Wine Thirty

Star wars auditions

Mon, 21 May 2007 01:18:35 GMT

The competition for Star Wars roles was really tough.

(Links from my bro...)

Oh, this one too...

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:51:01 GMT

...in case you didn't get enough gravity in the last one...

A little phun with physics...

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:45:22 GMT

I'm really not sure why things like this amuse me so much. But, there they are...

(Link from Vijaye...)

Out of date

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:16:33 GMT

Chris says my blog is out of date. He's right of course... this is my first post of 2007. Hmm...

Pair programming is fun, I agree. The stuff we got working last night was really cool.

But, I don't blog technical much anyway...

Happy 5th Birthday, Rachel!

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:07:44 GMT

Christmas Pre-funk

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:20:41 GMT

Brian's a better/faster content poster than me...

I had a little kick-off for the holiday season last Saturday. I used the opportunity to finally pop open the 5-liter bottle of '96 Pride Cab that's been in my cellar forever. It was good...

Here's a snap of the bottle I took:

That's one big bottle. Six and two-thirds "normal" sized bottles, all in one. Turns out, we didn't have any trouble finishing it off.

Anyway, Brian posted some great pics of the event. It's only fair to say that Erick wasn't in nearly the state that you might assume based on some of these pictures...

Comment Spam

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:25:35 GMT

Some people just suck.

I just turned off the ability to add comments to entries on this site. I had to do this because some pustulent piece(s) of garbage decided to spam the comments in order to add links to themselves... probably a google hack to increase traffic, etc.

Well, this'll fix their wagon... silly me for allowing a link in comments in the first place.

Happy 7th Birthday, Sarah!

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:39:48 GMT

Cannon Beach 2006

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:05:33 GMT

The past few years (including last year) we've taken a trip to Cannon Beach, OR. This year is no different; we spent last week there, and are once again ready to make arrangements for next year.

This time, our rental house was quite a bit different than the other years. It was quite a bit smaller. There were three bathrooms (well... three rooms in which there were toilets), but there wasn't one in which I couldn't touch opposing walls with my elbows. The ceilings were a little over 7 feet tall and I had to dodge the light fixtures. It was very old (registered historical structure, actually) but modernized and renovated. It even had free (sorry...included) wireless network access.

But the key aspect of this house? Location. You could walk outside barefoot, cross a small gravel road, and be walking on the sandy beach. No walking along a road, or down a few dozen stairs to get to the beach; it was right there.

We did many of the same things we did last year, including a visit to Ecola State Park (from which these two pictures were taken). I saw a seagull paying strangely familiar attention to a family enjoying a picnic, but didn't stop to ask if it remembered me.

Unfortunately, I think I got a grain of sand in one of my camera lenses, as it refused to auto-focus without assistance (and the noise it made while trying to do so was... unhealthy). I didn't get nearly as many pictures as last year, but in a pinch I could pass last year's off as this year's. Turns out the terrain hasn't changed much in a year.

The weather was not entirely cooperative. The highest temperature was probably less than 70 degrees, and we only had a few total hours of blue sky. It was a bit disappointing to get bundled up for the beach in August, but that sure didn't stop us. The best part was the lowest-of-the-year tides, which allowed for some really great tide-pool viewing. We walked right up to within 20 feet of the Needles. Saw exactly 9 million starfish. Rachel poked every one of them with a stick.

When not at the beach, or lounging in the house (watching the girls play at the beach -- did I say how nice it was to be right on the beach?), we were probably at Cannon Beach Bakery trying to snag a few more apple cider cinnamon doughnuts, or picking up some more chocolate peanut-butter taffy at Bruce's, or otherwise browsing/eating at the various goody shacks in town.

And of course, it's always wine-thirty, even in the sand...

What's an Aluminum Falcon?

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:46:48 GMT

Watch this to find out...

Home Theater

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 03:47:25 GMT

Remember this TV (you know, the one with the painful delivery)? Well, it died.

It happened once before, after a power outage/surge. Try to turn it on, the green power light comes on for a few seconds, and just when the screen usually displays its signal (or the 'no input' message), the light goes back off. We had a power surge Christmas morning, and the TV was working fine on Christmas Eve, and not so much the day after.

Instead of waiting/hoping for it to come back to life magically, like it did the first time, I decided to upgrade to a front projector. I picked the Panasonic AE900U, and a Stewart 84" GreyHawk screen.

So some friends of mine came over and helped me move the beast out of the theater room, which I think was easier coming out than it was going in. We didn't even touch a wall, although the TV structure itself needs a small repair. It's pretty amazing how simple and inexpensive-looking (yeah... cheap) the cabinets of these TV's are.

Now that there's room down there, I've arranged the furniture and painted "the spot" on the wall where the screen will go when it arrives. With everything (almost) in its place, it's pretty exciting... can't wait until the projector arrives.

There are a lot of little projects left to do before it's done, though. This room was a last-minute add-on to my house, so it doesn't have power outlets in places you'd expect, nor on circuits you'd expect. I found that the lights were on the circuit that is at least labeled as the dishwasher's circuit. So I need to run a dedicated power circuit to where I want the gear to sit, which luckily is an outside wall and I have an easy path to a sub-panel in my crawl-space. I will also need to run some more cables for the satellite receiver (I'm planning to get an HD Tivo), so I'll probably run a Cat-5 and phone line while I'm at it.

I also had to remove two large (7' by 4') mirrors from the wall where the screen goes (the previous owner used the room for an exercise room). I'm going to build a wood frame for one of them and mount it in the small room outside the theater, to make it feel bigger. Erick (same friend who helped move the TV) has an incredible woodworking shop and a good plan for building the frame.

Also need to paint the room. I'm thinking a nice dark brown, and painting the trim (currently white), including the doors, black.

Wireless controllers

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 03:01:27 GMT

Of all the cool new things about the XBox 360, my favorite isn't the games, the live integration, the marketplace... no, it's the wireless controllers. They associate with a profile (Geometry Wars has one of the best profile-controller association I've seen... you can have four people signed in and switching profiles is a simple as pressing the A button when it's your turn). They turn the box on and off.

And best of all, they don't have the stupid cords. I have my box sitting on top of a shelf over my TV, about 7 feet off the ground. Sarah and Rachel can run back and forth (try as you might, you can't get 4- and 6-year-olds to stop doing that) in front of me while I'm playing and I don't have to worry about them tripping on the cord.

The only problem left is them blocking the way. They still make better doors than windows...

360 Games Report

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 16:56:34 GMT

The bundle I got with my XBox 360 included 10 games. (It was almost the same bundle Chris ordered). I wasn't terribly excited about most of the games, but was willing to buy them to get the box. Vijaye isn't having the same luck getting one, and he's one of the most avid XBox fans I know.

Anyway, I still haven't played many of the games. I agree with Chris... 10 games at once is too many. Here's my review so-far:

PGR3: Played 1 race, set it aside. After Burnout Revenge, it just feels too slow, no matter how nice the graphics are.

Kameo: Cute, but irritating. Among the worst games I've played. You can't skip the cut scenes that lead up to level bosses, where you die and restart a lot (major peeve). Controlling the character is difficult, and some of the tasks you have to do are delicate (rolling a big boulder around, for example) and timed. I played this game a lot to give it a chance, since I heard it was so great. I'm done with it now.

Call of Duty 2: Awesome. Realistic warfare. Even get to drive & shoot tanks.

NBA 2K6: Graphics are amazing, and they've done a nice job making it feel like an actual basketball game, but I just can't get into sports games...

Ridge Racer: Again, a couple races, and haven't played it since. I'm spoiled on Burnout...

Condemned: Creepy! Another fantastic job with graphics, and realistic gameplay... but I've never been freaked out by a game until now.

Gun: Only played a little, but looks... interesting. Very themed...

...and the favorite: Geometry Wars! Mindless fun, and I can't stop being amazed at the graphics. Also downloaded Robotron. Some games just never die.

Still haven't played: Perfect Dark Zero, Quake 4, Tony Hawk.

Overall, the 360 rocks. I periodically have trouble connecting to XBox Live, but the problem is with the wireless bridge (I think), and varous manipulations and rebootings of the bridge, router, WAP, etc., eventually gets things working again.

Another gamertag

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 06:30:34 GMT

I forgot to mention that I have a second gamertag, since I had two original XBox's. Here's the second one -- I don't know what I'm going to do with two of them, but it's nice that I can actually associate both of them with my 360 (had trouble doing that with the original xbox's, but I did get one of them to recognize both accounts...)

FragMachines's Gamer card

Yeah, baby...

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:45:49 GMT

Cork Skewer's Gamer card

Happy 4th Birthday, Rachel!

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 04:53:21 GMT

Okay, I'm Behind...

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:24:36 GMT

It's been a long time since I've paid much attention to Wine Thirty. Lots of things going on, both at work and at home.

For example, Susan and I got hooked on Galactica, too.

I've also been playing Clark W. Griswold lately, decking out the house with lights. I have a plan to put more up, which involves some rare earth (neodymium) magnets for easy install/take-down. I'll post a picture when a) I'm done, and b) my camera battery gets recharged.

Tomorrow is also an important day. I'll post why tomorrow.

New "Laptop"

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:25:11 GMT

Last week I got a new machine at work. I've been slow to post about it (which irks Vijaye to no end...) but here goes:

The machine is a Dell XPS Gen 2 (or M170, I guess). It's huge. It has a 17" display with a 1920x1200 native resolution (that's the key reason I got it). It also has a 7200 RPM drive, which makes it tolerable to do any kind of dev-type work on it. The other stats are pretty normal (1GB RAM, 256MB NVIDIA 6800, etc.).

The goofy part about this machine is the LED's in the fan and speaker grills, and the XPS logo on the screen back. It's a little hard to be taken seriously in a meeting when all kinds of neon is flying out of your computer. It's way overstyled for a "work machine" -- people expect my to say "Dude! I just unlocked the Modified R195 and ranked up to Elite!!!" The first thing I did with the machine was wade through the BIOS and turn the LEDs off. But don't worry... I found an app to control them without going to the BIOS, so there might be a little gamer left in me after all.

It's hefty, but to me that's worth the power. This is the only machine I have at work, and its display is my primary monitor. It's nice having everything on one machine, wherever I go. (I'm sure I'll sing a different tune after I drop it down the stairs or something...)

Anniversary

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 14:27:22 GMT

15 years ago Saturday was my first day as a regular full-time Microsoft employee. I like the way that sounds better than the 18-year anniversary of my first ever day of Microsoft employment, which is in a couple weeks. Makes me feel younger. A little.

Anyway, some "coworkers" took advantage of the occassion to show off their office prank skillz.

New Keyboard

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 23:38:13 GMT

I just picked up the new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (the one Vijaye was so excited about).

It's pretty nice. Very quiet, comfortable touch, and like Vijaye pointed out, it's got the arrow keys and Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys in the right place!

I also think it's ironic that, as excited as Vijaye was about it, I got one before he did. (Just barely...)