Posts on John's Random Review

What I work on: Azure Monitor Workbooks

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:05:16 +0000

The last time i posted a “what i work on” was almost exactly 2 years ago. And you know what? I’m working on the same thing: workbooks! but Workbooks has changed a ton since that last post.

Two years later…so much has changed!

Wait, first things first: what is "workbooks"?

A workbook is a canvas. The author can put all kinds of things in it that query data from various Azure data sources, present that data in interesting ways, arrange the layout to their liking, and configure how users can interact with them.

What I work on: Application Insights Workbooks

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 22:40:37 +0000

Recently, I’ve been working on Usage features for Application Insights in the Azure Portal. Our new usage features are still in preview mode, and include Users, Sessions, Events and Retention tools. A person would normally use them to look at how users use their websites or app, what they click on, how often they come back, etc.

Users Tool

The users/sessions/events tools are very similar, showing you charts and grids and such about how users are using your website or app. You can filter and slice and dice and split, and save them and share them and pin them to dashboards and everything. (when you save them and pin them to the dashboard, they’ll show you a count matching your filters, so it’s possible to make a bunch of tiles on a dashboard that are like daily/weekly/monthly users of subsets of your site/app)

PKHunter Postmortem

Sun, 30 Apr 2017 23:19:37 +0000

After a long run, Asheron’s call has finally shut down for good. As such, I’ve also shut down the data processing for the 2 related site’s I’ve run for ~15 years: TrophyHunter and PKHunter. Here’s a post about statistics, info, and details about PKHunter. At some point i might do a similar post about TrophyHunter. There’s a little less stats involved there, but the final kill map looks a lot more like Dereth than the PK-only kill map

MetalCloak “Gold Standard” lift install

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 22:57:00 +0000

For a while, I’d been looking at options for a “small” lift for my jeep. Nowadays, there are an infinite amount of options, from leveling kits, to suspension lifts, to body lifts, offered by tons of different vendors. After setting a budget and evaluating all my options, I’d eventually settled on something. And then a post on wranglerforum.com changed my mind.

MetalCloak adopts the “Gold Standard”

Every once in a while, MetalCloak has done this special package where if you pay with 1 ounce of gold, they’ll sell you a 2.5” – 3.5” lift kit at a pretty good discount and give you free shipping.

Fun with Spray Paint

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 21:53:52 +0000

In a random ad email from Extreme Terrain, i saw a star grill insert, and had an idea to go with the theme of my jeep. I thought: "We have red and blue spray paint..."

So i ordered one, and busted out the masking tape…

Can you see my silly mistake in masking? i see saw it as soon as i finished spraying. You’ll see it in a second when the masking tape is removed… :|

What I (used to) work on: CodeMap debugger integration

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 05:10:48 +0000

Every once in a while, you run into one of those problems while debugging where you just don’t get what’s going on. you’ve stepped through the debugger 10 times, and you see it happening, but you just don’t know why.

I ran into one of those a few weeks back, while porting one of my apps to windows 10, where sometimes, when you clicked the back button, nothing would happen. if you clicked it a second time, it went back to the page you were on. And when this state was occurring, there were some other strange things going on that weren’t quite right. I’d been stepping through it over and over, and i got to a place where the same breakpoint was getting hit 2 times, with the same stack when i navigated to the page in the first place. This seemed like a very strange thing. i couldn’t for the life of me figure out how that was possible. did i find some strange subtle bug in the Win10 UWP framework? I figured that to be highly unlikely, i was certainly doing something subtle myself. So i thought, “Hey, self, you used to work on debuggermap, i wonder if there’s something i’m not seeing here..”

What I’ve been working on: Open Live Writer

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 18:32:35 +0000

It was announced this morning that what used to be Windows Live Writer has been forked, modified, and open sourced under a MIT license as Open Live Writer. Prior to Facebook, i used to post a lot more stuff here on my blog, and when i did, i did most of that posting using WLW. Microsoft stopped actively developing it after the Windows Live Writer 2012 release and most of that team was moved to working on making apps for Windows 8. I still used WLW after that, but slowly over time the plug-ins i used stopped being supported, and it became a little bit harder to use. And Facebook made it easy to post little things, and life always has a way of finding other things to do. I always mean to post more stuff here, and i probably have 10 or more unfinished drafts either as WLW .wpost files, or saved as drafts in WordPress.

Random Review: Deadpool

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 01:48:47 +0000

I randomly got Deadpool for xbox 360 from my gamefly.com queue. I have no idea when I added it, I’m presuming a long time ago since this game was released more than 2 years ago. But it finally came up to the top of the queue, so I played it. Went in with low expectations, since it was so old…

It was hilariously awesome…for adults!

My kids love Deadpool in the Lego: Marvel Superheroes game; he has lots of funny animations, and quips like “I’m not dead. I don’t have a pool.”, and so my children will just say that, for no reason at all while playing. But there’s no way I would ever let them see me playing this game. It is brutally violent, has tons of swearing, and lots of sexual innuendos, hence the Mature 17+ rating. Playing this game made me super excited for the upcoming movie with Ryan Reynolds!

Random Review: Dragon Age: Inquisition

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:30:07 +0000

Simply stated: Dragon Age: Inquisition is the best game I’ve played in a long, long time. It was so good, that now that I’ve finished, (twice! After I finished the first time, I loaded a save from several days prior and did several companion quests, finished up some loose ends, and finished the main storyline a different way), I am kindof on a Dragon Age hangover. I really just haven’t been in the mood to play anything. Since I’m not in the mood to play, I figure I better write about it!

Pretty, Pretty Quiet!

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 20:39:29 +0000

Almost a decade ago, I posted my original review of my springfield 1911. Over the years, little mods have taken place, like different grips, a different magwell, etc. The newest piece is a modification to the gun to enable an addition. I replaced the standard barrel with a threaded storm lake barrel, so that I could attach a suppressor! And yes, silencers are legal!

Random Review: Dead Rising 3

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:12:35 +0000

Way back when the XBox 360 came out (2006!), I did a review of Dead Rising. It was a great game, one of my favorites of that first generation of 360 games. When Dead Rising 2 came out in 2010, it was lost in a sea of other games, so I never ended up playing it. I did play through part of their free “preview” game, Dead Rising: Case Zero, but I never finished that either… When the Xbox One released a few months ago, Dead Rising 3 was one of the launch titles. I didn’t buy an Xbox One right away, instead I waited for the holiday drama to subside, and watched for people selling consoles they might have bought only to flip to people that were desperate for one during the holidays. And indeed, I did get a great deal on a bundle with an extra controller, Dead Rising 3, and Lego Marvel.

Random Review: Surface Pro 2

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:05:47 +0000

I’ve had a Surface since they originally came out. I bought a day one Surface RT of my own, and used it all the time. I really liked the idea of the surface pro, but since it had like half the battery life of the RT, at like twice the expense. But when the surface pro 2 was announced, it was with a much more efficient Intel i5 “Haswell” processor with much better battery life. And much more available memory. And a much bigger drive. So I pre-ordered the Surface Pro 2 with 8g of ram and the 256g drive. After using it for several months now, as a tablet, a laptop (and now as my entire desktop replacement!), here’s my bullet item pros and cons random review.

What I work on: CodeLens (VS2013 RC!)

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 17:19:18 +0000

As of yesterday, the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2013 is now available! (And, MSFT changed its mind, so if you have an MSDN subscription, you can also download Windows 8.1 RTM!)

The feature my team (and others) has been working on, CodeLens, has undergone some major updates and cleanups since the preview. To see the most of it, you can go to MSDN’s page about CodeLens.

Here’s just one little picture including some of the new stuff. for the rest, go to the MSDN link above!

Another new office!

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 18:03:16 +0000

This one is much bigger than the last. Unfortunately, it isn’t a single office. it would be pretty awesome if it was. But my team (and most of the rest of the team that makes Visual Studio) is now in “Team Rooms” in the newly remodeled Building 18. Team rooms are the new hotness, apparently. I think that every team in b18 (including managers, etc!) are all in team rooms.

What I work on: CodeLens!

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 17:19:11 +0000

Today at the //build/ conference, Visual Studio 2013 was announced and shown in preview form (and download!). And once again, my group (well, my group plus our larger team) made the front page of visualstudio.com:

In Visual Studio 2013, when doing c# and vb, you’ll get extra “indicators” above your methods that give you kindof a “heads up display” of things about that class/method/property. The first one shows you references to the method, if you’re also using TFS it will show you which people have touched that method and in what changesets. Its tfs history on steroids! If you’re also using the built in unit testing features, that method will also show you an indicator that shows which tests test that method, and how many are pass/fail. If you click on any of the indicators, you’ll get a popup that shows you the details, and each details popup window has more useful info and actions you can do with that reference, or that changeset, or that unit test!

Now on Azure!

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:56:19 +0000

So as an MSDN subscriber, you get up to $150 / month of credits on windows azure. And azure supports wordpress, so… I created a site on azure in like 5 minutes, exported the content from my garage based server, imported into my new azure site, and blammo, it’s back up. Admittedly, it took some time to re-install all my plug-ins and find a new theme (the theme I was using hasn’t been updated in 2 years, apparently?), but other than that it was a pretty painless process. Then I tweaked some DNS things (which required overnight to propogate), and everything appears to be working. So far! I’ve been looking for a way to move all of my hosted stuff off of the server that’s running in my garage, and the combination of this, azure’s VM service, and the MSDN credits might finally be a solution!

What I Work on: Code Map Debugger Integration

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:48:05 +0000

In the last “what I work on” post, I talked about the Code Map feature that was new in Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate (Update 1). It has turned out to be a very popular feature (as it should) because it is super useful!

After people have used Code Map for a while, one of their first requests is “how do I get debugger information into this map?” There are ways to do it, where as you step through code, you keep manually doing “show on code map” on the method you’re in, but that gets very tedious.

I Love my Surface!

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:40:36 +0000

I’ve had a Surface (RT) since the Surface launch day, and I love it. (Note: I am a Microsoft employee, and recently they did give each employee a Surface for primarily business use, with personal use allowed, primarily for evangelism purposes. The launch day surface is my own personal surface, purchased with my own hard earned money). Since buying the Surface, I haven’t used my laptop! Here are just a few of the things that I love about it.

What I Work On: Code Map

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 06:17:06 +0000

Yesterday, Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 shipped! So I can officially talk about what I just worked on. Much of it has already been available in preview form and CTP releases and such, but you don’t want to get in trouble! :)

I joined the Visual Studio team back in April, just as work was finishing up on Visual Studio 2012. As part of that release, the VS team was moving to much more agile release schedule for updates, so here we are, about 4 months after going gold with an update with lots of fixes and cool new features!

Random Review: Lego Batman 2

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:01:25 +0000

It should almost be called “Lego Superman,” as he’s probably the best character in the game :). Most of the Justice League makes appearances in the game, but they don’t have much importance in the story, which is a shame. hopefully it’s a setup for a full fledged lego justice league game? (related: why is there no lego:Avengers game?!!?)

Easton and I have played through several Lego games now, and of all of them, this was definitely the hardest. In most of the other games, you have to learn how to move the characters. In the first Lego Batman, you also had to drive some vehicles, but that’s it. Lego Batman 2, you have to learn how to:

After Action Report: Tough Mudder Seattle

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 05:02:43 +0000

If I had to describe Tough Mudder in 2 words, the nicest version would be “holy hell”. If you don’t already know what it is, Tough Mudder is an adventure-style race. It’s generally 10-12 miles, littered with obstacles. And the obstacles are crazy.

Laura and I were on a 4 person team, “Birthday Cake”, as it was one team-member’s birthday. Beside Laura and I, the other two ladies on the team (Buffy and Erinn) are women we know through Columbia Athletic Club, the gym we go to. Well, actually, one of the ladies on our team is a trainer at Columbia, who Laura sees regularly, and who I’ve been working with once a week since the “spring challenge” starting in April. Anyway, back to the ~~race~~ challenge!

Funny Things Easton Says: Part 2

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 04:50:09 +0000

Easton is now almost 4. I figured I’d have a “part 2” to follow up on the original part 1 before this, but, you know. Things. They come up. So I’m a little behind schedule on this one. :)

“Gwirl” (rhymes with “Squirrel”. This is how he produces the ultra simple word “Girl”. It is one of the funniest things he says. sometimes I try to correct him, and he says “no, it’s gwirl!” If you didn’t hear it all the time, you probably wouldn’t notice it. but now that I’ve pointed it out, you’ll hear it too.
“my friend pogo-stick” – for a while, we think easton had an imaginary friend that he had named “pogo stick”. no idea where it came from.
“my friend robin” – now he’s in a HUGE superhero kick, so now his imaginary friend is robin. So that’s a good thing, it means that he’s the lead, and he has at least one sidekick. So tonight before bed, he was looking through his books, and said “I don’t want to read this one, I just want to look at it to see if Robin wants it for his birthday”
“This sounds like a job for [superhero]!”, where [superhero] is whichever super-hero shirt or pajamas he is putting on.
A whole set of words where he just drops the first (few) syllables. I’m not sure if this is just the hip new thing that kids his age are doing to save typing on twitter or what:
- "-chine" for "machine"
- "-cado", for “avocado”
- "-nected" for "connected"

Of course, there are a bunch more, but now that I started writing them down I can’t think of any!

Project: Toy Car Garage

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 06:00:26 +0000

Like I said last time I built something, every time Laura and Easton (and now Barrett) go somewhere for a week,

I end up doing some project that consumes all of my free time, and half of my sleep! I finally have some time to sleep in and relax, but no; I do a woodworking or home improvement project instead.

This spring, same thing, for the third year in a row. The project this time was a “garage” for all of the toy cars we have.

Trying out TFSPreview

Thu, 31 May 2012 06:09:36 +0000

For my home development projects, I’ve been using the “Basic” setup of Microsoft Team Foundation Server for years. I have it running on my “server” box in my garage, but pointed at a Sql Server Express database instead of a full Sql Server install. (Apparently, there’s going to be an explicit TFS “Express” version in TFS11?)

Aside: why am I not using something like github? To keep my stuff private, I’d have to pay ~$7/month for 5 repositories. the way I have things setup in TFS right now, I’d have more than that, requiring their $12/month plan.

Ben Avery Review #3: Lotsa-shotguns edition

Sun, 06 May 2012 06:02:53 +0000

They say, “Variety is the spice of life.” That’s almost the perfect description for my 3rd trip to the Ben Avery shooting facility during our annual spring break trip to Arizona.

This year, Jimbo, Art, and I shot trap again, but rotated through a set of shotguns to see which one we liked (or which ones liked us) better.

The trip to Ben Avery is always one of my favorite parts of the trip, even if it is only a couple hours of our week. This year, I even remembered to bring my earplugs and shooting glasses. One of these years, I’ll have a trap gun of my own, and maybe I’ll bring that along as well. And maybe by then, Easton will be joining us. But that’s a long way off :).

Updating my office, again!

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 06:52:32 +0000

About 5 years ago, we redid my office. Well, now that there’s another little being on the way, my office is transforming back to bedroom form. So i had to update my office again. This time, there ended up being a little… well, consolidation. An entire room of stuff is now in this:

Over the years, “Nerd Central”, as my office was once known, has slowly gone from 3 computers, 2 monitors, 2 printers, a television, surround sound receiver, a small mixer to manage the sound output to one set of speakers, and a huge random assortment of other electronics down to just a single desktop computer and xbox with a single monitor and computer speakers, and the 2 printers (one inkjet, one photo)

Project: Theater Cabinet

Mon, 30 May 2011 06:03:11 +0000

I don’t know what it is, but every time Laura and Easton leave for a week, I end up doing some project that consumes all of my free time, and half of my sleep! I finally have some time to sleep in and relax, but no; I do a woodworking or home improvement project instead. Last May it was redoing the stairs. This year it was a cabinet for the theater room for dvds, games, books and things. We couldn’t use a floor standing one, as that corner of the room has an electric fan forced heater that requires clearance space. So the cabinet had to be a wall mounted one. Sounds like a project!

Random Review: Alan Wake

Mon, 30 May 2011 03:10:24 +0000

Alan Wake was one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time. The story was an actual story. Well, it was really a story about a story, in the form of a game about a story.

A lot of companies have tried to do some kind of “episodic” game, and of any, I think this game could have actually pulled it off if it had been released that way.

Random Review: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:17:49 +0000

The game begins in disappointment: you’re forced to install a console game. So before I can even do anything, I’m forced to wait 8 minutes. Great initial experience there.

During the install I’m forced to watch a dude on screen chain smoke the whole time. Some of the “hints” it gave during this install (emphasis/commentary added):

konami is not responsible for any damage resulting from misuse (misuse of what?)
this game is intended for use exclusively with the PLAYSTATION3 system. (no crap, really? is that why its only available on the PS3? where else would I play it?)
cigarette smoke has detrimental effects to you and those around you, particularly infants and children.
put litter in its place. dispose of ashes in ashtrays.
ensure that you play in a brightly lit room and sit as far away from the screen as possible (except sony makes this impossible, as I need to charge my ps3 controller, and the cord they give you for that is like 3’ long, and apparently the controller only charges if the PS3 is on!)
avoid playing when you are tired
be sure to take a 15-minute break every half hour
if you begin to feel ill, stop playing immediately

THANKS MOM, for the life coaching while waiting for your game to install.

Happy 1911 Day!

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:05:56 +0000

On March 29, 1911 the army adopted the John Moses Browning designed M1911 pistol. And today, 100 years later, the 1911 is still used by some of the special forces groups of the military and is still one of the most popular handguns in the world.

The first gun I bought was a 1911 pistol. It is still my favorite handgun to shoot, although shooting a lot of .45 gets expensive! So I bought a Marvel Precision .22 LR conversion that allows me to shoot .22 LR, and then I bought another (used) 1911 so that I didn’t have to keep swapping the conversion on and off. The collection has grown, but I still shoot both of those pretty often. I’ve even used the 45 in pistol league a few weeks, and it’s a lot of fun!

Ben Avery Review #2: The Shotgunning Edition

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 05:37:18 +0000

Last year, Art took us to Ben Avery Shooting Facility to shoot some of his guns, and we had a grand old time.

In what has become an annual tradition, we went again this year during spring training. But this year, instead of rifles and revolvers, this year was all about: Shotguns!

Jim and Art used over/under Browning shotguns, and I used a browning single shot. We then each shot ~60 birds of trap shooting. Ben Avery is a huge place, with something like 18 trap fields, so the 3 of us had a trap field to ourselves. This was good since neither Jim or I had shot trap before, and we didn’t want to slow anyone else down.

Random Review: Torchlight

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:32:02 +0000

While Torchlight has been available for the PC for a long (long!) time, it just came out last week on Xbox 360 as an arcade game. And it is a great game! It’s probably the best value for an Xbox live arcade game so far. I can’t believe how much stuff they fit into that ~400 meg download!

It wasn’t the best story ever, but I thought the story made more sense than Borderlands! The side quests were ok, but I think I “broke” some by going through the area and doing something before I got the quest for it. There were other things where I swear I scoured the whole level, and the thing that was supposed to be there wasn’t there. And I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time looking when there was so much other stuff to do.

Random Review: Medal of Honor

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:11:42 +0000

This is one of the few sequels that doesn’t have a number or subtitle. It should be something like “Medal of Honor: Tier 1” or something, as the game was mostly following some Tier 1 special forces operators through the storyline.

Like the Call of Duty series, I played through MoH on the hardest difficulty (until I saw the “Tier 1 mode” or whatever that I didn’t go back through and play). But unlike recent CoD games on hard, I didn’t see any real “bugs” with the “good guy” AI. And the special forces guys in this game could shoot. While you, as the player, still have to do the majority of the work, the computer controlled players could at least draw fire and provide cover so that you could flank the bad guys. So for this game, I don’t have to write a version of my “letter to my idiot squadmates” posts. The effectiveness of my squad did make the game feel a little easier than CoD, but it did make me feel like a good player on a great team, instead of the great player on a crappy team. However, the game not being as hard didn’t make the game any less enjoyable.

Random Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:19:24 +0000

This is the (by my count) 7th game in the Call of Duty series. Of the recent ones (since CoD:Modern Warfare), this one had the best story.

It had a very interesting psycho-drama going on, with the main character being captured and interrogated by someone, causing flashbacks. The missions occurred in the flashbacks, not entirely in order, and interestingly, sometimes without clear beginning or end. I liked that. Several times you’d be what you’d assume 3/4 of the way through something, and then you’d see something that didn’t make sense, and you’d get shocked back to the interrogation. I thought I had figured out what was going on, but I hadn’t. I like it when a game keeps me guessing.

Random Review: Red Dead Redemption

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:05:52 +0000

Red Dead Redemption was one of the best games I played in 2010. Well, I’m finished playing it in 2011, so it might be the best game I played in 2011 too :). If you haven’t played it, its Grand Theft Horse, basically. Same developers, same engine. But the story in RDR was a lot more interesting to me than GTA was. I think when you set a game in modern day, you really have to get every little detail right, because people’s brains are so used to seeing that stuff, that you will notice if the cars are too shiny, or the windows don’t reflect right, and all kinds of other things just won't look quite right. But when you set a game in the wild wild west, not a lot of people are used to riding horses, or herding cattle so you aren’t going to notice little things that are incorrect.

Random Review: Assassin’s Creed 2

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:31:50 +0000

AC2 was probably one of the best games I’ve played this year. Most of the time sequels aren’t as good as the original, but this one was as good, if not better than the original. Yes, it was a little formulaic, and there was a fair amount of repetition, but I really liked the story. It had one laaaaaaame moment, but I’ll let it go and see if AC3 cleans it up. I thought the addition of the interaction with Leonardo Da Vinci was pretty clever. There’s also a part now where you kindof run a city in a very minimal way, so that was an interesting way to make money. Towards the end I had so money I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I wish there would have been something else to do with it :D

Why I'm buying a Kinect

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 06:26:52 +0000

Now that Kinect for XBox360 has officially released, i’m allowed to say that we participated in the beta program for Kinect, and that we’ve been playing it now for a few months. (i even got a avatar t-shirt and a 0 point achievement, yay!)

There’s a very simple reason that i’m buying it: Easton can play it. He’s only 2, and doesn’t have the dexterity to do anything with a wii-mote or an xbox360 controller, but he can run in place, and he loves to play Kinect. Supposedly, the recommended minimum height for players is 3 feet, but for the most part he can play some stuff.

Funny things Easton says: Part 1

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:04:27 +0000

Well, probably more accurately, “things which easton says or mispronounces that i find funny”. Right now all the ones i can think of are single words. he’s starting to form sentences so i’m pretty sure there will be funny phrases for a future installment.

“Zune” is easton’s word for “phone”. I really wish i had my zune still (lost it on an airplane…) so he could be even more confused.
“Bean” is easton’s word for “beer”. “Daddy’s bean” is what he says whenever he sees a glass bottle of any kind. even though he says other words that end with the “r” sound, he will not say beer, he just says “bean” louder if you try to correct him
“Coshee” is easton’s word for “coffee”, although i think last weekend he started saying it right. He loves to run the coffee machine weekend mornings, and seems to enjoy the taste of even black coffee. I don’t know if its because he likes to copy me or if he really likes the taste. He does like raw garlic and onions though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he likes the bitterness of coffee.
“Shark” is easy’s word for “fork”. sometimes its just “sark”. The weird thing is that he can say the “f” sound, so i don’t know why he won’t say fork.
“Fi-fi” is what easton calls Felix Hernandez. But most of the Mariners call him that too, so that’s okay.
“Pay-pay” is what easton calls Peyton Manning. I’m generally pretty anti-Peyton, but he’s my fantasy QB this year, so i root for him, but against the Colts in general.
When he sees cats, or squirrels or other small animals outside, he will generally say their name, then say “eat”. The conversation goes like: “Meow. Cat! Eat?”, “no, we don’t eat cats.” “eat? no eat.”

Random Review: Pistol League @ SSNW

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:49:29 +0000

I’ve been going to a pistol league at Shooting Sports Northwest for a few weeks now. I’ve never competed in any gun related things before, so this is a first for me.

There are 3 events every week, and you shoot each event twice.

The first part is called “zombies”, and is worth the most points. 10 rounds, 9 targets. the back row of 3 poppers pops up, and is up for a few seconds. Then the middle row of 3, then the front row of 3. The zombies are scored on distance; the back row is worth 20, 18, 15, middle 12, 10, 10, putting the front row at only 7, 7, 7. Most people will use as many rounds as they can to get the back row.

Random Review: Bioshock 2

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:14:11 +0000

Hey, that rhymed! The story in Bioshock 2 wasn’t as quite as good as the original, but was still very good. Helping the little sisters harvest was pretty cool. The big sisters were a clever idea. the most interesting part was the part where you see what the world looks like through a little sister’s eyes. That was pretty cool. Like the first game, the art direction and theme were magnificently done.

Mariners 2010 Commercial Jinx?

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:04:33 +0000

It’s not as exciting as the old Sports Illustrated Cover jinx, nor as cool as the Madden Cover curse, but I think this year the mariners have created a “mariners commercial” jinx.

The Mariners 2010 Commercials:

Immortalized: A commercial about a composite painting of all of the bullpen pitchers as a “cohesive” unit. Bullpen 2010: Mark Lowe: Traded. Bunch of the guys: injured. Bunch of guys: DFA’d. The rest, marginally effective.

Random Review: Dragon Age: Origins

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:28:41 +0000

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the best RPG I’ve played since Lunar on Sega CD. Or maybe the Might and Magic series on PC. Or *maaaaaaaaaaybe *the original Final Fantasy on the NES.

None of those had the kind of character development that Origins had though. It was simply amazing to me how many conversations a pair of characters would have in the background. I’d be walking around town or the woods or whatever, and two of the characters in the party would start bickering. so I’d have to stop and turn around so I could watch the full conversation. Some of the characters did not get along at all!

Random things about working at Microsoft for a year

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:27:02 +0000

While I’ve only worked there for a year, because I was “acquired” in an “asset” in an acquisition, I have 11 years of “service” for things like vacation and office placement, so that’s handy. In no particular order:

I've installed Windows a lot in a year. 2 different versions of Windows 7 a total of 9 times, 2 different versions of Server 2008 3 times. (And 3 Win7+1 Server2K8R2 installs at home!) Although i haven’t installed windows in several months, though.
I’ve installed Visual Studio 2010 even more. Probably something like 20 different internal builds on 3 machines and several VM’s. Although since the RTM version was available, i haven’t had to install that anymore either. Visual Studio 2010 is so much better than 2008. After using Eclipse for years, i’ve gotten used to so many of the built in features there that i was really surprised that visual studio doesn’t have similar functionality. There are some add-ons that add a lot of the refactoring things and other tools, but like visual studio, most of them are not free.
It's amazing how many IM conversations i have. At rosetta we would have just gotten up and walked over there instead of using IM. Communicator at MS works way better than it did at Merck. Even the desktop sharing works really well. At Merck, the old version of netmeeting we were using was pretty finicky.
I’ve had 4 different offices (not counting the conference room we worked out of for a week+)
There’s an email mailing list (or 2) for anything and everything. The email alias often has a name that makes no sense unless you know what the codename of a product was 5 years ago. And with all the email, there are still a ton of people with no email etiquette whatsoever. And there are people that have 30 lines of crap in their signature.
Across 4 computers and 2 VM’s i’ve had exactly one bluescreen, and it was in the windows2008 server installer. (apparently it didn’t like the USB headset i had plugged in!)
I use OneNote all the time to take notes. I’d never used it before. And the 2010 version of OneNote makes some other things even easier. I only write on paper now when i go to meetings and don’t take my laptop, or if i’m sketching out paper prototypes. Sadly, it looks like the mobile version of onenote is pretty crippled compared to the full version. i only see numbered and bulleted lists, when i use the other tags like checkboxes and colors all the time.
C# as a language (and the .net framework in general) is pretty awesome. Especially LINQ and lambdas. Likewise, WPF + the xaml language and bindings makes it trivial to do a lot of things without much (or any) code. The visual GUI designer tools in VS2010 and Blend are the first ones i’ve used that don’t generate horrible horrible code. And the binding functionality makes hooking data up to controls trivial.
Expression Blend + SketchFlow are pretty awesome. I need more time to learn them both, as they’re way more powerful and useful than i’m using them. But there are some things that take like 2 seconds in Blend that are painful in visual studio.
There is a HUGE amount of available training. Classroom, online, books, everything, and most of it that i have used as been very very good.
like half the people I know have iphones. windows phone 7 looks cool at all, its just so far behind/away. Apple has released 4 hardware revisions and major OS versions in the time its taken MS to do 1? Since my first gen iphone is effectively a dead end now that it is no longer upgradable, I’m waiting for it to be worth my time to buy a new phone…
The company meeting at Safeco field is crazy. Last year had lots of great stuff, with Windows 7 and Office 2010 coming. This year’s should be interesting, with Win Phone 7 and Kinect coming soon. It would also be cool if they gave some more Windows 8 details.
I’d say like 33% of the people I know/have met are hardcore pro MS people. Another 33% are just there for a job that pays the bills. Another 33% are pro MS but realistic about the areas where we could be doing better. That last 1% is a crazy rabid anti microsoft bunch that thinks we’re on the wrong track completely about everything we do no matter what it is. We could be curing cancer and they’d still be upset.

Random Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Thu, 13 May 2010 05:03:55 +0000

Recently, film critic Roger Ebert said (again!) that “video games can never be art.” He has obviously never played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It was one of the best games i’ve ever played. If I’m not going to say it was the best i’ve ever played, because it did have some repetitive things and some other weird issues. But this game is art. There’s no way it ***can’t ***be. As much as I respect Roger Ebert, he’s just plain wrong on this one.

I would buy an iPad if...

Fri, 07 May 2010 04:07:07 +0000

Now that courier is dead (i’d link to that gizmodo article, but being a microsoft employee, i’m supposed to link to that instead), i’m looking at a new laptop or something.

I’d buy an ipad if it had “case” that made it like a my old clio. my horrible ‘shop: (aside: what do you call a “photoshop” that isn’t done in photoshop? this was done via paint.net)

It lets you hide/protect the screen, and yet lets you use the keyboard when you want, or use it as a stand to watch stuff without holding it, but you can pop it out when you want the lighter screen to do stuff with.

Random Review: Ben Avery Shooting Facility

Mon, 03 May 2010 05:51:56 +0000

While in Arizona for spring training, my step-dad Art took my brother and me to the Ben Avery Shooting Facility outside of Phoenix.

Here's the panorama view from where we were sitting. I should have gotten a couple more shots to the left, though!

Here's the view from space:

The main 200 yard range is just eastnortheast a bit of where the orange dot is on the map. If you zoom in you can see what 200 yards looks like from space. Then zoom back out and see HOW HUGE that place is! It was awesome! Weather was nice, not too warm, not too cold. A little windy, but not so much that it really affected us at the distance we were shooting.

Random Review : G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:31:52 +0000

Just finished the game G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra on Xbox 360. The idea of the game was good. The execution was rather….meh.

The game is kindof a 3rd person top down/isometric shooter. but you have absolutely no control over the camera! In most of the games like this you have at least some control over the camera. you might not be able to rotate the full 360 degrees, but at least you can move it so you can see your characters on the frigging screen! there were several places in the game where you had to make a left or right turn to go around the corner. and for several seconds, you couldn’t even see your characters until the camera caught up with you! That’s just insane. Instead of having the right thumbstick control the camera, it controlled what you were targeting. I would have much rather had camera control and then use the left/right bumpers for target control.

Random Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:49:23 +0000

I really liked the first Ultimate Alliance, and the sequel fixed almost every problem/annoyance that i had with it. Ultimate Alliance 2 was, in a word: Awesome.

It’s a top-down action game with RPG elements, reasonable multiplayer, and comic book heroes (and villains!) galore. It has a good story with a great moral dilemma, which is (mostly) meaningful to the story. The pace of the game was good, the story was really good.

Random Review: Dine Around Seattle

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:44:54 +0000

During March, Laura and I hit two restaurants as part of the Dine Around Seattle program. From March 1 to March 31, a bunch of Seattle area restaurants do a Sunday through Thursday, 3 course for $30 special offer. Some of the places are pretty high end that you might never go to. Thankfully we found a good babysitter, so we’ve been able to go to two! If we hadn’t gone to AZ on spring break, we might have hit more!

Spike's Tactical AR-22: one year later.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:05:05 +0000

I’ve now had my Spike’s Tactical AR-22 for more than a year. Its now on a different lower than it originally was, has some different accessories, and has lots of ammo through it!

Go to the original review.

In 2009, i put more than 2300 rounds through it, with only 27 failures. And of those 28, 15 were on one day early in February, where i tried to use CCI Mini-mags. Lets just say that it doesn’t like those! I also think i went through a bad batch of ammo in January, where i had ~100 light strikes or duds. It happened with 2 separate lowers, so I don’t think it was hammer or spring related.

Random Review: A piece of history

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:02:42 +0000

I recently received this amazing piece of WWII era history through the Civilian Marksmanship Program:

A Springfield Armory M1 .30 Caliber Rifle, commonly called an M1 Garand.

The serial number is in the 278xxxx range, which, according to Fulton Armory (via Scott Duff), makes its manufacture date in March of 1944. By the proof marks on the stock (pics to follow!) it looks like the stock is much newer, either HRA or IH from the mid to late 50’s. Either way, i think it is the oldest thing i own!

Random Review: Overlord 2

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:08:04 +0000

The first few hours were very enjoyable, much like the first Overlord was. I didn’t see much new stuff, other than that the minions could have mounts that would let them get to other places.

I really liked the original Overlord, and in fact while i was playing it, Laura was pregnant with Easton. In one of laura’s first ultrasounds, easton looked just like the overlord, so that was funny timing.

Now I want an ACOG even more!

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:23:22 +0000

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

-- From ABCNews.com

I love how all of a sudden a marking like JN8:12 is a “Secret Jesus Code”, instead of a passage in the bible.

This whole article is fully of quotes so hilarious, it should really have been published by the Onion:

Random Review: Modern Warfare 2

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:13:31 +0000

Fastest review: Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare was better.

The AI might have been crappy in the first one, but at least the story made sense. Yes, there was a controversial section in this one. But it should have been more controversial that it was horrible horrible writing. Hey, I’m standing here with a fully loaded machine gun, and the world’s most wanted terrorist and his dudes, I could end this whole story RIGHT HERE and be the hero of the world. But instead, i think i’ll let some terrorists waste a bunch of idiot tourists who just stand there. Um, no. And you’re telling me that airport cops in Russia are armed with pistols? God, i hope not.

Random Review: Ghostbusters (the video game)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:18:57 +0000

I really liked it! It had a few glitchy things at the beginning, though.

You’d think that if you were making a game about ghosts you would maybe maybe write your code in such a way that said ghosts don’t get stuck in the environment. Several times i’d get to a spot in the level where nothing was happening. All of the other ghostbusters are standing around, obviously waiting for something to happen. So i had to run around in the whole level, looking for that one stupid ghost that was stuck somewhere. On one of the first levels, he was stuck between a building and a car. Other times, having the ghosts stuck somewhere turned out to be very convenient, as it meant that there was one less ghost to deal with.

Halloween this year, not like the others.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:26:08 +0000

The thing I misses the most since the tragic end of Rosetta Biosoftware will be not having a real Halloween party tomorrow. And not just because someone in the carpool had won either Best Costume, Best Group, or the Golden Frankie for like the last 5 years. The best thing was probably seeing your managers, directors, etc, dressed up in costumes. Microsoft has kids over and trick-or-treating, but it isn’t going to be the same as having Yelena forcing people to wear whatever costume things she brought for the people who didn’t dress up!

I would buy this thing instantly.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:33:44 +0000

I’m going to need to start emailing around Microsoft Research now that i work at Microsoft…because i’m intrigued by this thing:

Microsoft Research’s Courier

This new device, called “Courier” showed up on Gizmodo today, and i don’t know why it hasn’t gotten more press. Maybe because its still in a “late prototype” phase and everyone assumes there’s an apple iTablet thing due any time now?

Random Review: Mirror's Edge

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:27:55 +0000

In haiku form:

mirror’s edge, the game
it is a jumping puzzle
and that’s about it.

Well, maybe it had other things, but i never found them. I just couldn’t get into it, because it was just jumping puzzles, so i gave up. I’d just finished Tomb Raider before that, and at least it had puzzle puzzles. And swinging puzzles, and fire puzzles and shooting puzzles, etc. There are just too many other games out to play something that pisses me off.

Hardware pain!

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:32:25 +0000

I’ve spent a couple weeks now trying to get this server back running and have had the wierdest problems…The network keeps disappearing! After a few hours, the NIC just stops working. Device manager still shows it, but the link light is gone, and the activity light stays off. I’ve updated bios, drivers, tried another NIC, same problem.

If i uninstall the driver, and reinstall the driver, sometimes it just magically comes back…looks like i might need to get Win2k8 server R2 when it comes out, see if it fixes some of these things… We’ll see how long the machine stays on the network tonight!

Random Review: Fallout 3

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:36:13 +0000

Fallout 3, by Bethesda Softworks is probably the best game I’ve played so far in 2009. Personally, i think the world felt a lot bigger and a lot more immersive than GTA4.

There was so much to do, and so many places to go, i found myself just wandering unexplored areas of the map to see what i could see. There were some great quest chains, and other not so great, but on a whole it was a great mix of RPG and action. There were some quests that were secondary that could be completed regardless of the main quest, and then there were a fair amount of “mini” quests that don’t show up in the quest list, but showed up as notes instead…which was annoying. Some of the mini-quests were literally seconds long: a dude ran up to me in the middle of the wasteland, and said

Hardware upgrade, websites (mostly) back to normal.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:06:21 +0000

After a hardware disaster, corrupted backups, professional data restoration, a hardware upgrade complete with more hardware failure (somehow a new power supply i bought at FRY’s was DOA!), everything is mostly back to normal. Everything is running on newer builds of php and mysql, with 4x the processing power and 4x the RAM. I’ve seen mysql crash a few times already, though, so we’ll see how that goes.

If you see somethinng missing or broken, let me know!

A small wood finishing project.

Sat, 30 May 2009 08:28:49 +0000

Before i get to the wood part of the project, can you identify the object the wood goes with?

If you’ve never seen one stripped down, you might not recognize it. Here’s a better “pre” picture that will make everything clear.

OMG SO SCARY AK47 MACHINEGUN!!11!! No, its an AK variant, a Yugoslavian M70AB2 underfolder. Its semi-automatic, not a “machine-gun”, so don’t get your panties in a bunch. It’s less powerful than most hunting rifles. Yes, it accepts 30+ round magazines, but so does almost any semi-auto gun these days. Why do i have one? Because (1) i like guns, and (2) the bill of rights says i can, so there! And this way when zombies attack or red dawn goes down, i’ll be ready…Everyone should have at least one AK!

Can it be?

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:26:19 +0000

I was browsing random crap on ebay today…and on my profile, saw this:

Member since: Feb-16-99 in United States

Holycrap, really? I’ve been buying stuff off ebay for a decade? I thought that ebay would die a quick death, like some of the other auction sites that we bought computer stuff from in college….

Truth, lies, and gun statistics

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:16:17 +0000

I posted most of this as a comment on the blog of Michael Yon, a former special forces operator turned war journalist, in a response to his post: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/tons-of-arms-flowing-to-mexico.htm. I really respect Michael, and read all of his disptaches and own all of his books, including a signed copy of Moment of Truth in Iraq.

Michael’s post is really just a link to a government document full of statistics about “tons” of guns going to Mexico. All of the block quotes here are quotes from the government document.

The president is not supposed to be your friend.

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:34:44 +0000

I’m sorry, but the President is not supposed to be your friend. Going on TV with a NCAA bracket? Going on Jay Leno while being President? Neither of these things is Presidential. The former is a thing that a 23 year old high school teacher right out of college would do to be friends with high school girls. The latter is something you do on the campaign trail. We get it, you’re cool. Now get over yourself and get to work.

Random Review: Too Human

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:29:49 +0000

Very weird game. It ended in the middle of the story. It took me a while to get a hang of the controls and equipment, and then about the time i was really getting into it, a cutscene ends, and the credits start rolling…

The lack of any kind of in game map was a giant pain, especially in the “cyberspace” thing… which should have had a better name. I mean, to most people that word has a meaning, and that meaning is not “lush green forest”.

What Combat Weaponry Are You?

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:05:46 +0000

What Combat Weaponry Are You?

M-134 “Mini-Gun”

A true brute, you have a “presence” every where you go. You can take on any opponent with little effort, your dependable and your reputation does the talking.

Click Here to Take This Quiz

Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

YES!

The Xbox360 repair process got WORSE since last time...

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:24:14 +0000

So last night i tried to go to the xbox support website to get my 360 repaired. But the site was down for maintenance.

Today i went to the support website to get my 360 repaired. I get a useless page that tells me to fill in fields that don’t exist:

That’s awesome. So i have to call the 18004MYXBOX number and talk to the robot. Then i got a guy, and we went through the troubleshooting. Yes, 3 red lights, yes the upper right one is off, yes the power supply light is green. Tried it without the hard drive, tried it without a memory card, i’ve done this before, the console has been repaired before. If you leave it off for a few hours, it will start up and you may or may not get into the dashboard. I got in long enough to copy my profile to a memory card so that worst case i can play on jimbo’s xbox during xmas…

Random Review: Spike's Tactical AR .22LR rifle

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:29:34 +0000

With my stimulus check, i built a rifle! And since my xbox has RRoD’d again, i have some free time to write about it!

Assembly

It all starts as what they call a “stripped lower receiver”. This is the part that the government classifies as a “firearm”. Even though it barely resembles a gun (its just a milled piece of aluminum with some holes cut in it), it has a serial number, you have to buy it at a gun shop and fill out paperwork and everything.

Not again!!!!

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 06:35:53 +0000

Almost 2 years ago (Feb 3, 2007)

Today (Dec 6, 2008)

Ah, crap.... RRoD #2 on my 360. March would be 3 years and the end of the free replacement warranty... maybe i need to buy a new one? I could just get a new jasper/arcade one for xmas for myself...but that would be sad!

What really sucks is that the xbox 360 is the "hub" of our theater room entertainment center. Without the 360, there is no dvd player, no netflix instant queue, no music, no games...crap! If netflix was on tivo (coming in december?) we'd at least still have that available, but nope. And the web based "repair my console" registration is down for maintenance, so i can't even get a replacement box sent asap!

Dear Bad Company Squad Mates

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:22:47 +0000

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Battlefield: Bad Company. I wrote a very similar letter to my computer controlled squad mates in Call of Duty 4.

Much Worse Things...

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:47:22 +0000

I caught most of the “A Colbert Christmas” special last night on comedy central. The last part of the episode, a duet between Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello was the best part of the whole show. An awesome little song, with a very memorable, very applicable holiday song. Here are the lyrics:

Random Review: Root canal

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:56:36 +0000

Sunday night, i awoke in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. Or, toothache, rather. I couldn’t tell which tooth, or even top or bottom, just that the left side of my face hurt. I took some advil, it went away, and I went back to sleep. Monday and Tuesday the toothache kindof came and went but there was no sensitivity to hot or cold or pressure, and i still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Wednesday was more of the same until dinner time. During dinner, it got to the point that i couldn’t even chew on the left side, but at least i could tell which tooth it was. Wednesday night i barely slept. I probably got about 2 hours of total sleep in 5 minute chunks. Thursday morning i went to the dentist, they took xrays and said that i had an infection in that tooth, and that i’d need a root canal. I was given prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers and had to come back the next day for the root canal, as they want the antibiotics in your system for at least 24 hours.

The Xbox 360 NXE is pretty cool!

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:14:33 +0000

You can’t really tell, but that is totally a camo hat! too bad i couldn’t figure out how to put it on backwards! I already signed up for a netflix trial membership and threw stuff into my instant queue and was watching superbad within 1 minute! sound was a little quiet, picture not super-awesome, but its still going to be so convenient, given that we can’t get on demand through the tivo.

Another (blue) Halloween, another win!

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:38:38 +0000

Last year it was blue man group, this year: SMURFS!

4 of us were smurf boys:

(Brainy, Papa, Grumpy, Handy smurf left to right, and a nice background photoshop job by jay)

Last year we used blue liquid latex, which was a nightmare to put on, but trivial to take off, because it all just came off as one big piece. This year was blue grease paint makeup, which was easy to put on, but took forever to get off. For the entire weekend Laura was finding more blue paint in my hair here and there.

Hey mom! I'm famous!

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:56:34 +0000

See for yourself!. Click + to zoom in.

I’m doing rock fingers, jay is doing the robot. We just barely saw him going by on our way to lunch. That was like 6 months ago? It was cold enough to wear a jacket…

Here’s another view that pete found:

We were just coming out the ping-pong-plaza door.

Yes, Rosetta (aka Merck Seattle) is closing.

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:02:02 +0000

By December 31, 2009 (nine, not eight), the Seattle Merck “lab” is closing. But Rosetta Biosoftware isn’t technically the lab, so there are other plans in the work for Rosetta Biosoftware and GEL Operations. We don’t know all the details yet, so that kinda sucks, but i’m not too worried about it right now.

Its kinda sad: in a ~3500 word press release about Merck’s 3Q2008 earnings, its single a whopping sentence:

Easton!

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:45:06 +0000

I have been a little busy for the past oh, 10 weeks, so i haven’t gotten to post. But i’m always busy with something, so i figure i should just post some little posts more often.

So here’s a fun one!

Just over 10 weeks ago, Laura had our first child (of many, i’m sure. i’m not a basketball fan, so maybe a hockey team? baseball team is wishful thinking!), Easton John Gardner. If you’re following my flickr easton collection contents like our friends and family, you already know that!

This is what happens when i leave my desk at work.

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:11:11 +0000

Go away for 5 minutes, and look what happens. Delicious goods appear!

Random Review: Dr. Horrible is awesome!

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:06:45 +0000

Go watch it. The third part is supposed to go live tomorrow (the 19th) and the first two parts are awesome. I love Neil Patrick Harris, and this is pure genius on Joss Whedon’s part as well. NPH is our favorite part of How I Met Your Mother, and playing himself in the Harold & Kumar movies is fantastic. So go watch it already. It would be awesome if they could turn this into a series of some kind, even if it was web based or i had to download it through iTunes or my X360.

A cheesehead take on this Favre nonsense.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:03:16 +0000

So yeah, we’re from Wisconsin. Laura’s from Green Bay. Most of her family still lives there. We joke that Laura and both of her sisters married into packer season tickets, and its even funnier that its true. We subscribe to DirecTV just to watch Packer games. I wear Packers or Brewers or Badgers stuff almost every day in one way or another (hats mostly!) We have a freakin shrine to Brett Favre in our kitchen. I’m not shxting you!

Would nature sort things out?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:49:03 +0000

I came across these two videos at the bottom of a story at kirotv.com, a local tv channel’s news website.

If we could combine these two stories into one, which problem would be solved?

Cougar Prowling Streets Of Olympia

The hunt is on for a cougar seen prowling the city streets of Olympia. More Details

+

Park Officials Try New Approach To Stop Graffiti

A graffiti spree over the holiday weekend is prompting the Seattle Parks Department to try a new approach to stop the vandals. More Details

Our users aren't stupid. They just don't have time to be curious!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:01:49 +0000

John Gruber at Daring Fireball:

Project: Closet Doors

Fri, 30 May 2008 06:20:14 +0000

Back when i wrote the post about building a pantry, i said that i thought i had used every tool i owned for that project…well… for this project, i used every major tool i own except one: my miter saw. I would have used the miter saw if it had a sharper/newer blade. And if i had a better place to use it than on the floor. And if I had a better one. For the closet doors project, I even bought some new tools that i didn’t have before!

Before:

After:

For more details and more pictures, follow the jump!

Random Review: The most expensive meal we've ever eaten...

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:36:09 +0000

For Valentine’s day (weekend), Laura and I had dinner at The Herbfarm restaurant. It definitely gets into the “Top 3” of meals I’ve ever eaten, but does not get the top spots. It was the most elegant, well prepared, fanciest, and most gourmet meal we’ve ever had, though.

For reference, #1 is Steak for lunch in a tiny little family restaurant in Porvoo, Finland, #2 was J P’s in Cannon Beach, OR, the dinner the night before we got engaged. Interestingly, the herbfarm is #1 of the “non-steak” dinners.

I'm 82% geek!

Fri, 09 May 2008 02:54:54 +0000

John	Laura
82% Geek	20% Geek

I think most of Laura’s 20% came from actually knowing the answer to the Firefly question: she remembered going to the movie! Attagirl!

Random Review: Howard Leight Impactâ„¢ Sport Earmuff

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:50:22 +0000

So i bought some fancy electronic ear protection from cabela’s to use at the range. I had searched some places and this “Impact” model fit my real requirements: has to muffle sounds, have to fit into the range bag. They also met my optional requirements: electronic ones that boost normal range sounds, so you can still hear people talking while you’re wearing them.

Howard Leight Impactâ„¢ Sport Earmuff @ Cabela’s

Dear CoD4 computer team-mates: shoot that guy 3 feet in front of you!

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:24:53 +0000

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Call of Duty 4.

thundersnail!

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:46:59 +0000

So in the last 3 days we’ve had 6" of snow, rain, then hail, then snow-hail (“snail”) and then it even thundered and lightninged while snailing! hence, my newly coined weather-phenomenon “thundersnail”:

Carbon Fiber Madness! (again!)

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:20:21 +0000

Put some more CF stuff on this week. One ebay, one MY.IS marketplace item.

License plate garnish from AAC (via a MY.IS member)

Before

After

And some mirror covers:

The CF + GGP color is perfect, at least to me. If you aren’t looking for the CF, you don’t even notice it!

For the rest of the pics, go to the carbon fiber madness # photoset at flickr.

Mass Effect was awesome!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:19:46 +0000

For the first time in a long time (portal is a close second: portal better ending, mass effect better story), this game actually made me want to to watch cut scenes. It felt kindof like a movie, kindof like a “choose your own adventure”. Being able to choose the direction things were going was cool, while the game was “on rails”, at least there were some switches along the way to push the story in a direction. The voice acting was great, and included some big names, which was really cool. I saw probably 100 people in the “other voices” section alone. The little interactions between the crew when out moving around, or overhearing conversations as you walk through a bar was very immersive. The main story line was really good, with a few twists now and then to keep it interesting. A couple of the little details in the story really made it feel plausible. All of the main characters had backstories and somewhat interesting conversations. It would have been nice if the side missions that you do would affect the story more. I spent time doing some of them because i hoped they might.

2 Years Later: Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 Conversion Review

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:04:29 +0000

My mini-2 year review of my Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 conversion. This is a continuation of my adventures with it, continued from the original post, and my 1 year followup!

I’ve been keeping religious track of range time in a Numbers spreadsheet for about 9 months now, so I can give exact numbers and ammo used and everything. in the last 9 months i’ve fired:

Ammunition	Rounds
CCI Mini-mags	300
CCI Stingers	133
Total	433

Follow the jump for the rest of the details and some pics.

TripIt saved my butt!

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:58:15 +0000

I’d heard of TripIt from people at work, but hadn’t used it. We’re going to AZ for Spring Training, and i needed to be able to print out all the itineraries and confirmation numbers and all that, but can’t from work because gmail is blocked. So i was going to just forward all the emails to work, but instead decided to forward them to plans@TripIt.com instead and see how well it worked.

What kind of D&D Character would you be?

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:18:29 +0000

Even more fitting the week when Gary Gygax died. So sad! Although technically, this would be an AD&D character, as the original D&D didn’t have “classes”, it just had races, didn’t it? Anyway, here are my results:

You are a: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-15
Constitution-12
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-13
Charisma-12

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

For more detailed nerdy stats, follow the jump.

Awwwwwwwwww maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:12:50 +0000

Brett Favre retires. A sad day in the NFL. The best reflection of my feelings is from Making Peace With Favre’s Final Days, from Jeff Bercovici@Deadspin:

This should be a SAD FACE!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:51:51 +0000

This should be a sad face, not a happy face, you TiVo jerkface.

And you thought it took a long time for a TiVo to restart on a normal day.

We’re watching live TV through the 360 via media center. Thanks a lot, TiVo.

OH! Please, let it be a boy!

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:53:23 +0000

If not the overlord, maybe he is batman?

Ultrasound

Batman/boy?

As gizmodo says:

Step one: Strap Mattel’s Wayne Tech Mega Cape on him from the day he can walk. The wings spring out with a single touch, instantly readying him to fly down a staircase and into the ER. $40, June. Health insurance sold separately.

I think my baby might be the overlord?

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:23:14 +0000

Ultrasound	Overlord

I’m not the only one that sees it, am I? And this is NOT photoshopped in anyway, the image is just resized and mirrored to match the box art. If you go to the flickr page you can see the original!

Ultrasounds are awesome, i have to say that much. I cannot believe how detailed information you can get by firing sound waves through someone!

There’s a whole bunch more ultrasound and pre-baby pics up in this flickr group, and the ultrasound video is up here on youtube.

i wanna play cod4!!!

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:55:13 +0000

So my brother got me Call of Duty 4 for Xbox360 for xmas. he also got me hooked on CoD4 during xmas. While home in WI, i downloaded my xbox live profile to his xbox so i could get my own ranks and stuff on live.

Now i’m home, and xbox live is all messed up, so i cannot recover my profile back to my own xbox. So i can’t use any of my saves on any games, i can’t play multiplayer anything, i cannot really do anything without starting over from scratch in any game, knowing that once i do get my profile back, i’d lose whatever progress i get offline. I understand that a lot of people might have gotten xboxen for christmas, but they should have had much worse during the halo3 launch.

The year in review!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:02:10 +0000

I review the year’s best (imo!) TV shows, and Games! Follow the jump for the whole thing. Its a little long!

Another Halloween, another WIN!

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:42:55 +0000

Another halloween, another “best group” costume win. Our carpool went as the blue man group, and jeff (and jay) also built a “Drum-bone” that we played a little routine on. Somehow through all the pictures/etc at work, i don’t think anyone got a video of us!

Unlike the real blue men who use a blue paint that comes off, we used liquid latex. What a mess, and what a pain. It took us 3+ hours to do all of the prep with baldcaps, liquid latex, costumes, ick. Plus the time it took jeff to find parts and actually construct the drumbone. It turned out awesome, and we actually won 2 prizes at at work, “best group” and the “golden frankie” which is a little hard to explain :)

The whole world is against us?

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:00:05 +0000

Watching Packers on NFL Network on DirectTV. After the cowboys kick a fieldgoal, all of a sudden, 0 reception. “Searching for satellite signal…(771)”. thats it. game came back on for about 10 seconds, then gone again. Fox+Comcast has fcked us 2x this year, with DirecTV coming to the rescue. NFL Sunday ticket is the ONLY reason we even have directv… Today, its 950AM KJR Radio to the rescue. that is just sad. Yay directv.

FXCK FOX PART2

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:03:59 +0000

Again!? Fox just switched away from Vikings @ Packers in the 3rd quarter to go to the Redskins/Eagles game. The packers are 7-1, working on going to 8-1. Do you think they’ll switch away from the Colts this week? Hell no! Do they switch away from the Pats when they are up by 20? Hell no!

He only gets paid for 4 Quarters!

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:52:53 +0000

Sitting on the couch with my wife, fidgeting with a football as GB takes the field after the OT kickoff:

"I was tied up at the time..."

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:56:50 +0000

During tonight’s republican debate, McCain actually just said that he had voted against a 1 million dollar package to fund a “Woodstock museum”. He claimed that, woodstock might have been an important cultural moment, but:

…I wasn’t there…I was tied up at the time.

That’s good stuff. If you don’t get it, i can’t really explain it to you. I wonder how long he’s been saving up that quote? :)

Just finished Portal. Awesome!

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:14:47 +0000

Just finished playing through portal. It was the most enjoyable ending and credit sequence i’ve ever seen in a game, and I’ve played a lot of games!

The antagonist computer chick was also one of the best characters in a game so far. Leave it to Valve to come up with a great story, and involving exactly zero human characters (although that might be “Blade Runner” style debatable!) Without giving any spoilers, i liked the style of the puzzles/challenges in the last half of the game a lot more than those at the beginning half, probably because of the things the computer was saying.

Packer Season Tickets?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:03:39 +0000

From Rick Reilly’s column yesterday:

For instance, if you put your name on the [season ticket] waiting list today, you would be number 74,659. An average of 70 people give up their tickets every year, which means you’ll have your tickets by the 3074 season. Luckily you’ll still catch Brett Favre’s last year.

My dad and uncle inherited my grandpa’s 2 seats and each have the pair every other year. So someday, my brother and I will each have a half a seat! My wife’s sisters both married into season tickets too :). How Wisconsin is that?

I agree: "Vista isn't that bad"

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:24:11 +0000

I found this article at TechReport via a post at Daring Fireball, and i agree completely. I’m not sure who all these people are who are using vista that say it sucks. I recently upgraded my computer to a new HP, and i had the choice between a Dell with most of what i wanted and a choice of XP or Vista, or the HP, with everthing i wanted and Vista Ultimate. I got the HP.

Two for two!

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 04:02:02 +0000

So earlier i stated that the goal for this trip was to get back to WA with one win in the two games we went to this weekend in ‘sconsin. Well, we went 2 for 2 on that goal! The brewer game (aside from the frigging parking fiasco) was awesome too. We got to see (future NL MVP!) Prince Fielder hit home run #48 on the year (he hit #49 and #50 tonight!), we got to see (future NL Rookie of the year!) Ryan Braun hit a home run, got to see lots of run production, lots of offense, some great defense, and a sausage race! We also saw some of the funniest signs i’ve seen at a sporting event, with the clear winner being a couple rows behind us, with the “I (HEART) E-5” ryan braun sign! It was very handy when he had an error later, and a home run to avenge himself after that..

Fun at the airport...

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:35:09 +0000

Traveling to the midwest can be a pain sometimes. Being from the midwest, we know that, so we planned for it. We’d been checking the weather reports, and were worried because the minneapolis area was due for thunderstorms right around the time we were supposed to arrive, so we split our stuff across our bags and carried one on. That way, even if we got stuck in MSP we’d be able to drive to green bay in time to make the wedding we had to be at on saturday and have our dress clothes. Then while boarding, a flight attendant started coming back up the jetway telling us that there’s no room for bags unless they fit under the seat. And this isn’t planeside check she’s doing, this is full on checking of our bags, we’re not getting them back until our final destination. After all our planning, we were about to be undone at the last minute. But our flight is boarding on time, so we’re not too worried. once we all get seated, the captain comes on and says “Well, folks..”, and at this point i know it isn’t good news, “..it looks like they are having high winds in minneapolis, so we’re looking at right now an hour and a half delay. So we’re going to let everyone back off the plane.” Then the flight attendant starts announcing flights that people are going to miss their connections, “If you’re on flights to amsterdam, blah blah blah, bring all of your baggage, as we’ll be rerouting you. Everyone else, leave your stuff so you can board faster later”. So we all get off the plane.

As soon as we’re all out, they come back on: “Sorry everyone, we have a new departure time, so we need to reboard right now. Nobody will miss their connections, everyone back on!”… so we all reboard. And we push back from the gate, taxi to the runway, then move off to the side. I turn to laura and say “Uh oh, this isn’t good”, as i see other planes passing us and taking off. The captain comes back on “Well, looks like we’ve got a new delay, we’re gonna be here until 4:15.”. We were supposed to leave at 3:21, it was about 10 to 4 at this point already. At 4:15 he told us it would be another 15 minutes, and it was. We made up some time in the air, but still ended up landing about an hour late.

Got a sunburn at Lambeau!

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:07:45 +0000

For our “paper” anniversary this year, the wife and i bought each other tickets to sporting events. We had to be in WI this weekend for a wedding in Green Bay, so i bought the Packer tickets for today, Laura bought Brewer tickets for tomorrow. I told people at work that I’d be happy getting one win over the weekend. Well, check that off the list! It was a beautiful day in green bay, 80+ and sunny at noon for the game. Sunny all game, so I got a little sunburned on my arms and my neck. Was an awesome game, back and forth with a great finish. Nick Barnett FTW! Favre got career TDs 418, 419, and 420, tying Marino’s all time record. After Barnett returned the INT to inside the 1 and the win seemed imminent, half of the crowd was chanting “Pass! Pass!” so favre could get #421. The Lambeau crowd can have a short memory, apparently, as no more than 5 minutes earlier the packers were right there trailing by 4 points on 4th and goal at the 1 and and incomplete pass ended a promising drive with 0 points.

The BEST picture from our wedding!

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 02:06:36 +0000

Just got emailed this today from my uncle perry:

Go to flickr for the full size image, and see if you notice something…. strange! Stranger than your initial reaction!!

FXCK FOX!

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:14:10 +0000

You have to be kidding me! Fox just switched from the packer game, tied with 59 seconds left, to play 2 minutes of ADS and go to the beginning of the seahawks game! THIS IS COMPLETE BS. There’s no way they tell direct tv in time to have the dish pick it up!

GRAW2 Review

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:19:27 +0000

When i reviewed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter back in March of last year, i said this:

The AI enemies seem to be a bit smarter than the AI friendlies though. it seems that the enemies will hide behind cover and fire, but if the friendlies are told to attack a target, they’ll move from behind their cover into the open instead of shooting over/around their cover. Some sections i need to just have them hold somewhere while i pick people off one by one. My biggest peeve is that if a teammate is incapacitated right next to them, they just stand there like a dufus and watch him die. Sure, you can tell him to give first aid and he’ll do it, but come on, you saw your buddy get shot! Hide and fix him already!

What do i have to say about GRAW2? Follow the jump!

What i did on my Labor Day Vacation...

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:47:41 +0000

A follow-up on the previous post, where Dad, Jimbo and I built a new deck. After a couple days of rain and some crap falling out of the trees, we realized that the spacing of the deck boards was a little too close. In some places the gap had basicly closed and the boards were touching. But the bigger problem is the crap that falls out of our cedar trees and firs. it was already getting stuck in the cracks, and basicly becomes impossible to get out. So this weeend, Laura and i redid all the decking. well, not all, because the first board stayed where it was, and one board about 2/3 way we didn’t move at all.

How I spent my wife's summer vacation...

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:35:23 +0000

Recently, Laura took a couple weeks of the summer to travel to Australia with her mom, because her dad had to be there for work. While she was in Australia, my dad and brother came out to WA to help me build a deck. Or, more precisely, my brother came out, and we helped my dad build a deck for me. :D

Before

After!

For more pics and stories, follow the link!

Edward Tufte ROCKS.

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:36:35 +0000

This week i had the opportunity to go to Edward Tufte’s PRESENTING DATA AND INFORMATION seminar here in Seattle. It was fricking awesome (i believe that “fricking” is the correct technical term!) I’ve been getting the advertisement in the mail at work for years, but never had the time to go. I’m always on the lookout for things to go to for work to cover my employee development plan, and this was a great one. Not only do you get a day of class, you end up with all 4 of Tufte’s books, which i’ll add to my “Now Reading” list as soon as i find some time. I have 2 other books I’m actively reading as well (and coincidentally, they both have “Danger” in their titles!)

A little bit more after the jump…

The Inn at Discovery Coast

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:01:29 +0000

Currently in Long Beach, WA. It’s windy and raining. But isn’t that a given here? :) anyway, we came over to the LB-WA to see the sandcastle building competition and have a weekend to ourselves before Laura jets off to Australia. We’re in “The Loft” room of the Inn at Discovery Coast, and its pretty sweet. Its more like a one bedroom apartment with a huge bathroom and euro style kitchen than a loft! And having a restaurant 43 steps (literally!) away is awesome! The Inn is 2 buildings, one with 9 rooms closer to the beach, and another building with the office and restaurant downstairs and our loft upstairs. We ate at the “Beach House” both nights, getting different things each time. Laura wants to stay for like 4 more days so she can try everything. When we went in tonight, the waitress asked us if we wanted “our usual” table, and we said “sure!”. that was pretty cool. Laura recommends the salmon, i recommend the rib-eye. I barely ate much of it, though, as i ate too much bread and salad beforehand… We’ll put some pictures up on flickr later, when i find a chance! The whole trip has been good, aside from the 2 hours it took us to get from Seattle through Tacoma. ick. we didn’t get up to the posted speed limits until we actually got to the 101. Now its time to lay down and enjoy the movie that we snagged from the office, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. We also got Stratego at the office, and i beat laura 3 times, and now we’re never, ever, ever going to play Stratego ever again. I need SOMETHING that i’ve beaten Laura at to stay that way!

Great Timing!

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:16:52 +0000

So yeah, after driving through some pretty crazy rain squalls, getting to the airport at ~11:30 pm when the main road to the airport is shut down for construction, we get a flat tire. right at the airport. At least it wasn’t raining in the hourly parking garage!

There’s yer problem right there!

Ah, military motivators!

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:02:44 +0000

Man, i love some of the milblog sites that are around today. particularly the Military Motivator site.

That’s a keeper! Its about time we used the “but its for the children!” line to support the war.

Hey Ma! I'm on TV! Ma! Ma! Moooom! Moooooom!

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 03:44:41 +0000

We (Me, Laura, Laura’s niece Alshley, Laura’s Mom Mary) went to the Seattle Storm game yesterday at Key Arena. We sat in the 5th row. pretty awesome seats. The storm kicked serious ass. Then i saw us on the 11pm news when they were covering the game. I’m in white, laura’s in white next to me, behind a guy in white :)

Click the pic to go to the flickr page, there are a couple other pics in that set.

I wonder if they still give these out today?

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:35:47 +0000

Here’s a link to a scanned version of a little booklet that the US “War Department” gave to soldiers who were being sent to Iraq (i-RAWK, according to the book, where Iran is EE-RAHN) back during WW2.

http://digitallibrary.smu.edu/cul/gir/ww2/pdf/w0025.pdf

Its kind of interesting that for a lot of it you could just search and replace “Hitler” with “Al-Queda” and almost everything would still apply!

I found this from the Wired “Danger Room”, via www.blackfive.net. Blackfive is awesome!

My first REAL constructioning!

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:49:13 +0000

Construction? This weekend i did my first real carpentry project ever. I built shelves and drawers for our kitchen pantry. If i wasn’t a huge fan of the New Yankee Workshop i don’t think i would have even known where to start! I never took a shop class in high school, but i did help my dad build some things back in junior high/high school (i tried to get out of that as often as possible though!) I wish i would have paid more attention then! I think i used almost every tool that i own this weekend!

And you think your wife is a neat freak?

Wed, 30 May 2007 14:24:49 +0000

You think your wife is a neat freak?

Has yours ever vacuumed the back yard? :)

I laughed when i saw her doing it, and i needed to get an “out of context” picture for laughs. She was vacuuming up a larged amount of broken glass that was left after a patio table was inadvertently destroyed when our house was re-roofed. Good times!

DDE's round 3: "Bumble-bee" eyes!

Wed, 30 May 2007 06:51:46 +0000

Over the last few weekends, i upgraded my DDE’s from old school light boxes to new CCFL halos from AACStyle.com. Follow the jump for the whole story and a whole bunch more pics!

Seattle Pimp Po-Po!

Wed, 02 May 2007 05:52:09 +0000

Outside the M’s game friday night there was a pimped out charger cop car. Lots of nice stuff, including red and blue alternating underbody LED’s (i don’t think they were neons, nowadays).

Here’s a youtube video we took too.

Who knew that the seattle police department had stuff like this?

Bobble-shelf

Wed, 02 May 2007 05:40:01 +0000

I built my first thing over the last couple weekends. I use the term “built” very loosely, as in this case, “building” meant routing one edge of a piece of oak, painting it, and screwing some brackets into the wall. :)

I was originally going to make the brackets, in fact i used the jig saw to make one, but then couldn’t find any keyhole anchor things that were the right size, and while looking for those at home depot, i found metal brackets that match the brushed aluminum style of other stuff in the office.

The best analysis of the VT-Massacre

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:38:15 +0000

After reading so much crap (literally, crap, everywhere) about the massacre, this post at Zen of Design is by far the best thing I’ve read. It has some very good links to videos about Jack Thompson’s anti-videogame craziness too.

A dichotomy of purchases!

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:44:32 +0000

This weekend, I purchased 2 items which are almost the complete opposite of each other. While they are very different items, they have some interesting similarities! Both are going to be a lot of fun, in their own little way!

	Item #1	Item #2
It is:	Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360	A General International Table Saw!
It looks like

For a more detailed table of differences and similarities, follow the jump!

Blogger's code of conduct?

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:05:50 +0000

So there’s a big brouhaha on the intertubes about this whole “Blogger’s Code of Conduct”, as proposed by Tim O’Reilly, et al. Apparently they never learned from the Comics industry…

At least they aren’t proposing that there’s a single authority that will patrol all these blogs and approve posts/comments. Although who knows, maybe “draft 2” of the code will include that…

New wheels: 18" SSR GT7-H

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:07:51 +0000

Got my new wheels, some 18x8 SSR GT7-H, with light grey spokes and a chrome ring. Had em installed saturday. Follow the jump for some quick pics. I had just washed the car and it started raining, so the pics are some goofy angles from inside the garage.

Moving to wordpress...

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:16:37 +0000

I’m moving the whole site to wordpress as the old site is all hand coded and complicated to updated. So slowly but surely i’m moving all the posts, too. Stay tuned!

Sold the Axis Se7en's

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:57:27 +0000

Sold the Se7ens, i’m gonna buy some other wheels. The “gunmetal” on these wheels is just way too green for my taste.

1 Year Later: Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 Conversion Review

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:03:36 +0000

I’ve had my Marvel Precision conversion kit for more than a year, and my first review of it here was just over a year ago. So In a year, and probably close to 4,000 rounds through it, how has it held up?

10 rounds at 30 feet →

Hawaii Vacation!

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:05:54 +0000

Back from our trip to Waikiki, so i have a few pics up on flickr. More to come. All of the Hawaii pics are geotagged too, so you can see almost exactly where we took them.

The pic here is of Makapu’u lighthouse, on the east coast of Oahu.

Not my week for technology...

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:49:23 +0000

egads

So on Saturday my Xbox360 died a horrible death. Well, horrible for me anyway. It hasn’t apparently affected Laura very much.. :( Tonight, for the very first time during my long tenure of TiVo ownership, i got the “Green Screen of Death”. I’ve had 4 TiVo boxes in my lifetime, and 3 of them have died of various hardware failures. 1 dead tuner, 2 dead drives, and now the newest one (which is several years old) is apparently having issues. 2 of the dead ones, including my original series 1 TiVo, are now External HDD Enclosures in my office!

Want an overpriced Resolver?

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:41:37 +0000

I never thought that i’d see anything i worked on would show up on ebay. Well, mostly because i work on software for a living. And its very specialized software. And it isn’t really something you look for on ebay. Well, hopefully someone does… and hopefully they have a fat checkbook. And if you really want a real Rosetta Resolver®, let me know, because i can get a bonus for the sales lead (i’m not in sales, so i don’t get a commission! :) ), and i can get you a new one for probably cheaper than that!

So maybe my signed XBOX360 isn't so great...

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:00:31 +0000

If you’ve read the, My XBOX360 is cooler than your XBOX360, then you know how about a year ago, i bought an XBOX 360 at a charity auction which was signed by Steve Ballmer.

I’ve had some “This disc cannot be read” errors, requiring a restart, but they only happend in 2 games (PGR3 and Oblivion), and after restarting, the system generally worked fine.

That all changed today when i was going to continue co-op Gears of War with a friend. The dreaded “Ring of Light” appeared….

My "Best Games of 2006" Post.

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:13:17 +0000

I played a TON of games this year, on the PC, DS, and XBOX360. Here are my top 5, and mini-reviews of them.

Follow the jump for the rest of the details!

iPhone? Not for me!

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:41:20 +0000

My Phone!

Am I going to get sued for this pic?

So yeah, the iPhone is pretty, but what’s the big deal. The only thing i like is the big button on the UI. My requirements are pretty specific:

usb (mini) connector. no stupid proprietary connectors.
sync with my pc (mostly for work appts, tasks)
keyboard (flip out, or slide out, i've had both)
camera (preferrably with video)
802.11x wireless
web+email
software!
Big screen (preferrably touch!)
Memory card of some kind

The iPhone meets most of those requirements. So why won’t i buy one? Read on for more!

"E-gate"? you have to be kidding me.

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:50:41 +0000

According to king5 news here in Seattle, some port of Seattle police officers received or sent or forwarded on some porn or “racist” emails (the “racist” email they used as an example was a video (probably a link to a video) of some guy picking up some Hispanic day laborers, and instead of taking them to a job, drove them to an INS office). According to the King 5 investigators,

Over a two-year period, 32 officers either received, saved, or passed on more than 175 inappropriate e-mails.

Which super villain are you?

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:09:45 +0000

Your results: You are The Joker. I was soooo close to being Dr Doom!

Villain	Score
The Joker	84%
Dr. Doom	80%
Mr. Freeze	75%
Green Goblin	74%
Lex Luthor	72%
Magneto	65%
Apocalypse	62%
Venom	59%
Kingpin	55%
Riddler	54%
Juggernaut	54%
Catwoman	50%
Two-Face	46%
Dark Phoenix	44%
Mystique	42%
Poison Ivy	39%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Now Reading...

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 05:18:49 +0000

Hooked up and installed the Now Reading plug-in for Wordpress. So now on the right side you can see the books i’m reading/read lately. I might go back and backfill some other books i’ve read lately as i find time. If you’re reading this via an RSS feed, you wont see any of that stuff, though, so here’s a link to the library. I’ll have to see if there’s a RSS feed plug-in for the “now reading” plug-in!

My first upload to YouTube

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:46:29 +0000

A partial video of laura driving home last night in the hail. The original video goes on for another minute, just as much hail. Note: that isn’t snow on the ground. thats all hail! Its fun to watch the hail bounce off the hood, then off the windshield. ping ping!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PwYFX6dmgk

The full movie embedded after the jump.

NumaNuma vs. StarWarsKid

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:59:58 +0000

If you don’t even know what i’m talking about already, then you aren’t using the internet right. I saw the “new numa” video today on the gootube, and i just think it is interesting how 2 people made famous by stupid internet videos took totally different paths. Even more interesting is how both of the original videos pre-date youtube, and pretty pretty much started the viral video thing. I remember watching the star wars kid videos off of a 32M thumb drive someone brought to a party. People were almost as excited to see this new thumb drive thing as they were to see the video.

Star Wars Kid (Ghyslain Raza), recorded himself playing “lightsabers”, but didn’t keep the tape. someone else used video editing to rotoscope in a light saber. Kid is shamed almost to death, goes into depression, sues people.
Numa Numa dance (Gary Brolsma), made a video of himself lipsyncing a song. it was so popular that there are hundreds of copies of it out there, spawned its own site NewNuma.com

Follow the jump for youtube videos of what i’m talking about. if you don’t know, you’ve missed out!

What's up with BN.com?

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:09:11 +0000

So I got some Barnes&Noble gift cards for xmas/birthday this year. I went to their website, and not only are the things i was looking for more expensive than Amazon, i get to the payment page, and i see this:

Only one Gift Card or Certificate can be redeemed per online order. To redeem multiple Cards or Certificates, select the Pay by Phone method below.

Brilliant. Well, B&N isn’t getting my money today, i don’t have the time or energy to call anyone. I just bought a bunch of stuff from amazon using 4 gift certificates that i had. I wonder how much $$$ B&N loses because people give up like this when they get all the way to the ordering page?

X-mas travel PAIN.

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 08:02:05 +0000

What we learned this Christmas vacation about airline travel:

Never travel multiple airlines in a single trip (at least in the continental US where you can avoid it)
keep everything they give you. boarding passes, luggage info, etc. even if someone tells you that you don't need it anymore.
If someone from one Airline X tells you to "take this to a Airline Y counter", don't go anywhere. That person can call the other airline's counter/desk directly and do it over the phone.
The airline that caused you to be late / miss a flight is responsible for helping you. If your Airline X flight was late, causing you to miss a Airline Y flight, Airline Y can't do anything for you, they didn't do anything wrong (yet!).
Travel protection insurance during the winter for midwest travel is probably worth the $100 extra (or whatever it costs for your trip)

For more details about our xmas travel fiasco, follow the jump. Its a looooooong story.

The best lunch video ever.

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:44:54 +0000

During lunch today i watched the most amazing thing ever. I watched live coverage of 2 spacewalking astronauts messing with a solar panel on the international space station. What a marvel of technology we have nowadays: I can sit in my office, and via the internet watch 2 guys at work in outer space, banging on stuff with a scraper, or shaking a solar panel to make it open, seeing it all through the camera on the astronauts’ helmets. All the while listening to them talk. My job would be so boring on a camera.

Monday Night Football! (or Seattle+Snow+Traffic=NIGHTMARE)

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 03:01:03 +0000

It started out so well. A beautiful sunset on the ship canal bridge coming into Seattle. We were on our way to the Monday Night Football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks. Oh how decieving a pretty sunset can be! The game was awesome (even as a Packer fan!), but the ride home was….not so good. We were at the game for 4 hours, 5:30-9:30 pm. We were in the car for 3 hours and 36 minutes to get home. And its only 23 miles… For more pics and more story, follow the jump!

Winter in Seattle...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 23:15:18 +0000

Every once and a while, it actually snows in the seattle area. From the Seattle traffic cameras, it doesn’t look like much of Seattle proper got any snow, but we live in what is called the “puget sound convergience zone”. So when seattle doesn’t get “it”, we get it instead. We got between 2-4" of snow yesterday and today.

There was enough snow, and it was wet enough to make snowmen and everything. Leave it to the neighbors to take it up a notch…

Another test Pete will get 100% on.

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:02:20 +0000

I only got 77.8% on this one, and that was right in the middle of the curve. Some of them i tried too hard on!
Are you tone deaf?

After listening to them again at the end, i could probalby do better if i took it again.

High School Quiz!

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:07:21 +0000

I just took this quiz thing online, it was pretty funny! I’m surprised i did so well!

You paid attention during 91% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don’t get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?

But then again, i was pretty nerdy! Was???

The Disney Princesses.

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 01:17:10 +0000

So last year i went as a bobblehead of myself for halloween. See this post from last year for details on that :)

This year, our carpool planned a group costume that was a huge secret. We came as the disney princesses!

From left to right:

Jeff - Belle
Jay - Cinderella
Me - Jasmine
Andrew - Snow White
Mark - Ariel

Aren’t we pretty? :D You should have seen the doubletakes we got while driving to work in in costume. Last year i won a $50 gift card to Best Buy for best costume, this year the 5 of us won $100 to the brand new Whole Foods opening up nearby work next week. Jackpot!

update: added a couple more pics after the jump

Ball Squad makes the Seattle Times!

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:17:48 +0000

SCOTT COHEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Our “work” kickball team, the “Ball Squad”, made the Seattle Times “lifestyle” section today! In the print edition of the paper, this picture is on the front page of the section, huge and in color! A second picture of Jay pitching (b&w, though) is on page 2. On the web version of the article, both pics are in color. For all the info, see the article at the Seattle Times website

Updating my office!

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 04:45:36 +0000

Since the FIOS guy was going to have to, in all likelihood, drill a hole in the wall to install our super high speed innerweb, we were going to have to move everything in my office. Since we were going to have to move everything in my office, we decided to paint my office, too. Once the office was mostly empty, we saw how horrible the carpet was, so we looked into redoing the floor with new carpet, or maybe some laminate floors. We settled on some blue colors to match the world map on the back wall, and some “hemse” laminate “click” flooring from IKEA.

To see how it all went, follow the link!

Verizon FIOS

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:28:07 +0000

Today was my install date for Verizon’s FIOS - the new super high speed fiber optic broadband. Well, it was supposed to be 9/12/2006. Then it was supposed to be 9/14/2006. Then it was supposed to be today, then it was supposed to be 9/21/2006. Imagine my suprise when i got to work today and had voicemail from the verizon installer at my house…

Once i got home, a challenge in and of itself, the installer came and had everything set up in a few hours. According to speakeasy’s speed test, this is what i get:

YOWZA! For more details, follow the link!

The Wedding!

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:44:18 +0000

Laura and I were married on August 19th, 2006, in a beautiful ceremony at the Paine Art Center and Gardens in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The bride was gorgeous, the weather perfect for an outdoor wedding, and the day could not have gone smoother.

The pics are all up in this Flickr photo set. Have a look see!

MY Dead Rising Review

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:27:49 +0000

Awesome. The best game i’ve played since Lego Star Wars last year. Best story since HL2. We’ll see if Lego Star Wars 2 can top Dead Rising! Follow the jump to read more specifics, including some things i’ve found that weren’t mentioned in any of the walkthroughs. (nothing that exciting… :))

Usability Week 06

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:23:11 +0000

This week I had the opportunity to go to Neilson Norman Groupâ€™s (NN/g) Usability Week 2006 conference in San Francisco, and attend a 3 day usability training seminar by Bruce “Tog"Tognazzini, of â€œAsk Tog â€œ fame. The Tog seminar was titled “Interaction Design: Three-day Immersion”, and it was fantastic. Iâ€™ve been reading Togâ€™s “AskTog” website for a long time, so I was pretty sure it was going to be good, and I was not let down. More after the jump!

Office 2007 Beta?

Thu, 25 May 2006 07:06:25 +0000

Iâ€™m trying out the “Blogging” feature from Word 2007 Beta 2. Setting it up with wordpress seems to have been trivial so far, but what happens when I actually try to post is another thing entirely. So far, I have to say that 2k7 looks gorgeous. The default Word background has a very Apple look to it with the blue curvy line thing going on.

I canâ€™t seem to find the “more” tag though. And I have the smart quotes turned off, but it seems to insert them anyway. Thatâ€™s what beta software is for, though!

Kickball!

Wed, 24 May 2006 04:36:07 +0000

Yes, you read that correctly! Kickball! Some friends from work started up a kickball team in the local “Underdog” Seattle coed kickball league! Who knew that a game we hated in 4th grade (at least those of us who weren’t very athletic in 4th grade!) would be so fun now! And boy do the little kids at the park seem confused when they see adults kicking that playground ball! To keep up with our team, keep an eye on the schedule page

Game Nerds.

Tue, 23 May 2006 05:41:28 +0000

A status page for us to see what everyone is up to from one place.

My XBOX360 is cooler than your XBOX360!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:08:05 +0000

Because my XBOX 360 is autographed by Steve Balmer! So there!

I won this autographed XBOX360 at a charity auction for Clyde Hill Elementary school in Bellevue, WA. It is the pro version, with an extra wireless controller and the media remote, and PGR3 and Kameo. HD Gaming here I come!

Reviews of the 360, Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, and the new Ghost Recon game after the jump.

My XFire "Gamercard" hack.

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 23:09:11 +0000

With Xbox Live, you can get yourself a snazzy little “gamercard” for your website/whatnot by inserting a little html. XFire has the same kindof thing with their “miniprofiles”, but i like the look of the live version better, so i did a little hackery.

XBox Live version

A famous person's gamercard.

My Xfire version

XFire Gamercard

Specifics after the jump! bonus points if you know what “famous person” HiroProtagonist is. :p

Marvel Precision .22LR 1911 Conversion Review

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 07:30:17 +0000

I previously posted a review of my Springfield 1911, and after using my Marvel Precision Unit 1 1911 .22 LR conversion kit for a while, here are my notes on that. This is a continuation of a previous article, about my Springfield Armory black stainless 1911.

This is one of the most popular pages on the whole site! For more information, you can also see the update to this review, one year later, and another update, the two year review!

Paper mache Bobblehead halloween costume

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:18:20 +0000

Our paper mache Bobblehead halloween costumes were the best halloween costumes EVER! About 40 hours of work, several weeks worth of newspapers, 2 giant balloons, 20 little bottles of paint, 5 lbs of flour and some hot glue make a pretty good costume! More details and pics inside!

Pretty, Pretty Bad ASS

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:28:26 +0000

before

after

Review of my new 1911, a Springfield Armory PX9154L, or if you like long names, “Tactical Combat Black Stainless Steel Custom Loaded 1911-A1”.

Multiplayer Game Architecture Done (Game Development Class 4)

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:26:30 +0000

The fourth and final class of the UW Extension Game Development certificate program is done! More later!

PK Hunter architecture

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:58:21 +0000

Asheron’s Call is a MMORPG by Turbine Games. Originally released in 1999 and published by microsoft, in 2003, the franchise was bought entirely back by Turbine. A 3-rd party utility application, Decal, was created by players with some programming savvy, which allowed other programming end users to create plug-ins that integrate with the AC client. This allowed for the automation of tedious in game tasks, tracking of statistics, drawing of extra things on the screen, and any other number of things which Turbine would not, or could not add themselves. (for a list of the large number of plug-ins, see sites like Decal Dev or AC Heaven)

I have written 3 plug-ins for Asheron’s Call using decal; one which tracks monsters you kill and “trophy” items you recieve, and submits it to a website (Trophy Hunter), another which acts as a shopping cart when interacting with players who are running special “Trade Bot” plug-ins to act as vendors (Bargain Hunter), and one which tracks Player vs Player kills (PK Hunter). This article covers some design and implementation details that third plug-in, PKHunter.

Advanced Graphics Class Done (Game Development Class 3)

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 05:31:28 +0000

Just finished up the third class of the Game Development certificate program offered by the University of Washington Extension system.

The adv graphics class was, like the first class, taught by Bretton Wade, who works in the XBox group at Microsoft. I don’t know exactly what his title is, but he’s neck deep in the graphics part of the X360, so he’s in the know. (If you google him, you’ll find all kinds of papers and stuff. He’s the BSP tree FAQ maintainer too.)

Other details, as well as my final presentation with screenshots and all that is available after the jump.

xfire?

Wed, 01 Jun 2005 06:55:56 +0000

Since the STEAM friends stuff hasn’t been working lately, my friends and i are trying out this cross game browser (didn’t gamespy used to do this? are they just a website now?) that we can use to find eachother when playing counterstrike…

Here’s my profile thing (click it to see more info about what i’ve been playing):

To get more info, go to xfire.com for downloads and all that. So if you want to play along, now you know how to find me!

Mac Plus database server!

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 07:20:59 +0000

My Mac Plus case mod is complete! Its the most powerful Mac Plus ever in existance! (Athlon64!)

4/24/05: updated with pics

AI Class Done (Game Development Class 2)

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 02:58:08 +0000

Just finished up the second ‘mester of the Game Development certificate program offered by the University of Washington Extension system.

The AI class, taught by Steve Rabin of the AI Game Programming Wisdom series of books, was pretty awesome! We added debug graphics, a real time profiler, a state machine system, flocking, A* pathfinding, coordinated behavior, terrain analysis, and gameplay to our game engines created for the first class. More details about the content after the jump.

Game Development Class

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:44:26 +0000

I just finished the first ‘mester of Game Development certificate program offered by the University of Washington Extension system. System? Whatever. Anyway, the first quarter is over and i learned more than I can type here! If you want to see how stupid my stuff ended up, there’s a link after the jump. Now that the quarter is over maybe i’ll have more time to update this silly site. But probably not!

Updates to BargainHunter

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 19:43:00 +0000

I’m back into playing AC (Asheron’s Call) again, so i need to go back through and update all of the plug-ins i’ve written! Since Trophy Hunter and PK Hunter are all working fine, but Bargain Hunter wasn’t working completely, so i had to update it first! BargainHunter 2.0.1.0 does all kinds of new things! Colors for imbues, more filtering options, keyword filtering, it works better than ever!

Mt. St. Helens!

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 03:45:45 +0000

Went to mount st. helens this weekend. Took a buncha pics. Too bad it was cloudy (the norm!), so there were no “spectacular” pics. There were quite a few good ones with sun rays, though. Here’s a panorama, though. this is at 8%, its 8 pics wide. The full image is 10444x1471!

When i get some more time i’ll post up some more, though.

naviPod Remote Control

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 03:42:13 +0000

I recently purchased a naviPod remote for my iPod, because I use my iPod every day at work. Because of the layout of my office, there isn’t a convenient place to put the ipod and control it. I used the Apple supplied corded remote for a while, but then when I took my iPod somewhere else, I had to untangle even more cords. I love having a remote, but I do have some issues with the design of the remote…

Mac Plus case mod

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:11:41 +0000

Modding a mac classic case to hold this web server. I already have the LCD monitor in it, now i just needs to squeeze the rest in. Pics up soon, hopefully.

Hardwire setup (in progress)

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 00:05:37 +0000

The passport 8500 has a remote mount kit that has a power light, a warning light, and a mute button. My mod is to use a different set of lights for both power and warning, have them inside of a button that fits in the cigarette lighter spot. There is also a switch to turn of the detector completely. This is all still a work in progress and isn’t fully “implemented” yet. :) Follow the link for details of my scheme.

Updated neons...

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:03:51 +0000

I updated the neon page today after i did some rewiring and got some better pictures of what they look like for real.

I also took some pictures of the new hardwire setup for the radar detector, but i’m to tired to put those up right now.

Eyelids, taillight covers, A51 roof spoiler.

Sat, 17 Apr 2004 00:02:51 +0000

I haven’t updated the site with pics, but i put on CF eyelids and taillight covers, and finally mounted my area 51 roof spoiler after having it for like a year. I just needed a LOT of double stick tape :)

Ooops.

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:02:14 +0000

working on rigging up an engine start button to control the remote mount of the radar detector. Blew up one remote mount kit already :)

Strategist

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:02:16 +0000

I just registered the domain, so that might not be working yet, but i added a link to the strategist site to the bar on the left. Its amazing, i hadn’t worked on this app since 7/11/2001! All of the performance issues i had then INSTANTLY went away just through the miracle of time!

New Office

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 21:57:06 +0000

During the previous week, the company i work for, Rosetta Biosoftware, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Rosetta Inpharmatics, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck, the pharma giant)) moved offices from Kirkland, WA (the “east side”) to the South Lake Union area of downtown Seattle. Well, not just biosoft, all of rosetta moved into a new 4 story building in the new “biotech mecca” of south lake union. The University of Washington has a building next door, and the “Hutch” is just down the street. Paul Allen and Vulcan Ventures own almost all of south lake union now…

This brings about all kinds of interesting changes…

Dance Dance Revolution?

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:47:08 +0000

just got one of those solid metal heavy duty dance pads for DDR for my XBox. It works a LOT better than my plastic pad duct taped to a large piece of polystyrene. It doesn’t have start or select buttons though, so i can’t sort the songs without unplugging the controller…

Blogging is lame!

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 21:46:45 +0000

This item is added. This whole page is set up. wahoo!

Fig hood prop kit

Fri, 06 Feb 2004 00:14:43 +0000

I got the last of Fig’s pre-production prop kits off of IS300.net. He sold it to me with the caveat that it needed to be painted or it would rust. No biggie there, i have some GGP spray paint to make them match the rest of the car. Painted em up, installed it, looks great, works great! Follow the link for the pics, etc.

Updated DDE's

Sat, 17 Jan 2004 23:53:59 +0000

Did the standalone fog enable mod and changed the color of the DDE’s to yellow to match. It looks mean! Updated the DDE page with the details!

IS300.NET Seattle Meet - Hooters edition!

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 04:17:04 +0000

I believe the meet was for Kane’s birthday, so we went to Hooters in Lynnwood. Lotsa fun, some wings, some champagne! The manager even let the girls come out and take pics with the cars! Follow the jump for the pic of my car!

IS300.NET Seattle Meet Pics

Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:42:57 +0000

For the JULY meet, we went down to Mt. Rainier. Gorgeous! I need to write more up and organize the pics, but follow the jump for the details.

Stillen body kit installed!

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 23:51:51 +0000

Finally got my body kit installed. I need to write more and organize the pics, but here’s the quick version: it looks great! and it barely clears my driveway! As usual, for more pics than you need, follow the link!

Carbon Fiber Madness!

Thu, 08 May 2003 00:23:56 +0000

I got a whole bunch of CF stuff lately (mostly through Lextasy.com) that i just HAD to put in! who doesn’t like carbon fiber? It does look really good on the GGP body color, thats fo-sho!

Follow the link for the pics and the crazy story of how a “fragile” sticker on a box virtually guarantees that the box will be destroyed during shipping!

IS300.NET Seattle April Meet Pics

Sun, 06 Apr 2003 00:17:23 +0000

Started with 7 of us at the Kirkland Marina, then raced on down to Alki where we met up with others, pushing our numbers up to 13. Then we went to Dick’s in the U District. But we didn’t get any food! Apparently we lost 2 people to a fender bender while leaving alki… :( Then we invaded a car show going on at Montlake Terrace High School, where the IS crew was a lot cooler than most of the cars there! Then we went to the Hooters over at Alderwood. By then there were only 6 of us left. I WISH i had the pictures from hooters! Yowza! :P Follow the link for the pics, etc.

Escort Passport 8500 hardwired.

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 23:41:52 +0000

Hardwired in the Radar Detector. The cord was JUST barely long enough! No pics yet.

TeCK Ground Kit

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:27:49 +0000

Another seemingly simple mod. Giant ASS cables that more properly ground some of the stock ground points. People with autos have seen lots of improvement in their automatic’s shifting, but since i have a stick, i don’t see much. It turns over a little quicker, and it looks cool! :) I hesitate to call this a performance mod, but it was my closest tag. i should really put performance in quote marks in the tag list :D

Pics and install notes after the break.

More PLP Stuff...

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:25:31 +0000

I got in on a Group buy of Prolex Performance stuff from the crew down at Carson Toyota in Carson, CA. I ended up getting 3 of the 4 products they were doing the GB for:

Vented Radiator Panel
Heat Shield
Passenger Panel

For pics and details, click away!

TEIN Coilovers and EDFC installed!

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 23:22:33 +0000

Took the car over to Auto Styles & Alignments and had them install my coilovers and the EDFC system, and do an alignment. The car is lowered about an inch and a half and it looks so much better!

And the EDFC system kicks ass! being able to tweak the dampening force while driving rocks out. It makes having adjustable coilovers make so much more sense! Now if the EDFC box only lit up ORANGE to match the rest of the dash…for pics and details follow the jump.

DDE Install

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 02:23:38 +0000

Finally Installed the Daylight Demon Eyes. Lots of pics, instructions after the jump!

Neon!

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 07:09:18 +0000

I got some orange neon accent lights (for the interior, not underbody!). They are mounted in the door storage areas, and they work perfect. Some more orange interior light, but when off, they are invisible. When on, they are dim and hidden enough that they aren’t annoying. Lots of pics and details after the jump.

PLP Intake install

Wed, 15 Jan 2003 07:04:18 +0000

I finally got and installed the PLP intake that my little brother bought me for xmas. Hey, i bought him a big spoiler for his WRX, he bought me an intake. :D

Follow the jump for install details and pics.

19"Axis Se7en wheels.

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 06:59:44 +0000

Got some used 19" Axis Se7en’s. They are gunmetal, with chrome caps. I’m thinking about getting the wheels repainted GGP to match the car. follow the jump for some initial pics.

GReddy Evo install

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:51:04 +0000

Because the actual install was so trivial, there aren’t any real instructions for it here, or pictures of anything you need to do. There are only 2 bolts at the front, 2 at the back, and 4 rubber hangers to unhook. then reverse the process to put the new exhaust on. pretty easy!

Momo boot, knob

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:43:21 +0000

This one was kindof tricky, actually. The momo boot actually screws onto the bottom of the knob. But the boot can’t turn, as it needs to be snapped into the console… And the knob can’t turn, because its basically screwed into the shifter…

K A B O O O M ! ! !

Mon, 14 Oct 2002 05:39:40 +0000

I got pegged by an escort today. I didn’t get a ticket at the scene, but the officer says i’ll probably get a “failure to yield” ticket. but i think it all depends on how long the escort’s skid marks are. he says he was going 25-30, i bet almost double that when he hit me. shrug

TRD Carbon Fiber Grill

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 05:32:51 +0000

Installed an authentic TRD carbon fiber “look” grill today. Details, pics after the jump

JDM Parts

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 05:25:13 +0000

Since all of these installs were so easy, its just going to be before/after pics!

PLP Short Shifter install

Mon, 23 Sep 2002 05:04:52 +0000

The newest mod to Hazy is the Pro Lex Performance “Second Generation” short shifter (PLP G2 is what everyone calls it). Wasn’t too complex of an install, pretty straightforward. It came with all the instructions you need, and you don’t need any special or unusual tools. Follow the jump for pics, details.

Painted Calipers!

Mon, 23 Sep 2002 03:25:27 +0000

So i decided to paint the calipers on hazy “porsche” red. I can’t afford a porsche, but i CAN afford to paint the calipers like porsche started doing a couple years ago.

Follow the jump to see all the progress and pics!

Sidemarkers

Thu, 19 Sep 2002 05:38:30 +0000

The first mod is done: installed clear sidemarkers.

And we begin!

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 05:35:10 +0000

bought the car! got lucky that the exact options i wanted were on a car that someone else just cancelled their order for. :D

DSL!

Sat, 07 Apr 2001 03:57:24 +0000

A little quicker update! The fun news now is that i got DSL! 1.5mbps SDSL! Its pretty damn sweet! Justin and I have been playing Unreal Tournament every night so far. My win2k machine has been set up as the server. Tons of fun! So if you have UT, look for a server with the name “Cool Guys Inc”, its usually running ~8pm CST. iknow, thats a little late for you central time zone people, but thats too bad!

The Universe in a Nut Shell

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 04:01:30 +0000

Dr Stephen W. Hawking

March 26, 2001

Seattle Opera House

Before the Show

Updates

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 03:51:09 +0000

Again, its been a while since i’ve updated this thing! since the last update:

Updates

Thu, 14 Sep 2000 03:46:29 +0000

Been a while! So what’s gone on lately?

Aino had a Baby! (July 10)
Rosetta went public! (Aug 3? Something like that)
The Family went to Finland to see Aino, to see Aino and Aleksi get married, and to meet the newest addition to the family, Elias! (Aug 30 - Sept 9)

Whew! thats a lot of stuff! If you want to see pics from finand, etc, they are all here: [Finland Pics](broken link!) It is a 5 meg zip file with tons of pictures in it. All of the pictures are half size, so if you want the full size ones, let me know. I’m going to be making a cd that has pics and movies on it, so let me know if you want one of those too! (i would have unzipped the file and just had the pictures on the site, but the unix machine that the stuff is on doesn’t have the ability to unzip zip files! eeek!

Memory stick walkman!

Wed, 07 Jun 2000 03:45:26 +0000

What’s new? Not a whole hell of a lot! I got a Memory Stick walkman, and i’m playing with that a lot (its pretty cool!) but other than that, no news is good news!

This post recovered from my really old blog on the internet archive @ http://web.archive.org

IPO!

Sat, 18 Mar 2000 03:44:33 +0000

For those of you that check this page, here’s some more good news: Rosetta Inpharmatics is going Public! Thats right! We filed our S-1 on friday (3/17)! Check out FreeEdgar for the whole deal! It is a very exciting time to be in a hightech/biotech company!

This post recovered from my really old blog on the internet archive @ http://web.archive.org

Promoted!

Thu, 16 Mar 2000 03:43:31 +0000

On the other good news front, I also got promoted! I guess working 70+ hours a week will get you that! Crazy. I’m now a “Senior Developer”. Rock on. Check out Rosetta’s Website for all the goods!

This post recovered from my really old blog on the internet archive @ http://web.archive.org