| |||||||||||
|
Copyright © 2002 - 2011 |
Old Entries...and it's hotter than usual. - September 4th, 2007 He awoke in the night, a thin layer of prickling sweat covering him like a coat of grey primer on a mismatched car door. It had been a rather warm season, and the summer seemed damned to go out with one final sweltering blast from Hell's inferno into the city of San Diego. Gulping the last of the tepid water from a bottle on his nightstand he lapsed back in his hammock with a sigh and longed for the civilized climate of Southwest Texas, with its air conditioned homes and buildings... didn't these idiots know they lived in the desert? This was what caused strife in the world, the ultimate source of all war. Insufferable heat. Evil. Quidquid Latet - August 1st, 2007 The radical shift has completed. The core has re-solidified, osmium and graphite. The weapon is my mind. ... I attended ComicCon, and talked to the Pure Pwnage guys, Jarett told me that he lost several years to EverQuest, and played a wizard... he spent a lot of time on Graffe's. I will be attending DefCon and SOE Fan Faire simultaneously the next few days, it should be fun. The Radical Shift - August 13th, 2006 A radical shift seems to be occuring... Over a week now, and I am still unsure as to how and when it will complete. A by-product of being highly internalized, I sometimes develop internal dialog components that are somewhat cryptic externally... I should abstain from nonsense such as this until the shift has completed. SOE, EverQuest, San Diego - July 8th, 2006 I neglected to mention in my last log, a reason for the lack of any posts for quite some time... For quite some time, I had reduced my direct human interaction to a very minimal amount... I was able to go days, and sometimes weeks without having to communicate with anyone... I guess that this log is really a form of communication, and due to my mindset, was neglected as well. I have started a new job with SOE working on EverQuest as a "Game Designer", in charge of itemization. It is always nice to see complex plans execute successfully... I was one of over a hundred applicants, which enhances my satisfaction with the outcome. I was also fortunate to have several overly favorable outcomes in other related facets of my planning; as well, I've learned that my estimations of unknowns were very accurate. For the moment, I'm enjoying my new environment, and in full absorption mode in preparation for future planning. I sense that a radical shift will occur at some point, soon, and I need to prepare. Puzzles and Problems - June 27th, 2006 Well, for the third year I've participated in the online Google U.S. Puzzle Championship Contest. Solving puzzles and problems is something I enjoy, although the problems for the aforementioned contest tend to not be that complex (hence the time constraint). I completed the Da Vinci Code Quest, also hosted by google, which was enjoyable, but unfortunately I wasn't one of the 10,000 or so that won a cryptix. The high iq society took down their "Test for Exceptional Intelligence", which made me quite sad, since I've only managed to solve 13 of the 25 questions so far, and the I have no way to verify my answers now, although I did cache all the problems off of the site. I hope at some point they put the test back up... although I noticed they put up a "2006 World's Smartest Person Contest", which looks like it has some interesting problems to solve... I'm sure the bottom half of the top two percent of the world's smartest people will be busy at that for the next few months. I like to play various different puzzle type flash games that spawn around the Internet, and I was really fascinated by the Grow Cube game I stumbled upon recently... All of these various factors have motivated me to start thinking of creating my own puzzle... I will probably spend several months of random thinking time attempting to devise something sufficiently clever. (321 into the future, the 13th, this is not a riddle, what does it all mean? I know currently, I don't know now, will I know in the future?) Spinning Psy-Trance at the Pit - October 29th, 2004 I did some DJing at the UBC Campus Pub last night, The Pit... CiTR was doing it's weekly night of music, and the theme was electronica, so I thought I'd play some psy for the local heathens, most of whom don't appreciate that sort of thing. Turned out Syd, who does the Synaptic Sandwich show, was on after me, and we laid our standing feud to rest... brought on by the fact that someone deleted all my archived shows from the control room computer a few weeks ago, before I could transfer them off. Of course, I had to use some forensic skills to determine who had actually deleted them... fortunately, I was able to recover most of the archives that had been erased. For those curious about the Honey / Flour / Safeway Card situation, I'm still not sure who the guilty party is... although, I did manage to discover that the $25 Safeway Card was unrelated, as it turns out, I won the Thunderbird Residence Association drawing a month or so back, done during one of the regularly scheduled BBQs they like to have. Paintballing - October 25th, 2004 Well, my bruises from paintballing last weekend are pretty much gone. Played for several hours with the Botha brothers, and a bunch of guys from Relic at a decent field in Tsawassen. I had a pretty good record for most of the games, got really smoked at the end of the "hold the fort" scenario... down to under 2 minutes before the attackers were out of time, and some guy who had worked his way all the way around to the far side, hit me in the side from about 20 feet away... I got some payback with 3 or 4 kills the next match when we attacked. All hail flanking r38. Strange Goings On - October 6th, 2004 Yes indeed, I have a set of mysteries on my hand... I will need to put my sleuthing skills to work, and see if I am able to turn anything up. Sometime this weekend, someone took my jug of honey, and decided to pour it into my bag of flour. wtf? you make be asking yourself, which is pretty much the same reaction I had. It boggles my mind, to think, would anyone have malicious feelings towards me? The most likely suspects are of course, my 3 quad-mates. Fred, my immediate neighbor is a quiet guy, and plans to move out this Friday... he has complained in the past, that I was noisy, but now claims that the other two quad-mates are too noisy, but he has no problem with me... could he secretly despise me, but be afraid to confront me directly, as he may believe that I could be his TA next term... Robby and Joey, mutual friends, would have no reason I can think of, to secretly attack me... however, they do on occasion, enjoy falling into drunken stupors... in an intoxicated state, they may have indulged themselves in a bit of mischievous fun, seems a bit unlikely. Perhaps a random stranger wandered in, decided to perform this cruel act, then wandered out... it defies logic. Sadly, I am left with the last possible conclusion that I must be going insane. I have woken up feeling overly tired several days, over the course of the last few weeks. Could I have done it myself? How then, can I explain the mysterious $25 Safeway gift card, hand delivered to my Thunderbird mail box in the past few days... Could it be a form of penance, or a completely unrelated incident... Did the honey pouring perpetrator feel remorse, or have I garnered a secret admirer? Perhaps, the residence advisers, tiring of my endless calls for more residence events featuring free food, decided to pay homage to me with the gift card... I redeemed the card yesterday, and consulted with the check out girl. Unfortunately, she was unable to give me any useful information as to who purchased the card, but she did suggest that I may have a stalker who believes that I am too thin. I will investigate further. Voting Electronically - September 12th, 2004 Last Thursday I went to Koerner's Pub with Dr. Beznosov, and some of the students from EECE 412. We had a good time, and ended up talking about e-voting for quite some time. During the course of the discussion, we came up with a set of requirements that traditional voting does not have, but would be quite nice if implemented in a new electronic system. Some data could be hidden from the public, but the main objective is the ability to verify your vote, and preserve the integrity of data... the tally system can remain private, it could of course be corrupted, but as long as the data remains uncorrupted, the tally system could be challenged. None of us have studied e-voting in depth, but it was an interesting discussion. Field Day Fun - June 27th, 2004 Had some fun today with the UBC ARS for the HAM field day... helped set up an antenna on the roof of the club house, and hung out with the other HAMs. They are pretty cool guys, and are quite knowledgeable. One of the guys is an Industry Canada tester, so I took my 5 WPM Morse Code and Advanced Qualification exams, and passed both. I'm now licensed to operate any amateur radio equipment on any amateur frequency. .... .- .. .-.. - --- - .... . -.- .. -. --. --..-- -... .- -... -.-- .-.-.- Bus Fight - April 13th, 2004 So, I was riding along on the bus today... just as the 99 pulls out of the UBC bus loop, a girl sits down next to me, facing towards an Iranian guy on the opposite side... As I'm browsing the paper I just happened to have with me, she starts into some sort of tirade, which makes no sense whatsoever... Of course, I enjoy watching a good fight, so I peer over my paper to see what's up. Unfortunately, I can't make heads or tails of the argument, other than it has something to do with the guy being an ass, or something with regards to their study group. Well, the argument is just so good, that I miss my stop and stay on the bus to see how it turns out... of course, I'm smirking the entire time, along with several other passengers, until finally some old guy interrupts them, and gives them a lecture on how the bus is a public place, and they should go off somewhere in private if they want to fight. They shut up, but I can't help letting them know how much I enjoyed their little spat, and they graciously let me know they are grateful they could provide me with entertainment. Then I get off the bus. Breakin, Poppin, and Lockin - March 24th, 2004 Dance Horizons had the year end show tonight, and I have to say the breaking class (3 b-boys and 7 b-girls) pretty much rocked the whole show. It didn't hurt that the hardcore breakers followed us up with some free style moves, that finished off the show over the top. After the show, we watched the video Cole shot, and I have to say we looked even better than I imagined. Everyone was pretty much on beat, and my solo moves were much faster and smoother than I expected. Now, I need to work on my turtle and windmill moves some more, until I get them down. We Were Robbed - February 9th, 2004 Yep, someone came in the front door between 6 and 7 PM tonight and swiped Ollie's PS2 Games, etc. There were kind enough to leave behind his remote as a memento. I guess we should start locking the front door, but there isn't really anything else left that is worth stealing. I've started to show my skills during the weekly gaming sessions with the sci fi/war gamers. Now that I've got a decent understanding of the game play and strategies for the various games, it's not too hard to use statistical analysis to improve my odds. Bouncing, Taking Money, Whatever - November 17th, 2003 So I volunteered to help out with the CiTR Under The Sea Dance, and ended up taking money from people for cover, and stamping their hands for about 4 hours, it was pretty fun, and I did some dancing... Merek was the last DJ of the night, so I did some break dancing before the bouncers shut down the party at 11PM, they party hardcore up here in Canada, eh? I drifted through the Sinkha / Hyleyn CD, it was very nice, kind of gave me that Tom Swift feeling, the art was incredible, and I'm looking forward to seeing some more in that series. Victor Alpha Seven Echo Tango - November 9th, 2003 Well, last Sunday I passed my Amateur Radio Basic Qualification Exam, so I am licensed to transmit radio signals over 30MHz. The three call signs I asked for are VA7ET, VA7UFO, and VA7USA, hopefully I will get VA7ET. I'm working on the 5 wpm morse code now, I should be able to impress someone with that someday, whoop, and I can go below 30MHz. Deployment of the playsheet site for CiTR is working out well too, had a weird bug or two, but caught them before they could spread... Propagating the digital age to every nook and cranny. Why I Rock At CiTR - September 28th, 2003 Well, it seems like I'm becoming more popular at CiTR, these days... I was the only DJ to actually do a show promo a few months ago, which resulted in free membership this year. yep. So, a few weeks ago Nardwar was talking about how great it would be if all the shows were recorded, so he ended up buying a CD burner which I installed in the DJ booth, I then networked the logger so DJs can copy their shows and burn them. hooray. Just before I installed the CD Burner, the power supply went bad, which I fixed almost instantaneously... Then Lydia let me know that the fax machine wasn't working, after unscrewing a few things, and browsing through the manual, I managed to get it working again... And just so I would rock even more, I wrote a nice little bit of php/mysql code that tracks all show playlists, which will probably save Bryce, or at least his minions, tons of time every month, plus force everyone even further into the digital age... Infinite Loop Bug Finally Ends - July 28th, 2003 Well, last week I bought a new motherboard and finally ended the infinite loop bug that has been plaguing me for almost two years, causing me to randomly blue screen in any 3D application. To celebrate the fact that I've replaced every single component at least once, except for my CPU, I took my PC with Kris to Necrowombicon at the Hilton, and spent some time tearing things up on the weekend LAN they had set up there. Kris showed off a beta version of Homeworld to people, and some fans (Fatrick) were drooling over it. Young School Style - June 13th, 2003 So yesterday, I was the surprise performer at a kindergarten - 3rd grade school talent show. Doris, one of the clerks at the EECE department asked me if I would do some breakdancing for the kids, so I went down in the morning and wandered around until I found the school. At first I was nervous, but since I performed at the end of the show I had the chance to watch the kids do their little dances, etc. and I realized I was so much better than them, I RULE! Eheheheh... (just kidding) I don't know how these things always happen to me, but the kids liked it and they all wanted to talk to me after the show, some of them asked me for my autograph... I remember when I was that age an autograph was a punch in the face, so I didn't give them one. Before the show the teachers were eating breakfast in the teacher's lounge and had fortune cookies, mine said 'Your mentality is alert, practical and analitical'... one of the teachers was interested in my fortune, so I read it to her... then she opened her cookie and it didn't have a fortune, she felt bad and said she didn't have a future... I was going to tell her that it meant she could make her own fortune, but decided it wasn't a very practical thing to say, so I didn't. Jeff asked me over for dinner and his girlfriend Christine cooked some kind of spicy chicken peanut curry with rice, it was good. I recognized her from a UBC 'blind date' video I found on resnet, so I played it off my share so we could watch it and laugh. Another Death Threat - June 11th, 2003 On air the yesterday, other Keith said Bush should be shot, which prompted a caller to warn us against threatening a political leader... So other Keith said he was not endorsing violence, blah blah... then went on a rant. Bush has always seemed like a nice enough fellow, so I expressed that opinion despite the obvious dangers involved... Other Keith said he should stab me in the eye, and the phone rang immediately... "I want to stab you too! It wasn't a really great threat, but I haven't had one in a while, probably since Las Vegas a year or two ago. Three Section Staff... Completed! - June 5th, 2003 Spent a few hours yesterday working on my three section staff and got it finished... I bent some thick wire to clamp down on the ends of the sections. I didn't have any vice grips to completely crimp them closed, so I improvised one by opening two desk slipping the sections in, then pushing them closed to clamp the wires closed. Moving for Painters - June 2nd, 2003 Well, today I start my ulog, which is like a blog, only unoriginal instead of boring. Got up early and went down to 1122 to help Victor's female classmates move all their furniture into the center of the room. Three of them are MBA students, and the other one is CS. Guess which one had already moved all of her stuff to the center of the room.. of course, the CS major. The painters showed up just as we were finishing, and remembered us from our quad on Thursday. They were so happy to see us again, and one of them even gave me a twonie for being such a great guy. These girls were only going to be gone for 3 days, but you should have seen all the luggage they took with them, it took 6 of us two trips to carry it all. We of course laughed and joked about it, as did the painters, but since we were helping them, the girls could only laugh too. |