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Flack

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  1. Flack

    Econo-Me

    By Flack,

    Two and a half years ago I purchased a new 2006 Chevy Avalanche, a truck that came with pretty much every option but one -- a crystal ball showing me the future price of gas.
     
    Back in the summer of 2005 (when Susan and I first began talking about buying a new vehicle), gas cost $2.20/gallon. Prices climbed to $3/gallon that fall due to Hurricane Katrina, but we (and everybody, I think) hoped that gas hike was temporary. Prices did settle a bit after that, but have been steadily (and sometimes not so steadily) climbing ever since. Here in Oklahoma (Indian for "land of the cheap gas") the highest I've personally seen is $3.89/gallon, although I have several out-of-state friends who passed the $4 mark weeks ago. Prices have slightly dropped this week; I paid $3.69/gallon today.
     
    As I'm sure most of you have noticed, most gas pumps will now cut you off at a predetermined total. This was put in place by credit card companies to protect themselves from fraud. From what I have read on the Internet, this cut-off point reflects the amount their insurance covers for a "non-signature transaction". Depending on the brand of credit card and the state you live in, the cut-off is usually $50 or $75. The gas tank on my Avalanche holds 31 gallons of fuel. At $3.69, I can only purchase 20 gallons of gas before hitting the $75 mark. $50 only gets me 13 gallons. Today I actually found a pump that cuts you off at $100, regardless what brand of credit card is used. By the time I hit $100, I had purchased 27 gallons of fuel -- my tank wasn't even full. I still could have put another $15-$20 worth of gas in. That hurts.
     
    Last week during our vacation we drove to Galveston and back. We drove 1,400 miles in all and spent somewhere around $300 in gas (we took the minivan). We knew that prices would spike over Memorial Day weekend (the day we left), but we already had plans and reservations that we did not want to cancel.
    According to a recent survey, 39% of Americans planned to travel over Memorial Day weekend, and 20% of Americans said they cancelled their plans due to gas prices. While we didn't cancel our plans, we did make some concessions. We took sandwich stuff with us and ate more meals on the road and in the cabin than we normally would have. You have to make up the price difference somehow.
     
    Susan and I work in the same building and, for nine months of the year, don't carpool. Due to Mason's school schedule we have to drop him off and pick him up. That means one of us comes to work early so we can pick him up, and one of us comes in late so we can drop him off. During the summer however, the four of us ride to work together. Mason and Morgan attend the FAA Daycare, and Susan and I shuffle our schedules around so we can all come and go at the same time. It's a very small concession to make, and I'm saving approximately $50 bucks a week (maybe more) in gas by parking the truck.
     
    When gas prices were on the rise I talked about selling my truck -- now, I fear I've waited too long. I'm not sure if there's a market for a second hand truck when dealerships are begging people to take them off their lots. My truck is large and roomy inside and I wonder how comfortable I would be in a smaller, four-door car. I have a feeling I might be finding out sometime in the near future.
  2. Flack

    The Last Leg

    By Flack,

    On day four of our trip, we headed into Galveston -- which is funny, as I have been referring to this entire trip as the Galveston Trip. Turns out we've been 70 miles southwest of Galveston. My apologies to any would-be assassins who have been wandering around Galveston looking for me.
     
    There comes a point in every vacation where you realize you've had enough. For us, that time was approximately 7:04am, Thursday morning. Our original plan involved getting up Thursday morning, driving 70 miles northeast to Galveston, spending the day there, driving back 70 miles southwest to our cabin, hanging out at the beach one last night, and heading for home Friday morning. By Thursday, we realized we'd had enough of the beach. 70 miles northeast put us 70 miles closer to home, so the decision was made to load up the van, drive to Galveston, spend some time there, and leave for home from there.
     
    When Mason was two, maybe three, I taught him to pee outside. Teaching a boy to pee outside is a lot like teaching a dog to pee outside. You say, "pee," and they do. Not much teaching involved. Teaching a girl to pee outside is a lot more difficult. Actually, that's not true -- teaching a girl to pee outside without peeing all over herself is the difficult part. On a wooded driveway somewhere between Quintana Beach and Galveston, Morgan managed to pee all over herself, her shorts, and managed to fill her shoes in the process.
     
    Galveston was completely different from Quintana Beach. Galveston had blue/green ocean water, as opposed to the brown and oily water we'd previously seen. The beaches were bustling with activity, and the town looked like what we had imagined a beach town would look like, versus Quintana/Freeport's "poor" motif.
     
    Our first stop (which turned out to be basically our ownly stop) was Moody Gardens, home to half a dozen touristy things. One of those things was an aquarium.
     

     

     
    The kids really enjoyed the penguins, sharks, and manta rays. Mason also really enjoyed the different skeletons (penguin, dolphin, seal) that the museum had on display.
     
    After the aquarium, we hit Moody's 3D IMAX theater. We had hoped to see "Monsters of the Deep" but due to a scheduling conflict we ended up seeing some crap about the Grand Canyon. Morgan was fidgiting the entire time and the rest of us were bored. We ended up leaving early and driving around the island, looking for a place to eat. We ended up at Tortuga, which is Spanish for "turtle".
     

     
    Lunch was good, and the daqueries were great. Never underestimate the power of alcohol after spending a week with two kids in a 250 square foot cabin.
     
    Even though we kept open the option of staying the night in a Galveston hotel, by that time everybody was worn out. We hopped into the van one last time, our bellies full of Tortuga goodness, and started driving north. This turned out to be a really stupid plan as we hit Houston around 4:30pm and spent an hour and a half inching through their rush hour congestion. Dumb. We hit Dallas a little after 8pm and hooked up with Jusin and Les for some Steak and Shake. Everyone loved the shakes. The final leg of our tour launched just after 10pm, and we arrived back home at 2am exactly.
  3. Flack

    Galveston Part Tres

    By Flack,

    Sorry about the Spanish numbers -- we have seen so many restaurant names and road signs in Spanish, it's hard not to get your mind stuck in Espanol mode. The gulf is a multi-cultural place. Breakfast today was served by a Chinese guy with a thick Spanish accent selling kolaches. Dos doughnuts, por favor!
     
    Today's adventure took us north (relatively speaking), to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Mason is really into outer space things right now, so he was in love -- and, as a guy who used to love outer space things as a kid, I thought it was pretty neat, too. There were tons of interactive activities and shows for kids of all ages, and one price basically covered everything. Mason crashed the Space Shuttle several times in their landing flight simulator, and Morgan tried her tiny hands at docking with a satellite.
     

     

     
    By printing out our tickets online, we got in for half price -- $21 for the four of us. In comparison, lunch for the three of us (Morgan shared with Mommy) was close to $50 for some nachos, a bowl of chili, a piece of pizza, a couple of drinks and a couple of candy bars.
     
    After a long day at the space center and a short nap, it was back to the beach. To be honest we're getting a little tired of the beach, but we're here at the ocean, and it's free, so we're making ourselves go. Note Mason's NASA helmet. He's been wearing it a lot this afternoon.
     

     

     
    We headed back into town this weekend looking for a small Mexican place but settled on a small pizza place instead. We came home, watched a little television, cooked some s'mores, and went to bed. Like the other days, I took a ton more pictures than I'm currently posting (I took almost 100 today). When I return to civilization and get a faster Internet connection, I'm going to post the entire gallery.
  4. Flack

    Galveston, Dia Dos

    By Flack,

    The majority of day two was spend on the beach. Actually, day two went a lot like this: breakfast, beach, lunch, nap, beach, dinner, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hey, it's my vacation too!).
     
    Because the cabin is so small, we have things stacked on the kitchen table, the stove, and the bench next to the table. When we eat, we have to move the piles around and move them back afterwards. Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs and pancakes. The kids helped cook and the food was delicious. Our trips to the beach were enjoyable but relatively uneventful. Around lunch time we made a run into town, picked up a few beach-related odds and ends at Dollar General, and ate at Jack in the Box for lunch. For us, Jack in the Box is a treat -- there are only two in Oklahoma, both of which are over 100 miles away from us. After a lengthy nap, we headed back down to the beach for some evening swimming. Dinner consisted of some chili, mac and cheese, and peaches. Yummy camping food. After Morgan started winding down, Mason and I hopped in the van and tracked back to town. Using the ol' faithful GPS I tracked down a movie theater, and we ended up catching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'll write a more lengthy review some other day; suffice it to say, we both enjoyed it.
     
    I took a hundred pictures at the beach, but I'll spare you -- here are three. When I get back home I'll post all the vacation pix in one big online gallery.
     

     

     

  5. Flack

    Bet on It

    By Flack,

    Friday was Mason's last day of kindergarten. Friday was also the date of the Shedeck Talent Show, in which Mason and his (girl)friend Sadie performed "Bet on It" from High School Musical II. High School Musical is, so I'm told, "this generation's Grease." Personally I think this generation's Grease should be "Grease", but whatever.
     
    Mason was scheduled to perform 26th out of 28 acts. Before the show started, Susan was saying things like, "I'm just so excited he signed up to perform," and I was thinking things like, "please God, don't let the boy suck." And I don't care if the performance is stellar or not -- I just need the boy to get through his song without anyone booing or throwing fruit at him or anything.
     
    Patiently, Susan and I sat through 25 displays of talent, some better than others. Four different groups of kids got up and told jokes as their talent. All four groups mumbled unintelligably into the microphone during their performances -- I couldn't make out a single word the entire time. Two different groups of four performed "jumproping" as their talents -- not syncronized or organized jumproping, mind you. One little girl sang half a song, forgot the words, and walked off the stage. She'll remember that for a long time. I still remember when it happened to me.
     
    After an hour or so, it was finally Mason's turn. I guess God heard my prayers, and the boy did not suck. He and Sadie sang as planned, nothing went too wrong, and people clapped when they were done. Mason may or may not remember the performance, but if he does, at least it won't be because it was a traumatic experience.
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_zJP9sQCQ
  6. Flack

    Mental Programming

    By Flack,

    The second most important part of writing any computer program or script is planning out your program's "path". You can do this in a number of ways; flowcharting is one common method. A program's flow can also be referred to as its "logic".
     
    (Incidently, and completely unrelated to this post, the single most important part of writing any computer program is coming up with a good name before you start. My old pal Leperkhan taught me that, and it's true. Come up with a good name for your program and a good program is sure to follow.)
     
    Back in my middle school speech class, one of the speeches we had to write and present to our classmates was a demonstrative speech. The point of a demonstrative speech is to demonstrate a process to an audience. "How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" was a popular topic that I remember at least three kids doing. Nothing more exciting than listening to several seventh graders in a row describe in great detail the steps involved in making a sandwich. What a waste; I always saw assignments like that one as an opportunity to torture my fellow classmates. It's not every day that you are presented with complete freedom of choice over a topic and a forcibly captive audience. Of course, I come by this trait honestly; back when Dad was a kid he gave a speech in school on how to rob a bank that unfortunately matched the m/o of a string of bank robberies a little too closely. That one got him a few house of police interrogation. Fortunately my speeches never got me into any legal trouble, but I do remember hearing a few exasperated sighs during my thirty-minute classic speech, "How to get the most for your money at Taco Bell."
     
    At the heart of these speeches was the ability to take a process (making sandwiches or robbing a bank) and break it down into small, manageable steps. This is, essentially, what programming is. Sometimes, especially with scripts, programs are very simple. "I need a program that tells me how much free drive space is available on a remote machine." For that you're going to need a machine name, a drive, and a command that determines the free space. Obviously this is a extremely simple example, as this program only performs one function. When you start programming in things like Visual Basic (or any graphical type of programming language), you end up with a bunch of related functions that all do different things. Back in the days of BASIC or even most scripts, things tend to follow a logical path from beginning to end. Obviously the program's path can be varied, perhaps due to input from a user or based off of a pre-determined result, but everything that a program does must happen in order. Things are slightly more complicated in a visual type of program, as users can perform a number of tasks in any order they choose.
     
    It is this logic, the ability to plan out a program's path, that determines how well a program works. For example, a couple of years ago I wrote a program that would report the amount of drive space available on several servers. The program ran once a day, every morning. If the amount of available drive space was greater than 10%, the program did nothing. If the amount of free drive space was between 0% and 10%, the program would e-mail me a warning. Although I thought it was a great idea, the program didn't work right. I had several servers end up with 0 space free, and I never received a warning. Did you spot the logic problem? In each instance, the servers had more than 10% free the morning before when my program ran (so I received no warning), and then during the day a user copied so many files to the server that the drive completely filled up and there was 0 space free. Unfortunately I only wrote my program to warn me if the amount of free drive space was BETWEEN 0% and 10%, but I forgot to take into account the possibility that the result might actually BE 0%. The servers were going from more than 10% free one day to 0% free the next, and my script never caught it.
     
    That's the problem with programming and logic; you have to take every possible scenario into consideration. And when you're programming something that accepts input from people, look out -- you have to take EVERYTHING into consideration. One time, while beta testing a program at work, I was able to crash it at the login prompt. When the programmer asked me what I entered for my name I told him I had held down F1 for about five minutes and then hit enter. By the look of exasperation on his face I suspect he did not anticipate such genius. Never underestimate or overestimate the power of an end user.
     
    If you can begin to think like a program, or at least think using program-like logic, you'll find writing programs much simpler. The problem is, at least for me, it's a hard skill to turn off at the end of the day. I'll give you an example. Every day at work that I write scripts or work on a program, I find myself wondering about the logic programming that runs my building's elevators.
     
    My building has four floors (three stories and a basement) and three elevators. When idle, the elevators sit on the first, second and third floors. Like most elevators, over each pair of doors on every floor is an LED sign that shows the floor the elevator is on and, if in motion, the direction the elevator is travelling. I work in the basement but visit the third floor often, so I spend a lot of time waiting on elevators. I suspect, if one spent enough time watching the elevators, that a set of logic rules could be surmised through observation. While waiting for an elevator to arrive I often think about the code involved to run such a system. Right now, one of our elevators is out of order and the system is suffering. Obviously, the programmers did not take that possibility into consideration.
     
    Susan says I should take the stairs more often.
  7. Flack
    For as long as I can remember I have associated specific songs with specific memories, and for me, an arcade wouldn't be an arcade without the music. All of my old arcade memories including a backing soundtrack of 80s music. Different arcades had different playlists: family friendly arcades like Le Mans and Tilt pumped in 80s pop music, while seedier arcades like Cactus Jack's and the Bowling Alley delivered a constant stream of 70s arena rock and 80s hair metal.
     
    When my backyard shed begin to make the transition from "collection of arcade machines in a shed" to "backyard arcade", having music playing was one of my very first considerations. My first plan was to gut an old jukebox, stick a computer inside it, and set it up to play MP3s around the clock. I got as far as picking up the broken jukebox -- turns out, shoehorning a PC inside an old jukebox takes a lot of work. Additionally, old jukeboxes are really big, taking up valuable real estate in an already crowded backyard shed. After giving up on that project, I went with the much simpler approach -- sticking a PC out there, connecting some really big speakers, and having the thing play MP3s in random order.
     
    In the early 90s, Le Mans Arcade added a music video jukebox to their arcade. The large screen was a panel of televisions, and the jukebox played music videos constantly. That wall of monitors made an impression on me, and as I started putting together a PC for playing music out in the arcade, I thought it would be a neat idea to get it to play videos as well. Through the newsgroups I found alt.binaries.videos.music and I downloaded away. One video turned into ten, one gig turned into ten, then twenty, and so on. By the time I was done I had amassed 20 DVDs full of music videos -- approximately 80 gig. I should mention that the criteria for what I downloaded and what I didn't is fairly specific; to make the collection, the videos had to be of songs I liked, and the videos/songs had to be family friendly. While "family friendly" is fairly subjective, the idea was that I wouldn't include anything that might be offensive if kids (mine or someone else's) were out in the arcade.
     
    While not particularly important to the story (not that that would ever stop me), I should note that I wrote my own software to run out in the arcade. The software is called Jukebox Zero (a play on the song "Jukebox Hero), as is the machine it runs on. The program launches with Windows, scans a pre-determined directory (and sub-directories), and plays the contained MP3 and video files contained within. To be honest there are a zillion other PC-based jukebox programs out there, most of them better than mine, but none of them seemed to do exactly what I wanted. Sometimes, writing your own is simpler, so that's what I did. I don't think I ever publicly released Jukebox Zero because, frankly, it's so specific that I can't imagine anyone else ever wanting a copy.
     
    Back to the problem at hand, which has been moving of the 80 gigs of videos from my house (where I downloaded them) to Jukebox Hero, which sits out in the arcade. Jukebox Zero (the PC) is old and crappy, a 600mhz machine with a CD-Rom drive and two (funky) USB ports that cancel each other out when they're used at the same time. In the beginning, videos were transferred out to the machine a few at a time via USB memory sticks. As the video collection grew and was moved to DVD, I lost track of which videos had been moved to Jukebox Zero and which ones had not. I really wanted to have the machine filled with videos before all my friends came over to visit the weekend of OEGE, and so I did something foolish and deleted all the videos off of Jukebox Zero, with the intention of moving them back over ... somehow.
     
    With help from an external USB DVD drive, my first plan involved copying the DVDs one at a time to Jukebox Zero. This proved to be much more of a pain in the ass than it might sound. Each DVD was taking over an hour to copy over -- too long to stand there and watch, but short enough that I didn't feel like I had enough time to go do anything else. After one or two DVDs, I gave up on this plan. (I should mention that out in the arcade there is no comfortable place to sit. Standing and watching files copy makes one feel stupid(er).)
     
    The next plan involved setting up a wireless network out in the arcade and copying the files wirelessly to Jukebox Zero. This turned out to be a monumental waste of time that took me at least a week to decide was pointless. Here are the highlights: I installed a wireless card into Jukebox Zero, but could not get a strong enough signal to connect to my home network -- this is despite the fact that from the exact same location, I could connect to my home network using my laptop. This led me to believe that, for whatever reason, the wireless card in my laptop had more power than the wireless card I installed in Jukebox Zero. I still had my old wireless router lying around, so I then decided to install that out in the arcade, physically connect Jukebox Zero to it, and connect to that network wirelessly from the house. This created another huge network mess, since both routers are hard set to exist in the same IP space (192.168.1.x) so switching back and forth was screwing up my routing tables and causing me to continually reboot. When I DID finally get everything working, I found I could copy about three videos before the wireless signal would drop (which, oddly enough, is why I bought a new router in the first place ...). The best part of this whole adventure was troubleshooting the wireless router out in the arcade, which cost me several dozen trips back and forth from the house in the middle of the night while testing. What a pain in the ass.
     
    After giving up on the network I decided to copy all the music DVDs to an external USB hard drive, take the hard drive out to the arcade, connect it to Jukebox Zero and copy the files that way. This is friggin' foolproof ... or so I thought. I copied all the music DVDs to my 300 gig external hard drive, carried it out to the arcade, connected it and started the files copying. The next morning when I went out to check on the progress, I found that it again had copied less than a dozen files before dying. "I/O error" was all Windows offered. Since I/O means "input/output," I found the error accurate although not particularly helpful. The problem turned out to be my external hard drive, which picked THAT MOMENT to die. Further inspection determined that it was actually the enclosures power supply and not the drive itself that died. The drive was transplanted into a new enclosure and the whole process was repeated. This time I got through almost 5 DVDs of videos before the machine locked up. THIS SHOULDN'T BE THIS HARD.
     
    Since I can connect to the machine still via wireless, I'm going to connect to the machine today and attempt to copy the DVD directories one at a time -- sneaking up on the project, so to speak. Should that fail I'm going to take an axe to the whole god damn pile of electronics and set up a VCR full of old music videos and call it good.
  8. Flack
    Took the boy to go see Iron Man yesterday after school at the local theater. $10 for two tickets, which (I guess) isn't bad these days. Personally I'd rather watch it at home, but the boy's getting wise to me. "How come everybody else gets to see new movies at the theater and we have to watch them at home? And why do all our movies have words at the bottom in other languages and why are people always walking in front of the camera?" I think the real reason he likes to go to the theater is that they have better snacks there than we have at the house -- plus, if we had watched it home no one would get to see him wearing his matching Iron Man shirt and shorts and his Iron Man toy in hand. Plus, schedule wise, these early afternoon movies work out pretty well -- Mason and I get home around 3:45pm and Mommy and Morgan don't get home until around 6pm. There are a slew of movies that start between 4pm and 5pm that we could hit and get home around the same time as the girls.
     
    As far as the movie went, I'd say it was one of the best comic book based movies I've seen. They did a good job of keeping the film interesting for both adults and kids. Hulk was terrible in that aspect (Mason was asleep before the Hulk ever appeared) and some of the other comic book films got either too violent, too scary, or too boring -- which is funny, considering they are making movies inappropriate for little kids and then spending millions of dollars marketing directly to them. I highly doubt tweenagers are the ones collecting toys out of Burger King kid's meals (although I do remember eating my share of them when the Star Wars toys were released. Nevermind ...) Despite the film's PG-13 rating I don't remember anything inappropriate for kids as young as Mason. Most of the sex and violence was either implied or fleeting. No nudity, no four-letter words ... just two hours of good clean robotic ass-kicking. Can't beat that for five bucks a head.
  9. Flack
    Last night after the kids went to bed I was able to skip out for a couple of hours and take a quick tour of Liberty City. As my gamer friends already know, Liberty City (the pseudonym for New York City) is the town where Grand Theft Auto 4 takes place.
     
    Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 were drawn in a top-down perspective, and while they were fun for their time, neither made much of a lasting impression. It wasn't until Grand Theft Auto 3 hit shelves that the series really began to make waves. Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas and later GTA: Liberty City Stories all became best sellers for platforms including the Playstation 2, Xbox, and later, portable gaming systems including the Game Boy Advance and Sony's PSP.
     
    And so here we are with a new generation of consoles, and a new generation of Grand Theft Auto games. Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA4) again takes place in Liberty City. Although I've never actually been to New York City, you can get a pretty good idea of what it must be like from GTA4. The streets and cityscape are the same. According to recent articles, a lot of time went into recreating sections of New York in the game, and Rockstar's efforts paid off; the result is a city that, for all intents and purposes, feels alive. Traffic moves along, people stand around chatting with one another, birds fly in the distance.
     
    GTA4 puts players in control of Nico Bellic, a Serbian who has been come to Liberty City to meet his cousin (and small time crook) Roman. When Nico arrives he discovers that Roman's tales of wealth and women have been greatly exaggerated (to say the least). The plot, as it is slowly unveiled to players, involves honor and revenge. As the story's twists and turns reveal more twists, you (as a player) become more involved in the game's story. More than a game, GTA4 is like an interactive movie, where you play the starring role and can impact the path the story will take.
     
    Like the games before it, Grand Theft Auto 4 is a "sandbox" game, which means players can go anywhere and do anything. To put it in perspective, imagine if in Super Mario Bros. you could simply say, "eh, I don't feel like chasing down Bowser today. Instead, I'm going to go to the store, buy some new overalls, and go watch television instead." In GTA4, you can do just that -- in fact, it seems like you can do almost anything. Obviously your actions are limited to what developers thought of and programmed into the system, but when you decide to pick up a girl, drive her to the local bowling alley and go bowling, it seems as though they thought of an awful lot. In a sandbox game, moving the plot along becomes less of a mandatory goal and more of a suggestion. When Roman calls you on your phone and asks you to come pick him up from work, you can ... or, you can ditch him, go pick up one of your girls, take her out for a hot dog, and shoot the cart vendor in the head for dessert.
     
    Make no mistake, Grand Theft Auto 4 (like its predecessors) is rated M (for mature) for a reason. The game is bursting at the seams with adult themes, language, and violence. That whole "sandbox" aspect is a double-edged sword. There's nothing stopping gamers from punching random strangers in the face, mowing down pedestrians in a stolen Hummer, or leading cops on high speed chases for hours at a time. If you want to attack innocent people all day long and stomp on their heads until brains and blood cover the sidewalk, there's nothing stopping you (although you might refrain from telling your shrink about it). Even when directly following the game's story mode you'll be fighting (and killing) other characters. It's not on me to tell you what your kids should or shouldn't be playing, but those who complained about the violence in Mortal Kombat just a few years ago will surely faint the first time they hear a Liberty City hooker beg for her life as you empty a clip into her gut and take her cash.
     
    New to GTA4 is online gaming. If you throught the depravity of Grand Theft Auto was fun in your own home, now you can share those adventures with fellow online gamers. Up to sixteen players can duke it out in one of fifteen different online modes. Some are team vs. team, others are co-op in nature. The online game are addictive, and I suspect many gamers will pick up this title for these alone. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to learn many gamers stick solely to the online matches and never play through the story mode itself.
     
    Grand Theft Auto has hit the current generation of consoles running. It is both completely new and completely familiar at the same time. While the core of the game is still very Grand Theft Auto, every aspect of the original games has been expanded upon -- as well it should be, with a reported budget of $100 million (making it the most expensive videogame ever made). With several gaming sites rating GTA4 10/10, it seems that next-gen gamers have finally been granted their "killer app." It would not surprise me to find groups of 360/PS3 gamers in the future that only own one single game -- this one. The exhaustive maps, in depth story mode (rumored to take around 40 hours to complete) and the continually fresh source of online matches is bound to keep gamers entertained for years.
     
    Or, until the next Grand Theft Auto game hits stores.
  10. Flack

    OEGE After Party

    By Flack,

    It's a vicious trend -- the older I get and the more games I collect, the less time I have to play them -- especially with others. I have piles of new games, old games, and arcade games that collect dust on a day-to-day basis. A couple of times throughout the year, some friends of mine and I organize "game nights" -- a time and place where "big kids" can get together, forget about school/work/kids for a while and spend some time talking about, trading, and most importantly, playing games.
     
    As several of my online friends were coming in from out of town to attend OEGE last weekend, we decided that after the show would be a great time for everyone to get together and have a game night. I volunteered my place (only fifteen minutes away from the OEGE show location).
     
    My house was divided up into three main gaming locations: upstairs, downstairs, and the arcade (my backyard shed, converted into an 80's-style arcade). Upstairs was easy -- it already functions as a fulltime gameroom, with systems from the Atari 2600 and the NES all the way to the Xbox 360 and PS3 hooked up, ready for gaming action. Downstairs the Wii was hooked up to our main television, and tables were set up to accomidate additional gaming systems and/or trade boxes. The arcade didn't need much work at all, other than a bit of vaccuuming and Windexing.
     
    The cool (and sometimes stressful) thing about game nights are 1, you never know who's going to show up, and 2, you never know what people are going to want to do. As anyone who's ever thrown one can tell you, you never know what people are going to want to see or do for sure.
     

    Namzep, Josh, Icbrkr and Crossbow talk about games.
     
    For the next six hours, Icbrkr, Phosphor Dot Fossils and Kent (from Arkansas), Ubikuberalles (from New Mexico), Gapporin (from Missouri), as well as several Okies including Namzep and Tim (from Stillwater), Neist (from Norman, Crossbow, Vicky and Josh Risner (from Tulsa) along with myself and my good buddy spent the evening gaming. (Yes, I'm aware these people all have real names.) Several people brought their "trade boxes" -- bins full of things they don't want and would like to trade for things they do want -- and a lot of time was spend wheeling and dealing in the living room.
     

    OVGE founder Crossbow digs through someone's trade box.
     
    The arcade was a success, warts and all. There are many cooler arcades out there and I have no delusions about the state of my own. Sometimes where people see "arcade games" I see chunks of wood with scratches, patched-together controls and tired monitors. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and (thankfully) there were no technical meltdowns during the festivities. Classic arcade machines are cantankerous at best.
     

    Icbrkr kicks off the arcade with a little Mortal Kombat 3 action as Kent looks on.
     
    Attending OEGE along with people's long drives took their toll on the partygoers. By 11pm things were winding down; Icbrkr, Gapporin and Ubikuberalles sauntered off to claim their respective bunks. One by one the faithful gamers admitted defeat and parted ways. It was an honor to to have so many people travel so far to come visit, hang out, and share the love of videogames with me and others, and I can't wait until the next time.
     
    OEGE After Party Pictures
     
    Icbrkr's YouTube Videos of the party:
     



  11. Flack

    OEGE Review

    By Flack,

    Last Saturday (April 26th, 2008) marked the debut of the Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo (OEGE). Unrelated to the already established Oklahoma Videogame Expo (OVGE), OEGE is a new show that took place at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC). The show was sponsored by OCCC's Computer Arts & Technology Society (CATS), and was spearheaded by student and club member Drew Stone. The first draft of this post was well over five pages long; I've since removed 90% of the details, and decided to go with this more generic review of the show instead. A review of the OEGE After Party (which took place at my house) will follow later today.
     
    OEGE was plagued with issues from word go. Drew tapped CATS and OCCC as sponsors for the show, but as he soon found out, linking your event with such organizations (especially a school) is a double-edged sword. The upside is you can get lots of floor space inexpensively; the downside is, you have to play by their rules. From what I understand, red tape school politics delayed the launch of a website to the point where it never happened. With no website or official advertising, the show was doomed to a low turnout from the start.
     
    The only official advertising I saw was a PDF flyer which was posted on one forum (I downloaded the flyer and rehosted it on my own site just so I could post links to it -- it was the only way I knew to get the word out about the show!). Taken from the flyer:
     
    "Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo is a day of video-game revelry. Our 2008 Expo will mark the first gaming destination in Oklahoma- where gamers and industry insiders can come together to celebrate video-games. Attendees come to OEGE to experience the newest games, encounter game industry legends, compete in tournaments, buy games, and meet with friends."
     
    Based on the above text, friends of mine from Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and even New Mexico drove to Oklahoma City to attend OEGE, in hopes of experiencing the newest games and encountering game industry legends. Instead, they found four vendors, two game stations, and an CATS booth. Of the four vendors, two were videogame related. One was Vintage Stock, a midwest-based gaming chain. The other was Phosphor Dot Fossils, who was there to debut his Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD (it's fantastic -- review coming soon!). The other two vendors were selling comic books and board games. Aside from the four vendors there were two game stations -- an Xbox 360 running Guitar Hero, and a Wii (hooked up to a projector) playing a few different games (mostly Super Smash Bros. Brawl).
     
    The word on the show's floor was that several vendors either cancelled or pulled out at the last minute. I don't know what went on behind the scenes. What I do know is we had seen everything the show had to offer in less than half an hour. While it was a nice opportunity to see all my online friends in person again, there wasn't much for us to do there. Icbrkr and Gapporin played a few rounds of Guitar Hero at the show (a game both of them own at home, too). Had I driven from another state to attend the show I might have forced myself to stay longer ... but I didn't. After looking at everything on the showroom floor two or three times, most of us split -- first, to eat, followed by a bit of thrift store game hunting.
     
    Thanks to all the vendors who did show up, and congrats to Drew Stone and company for pulling off their first event. I'm sure the gang learned some tough lessons first hand this time around, and I expect great improvements will be made to next year's show.
     
    OEGE 2008 Photos
  12. Flack

    Crash Gordon

    By Flack,

    I fly down the stairs, feet moving so quickly I almost trip over them. Rounding the corner I dodge Morgan, pop into my office, and remove my workstation from the domain. As that machine begins to reboot I jog back to the living room and begin moving downloaded utilities from my laptop to a memory stick. Once the copy begins it's back upstairs to try and pull more data out of backups. No, this isn't some new sort of nerd Olympics -- unforunately, it was my Monday night.
     
    We've become so reliant and comfortable with Microsoft patches that patching and rebooting a machine, even an important server, seems mundane. (I don't want to hear it from the Linux crowd; my Ubuntu machine downloads as many if not more patches on a day-to-day basis.) When I checked my home server Monday morning and saw that it had downloaded new patches, I didn't think twice about applying them and rebooting. In fact I thought so little of it that I didn't even stick around to make sure the server came back online. For the record, it didn't.
     
    Data recovery is a funny thing that almost never works as well or as smoothly as you think and hope it will. My personal backup scheme goes above and beyond that of most end users and some businesses. Once machines are loaded and configured, snapshot images (using Acronis) are made and stored. In addition, "data" is backed up on a nightly basis as well. By "data" I don't mean applications, but my own personal files. In other words, I don't back up Microsoft Word on a nightly basis, but I do backup my Word documents.
     
    On a recent episode of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie demonstrated how to escape from a sinking car. The technique involved waiting for the car to fill with water, opening door, and swimming to safety. Even with a tried-and-true plan in place and the knowledge that they were filming a television show, Adam still panicked and had to be given emergency oxygen. Even the best plans fall apart in a moment of panic; such is the often case when a hard drive fails. Even though I perform regular backups, it is sometimes difficult to function when all you can think about is the fear of losing almost fifteen years of digital photos and tons of original documents. During these times it is imperitive to follow preset plans and not lose your head.
     
    I worked from 3:30pm Monday until almost 3:30am Tuesday morning reloading, restoring, and recovering data. My backup plan worked good, but not great. In retrospect, I should take more frequent snapshots of my server, or at least my application directory. After working for almost 12 hours straight on getting IIS, MySQL, Wordpress and PHP to talk to one another, I threw in the towel and called my good buddy Jeff at Managed Data Solutions to bail me out. Within the hour Jeff had everything up and running, and once again I owe him dinner.
     
    I learned a bit more about backups this time without too sharp of a sting. 24 hours later I'm back up and running, with 0% data loss.
     
    We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
  13. Flack
    From 1985-1991, I competed in Odyssey of the Mind. (Side rant: Odyssey of the Mind was originally known as Olympics of the Mind back when I began participating. Apparently the aggressive and somewhat litigious International Olympic Committee forced the name change -- not that there was any chance of people confusing a bunch of underaged geeks building crap out of cardboard, paper mache' and poster paints with a gathering of international atheletes, but whatever. The O in OM (which is all we ever called it anyway) was quietly changed from "Olympics" to "Odyssey" and we all carried on about our business.)
     
    The point of OM was to put together a team and solve one long-term problem. Each year, four or five different long-term problems were presented to choose from. Although the problems changed each year, there were five general categories in which the problems fell: vehicle problems, technical problems, Classics, structure ("building a bridge out of balsa wood"), and performance. Over the years I think I tried all of them except the balsa wood one. Once the problems were announced, we formed teams of 5-7 kids and went to work. After working on the problem for a few months, we all travelled to "state competition" and competed against other groups of nerdy kids. For us this took place in Ada, Oklahoma. If you won at state, you moved on to nationals. I had a few friends who went to nationals over the years. My teams never made the cut. This is all a huge simplification of Odyssey of the Mind; if you want to know more, Wikipedia has a nice summary.
     
    While each of these problems had pages upon pages of rules (and potential penalties), the most serious penalty a team could receive was a "Spirit of the Problem" violation. A Spirit of the Problem violation meant that you basically didn't solve the problem -- essentially, you failed to meet the minimum requirements. For example, let's say the problem was to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If you made a sandwich but burned it, you might lose five points; if you didn't manage to assemble a sandwich at all, that would be a Spirit of the Problem violation. The most you could score was 100. While most other penalities ranged from 1 to 5 points, a Spirit of the Violation problem penalized a team 100 points or so, essentially reducing your score 0 (and beyond).
     
    One important thing to mention here is that we (the kids) were responsible for all ideas and work. Each team had a coach, but it was against the rules for s/he to give us ideas or perform any work (except for anything deemed dangerous to kids -- welding, for example).
     
    The first time any of my teams received a Spirit of the Problem violation was I believe in seventh grade. A few friends of mine and I had taken on a vehicle problem. The problem consisted of a real life 10x10 grid. On the grid were 3 randomly placed treasures, and 3 randomly placed dangers. Our first task was to write a computer program that would generate a path throughout the grid that would pick up all the treasures, and avoid all the pitfalls. Once the computer provided the solution, the solution had to be conveyed to whoever was operating the vehicle, who would then steer it around the real life grid, following the computer's path. Basically, we had three problems to solve: writing the computer program, conveying the computer's solution to the vehicle operator, and building a vehicle. All of this had to be performed non-verbally, and the computer was situated so that the vehicle operator could not see the monitor.
     
    Even in 7th grade, I was doing quite a bit of Apple programming. We decided that it would be much simpler for a computer operator to generate the solution, so instead of having the computer solve the problem, I wrote a graphical 10x10 grid that could be maneuvered by using the Apple II's arrow keys. Pressing "plus" dropped a treasure in a grid, and "minus" dropped a danger. Once those were in place, the computer operator could maneuver around the virtual grid, and the arrow keys left a little trail. The system we invented to convey the results to the vehicle operator involved a 10x10 grid painted on a piece of wood with Christmas lights mounted to it. If I remember correctly, blue lightbulbs represented the path, green meant treasure and red meant pitfall. The person operating the board would look at the computer screen and enter fill the grid in with lightbulbs. If that sounds cheesy, wait until you hear about our vehicle. Basically, it was a giant pair of shoes. One of the requirements was that the vehicle operator had to be four inches off the ground, so we nailed a couple of 2x4s to the bottom of two sheets of wood, and ran rope through the wood so that you could hold on to the shoes. The vehicle had to carry two people, so with two of us on the shoes holding ropes, we walked around the grid, collecting our treasure.
     
    Shortly after our performance, we were informed that we had received not one, but two Spirit of the Problem violations. (In retrospect, I've never heard of anyone else receiving two.) First, we were told that "shoes are not a vehicle." I don't remember the specifics but I can only assume there were some details somewhere about what qualified as a vehicle that we did not meet. And second, at the competition they informed us that the computer was to generate the solution, not a person. Oops. Out of 100 possible points, I think we scored a -175.
     
    Sometimes when I am programming at work on something I thought about that OM project. I'm not sure I could program the thing now any better. Maybe I'll try again one of these days.
  14. Flack

    It's a Gas, Gas, Gas.

    By Flack,

    Came home the other day, found a note on the front door. "Your gas has been turned off due to a suspected leak. Call us to arrange an inspection. Love, Oklahoma Natural Gas." Turns out, ONG has a courtesy service where they automatically shut your gas off when your bill hits a certain number. Apparently that number is around $500.
     
    ONG was called and the night shift fellow (who was quite friendly) stopped by. He checked our meter and found a tiny leak -- so small, it may be costing us $2/month. The real problem, as determined by "the guy", is that when our air conditioner was fixed last summer, they crossed the wiring somehow, which causes our heater and furnace to cycle continually. This makes the gas heater fire up whether or not we turn on the heat, or the A/C. In fact, while he was there we looked at the heater, which was on and blowing heat at full blast while our air conditioner was fighting it to cool the house.
     
    To fix the leak at the meter, the guy said they would be sending out a construction crew to dig up the back yard. Apparently the leak is underground, somewhere between the meter and the house. The solution for this is to dig everything up and move the meter next to the house. This is done free of charge, which is fortunate as I wouldn't pay much to stop a $2/month leak. The part I'm looking forward to the most (sarcasm to follow) is the fact that our cable runs there as well, which I fully expect them to sever -- I also expect this to happen on or around Saturday, the day of my gaming party at the house. I am already planning on not having cable television, cable modem, or telephone (which we also get via cable) for the weekend. I'd bet money on not having it this weekend.
     
    As for the heater fix, it's going to have to wait until next week. Based on co-worker advice (and a late call to Andy) I killed the gas going to the heater (at least we still have hot water). In theory that should stop the leak until we can call Dahl's Heat and Air back out, show them our bill over the past few months, and beg for repairs.
  15. Flack

    Random Updates

    By Flack,

    Work has continued on the End User Provisioning Team here at work. You can tell the weeks we meet; I rarely update the blog those weeks, just because we're so busy here at work and when I get home I don't feel like getting on the computer. We had planning on meeting the week of April 25th as well, but moments ago I heard that week has been split into two week-long meetings, one the week of the 14th and another the week of the 28th. Crazy times around these here parts.
     
    Last week I released episode three of You Don't Know Flack. Episode 103 is full of old arcade stories, and I've had good feedback on this one so far. Episode 4 will likely be about Console Copiers. After that, who knows.
     
    This Saturday (April 12th) is Garage Sale Day in Sun Valley. Dad and I spent an hour or so on Saturday cleaning up his yard. I worked on the golf kart a bit this weekend; expect it to make another appearance this year.
     
    Mason's soccer team (The Hotshots) pulled off a tie game this weekend, their best showing yet.
     
    During Mason's previous soccer game, the field was buzzed by a yet. There was speculation as to whether it was a real jet, or an R/C plane. After the game ended, we tracked down where the planes were taking off and landing from. The owner of the jet turned out to be our doctor's son, who let Mason pose with the jet for a picture.
     

  16. Flack
    Shortly after the premiere of 2004's "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story," real dodgeball centers began to pop up across the country. One such center is Maximum Dodgeball, where Mason and I attended his friend Dominic's birthday party on Saturday.
     

     
    Those of you who attended school in the 70s and 80s like I did (before school districs began banning the game) probably remember playing dodgeball. Teachers saw it as a way for kids to burn off energy and aggression, and we saw it as a way to pummel the weak without leaving scars. (Oh, who am I kidding; I was generally a pummelee rather than a pummeler.) For all intents and purposes, the game hasn't changed much. There are a few new rules here and there (which could simply be old rules that I've forgotten) but the goal remains the same -- tag, and avoid being tagged.
     

     
    The birthday party began with a rule session, provided by an official dodgeball referee (and, during the party, the only present employee). The referee made himself useful during the games. (Let's just say the honor system doesn't work that well among six and seven year olds.) Once the rules had been explained, teams were divided up, and the game was on.
     

     
    After 30 minutes or so, a "parents vs. kids" game was announced. With nothing to lose, a few parents (including myself) took to the court. We won the first round, the kids won the second, and the parents edged out a third victory. After that, parents remained out on the court, some on each team. Probably the highlight of the afternoon was when I went to beam the ball at a fellow adult, missed, and popped the birthday boy in the face, knocking him down. In the end it was all good, and I even gave the kid a free shot to make up for it.
     
    I ended up playing dodgeball for 90 minutes straight before the party concluded, at which point we hopped in the truck and zipped back to the house just in time for Mason to change into his soccer gear and head out to the game.
     
    Maximum Dodgeball has an adult league if anyone wants to get a team together. Anyone? Bueller?
  17. Flack
    Over the past week I’ve had two different friends ask me details about my Lapband surgery – how the surgery went, how things are going, and would I recommend it. When I mentioned this coincidence to Susan, she pointed out that I haven’t blogged much about my surgery at all (which is unlike me). So, for my friends, and for you, here is my “three-month Lapband update.”
     
    I had Lapband surgery on December 3rd, 2007. It’s an easy date to remember; it was nine years (to the day) that I got hit by a truck. December 3rd has become my second birthday – twice now. Prior to having Lapband surgery there are a series of hoops everyone must jump through. Every single place that performs this procedure has different rules and requirements, so I would be surprised if anyone else’s experience was identical to mine. Here are the eight things I had to complete before having surgery:
     
    - Attend the initial seminar: This was more or less a two-hour sales pitch. During the event they explained and compared the two most common surgeries (Gastric Bypass and Lapband). At the end of this seminar, attendees submitted their insurance information and were later notified if they qualified for either of the surgeries.
     
    - Attend the introduction: After being accepted, I had to attend this introductory meeting. During this meeting they explained the general process, allowed us to sample different types of food, and gave us notebooks full of information. They also scheduled my surgery date during this meeting, approximately six weeks out.
     
    - Make a food order: For ten days prior to surgery and a week afterwards, I was on a liquid diet. The place I had surgery sells protein-rich drinks intended for this period. Purchasing my food elsewhere was not an option; their food is part of the program. Protein shakes and packets average $3 per meal, and I had to buy 3 weeks worth. (If you want to buy protein mix in bulk, it is cheaper.)
     
    - Meet with a shrink: During this 1 hour session, a shrink tries to determine whether or not you are crazy. I suspect the purpose for this is to determine why you are overweight; I think they are looking for eating disorders here.
     
    - Meet with a dietary consultant: During this session I met with a dietary counselor who explained to me the changes in food intake that were about to occur. We talked a lot about measuring food and monitoring daily protein levels. I actually thought this was one of the more interesting and productive hoops.
     
    - Meet with a physical therapist: During this session the physical therapist explains to you why you are fat and helps you develop a workout schedule.
     
    - Attend a support group meeting: Personally for me this was the least helpful and most annoying hoop, but others may find it more helpful or interesting. The group meeting I attended consisted of three groups of people: people who were there to whine, people who were there to help the whiners, and people like myself who were forced to be there and didn’t say a word. The whiners whined (“I just can’t do it! I love ice cream too much!”), the helpers helped (“You can do it! I did it! If I can do it, you can do it!”), and the rest of us sat around looking at the clock. If I need support, there’s this thing called the Internet and there are several large websites and forums designed for people to ask and answer questions. Hanging out in a room full of strangers talking about my addiction to Peeps ain’t my thing.
     
    - 10-day pre-diet: Both Lapband and Gastric Bypass surgery are stomach-related surgeries, so it makes sense that your stomach should be as empty as possible beforehand. Lapband surgery is laparoscopic, which means it is performed through a series of tiny cuts instead of one big incision. To get to the stomach easily, the liver must shrink, which is another reason for the diet. Some people suffer terribly through the diet but I personally found it not too bad. One of the meal replacements I purchased was a big bag of Cookies and Cream mixed, which is prepared by mixing a big cup of mix with 8oz of water or milk. I added ice and threw it in the blender, making a giant shake. Who doesn’t like Cookies and Cream shakes for lunch?
     
    All of this was not as bad as it sounds. I know at least four of them all took place on the same day, so it wasn’t as time consuming as it may seem.
     
    On the day of my surgery, I checked in to the hospital at 6am, with a scheduled surgery time of 9am. My surgery actually took place sometime around 1pm (routine hospital delays). Before the surgery, I laid in a waiting bay with my parents and my wife at my side. Once I finally went back, the surgery went quick and within an hour I had woken up in recovery. I moved back to my room shortly after that. Some insurance companies will not pay for an overnight stay; mine did, and I had a stack of electronic things around me to keep me entertained.
     
    Around 6pm that night (approximately three hours after returning to my room) I was served my first meal, in paper cups the size of shot glasses. I think I had broth, pudding, and Jell-O. Surprisingly, it filled me up. Another two hours later at 8pm I got up and walked around a bit. My stomach was sore but not unbearable. I spent the last couple of hours of the night watching Funniest Home Videos (which seems to always be on in the hospital) and a football game. The next morning I took a shower on my own, got dressed in loose clothing, and went home around 9am.
     
    The worst pain I experienced throughout the entire ordeal was something called “phantom pain” in my shoulder. A day or two after my surgery I began feeling intense pain in my shoulder. During laparoscopic surgery, the stomach cavity is pumped full of air. Some people will tell you that the pain comes from those bubbles rising up to your shoulder, but the real cause of the pain is bubbles pressing up against nerves which lead up to your shoulders – that’s why you feel it there. Google for laparascopic shoulder pain and you’ll find a million cures. Believe me, I tried them all. Heating pads didn’t work. Drinking Peppermint Tea didn’t work. Laxatives didn’t work. Walking around didn’t work. The only thing that worked was pain pills, so stock up! The pain I felt in my shoulder was 100x worse than anything related to the surgery.
     
    I had my surgery on a Monday. I was home Tuesday morning; Wednesday, Dad and I went out and did some minor shopping. Even though I scheduled a week off of work for the surgery, I could have gone back to work by Thursday for sure. One of the limitations after the surgery is not lifting 20 pounds, but that was not a major factor for me at work.
     

     
    For those who aren’t sure how Lapband works, here’s a cute little image. As you can see, the band goes around the top of the stomach, creating a small 4oz (half a cup) pouch above it. If you think of it like a car’s gas tank, essentially you’ve moved the bottom of the tank all the way close to the “full meter,” so even after eating a small amount of food you feel very full. Another analogy – think about a plastic funnel. Even if you fill a funnel quickly with water, it takes a long time for it to flow through. The idea with Lapband is that your new pouch will fill quickly with food, but it will take a long time for that food to drain through to your real stomach. That rate of drain is controlled by how much saline is in your band. If you’ll notice in the diagram, there is a port hanging off of the band. That port sits underneath your skin, and the amount of saline in your band can be increased or decreased through simple injections.
     
    And so, on with the injections.
     
    Again, I preface this information with the note that every place is different. At my place, no saline was added into the band after surgery. Trust me, your stomach will be so sore at this point that you won’t need saline to keep you from over eating. Over time, small amounts of saline are added to the band. The goal is to find your “sweet spot,” a setting where you feel full after eating only 4oz of food, and the fullness lasts three or four hours. Unfortunately that setting is different for every single person so the only way to find it to get a fill, wait two weeks, get another fill, wait two weeks, etc.
     
    I should note that there are three main sizes of Lapband devices – 4oz, 10oz, and 14oz. Between that and the fact that everyone’s stomach lining is a different thickness, it’s really difficult to compare fill levels with other people.
     
    I have a 14oz band, and to date I’ve had four fills. On the first fill, they added 4 ½ oz. After each fill I am instructed to have liquids for a day and then soft foods for a day before venturing back to solid food. My first fill did not restrict my eating at all. After one fill I was able to eat a salad at Golden Corral covered in steak, chicken and shrimp, and follow it up with another full plate of meat and veggies. My second fill, which added two more CCs of fluid, was much the same.
     
    After my third fill, which brought me to 8 CCs, I began feeling major restriction. All of a sudden, all of the rules I previously thought of as “suggestions” became rules. All of the things they told me to stop doing (like drinking during meals) started making me puke. I’ve only thrown up a handful (ew) of times since the surgery and they have all been due to me breaking the rules so it’s tough to fault the procedure.
     
    It was only after my third fill that I really felt like I had had the operation. My fourth fill, which brought me to 9 CCs, has made a believer out of me. Finally, all the reasons that made me want to have the surgery are coming true. I ate a protein bar for breakfast this morning and I was STUFFED. For dinner last night, I had a small-sized frozen dinner and couldn’t finish the dessert. Over the past couple of months I have been kind of disappointed with the procedure because I felt like it really wasn’t working, but the past couple of weeks have changed my mind. I really feel like things may change for me.
     
    One major thing that Lapband does is affect your social life. It’s amazing how much of our lives are tied to eating. When people come in from out of town, I take them to eat. When I catch up with old friends, we go out and eat. Eating = socializing in my world, and that’s something you should really consider before having this surgery. All of a sudden I am consistently the last person done eating at every meal. People will constantly ask you about your food. They’ll comment on what, and how much, you are eating. This goes with the territory; if you can’t handle it, don’t eat around other people. Your surgery will affect the people around you. Some people will feel self-conscious eating in front of you. Some people will make comments to you. Some people will make comments after you leave. People will comment on your weight loss, and how fast or slow it’s going. They’ll tell you horror stories about people they know who have had the surgery and how terrible it went for them. Although this surgery takes place on your inside, you had better have a thick outside to go along with it. Unfortunately there is no handbook that goes along with these things. You, as I have, will learn your own way to deal with these things. Some of them may bother you and others may not.
     
    The one thing I would stress to people considering Lapband surgery is, Lapband is not a solution in and of itself. There are cases where people have actually GAINED weight after this surgery. Lapband restricts the amount of food you can eat in one sitting. It does not stop you from snacking. More importantly, it does not make good food decisions for you. Even though you can are limited to eating 4oz of food at a time, that could mean 4oz of cake. Or worse, it could be 4oz of pudding or ice cream or shakes, things that slide right through the Lapband, add calories, and don’t fill you up.
     
    Lapband and Gastric Bypass surgery involve many sacrifices. You have to give up carbonated drinks (that includes beer). You have to give up caffeine. I have all but given up white bread and pasta (it simply won’t go down). Whether or not the surgery is the right choice for you is a personal decision. It certainly is not “the easy way to lose weight,” as many people have told me (try giving up drinking 30 minutes before, during, and after meals and tell me how easy it is!). I am sure there are people who think less of me for having the surgery, but those who really care about me are glad that I will live longer because of it, and that for me was the ultimate deciding factor.
  18. Flack

    DS Downloading

    By Flack,

    "Cool Dad, now we can DS Download," Mason exclaimed as I fired up my new Nintendo DS last night for the first time. I didn't want to admit that I didn't know what "DS downloading" was, so I simply nodded. "Sure, Mase," I said. DS Downloading, apparently, is a way in which two people with Nintendo DSes can play games together.
     
    Around bedtime, Mason asked again if we could DS Download. "Well Mase, I don't have a cable for that," I said. "You don't need a cable, let me show you," he said. He fired up his DS and I fired up mine. Then we both launched the game Super Mario DS. "No no no, Dad," he scolded me. "You go to the wireless part and wait for me," he explained. When I couldn't find where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do (give me a break -- I just got the thing!) Mason removed the DS from my hands and got me set up. "There," he said, handing the unit back to me. Moments later, a message popped up on my screen: "Would you like to connect to qxfheke?" it asked.
     
    "I changed my name," Mason replied.
     
    Everything else after that was a blur. We played some game, best three out of five, but only made it through three rounds as Mason repeatedly pummeled my character every game. There was no escaping the boy's wrath -- my little pink dinosaur was beaten senseless by Mason's much-more-nimble green dinosaur (Yoshi, I think -- I didn't get a real good look at him). I think I even heard a snicker or two coming from the boy's direction. Rather than face the humility of a "YOU LOSE" screen I turned the DS off, hoping to save my clean record (and dignity). No such luck (on either account).
  19. Flack
    Last weekend was Mason's first game as a member of the Yukon Hotshots. The game took place in El Reno at 1pm. It was 29 degrees, but the brisk north wind made it feel colder than that.
     

     
    The Hotshots formed approximately two weeks before the team's first game. That gave the team's five six-year-olds four practice sessions -- unfortunately, two of the them were cancelled, due to weather. That meant prior to our first games, the kid had spent exactly two hours learning how to play soccer.
     
    Mason's soccer league consists of kids between the ages of six and eight. Mason's team consists of five six-year-olds. Our first opponents, the Cougers, consisted of at least eight kids, all ages seven or eight. Before the game, Mason's biggest concern was that his shoes were going to come off. "Tie them real tight, dad," he said. As the kids lined up for the game to begin, the coach of the Cougers began yelling out plays. "TRIANGLE FORMATION," he yelled, while making the shape of a triangle with his hands.
     
    I don't know if there's a name for that moment in time in which a person realizes things are about to go very bad, but this was that moment. Their coach is calling offensive plays, and our kids' biggest concern is that their shoes are going to fly off. This did not bode well.
     
    Within five minutes we were down 0-2 -- which is pretty amazing in the fact that they had only scored twice. The Cougers were crafty veterans, running down the ball, passing, and rushing toward the goal. Our kids were tired, complaining about the cold, and fairly good at stealing the ball from their own teammates.
     
    Mason's biggest problem is, he's too nice. When kids would all run toward the ball he would step back, as if to say, "here you go!" During one of these moments, the ball popped out of the pocket, and landed at Mason's feet. "RUN!" we shouted, and he did, chasing the ball downfield with seven other kids chasing after him. When he got to the goal he shot, and SCORED! All the parents on our side were cheering his name. Immediately after scoring, Mason ran off the field to give Susan a hug. And while it was cute, this was no time for hugging -- there was a game to be played! "GET BACK OUT THERE, MASON!" the other parents cried, and so he did.
     
    By the end of the game, Mason had scored three goals. That's the good news. The bad news is, he was the only member of the team to score. The worse news is, the other team scored somewhere around 10 points or so. At one point we got unofficially run-ruled, and were allowed an extra player on the field. Things got so bad that the Cougers began kicking the ball away from the goal, to quit running up the score. Appreciated, but embarassing.
     
    In the end though, it was only the parents and not the kids who cared about the score. Mason had a great time playing, and didn't realize until after I told him that his team had lost the game. He didn't care about the final score at all. He was just glad to get to play and was excited that he had scored. Mason had a blast playing, and that's all that mattered.
     
    He also spent plenty of the time talking with girls. What can I say ... he's his daddy's boy.
     

  20. Flack

    Who's got the shoes?

    By Flack,

    The biggest thing that worries me about being in charge of the kids is dealing with the surprises. For example, before Susan left she laid out two big piles of clothes for the kids. Each kid has one shirt, one pair of pants, one pair of underwear, and one pair of socks for each day of the week. Each morning we pull a complete set off the pile for each kid and the kids get dressed. I like this system because neither I nor the kids have to think about what they're going to wear each morning. Yesterday after Mason had got dressed, he couldn't find his shoes. We spent the next 10 minutes turning the house upside down, looking for his shoes. We checked all the easy places first: the living room, the bathroom, and so on. Then we started searching the more obscure places: under the couch cushions, upstairs, out in the truck, etc. At this point things are going through my mind like, can I send the kid to school barefoot? Do I have time to stop by Wal-Mart and buy the boy more shoes? Can I get a pair of my old shoes and duct tape them to the boy really tightly?
     
    Just as all hope had been given up, the shoes turned up. I caught a glimpse of a shoelace sticking out from under MY bed -- yes, Mason's shoes somehow ended up under MY bed. Who knows how they ended up there.
  21. Flack

    Goolag

    By Flack,

    The Cult of the Dead Cow has officially released GoolagScan -- but what exactly does it do?
     
    Google is a very powerful search engine. Google indexes billions of websites, and lots and lots of little bits of information about each of those websites -- lots of information, in fact, that website owners may not even realize is being archived. Through crafty and sometimes complex Google searches, that information can be retrieved.
     
    Everybody who's used Google for any length of time has learned its nuances and advanced search options. For example, by using quotation marks you can group words together (+"Michael Jackson") and by using plus and minus symbols, you can include or exclude words in your results (+mp3 -avi). The real power comes in linking these things together: (+"Michael Jackson" +thriller +mp3 -avi). Unfortunately due to the thousands of sites that sell mp3s, this isn't a very effective search. You're pretty unlikely to find Michael Jackson's Thriller this way without a lot of manual searching. That's where advanced searches come in to play. Google for <b>“parent directory” +mp3 +thriller -html -htm -download -links</b> and all of a sudden you'll find indexes of open shares that contain both the words "mp3" and "thriller". This method's not foolproof either. If you run that query on Google you'll notice that the first two hits are fake webpages set up to look like indexes of files. Boo, hiss. The third hit, however, is a real index of an mp3 share hosted on a webserver. And, if you're needing your daily zombie/Vincent Price/Michael Jackson fix, here's Thriller.
     
    Obviously, sitting around and Googling for mp3s is kind of silly in today's world of P2P, FTP and Usenet. But what else could we use Google for? I'm glad you asked! What if we want to search for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that contain the word "salary" or Word documents that contain the words "dmz" and "password"? Woo hoo, now we're having fun, right?
     
    Johnny, of johnny.ihackstuff.com took Google Hacking to new heights by compiling an online database of Google Hacks. Want to know how to search for files, or passwords, or login portals, or vulnerabilites? Johnny has a collection of these search tidbits, called "dorks", that can be viewed. Once the idea of storing/shaing dorks grabbed a foothold, the Google Hacking scene took off. Everybody was doing it; even I wrote my own app, Scroogle, which was a small GUI that allowed users to use built-in dorks or add their own (stored in text files). The software is actually quite functional, although it was never officially released.
     
    So anyway, full circle -- what is Goolag? Goolag is a web auditing tool that takes Johnny iHackStuff's Google Hacking to new heights by automating Google searches and providing a collection of security-related "dorks". Want to scan your domain for vulnerabilities, files containing usernames and/or sensitive directories? Now you can! Want to scan someone else's domain for those same things? That's naughty and you shouldn't think of things like that.
  22. Flack

    Near Miss

    By Flack,

    If I take the back way home from work, there's one intersection that scares me to death. It's a two way stop where the crossroad is a four-lane highway. Cars speed by at 60mph as people behind you honk impatiently for you to zip across. It's a wonder no one's been killed at that intersection yet. Yesterday, I almost was.
     
    To make a long story short, a small, gray Honda was hidden behind a large red truck. I saw the truck coming and gunned it, only to notice the gray car hidden behind it seconds later. I hit my brakes and swerved to the left to avoid hitting him; the drive of the other car locked his brakes up, sliding sideways and hitting the curb. I'm not sure how close we came to colliding, but it was pretty dang close.
     
    I stopped to see if the driver was okay, but he motioned for me to drive on so I did. Then I noticed he was following me. In retrospect, I think he was just motioning for me to get off the busy road before we stopped. The guy wanted to exchange information and, still in a daze, I gave him my name, home phone number and address instead of my insurance information. I hope he calls; I'd gladly give him my insurance info, I just wasn't thinking straight at the time. His car seemed to be okay, sans a few scratches on his wheel. Does anyone know if insurance pays for an accident where the cars don't even touch?
  23. Flack

    Rob, meet High-Definition

    By Flack,

    With the swipe of a credit card, I have officially joined the high definition era. Wednesday, UPS delivered my mail-order 46" 1080p LCD flat screen television. And by "delivered," I mean "left me a note for me on my front door telling me to come pick it up." Oh sure, they'll attempt to deliver it two more times -- during the middle of the day, when obviously I'm at work. Someone should invent a shipping company that delivers packages between 6pm and 10pm. I'll probably detail my experience with UPS in another post but for now, the focus is my new television. Woo hoo!
     
    At UPS, Susan and I managed to load the bulky (but not particularly heavy, considering its size) box into the back of the truck by ourselves. A couple of tie-down straps later we were barreling down the interstate, racing to get home. While driving, I imagined what might happen if I were pulled over for speeding. "Mr. O'Hara, why were you driving so fast?" "Dude, did you see the television in the back of this truck? I'm trying to get home so I can hook it up and see how it looks!" "Oh wow, would you like an escort? Let me call the guys so they can meet us there!" I have a great imagination.
     
    On the way home, the four of us (me, Susan and the kids) stopped at Taco Bueno for some dinner. And yes, I backed my truck up to the sidewalk and positioned myself inside the restaurant so I could look out the window and keep an eye on everything.
     
    After we got home and got the childrens settled, Susan helped me carry the television into the house. She was nervous about dropping it and so was I (nervous about her dropping it). Fortunately, the short migration was uneventful. I decided to unbox the television in the kitchen -- I figured if the screen was scratched or broken, I might as well find out downstairs instead of lugging it upstars, discovering it, and carrying it back down again.
     
    After unboxing the television on the kitchen counter, I hooked up a spare DVD player to it to test everything out. It looks great! By now the kids were getting pretty curious, and as I worked they drug dining room chairs into the kitchen to watch what I was doing, forming possibly the world's first kitchen home theater. At least we weren't too far from the popcorn.
     

  24. Flack

    Pointless Jobs

    By Flack,

    Most days when I show up at Mason's school to pick him up, I see the school's custodian standing out in the middle of the road, directing traffic. His job, as far as I can tell, is to tell people not to turn into the school's driveway when it's full. Of course, when the driveway is full, there's no where to turn anyway. In fast food terms, it would be the same as standing by the drink fountain and warning people to stop filling their cup when it's full.
     
    The funniest part of the whole situation is, the guy is only out there approximately every other day. On the days he's not there, everything goes just fine. Drivers, showing a fundamental comprehension of physics, understand that they cannot move forward until the car in front of them has moved forward. Somehow we manage the no-so-complicated "single file line" system without his direction or intervention.
     
    How depressing it must be to be able to be replaced by "nobody" on a regular basis and have things still run just fine.
     
    (Susan's comment: "I think the worst job is standing on the corner, holding a pizza sign. Those people can be replaced by a pole.")
  25. Flack
    Just when I got the family weaned off of videotapes, "Pivo", our living room-based media center PC, up and died on us. I can't say that I didn't get my money's worth out of the box I was using -- I bought it over a year ago off Craigslist for $100 -- but during a recent winter storm our lights flickered, the machine went off, and that was the end of that. The power supply fan spun, but that was the only sign of life. I pulled every card and swapped out all the RAM, to no avail.
     
    This happened a little over two weeks ago. You don't realize how much you've grown to rely on something until it abruptly disappears. Pivo's a great babysitter -- I have instant access to any number of videos -- and I've personally come to depend on it for catching my regular television programs. It's tough to get through American Idol when the kids are awake; after they go to bed however, we can watch an episode twice as fast by skipping commercials (and the dead time between performances). Suddenly, all of that was gone. The kids cried, "we want Barney! We want Teletubbies! We want Curious George!" Instead, they've been scraping by, suffering with old videotapes of Scooby Doo and other cartoon characters well past their prime. Even worse -- Susan and I have been forced to watch television in real time -- with COMMERCIALS!
     
    Pivo #2 -- a Dell Inspiron 3000 -- was purchased over the weekend. Surprisingly, very little work needed to be done to get it up and going. I swapped the old RAM and the old hard drives into the machine, rebooted a couple of times, and things were back up and running. Now I'll have to wean everybody back off videotapes again (and throw them away this time).
     
    So, RIP Pivo. Hello, Pivo #2.
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