs. dynamic typing, variable names, unit testing, you name it, we've debated it. Eric and John were tossing some ideas and articles back and forth in the campfire, and Eric sent over a link asking for my opinion. I read the article, but my net takeaway was neither positive nor negative.why the lucky stiff just argues (in his silly way) against unit testing and the bias against hacks and code tricks. But he doesn't mention context. Would he put that 5-line hack in a high-traffic ecommerce site? 

The oversight is common among programming articles; all too often they preach a single idea as The Path. The real path is that there is no path; you have to think before you leap. It's not some Indiana Jones leap of faith thing. Do you really want to write unit tests for your RoR blog? Or do you want to put in a really nifty hack in an accounts-payable system or anti-spyware code? 

Then John hit me with some of his brilliance:

FxBx: "to each his own, except for YOU." is what Fufflebee said.
FxBx: Some persons can't think
FxBx: They need to know what Microsoft and Apple are doing
FxBx: and copy for their own arts

He's right, of course. Those people are in the 80%, as defined by Jeff Atwood. By definition, the 80% aren't going to be smart; they're just doing to do. So maybe these "leap of faith" articles have a better chance of reaching the 80%. 

What's my point? I'm not sure really. Us in the 20% (I'm fairly certain I'm at the bottom of it) will continue to debate about all sorts of high-falootin' ideas, and those in the 80% will keep plugging along. 

Two Cents Is Too Much: AVP-R

The easiest way to get back into blogging is to convince yourself you've started anew, either with new content or a new feature... or both! Introducing Two Cents Is Too Much, a collection of my reviews of various things that are probably not worth anything (ask my about reviews some day).

In today's episode, I'm talking about Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem, or AVP-R. At first I thought the "R" stood for "Rated R", since the first AVP was rated PG-13. In the end, the R rating was the only thing good about the movie; hearing curses every other word was great. Otherwise, this movie sucked. 

AVP-R reeked of other terrible SciFi sequels, like Starship Troopers 2. Its like the producers forgot to hire writers (maybe this was written during the writers strike). There was no plot to speak of. Instead the movie focuses on a series of fight scenes with bad lighting among various alien species and humans. I left 30 minutes in to grab popcorn and I didn't miss a thing. The best part of the movie was when one of the main characters yelled "Get to the chopper!" sans Austrian accent. Ahh, memories.

So don't go see it in the theater. Don't buy it on DVD. Wait until it's on TV, then check to see if anything else is on... I'd rather watch Chuck Norris sell the Total Gym ("Two months? Wow!") for 100 minutes than watch AVP-R again. I even had to watch the first AVP when I got home just to get the taste out of my mouth. 

Do I Have Content? Hell Yeah I Do.

I got a great piece I'm preparing to post this weekend. Well, at least I think it's great.

He Shoots! Wide Left!

It took me all of one Monday to miss posting on Mondays. Awesome. To be fair, I was so enthralled by the absolute train wreck of a football game in Pittsburgh.

Distraction plus Pics

Trying to write a sports post during Monday Night Football: bad idea. Here are some some house pics:

Manny coming around 3rd to score.

Barister cabinet, sofa, and Manny on TV.

Two recliners in the living room.

The bathroom with Derek Jeter, Annie and I, and Manny Ramirez on the walls.

Sportsmanship Vs. Gamesmanship: What Is Right?

Unless you are avoiding sports news, you have heard of the New England Patriots' 10-0 run this season and their outscoring their opponents by record margins. Many pundits and fans have accused Bill Belichick, head coach of the Patriots, of running up the score and embarassing their opponents. 

Wait a second: embarassing their opponents? These teams are professional athletes: essentially paid performers, no different from actors. Embarassment is not the problem. The problem is gamesmanship as is compares to sportsmanship.

Review the definitions of those ideas. Gamesmanship means doing whatever you can to win, while staying within the rules. Sportsmanship means having good conduct during games, having respect for your opponents, and being gracious in victory and defeat. Those last two are the big issues with the Patriots.

Do the Patriots have respect for their opponents? Sure, they pay lots of lip service to respect. Listening to Belichick before the Buffalo game (which the Pats won, 56-10), you might've suspected the Bills were an elite AFC East team. Instead they were 5-4, and their star running back was ruled out for the game. 

Did the Pats respect the Bills during the game? You can look at this two ways. After the game was all but sealed up, the Pats did send in the second string. But they also didn't change the playbook; they played the same way they did all game, showing the Buffalo defense some respect. But that goes both ways; up 35-7 (four TDs), the Pats had 4th and 1 on the Buffalo 3 yard line. Up by 28, the respectful thing to do is to kick a field goal. But Tom Brady threw to Ben Watson for the touchdown. 

OK, fine, you're playing hard. Later that quarter the Pats had 4th and 1 on the Buffalo 10 yard line with about a minute left in the quarter and leading 49-10 (, and again Belichick eschews the field goal and has Brady pass to Randy Moss for a first down, leading to a touchdown two plays later. That is purely disrespectful; taking an unnecessary risk when you're already up by an nigh-insurmountable lead. That, my friends, is the reason everyone has a problem with the Patriots.

The Category For Today's Post Is: Sports

I was away in Cape Cod this weekend, so I didn't have time to write the post I planned to. However, I know what I want to write and what I want to say, so I will be writing it tonight. 

Booya.

All that Work Just To Do Work?

My work computer died this week; I spent all of Tuesday and most of Wednesday reinstalling applications and configuring settings. Here is a partial list of all the crap I had to go through:

Configuration options:

• Set mouse speed
• Set keyboard repeat delay and repeat speed
• Set default browser
• Set up quick launch and add folders/files/app links
• Install printers
• Set homepages
• Set default applications

Developer applications:

• Visual Studio 6
• Visual Studio 2003
• Visual Studio 2005
• SQL Server 2000
• SQL Server 2005
• C1 Flexgrid
• HTML Helpworkshop

Non-developer applications:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• VLC
• Notepad2
• Launchy
• TweakUI
• 7-Zip
• Putty
• Foxit Reader
• Flickr Uploader
• Roboform
• Pidgin
• Songbird
  
• PSTools
• Filezilla
• Roboform

Not to mention all the Firefox extensions:

• Adblock Plus
• Roboform
• All-in-One Gestures
• Better GMail
• Download Statusbar
• Firebug
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
• Greasemonkey
• PDF Download
• SafeCache
• SafeHistory
• StumbleUpon
• Web Developer

And all the Greasemonkey scripts!

• Hoodwink'd
• Greased Lightbox
• Plus tons that I'm forgetting

I'm not even convinced I've got it all. What the crap, man?!

Look At The Other Side

I was all ready to post an angry rant about people who cut in line, both as pedestrians and in cars, but I realized that it would just be me bitching and moaning about the same crap we all have to deal with. I started to think of the causes of people's rude behavior when I reminded myself of a policy I had when I first learned to drive. I remember driving with my mom sitting shotgun when someone cut me off on the highway and sped away. My mom got quite angry, but I said "well, he might have a good excuse for going fast. Maybe his wife is giving birth? I don't know, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt."

That mental outlook always made me feel very calm on the road. I am less tolerant of idiots on the road (a whole other issue) these days, but I still try to think of what others might be thinking. That guy that cut into the line in front of me for the staircases this morning might have had a rough morning. Maybe he deserves a little slack. We've all had that morning.

I guess the net take away I had (and maybe you should get) is before you get pissed at some anonymous stranger, think about what might be going on for them. It sure makes it easier to forgive and chill out.

My Least Favorite Pedestrian

This person technically isn't a pedestrian, as you encounter them in mass transit, usually on a bus or train. I'll call this person Pat, because both males and females do this. Usually you encounter Pat when you are forced to stand up on a crowded train with little room to spare. As the train approaches your stop, you gather your things and prepare to "excuse me" your way to the door. But Pat is not willing to wait for the train to stop. Pat stands up behind you and loudly asks "Excuse me!". You have three options here: 1) get out of Pat's way, 2) tell Pat you're also getting off here, or 3) do nothing. I refuse to do #1 because Pat is no more important than me (if Pat was really important, he'd have his own car and driver). Option 3 is the most satisfying, but you might get Pat really angry. So option 2 is usually best.

But what about when you're standing right next to the door and you've told Pat you're getting off, but he still tries to wedge in front of you? What the crap, man? This used to happen to me all the time on the subway, and it's happening again now that I'm taking the bus twice a week (commuter rail travellers are much kinder). I just think it's funny that some people are in so much of a rush to get off the bus that they're willing to push other people out of the way.

I don't really have a point to this post. I just hope you're reading this, Pat, and that you chill out!

Proof of the Apocolypse

Plans For the Future

So I decided that if I'm going to blog, I should blog regularly. Starting today, I will be posting a new blog entry every Monday. And it won't just be a short "goddamnit I was up late last night" post; it'll be a full, interesting post. I'll still do the other variety as well.

Quantity Is Better Than Quality

So I opened my email today and had a new friend request on Facebook. It was from someone I knew in high school but was never really friends with. In fact, I probably only ever spoke to her twice. Now she sends me a friend request. Do I accept? She was an aquaintence at best, never a friend. It's not like we were mortal enemies or anything, we just weren't friends.

What does a friend request even mean? If I have 100 friends in my friends list, is that better than having 50? What if I have 20 people, but they're all my good friends who I spend time with and care about? Is that better?

I just don't like the "I'm going to friend request everyone I've ever know" policy for most people on MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn/whatever. I used to deny those people, but then they'd just request again. So I'd ignore them, but then they'd message me. I decided it wasn't worth offending people because I didn't consider them a friend, so I just started accepting the requests.

But seriously people. If I haven't spoken with you in 10 years and you send me a friend request (and nothing more*), what are you trying to do: increment your friend count or actually catch up?

*I've had a few people send friend requests then send lengthy emails of the catching-up type. I'm down with that.

The Wishlist: Implementation

Once upon a time a few years ago I was thinking about an old movie I saw as a kid. I couldn't recall the name, but I did remember it was about personified home appliances (like toasters, electric blankets, and whatnot) and that it had a profound effect on me. After a brief interwebz search, I found it: The Brave Little Toaster.

I almost bought it on the spot at Amazon, but I realized it would be kind of a frivilous purchase. Plus, at the time I was not exactly flush with cash. I noticed a link on the Amazon product page that said "Add to wishlist." I sorta figured it was kinda like the same thing as a shopping list, so I added it, thinking it would be nice to have a place to list things I thought about buying but didn't. That way, if I randomly think about it again and see it's already on my wishlist, then I can see that I've thought about it before, and it becomes less of an impulse buy. So I kept adding things to the list like this.

Then, one fateful October, Annie asked me what I wanted for my birthday. In an uncommon moment of clarity, I thought Hey, I've already got a birthday list! I sent her a link to my wishlist. Her response: "Are you serious? You want all these things?" After I calmed her down, I outlined the prinicples of a wishlist:

• I don't expect to get everything on the list.
• I provide the list to help people know what to give me; someone can get me something from the list and know that I will like it.
• The list gives people an idea of the kind of stuff I like, so if they want to get me something off the list, they have an idea.
• Having a large list maintains the surprise for me. Even if I knew for certain that 10 people were getting me gifts from the list, if I have 100 items on my list I will still be surprised.

She seemed to lighten up after that, and even embraced the idea.

So I say to all of you out there: Make a wishlist, keep it current, and let people know about it!

Live from Minnesota

Minnesota is a nice state. The section I'm in (somewhere near Minnetonka) looks like the part of New Jersey I grew up in (I shit you not). I'm hear for one of my best friends' wedding. They're Jewish, so I got to partake in a Jewish wedding ceremony for the first time. It was pretty much the same as every non-Catholic wedding I've been to. I was the best man though, so damn I was scared about the rings and the speech. I tackled the rings by having the two of them in their cases with me at all times. And not just with me, but in my hands. It worked; I didn't lose the rings.

The speech was tough too. I have seen several best man speeches, and most were decent, but I wanted better. I decided my goal was to deliver the speech in under one minute. This took the pressure off of being too funny or insightful and allowed me to distil the essence of what I wanted to say into four three bullet points:

• Joke that speech should be short, so no revealing stories (I ended up forgetting this bit).
• Joke that when Joe told me about Liz, that I said she was out of his league.
• Nice thing about Liz.
• Nice thing about Joe.

By my reckoning (no one thought to time me), I came in around a minute and a half. And yet, I had them all in tears. It was awesome. The maid of honor went next and spoke for what seemed like 10 minutes, but it was a great speech too. Good stuff.

I'm packing up right now (actually I'm getting yelled at right now for blogging instead of packing) to head back home. Thank God we decided to take an extra day off.

The Wishlist: Background

A short history of gift-giving as it relates to me.

Back in like 5th grade, my parents apparently found it too difficult to determine what exactly I wanted for my birthday, so they asked me to make a list. I made a list no fewer than three pages long. So my parents asked me the next day to make another list because they "lost" the first one. They compared the two lists, found about three items overlapping, and got me those things. I was happy.

In middle school, I was really into Magic: The Gathering. My friends all knew this, and so they all gave me Magic cards. I got pretty much my only good cards from that birthday (and recently sold them too).

Freshman year of college, for the first birthday party among my group of friends, we got together, each chipping in $5, and got Anna what turned out to be a huge set of birthday gifts. We quickly realized we'd run out of money fast if we continued this lavish process, and thereafter no one got gifts.

A few years back, I invited friends out to a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. I did not expect any gifts, but a good friend got me a really thoughtful gift; a bottle of low-carb wine (I was on the South Beach diet at the time and doing very well). It made me realize that now that we all had jobs, we could afford to buy each other gifts.

Which brings me back to the beginning. How do I let my friends know what I want unless they ask me? I've already received my fair share of ties, digital tire pressure gauges, and gift cards.

The answer: the wishlist!