Rules are rules

Shame on you Linksys

2009-11-17T10:47:00.003-05:00

Yay another technical blog. its been a looooooooong time since i updated this but hey, better late than never eh?

So recently i did the shitty upgrade path from XP to Win 7 only because of 2 things:
1. it was better than Vista in the RTC version i downloaded and used and
2. 64 bit OS

Well i was a little disappointed to find out the final version had a larger memory footprint then its much nicer test version. in the RTC i was seeing ~600-800 megs footprint, close to XP levels i was currently running. comparing that to my vista laptop which was 1.2 gigs to 1.5 gigs right from startup i thought this would be great. well i get the final release and i see 1.2 gigs and it made me a sad panda.

But besides a bunch of hardware issues, lets get to the point at hand, my WUSB54G v4.0 wireless network adapter. ive had this thing for a few years now. on my XP setup it was fine. if you havent kept up with the times, there was an OS that came out not too long ago called Vista and it had a 64 bit flavour... and wouldnt you know, XP had a 64 bit version as well.

When i bought my wireless adapter, i got it along with the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. If you went to Best Buy or such at the time, pretty much it looked like it was there flagship models. And ya know, they worked fine... in a 32 bit environment.

The big issue now? after installing Win 7 x64, i got CONSTANT BSOD's. and rummaging through the debug app, the WUSB54G drivers were the problem. Went to windows driver site, they only had the 32 bit version verified to work. Ok so ill go to Linksys site and get the drivers from there.
this is the response i get:
"WUSB54G is not compatible with Windows7. "

and nothing more... so there big wireless models that have been out forever and during the lifespan of 64 bit OS's is totally not supported, not even for Vista (a lot of Win 7 is Vista based, many if not all the Vista drivers work for Win 7). So rather than take defeat (this thing was freaking $50) i scoured the internet until i found info on this.

i had to track down the chipset manufacturer for the device which is Ralink. and while their website is crappy, they do have drive support for vista 64 bit (and with that also win 7 64bit).

http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=1

the model in question is the RT2500, they have drivers for the PCI and the USB versions.

had to totally uninstall the current drivers from win 7 and then install and doing the "let me choose where to look" option. the driver installed and the device is seen as a Ralink device. and so far after a week, no BSOD.

you would think that as much as they sold the WUSB54G and its sister router the WRT54G (which i also have) for last couple years that oh, hey vista 64 bit has been out for a while, lets make some working 64 bit drivers to support our device. nope. instead i buy $100 worth of equipment that can work in a 64 bit environment but isnt supported. GG linksys, wont be buying linksys products again.

im sick

2009-06-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

and it blows

Oh my!

2009-05-06T19:34:00.001-04:00

hey all, i updated to say nicole finally has a blog about her and tori, I WANT YOU TO GO TO THERE NAO!

Crazy

2009-02-03T06:30:00.002-05:00

so at 2:25 am, Victoria Elizabeth Thaung entered the world at 7 pounds, 6 ounces and 19 and 3/4 inches long. It was a luckily short 12 hour labor and we now have in our hands a little asian girl. We have pics on my facebook but ill post some here soon for those who cant see my facebook photos.
Me and nic are parents! Crazy!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1044797472&ref=profile

Application.Settings, complex types, and you

2009-01-20T08:38:00.003-05:00

So i came across the need to serialize some user settings between instances of an application. I happen to find the Application.Settings object and its "supposed" simple and straightforward uses.
With the Settings object you can add types at design time (or run time) in a key-value pair that load automatically with the application. and when set properly, you could also save values at runtime too. Best of all, the designer even allows you to add complex types. What luck!
...
...
or not...

Apparently while simple primitive types (int, string, colour) are supported, complex ones (youClass, PageSettings, PrinterSettings) arent... but the designer didnt get the memo. This may be an uninformed rant, but since i could find jack squat on the subject in my few days of research, i feel i can rant freely.

So yes, you can add complex types to the Application.Settings file. and yes, when you save you will see your super duper object all serialized in XML just the way you'd think it would be. But when you fire that bad boy up again and try to load that object, well... dont be surprised you get a null value instead.

to get around that, i did your simple serialize/deserialize manually. so what i needed was to save the user's printer settings after they saved them and wanted to keep them persistent between sessions.
with a little help from the following assemblies

using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

we had the simple following:

private string str_page_settings = "page.set";
private string str_printer_settings = "printer.set";

internal void LoadSettings()
{
try
{
FileStream fs;
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();

// load the PageSettings
if (File.Exists(str_page_settings))
{
fs = new FileStream(str_page_settings, FileMode.Open);
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = (PageSettings)bf.Deserialize(fs);

if (pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings == null)
{
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = new PageSettings();
}
}
else
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = new PageSettings();

// load the PrinterSettings
if (File.Exists(str_printer_settings))
{
fs = new FileStream(str_printer_settings, FileMode.Open);
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = (PrinterSettings)bf.Deserialize(fs);

if (printDialog1.PrinterSettings == null)
{
pageSetupDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
}
}
else
{
pageSetupDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message + " " + ex.StackTrace);
}
}

for loading, and for saving after the user saved:

private void btnPrint_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (printDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
{
printDocument1.Print();
// serialize the printer settings the user chose
FileStream fs = new FileStream(str_printer_settings, FileMode.Create);
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
bf.Serialize(fs, printDialog1.PrinterSettings);
fs.Close();
}
}

Ill try my best...

2008-12-28T21:05:00.003-05:00

at the suggestion of some, ill try to keep this blog up to date with Tori and Nic's progress at the game of creating life.
i make no promises but we'll try to get random pics and shit up.
also, i eat babies.
will gnaw any race

i suck

2008-10-20T16:16:00.001-04:00

yes i do suck at updating this thing... oh well. putting together cribs can do that to you.

So about the economy...

2008-09-30T16:42:00.003-04:00

Im having a hard time absorbing all thats going on. From hearing from both sides of the table having a bailout is both the only way to save America from financial ruin to being the 1 thing that destroys what our financial world stands for.
Who is right?
It would be damn nice to have a straightforward and laymen's terms explanation of whats going on. Convince me that 700 billion dollars of taxpayer's money is needed to bailout some financiers who gambled and lost. Will the economy really take a nose dive that it will never recover from? Or will buyouts and acquisitions keep things in order?
Will government regulation be the end all solution? Or is a free market the real answer?
Its tough trying to decide whats right. I mean, is it possible to just take that 700 bill, give it to the american tax payer, and let them pay their debts, payoff mortgages, and inject huge quantities back into the economy? or is that just wishfull thinking?
People tend to knee jerk and flip out when the dow drops 700 points, the worst ever in a single day. But the next day gains over 400. It didnt level out, but it isnt exactly slitting its wrists.
What do the makers of the bill know that we dont? Inform the public and maybe the original vote down wouldnt have happened.
People need to know why, they need to understand why and having Bush telling me its gotta happen or we're all fucked isnt the right way to do it.

SATURDAY!!!!!!!

2008-09-17T15:35:00.001-04:00

GATORS VS VOLS!!
BRUS ROOM
I BE THERE NOON FOR EARLY DRINK DRINK
SEE YOU THERE

Yay

2008-09-08T12:30:00.001-04:00

yay no hurricane!
boo have to work :(

Hurricane... heyyyyyyyyy

2008-09-05T16:39:00.001-04:00

ugh... here comes Ike... and the possibility of no power for a few weeks...

BACK

2008-09-02T13:29:00.002-04:00

god i hate driving 5 hours to gainesville... but i did enjoy drinking with you bastards up there.
and wait till you see the pics sterling has from my last visit...

AFK: Gator Game

2008-08-29T12:00:00.001-04:00

going to first gator game of season, BRB.
if yer in g-ville COME GET WASTED WITH ME.

Resource files, satellite assemblies, and you

2008-08-20T11:35:00.006-04:00

So while at work doing a POC for a C# windows form, i was fiddling with the resource files for my app. If you are not aware of them, resource files are compiled text or XML files that contain key-value pairs. You create a form (or a website if yer doing ASP.NET) that has some default textboxes, labels, and such. Then you create some text/resx files that contain the key-value pairs and rename them to match the culture you are using (en-US for US english, de-DE for german, etc).
After adding a custom section in the app.config file via an example from this guy Derik, i was now able to add languages to a drop down on the fly.
The next step was to create the resource files for each of the languages. Now creating them through the 2k5 IDE is obviously the simple and easier way to go as the compilation and generation of resources is done for you at compile time.

But my requirements needed to be able to compile the app once and add language resource files at any given time. While there is still a process to do it, it can be done with very little effort.
The steps include:
- create a text file or resx file and add some key-value pairs
- compile the file into a resource file using the resgen executable that comes along with Visual Studio
- link the resource file into a DLL
- create a new folder in the working folder, named after the culture you are adding
- plop it in, edit the app.config and POOF, yer off

Now as easy as it sounds, i did run into issues. The main error message being:

Could not find any resources appropriate for the specified culture or the neutral culture. Make sure "YOUR RESOURCE HERE" was correctly embedded or linked into assembly "YOUR ASSEMBLY" at compile time, or that all the satellite assemblies required are loadable and fully signed.

There were some details left out in the many examples out on the interwebs and it seemed a lot of people came across the same issue i had. Basically, after compiling the resource file and linking to a DLL, the application still couldnt find said DLL and its resources.
It turns out that when you compile the resource file, you need to add the namespace of the calling application thats using it.
Before, i was doing this:

resgen german.txt Form1.de-DE.resources

where Form1 was the default form name from Visual Studio. Where as the correct way to do it was to run it as

resgen german.txt TestAPP.Form1.de-DE.resources

and then from there we need to link it to a DLL

Al.exe /t:lib /embed:TestAPP.Form1.de-DE.resources /culture:de-DE /out:TestAPP.resources.dll

After putting it in the correct folder, things went great. Now im currently working on getting a datetime object to format correctly for neutral cultures... if anyone has info on that let me know

Shadow Priest NOM NOM NOM NOM

2008-08-15T08:59:00.006-04:00

First got my
[Frozen Shadoweave Robe]
[Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders]
[Frozen Shadoweave Boots]
and now
[Belt of Blasting]
DPS mana battery here i come!

and on a real life note, we find out next week whether the baby is a boy or girl... though they are determining this through bizarre means... id rather have DNA evidence then measuring certain aspects of the head size or skin behind the neck or whatever they are doing. For you parents out there, is that how they do it?

Going to Blizzcon!!!

2008-08-12T09:54:00.002-04:00

WOOOO
got my tickets!!!!
Woooooo!!!

Im an Idiot

2008-08-08T09:12:00.003-04:00

Soooooo. I was mistaken. It seems i have way too many partitions for my 4 HDDs and coupled with the fact i had a USB hub with some flash drives attached and a card reader installed when i reinstalled windows (on a different partition thank god, as apparently when i first installed windows, it was NOT on the C drive as i thought) that the new windows install didnt recognize one of my hard drives, at all. So i thought my files were overwritten when in actuality they werent even seen.
After pulling out the hub and unplugging the card reader, the new windows install finally could see my other HDD, and with it my old windows install. So after copying over the hal.dll from new to old, i restarted and entered the recovery console.
I recreated my boot.ini and moved to the next step.
From there, i discovered (at least it seems) that before i installed the new windows, i couldnt run bootcfg /rebuild on my C drive because there was no installation of windows on there previously, but i understood the error as "yer fucked".
But it seems that that was the case, as i ran it again on the old windows partition and it ran fine. I included my old install in the rebuild but not the new one. Rebooted and BAM, old windows works again. I then proceeded to delete everything i can from the new install and happy days are here again.

UGH

2008-08-07T10:48:00.003-04:00

Ok so my windows install got corrupted. Apparently the hal.dll file was bad or missing. So a little research points to 2 things, that i either have a bad or missing hal.dll, or i have a bad or missing boot.ini.
The most direct solution is to unzip the hal.dll from the xp cd onto your computer into the windows/system32 folder through the Recovery Console. Easier said than done as i haz ACCESS DENIED to my windows folder. Well shit. So another advice that "looked" to work was to install windows into a different folder, then move over the correct files to the old windows folder since you can access these files through reg windows. I must have not done it right, as it was supposed to prompt me to choose whether to install over the old installation or choose a new directory.
it didnt.
it installed over the old directory.
everything in my documents and desktop are lost now as it was overwriten. no more pics, no more itunes library, no more random notes i write myself on my desktop.
gonna try to see if a file recovery prog will work but it looks like im shit outta luck.
So lesson of the day, either backup your desktop files and my document files, or make sure to keep them NOT in those folders. As if you do try to reinstall windows, you might screw yerself like i did.

My love for the B list

2008-07-24T11:04:00.004-04:00

So last night i got to watch something ive been gitty about for months. I finally got The Machine Girl from netflix. Im a big fan of over the top campy B movies. I cant help it, its in my blood. This movie is an over the top revenge flick with over the top gore.
A schoolgirl loses her brother to the yakuza's son and his deranged gang and family. After trying to get revenge she gets caught, gets tortured, and gets her arm cut off. Luckily, she escapes and has some nice car mechanics attach a mini gun to her stump so that she can proceed to exact revenge.
This movie is simply amazing. Sure the effects are out there, and the voice acting (English dubbed since its a japanese movie) is horrible but the shear absurdity of some of the shit that goes on is classic. And seriously, how can you not laugh at a ninja that gets annihlated by a chaingun? Make a note, this movie is not for the faint of heart. There is def gore and violence, even if it campy, it can be a lil gruesome at times.
But if you can stomach the gallons upon gallons of blood, youll be treated to angry japanese schoolgirls with guns for arms, modern day yakuza gangs using ninjas (if they dont in real life, i have no idea wtf they are thinking), and did i mention, DRILL BRA?????
And if yer up for it, make sure to see my trinity of holy grail of movies, the Evil Dead series.
Also, cocks.

Hell freezes over...

2008-07-02T13:58:00.004-04:00

UPDATE: unfortunately due to some personal issues, the reunion wont occur. Would have been sweet to do, but family comes first. Either way, ill still be heading to Gville the weekend of the 18th to get crunked if you want to come out and join us...

Well son of a....

2008-06-27T16:13:00.002-04:00

The news on this side of the fence... im gonna be a father.
Let it be known... im not shooting blanks.

WoW: The Second World we live in

2008-06-17T10:11:00.003-04:00

So as many people know (and not so many know yet) im pretty much a warcraft junkie nowadays. I started back in Sept of last year thanks to a friend from Counterstrike named Connery. The reason i stayed away from the game so long was because i know myself. I knew i would get enthralled with it and of course, i did.
Now thats not to say that ive given up on social skills or decided that playing is more important then wife points, but ive definately been hardcore about it.
At first it was just about playing the game. Now its about reaching end game content. I picked a warrior class oh so long ago because... well... i always pick the warrior class in games like this. No one told me that the class had a specific job title at end game, tank.
So i got plunged headfirst into tanking after reaching Outlands (if youve read this far you see that this post is prolly gonna be a WoW post) and i did like it. But dont be mistaken, its a lot of hard work.
Everyone expects everything out of you. You need to know the mobs in the instance. You need to mark the kill/CC order. You need to keep everything off the healer (and according to hunters and mages, off the dps... screw you fuckers). You have to keep the threat up on all the mobs you can. You have to watch your life and hit the Oh Shit button if the healer missed a heal or such. And finally, you get the shitty repair bill at the end.
But all in all, its still fun...
So a couple of weeks ago, after being in a raid slump since most of our raiders left the guild to start a more hardcore raiding guild, i decided to start a priest. Boy, i tell you what, ive never had so much fun. Who knew healing could be exciting.
Ive been nonstop leveling her (i once said that id never level another female toon, but all the good names were taken, and it would be weird having a male toon named Evilnurse) and enjoying my PW:Shield and Renews and Mind Flays and MC.
Its good times. Plus, it keeps me in the house and not spending money, which is good.
Now all i need to do is get Nic to play...

If you ever decide to hop on, join me on the Cho'gall server:
Evilannie
Evilman
Evilnurse

Shows! Have at it!

2008-06-04T10:45:00.001-04:00

Weds 06/18 Less Than Jake at Revolution
Thurs 06/19 Rancid at Revolution
We be going. You should too.

Wii Fit = the hotness

2008-05-29T09:31:00.002-04:00

So im sure youve seen it already. But for those who havent, nothing better than cute chicks in their naughty bits doing some Wii Fit.

Day 320: Aftermath

2008-05-27T17:49:00.004-04:00

So we went to Ft Pierce this weekend with Sean and Monica and spent it on a boat, in the hot sun.

In the process of boating, we went 14 miles offshore near (or in depending on who you ask) the Gulfstream to try to catch dinner. Sean dropped the line and about 10 seconds after we started trolling we got a bite. Too bad it was the only thing we caught, it was still pretty bad ass. 22 inch Mahi Mahi that Monica named Mortimer. He tasted good.

You see a lot of crazy wildlife on the open ocean. Lots of flying fish (that are too small and too annoying to take a pic of). Saw a sea turtle, and then we came across a pod of dolphins who obviously enjoyed being watched.

The next day we sat in the inlet and anchored as we drank and watched women in small bathing suits and drinking lots of alcohol hanging out with red, red, RED men.

Finally, we had some manatees in the dock area near the boat. If you ever see some, and have fresh water available, give it to them. They LOVE fresh water and fight over it. We had a garden hose and a small child with a brush who was also scrubbing their backs. They also love that too.

Day 314: Sore

2008-05-22T13:09:00.002-04:00

So picks up the Wii Fit yesterday. It is damn fun. Nic and i are enjoying the hell out of it. Its works up a sweat and i have set a goal for some weight loss. we'll see how that ends up.
Pics to come.
Also, cocks.

UPDATE: PICS

Soooo......

2008-05-21T11:04:00.003-04:00

Yea i havent updated this crap in so long. Many many things have happened since whenever that i kinda forgot this thing was still around.
I got obsessesed with (and still obssesing) over World of Warcraft. If yer ever on the US Cho'gall server, send my toon some money, her name is Evilannie. Yea i chose a girl, yea i regret it now that im in the endgame shit just cuz shes boring to look at (shes undead and not stacked like those humans or draenei).
Also, my father passed away last month which was pretty hard for me. Its one of those things where you know its gonna happen and i actually spent a few years preparing myself for it, but it still knocks you sideways when it happens. All i can say is, its tough.
But i dont want to dwell on painful memories, and would rather look ahead to whats next.
Nic and i are planning a nice trip to Japan in the winter where i hope to God that i can bathe in steam baths with snow monkeys. There are a few things ive wanted to do with my life before its over, and one of them is bathing with monkeys in the mountains. Is that weird?
Also, my biggest nerdgasm will occur when i head out to Anaheim in October for Blizzcon 08 with my friend from all my computer games, Tim (aka Connery). We've been playing online games together forever and is my gay-ass nerd partner. We're pretty stoked about going and plan on having lots of lame ass pictures that make us giggle while confounding the wife.
So theres the summary. By the way, Lost = awesomesauce

You know how i know im gay?

2008-05-13T14:46:00.000-04:00

im going to Blizzcon this year... :|

I suck at updates

2008-02-14T10:42:00.001-05:00

Got to caught up in Wow....

Vista Ultimate Complete PC Backup not working for you?

2007-11-09T09:39:00.001-05:00

We got a new laptop at work that we need to develop for. Its a fun new Vista with a tablet touch screen. Now i fancy new tech as much as the next geek, but tablet PCs and the handwriting recognition software is wacky cool. Along with the pen and tablet stuff its the next best thing to Surface or those other crazy touch screen comps.

But anyways, back to the story. We needed to do a complete backup of the PC before going balls deep on it so we can save a good image in case we fuck it up. Common sense here for anyone in IT.

Well this Vista system got wacky by NOT letting you do a complete PC backup. Sure you can do shadow backups with partial files, but i needed the whole image saved... but Vista was having none of that.

Perusing the vista forums for the last 30 minutes got me NOTHING. Mostly responses from support asking about FAT32 partitions... because FAT32 doesnt work with Vista. While i know some OS's still use FAT32 and some people still use those OS's... but if yer still using those OS's theres a good chance you know that XP and Vista arent using FAT32 and telling us otherwise is trivial.

So after scouring and scouring i finally came across a forum post that had the correct answer. And considering it was brutal to find it, i thought id prolly just start posting such random computer answers like this here for anyone that needs it.

The answer? Using Intel's Turbo Memory Console: disable ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive. Thats it. Thats whats stopping the total PC backup. This is what kept me from saving 30 gigs of vista fattiness onto a stupid backup drive. Oh and heres a kicker, you cant just uncheck both boxes, if you uncheck one it immediatly tries to restart. Weak eh? I had to actually uncheck one, agree and then quickly uncheck the other one and agree before vista closed. Reminiscent of XP registries but at least there they gave you the option to reboot later.

Legend has passed

2007-10-31T08:37:00.000-04:00

Its been a while since ive updated, been busy playing WoW (yes... im addicted... but not enough to lose my wife :P)
Just read this morning that legendary crooner Robert "The 'Stache" Goulet has passed. Stay fresh young man... stay fresh.

Nutty Goulet

Add to My Profile More Videos

Day 119: Just plain tired...

2007-10-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

After a horrible weekend of sadness and over adbundance... this is all i have to make me smile. Enjoy Losers

Let me tell you of the Town Tavern...

2007-09-24T08:33:00.000-04:00

So in NYC and Doug take us to this place called the Town Tavern. Its a bar in Washington Square. If you are in NY and need to go to a Gator game, this is the place to be.

This nice lil 2 story bar offers a special for the Gator games and I think its recognized by the Gator Club. This place rules.
For $20, you get UNLIMITED domestic drafts, UNLIMITED wings, and UNLIMITED fries. And if you wear gator gear, you get a ticket for 1 free drink.
EDIT: and Doug reminded me, after every score the Gators get, the WHOLE BAR GETS JAGERBOMB SHOTS.
Not only this, but the crowd there is great. The food starts coming out on platters at kick off and gets placed on random tables. No one gets their own thing, everyone pretty much just walks over and grabs what they want.
The waitresses there are great too, very friendly and quick. Plus, they walk around in referee costumes. You know how women's costumes are, its an everyday outfit plus the word "sexy" in front of it. So our waitresses were "sexy" referees.

There's one more thing that will make your Town Tavern experience even better: bring a good baby wearing gator gear. Audrey was the hit of the pub and was handing out high 5's to everyone there.

Thank you Town Tavern, not only did we have a great time, but we became so overly drunk that we stood up our friends later in the night.
w00t.

AFK: NY

2007-09-21T10:06:00.000-04:00

Going to Manhattan this weekend to hang with Doug and the gang up north as well as spread the Gator love in the city that never sleeps.
If you need me, call me.
Otherwise get bent.

Also, cocks.

Day 98: Pink Sock

2007-09-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

Read Guts by Chuck Palahniuk.
Look up Pink Sock on urbandictionary.com.

Discuss.

TF2 Part 3: Revenge of the Beta

2007-09-19T08:22:00.000-04:00

So I got my hands on the Beta when I got home from work (FINALLY). I will say this... Valve has a winner on its hands.
This game is just tons of fun. I've only tried a couple of classes, and while they are similar to the old TFC and TF, there are definate changes made and many hardcore TFC and TF players are gonna be disappointed. But if they just want a port of TFC, they can always download Fortress Forever which is just as fun, sans a few bugs, as the original. FF is a port to Source and a good one.
But back to the topic at hand, monkey paws and vanilla wafers in a succulent... mmm, I'll save that for later.

This game has a great feel and style to it with the... well I'd like to call it cel-shaded graphics. The art designer on this game should be fucking ear to ear with this one because its spot on. It breathes atmospehere as much as Bioshock did. Every character just looks and feels right. The taunts are not bad, and the voice acting and kill cam shots are priceless.
Being a beta, it does have its share of bugs. I've had to restart Steam or TF2 2-3 times now from crashes, but thats expected.
And some of the bigger characters like the Soldier or Heavy do seem to run like they belong in a Halo multiplayer game but that gets alleviated when you have a good engineer placing teleports at spawn for ya.
My main class was the medic, supporting all the characters for the capture the intelligence (CTF variant but the same idea). Theres just something so fun of keeping a Heavy alive, running behind him while he mows down the opposition. Its just... groovy.
And while I suck at the spy... there are already really good people doing it up good and getting me perturbed multiple times. If I could count the number of times you heard on my mic "Fucking spys...", heh, it would totally be like 3.

Get this game. Its bad ass and the first thing to actually look promising enough to pull me away from CSS for once... at least till UT3 comes out...

TF2 Part 2: The Wrath of the InterWeb

2007-09-18T08:40:00.000-04:00

From seeing some posts on other sites including the steampowered forums (after all this rick-diculousness, they are finally not being bombarded) and others, there are some people out there curious about the woes and pains a lot of us gamers feel from this Sept 17th event.

"Stop crying, its a beta, its a privelage"
"BETA get used to it"
"My daddy touches me in naughty places"

Look, I can understand the idea behind the BETA. I realize its an extra gift for doing the pre-purchase. I see it as the the icing on the cake. What I dont final amusing is that some people made the decision to buy the Orange Box early because of touted features like "Beta on Sept 17th". My money could easily be used elsewhere until the game officially came out, but I chose to go the way of Valve and pre-order so I could have my taste of the game early.
Then after screaming from the mountains "Dont plan your vacation, TF2 BETA ON MONDAY SEPT 17 OMGWTFBBQSAUCE" and ads and posts saying, "YOU, YES YOU DINGLEBERRRY! YOU GET TO PLAY TF2 ON MONDAY BECAUSE YOU GAVE THEM YOUR MONEY", you kinda expect something... Maybe its not the same as buying a chick a drink and expecting a little toss the salad but you expect something.

Now im not gonna go as far as staying home just to play it, but i can understand what those people who did it feel like.
I come home and nothing... i wait a few hours and nothing. I go to sleep and nothing.

All valve had to do, and nothing more, was post updates. Tell the customers what is going on. Let them know that they are having issues and wont make their promises. And NOT just mention these things in IRC chatrooms and forums that obviously did not live up to their usage.
Send a message to major blogging and tech and forums sites. LET PEOPLE KNOW WHY THEY ARENT PLAYING. Thats all we ask. Sure we'll be a little miffed, but at least we can go "Hey, i guess i can just go outside and do things that require physical exertion and social prowess"

PPS DESTRUCTOID.COM is the bomb shizzie. Go there and learn and absorb gaming goodness. And make sure to marry their daughter at http://marryourdaughter.net/

Team Fortress 2 WTF??

2007-09-17T23:09:00.000-04:00

So you tout this selling point of a product, buy the Orange Box and get into the TF2 beta on Monday, Sept 17th!!!!!
So what should i expect after i pre-order and download said product? i should expect to play a fucking beta on Monday Sept 17th. Instead i am going to sleep and annoyed with Valve.
As a gamer, especially a PC gamer, we are used to delays in games and betas to said games. But, we are also used to INFORMATION. Seriously, if you cant finish the game for the beta, TELL YOUR CONSUMER BASE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME WITH THE INTENT ON JOINING THE BETA ON MONDAY SEPT17!!!
Even a fucking letter to one of the gaming blogs like Kotaku or Destructoid because obviously there is enough issues that the steam forums are bogged down like a hooker at taco bell.
I have no issue with these people if they can admit their faults. "Sorry, we fucked up, we cant give you the beta today, we'll give it to you ASAP" or "Buy the Orange Box and Get into the TF2 Beta... when we get it working".
Dont fucking come out balls deep saying "YOU BUY THIS BOX, YOU PLAY THIS GAME ON SEPT 17!!!"
Guess what Valve? theres 44 minutes left of Sept 17th.
Great fucking work.

GATOR GAME

2007-09-05T22:02:00.000-04:00

this saturday, brus room. gator game. be there.

Bioshock for the PC

2007-08-24T11:25:00.000-04:00

Ok, this game is amazing. Believe the hype and believe the reviews. The story, crazily good. The setting is perfect. The graphics are top notch. The action is top notch. The choices are difficult. The next best thing to Half Life 2.

Now that I got that out of the way... people need to stop the self-serving bitching and whining about the whole launch debacle.
Yes, its a new game, yes its going to have issues.

For those that can't install it properly or getting crashes, much like every PC release, wait for a patch to come out.

For those who cry about the widescreen, oh noes, you are missing an extra inch of monitor space. YOU HAVE A FUCKING WIDESCREEN. YOU HAVE MORE MONITOR SPACE. The game isnt stretched out to fit widescreen, ITS MADE FOR WIDESCREEN.

For those who complain about the install/uninstall problem. Why do people keep saying they have been lied too? 2k stated you can have 2 installations at any one time. You install once, you lose an installation, you uninstall it, you gain it back. "It didnt work at launch" you say? It worked for some people but only those who didnt get it to work are the vocal ones. Its a bug, it will get fixed. Now they've raised it to 5 installs and people are still bitching.

For those who complain about Securom. It may be a shitty way of handling piracy, but its not intrusive and its not part of some conspiracy to take over your computer and steal your information. "OMG IT INSTALLS HIDDEN FILES AND WRITES REGISTRY KEYS" yea no shit, its fucking Windows, what doesnt fucking install registry keys? Why dont you turn on hidden files and folders and see how much other hidden shit is on your computer. "ROOTKIT ROOTKIT ROOTKIT" until someone shows INDISCERNABLE EVIDENCE that the files that secruom copied onto your computer are taking information of you and your computer and running hidden processes to take control of your kernal, then dont fucking complain.

I got the game on Steam. I walked into my house at 5:30pm EST on August 21st and unlocked my game. I went to dinner and came back and played Bioshock and have been for the last week with no problems. With no crashes. With no complaining.

Chill out. PC gamers should be accustomed to knowing patches come out for games.

Day 67: Success!!

2007-08-19T12:20:00.000-04:00

I finally got off my ass and lapped my heatsink and cpu. It was pretty daunting considering how top heavy a Tuniq Tower 120 is. However i was pretty nervous and probably sweating while i was lapping the cpu. But it seems to be worth something. After the laps and resetting of the heatsink, i knocked off around 7 degrees Celsius off my temps. And thats before the breakin period. Im pretty happy with the result even though i spilt a little blood in the process.
So for you computer savvy people out there, dont be afraid to try some lapping. You will be amazed how uneven the surface of that IHS and heatsink are.
I would have taken pictures but im pretty impatient and wanted to see the fruits of my labour ASAP. If i ever re-seat the heatsink ill post some.

Sick

2007-08-14T08:11:00.001-04:00

Been sick for a bit. my fever broke yesterday afternoon but still the sinuses are fucking horrible. I dont think i could sees straight out of my left eye yesterday. Sinus medicine + advil = not bad.

and if the Gallers are reading, congrats on the new kid. Id call and stuff but im busy shoving a nail into my forehead to relieve the pain.

LOLCAT EMUTATE LIFEZ

2007-08-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

nuff said.

Best Futurama Project, EVAH!

2007-08-09T09:32:00.000-04:00

So while surfing the ole Digg.com, I ran across this tasty nugget : http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bender/
This guy has been building a life-size Bender with working gizmos and hoo-ha's that make funny sounds and twinkly lights and funny sensations in the naughty bits. Not only that, but it brews beers too. Simon Jansen, truly you are the king of kings.
Im not gonna try posting any of his pics here so hit the title or any of the other jumps to see his progress.

Day 55: Commemoration

2007-08-07T08:53:00.000-04:00

Well after a weekend of angst and letdowns, Ive moved forward and look toward my 3 year marriage anniversary tonight. No stress, no problems, no nothing. Just peace and quiet with the wife.

By the way... Gator football is coming... we will be at Bru's room for the games so make sure to meet up with us.

UPDATE

2007-08-03T17:51:00.000-04:00

They called at 5pm today and told Nicole that the windows WERENT EVEN IN YET.
When I scheduled the Aug 3rd date, I was told they wouldnt schedule an install date unless they had the invoice for the materials in their hands. They didnt have them when I called back in April. They called back and said they had them and they can schedule a date. NOW they tell me they never came in?????????
What is going on here?
If you tell me that you wont schedule a date UNLESS you have the invoice in your hand that says THE MATERIALS ARE IN, then WHY would you schedule a date that FORCES us to take time off... not only that, they WAITED UNTIL 5PM ON A FRIDAY to let us know. (They dont work weekends).

Day 51: Fucking pissed off

2007-08-03T13:41:00.000-04:00

If anyone can give me any idea on how I can go about making MARATHON CONSTRUCTION IN BOCA RATON finish my job correctly and on time please enlighten me. Here is my situation so far:

JUNE 2006: we ordered hurricane shutters and impact windows and a slider from MARATHON CONSTRUCTION IN BOCA RATON for around $12k. Since shutters were highly in demand from the busy season the year before they wanted $5k down payment. We were given a timeframe of 10-40 weeks. Take a day off so they can come in and measure the windows and such for ordering the shutters and windows.
10-40 weeks passed and we were still on backorder.

DECEMBER 2006: we get a call for shutter installation. I take another day off for installation. Sure enough they show up. With installation, we have to pay $3k for intial installation, before they do anything. Guess what? they measured 1 shutter wrong and ordered another one with the length and width reversed. Since they dont know what they should do they just leave until the next day. Now my wife has to take a day off for them to come again and figre something out. They install one shutter and then decide its best not to install more since we are also going to replace a slider and some windows. So they leave the extra shutters in my patio.
We are told we should see something in a month, late January.
MONTHS go by and calls back and forth and still nothing.

JUNE 2007: Finally get a date back from them saying the windows are in and they can schedule an install on August 3rd. WE ARE FUCKING ECSTATIC.

AUGUST 2nd 2007: Get a call from MARATHON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON at 6:30pm, they say that the current job they are working on is going to rollover to our install date. So they tell my wife that they will be there in the afternoon. My wife takes another day off to meet them.

AUGUST 3rd 2007: Wife calls and now we get a different story. Going through the secretary or whoever we find out the guy who installs windows DIDNT WORK THAT DAY. So either they knew he wasnt going to be there or this is a surprise to them. Either way they say because of that they probably wont get to the install today. WTF. When the secretary questioned him on this he said he talked to our daughter about it (you mean my wife). So now they are just dropping off the materials for a Monday install. So now I have to take ANOTHER DAY OFF. And this is before we even get more shutters and have them installed.
So all in all, combined my wife and I have lost a week of work. MARATON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON has 2/3 of the money we owe them for the work. I have 1 shutter on my house. And I've waited 57 weeks for shutters and windows that were supposed to be done 10-40 weeks after signing the contract. If anyone has any ideas on how to get things accomplished please let me know or let MARATHON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON know.

Day 47: Comedic Relief

2007-07-30T14:41:00.000-04:00

If you are like me, you wished you liked the Simpsons TV show a lot more than you used too. I jumped the bandwagon and left for Family Guy a while ago after the show started heading towards irreverance. Now, not to be totally hypocritical, Family Guy definately is a show with ADD when it comes to plot and overall continuity, but looking at it through the years, its always been like that... plus what more can you expect from a show written by manatees in a think tank?
So as Homer started hurting himself more and more and Family Guy and South Park stayed witty and nostalgic, I left my once loved Simpsons. And so far I haven't missed them... until now.

With much anticipation and high expectations, me and the wives saw the Simpsons movie on Saturday. I have to say, it was nice to see them back in good form.
Overall it was just a good, funny movie. It has a few weak jokes here and there, but the spirit and fun was reminicesnt of the old days. I was satisfied with the outing and hope that the TV series will take something away from this experience.

if i had to some up the movie in 2 words? SPIDER PIG
Go see this movie.

Quad Core FTW

2007-07-29T10:25:00.000-04:00

Fuck yea quad core

Yea even though i have 32bit XP, i still got 4gigs of mem

Crazy ass eVGA board. lots of lil fun bits, almost comparable to DFI' s Lanparty series

My huge fucking Tuniq Tower 120. Biggest thing EVER

Comparing the Tuniq to my old PSU.

The Tuniq on the mobo, tell me thats not ass-mastering. Go ahead, tell me.

Compared to the ole DFI with the SLK.

Installed and ready to go.

Vacation Pics

2007-07-18T17:53:00.001-04:00

Just a few things of what we saw over on the West side...

Sea otters like to clean them whiskers

This is what you fall into if you veer off of the PCH

Elephant seals and harbor seals at peace

Nic on the set of ER

Me petting sharks

Sea lions doing what they do best... in 59 degree wheather

Even on the smelly, cold island of Alcatraz, flowers still bloom

San Fran from Alcatraz.... I fucking hate walking up inclines

Me vs Alcatraz

Inside the Rock

Wine country

Day 28: Celebration

2007-07-11T09:34:00.000-04:00

Thank god Gears of War is coming to the PC. I have found a new reason NOT to spend another $400 on a gaming system... but the PS3 does look tempting...

Day 23: Perplexity

2007-07-06T10:50:00.000-04:00

So after much hoopla, it turns out my PSU died during the storms while we were in Cali. You would think that a computer plugged into a surge protector, plugged into a UPS unit would be ok... not in the least bit so. Apparently those $100 plus items are merely just large paperweights... Meanwhile the ugly and misshapen win2k3 server thats plugged directly into the wall with a PSU thats close to 5 years old merely just shut off and has been running like a champ since. Oh the irony of it all.

Day 19: The Return

2007-07-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

back from vacation... to tired and crappy to add more... but more will be added. The biggest news? i think my motherboard is fried... yay for crappy APCs!!!!

Hello from San Francisco

2007-06-26T13:38:00.000-04:00

Its been a wild week thus far... Lotsa babies and beer and Jager shots in NC for hive (pictures pending) and then a shitty plane ride we almost missed to San Fran. Yesterday was a LONG day drinking tons of wine of the Napa Valley. Today: Alcatraz. more to come

Day 8: VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-06-21T09:41:00.000-04:00

Sweet... last day of work for 10 long days. Ill see some of you out in NC and over on the west side. I can't WAIT for wine time in Napa and seafood in SF. And of course guitar hero at pumpkin's... the Source mod is on hold since after me and Jones couldn't get shit working the other night, it looks like im gonna have to go in and make my own models for the mod after all. AND the stupid server plugin source code aint working either... so much for expectations... Boobies...

for those that care

2007-06-19T12:16:00.000-04:00

i am on the fast track to creating the new robogibs mod for our server... testing begins tonight and i have nothing but high expectations of this. if it works well, porting it to a server plugin will be trivial. all that leaves is packaging of said plugin and releasing it to the world.

Day 6: Speechless

2007-06-19T08:16:00.000-04:00

going over to digg today, i saw this little tidbit about countries that HAVEN'T adopted the metric system yet... wow... and I thought I was being open-minded on the fact. Yet here we are... on the outside looking out some more. But then again, how ironic is it that I live in one of those countries, but herald from another (goddammit Burma!)

Day 5: Anticipation

2007-06-18T12:24:00.000-04:00

only 4 more days till sweet sweet vacation time. Heading to North Carolina this weekend for Hive, then its off to California and wine country along with a long drive down PCH to LA to meet up with Ariel and Pumpkin... tough times ahead it seems

Day 3: Regret

2007-06-16T11:57:00.000-04:00

ugh... don't ever forget to drink at least SOMETHING non alcoholic when drinking 2 bottles of wine. It definiately bites you in the ass the next morning at 4am. The headaches begin... the mouth dryness begins... and the zombie nightmares begin... plus, Abbie is a fat, hot cat that has no business taking up space on my bed

HL2 Episode 2 gets a date!!!

2007-06-15T14:00:00.001-04:00

about fucking time!

Day 2: Common sense

2007-06-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

There seems to be a trend lately about blaming media and such for the miscreant acts of kids and those that commit heinous deeds. So and so killed 32 people in VT, there must be some connection to the video games he played or the movies he watched. This kid killed his friend because the songs he listens to told him it was ok. Jack Thompson even tried to thwart Microsoft's attempt at terrorism by trying to stop the release of Flight Simulator X since its a realistic flight trainer that a terrorist or misguided youth can use to fly planes into buildings. WTF is wrong with people? What happened to personal responsibility for their actions? What happened to kids being taught right from wrong by their PARENTS?
I've played video games since i could prolly walk (thanks to my brother and my parents for buying him his first commodore). I've watched hundreds of violent movies and just plain wrong cartoons (i'm sure some of you remember those Tom and Jerry cartoons and the "Big black mama" character running about), and you know what? Amazingly i have never killed a single person. I dont plan on shooting my co-workers for being disgruntled with my job. I wonder why this is? Oh wait i do know... BECAUSE I WAS RAISED BY MY PARENTS TO BE A GOOD PERSON. Sure im an asshole in general, but only to a point. Sure i want to shoot everyone on the fucking roads for being shitty drivers, BUT I DONT. Why? because i freaking know better. So when i get to read these great stories about Jack Thompson suing every violent video game out there or articles on parents taking their fucking 4 year old children to freaking Hostel 2 or see another goddamn idiot parent walk into Gamestop and buy their 8 year old GTA San Andreas, i get perturbed... Raise your kids right and let them take responsibility for their actions. If some kid shoots up a school, maybe it wasn't the video games or the hippity hop, maybe their parents did try to raise them right... maybe they were just fucking psycho so let them deal with the consequences.

Day 1: Conception

2007-06-14T12:51:00.001-04:00

just like many of the fads out there, i have once again caved in and joined another. more to come...