Not Necessarily Interesting News

Yeah, it’s two weeks early but I couldn’t wait and my wife said I could pick it up.

It’s a shiny new Nintendo DS. I couldn’t afford any of the only 4 or so games it had on release day so I’m making due with the Metroid game and PictoChat software that came with it. (for family members reading this: I need games for my birthday. Anything will be fine as long as it’s for the DS. :)) I was dubious about the touch screen controls but once you discover the thumb thingy attached to the wrist strap is for the touch screen it’s great. Point and shoot. Almost as intuitive as using a mouse on a PC. 3D shooters are very playable using this format once you get used to it. The stylus is a bit small but an after-market Palm Pilot stylus works just fine. The whole machine is a bit big, about as big as an original Gameboy but sideways and in a clamshell. It’ll still fit in a pocket but just barely.

It has built-in wireless and I can’t wait for the inevitable wi-fi uses for it. It’d be awesome to have a mini web-browser and email client for it. Pop into a Schlotsky’s and do email from your Gameboy. Give me that and I won’t even need to take my laptop on trips and vacations. I notice it also has a microphone built in. That could make for some interesting game-play I guess.

It takes a bit of getting used to, especially the touch screen but I like it. Now I just need to get some more games for it. As is I’ll keep playing my old faves like Mario Golf Advance and Advance Wars 2 on it.

: Father of Mine from the album “So Much for the Afterglow” by Everclear

This last week sucked work-wise.

Lesse, I ended one contract to take another contract for more money. I had a start date of this past Monday. I get a call from my new contract company late the Friday before I’m to start saying ‘the PO hasn’t been approved, you’ll start Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest’. Ok, the time off will hurt my budget. I don’t get paid if I don’t work. I’ll make do.

No news Monday. I email Tuesday and get no answer. I call and get no response. Wednesday I get a hold of someone. ‘Still waiting on the PO. Sorry.’ Thursday morning first thing I get a call saying ‘Oops, another company has all the contracts for that department. We can’t be your company. Call these folks and get things rolling with them’. WTF? I call the new-new contract company and get told that I might be able to start as early as the 29th. You’ve got to be kidding! I quit a job to move to better pay and now being out of work 2 weeks negates any gains for the next couple months. I then get a call Thursday afternoon saying, ‘oh, you can work for us(the original company) but you’ll have to switch companies again on Jan 1st’. Another WTF!

I finally started Friday afternoon. Looks to be a decent job and I’ll have fun. The bad part is I’ll have to re-negotiate my contract with a new company in a month. A company that seems to have all the contracts on site. So I’m sure I’ll get screwed and lose my gain in pay from moving positions. The new contract company will have the upper hand. I can’t go to a different company to work there. I’ll have to use them. Eliminate the competing contract companies and they can really stick to the contractors. Pay for all contractors on-site has gone down about 20-25% over the past 4 years. It’ll drop yet again over this, I’m sure.

Anybody own a landscaping business that needs a lawnmower driver?

I did get a lot of time to play Halo2 over the past week while waiting though so it wasn’t all bad. 🙂

: A Million Tears from the album “Barricades & Brickwalls” by Kasey Chambers

Ok, I’ve played a bunch of it over the last few days. I won’t give any spoilers.

Good: The single player campaign kicks ass. I went out and got an HDTV converter for the Xbox and that along with the Dolby surround sound really draws you in to the game. I don’t know how I could ever play again without the surround sound. You can hear the bad guys coming up on you from behind and know to turn to face them. Halo2 only supports 480p resolution on the HDTV part, it is much clearer and brghter using component inputs though. The graphics are amazing and the story line is interesting if a bit confusing to my 8 year old son.

Bad: Xbox Live support. It sucks. I’ve never seen a worse implementation of online gaming in my life. I’m not the only one who thinks so either. The forums at Bungie are full of people who hate the Live version like I do. You don’t get to pick the game you want. It uses ‘Optimatch’ to select what it thinks is the best game for you. “Wanna play plain old vanilla CTF on a map you like? Too bad. You’re playing Assault and you’ll like it. Maybe you’ll get CTF next time.” It takes anywhere from 2-3 minutes to finally find a match for you. You get to play for a whopping 6 minutes and then the game’s over. Back to the lobby for another 2-3 minute wait before it can get off it’s ass to find a new game for you. Just about the time you’re really getting into the match, it’s over. Once you start figuring out someone’s play style and how to defeat them you’re dumped out and the next match will have a completely different set of people. Online gaming has been around for years. Was it too tough to look at Gamespy, something fast and easy, and come up with something close to that? Bingie’s response, get some friends online and use the ‘party’ room to create your own match. I’m not online to make friends and only a couple of my friends even own Xboxes. I don’t want to make friends with a bunch of 14 year olds so I can play how I like. I just want to play what I want to play. I guess I’ll stick to playing against my son and friends who’ll bring over their Xbox for a system link game.

I picked up Halo 2 for my Xbox on the way in to work today. It’s sitting right here beckoning to me. Calling my name.

*cough* *cough* I think I’m coming down with a cold. I might have to go home early. *cough* *cough*

…but I’m getting a better handle on it.

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of ‘Rolex’, or R0lex, or is it R0|e}{, spam lately. Spamassassin has been good for me the past few years but the spammers are getting better at tuning spam to get past it. Normally the spam cutoff is a ‘5’. They’ve got things tuned to come in at 4.5. I’ve dropped my cutoff to 4.5 and that’s helped a bit but not enough. It was time to get more drastic. I’ve now invoked Postfix’s ability to do header and body checks on incoming mail and reject it before it even gets in to the server. I’ve spent the last day or so coming up with regex’s like c[|i][@a][|l][1i|]s and v[1i|][a@]gr[a@] to catch every possible (mis)spelling of whatever drug they’re pushing. The war just keeps escalating.

: Double Team from the album “Tenacious D” by Tenacious D

This morning we went down to Wimberley for their first Saturday sale. While browsing the various antique and craft booths I came across a dealer that had a set of original, in the original box, Lawn Jarts.

I had to own them.

We haggled over price and I walked away with my prize for a mere $8. I wasn’t about to tell him they sell for around $50-$150 on the Net, when you can find them. The reason they are so expensive is that they have banned from manufacturing and resale in the US since 1988. eBay cancels all attempts at selling them. Yeah, you can sell swords, knives, and other instruments of doom on eBay but not good ol’ Jarts. These things are dangerous as all hell and a blast to play with.

These things also bring back lots of memories. My favorite memory of them is from when I was around 9 years old. A friend of mine that lived two doors up had a set of them. I’d stand in my backyard, and he in his. Each of us would have a pair of the daggers of flying death. We put out the rings and get ready to play. From our yards we could not see each other. We’d decide who went first and go.

INCOMING!

When you heard that cry you’d better be looking up as pointy airborne death from above was inbound to your location. Remember, we couldn’t see the person tossing. We had to acquire our potential Grim-Reaper-on-wings in mid-air and get the hell out of the way before it impacted. Once it hit we’d give fire correction over the tin-can phone we had strung from his yard to mine and they’d fire again. We’d do this for hours on a summer afternoon.

How we ever survived childhood without our nanny government looking out for us I’ll never know.

: Hello City from the album “Play Everywhere For Everyone Austin, TX 03-10-04” by Barenaked Ladies

Took my son out trick-or-treating last night. He prefers to stay home and help us with the haunted house we do but we always go out and hit 20 or so houses just to get a bit of candy. Luckily for us, unlike most kids his age, he’s not a candy freak and doesn’t care too much about it.

On to the observation. We passed about 30 houses, of those only 20 or so had their lights on and were handing out candy. I noticed in the driveways we passed that 8 cars had politcal stickers on the back. They were evenly split, 4 had Bush stickers, 4 had Kerry. Of the houses with Bush stickers, 3 of the 4 were giving out candy. Of the pro-Kerry houses, only 1 of the 4 were giving out candy.

I don’t know what this means and it’s completely unscientific, but it was interesting none-the-less. What I do know is that you have a bunch of time on your hands while waiting on the kid to get his candy.