Second Recess

Job!

2009-09-02T23:44:00.004-05:00

In case you haven't heard, I have accepted a position as the online marketing coordinator and web designer at Celebration! Cinema. The job offer came after a rigorous, 3-round interview process (for which they received 250 applications), during which I created two websites and a marketing proposal.

I will be using social media and networking tools to engage and interact with our current fans online, create promotions to attract new fans to our Facebook page, and work on redesigning the company sites.

I start on Wednesday the 9th. I am terribly excited.

And yes, the job includes free movies.

Anniversary

2009-08-18T15:30:00.000-05:00

Danielle and I celebrated our first anniversary this weekend. Among other reasons, I had a big job interview to prepare for, so we stuck around town instead of traveling to Lake Michigan. We'll probably spend this weekend at her family's cabin.

We went to Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, a unique and very impressive place in Grand Rapids where we haven't actually been. They had fantastic collections of weird carnivorous plants, vast garden landscapes, and cool galleries of sculptures, including this DaVinci Horse.

For dinner, we ate at Cygnus 27 on the 27th (get it?) floor of the Amway Grand. Apparently it's been around for a while but was recently renovated on the interior. It's a very nice looking place. We sat right about where this picture was taken from, but looking out over the city instead of into the restaurant.

We exchanged gifts and sampled our wedding cake. I don't really understand this tradition but I understand that it is one. Anyway, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It helps that it was so good in the first place.

Another month gone

2009-07-24T19:30:00.003-05:00

And I've neglected the blog for another month. Sorry.

So, the 10 week contract didn't turn into a full-time job. I'm back looking again, but I have several prospects, had two interviews with a third on the way, and am one of two finalists for a web design & development job I'd very much like.

While working over the last couple months, my projects included all the HTML & CSS code for T4T and Breese Lawn & Garden. I also provided the initial design concepts for Symphono (final developed product varies slightly), a financial software company where my friend in Chicago works. Plus a couple other projects that haven't been launched yet. I'm also working on a website for Danielle's classroom now.

So I've still managed to stay busy, working on web designs and learning some jQuery in the meantime. Danielle is teaching summer school, making some extra money on these half days. Braylon is doing well too. Hopefully, I'll have good news on the job front very soon.

resuming...

2009-06-16T21:21:00.003-05:00

Oops -- I've neglected blogging for two months. My longest gap since 2001, I believe.

I've been busy. The 4 week contract turned into a 10 week contract, which ends this Friday. Even if it doesn't immediately become full time, I'll continue working there on a part time/contract basis. I'm doing some web design, and lots of HTML/CSS/jQuery code. The people are talented and fun to work with, and the office space is amazing. There are also pictures of it online. I'm putting in 10-20 extra hours a week on freelance projects as well.

Danielle is now done with school and thoroughly enjoying summer. It's been 10 days off and she's already been to the beach twice and to two hosted parties with teacher-friends, with a third tomorrow night at our place.

Other exciting things that have occurred over the last two months: Emily & Scott's wedding in Mackinac, Phil & Virginia's wedding in Indiana, and Tim & Grace's wedding in Utah. (Three more weddings to go this summer). The Red Wings. Finishing painting every room on the main floor. Braylon, and how he's so smart it's frustrating. The transition to digital TV. Consistent seventy degree weather. Daylight until 10pm. Oberon.

Work

2009-04-14T21:39:00.006-05:00

On Monday I began a 4-week contract working at a small web design and digital creative studio in Grand Rapids. I'm doing front-end web development, including coding and design for current and upcoming projects and clients. They do video work too, including motion graphics, so there's potential for that down the line as well.

This week I'm working from home while we wait for their new computers to arrive, so I'll begin working downtown on Monday. It's located in an old repurposed factory building downtown, above my favorite bar, and the bus ride (which stops very close to our house) takes about 15 minutes. It's pretty exciting stuff, and I'm very grateful to have found it so quickly.

In addition to my new gig -- which sounds like it could turn into a full-time hire if I do well -- I'm still getting a decent amount of part-time work from my old job. In fact, I'll most likely be working 11 hour days this whole week. It's good to be busy again.

Dale Newman: Epilogue

2009-04-01T21:00:00.005-05:00

Dale Michigan, who formerly owned the dilapidated Michigan Inn, crossed wires to steal electricity, and had a long history of refusing to return security deposits, had his day in court for his life-threatening DTE fraud.

How did it go? According to the Ann Arbor News [post edited 4/3 to add link], not very well:

Newman was arrested Feb. 4 after a scuffle with Washtenaw County security officers after he entered the courthouse, authorities said. He was charged with felony resisting and obstructing an officer, causing injury, officials said. That case is pending.

Brilliant. Par for the course. But that's not even the best news. DTE's lawsuit against him was settled last week, and here's the damage:

Ann Arbor landlord Dale Newman was ordered to pay DTE $637,273 after a judge found him guilty of utilities fraud and awarded triple the damages incurred.

DTE filed a complaint against Newman in October 2007, charging that he failed to pay for gas and electric services supplied to the properties he owned or managed in Ann Arbor. DTE alleged Newman engaged in utilities fraud that involved gas meters.

Beautiful. However, $637,000 is only about 250 security deposits; I'm sure he's been at it long enough to have it stashed for a felonious rainy day like this.

Scrabble Deluxe

2009-03-13T22:42:00.001-05:00

Danielle beat me at Scrabble for the first time ever* tonight, thanks to the availability of additional letters and multipliers offered by the ridiculous Scrabble Deluxe board. It extends a few rows beyond a regular board and includes quadruple multipliers for letters, which means that "quench" on the board below was worth 100 damn points.

Two and a half hours and 1400 combined points later, she won comfortably.

*Her previous victory occurred in a game when we allowed a non-word to be played to relieve congestion.

Restaurant.com

2009-03-12T10:27:00.000-05:00

Restaurant.com has a coupon code (MENU) which gives you 80% off its already-discounted prices on restaurant gift cards. Previously, a $10 gift card would cost $3, but with the coupon code, it's $0.60.

Each participating restaurant has restrictions for the gift certificate use -- no such thing as a free lunch, after all -- so check what you're committing to before you purchase. For example, it looks like most $10 gift cards are valid on a food purchase of $25 plus gratuity, so spending some money is unavoidable. The more draconian restrictions exclude drinks. Still, this basically amounts to free $10 or $25 gift cards to places I'd be eating at anyway.

After purchasing the gift cards, I was able to print them right away, with no wait for shipping. We're looking forward to putting these to use.

fat boy burgers

2009-03-05T16:49:00.003-06:00

WXMI shares the love for Fat Boy Burgers, which recently reopened less than two blocks from my house.

As a side note, I appreciate WXMI's attempts to facilitate spreading its content, but holy crap, I've never seen so much embed code for a video.

Friday

2009-03-02T11:48:00.003-06:00

My dad and I went skiing at Caberfae on Friday. The conditions were difficult, as it was extremely cold and windy the entire day. The Weather Channel historical data shows that the wind chill was at or around zero the whole time, with a steady 15-20mph sustained wind.

But the highlight of the day was not on the slopes, but rather when I picked up a new freelance design job while we were there. Thursday night we discovered a brewery in Cadillac that has no website, and was therefore missing out on the business of out-of-town-brew-pub-seekers like us. I cold-called the owner and offered to meet with him on Friday morning. He agreed. Less than 10 minutes into our meeting, before I even showed him any samples of my work, he offered to pay me the 50% up front cost right there on the spot. I was stunned, but I naturally agreed. Either he's a very trusting man or I'm an excellent salesman. Either way, look for the new website for the Bear Claw Brewery and Grille coming soon.

$1 coins

2009-02-13T15:55:00.003-06:00

The email forward I received at work today was a departure from the usual far-right talking points/homophobia/xenophobic fearmongering. Instead, today's was about how the national motto "In God We Trust" is not on the new Dollar coins. The email had been forwarded over a dozen times, with occasional remarks about the radical leftist liberals sabotaging our national heritage and how the next round of coins will read "in Ala [sic] we trust."

Now, normally I can debunk most of these emails as misleading or outright lies with no more than ten seconds of Google searching. But to my surprise, this forward was almost true!

But not really. As Snopes pointed out, the phrase is not on the coin's face, but along the edge. And what probably fanned many of these flames was that in early 2007, a batch was erroneously minted that did not have the phrase on it at all. This batch was as much as 50,000 coins, out of 300 million, or one hundredth of one percent. 0.01%.

So the email was, at most, 0.01% correct.

Additionally, the phrase is being put back on the front of coins "as soon as is practicable." In fact, the first coin with "In God We Trust" on its obverse will be introduced into circulation next week. However, having evidence to the contrary and being able to hold it in one's hand probably won't stop this email from spreading, considering how incredibly easy it was to figure this one out already. For example, here are just a few Google searches in which the truth could have been learned in the first two results:

"in god we trust $1 coin"

"is in god we trust on dollar coins?"

"motto $1 coin"

"coin god"

"god dollar"

The content of the forwards I get doesn't bother me as much as how nobody, at any point in the chain, could be bothered to actually check and find out if it's true.

It's also worth noting that the Presidential $1 Coin Program, responsible for the introduction of these coins, was introduced by a Republican Senator and signed into law in 2005 by our Republican President. Clearly the work of the radical leftist liberals.

New Computer

2009-02-07T00:27:00.003-06:00

With my regular computer gaming habit, and now picking up design jobs, my computer needed an upgrade. It only had 1 gigabyte of RAM, and even that was from 2002. It was showing its age, and this week I finally had the means to get a new one.

I initially used the Tom's Hardware Guide gaming PC as a starting point, although the only components I ended up using from their list were the motherboard and CPU cooler. In the month that passed since the guide was published, I was able to get the Intel Core 2 Duo e7400, Radeon 4870, and faster RAM for just about the same prices. I also got a black aluminum Lian Li PC case, and a nice rebate on a 500w power supply, knowing the Radeon 4870 would require a little more power. I harvested my DVD-RW drive from the old machine and kept the same mouse and keyboard. The case has USB and audio ports on the front, which are not new technologies, but are new to *me,* and I like not having to climb under the desk to plug things in anymore.

Anyway, assembly was relatively easy. The case has a 120mm fan at both the front and back, and space for an additional fan to ventilate out the top. The power supply also has a fan up top so I'm not sure that other fan will be necessary. The lower fan draws air directly onto the 3.5" drive tray.

I didn't realize how big the CPU cooler was until it arrived. It's just enormous. In fact, the fan assembly is so big it sticks out over the RAM slot, thus making 8GB dual-channel RAM impossible. I just had to use the other channel; this won't be an issue for a few years. However, I do like how it directs air perpendicular to the CPU and therefore out of the case, instead of just up (or down) on the chip.

Here's a picture of the video card in place. I knew from reading reviews I had to get a mid-tower case to even fit the card inside, and even then, some cases required removal of the lower drive tray. Fortunately this fit with room to spare, though the back of the card covers up an unused system fan power connection on the motherboard. It requires a ridiculous *two* 6-pin power connectors. My power supply only had one, but fortunately, Sapphire included some adapters for existing 4-pin connections.

Here's a picture of the final machine before connecting the power cables. I would've preferred if they had sleeve coverings, but I don't think they obstruct the airflow in any serious way.

Some final scattered thoughts... I decided to bite the bullet and install Vista instead of XP or 7, because XP won't recognize the 4GB of RAM and 7 is still a beta. I picked up a copy of Vista while I was still staff at the Michigan for something like $18. This is a savings of about $300. Anyway, I'm still getting used to it. I don't trust or understand the system folder structure just yet. I'm quite frustrated at the lack of options for importing pictures off my camera (XP's Scanner & Camera wizard was, surprisingly, the perfect tool and all I ever used). And so on. I'm not noticing a performance slowdown, but there's a lot of juice under the hood here. The performance is on par with the overclocked version of the Tom's Hardware Guide PC linked above. It's nice to go back and see games and demos that would churn my old system to a halt run silky smooth on this new machine, but I think I've built a rig that can handle games of the future pretty well too.

The last couple days all I've focused on are playing demos and games to flex its graphical muscles. Tomorrow's project is importing all my pictures and mp3s from the old machine. Hope it goes smoothly.

Elite DJ Services

2009-01-28T21:55:00.002-06:00

I finished my first official* freelance website this week. Elite DJ Services is a Lansing, Michigan DJ service that performs at the whole spectrum of events from weddings to nightclubs. The owner's mom works with my mother-in-law, which is how I first heard of this project. Check it out: Elite DJ Services

Now here's hoping Google returns search results to his page and not this post.

*"First official" mostly just means the first time money was involved. The rest have been favors or trade for wedding services, or are still in progress.

F.E.A.R. 2 Demo

2009-01-28T13:37:00.000-06:00

I played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo the other night. There were parts I strongly liked and others I strongly disliked.

The Good:

Weaponry: The guns had a good kick and were easy to use and switch between. This is important because they sounded very powerful in the first game.
The attention to detail in the school was incredible. Everything you'd expect to see in a classroom was all there, from fundraiser progress bars to construction paper projects to grammar lessons. Nice touch.
The mech battle sequence was quite well done. The movement of the mech was neither unrealistically fluid nor frustratingly clunky; either extreme is easy to achieve.

The Bad:

The glow around the enemies in bullet time is a horrible symptom of consolitis
Graphics? I think? The first FEAR was the game I bought to flex the muscles of my upgrade computer in 2006; that same comptuer would naturally struggle with this one. It's scalable, and certainly not bad, but the graphics weren't as effective this time around. To be specific, it seemed like dynamic shadows and lighting effects were used to much greater effect in the first game. I understand the need to not rely on that so much - increase the texture resolution and level of detail, and you'll need to bake some lighting in to maintain performance.
The laser sights on enemy snipers defeated the purpose of sniping. I understand this is a development decision so we're not frustrated trying to find them, but it's the easy and ineffective way out.
Seriously, the object shimmer effect around the enemies is a dealbreaker. It reduces arguably the coolest function of the game into an annoying sign saying "SHOOT HERE, LOVE, XBOX." It's unforgivable, and until it's removed or removable, I won't be buying the game.

HD

2009-01-27T15:27:00.001-06:00

Last week when I was trying to watch the Daily Show, I could no longer find Comedy Central in my saved channel guide. As it turned out, this wasn't a bad thing: Comedy Central HD was just added to the DirecTV lineup, so the number had changed.

This is good news. But from what I could tell, much of the content is broadcast in pillarboxed 4:3? So while it's not widescreen, at least it's clear and sharp.

South Park will be broadcast in HD as well on the 13th season. Link ibid.

Silverlight

2009-01-17T11:34:00.004-06:00

The Presidential inauguration team has chosen Microsoft Silverlight as the platform of choice to stream inaugural events over the Internet. While I appreciate their efforts to embrace this technology to make the event accessible, I wish they would instead use a public domain codec sufficient for large-scale dissemination.

I felt similarly about the recent House and Senate YouTube channels when they were announced, wishing they would operate under a Creative Commons license and make the content freely available to download in a number of formats (as the Change.gov site has already done). However, it appears that feature is slowly being rolled out.

Whopper Sacrifice

2009-01-17T11:23:00.003-06:00

Burger King announced its Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application last week. In the days since, Facebook required that the application stop notifying the people who the app user chooses to remove, and Burger King refused to concede and pulled the plug. Fortunately, I acted quickly, whittled away 10 friends, and yesterday I was rewarded for my efforts:

Home improvement

2009-01-04T16:52:00.002-06:00

We decided to continue with the home renovations this weekend. My dad came up yesterday and helped us with the electrical wiring (and plaster saw-through-ing) for a new light fixture in the bathroom. Today, Danielle is painting the bathroom, and I installed corner shelves on the kitchen cabinets. They provide convenient storage for our cookbooks and mask the old, unused phone jack.

What is that on the top shelf? It's a level, placed there to show off my flawless craftsmanship.

Boom.

Excavation

2008-12-19T23:52:00.002-06:00

We got about a foot of snow in the storm that came through today. Every school in the three closest counties was closed, and we now have over 40 inches of snow on the season and winter hasn't officially started yet.

Instead of individual pictures, here's a Picasa Web Album with a few long-exposure shots I took of the snow tonight.

It's the least wonderful time of the year

2008-12-18T08:52:00.002-06:00

No, not the holiday season: We're now in the miserable two-week period around the winter solstice when the sun rises after I leave for work and sets before I head home. In the unlikely event that it's clear enough to see the sun during the day, I'd be inside my windowless office anyway. So if you see the sun before the new year, please describe what it looks like. Hopefully I will remember while I'm treating my vitamin D deficieny.

Learning

2008-12-12T22:49:00.002-06:00

Things Braylon has learned since we started leaving him in the house while we're gone at work:

The couch is a comfortable place to sit
Tree ornaments are tasty (and there's a tree full of them!)
Danielle's slippers are tasty
The buckle of his Michigan collar is tasty

Much of this is on us for not puppy-proofing the house before we left. We've learned quickly. Hopefully he will too.

ABC Warehouse

2008-12-09T19:55:00.003-06:00

ABC Warehouse has been constantly playing ads on local radio stations advertising their prices on HDTVs. Gordy and the announcer go back and forth glossing over technical acronyms. Those big fancy terms like LCD, DLP, HDTV, 1080p, and 720p, rolling their eyes at the newfangled technology and reassuring you that it doesn't matter and nobody understands that gobbeldygook. Just come into ABC Warehouse and we'll take care of you!

Unfortunately, what this means is they'll prey on the uninformed consumer by selling them things they don't need. For example, they'll probably push 1080p TVs at sizes where the difference between 720p and 1080p is indistinguishable, or sell HDMI cables for considerably more than the $15 they cost at Meijer.

What's wrong with just finding out what these things mean? Or even reassuring the consumer that we know and we will explain them to you? There was no mention of "we'll walk you through the terms and help you decide what's best," just a dismissive "LCD, HDTV, E-I-E-I-O." And to answer those questions, it's because it affects profit.

I'm also glad to see I'm not the only one annoyed by ABC warehouse advertising

Winter

2008-12-07T00:22:00.001-06:00

We woke up this morning to about 5 inches of powder on the ground.

The show continued pretty steadily throughout the day. I shoveled the driveway yesterday and today in the afternoon; our neighbor had shoveled his twice today alone.

We got our tree from Kingma's Market, 3 blocks away.

Sophie was not in the mood to help.

Still, we got the tree up hassle-free thanks to a handy new stand that supports the tree through a spike in the base. The living room is now ready for Santa.

Best Jeopardy Ever

2008-12-04T21:53:00.004-06:00

I've always had more respect for Jeopardy players who play with a risky and aggressive style than for the wimps who play it safely. Last night was probably my favorite episode ever. The players risked all of their money on every Daily Double. The first two ($2200 and $6000) were successful, but the third and final (for $10,800) was incorrect. It rattled him and he couldn't dig out of the hole in time for Final Jeopardy, but I applauded his effort for putting everything on the line. Twice! With $10,000 at stake!

The third contestant, who did not get to guess a Daily Double question, came through for me as she risked her entire winnings on the Final Jeopardy. It was but one single wager away from being a perfect episode, at least according to my formula. It would be foolish for the winner to bet an amount that would dip him below the second place contestant's potential maximum.

Christmas Music

2008-12-03T22:02:00.003-06:00

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I can listen to Christmas-themed music guilt-free. The local radio stations have been playing it round the clock since before November(!), but I prefer my own collection and want to share my top 5 favorites:

1. Mannheim Steamroller. Any Christmas album, really.

2. Soma FM's Christmas Lounge station. Pretty much anything on there will be good.

3. "Suo Gan" by Rudolph & Blitzen

4. "Put the Lights on the Tree" by Sufjan Stevens.

5. Hollywood Trombones Christmas album. Obvs.

Honorable mention: "What's This?" from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

Armed with these selections, your holiday music collection will be unbeatable!

Vote For Lizard People

2008-11-20T15:42:00.002-06:00

This was a hilarious ballot found in the Franken/Coleman recount in Minnesota.

More ridiculous ballots here.

GOP Stronghold No More

2008-11-05T12:32:00.003-06:00

Socially and economically, metropolitan Grand Rapids has earned its reputation for being conservative, as evidenced by previous Presidential election results. Historically, the county has voted overwhelmingly for the Republican candidate. But this year, like in Virginia, the Democratic party candidate won more votes in Kent County for the first time since LBJ in 1964. The tide is turning:

1968: Nixon 85,000 - Humphrey 61,900 (53% - 38% GOP margin)

1972: Nixon 104,000 - McGovern 67,600 (59% - 39% GOP margin)

1976: Ford 127,000 - Carter 59,000 (67% - 31% GOP margin)

1980: Reagan 112,000 - Carter 72,800 (55% - 35% GOP margin)

1984: Reagan 137,000 - Mondale 66,200 (67% - 33% GOP margin)

1988: Bush 131,000 - Dukakis 73,000 (63% - 35% GOP margin)

1992: Bush 115,000 - Clinton 82,000 (47% - 33% GOP margin)

1996: Dole 121,000 - Clinton 86,000 (54% - 38% GOP margin)

2000: Bush 148,000 - Gore 95,000 (58% - 39% GOP margin)

2004: Bush 171,000 - Kerry 116,000 (59% - 40% GOP margin)

2008: Obama 149,855 - McCain 148,305 (1% Democratic margin)

The results from my precinct also make me proud:

Eligible	Turnout	Percent	Obama	Mccain
1180	991	83.98%	514	462

I'm glad to see the reputation of Grand Rapids/Kent County as a "GOP stronghold," like the current Republican party itself, is fading.

(h/t: electionmagic.com, uselectionatlas.org)

President-Elect Obama

2008-11-04T23:34:00.002-06:00

As the 2004 election drew to a disappointing close, tucked at the bottom of the lengthy and profane tirade I wrote in my previous blog was this item:

Four years later, the African-American with just 4 years in the senate beat the Clinton Machine in the primary and a Vietnam war hero in the general election. The symbolism on display is almost as profound as the political dexterity. Well done, sir. I'm glad I got to witness this moment in history.

my commercial

2008-10-22T11:04:00.002-05:00

WZZM used footage I shot to create this TV commercial for Arena Racing.

I didn't edit the spot, but I did shoot all the video and I created the logo they used, so I'm taking credit for this. At least, it provides a little vindication for all the condescending comments I received when I decided to study film & video production in college.

Joe the Plumber

2008-10-16T08:32:00.001-05:00

The plumbers' union -- the United Association -- endorses Barack Obama for President.

More like this one, please

2008-10-09T15:20:00.002-05:00

Obama is leading McCain by 16 points in the latest Rasmussen poll. That's astounding for what was once considered an important swing state. Apparently voters don't really like it when you blow off their state.

And as for accuracy, Rasmussen is among the best.

Search Engine Rap Battle: Google vs Yahoo

2008-09-19T07:58:00.001-05:00

More here.

I still hate Comcast

2008-09-11T22:07:00.002-05:00

(Sleek interface on this test)

Real Estate

2008-09-07T00:37:00.001-05:00

The office has undergone some renovations in the last week.

First, we decided to rearrange the desks. Mine now occupies the west wall, and we fashioned me a new one out of the filing cabinets and an unused door from the house. At first I thought the door would look stupid and obviously improvised, but it's a quality piece of wood and I think it looks pretty sweet. It's at least twice as big as the old desk surface was, too.The circular hole originally cut for the handle is a nice place to drop cords down as well.

The second improvement is the new 22" widescreen LCD monitor I finally bought. This makes all my gaming and photo viewing look better, and compared to the 19" CRT I've been using, this runs brigher, it takes up considerably less space, weighs 50lbs less, allows me to have two documents open side by side onscreen, and uses 1/3 the electricity. It doesn't have a height adjustment, which the 90s Trivial Purusit box is remedying for now.

The third is the bracketless shelving unit hovering above the desk. I think it looks nice up there.

catching up

2008-08-31T23:01:00.004-05:00

I'm behind. Here are my updates, with less detail than I had originally planned.

I got married two weeks ago. The wedding was fantastic. I remember everything in two-second bursts, since that's about what my interactions with everyone were limited to. The flow of the evening was handled perfectly, everything went well, and I couldn't be happier with the result. I'll post pictures when I have them.

We went to Portland, Maine for our honeymoon, which was a wonderful trip. Even the 15 hour drive wasn't too bad because that part of the country is so pretty. We went whale watching, sea kayaking, sunset-cruising on a schooner, lighthouse-touring, bed and breakfasting, and fine dining throughout the cool little city of Portland. I do have pictures from that here.

My wife(!) and I got a Wii as one of our wedding gifts and I've been bowling quite a bit on that, but haven't had much time for gaming. She starts teaching again on Tuesday and a regular schedule should settle in once again.

Braylon broke his toe the day before the wedding and has to have it wrapped for six weeks. He's in good spirits and it doesn't hurt him, so we were able to bring him to the Michigan football game this weekend. He'll be five months old this week and is already about 55 lbs.

Michigan football's first game was yesterday. The team found new and exciting ways to suck; I think the novelty of the new offense numbs the sting of losing to a Mountain West team at home. Things will jell, most everyone on the team will still be there in two years, we'll be fine. I found things to be encouraged about.

Lomo Effect

2008-08-11T19:50:00.002-05:00

I'd seen the Lomo Effect before and liked the look -- high contrast, unusual saturation and color, vignette around the edges -- but didn't know the name and could only sorta fake duplicate it on my own. I read this article on Lomo photography and tried it immediately. The results are impressive and I saved it as an Action in Photoshop so it's just a click away with any photo now. Slideshow:

Still working on finding the right shots to process, but so far the best seem to be softly shaded ones with low contrast to start. Also, the "mood" of the effect is somewhat bleak, so happy cheerful shots in full sunlight look awkward.

Full size pics at the Picasa Web Album.

More HDR

2008-08-10T19:54:00.002-05:00

This time it's a sunset at South Haven. I didn't overexpose it quite enough to get the houses exposed correctly. I seemed to make up most of it with gamma correction and setting the minimum black (forget what that's called) and it ended up pretty good. Don't know why all visual information is lost along the edges of the dock and in the reflection off the water though.

CAPTCHA

2008-08-07T09:32:00.003-05:00

If you ever try to download a file from RapidShare, the CAPTCHA is incredible. It features warped outlines of animals overlaid onto letters, and it's up to you to distinguish which blurry, distorted figures are cats. Good luck:

HDR

2008-07-24T12:08:00.003-05:00

I've been interested in HDR photography for some time now. I have a camera which will allow me to adjust the metering to take bracketed images, a tripod, and Photoshop CS3 which has its own merge-to-hdr feature. In the couple times I tried it, I was never really pleased with the results, and chalked it up to some combination of my consumer-level camera and/or poor source images. In other words, I didn't give it much of a chance.

Anyway, I've been tempted to buy Photomatix Pro, which addresses tone mapping in a more robust and intuitive fashion than Photoshop by itself. Today I discovered they have a trial plugin and installed that. Even though everything about this screams "amateur first try" (note the camera lens reflected off the glass door), I'm pretty impressed with the results:

For comparison, here is the +0 baseline exposure source image, essentially what the camera would've produced with one shot in automatic mode:

Comcast Sucks

2008-07-15T22:13:00.002-05:00

Check out those upload speeds.

I love my AT&T Yahoo DSL. There's some free word-of-mouth advertising for you fine folks at AT&T. I am so relieved to be through with Comcast's monopoly, poor customer service, and deceptive pricing schemes.

One step closer

2008-07-10T22:18:00.002-05:00

We closed on the house June 30th and every day since then have been painting or moving small things in or both. Every trip to the house was accompanied by a carload of stuff so most of the non-furniture items made it over here that way. Today we rented a U-Haul and brought all the furniture and couches. There is still a lot of work to be done but it's starting to feel like our own place.

One Month of Braylon

2008-06-26T21:10:00.007-05:00

Braylon turns 12 weeks old tomorrow (and 3 months on July 4th). He is big and growing like a weed. Everyone who's seen him looks at his massive floppy paws and tells us how he's going to be huge. It's probably true. But as of today, we've had him for a month.

He's a very determined puppy who often wants to JUST EXPLORE DAMMIT STOP PLAYING WITH ME. But he's also a very smart puppy who figures things out very quickly. He's known the come-sit-stay routine for a couple weeks now. Last week we added "down" and it took him all of ten tries to learn it correctly (as long as we have treats). Here he demonstrates with a pheasant wing:

He's very good at going on walks now and doesn't run ahead to see people ss much anymore. He knows when we get out the choke chain that it's TIME FOR A WALK OH YES and knows the (two or three) paths we take. We know his favorite spot to lay (on the folded comforter) and second favorite (on the floor of the bathroom, since it's cool), the difference between the "hey guys let me out" whine and the "NO SERIOUSLY LET ME OUT I GOTTA GO" whine. As of this week, he now sleeps through the night. Sometimes he'll go into his crate even when it's not bedtime.

Sophie has adapted very well by finding new places to lay. Her favorite one is curled up in the sink. It is hard to get her out, because even when we turn on the water, it only bothers her after a few seconds when she realizes that she could be drinking from the faucet.

It's been a different month for me, having never had a puppy before. Braylon's happy fun times far outweigh his annoying stubborn ones. He is a good boy and I'm glad we have him.

Meet Jeff

2008-06-17T22:49:00.001-05:00

This is Jeff, the first creature I created in Spore. I'm mostly doing this to see how easy it is to capture video from the game and embed it in the blog. The answer is something like three clicks. They did a great job with the YouTube integration.

I didn't play around much, besides creating this seven-legged beast. I had no idea how he was going to walk with a single, ten-foot long hind leg with a knee above his head. But that was for the game to figure out. So far, this is pretty fun.

Suddenly June is half over

2008-06-16T16:52:00.004-05:00

Much has happened in the last 3 weeks. We spent a weekend in Oxford visiting Matt and Phil and their families. Then we spent one in Pittsburgh:
Good times and great food, including the Primanti Brothers sandwich shop where the french fries are on the sandwich. Genius.

Braylon has been growing and learning at an alarming rate. He's considerably larger than when we got him 4 weeks ago and noticeably taller too. He slept through the night twice last week, and even when he wakes up at night, it's for a good reason. So he's essentially potty trained, at least in that he always lets us know when he has to go. Since he doesn't quite have the muscle control yet, we have to let him out NOW when he wants to. Still, the only accidents have been the fault of his neglectful parents.

Also, we're in the process of buying this house:

An offer was accepted last week and we're negotiating based on the inspection results. It is a 3-bedroom 1.5-story bungalow style house (where the entire upper floor is a finished attic-turned master bedroom) with a huge backyard and detached 2-stall garage. Everything about this house is appealing to me and my snobby requirements for positive residential living spaces: A mature neighborhood with huge trees lining the streets, hard wood floors, a garage set back, a solidly constructed house built with materials worth caring about, and within walking distance from a meat market, a few local restaurants, and a 300-acre park along the river. Danielle has more pictures on her camera that I'll include once it's all finalized. Between the loans, the realtors, the traveling, the dog, the mortgage meetings, and work, it has been a busy few weeks. Oh yeah, and we're getting married two months from yesterday.

DeltaPlex vs Van Andel

2008-06-10T20:12:00.002-05:00

My boss is suing the Kent County Convention Authority, which owns the Van Andel Arena (our larger competitor in Grand Rapids). Earlier this year someone at the DeltaPlex, where I work, was accidentally sent an email containing an agreement stipulating that the midwest's largest concert promoter must pay the Van Andel Arena 1/3 of its profits for any concert booked anywhere else in the area. This is being investigated as a violation of federal antitrust laws as it has allowed Van Andel to monopolize the concert industry for years.

It might get ugly, but that just means publicity in the form of headlines where the DeltaPlex is the little guy fighting for justice. Give 'em hell, Joel!

Wundermap

2008-06-05T10:18:00.003-05:00

There's a cool new Wundermap feature on wunderground.com that is basically a large radar mashed up with sensor data from local stations and Google Maps. Besides the wealth of accurate, timely information it presents, I like it because its presentation makes thunderstorms look absolutely hellacious.

ClearBlue pregnancy test

2008-06-03T12:16:00.001-05:00

I see this ad every single day during the morning news, and I laugh every single time.

2008-05-28T22:17:00.004-05:00

Braylon is a handful, as I'm sure everyone who has ever had a puppy will be all like "duh" about. On one hand, I haven't slept for more than 3 hours since Sunday. But on the other hand:

Sophie continues to warm up to him and even seems to approach him with curiosity. She hasn't eaten nearly as much in the last few days because she's afraid to let her guard down. Today we discovered that she will let him get as close as he wants, as long as she has potential energy on her side.

Braylon

2008-05-27T21:52:00.003-05:00

(more here)

The timing was right yesterday that Danielle and I decided to get a puppy. She had been talking about getting a black lab for more than a year now, but insisted we get it as young as possible to have it through those precious first few weeks. "We'll get it after school ends" became "the day school ends" became "sometime this week" became "today!" after a breeder in the paper had a male, 7 week old black lab ready to go home. The parents were on site and very friendly and healthy looking, so we decided to go ahead with it.

Braylon was shy and scared at first. We took him on walks outside and he followed right with us, but his independence today made us think that yesterday was just because he was scared. Due either to good timing on our part or instincts on his, he's only peed inside the house twice (at night), so that's a 90% successful "outside" rate. Today he ran around much more free from us and played more aggressively when he was in the mood. We think he's just getting more comfortable with his home.

The nights will be difficult. We're already setting alarms for 2:00 and 4:00 to make sure he doesn't eliminate in his cage. So for several weeks I'll not sleep for more than a few hours. Last night he cried a lot, but we may not have introduced him to the crate properly and did not have it sized right, or in the bedroom. We're learning too. And, heck, we took him away from his parents and siblings and put him in a scary new place; I'd yell all night too.

This is going to be a lot of work, but it's work we're eager to do. I will keep updating this with more information and stories as the little guy grows. But right now, it's time for a vigorous play session so he's absolutely exhausted by the time I go to bed.

Notes on the first bike commute

2008-05-20T16:56:00.005-05:00

TO:

Awake by 7:00, out the door by 7:55 (ironed 2 items), 3 red lights, arrived 8:15, ready to work by 8:30. Barely enough time to cool off and be ready.

It was 43 degrees outside. This helped me not sweat, but I think I went slower to avoid the icy breeze.

About 10 degrees warmer would be ideal.

Except for a quarter-mile climb out of the apartment complex driveway, the entire ride is downhill or flat. This means the entire way home is uphill.

Burning an extra 300 calories means more food fuel is needed. I need to pack a yogurt or something extra.

FROM:

The ride home wasn't bad despite being uphill. Probably because I don't care how I look or feel at that point.

The sidewalk on West River, only on the east side of the road, ends abruptly before the 131 exit ramp. This means I either need to stay on the 45mph road at all times, or dangerously cross before a 3-way intersection and a highway.

The last quarter mile being all downhill is nice. I can easily coast to 30mph, and probably higher if I time the light at Ball correctly.

Imagine the worst thing each car can do as it passes, then expect it to do just that. More often than not, it will.

biking to work

2008-05-19T22:24:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow morning I will begin riding my bike to work. There are many reasons for this: $4 gas, my health, the environment's health, and the short 3.7 mile commute. My only concerns are how wrinkled my clothes will get on the way and whether my incredible sweatiness will stink up the office. I plan to remedy those problems by rolling them and bringing a towel/deodorant, respectively.

It's worth noting that my cumulative work-related commuting is already very small. Even though I have had a full-time job for 21 of the last 22 months, I've only driven a grand total of 1,300 miles to work. By contrast, the average American commutes 16 miles one way, for a total of 14,700 miles over the same 21-month period. Average!

This means for the average American who started a job at the same time as I did, they drove more miles in their first eight weeks of work than I've driven in the 18 months since.

Here's hoping the cool weather keeps me dry.

Obama in GR

2008-05-12T22:03:00.005-05:00

Senator Obama is making his first appearance in Michigan in 9 months in downtown Grand Rapids this week. Danielle and I are going to try to get in as soon as I get out of work. I hope we get a chance to see him, but if we don't, I can't complain about too much interest and the arena filling to capacity two hours early.

Hillary Clinton's Michigan Logic

2008-05-08T19:32:00.005-05:00

I wondered whether Senator Clinton was going to emerge Wednesday with more negative attacks, race-baiting, and general punch-throwing, or show a more sensible side that suggests that not destroying the Democratic Party from the inside is in her best interest. Of course, it was the former, in the few sentences that didn't mention her heroic victories in Michigan and Florida (those tough contests versus "Uncommitted"). At this point, the only way she can win the nomination is a superdelegate coup. Though the rules don't necessitate it, it's time for her to get out of the way and stop trying to move the goalposts 50/56ths of the way through the competition.

Digsby

2008-05-04T19:06:00.003-05:00

Last month, Facebook rolled out yet another separate, non-standard, not-supported-anywhere-else, no-API chat network to deal with, making the site noisier than ever before (something I hardly thought was possible). Not wanting to be locked into their stupid walled garden, I was excited to hear about Digsby, the first program to include Facebook chat in its multi-chat protocol.

I tried out Digsby this weekend and I think I'll keep it (sorry, Pidgin). Digsby does all the cool things I require in a chat client that Pidgin also offered: Tabbed browsing, grouping contacts' accounts under one alias, inline status display, rollover buddy info display.

But it adds some interesting chat features, including extremely customizable layouts of both the buddy list and chat windows, allowing me to maximize screen space or icon size or whichever I want.

The main draw is its integration with the Facebook chat network. What's cool is how its integration with Facebook goes beyond just adding the chat: It harvests and displays your entire mini-feed accessible via rollover. Unobtrusive pop up windows notify of sign ons and sign offs like usual, but also IMs received. A window with a single-line text input box appears to quickly reply to IMs. Additionally, these windows can notify of Facebook events basically as they happen, and GMail messages too. It would do the same things for Twitter if I had an account.

Its drawbacks are few: It eats up a huge memory footprint, but the developers are aware of that issue. Also, I wish I could pick a different font color to distinguish the screenname from the status line below it. But since I didn't have any configuration options for that display at all before this week, that's hardly something to complain about.

So basically, in addition to being the most comprehensive multi-protocol chat client available, it's a real-time RSS feed reader for your friends' activities. GMail, GMail chat, AIM, and Facebook are all things I participate in daily anyway, so aggregating them into one place - without input needed from me to view updates - will save a great deal of time.

Arbys buys Wendy's

2008-04-28T12:32:00.004-05:00

Arby's has bought Wendy's for 2.34 billion dollars. While the stores will continue to operate autonomously, Dave Thomas's family is not happy with the news:

It's a very sad day for Wendy's, and our family. We just didn't think this would be the outcome," said Farber, 53. If her father were alive to hear news of the buyout, "he would not be amused," she said.

Arby's needs to watch out. This is a fast food icon whose posthumous legacy is unblemished, and now they've pissed off his family. Unlike Colonel Sanders, Dave Thomas now only exists in the form of faded posters overlooking condiment racks of restaurants who haven't touched their decor since 2002. While Colonel Sanders has been reintroduced in a comical animated form, rendering the Colonel's tormented spirit incapacitated from spinning so furiously in his grave, Dave Thomas's old stomping grounds are ripe for the haunting.

And it doesn't stop there. Arby's has pissed off the friendly redheaded namesake as well:

Farber said she had just gotten off the phone with her sister Wendy, 46, the company's namesake. "She's feeling horrible. She just is devastated," Farber said.

Arby's, this acquisition has only upset the family so far, but the consequences are much broader if you manage to alienate the fan base. Less competition in the fast food business means prices can go up with less resistance, but God help you if you take away the 99-cent chicken nuggets.

One Decade of mp3s

2008-04-18T08:35:00.003-05:00

Historical reference.

Ten years ago on Saturday, Matt Varas walked up to me with a small stack of floppy diskettes, and in usual Varas fashion, thrust them at me.

"What's this?"
"It's an mp3."
"What is that?"

He explained that it was just a way of making a sound file small. On four disks (remember this was 1998, before CD burners were common), he told me to use Microsoft Backup/Restore to combine them all.

Not really sure what that was, I went home, spent two hours downloading Winamp, and used that obscure program to combine the diskettes into my very first MP3: Bone Thugs N Harmony's "Tha Crossroads."

And that's what got me started. From there I got mIRC. Downloading files from mIRC was a pain. One had to

-Search for a file
-Find someone who had it
-Type a command just to enter their queue, and, usually
-Wait for them to become available, then
-Spend an hour downloading a song.

But I kept at it as the times kept changing. From mIRC to Napster. From Napster to Morpheus, and from Morpheus to KaZaa and onto KaZaa Lite, iTunes, eMusic, and the legally ambiguous allofmp3.com. And along the way I tried my share of programs: Abe's mp3 finder, gnutella, iMesh, limewire, BearShare, AIMster, grokster, audiogalaxy, Direct Connect, eDonkey, eMule, launchcast, winmx, shoutcast, soulseek, g2p, seeqpod, imeem...

My point? I kindled the nascent technology and watched it blossom into its current form, along for the entire ride. More than 6,100 songs later (that's 1.7 a day for 10 years), it's shaped me into the ~~copyright-infringing music pirate~~ RIAA-abiding fan of music that I am today. One full decade in the making.

And thank you, Bone Thugs N Harmony, for shining your light for others to follow!

Reviews and dinner

2008-04-16T20:34:00.003-05:00

I had my 6-month performance review at work this morning. It went very, very well. Danielle also got the results of her observation this morning and they were equally positive.

We decided to celebrate with a meal at Bistro Bella Vita downtown, and it was fantastic. Along with a glass of wine, we ordered a prosciutto and apple salad with pistachios and gorgonzola and a baked goat cheese appetizer. For dinner, I had roast quail over a bed of gnocchi, sweet potatoes, figs, artichokes, and baby tomatoes. Danielle had a delicious Italian sausage penne pasta with roasted onions, red peppers, and tomatoes. It was a fantastic way to cap off an all-around great day.

xkcd vs Watterson

2008-04-11T08:26:00.002-05:00

I'm a big fan of the comic xkcd. Its unabashed nerdiness and superior wit combine for some truly great comics. Today's is a brilliant synthesis of his newfound enjoyment of electric skateboards and Mario Kart Double Dash, and an homage to the philosophical and artistic style of Calvin and Hobbes' wagon comics.

Now, I am also a big fan of Calvin & Hobbes. I read and relate to Calvin & Hobbes as I would a religious text. I also respect Bill Watterson's firm desires never to have Calvin & Hobbes parodied (isn't there a better way to show everyone you enjoy hunting than to buy a sticker of Calvin peeing on the word "anti-hunter?"), referenced, or duplicated. As such, even a respectful C&H homage as well-done as today's xkcd is treading on sacred ground and should be subject to intense scrutiny.

Obviously he wanted the characters on the skateboard as entrenched in Calvin & Hobbes' world as possible, to write dialogue like Watterson, and to compose a scene like Watterson. The idea of the strip is great, but I have two major complaints about its execution, where I feel he failed on two counts (and C&H is such sacred ground that I'm splitting hairs finely enough so that anything short of perfection is failure):

First, the strip hits us over the head with what it's trying to accomplish. Its reference to "building character," obviously Calvin's dad's mantra, is said in earnest, and exists only as a red flag in case you didn't follow from the artwork yet. Additionally, it uses the word "philosophy" in lieu of actual philosophy. Not only is that lazy, forceful writing, but it's *telling* us what it's doing, not *showing* us, which is jarring and wrong in the context of how the wagon strips played out artistically and textually.

Second, it misunderstands the Hobbes duality. While Hobbes' true nature may be up to interpretation, it is very consistent: Hobbes is always in stuffed tiger form when there are other humans around. Calvin's world is his alone.

I disagree with the argument that this strip just lets us know that xkcd/Randall's mentality is closer to that of Calvin than that of the real world. However, discussions of Python/C, skateboards, and Mario Kart firmly ground it in our own human world, where Hobbes would be in stuffed form.

That said, this is still a very moving strip. In my admittedly picky opinion, however, it just falls short of a goal within its reach. A truly respectful tribute to Calvin & Hobbes should be done perfectly (i.e. consistent with the C&H world) or not at all. Just remove the line about "my philosophy" or replace it with an actual philosophy, and draw Hobbes in his stuffed form, and this would be it.

Still got it

2008-04-03T22:39:00.004-05:00

I'm weak.

I just finished Bioshock. I played through Portal one more time. I spent a full hour tonight trying to get System Shock 2 to work, without success. I accidentally uninstalled the Call of Duty demo before finishing it and didn't have time to wait for it to download. Lacking any other immediate and available options to get my quick gaming fix, I turned to an old drug: UT2004.

I had been sober since August, but I went back. It was all there, just as I remembered: The three-second load times. The silky-smooth framerates. The rap-heavy background playlist. And the absolute domination of opponents. It's just like riding a bicycle.

I could use Mass Effect or Assassin's Creed right about now.

US Army Using Wii Remotes To Defuse Bombs

2008-03-27T09:44:00.002-05:00

There you have it. Video games are now directly responsible for a reduction in violence.

buddies

2008-03-22T17:19:00.001-05:00

Ugli Fruit

2008-03-12T21:27:00.000-05:00

So apparently there's a fruit called "ugli fruit." Having never heard of this before, we had to buy one.

It certainly was ugly, and it got me wondering where it came from and why Meijer never carried them before. Did they just drop some grapefruit off the pallet, not notice for a few days, and then set them out to see what suckers would buy them? Did some oranges get radiation poisoning? Anyway, like Faygo Redpop, the audacity of the name led to me purchasing it. And then we were disappointed, because it looked pretty good inside.

As it turns out, exists outside of Meijer. It's a grapefruit/tangerine hybrid from Jamaica.

You Got 30 Minutes

2008-03-05T14:45:00.005-06:00

This Consumerist article talks about the new Domino's Pizza ads and their "you got 30 minutes" catchphrase. Not a guarantee, mind you, more like a guideline. They imagine a conversation between the driver and customer:

DRIVER: I am sorry valued customer but Domino's Pizza no longer honors the thirty minute guarantee anymore thirty minutes is just an estimate I apologize for the inconvenience.

[CUSTOMER LAUGHS. THERE IS AN AWKWARD SILENCE]

CUSTOMER: You're serious? What a f*cking crock, you expect me to pay for this? I just saw the ad on tv!

They're kidding, but speaking from experience, this is exactly how the conversation would go. Even when I delivered pizzas in 2002, I had to explain many times that we dropped our 30 minute guarantee in favor of our safe driving policy more than a decade ago, and everyone involved is better off for it.

Apparently they have a history of bad ideas. When I first started working there in 2000, we had daily requests for Bad Andy merchandise. Bad Andy was the recently-canceled promotion featuring a stuffed monkey mascot who encouraged children to pour water on live electrical appliances:

Anyway, this 30 minute guarantee/catchphrase/whatever is unnecessary for a few reasons:

First of all, the vast majority of pizzas are delivered in under 40 minutes anyway. This does not include 6pm on Fridays, but what did you expect?

Second, customers do not care how long it takes as long as your estimate is accurate. If I'd say 20 and it took 30, they were almost always upset. If I'd say 45 and it took 45, they were pleased that I was right on time.

Finally, if they would focus on the quality of the finished product -- i.e., getting it to taste more like pizza and less like corrugated cardboard box it arrives in -- they wouldn't have to distract their customers with these irrelevant marketing ploys. Unfortunately, "Domino's Pizza: Excellent ingredients delivered right when we say it will be, or sooner!" just isn't catchy.

Still Alive on Rock Band

2008-02-25T14:23:00.002-06:00

This represents the intersection of current gaming society's two geekiest indulgences. It looks simply incredible.

Eclipse!

2008-02-20T21:55:00.000-06:00

My new tripod came in handy for photographing tonight's lunar eclipse. So did the clear sky.

TF2 valentines

2008-02-19T12:04:00.002-06:00

I definitely would've sent these out if I'd seen them in time.

Twitter + Google

2008-02-13T09:10:00.003-06:00

I haven't used Twitter yet, because I think that such a high detail of perfunctory microblogging amounts to sensory overload. But recently I've found some very interesting and potentially useful applications of it. There's the Commuter Feed which logs traffic reports for major metro areas. There's also a Google Maps + Twitter mashup that I watched on Super Tuesday to see people's reactions appearing in real-time. Google Maps also had a layer (I think that's the right term) that reported primary results basically in real time per district.

It's still a ton of information that can (and usually will) be condensed and spat out by the mainstream media eventually, but the speed and scope of it all, presented in its raw form, amounts to a new kind of useful social observation. It's interesting that instead of the tool being a single piece of software explicitly designed for a singular purpose, the tool is being procedurally generated, layered, or filtered.

A giant flaw

2008-02-04T08:38:00.000-06:00

Last night's Super Bowl proved another great reason why never to have a playoff system in college football: A team that started 0-2, and finished with a 3-5 home record, was able to get a shot at the championship.

Of course, the NFL is more competitive, so it's not a perfect mirror. But we have a system where every game matters, and where the Michigan-Ohio State is never about seeding. Neither of those should be changed.

You can link to other pages!

2008-01-23T22:06:00.000-06:00

This blog post unearths a Conferencing on the Web (COW) topic from 1997: "What do you think of this web phenomenon?" The prescience is almost as great as the ironic hindsight. Some of the better snippets:

"I like various aspects of it, such as calling up the news on the Web page, that's fun. But why does everything have to be grey? I think the Web should be more colorful."

"The challenge will be getting the speed to the point where the web is a real time medium for objects like pictures and music, which currently take forever using the typical modem."

"Have anyone heard of the new technology called Broad Band service?"

If you have a umich uniqname, you can check it out for yourself.

Splat

2008-01-14T21:56:00.000-06:00

Toward the end of last month, Danielle and I went to Chicago. It was an excellent trip, and we were able to catch up with about a dozen different friends in a handful of great places. The Mulders took us to a great dinner at Red Light and then we rocked out on plastic guitar and drumpad for hours, we met Danielle's friend Sarah for brunch at Orange, we rang in the new year with several college friends, and got to see Lloyd Carr's final game from 48th-floor panoramic apartment.

However, one event on the morning of the 31st left a mark, pun intended, that was impressive in its cruel swiftness and magnitude. When we found my car outside of the Mulders' apartment, we discovered that about ten thousand birds -- why aren't you bastards south for the winter? -- had decided to savagely and relentlessly blast it with their colorful assortment of excrement. It looked like this after just 16 hours of being parked there:

A "silver" level car wash, a blizzard, and a rainstorm later, and it's still not all off.

The perils of express self-scan checkout

2008-01-09T09:04:00.000-06:00

Man With Knives in Pants Stabs Himself

I hear this on the local news yesterday morning. This Meijer is a mile away from our apartment.

Doom

2008-01-04T14:30:00.000-06:00

Someone created a version of Doom that runs on a TI-89 calculator. If I were 14, I would definitely be getting out my link cable and playing this before the bell rings in math class right now.

In case you haven't heard...

2007-12-29T12:57:00.000-06:00

Last Friday, I asked Danielle to marry me. It was an easy decision, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

Overheard in the kitchen

2007-12-18T08:47:00.000-06:00

Me: Why is there a plate of melted butter in the toaster oven?
Danielle: So the cat doesn't lick it up.

Merriam-Webster = n00bs

2007-12-11T22:57:00.001-06:00

Their word of the year: w00t.
This is dumb, tacky, and outdated. I got my "w00t" shirt in 2002 and only wore it a few times for the same reason, and that was 5 years ago. What's next year's word going to be? "The web?" "Cyber?"

To make it more frustrating, the article misunderstands and misuses the word from the very beginning. It capitalizes the W as if to suggest l33tspeak should follow some grammatical guidelines. It also uses the phrase "expect them to 'w00t.'" Unless I have fallen drastically behind the times, w00t is not acceptable -- at least, certainly not sincerely -- as a verb.

Reminds me of this xkcd.

TF2 stats

2007-12-08T10:37:00.000-06:00

Valve released TF2 gameplay stats and they are fascinating. Here are my observations.

The medic's bonesaw is the most likely to get a critical hit.
The RL deals the most damage.
The scout is the cap leader, which is by design, but I was surprised the pyro is second.
The Soldier and Heavy cap at the same rate. This suggests sheer firepower is just as important as speed.
The Demoman has no moments of glory. If they included statistics on defending capture points, I bet the Demoman would be at or near the top. Statistically it may be a routine pipe bomb kill, but it's a very important one.
My 3 favorite classes (Engineer, Demoman, and Medic) have the 3 fewest points per hour.

Levels:

Hydro games take 95 minutes!
4 times as many games are played on Gravelpit as on Granary.
Winning dustbowl on offense is hard, but 71-29% in favor of defense is incredibly lopsided.
Blue wins 2fort 52% to 33%. This makes no sense since the sides are identical. Do good players feel more comfortable in the cold industrial blue environment? Does the rural feel of red suggest inefficient construction? I don't get this at all.

Death maps:

The 2fort barracks are too big of a bottleneck. Incoming offenses have to deal with attacks from four directions (sniper loft, ramp exit, upper spawn, and ramp room) if they do make it in the clear.
...Maybe. That map does not distinguish between upper and lower levels. Could it be that everyone just goes to the right after they cross the bridge?
People die more often inside the first Dustbowl red team spawn than on 3 of the capture points. Blue is seeking out and destroying the cowering defense.
The second to last capture point in Dustbowl is rarely contested.
Capturing A in Gravelpit is too easy. People are surrendering it in order to fortify B. This is poor strategy. It is easy to defend both, and while B may not be as well-defended, defending both buys precious time. I hate when defenses abandon A completely, or give up immediately once blue gets two people there. This is not necessary.

Suggestions:

Eliminate the 60-second setup between rounds of Dustbowl. Maybe make it 10-15 so at least they can run into position.
People are playing engineer and scout 3 times as much as medic. Create more incentive for more medics. Maybe increase the syringe gun damage since it's weak and ineffective. Medic is not a glamorous job but it's too important to be ignored.

I wonder if/how people's strategies will be affected with this knowledge? Probably not much on the public servers considering the level of ability displayed there, but hopefully more serious players read up on this stuff.

Breeze

2007-12-07T23:30:00.000-06:00

That's 81 points, if you're keeping score, thanks to the double letter score on the Z. Pox and axe were also mine. The lower right corner of the board came through in the clutch, and balanced out exclusively having consonants for the first three turns.

Dale Newman sued by DTE

2007-12-06T11:42:00.000-06:00

Oh happy day! I did a little searching to find out what Dale Newman was up to, and struck gold. DTE is taking the landlord to court for his fraudulent hackery! Ann Arbor News:

DTE suing landlord, saying utilities stolen
Meter tampering, nonpayment among accusations
Thursday, October 11, 2007
DTE has filed a lawsuit accusing Ann Arbor landlord Dale Newman of energy theft and non-payment and seeks a little more than $500,000 in damages, according to court documents.

$500,000 is triple what he actually owes, which is still an astounding amount:

It alleges Newman has been underbilled or failed to pay $36,736 in electrical bills and $111,011 in gas bills. DTE also stated its investigation cost $25,000 and wanted Newman to reimburse it for that bill.

DTE is asking for three times the amount of actual damages, which it says is $172,748 plus costs and reasonable attorney fees.

But wait! There's more! Dale Newman also faces pressure from the city to tear down the dilapidated Michigan Inn:

For the better part of two decades the Michigan Inn has been a vacant eyesore on Jackson Road, leaving many to wonder how a multimillion-dollar piece of property could sit undeveloped for so long in a town like Ann Arbor.

Instead of attracting developers, the property has been a magnet for squatters and a headache for the Ann Arbor Police Department.

Its owner, 68-year-old Dale Newman, is a real estate broker who's mired in lawsuits, unpaid bills and convoluted business agreements with partners and creditors who say they are fed up.

Dale Newman and his wife and business partner Christine Dong engaged in these and other illegal business practices while we were tenants of theirs. Click the "Dale Newman" post label to read more about their past offenses.

Jingle Bells vs. Technology

2007-12-02T13:18:00.001-06:00

When I was in the elementary school smart-kid program, we were presented with a daunting task on one of our weekly assignments. We were told to calculate how fast the horse was going in Jingle Bells. This was explained to us as the Holy Grail of this program's assessment, with the warning that only a handful of students had ever successfully figured it out.

Sadly, such problems are no match for technology anymore.

For reference, here was the thought process in 1994, as a ten year old would see it:

1. How would you know that? Maybe there are other verses that explain it. But we'd have to go to the library to find out.

2. Get mom to drive you to the library. She can take you on Saturday, so you wait until then.

3. Once there, you ponder whether to go into the safety and comfort of the children's section or wander into uncharted waters (for me at least) in the adult area.

4. Ask the librarian to help you search through the card catalog for Christmas songs' music and lyrics.

5. A few books don't have it and you start to get discouraged. After a few more tries, you find a book that contains Christmas songs, and search for Jingle Bells.

6. Read through all the verses to find some reference to speed or time. There it is, in verse four! "Two forty as his speed!"

7. Now decipher the language. What does "two forty" even mean? Surely a horse can't go 240 miles per hour. This must be an old-timey phrase. 240 furlongs per fortnight?

8. Now you have to research horses. You eventually learn that horse racers refer to their horse's speed in terms of time per mile.

9. 2:40 per mile now has to be converted to miles per hour. 2:40 = 2 2/3 minutes,so (60 minutes/hr) / (2.667 minutes/mile)= 22.5 miles per hour.

10. Call mom to come pick you up.

This is as difficult as it will ever be now:

1. A Google search for "verses of jingle bells" takes you to the Wikipedia page which has all of them.

2. What about the line "two forty as his speed?" Another Google search refers you to several other people asking these questions, which eventually point to the time per mile.

3. Google's converter eliminates pesky math.

Elapsed time: Less than it takes a speedy bob-tailed bay to run a mile.

And even that method was for the suckers who want to burden themselves with extra work. The truly resourceful kids will simply Google the phrase "how fast is the horse in jingle bells" and find their answer in the seventh result.

But there we were, using our brains, like suckers.

snow

2007-11-30T11:18:00.000-06:00

Woke up this morning to discover about 4 inches of snow had fallen overnight. We get more lake effect snow being closer to Lake Michigan and all, so no storm system required. It was wet enough snow that the elementary school on my drive to work had several snowmen in its playground from the kids' 20 minute morning recess.

If the artificial pond in our back yard freezes over, I'm definitely using it as a stage for Calvin and Hobbes snowmen tributes.

All quiet on the western front

2007-11-26T20:41:00.000-06:00

One of the advantages to working at the second-largest venue in town is that the acts who perform there are not likely to result in hysterical fights over tickets. For example: Hannah Montana. This is from the Wikipedia article on her upcoming "Best of Both Worlds Tour":

A Ticketmaster official said, "Hell hath no fury like the parent of a child throwing a tantrum. People who have been in this business for a long time are watching what's happening, and they say there hasn't been a demand of this level or intensity since the Beatles or Elvis.

Yeeesh. As popular as Fall Out Boy may be, this does not happen quite so much at the DeltaPlex.

Secret Cardinal Trailer

2007-11-18T15:29:00.000-06:00

The trailer is finally on YouTube. Spread the word.

A case of the Mondays

2007-11-05T21:34:00.000-06:00

Work today involved buying a new DSL modem and router and configuring them to work across the entire building. This was basically an eight-hour troubleshooting session. I saw a Best Buy ad for 1gb sticks of RAM for $35 and decided buying a couple would brighten my sour mood. They were surprisingly cheap, RAM is the oldest part of my computer, and I could use some more now that I'm designing full-page magazine ads for the DeltaPlex(!).

It sounded too good to be true, and it was. I bought DDR2, which I learned after a struggle, is not compliant with my DDR-based motherboard. At least the engineers shifted the pin a few millimeters so I wouldn't be able to turn it on and fry anything. I just couldn't win today.

I love this doctor!

2007-10-24T18:54:00.000-05:00

Since Team Fortress 2 is essentially a 9-option game of rock-paper-scissors, I try to avoid or make up for imbalance by filling in the underused classes rather than diving for the positions I'd prefer to have. That said, I'm not to the point of completely pwning n00bs on servers yet, but I've had some pretty good games.
As for the classes I like: On the CP maps, where progression isn't so linear, I prefer the pyro. It's easy to take alternate routes to circumvent big bottlenecks and ambush clusters at close range. I just finished a fun round doing just that. Unfortunately, we lost; the Heavy with the 750ms ping didn't help much.

On 2fort, when we have enough engineers, I'll be a scout. He packs a punch and is good at fleeing firefights quickly if needed. I can bob and weave around the slower classes and usually take a few out on my way to the intelligence.

I also think I'm a good medic, but that being a good medic doesn't take much -- all you need to do is anticipate where the attacks will come from and position yourself oppositely. And the correct deployment of ubercharges. It's a boring class but an extremely valuable one.

Hi again.

2007-10-15T07:53:00.000-05:00

I haven't been updating this very much. Work, obviously, takes up time during the day nowadays. Michigan football has consumed 6 of the last 7 weekends, which is more overwhelming than I thought it would be. I love Ann Arbor and everything, but it takes a lot out of me to drive four hours to a football game and back every weekend. That weekend off was GLORIOUS. And when I'm not at work or football games, I've been enjoying the plentiful bounty of all the video games that have been released lately - Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and demos of Enemy Territory and UT3. It's been a great month for gaming and the loss of eyesight and free time that results.

Work is going very well in most aspects. The web design is a dream; I get to work with the full Adobe Creative Suite all day redesigning and updating their webpages. I'm learning a different way than usual, too -- I've always though I learned better by deconstructing finished products and recreating them on my own. This time I'm teaching myself from the ground up.

I only have one site finished so far - http://www.deltaplex.com. It's not cutting edge or anything, but it serves its intended purpose. The DP director had a very specific vision for what he wanted (vertical navigation bar, three column design, events at the top, logo on the left, etc) so I was somewhat limited. I will also soon be recording and editing a weekly video show for one of next year's upcoming events at the DeltaPlex arena. This means actually putting the film degree to use. Congratulations, universe, you win.

The IT aspects can be intimidating as it's very much a learn-as-I-go operation. I'm crossing my fingers that nothing catastrophic ever happens to one of the servers, since I don't have as much network maintenance experience as I'd like. However, my bosses know this, and are easing me into the role by still keeping in touch with their outsourced IT company for issues over my head as I grow more comfortable in the role.

Life with Danielle is great as she grows more comfortable with her job, which means less stress for everyone involved. The cat is 75% adorable and 25% excruciating, much of the latter resulting from her new hobby of tugging and chewing on my computer cables. I don't enjoy waking up in the morning to find my iPod and mouse yanked onto the floor.

We have liftoff

2007-09-28T07:47:00.000-05:00

The Secret Cardinal is now in stores! Links to bookstores are conveniently provided at the book's website linked above.

Edit: Tomgrace.net is now online as well.

A video interview is on metacafe, which means it's embeddable here:

Chinese Government Versus The Vatican

The video trailer for the book, consisting of a professionally shot scene from the book designed to introduce and intrigue, is through production and in the final stages of editing. I will certainly post it here as soon as possible.

Redemption before bed

2007-09-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that the piping under the sink has split and leaks onto the cabinets beneath it. I found this out when I poured a crock pot half filled with water and a mug of sour yogurt down the drain. It took 20 minutes to clean up (repeatedly soaking a rag, wringing it out, and scrubbing out the spoiled milk gristle and food crumbs) and I gagged twice. In order to compensate for this unpleasantness I wanted to post a video from Saturday. This is when Michigan got the ball back and took a knee to beat Penn State for the ninth straight time.

JOB

2007-09-20T22:54:00.000-05:00

They offered me the job an hour after round 2 of the interview yesterday. I accepted this morning and shortly afterward I was in Best Buy with my boss's assistant where they bought me a new laptop. I now have to prove myself, but this is an incredible opportunity and I have great tools to help. It's still kinda surreal how well this has worked out.

Dale Newman, again

2007-09-17T10:22:00.001-05:00

Dale Newman's misdeeds are spreading throughout the internets.

The cynically resourceful Ann Arbor is Overrated caught Sarah's story about the Dale Newman properties and mentioned it in a post.
There is an ArborWiki page dedicated to non-libelous Dale Newman facts. It links back to one of this blog's earlier posts about Dale Newman.
Prolific A2 blogger Edward Vielmetti has even kept abreast of these happenings via a dale-newman tag on his del.icio.us page. (Also links back here)
An inn owned by Dale Newman burned to the groud not long after Dale visited the site after a security alert.

I'm hoping increased awareness will prevent anyone from doing business with him again. It sounds like his latest actions with his energy fraudulence may take care of that for us though.

Job interview

2007-09-13T23:04:00.000-05:00

I had a job interview today. It's at the company of a businessman who owns several properties and venues and leases lots of office space. The office itself is in the gutted and remodeled Steelcase factory, which means it's an old and beautifully refinished building

These clients desperately need their websites brought up to date and this businessman is hoping to kill two birds with one stone by finding someone who can do that and fix their IT problems. The position is a hybrid tech support/web development position, and they want to find someone eager and looking to be in a position to learn and grow and develop their skills.

Enter: me.

So the interview went very well. Round 2 is next week, and I'm the only person who's made it there so far.

Fingers are crossed to say the least.

The Secret Cardinal Website Online

2007-09-12T12:10:00.001-05:00

The website is online, and looking great! Less than two weeks until it drops in stores.

http://www.secretcardinalbook.com/

I saw this coming

2007-09-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

Michigan football is pretty lousy this year. I've been on record wondering if the defensive successes last year were due to the philosophy of the defensive coordinator Ron English or just the talent of the players, and if the weaknesses exposed by the last two games of the season could be corrected. The answers: Personnel, and a resounding NO.

These are my quotes from an e-mail with Matt on January 8th, regarding USC coach Pete Carroll possibly taking an NFL job.

It's ok. With Branch, Hall, Woodley, and Harris gone, we won't be in any position to play USC anytime soon. We should be worried about the SEC #3, or whoever we'll face in the next couple Citrus Bowls.

I refuse to be less cynical than that until we beat OSU.
...
The formula [for beating Michigan] was written by minnesota, tweaked by OSU, and perfected by USC. unfortunately, we only seem to face two teams a year that can do what they did.
...
This doesn't mean I'll cheer any less or get any less excited, but I don't think the problem lies in our personnel.

I was dismissed as being too cynical; now it seems I was overestimating the team completely. Also, to Danielle on January 5th:

Mike Hart and Lamarr Woodley have helped to mask the fact that we're still playing football like it's 1978. Boise State and USC have helped expose that.

Sigh. Nothing groundbreaking, but I hate that I was so right. I ended with this:

Still, I'd rather go 9-4 if it means we beat OSU and win the bowl game.

That sentiment absolutely stands, though I will be ecstatic if Michigan escapes this season 9-4.

Secret Cardinal Updates 9/9

2007-09-09T13:25:00.001-05:00

The International Thriller Writers website has an interview online.

The Ave Maria School of Law's weekly radio show has an interview available for download. Tom appears about halfway in.

The Secret Cardinal's official web page is online. It's just a placeholder for now until the final design is up.

Zeitgeist

2007-09-06T22:18:00.001-05:00

My iTunes library reset itself in March 2005, and then again last fall (9/5/2006) with the new computer. In March 2006 I compiled the statistics to see what I had been listening to over the previous year. It turned out to be 8300 songs, or 23 per day every day. Top selections (skewed by a rap-heavy video gaming playlist):

I figured over this past year, the numbers would drop considerably since I worked most of the day. Surprisingly, they actually increased: 8556 songs. Only a 2% increase, but still an increase. And the artists:

Scissor Sisters tops the list again and in #3 as well. Their margin of victory is much greater this year too. Interesting.

There's a much broader distribution of music -- I haven't concentrated on the same few songs as much. Also, I listen to Richard Cheese way, way too much.

Winamp on our old old computer kept track of shareware usage statistics. I had played more than 14,000 songs when we built the new one, which is 4600 a year from May '98 May '01. Let's assume an increase of 1,000 listens per year -- so up to 5,600 from '01-'02, 6,600 from '02-'03, 7600 from '03-'04, 8000 from '04-'05, which keeps pace with the current numbers. Adding those up gives these estimates:

-I have listened to 60,000 songs on my computer alone in the last nine years.
-That's four months straight of music playing from the computer speakers.
-Pick any date and time since May 1998, and there's a 4% chance I was listening to music on the computer.

Secret Cardinal Updates

2007-09-04T08:54:00.000-05:00

The Perseus Books website has a video interview with Tom Grace online. It does a great job superimposing relevant images on the screen to ground the discussion in the reality on which the book is based.

The Secret Cardinal was also named an Editor's Choice for the U.S. Catholic magazine's fall book reviews, an honor it shares with the latest Harry Potter book.

Sarah Taylor made my day

2007-08-29T21:36:00.000-05:00

My old landlord made the headlines again yesterday in this front page article in the Ann Arbor News. Basically, Dale Newman's houses were declared uninhabitable because of his criminal fraudulence. The good news is, I will be getting my money back after all.

I know this because Sarah, whose photograph appears at the top of the article, received my writ for garnishment last week. When she figured out what it was, she figured the new owner of the property would be able to help me with my situation.

I'd like to paste the full text of the article here, since MLive is a decrepit system that will take it offline in 14 days or so.

Student apartment houses shut down by city
Posted by Staff Reporter David Gershman August 28, 2007 08:55AM

Ann Arbor officials have declared five apartment houses in predominantly student neighborhoods to be uninhabitable, forcing University of Michigan students like Sarah Taylor to look for new places to live just as the fall term is about to begin.

"It's horrible," said Taylor, 26, an out-of-state student entering a graduate program at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. "It's move-in weekend. There's nothing available. I'm looking at some really dingy apartments around town.

"The reason I moved to Ann Arbor two months ago was exactly to avoid moving this weekend."

Late last week, city officials posted notices on the front doors of five houses - on Lawrence, State, Division and Brown streets - stating that all or a portion of them are uninhabitable because they lack electricity or natural gas, or both.

Three of the houses - 418 and 504 Lawrence St. and 419 N. State St. - are owned by John and Mary Schwartz of Williamston, Mich. The couple bought the houses from Dale Newman of Ann Arbor - two of them last September and the third in July. They agreed Newman would manage each property for a year.

The other two houses are also managed by Newman, a city official said.

On Friday, DTE Energy shut off electricity to two of Schwartz's houses and natural gas to all three because bills were unpaid. Crews also found utility meters had been tampered with, said Scott Simons, a DTE spokesman.

"They were disconnected for non-payment and/or unauthorized use, which means meter-tampering," Simons said. "You can tamper with a meter in a way that it doesn't register usage."

Simons said the amount owed is "significant." He said the name on the utility bills was transferred from Newman to Schwartz in July.

Schwartz said he didn't know there were outstanding bills until Friday, and is trying to get utility service restored quickly. He said he spoke to tenants who are staying with parents who live nearby. He said he will put up any tenant who needs a place to stay in a motel until the apartments can be reoccupied.

"I was not managing these (houses), but I will be," said Schwartz, who is a professor at Michigan State University and also owns rental property in East Lansing
.
Newman said he managed Schwartz's units. "Apparently I didn't do it very well," he said. He said he did not know why utilities were shut off.

"I don't know everything because it's impossible to micro-manage everything," he said. "I just hire people that I consider competent to do their jobs. When it gets down to problems, I have to deal with the problems, which is what I'm doing now."

Jayne Miller, the city's Community Services Area Administrator, said the other two posted houses that are not owned by the Schwartzes are on Brown Street and South Division Street. Newman also manages those houses, said Miller, who couldn't provide more information.

It's unclear how many tenants lived in the five houses. The houses have mailboxes for multiple people. So far, U-M officials in campus housing and student legal affairs are assisting three students, but they expect to hear from more.

"We're going to help the students find alternative housing," said Linda Hancock Green, director of communications and public relations at the U-M Division of Student Affairs. "The university has a limited number of emergency apartments, but at this point in time they're all full. So if these three students turn into 12 students we'll be looking for other places for them to stay."

Newman said many of the apartments are vacant this time of the year. Tenants are allowed to keep their belongings in the apartments, and can enter them, he said. But they cannot sleep in them, he said.

This was the second time DTE shut off the utilities to Schwartz's houses, Simons said. It also had happened in July, he said.

Taylor said electricity was restored quickly in July to the house at 418 Lawrence St., but natural gas wasn't restored to all of the apartments for about a week. While tenants in the house were waiting for the service, Taylor said, they took turns showering and cooking in one apartment that was vacant. Its door didn't lock, she said.

"It was a pretty huge inconvenience having to coordinate your schedule with a whole bunch of people, having a unit that didn't lock," said Taylor. "It wasn't very safe. Anybody could go in there at any time."

Taylor's basement apartment, which she shares with her boyfriend, costs $680 a month, including utilities.

Wow. It's one thing to be a shady landlord who skirts around security deposits; when you start crossing wires to steal electricity from the house next door and creating a slow gas leak, you reach a new low.

I also couldn't believe the report got ahold of Dale on the phone!

Sarah was as pissed as I am on the phone, and understandably so. She figured since she wasn't writing rent to Christine Dong anymore, my garnishment notice would do her no good. However she also knew that John Schwartz had been trying to make amends around town for people affected by Dale's gross incompetence. She gave me Mr. Schwartz's contact information. I called him and he said he was willing to pay us the amount originally owed (not the doubled amount) plus my court costs. I will gladly take this and be done.

So it sounds like the saga will be over, even though I had to rely on the good faith of two people and not the court system or the landlords for it to work out.

UT Stats

2007-08-26T23:14:00.001-05:00

Unreal Tournament has logged two sets of stats for me -- the 65-hour set from the first installation (which I once estimated to be less than 1/4 of all the matches I played). Then the second set from after I reinstalled the game this winter. Though we only have two data points to look at, they reveal some interesting trends.

Interesting things at first glance - the extrapolated score per hour and my time to live are almost exactly the same. However, directly comparing the two suggests a trend that I'm becoming a more defensive player. Why do I think this?

-Flag kills per match are up almost 50%. This is just preying on people who leave the base with my flag.

-Flag saves are also up 40% per match. This correlates strongly with killing the flag carrier.

-Score per hour is down 10%, while frags per hour remains almost exactly the same. This means fewer of my points come from flag captures.

-Kills are up 35% and captures are down 30% per game. If I'm capping I don't care about fragging, just escaping. More kills means more time in the home base.

-Drops are down 11%. I infer that when I do touch the flag, I'm better at capturing it now.

-Strikingly, my win-loss record has become terrible: 198-149 (57%) to 71-89 (44%). Again, these could be completely skewed by the servers I join (perhaps the stats-logging servers have higher pings where I lose more). I know that some of it is due to me switching to the losing side more often now; I seek out the challenges more often. Also, while there have been several 100-point games which never showed up on the stats servers, there may be just as many low-scoring games that haven't shown up that I didn't care to check for.

In conclusion, I'm becoming a more defensive player, but the W/L trend makes it seem like it's not working. On the other hand, I may be a more efficient player on offense; that is, when I do try to cap I'm more successful. Basically I just need UT3 to come out so I can stop overanalyzing this three-year-old game.

Updates

2007-08-20T09:31:00.001-05:00

It's been a very busy week. Let's back up to Saturday the 11th. That's when Bryan and Jessie got married, and the whole day was wonderful. Food, weather, the ceremony itself, everything was excellent, everyone looked great; I don't think it could've gone better unless we were allowed to un-tuck our shirts. I got a little sweaty in the direct sun, but that was just me, and we soon moved to the shade under the tents. Pictures from my mom's and Danielle's cameras are here, and the word is spreading on how to add albums there. This was one of my favorites.

Then I returned to Ann Arbor for my last week of work, tying up loose ends on projects all week. The staff gave me a nice card with gift certificate to Border's. It would appear they genuinely liked working with me, and I'll be hard pressed to find a work environment as enjoyable as that one was.

Also last week I finished my work on the MMB video project. After spending about 15 hours in the fishbowl labs last week editing it, I discovered that iDVD needs almost 10 uninterrupted hours to encode all the video and audio for it. Unfortunately that project is now on the back burner until I find a friend with a mac who'll let me borrow it for a full day... or until I get a job and Danielle buys a macbook? That would be nice too.

Friday and Saturday I packed up all my stuff and moved out to Grand Rapids. I bought a desk in Ypsi on Saturday morning that I saw on Craigslist. It was $20 and gets the job done. I didn't think I had that much stuff, yet we still filled my car and an Astro van. It didn't take too long to unload, and I've mostly settled in. I still like the apartment very much.

Comcast internet here, of course, sucks. Web browsing is spotty and inconsistent, but games and bittorrent are blazing fast. This means it's frustrating enough to drive me crazy, but fast enough where it matters that I can't do anything about it. As soon as I get a job, we're getting DSL.

Off to the grocery store. Serious, mission-critical job hunting begins today too. Tomorrow I return to Kalamazoo for three doctors appointments and to claim my dresser. Apparently "in suitcases in the middle of the floor" is not an acceptable place to put my clothes.

Onward and upward

2007-08-18T07:57:00.001-05:00

Signing off from Ann Arbor. It's been a blast.

Bioshock

2007-08-09T09:34:00.000-05:00

Bioshock has gone gold. This is the first highly-anticipated game that I've been waiting to drop this fall (the others in no particular order: UT3, Crysis, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Spore, and maybe Gears of War).

It comes out on August 21st, which is of course the day I have three doctors appointments scheduled in Kalamazoo. Maybe I can pick it up on my way home as a reward for a hopefully clean bill of health.