Bleh.

I’ve got a splitting headache right now, I need caffeine, and I’m running on less sleep than usual. Truly, this is not one of my better days. Hell, it wasn’t one of my better weekends. Dave and I got the video from Louie’s party finished, and the three of us went to P.F. Chang’s for dinner Saturday. That and seeing the season finale of Doctor Who were about the only things that went right this weekend. Otherwise… bah.

It all started Friday night, when I decided to do an update to the web/proxy server at the office. I hadn’t done it in a while, and figured it needed doing. Problem was, it was one of those things you have to wait to do after hours. So, I ran the update… and by the time 3:30 AM rolled around, I said to hell with it and went to bed, intending on restarting the updated services when I woke up and letting it finish while I slept. At 7 AM, I woke up, got the box rebooted… and found to my horror that the proxy server was now broken. After an hour or two of frantic testing and researching, I found that the only fix I could do was upgrade the server to a more recent Linux version. *grumble* So, seeing as I already had plans Saturday, I went to the colocation on Sunday and spent a couple of hours wiping and reloading the box. Then, this morning, I had to spend time finishing fixing the timeserver implementation as well.

And if all that didn’t annoy me enough, I got into work late because of horrific traffic (which seems to have affected everyone)… and found that the Coke machine was stealing coins and not accepting dollar bills. I ended up doing a run to the Texaco station at the corner for a Diet Coke. (It was either that or coffee, and I’m not a big fan of coffee.) AND, I find I have to run to Cypress today to uninstall and reinstall SmarTeam on an engineering workstation.

*sigh* Why me?

Anyway, that’s enough ranting out of me…time to check the new NTP server install here and make sure it’s still working properly. Fun fun…

I know the subject sounds very spiritual… unfortunately, this is going to be a rant that deals more with technology and ignorance of same than anything else. If you’re expecting a deep discussion, bypass this entry. :-)

That said…

Among the entries on my links page is a webcomic called Ctrl+Alt+Del. For the most part, I find it amusing and enjoy reading it. However, I came to a realization after reading Wednesday’s comic: Tim Buckley, the author, really has no concept of the world outside of gaming. For reference, I present the comic:

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date=2005-06-08

Frankly, if I didn’t think the email would be lost among whatever juvenile flames would be sent his way, I’d send him something along these lines:

“I read your comic on Wednesday, and I was kind of troubled by the attitude you take towards Macs. Make no mistake, I use Windows, myself. My main PC at home runs Windows XP Professional. I use it for playing around and gaming. I’m at work right now, as a systems/networking administrator and support person. I also do news reporting and sysadmin work for Mortal Kombat Online, the net’s top MK fansite. I currently have terminal sessions going to four different Linux and Windows servers I’m administrating. I often find myself working out shell scripting on this machine. Image and video manipulation for MK Online is quite common. This laptop also fairly seamlessly integrates into the network here at my office, for both file and printer sharing. It is, in short, the best laptop I’ve ever used for work purposes.

“It’s a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS X 10.3.

“I also have other friends who use Powerbooks for their work duties; I’ve also read that the Powerbook is becoming the laptop of choice for sysadmins due to Mac OS X’s UNIX underpinnings. I guess what I’m getting at is that when I want to play around, I use Windows XP. When I want to get work done, whether at the office or on MK Online (especially when at Gamer’s Day or E3), I rely on my Mac.

“So, in my particular case… which is the toy OS again?”

*sigh* All’s quiet on the work front.

Well, not really. I actually have a couple of things I’m keeping an eye on right now, but until the people who do our phone/network wiring get here, I’m stuck in a holding pattern. Otherwise, the big thing I have to do computer-wise today isn’t even really something for work. I have to bring home my Ghost disk, and replicate the hard drive on Dad’s work PC onto the new 80 GB drive he bought on Saturday. I tried using a DriveCopy tool the other day, but to say it didn’t work properly would be a bit of an understatement. I’m hoping that a recent version of Ghost will handle the drive replication a bit better. Otherwise, well… gah. I’ll take that as it comes.

Apparently pre-registrations started for the Evolution 2005 tournament today. Evo2K5 is one of the biggest fighting game tournaments out there; MK Online is involved in promoting it as MK: Deception has a chance to make it as one of the competing games. We’ve been working to get the community motivated, as it’s a great opportunity for the Mortal Kombat franchise.

Now, what I’m about to say, I’m saying for myself, and not on behalf of MK Online or any of its staffers.

Evolution might be the big fighting game tournament event… but right now, I have no faith in it or its organizers.

Pre-registrations were supposed to start back in March, to my knowledge. It’s now almost June and they’ve only just opened them, and the event takes place in late August. When MK Online was approached about this, we were told that we would be a sponsor and that MK: Deception was definitely in the tournament. We were then later told that MKD wasn’t definite, and that its participation was dependent on Midway getting involved. Midway declined to get involved. We were then told that MKD would only get in if at least 100 people pre-registered. That’s fine, we understood.

… then yesterday, Scott Howell came to me with a bit of news from the guy organizing the tournament. Apparently things had been changed again that if more than four of the “possible” games got more than 100 preregistrations, then only the top four would get in. Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy about this change. Several minutes ago, Scott came onto IRC and told us in op notice that things had been changed AGAIN: this time, it was only the top two.

… and now Scott’s telling me they didn’t give us complete information as far as the charge to enter the tournament. So, now, we have to tell people it’s $30 for people to enter for MKD and not $20. ($20 cover plus $10 entry fee.)

The sheer number of last minute sudden changes that are happening are not making me feel secure about this event, and the fact that they took so long to announce where exactly the event was going to be held isn’t endearing Evo to its core crowd, either. Personally, I think we (the MK community) are being jacked with, and I don’t like it one bit. Regardless of what happens with this event, I’m almost certainly going to oppose working with Evolution on any further events. If they can’t act professionally about this and treat us like red-headed stepchildren when we’re doing our best to get the community motivated, then I don’t see any benefit to any kind of professional relationship with them.

*sigh* It’s just really frustrating. Like I’ve said before, sometimes I wonder why I even bother.

Oh, well… I’m going to make a call to the sysadmin and see if I can get my Louisiana trip postponed again to next week so I have time to get a rental car arranged and picked up. Fun fun…

Before I go any further, I shall bore you with the final Nova desktop! This one is from my personal account on my Powerbook.

<a href="http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/images/screenshot-20050525-pb.jpg"><img src="http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/images/tn_screenshot-20050525-pb.jpg"></a>

Right now I'm stuck at our Cypress location, loading CentOS Enterprise Linux 4.0 onto our engineering fileserver. I'm doing it now (and will end up working late as a result) simply because the alternatives are working on it afterhours tomorrow or Friday, or on Saturday. I'm NOT using my holiday weekend to work on this project, and, well… I was already here fixing a network connectivity issue that ended up being a problem with a strand of fiber-optic cable. Fun. Oh, well… I have my music, I have some semblance of net access, and I can actually do most of the post-install configuration remotely on my Powerbook. (God bless SSH and X11… heh.) As it stands, I'm hoping I won't need to be here for TOO long after work.

Mom and Aunt Norma have made it to Vegas. As I've probably said before, they're going to go see Cirque du Soleil "O" and Blue Man Group while there, plus play lots of slots. They'll be coming back Saturday, and then Aunt Norma leaves a day or two later. Hopefully they'll enjoy their trip to Vegas, and win lots of money. :-)

Anyway, need to keep checking on this install… fun fun….

I just took a screenshot of the home PC's desktop. Like I said, I'm on something of a Nova kick right now.

<a href="http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/images/screenshot-20050523.jpg"><img src="http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/images/tn_screenshot-20050523.jpg"></a>

Fun fun… I get to go to Houma and Jennings next week to upgrade the engineering fileservers. I wish I didn't have to, but unfortunately I'm the only one familiar enough with Linux, Samba, et al to be able to do it properly. *sigh* Good thing Monday's a holiday… the more break I have between trips, the happier I am.

Oh, well… now to check in on a situation developing on #mortalkombat… *sigh* Sometimes I seriously consider resigning from the site. It would save me a lot of stress over the long run.

Anyway, going to get a beer and deal with this… fun…

Well, I'm back from E3.

I should be going to bed at some point in the next hour. The problem is that I'm still kind of on Pacific time, and I usually stayed up late every day this past week. Oh, well… the big interesting games that I saw were Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, Stargate SG-1: The Alliance, We <3 Katamari, Quake 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Starcraft: Ghost, and others. I also have blisters on my feet… bleh.

If you want to see the pics that I took, just take a look here: http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=e3-2005

(Take special note of the booth babe from the SG-1 area on the first page. She's holding her staff weapon upside-down.)

And now, seeing as I'm unpacking my laptop backpack, I decided to answer the never-answered (and for that matter, never-asked) question: "What do you take with you on these trips, Scott?"

<lj-cut text="Placed behind a cut for those people who don't care… heh.">For one thing, I take my laptop backpack instead of my shoulder bag, as the backpack is easier for me to carry around and can be less obtrusive. As for the contents of the bag…
<ul>
<li> My Apple 15" Powerbook and assorted power cables.</li>
<li> Two retractable cables… one network, one phone.</li>
<li> An AirPort Express (aka, a portable wireless access point and router). We used it so all four of us with laptops could share one room's network connection.</li>
<li> My Fuji Finepix 1400 digital camera, and two sets of rechargable NiMH AA batteries for it.</li>
<li> My Canon ZR80 MiniDV camcorder, a Firewire cable, and an A/V cable, plus two MiniDV tapes. (It didn't see much use this year.)</li>
<li> My Game Boy Advance, along with a small selection of games. (This time I brought Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Space Invaders, Namco Museum, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Tetris, and Arcade Classic 4: Defender/Joust.)</li>
<li> My noise-cancelling headphones. </li>
<li> The wifi detector <lj user=missyanthrope> got me for Christmas.</li>
<li> A stack of DVDs for watching during the trip. (This time I brought Mortal Kombat, Star Trek II, The Fifth Element, Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars, and Doctor Who: Rememberance of the Daleks.)</li>
<li> My iPod</li>
<li> The travel charger for my Blackberry.</li>
</ul>
This is what I usually take when I'm on a personal vacation. When on business trips, I take the shoulder bag and don't bother taking the camera equipment.
</lj-cut>
In any event, it's good to be home… heh. A couple of other events happened during this trip, but I'm close to being ready to go to bed. I'll hopefully post about them tomorrow from work. For now, I can say it was a good trip, but it's good to be home in my own bed.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php?name=Articles&pa=showpage&pid=98

The link is to an interview with Bram Cohen, the guy who created the popular BitTorrent protocol so popular in filesharing and the like. The reason I bring it up here to <lj user=pandorah>'s attention is that unlike most interviews, this one takes a different tack and focuses on Cohen's Asperger's Syndrome.

Just thought it might be an interesting read, especially as it focuses on someone who's in Gabe's shoes and has achieved some measure of success in the computer field. :-)