General on John's Random Review

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!

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?

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!

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….

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.

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.

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

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.

"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? :)

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.

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!!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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…

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!

"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.

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!

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?

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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…

Blogging is lame!

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

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

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!

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!