Archive for 2008

A lot of folks these days have at least part of their home network on wireless ethernet, or WiFi. I have two wireless access points in my house, for example, and plan on adding a third. Wireless networking has security considerations: unless your WiFi network is encrypted, someone outside your home can use your bandwidth or, potentially worse, intercept your data. Wireless security was improved significantly a few years ago with the introduction of WPA (WiFi Protected Access) after the previous security method, WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) was “cracked”. Since then, wireless networking has been pretty much secure against any intrusion. Until now…

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The global economy has collapsed, the stock market is decimated, we are all going to lose our jobs, and the sky is falling! Oddly, none of the recent economic turmoil has scared me. In fact, when stocks bottomed out (presumably) a couple of weeks ago, I started buying shares. I’m not Warren Buffett, but I now own a couple hundred shares of GM, and twenty-some shares each of Apple, Microsoft, and RIM.

Am I crazy? I’m hearing of people selling their houses and buying gold, stocking up on tinned goods and toilet paper, and most of all desperately trying to convert any equity investments they have into or some kind of guaranteed investment. There must be something wrong with me that I keep feeling this strange compulsion to go buy more stock…

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Spore is the new creation by game “God” Will Wright, the genius behind the SimCity and The Sims. The man is recognized as a computer gaming visionary, and Spore is considered by many to be his crowning achievement: Will himself called it “Sim Everything”.

I wanted to like Spore, I really did. I tried to avoid the hoopla associated with it so I wouldn’t build up a lot of expectations. Anticipation has been building for years now, so that avoidance was challenging. Perhaps in part my success was helped by the fact that I’m not really that huge of a fan of either of Will’s previous franchises, SimCity or The Sims. I enjoyed SimCity in a couple of incarnations, but would never likely rate it above a 7 out of 10 on my gaming goodness scale. I guess I prefer games with some kind of objective rather than more open ended simulators. And Spore continued my pattern of not really liking Will Wright’s games that much… without even the redeeming “simulator” qualities I’d found in SimCity. But I can certainly perceive what attracts others to these games, and thus my double-barreled score for Spore. One score as a game, and another score as, for want of a better word, a toy.

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Blizzard announced at Blizzcon that StarCraft II will be released as three separate games, one for each race. The first shipping “race” will be the Terrans. There will likely be a year or two between each release, so if you want to play all three single player campaigns you’ll have to wait four or five years at least from the date the first one ships.

What does this mean to me? Not much, really- I didn’t play the original StarCraft a decade ago, and I’m unlikely to be interested in StarCraft II either. I never really got “hooked” by the whole real time strategy genre, although I did play the original Warcraft. But for anyone who is a serious fan of the StarCraft series, waiting even longer to get the whole second release has got to be a bit frustrating. You can read the opinions of some game bloggers on the IGN website, but the truth is it will be released however Blizzard wants it.

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My friend Chris and I have made going to airshows a tradition of sorts. Chris actually knows quite a lot about aircraft, whereas I am more of the “wow, that’s cool” mindset and only skim the surface regarding technical details. One thing I’ve found is that the airmen sent to these shows, presumably amongst the best in their respective forces, generally seem to be pretty nice people. At least on the surface I haven’t noted much of that “strutting arrogance” we expect to see pilots have based on movies and TV shows.

The work that these people do is pretty amazing: when they are flying, they are expected to perform tremendously complex and precise tasks while under the most stressful of circumstances. That’s why I found this article about an F14 test pilot who shot himself down particularly enjoyable to read. Pete Purvis is the pilot in question, and from the article he sounds like a genuinely “real” person. His story is funny and yet gives a detailed example of all the complex things a pilot in a difficult situation has to deal with. I was fascinated by all the little tasks that have to be performed after an ejection that, if done wrong, can mean death to the flight crew.

It makes me respect the work these folks do that much more- the fact that these are real people, not super-efficient automatons with flawless reactions. Just the fact that someone can do enough of the “right stuff” in a few fractions of a second to live after a mis-fired missile damages their aircraft amazes me. Thanks, Pete!

The deck construction is almost finished. Almost… a slippery word, that can often mean “never”. Since the last posting on this topic, here is what has been completed:

• roof framing assembly (structural steel trusses) constructed
• aluminum framing and acrylite / polycarbonate roofing panels installed
• electrical roughed in
• exposed steel clad in cedar
• deck stairs constructed
• second “quick connect” natural gas fitting installed

It looks pretty good, actually, and is “done enough” that the things remaining feel rather minor. The roof has turned out really nicely: Solariumsplus did the work, and I’m really pleased with what Pete, Curtis and Randy put together for us. Some pictures…

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We just had another power outage exceeding an hour in duration here at our house. That makes about six this year here after perhaps one per year of that duration during the seven previous years. You could argue, I guess, that I live in a suburb, and so perhaps the occasional power outage is to be expected. However, at my workplace in the heart of the corporate district in Burnaby, with BCIT on one side of the road and Telus/IBM/etc on the other, there have been three multi-hour outages this year as well. I know it is an exaggeration bordering on the insensitive, but I’m beginning to feel like BC Hydro has degraded lower mainland British Columbia into a third world power district.

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Mobile phones and “smart” phones have a ton of features: things like taking pictures, browsing the Internet, and playing games. Studies have shown, however, that only somewhere between 10 and 50% of the users of these feature rich devices know how to do more than make phone calls with them. Rich Miner of Google mentioned recently that the reason for this is mainly “bad UIs”. I think, however, that Rich is probably on the wrong track, at least for some users. Maybe even the majority of them.

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I am continuously amazed by the human capacity for cruelty and stupidity. Here we have a man, a former professional baseball player and sometime-actor by the name of Joseph Petcka, who claims he brutalized and killed his (presumably ex) girlfriend’s cat because “he attacked me”.

The cat was an eight pound declawed (yes, no claws) orange tabby named “Norman” who belonged to Mr. Petcka’s then girlfriend, Lisa Altobelli. Apparently, Mr. Petcka has severe self-esteem issues, because, according to Ms. Altobelli, he obsessed with how much attention she paid to the cat versus him. On the night in question, an apparently alcohol fuelled Mr. Petcka was once again trying to get chummy with the cat. The cat protested, Joseph and Lisa had an argument over this, and she left the apartment to let him cool down.

When she returned, the apartment was a shambles and Norman, the cat, was curled up in his favorite hiding spot, dead. Mr. Petcka was no where to be found. According to Mr. Petcka’s testimony, the eight pound cat “attacked” him, and frail, 200+ pound ex-pro athlete Mr Petcka “defended himself” by tossing him away. Apparently, he “tossed him away” repeated with his boots, the wall, and other nearby hard furniture: according to a vet autopsy, Norman’s injuries appeared as if he had been run over by a car.

All of this disgusts me. My first reaction is that Mr. Petcka and people like him should be wiped from the face of the planet. But of course I don’t know what he may have suffered in his life… but if he had any balls at all, he’d man up and admit what he did, and get some therapy. Claiming “self defense” is pathetic in the most extreme way. If he is that much of a fragile flower, he wouldn’t last thirty seconds in a real prison- which is maybe where he belongs.

Just to clarify: I have six cats currently, and have had others in the past, and have handled some abused cats at shelters and been badly bitten. Never once have I flung a cat into a wall, stomped on it with my boots, and claimed self defense. I’m a flabby, unathletic geek who has never played “character building” sports, and yet I am apparently a much hardier, more compassionate human than this sack of offal named Joseph Petcka will ever be. To be clear: his action was despicable, but I could probably accept a boozed up mistake if only the so-called “man” would admit what he did and take his punishment.

My main posting this, other than to rant… if you have ever watched Mr. Petcka in a TV show (Sex and the City) or on a commercial, I figure you should know just what kind of boot scrapings you are really looking at. Unless he stands up and admits what he has done, he deserves any horror inflicted upon him. Unfortunately, knowing how the law works, he’ll probably get off without much more than a meaningless fine.

P.S.: The jurors are apparently deadlocked (I.E.: can’t reach a decision on verdict) in Mr. Petcka’s trial. Good job picking apparently useless jurors…

Game developers for the personal computer are becoming scarce. More and more developers are changing their focus to develop console games- games for the XBox 360, PS3, Wii, and so on. Many of the games that make it to the PC are low-quality “ports” of games that were first release months or years earlier on the console.

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