ITzerokewl's Blog

VMWorld Wrap-up

2010-09-02T15:02:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I said I would try and do a recap at the end of each day, and it showed so much promise at the end of the first day, but then I was out late at events, or I was out walking around looking at the crazies, or something else seemed to take my attention away from posting here, so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it!

The last 4 days have been pretty crazy and I’ve gotten a TON of information from the vendors and the presenters here at VMWorld. I will have to say, they put on a heck of a show overall. The talks do get a bit preachy about the glories of VMWare and how much Hyper-V sucks (according to all the VMWare employees at least,) but the other resellers, such as Dell, HP, etc, seem to have embraced all the major virtualization players (VMWare, Hyper-V, and Citrix) and are more than happy to discuss the pros and cons of each one in purely an academic sense with very little bias towards one or the other.

Since the last time I posted a large number of the sessions I have attended have been geared more towards the future of virtualization and what we as an IT community can do in order to move our environments towards that future. It has been nice to see what’s out there currently in the market, and what’s going to be out there in the near future and it has greatly helped me come up with ideas of what I can do to help Blue Ridge move towards the future and give my users the best in cutting edge technology.

While most of the days have been filled with session, after session, and lab, after lab, there has been downtime and time to talk with IT professionals and see how other people are using the technology in their environments, of course, there’s also time to party!

Last night was a great time at the VMWorld Party. The cover band that opened for INXS was really good. They played pretty much everything ranging from The Who to Salt ‘n Pepper. Sadly I did not get to see INXS because I was at the ARCADE!!!! Yes, VMWorld bought out an entire Arcade for us geeks to play in for a whole night for free! Not only were all the games free, but they also had free b33r! I ended up spending the better part of the night there, but I had a great time and enjoyed meeting a number of other attendees and racing/fighting against them in various games. I will have to admit though, this morning was a little rough (for myself along with a number of people I’ve spoken to today.) But all-in-all it was a great time last night and nice accent mark on a great week.

Today has been much of the same as the previous days, more sessions, more labs. I went down to the exhibit hall for a bit, but it looked like a few of the vendors had already given up and their booths were empty. The ones that still had some people around it had staff that looked pretty worn down, you would be too if you had to be happy and excited for 4 solid days. As with everything else at this convention, I’d have to give all the exhibition staff an A+ for effort, even though the number of booth babes was a bit appalling at times, oh yeah, and I didn’t win an iPad *grumble, grumble*

Well, I have to admit, my first couple of days here were a bit of culture shock (there really are a large number of actually crazy people here in San Francisco) but in the end, they just become part of the background noise that makes up this town. I do wish I would have had a bit more time to do some sight-seeing and check out Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Warf and the like, but for now, I’ll just have to be content with the small piece I did get to see, hey, I did get some Cheescake Factory for dinner one night so it really can’t be all bad! Hope you all enjoyed reading my various Facebook, Twitter, and Blog posts, I’ll be back to gaming and “normal” IT life when I get back home tomorrow morning!

Day 2 pt. 2

2010-08-31T09:46:00.001-07:00

Sorry about the short post last night, I was REALLY tired. I think I’m finally adjusted to West Coast time and I even woke-up at a decent hour, felt pretty good.

Ok, time for the recap!

Yesterday was focused mostly on virtualization and current technologies. Since today VMWare is having a huge keynote and unveiling their newest and hottest stuff, yesterday ended up being a good recap of the virtualization world as we know it today.

My first session was into to Virtualization and VMWare cheerleading aside, it was a pretty good intro into exactly what Virtualization is and how many companies today are using it. I kind of feel like a bit of a spy since we use Hyper-V in our environment, but it is nice to see what else is out there.

The next session was more focused on the storage aspect of Virtualization and what pains and problems you can run into in that process. Again, lots of good info, with some suggestions of various monitoring tools currently available on the market to help IT departments manage their virtual environment. The other big talking point here was VM Sprawl vs. VM stall, while no one on the panel could give a good definition of what VM stall is (according to the panel this is a term created just for this session.) VM Sprawl is a very real issue in the IT world. The idea behind VM sprawl is that an IT department starts small with only one or two VM’s and then one day they look down and they have 500 VM’s and no real idea where they all came from or how they all got there. This can cause a massive strain on resources, both on the IT staff and on the hardware. For me this drove a very good point home, especially in our environment where we have 3 virtual host servers and the only tool we have to manage them is the Hyper-V management tool which is limited at best. This is something I fully plan on looking into once I get home.

The final session of the day was the first future looking session I attended and it showed off a number of the features that are being talked about in today’s keynote. The session was called Virtual Desktop Cloud: The future vision of End-User Computing. A lot of this hit very close to home for me since I could see many of my users wanting to bring many of these technologies into our environment. The main point behind this was moving away from the old IT thoughts of one workstation per user with a corporate image loaded on it and when a user goes home they leave that workstation with them. In today’s world, everyone wants smartphones, iPads, laptops, tablets, etc. and they want to be able to access their work from their personal devices. The concept of employee BYOPC was introduced, and it had some merit. With a lot of the current and new VDI technology out there it’s becoming possible for users to run just on thin clients, tablets, smartphones, etc. while a majority of their data and storage is done in the cloud. Basically the way VMWare views the future of end-user computing is not so much more powerful desktops and laptops for users, instead desktop computing is done in the cloud, while the end-user is getting less and less powerful systems, but being able to do the same amount work and have access to the exact same environment no matter what device they are connecting with or where they are. Truly mobile computing!

So yeah, that about sums up day one sessions. Like I said, lots of good info with plenty of VMWare cheerleading mixed in :P

Time to get ready for Day 2 of VMWorld, should have recap up this evening since there are no evening events scheduled tonight.

Day 2 wrap-up (kind of)

2010-08-30T21:40:00.001-07:00

I have a great, long, very detailed blog post in mind, but the day got away from me and I’m really tired, so there’s not going to be much of a post tonight…sorry.

The conference is awesome, learned a lot of great information today and had some really good discussions with a few of the vendors in the exhibition hall (more on this later.)

I’m off to bed, more later on!

Day 2 in San Fran

2010-08-30T07:32:00.001-07:00

So I woke up this morning about 3:30am since I feel asleep about 7pm last night due to pure exhaustion, so I was treated to something quite nice, the sunrise in San Francisco. While you really can’t see the sun proper, it is kind of nice to see the sky getting slowly brighter and brighter, just a nice start to the morning.

Also found a Starbucks pretty close to the hotel so I went there this morning to grab a coffee and I ended up getting a Chocolate Croissant, so yummy!

Today is the first day of VMWorld 2010, and it promises to be pretty packed! They just released the mobile app to help you keep track of your schedule and other events you want to attend which is a very nice touch, it’s a great app too, totally web based so they didn’t have to worry about going the sometimes long and always confusing apple approval process for all us Geeks that have iPhones.

Ok, that’s about it for the morning, I should have more this afternoon!

Arrived in San Francisco

2010-08-29T18:08:00.001-07:00

So I’ve arrived at my hotel and am all checked in and now settled in. It’s about a 1 block and a half from from the VMWorld convention, so it’s a nice short walk.

The best thing so far, is that during check-in, after we got our badges (which weighs about 3 pounds around my neck), we got had to go downstairs to get our materials, when you first got in line there were people standing there handing out water and soda, and then as you went through the line, they were handing out beer, that’s right, a professional convention was handing out beer…awesome sauce!

When we finally got into the room, we got a bunch of VMWorld2010/VMWare swag (backpack, t-shirt, water bottle, etc.) All nice stuff!

While I was there I managed to steal a quick glimpse into the exhibition hall and all I saw was a massive Dell sign, I felt right at home!

Well, it’s about 6pm local time so I think this is going to be it for me today, I’ll try and post a few more posts while I’m here, but we’ll see!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2010-08-29T02:53:00.001-07:00

That’s right, I said it! I’m currently sitting at the Richmond Airport waiting on my 7am(!) flight to Boston and then a further flight to San Francisco.

Now why in the world would I have woken up at 3am to drag my happy butt to Richmond to get a flight to San Francisco…let’s see…oh yeah, it’s VMWorld!!!! For those who don’t know what VMWorld is, check This Out. Basically if you’re into Virtualization this is the place to be. All the major players from the Virtualization world will be there, including, Dell, VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix, HP, etc. The convention runs Monday through Thursday and each day is packed with tons of talks and labs and hands-on experiences of the newest and hottest VM Technology out there…excuse me while I wipe the drool from my mouth!

Most of the convention is centered around VMWare and their line of products, which my company doesn’t really use, opting instead for Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology. The main point to me going to this event is to learn the ideas and theories behind implementation of some of the technology in a VMWare environment and then I get to go back to work and figure out how to implement the good parts in a Hyper-V environment. I think it will pretty intuitive honestly, since no matter how you brand it, it’s still Virtualization and the underlying theories and practices behind it is the same no matter what you use.

I’m really excited about this trip. Firstly, I’m going to San Francisco, which is a new place I haven’t been, there’s lots of great stuff to do and see I’m sure (how much of that I’ll get to do, is still in question.) Secondly, my hotel looks totally awesome too! Thirdly, it’s a week filled with nothing but Virtualization, which is going to be a fantastic thing! It’ll be a great combination of amazing hardware and really cool software, so basically the best parts of the IT world!

Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me, I’m sure I’ll write some more as I’m in San Francisco and I’ll see about maybe even posting a few pictures on here.

More later on!

StarCraft II

2010-07-27T17:02:00.001-07:00

The time has come, the release of StarCraft 2 is today and I was there at midnight to get my copy. As an aside, I was the first one to get out of GameStop with my spiffy new copy of StarCraft, kind of a fun feeling!

To say the build-up to this game has been huge is a gross understatement. Blizzard even had TV commercials for the game…TV Commercials…how many video games do you know have TV commercials announcing the release of a game? I guess it’s well deserved though, this game has been 11 years in the making so the hype for the game has been there for years. Anyway, enough about the build-up, on to my thoughts about the game. I will try my best to not have any spoiler content in here, but no promises!

The game, to say the least, is AWESOME! I’m about half way through the single player campaign at this point and it has been totally amazing! Most of the classic characters are there, Raynor, Kerrigan, Mengsk, the list goes on. The characters have moved on in their lives, but they are still all very recognizable and the voice acting at least very similar, if not the same, as the original. Once you get past the initial reintroduction of some of the main characters, this is mostly done with various cinematic cuts (that are beautiful), you move onto game play! For the sake of cutting out spoilers I won’t go into any specifics of the story, but suffice to say, I’m half-way through and can’t wait to get back to it!

So the game is awesome, it has a very familiar sense, as well as a sense of something different. I think a lot of the different feeling has a lot to do with the new units that have been introduced in the game. We got to see all the new units in action during the Beta, but to get the fully integrated sense that comes with a single player game is a great thing. It also has awesome graphics. The cinematic cut scenes, which they use in between almost every level, are very well done. All the scenes are animated so there’s no live action in the game, but like I said, they look very real!

Overall, at this point, I have give the game a 5 out of 5. I haven’t really messed with the multi-player yet (even though I played it a ton during Beta) so I really don’t expect much different there. If it is the same, the overall score of the game will not affected at all since I had a great time with the Beta.

Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me for now. As I get deeper into the game I’ll post some more thoughts and I’ll see if I can get some multi-player games posted for you all to watch!

Another Day another power outage

2010-07-02T19:59:00.001-07:00

Here it is again, a weekend about to being and my phone explodes with alerts…

”Warning” it says

“APC02 has switched to battery backup”

“OK”, I say, “this must just be a quick power blink, no big deal”

Another text message “Warning” it reads

“APC01 has switched to battery backup”

“AH HELL” I say. “Maybe my boss is testing something?”

After a quick call to the boss it becomes very clear that in fact the power has gone out at our building once again. As an aside, the power went out last week too due to a massive storm that ripped through central Virginia and only left pain and destruction in it’s path. So I turn my car around and head back to the office, knowing full-well that when I get back there all of servers will have been hard powered down due to no one being there to turn them off and the UPS’ only last for a couple of minutes at best. I get back to the office and I hear the tell tale sign of power being out that I learned last week, a generator working at full capacity for another company in our building. At this point I get the sinking feeling in my stomach and realize that my nice 3-day holiday weekend that I was so looking forward too, may not come to pass.

I head into the building and see only the emergency lights are turned on and when I get to our office I see all our lights out and the all-too familiar chirps of our users UPS’ telling me that the power to the office is out and people need to turn their computers off (mind you, most everyone has already gone home for the long weekend.) *sigh*

A couple of phone calls to the boss and to the power company and I discover that someone has hit an underground power line and the estimated return time for the power is 11pm (as I look at my clock now it’s 7:16 and I’ve already been here a while.) OK, so what do I do now. I now know an approximate time when the power will be back, so I’m mostly free, but I still need to be around just in case it comes back a bit earlier, so what to do? Hey, how about dinner in town! Great idea! So I’m sitting here, waiting for Amy to finish with all the pets and then head into town so we can go grab some dinner and then I’ll head back here in hopes of the power being back on so I can get all the servers reset. While resetting the servers, I’m also hopeful that due to the hard turning off of the SQL database, that it did not get corrupted. If this is the case, then we will have to rebuild the entire SQL database from backups, and there goes the holiday weekend straight down the crapper, and everyone always thought IT was a glorious job…

In the end I guess I really can’t complain too much. I’m just sitting here at my desk and while it is a bit warm, it’s not too bad and I get time to do things…like blog! Now only if I had a way to publish this……

Still alive

2010-06-11T16:12:00.001-07:00

So I couldn’t resist using the famous line from Portal…just too easy! As you could have guess from my lack of blogging recently, things have been pretty busy since I last wrote.

I’ve been having a great time with the StarCraft 2 Beta and have even managed to get a few friends involved and overall it’s been a great experience. The real SC2 is set to release on the 27th of July and you can bet whole countries *cough*Korea*cough* will shut-down for this release. I have to admit that I’m also really looking forward to the release, there are a number of things that are in the Beta but not functioning that look quite interesting. Of course the big part is going to be the taunted single-player campaign that will feature the Terran race. I’m hoping the single-player is at least as good if not better than the multi-player. I’ve played the Terran race during the Beta and there are number of really interesting new units (for all the races really, not just Terran, but since the first SC2 is all about Terran, that’s what I’m talking about.) With the addition of the large Thor unit, along with a number of smaller/cheaper units I think the Terran race is moving more towards a early game skirmish race, as opposed to the build-up to a nuke race that they were in Brood Wars. Also I’ve seen the Tanks have gotten a lot better, which I’m excited about as I love to use lots of Tanks to crush opposition!

The other thing I’ve noticed in playing against the Terran race, is the how ineffective the nuke has become. Back in Brood Wars, the nuke was something to fear, now the few times I have been hit with nukes, they have had little to no effect on my buildings or units. The worst I’ve seen them do is to take a few probes which does slow down the economy, but by that late in the game I really don’t think killing a few probes will bring my economy to a complete halt like it would in the early game.

Oh well, I think overall the new game will be fantastic and I’m really excited about getting my hands on it the night it’s released! As I play, I’m sure I’ll post more thoughts about SC2. That’ll be it for now, more later on!

PAX Thoughts

2010-04-11T16:50:00.001-07:00

So it’s been a couple of weeks since we got back from PAX and even after a couple of weeks, I have great memories of how fan it was! I think Wil Wheaton said it best in his keynote speech that PAX really is like home for the gamer community.

You could walk the halls at any point of the day or night and there would masses of people, some playing Magic, some playing DS, some would be standing in circles syncing their Pokewalkers (this happened more times than I can count.)

Overall the panels were great. I have heard a number of people complaining about not being able to get into the bigger/more popular panels but for a few of them I got in even shortly after they had started with no problems. As I mentioned I got the see the keynote, which was fantastic, then the Penny Arcade Q&A which the guys from Penny Arcade which was funny and interesting. The draw a sketch panel was REALLY fantastic (Amy even came to this one with me) and the final Q&A panel of the weekend on Sunday was fun and very emotional. If you don’t know what I mean check this out:

That’s right at the end of the video that Mike “Gabe” going down to give her a hug…it was really sweet a just a great moment, one of many throughout PAX.

Most of my time was spent at BYOC (bring your own computer.) I have to say this was AWESOME! There is a small fee beyond that of the normal PAX pass, but I have to say it’s totally worth it. NVIDIA and Intel with the help of lots of Enforcers did a great job running BYOC and all of the “low tech” competitions were also lots of fun.

I also spent a fair amount of time on Saturday in the Expo Hall with Amy. That was pretty cool. Alienware had their new M17X laptops with them and they all a custom portal map that had been created just for Alienware. Of course I had to play it, and it was lots of fun. The map actually used some of the new things that will be in Portal 2 (like reverse gravity) and then you did get cake at the end and as we all know, you just keep on trying until you run out of cake :) Another thing that I found interesting in the Expo Hall was a new game called Monday Night Combat. This game hasn’t been released yet (bummer) but I’m sure it will be a huge success based on what I saw. Basically the game has many of the aspects that make Team Fortress 2 such a playable game (different but balance classes being the most important.) I talked to the guys there for a bit and they are really excited about the game and they were even more excited about all the attention they were getting from the PAX crowd. I don’t currently have Xbox Live, but once this game is released I’m going to find it pretty hard to resist. Of course the standards were there, Bioware had a huge booth, 2K games also had a huge booth, but really it was the smaller developers that I found the most interesting and the most fun to talk to. All great people, and they are super passionate about their games too.

Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me, lots more to say about PAX and the games I got and how awesome they are, but I’ll save that for another post. More later on!

Heading to PAX East!

2010-03-25T04:09:00.001-07:00

The time has come, we’re currently sitting in the Richmond airport getting ready to board our plane to Boston for PAX East!

For those of you who haven’t been following, PAX East is a massive gaming convention put on by the guys from Penny Arcade. It regularly lists among one of the largest gaming conventions in the US. This year is unique though, for the first time they are brining PAX to the East Coast (hince the name PAX East.) Even though this is the first year in Boston the convention is totally sold out (has been for about a week or so) and they are expecting there to be about 20,000 people per day.

From what I’ve read on various forums it’s looking to be a show of Epic proportions, just think about NVIDIA with an 80 foot tall screen, playing Battlefield Bad Company 2…in 3D…yeah, that kind of epic! It’s going to be a great time though and a great chance to meet other gamers and see some great games.

Ok, I’m gonna cut this one short now, we should be boarding our plane shortly, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to update some more once we get to Boston.

Podcasts and Flickr

2010-03-04T07:33:00.001-08:00

So for those of you who haven’t been reading this blog, I do a fair amount of IT type work for the Charlottesville Toy Lift Charity. It’s a great group and I have tons of fun working with them. After last years Toy Lift I realized how the group was not taking advantage of all the social media outlets that exist in the world. While they do have a Facebook, Twitter, and Blog accounts, they are very rarely updated and besides me updating my Facebook account there wasn’t any social media coverage of the Toy Lift. It was after that I decided this had to change. I’ve seen social media do much for so many companies (my company included), so I’ve been trying to figure out how not only to ensure all of the social media pages that currently exist get updated on a regular basis, but I also want to start a podcast for the Toy Lift, with at least monthly updates and “behind the scenes” material on what goes into planning and getting the toy lift together.

This is where I’m stumped. I’ve done some research into setting up podcasts and seen various recommendations on what audio editing software to use but the one thing I haven’t really been able to find is how to get your podcast listed in the iTunes store. So it’s to the great and all knowing blogsphere I turn. Any information anyone can provide would be a great help!

As for the other part of of the title, Flickr, we have a large number of pictures from last-years Toy Lift and what I would like to do is have a page on our site that would basically pull X number of random pictures from the flickr feed and display them on our website. This way, each time a user refreshes their page, or comes back to view the page again, he/she will see a new set of pictures pulled from the correct Flickr gallery. For this one I’m not really sure it’s possible. I’ve only done a VERY small amount of research into this and the best thing I’ve seen is using a tool provided by Flickr that allows a slideshow on a 3rd party website. Honestly I’m not really tied to Flickr, I just gravitated towards it 1) it’s popular and 2) it’s free (free is always good.) So again, oh great and powerful blogsphere, if any of you have any knowledge about the above, please let me know…thanks!

On another, completely unrelated note, PAX East is this month and I’m getting SUPER excited about it! I got my trading cards a few weeks ago and they look awesome! Should be getting the PAX badges here in the next week or so and then we’ll be totally ready for the greatest gaming show on the East Coast.

Ok, I think that’s about it from me, more later on!

Tuesday night rantings

2010-02-16T18:06:00.001-08:00

I know, kind of a lame title, but wasn’t feeling really inspired when thinking up titles. Also, it’s Tuesday night, not really a super special night, nor particularly exciting.

The big news, in case you haven’t heard, is the Olympics have been on since Friday. I have to say, Vancouver has put on a heck of a show. Despite all the annoying TV types only talking about how the 4th pillar did not raise during the opening ceremonies and then the non-stop coverage of the tragic death of the Georgian Luger it’s been great! I guess that’s how the media rolls these days, they find one story and they’ll drive it into the ground. Oh well, at least the competitions have been good and as of right now the US is on top of the medal count and the US men’s and women’s team have both rocked their competition to advance into the next round and the US won it’s first medal every in the Alpine combined.

So I get it, kind of strange that the IT dork is even slightly interested in the Olympics, but it’s just something about them that I’ve always found really cool and fun. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no way the Olympics is going to cut into my gaming time, in fact, I had a great round of TF2 last night, getting lots more time in as a Medic recently and have been having some really good success, both on defense and offense.

Oh well, it’s getting late and Amy’s turned the Olympics on now so I think I’ll watch. More later on!

Snowed in again

2010-02-07T13:07:00.001-08:00

So here we are, snowed in again for the 3rd or 4th time this winter, starting to lose count. The damage this time was about a foot of snow, but the worst part was the ice. About 5” of the stuff, really made life and digging out tough. We did manage to dig out though and it feels nice to have a mostly clear driveway and it’s only Sunday afternoon. I will say one thing for the about 6 feet of snow we’ve gotten this winter, it has taught Amy and I a lot about how to clear a driveway and how to do it quickly and as easily as possible. We even helped out the road clearing guys buy pushing the ice off of our part of the road, and as a thank-you the snow plow guy didn’t push all the snow onto the driveway! I was very thankful for that one.

But life here goes on and we continue with our day-to-day lives. Counting down to PAX East at this point, something I’m SUPER stoked about. While there’s been no official announcements yet, there’s a fair amount of speculation as to the companies and the musical groups which will be there. Some of the music groups include MC Frontalot and Freezepop both are Nerdcore groups that are awesome! Of course many of the big gaming companies are shaping up to be there as well, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, NVIDIA, etc.

It should be an exciting time and the best part of the whole thing is that Amy and I will be with our good friends Anna and Aaron and it’s going to be in Boston which is a great city!

Besides PAX this week also marks the release of Bioshock 2!!! I have a feeling that will be a big time sink for me this week, but it’s looking like a great game and this time it has multiplayer, which will be great for PAX BYOC!

Ok, that’s gonna be it for now, more later on

Apple iPad pt. 2

2010-01-30T20:30:00.001-08:00

Normally I don't pass these things around because I find them super annoying, but I found this today on Slashdot(slashdot.org) and couldn't resist passing it along, enjoy!

Apple iPad

2010-01-30T17:00:00.001-08:00

So it’s been a few days since the iPad was introduced so I figured it was about time for me to weigh in on what will most likely be the “must have” present of Christmas 2010.

First off a pic of the new toy that left all Apple fanboys swimming in their own pools of drool:

I have to admit, it looks really cool. At only .5” thick and a 9.7” screen, it’s a pretty nice little tablet. If you look a little more closely though you see exactly what this is…it’s a big iPod touch. Yes it does have a better processor and they did revamp the iPhone/iPod touch OS a little more to add in the ability to read ebooks, which is pretty cool, but as the model stands right now, 90% of the functionality you get by shelling out the 500 bucks, which is the price for the base 16GB WiFi only model is the same you can get in a system that’s on the market today, only with a smaller screen. I guess everyone, myself included, was hoping for something more. Now I didn’t really think it was going to have phone functionality like some crazy people did, but I was at least hoping for a camera, be it a webcam or a regular camera, but nothing. While this is fairly disappointing, it also fits pretty well into the normal Apple marketing scheme. If you go back and look at the first iPhone, there was no camera and it was missing a number of features that were considered standard at the time. As the iPhone advanced through the 3G and now the 3GS Apple has added in features to quickly bring the iPhone up to one of the more modern phones on the market. I have a feeling this is the same approach Apple is taking with the iPad. If you are able to hold out, at least a year, most likely, there will be a better, more advanced iPad that will be offered up at MacWorld 2011.

I think at the end of the day, the iPad could be a pretty cool product. Basically Apple is taking a huge risk by introducing this product since it fits into its own category in between the smart phone and the modern laptop, which until now has been mostly filled with netbooks. Will the gamble pay off, no one can say for sure. From what I’ve heard from talking with various people, I think the iPad will do well for Apple, maybe not the first year out, but as Apple makes improvements I can see it becoming part of daily life.

Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me. Lots more to talk about, but hopefully I’ll get a second post up tomorrow.

MRI’s are a bit freaky

2010-01-07T16:22:00.001-08:00

Today has been a pretty interesting day. As you can guess from the title of this blog I had my first MRI today. It really wasn’t a bad experience at all. The MRI tech was really nice and the machine they put me in was pretty cool and my head got to stick out of the machine so I really didn’t feel trapped, which was a good thing.

Overall I’d have to say it was a great experience, it was a bit freaky because the machine was so massive and they do use some crazy strong magnets, I could actually feel the hair on my body shifting with the magnets, kind of nuts. I think the best of the thing was at the end, when I got a CD-R with all the MRI pictures that were taken of my lower back and spine, so I got to see all the different pictures for myself, pretty cool stuff!

Once I get some time, I’ll try and get some pictures off of the CD-R (they are in some odd format) and get them posted here.

The fun thing I got to do today was to head over to GameStop and put BioShock 2 on reserve!!!!

Anyway, that’s about it for now, more later on!

Beginning of a new year

2010-01-04T16:57:00.001-08:00

Here we are again, the beginning of another year. A year full of promise, full of hope, full of…meh, who cares, it’s another year of great video games and lots of fun IT stuff!

Since it seems everyone and their brother has created a “Best of 2009” list, here’s my list of the crazy cool stuff I’m looking forward to in 2010:

1) PAX East (my first PAX ever and going with great friends, couldn’t ask for more)

2) Bioshock 2 (the release date is set for February 9th, I better finish what I’m playing now so I can start playing when it’s released)

3) StarCraft II (I know, I know, SC will never come out and it’s going to be vaporware until we’re all old and gray, but I still hold hope that maybe one day it will be released)

4) PAX East (yes, I’m really that excited about it)

5) CFdesign 2011 (the software my company makes, it’s looking like it’s going to be great stuff and honestly, this company is a geeks dream come true)

6) Rammstein coming to America (I read a couple of different rumors about Rammstein bringing their 2010 tour to America, hopefully they’ll play in DC or even better, Richmond)

Now, back to that part where I was talking about what I’m currently playing. For Christmas my wife got me Assassin’s Creed, the original one for PC. I’d heard many good and bad things about it, but it was on Black Friday special at Best Buy so Amy decided to pick it up for me. It’s a fantastic game! I’ve been having lots of fun tracking down targets and moving in for the kill, it’s really cool. I’ve only got 3 of the 9 major kills done so I know I still have a long ways to go, and I do see how it could get pretty boring and repetitive, but right now, I think it’s great!

The rest of the holidays were pretty good for my wife and I. We got to see lots of family and lots and lots of friends. Had a really great time and it was really good to see many of those people who we normally don’t get to see that much during the year. It is nice however to be home again and getting back to a more normal work and life schedule.

Well, that’s going to be about it from me, Happy New Year to everyone out in the Blogsphere and I hope you all have a great 2010!

Snowbound day 2

2009-12-21T14:16:00.001-08:00

So today marks the second day of being totally snowed in. Yesterday we did manage to get the driveway mostly cleared off and get my car free, but this morning when I tried to go to work, we learned that the main road that goes from our house had been closed for the day so that abandoned cars could be cleared out!

This snow storm has been crazy. I think the final total was somewhere around 20 – 24 inches of the white stuff, which is more than anyone has seen around here in something like 20 years! At least we now have my car and Amy’s car dug out and we can get out of our driveway (it may take some effort, but at least we can get out.)

It has been nice though, Amy and I have gotten a number of chores done and we’re almost done with all of our Christmas cookies for family and friends! Now I have the issue of wrapping Amy’s presents…

I’ve never really been good at wrapping presents but this time of year just brings that whole issue to a head. Despite many offers of cash bribes for wrapping her own presents Amy has yet to accept the offer (sadly.) I soldier through it year after year though, I have gotten better than I was our first year, but my wrapping is, let’s say, expressive, I express all my rage at wrapping presents and put it into the wrapping itself, let’s just say I can keep 3M in business for a good long while with how much tape I use :)

Ok, one last thing; in my last post I mentioned the trip to PAX East at the end of March. What I failed to mention is that it won’t only be my wife and I on this trip, but also my friend Aaron and his wife Anna. Anna and Aaron have been friends for a long time and we try and get together quite often to hang-out, have dinner, and play video games. As I said before, it should be an awesome trip and I can’t think of two better people we’d rather spend the time with!

That’s it for now, more later on!

Snow and Cookies

2009-12-19T15:44:00.001-08:00

If you’ve been under a rock for the past 3 days, there’s a small snow storm currently centered over the Mid-Atlantic states and it’s dropping EPIC amounts of snow on the ground…it is in this area that my wife and I happen to live. At last measurement (a few hours ago) it was over 18” of the white stuff, and it’s still snowing pretty hard. I’m guessing by tomorrow morning we should have over 2 feet of snow!!! That’s just crazy!

On the plus side, Amy and I had a ton of social plans that have been, unluckily, cancelled due to weather, but this has given us time to take care of all the Christmas stuff we’ve been needing to do, so we’re sure we are ready for the holidays. It’s actually been kind of a stress relief to have the snow and allow us to get all this other stuff done.

One of the main things we needed to do was to make some Christmas cookies (yummy!) So far we are at 8+ dozen cookies. I add the plus in because we had just a few over that. Our biggest asset today in baking has been the addition of Amy’s Kitchen Aid stand mixer which I got her for her birthday. That thing is awesome when it comes to making cookies! Previously all of our cookies had been hand mixed, which when all the dry ingredients were added made mixing pretty hard, but with the mixer, just dump the dry ingredients in and it handles all the mixing no problem, it’s great fun. Tomorrow is another baking day for us and it’s going to be great fun, lots of good cookies planned, I can’t wait!

Oh yeah, one more thing that I don’t believe I have mentioned here is the fact that Amy and I are headed to PAX East this year in Boston! For those who don’t know PAX (or Penny Arcade Expo) was started by the two guys who run Penny Arcade (penny-arcade.com) which is an online web comic for gamers by gamers. The guys over at Penny Arcade are also known for the other major charity we support beside Toy Lift (toylift.org), known as Child's Play (childsplaycharity.org.) It’s a great charity to help get video games and video game systems for children’s hospitals so the kids who have to be there can have something fun to do while they are there. Any, I digress…

PAX has typically been a massive once a year gaming event in Seattle and it’s one of the largest gaming conventions the world over. In 2010 though PAX is breaking into two events, PAX Prime (which is the event in Seattle) and PAX East (which is the event in Boston.) So far from the forums that I’ve been reading, it looks like PAX east is shaping up to be tons of fun. There will be a BYOC (Bring your own computer) room so I’m sure I’ll be brining a laptop with me for a bit of gaming fun and enjoyment. Also there will be a table top gaming room, along with a hall full of every major, and I’m sure many smaller, video game vendors out there. Amy even has a Saturday pass so she can see what all the hype is about and also have some fun playing all the different games the various vendors will bring. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to post from PAX with some pictures or other fun things, but if you want to follow all the fun make sure to follow me on Twitter @itzerokewl. PAX East takes place near the end of March, so I’m sure I’ll post more as details come out about PAX.

Well, it’s still snowing but I think I’m going to curl up with a good book and read for a while, more later on.

Thursday evening rant

2009-12-09T16:01:00.001-08:00

So the title isn’t super original, oh well…that’s how it goes sometimes. Making pan seared pork chops with mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner tonight…yummy
!

It hasn’t been too long since my last blog, not a lot has really happened. The toy lift did happen though and it was a great success! It ended up being a great day (the warmest toy lift day on record) and we did well as far as money and toy collections went. Another bit of great news with the toy lift is that I got voted onto the board of advisors! I got listed as the IT advisor this year, we’ll see what happens next year. It was a ton of work for sure, but it was very rewarding on Saturday when I got the chance to deliver some of the toys to the schools where the parents of the kids would pick-up the toys over the next few days to get them wrapped and ready for Christmas! If this all sounds really alien to you go on and check out the website http://www.toylift.org it’s a great charity and a great bunch of people who run the event each year and I’m really excited about next year!

Speaking of the holidays, they’re just around the corner, can you believe it? It seems like just yesterday we were toasting in 2009 and now we’re getting ready to ring in 2010 in just a few short weeks, crazy times.

I’ll have to say, it’s been a pretty good 2009, lots of crazy experiences and lots of fun and I’m really looking forward to 2010, it seems to be holding a lot of promise already! The coolest part of 2010 so far is that Amy and I along with some friends will be going to PAX East (Penny Arcade). I can’t wait! We already have the hotel booked and I think we’re getting the flights to Boston booked in the next couple of days. It should be a great time in a great city and with great friends, what more could a guy ask for.

Ok, I think we’re going to pop in a movie now, more later on!

Catching Up

2009-11-29T17:59:00.000-08:00

So it's been over a month since I've posted anything here and lots of things have been going on, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and lay-out life, work, and general going-on's over the past month or so.

First was the vacation, freakin' awesome! Got the visit the Yuengling brewery and it was SO great. You really could at one point reach out and grab a bottle off the line. The tasting area was kind of lame, but it really didn't matter since the tour was so awesome! The rest of the trip was great too. Lancaster and the Dutch Country was really fun and educational, Hershey was a great place and we learned that Mr. Hershey (the guy that started Hershey) was WAY more than just a chocolate guy, he even has his own boarding school for at-risk youth! Gettysburg was also lots of fun. We went on a ghost tour the first night we were there, and it was pretty lame. I always thought ghost tours would be super cool, I was wrong. Oh well, we did the battlefield tour and that was a lot of fun and the museum was really cool too.

After the trip it's been pretty crazy at work. The release of Windows 7 has been a huge deal for us, but it's also been really good. I'm currently running Windows 7 on all of my systems at work (2 Desktops and a Laptop) and also running Windows 7 on my home Desktop, so far, it's great. It just feels better than Vista. I'm sure it's because of all the negative media that Vista received, but every time I booted into a Vista machine, it just felt really sluggish. This isn't to say that Vista is a totally crap OS. I used it for about a year, and overall, I have very few complaints about it. A few things I found annoying, but most of those things are an easy fix if you know how, in both Vista and Windows 7.

I guess that pretty much brings us up-to-date. Mostly been busting my butt at work. I did turn the big 3-0 on vacation and we had a great birthday party for me that weekend, that was tons of fun. I was kind of scared to turn 30, I mean, that's pretty old, but since I've turned 30, things have been going pretty well. I have a great job that I love, I just celebrated my two year anniversary at work, and have just been having a great time with life recently.

On the gaming front, WCG 2009 happened and, yet again, Korea dominated the tournament. I got a chance to watch a few of the replays for Broodwar and wow, now I know why Korea dominates the world...they're REALLY good. One American did make it out of the group stage, so that was pretty cool, but this guy trains in Korea so I'm not really sure if that counts one of the US or just one more for Korea. It has been announced that WCG 2010 will take place in California which is really awesome. I think I may try to qualify again this year. I'll need to do some serious play between now and then, but I think if I practice a lot and really stick with it, I may have a chance of making it past the qualifier stage :P

The big news this week though is the Toy Lift http://kidslift.org. I know I've talked about this a bit before, but it's one of those things that I'm pretty adamant about so I wanted to bring it up again. The event is taking place on December 4th (Friday), at the Fashion Square Mall in Charlottesville, VA. They are collecting toys and books for under-privileged children who may otherwise have nothing under the tree for Christmas. This will be my second year working with the Toy Lift and this year I'm the guy that will be coordinating all the people who will actually be going up into the bucket trucks we have which were donated by Virginia Power and Comcast. Toy Lift is a great charity and it's a great event for a great cause. Come on out Friday December 4th between 7am and 9pm and bring a toy to donate!

Ok, I think that's probably enough my rantings, more later on!

~C

Time for a vacation

2009-10-16T18:16:00.001-07:00

That’s right, it’s time for the IT guy to finally unplug for a couple of days and take a trip with the wife. This year, we’ve decided to take a trip to Pennsylvania. It should be a great trip, here’s how it shapes up:

We’re leaving early morning Sunday and heading to Lancaster, PA for a couple days of shopping in the Lancaster Outlets and to check out the Amish country. After that it’s off to the main reason for this whole trip, the Yuengling brewery in Pottsville, PA (I’ll expand more on this later.) Next is a trip to Hershey to check out the Hershey factory and maybe see what it feels like to dive into a vat of chocolate (I’m sure OSHA won’t mind if we take a small dip ;)) Finally, if the weather holds out for us, we’re going to hit up Gettysburg, since the last time I went I was a little kid and Amy has never been, so that should be pretty interesting too. As a recap, in the span of 5 days, we have: shopping, beer, chocolate, and history…what more could you want from a vacation?

Now, you may have heard that Yuengling is America's Oldest Brewery (yuengling.com). Because of this, we have been told by reliable sources, that OSHA does not apply. This means that instead of the normal brewery tour you go on where there is a 3” piece of bullet proof glass between you and the beer, you’re right there, on the line, within arms reach of the golden delicious nectar that they call Yuengling. I’m not really sure why, but this really excites me. It could have something to do with the fact that when we went on Jack Daniels tour we didn’t even get to see them making the liquor, instead all we saw were the old workshops and old methods of how bourbon used to be made. It was pretty cool and really educational, but it just felt like something was missing. I’m hoping this trip to Yuengling will help fill that missing feeling I had.

In case you’re wondering why we’re randomly taking a vacation to the northern United States in late October (not exactly your tropical oasis by any sense) I should probably mention that next week is my 30th birthday and the one thing I really wanted to do for my birthday was to check out the Yuengling brewery. So, off we go for a week of fun and adventure Amy and Charlie style, it should be a really good time.

In case you’re wondering, the answer the burning question is no, the fact is not lost on me that next week will mark the release of Windows 7 (microsoft.com). I am really excited and I can’t wait to get my hands on the final version (even though I’ve been using RTM pretty happily for the last couple of months.) The one thing that I can’t figure out yet, is weather or not Microsoft is planning on shipping Windows 7 with XP mode already installed, or is it going to be something that you’ll have to know about and surf though the massive confusing website that is Microsoft’s website to try and download and install it…should be interesting to see.

Oh yeah, on a somewhat amusing note, check out this article from Gizmodo related to their <sarcasm> love for the Blackberry Storm </sarcasm> Also, I read somewhere about the heavily rumored iPad from apple which now has an apparent ship date of early 2010…I’m feeling another massive keynote speech from Jobs at MacWorld…who’s with me?

Ok, that’s gonna be it for this one, more later on.

U2 and a Wedding

2009-09-30T19:27:00.001-07:00

This weekend is shaping up to be a crazy one…tomorrow is the U2 concert here and it’s looking to be EPIC! I saw some pictures of the building of the stage and they look a lot like this:

It’s pretty crazy stuff…I can’t wait!

If that wasn’t enough, Amy’s brother is going to get married on Saturday so we have lots of crazy wedding stuff to do starting Friday morning bright and early. Yeah, crazy weekend in store…it should be a lot of fun though so I’m pretty excited.

On the IT front Google has released their Wave product (Google) to Beta testers. Been waiting all day for my invite from Google but still nothing :( If you have a spare Wave invite, please Let me know Google has also been making waves (ha ha) in the OS world with talk of the Google Chrome OS which is a Linux based OS for netbooks. Basically it looks like Google is trying to take a foothold in a market that is currently dominated by Windows XP. That’s right boys and girls, you heard me right, with all the grand technology and money Microsoft is putting into Vista and Windows 7 the best solution (and still sold solution) M$ can offer for netbooks is an OS that’s about 9 years old (a lifetime in the computing world.) How nuts is that? Anyway, that part of the rant is for a totally different post, the main point here is that Google is finally taking the plunge into the OS market, a place many have gone, but very few have returned…it’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out.

The other hot topic right now is the tablet market. With Microsoft announcing their Courier (ZDNet) and Apple’s highly rumored iPad (Gizmodo) the tablet market is shaping up to be something of a clash of the titans. While the Courier does look cooler and the prospect of having a computer that carries and opens like a notebook, vs Apple’s more Kindle (Amazon) style tablet is very appealing, it’s going to be hard to compete with Apple though which already has a mobile OS (OSX for iPhone) that has been tested numerous times and already has a substantial App store behind it. We shall see though, the rumor is the Courier will be running the new Windows 7 mobile edition which even Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer admitted they screwed up. (PC Pro)

Ah yes, Windows 7…as I call it, my personal gift from Microsoft (since it’s being released on my birthday.) As you all have previously read, I have been running Windows 7 since the Beta onto RC and now happily running RTM (actually I’m blogging on a Windows 7 laptop come to think of it.) In short, Windows 7 is great. It feels as though all the wrongs with Vista have been fixed and the world will once again sing the praises of the mighty Microsoft…notice I said it feels like all the wrongs of Vista have been fixed. Through my testing I have found a few minor things that have made me scratch my head and while doing some reading various blogs and sites I have found some users who are having troubles with software compatibility even though their software runs fine on Vista…I wish I could make this crap up.

Now I know 7 won’t be perfect, no OS is ever perfect, but the one thing Windows 7 does WAY better than Vista ever did or ever will, is to restore faith in Microsoft and their ability to release a cutting edge OS that is user friendly not only in the home environment, but also in a corporate setting. To get a sense of how Microsoft is trying to restore the good will, as it were, check out this commercial:

Yeah, let’s see, cute little girl looking on her daddy’s new Windows 7 system and she makes this great little slide show with the theme to Rocky…pretty good selling skillz if you ask me.

Ok, I think I’ve babbled on long enough and I’m sure after this weekend I’ll have another long entry, so I’ll stop now. More later on!

iPhone…the next, next gen gaming system?

2009-09-03T07:34:00.001-07:00

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while and I’ve got some today so thought I would take some time and really look at the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming system.

On the surface it doesn’t appear to viable as a gaming system, I mean after all…it’s a freakin’ phone. If you look a bit closer though and take some time to really surf though the app store gaming section, you will find some of the current hot titles in the gaming world ready for download and play on your iPhone…

Example: Tiger Woods 10…this is one of those epic titles for console gaming that has been strong for years. I got it for my iPhone about 4 months ago or so and I have to say…the game mechanics and the playability are really good! Sure the graphics may not be a pretty as on the Xbox or the PS3, but the game only cost me 6 bucks (as opposed to the 60 it costs on Xbox) and I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything as far as the game experience goes…in fact, I had the opportunity to mess around with Tiger Woods 10 on Xbox and after playing it, I have to say that the version on the iPhone is possibly more challenging due to the way you swing your clubs.

Another example that brings me to think of the iPhone as a gaming system is Wolfenstein 3D…you all remember this game from back in the day…basically the granddaddy of all 3D FPS games. While this is an older game and not nearly as system intensive as say Tiger Woods, it’s still a great game on the iPhone. The controls do take a bit of getting used to, but once you get the customizable controls in the place that works best for you…it’s an amazing game all over again…and at 2 bucks, you really can’t beat the price!

So that covers the sports genre and the FPS genre, let’s look at the racing genre on the iPhone…more specifically Asphalt 4 and Need for Speed. Asphalt 4 has come into it’s own as a mobile gaming app…it’s even one of the games they play in the WCG for the Samsung mobile challenge. As mentioned before, the game mechanics are quite good with the opting of steering either via touch or by using the iPhone’s accelerometer. I have tried both methods and I’m really very good at using either, but the game is fun and I’m sure once I spend some real time with the game, it will quickly move into one of my favorite racing games (although I’m pretty sure nothing will ever top the Midnight Club series for me.) I will admit that I have yet to download Need for Speed for my iPhone but from the reviews I have read and what I have heard about it from other sources, it looks like the Need for Speed developers have really nailed it for an iPhone app…I can’t wait to get my hands on!

There we are…those are but a few of the main reasons why I have found the iPhone/iPod touch to be as good of next gen gaming system as there currently is. The only real short coming I have been able to find is the graphics…but as more developers build games with the iPhone in mind and as Apple constantly improves the iPhone (and then the release of the rumored iPad) I’m sure the graphics problem will quickly dissipate.

Anyway, so what are you thoughts? I’d be curious to hear what you think about this…do you think I’m totally nuts or do you see some reason behind the madness?

Totally Random Post

2009-08-13T16:15:00.001-07:00

So this is totally off topic and something that I wouldn't normally post, but OMG, it's so freakin' funny.

Also, you may have noticed the new poll up in the right hand corner...go on and vote, I'm just curious to see who all I'm going to be able to place SC with when it comes out :)

Anyway, that's really it, don't have much to say right now, hopefully I'll get a good post in this weekend.

~C

The life of a sys admin

2009-08-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

I had seen this a few months ago and then had lost the links to them, but then surfing around today I found these two videos. The title is IT guy vs Sales guy and as a warning this is very much rated PG-13 for language (don't start these if the kids are around)

Enjoy!

~C

Link

2009-07-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

...and of course just as I finish posting Live decides it wants to work again...anyway, here's the link if you're interested in downloading the replays of my StarCraft match:

http://cid-148d5e6a1cda65f9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/WCG%202009%20Star%20Craft/WCG%7C_SC.zip

~C

Back to it...

2009-07-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

I know I have been out of the blog sphere for a long while...I guess my practice for the Star Craft tournament took up more time than I thought it would. Well, the tournament is over...it was not good for me. I did save the replays and as soon as Live get it's head out of it's a$$ then I'll upload them to my Sky Drive and post a link here for anyone that's curious on how the games went.

If you do want to check out the brackets, you can see them here http://qualify.us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=2837 I got beat by Eric Rothmuller who was the number 2 Brood Wars player in the US last year...the replays will show you why!

So that was my first plunge into the world of professional gaming and I did beat my goal of making it past the first round, so I feel pretty good about that. I was talking to a friend of mine after the tournament and his exact quote was: "Sorry to hear about the loss, let's get some more practice in and we'll get you ready for the next one." So, depending on how life plays out, I'll probably give this another shot, just to see if I can make it past round 2 next year.

In other news, life in the IT world has been crazy. Haven't really been messing with Hyper-V as much I would like, but have been playing around a lot with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and then Sun's Virtual Box. The biggest draw back of the M$ product is apparently they have no 64 bit support for guest operating systems...I have NO idea why they would do this, but there you have it. Virtual Box does come with 64 bit guest OS support, but it seems to consume my entire system when trying to run it. I really don't understand the difference, since I've been running Virtual Box on my home system for months now with a Linux distro on it and I can do lots of other things while running Virtual Box. For some reason though, when I'm running virtual box on my 64 bit Vista machine at work and have a Vista guess OS open, it bring my system to it's knees...I mean, it's not like my work system is crappy, it's a core 2 duo with 8 GB of DDR2 RAM with a decent HDD, so I really don't see the reason why it runs SO slow. If any of you have experienced this or know why this is happening...PLEASE let me know!

It does seem though that most of the IT world is beginning to focus more and more on virtual environments and could computing. As I've said before, I do see a lot of promise and a lot of very nice possibilities of life in the cloud, but there is also a very risk if you live your life in the could. There is a very nice article over at Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing that goes into detail about some of the dangers of cloud computing...just a very interesting read. I do have a large amount of data stored on the could (this blog being one, plus my email, plus, plus, plus) and I do think it's very cool to be able to have all of your important data accessible from any system, all you need is a simple browser and you're good to go.

Speaking of browsers, I know a number of have heard about this, but I thought I'd post something here also. Google has officially announced the creation of their own OS: Chrome OS http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html [Google blog], this OS is designed to uproot XP which currently has a strangle hold on the netbook market. Maybe it will succeed where many other Linux flavors have failed...lord knows it has the monetary backing that Linux does not, but who knows...to date there is no official release date for Chrome OS, but you can bet Google is going to try their best to get a high quality good product to market as fast as they can. Hopefully this will not fall victim the Google Beta monster which holds amazing products (such as Gmail) in Beta for the better part of 5 years! Lucky for Gmail though, Google was able to bribe the beta monster and finally pull Gmail out of beta and into a fully grown-up web-app.

Ok, it's getting late and still can't get into my Live account to post the links, so I'll stop here for now and post more hopefully tomorrow.

~C

Crazy Week...

2009-07-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

The last week has been really crazy. Not really sure why...it's not like the work load was any heavier than normal, but it all just seemed to happen so quickly...I don't know, I was sure glad when Friday came around for sure.

Anyway, it's the weekend so no need to ramble on about work...on to more exiting things. Not sure if I've mentioned this before but there are two charities that are very near and dear to me, they are Child's Play and The Charlottesville Toy Lift. Both charities are geared towards kids. Child's Play was started by Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade as a way to raise money so children in hospitals can have games to take their minds off of their pain and sickness and try and bring some happiness to kids, if only for a short while. This one is important to me for two reasons...first...I'm a gamer. Too often gamers are looked upon as shut-in's or people who only care about themselves and their games...this goes out to prove that gamers do care about trying to help people the best way we know. The second reason is the main reason the charity was started in the first place. A few years ago the media really started pounding on games (such as GTA, Doom, Unreal, etc.) as super violent and the only things these games were leading to was teaching children that it's OK to kill. In response to the this, the Penny Arcade guys started Child's Play. This allowed the media to see what games are really for, an escape. A machine that allows an escape from the world and have some fun.

There is a point this whole rant. There are these 3 guys and they decided the best way they could help Child's Play was to play Mario all weekend long...hince Mario Marathon was born. This is the second year they've been doing it and as of this posting they have about 11,300 bucks already raised. Their goals is around 12,000 bucks and they still have one whole day to play...I think they'll make the goal. Anyway, you should totally check it out, they're streaming live for the entire time they're playing.

The other charity, that I mentioned previously is Toy Lift. I actually volunteered last year with this group and it was a great time and a great cause for kids. If you get a chance you should check it out and if you're in the Charlottesville area, the Toy lift is going to be taking place this year on Friday December 4th...I know it's a crazy long ways away, but since I know I'll be volunteering again this year, I'm sure I'll be writing way more about this later.

As far as gaming goes, not much new. Been playing as much Brood Wars as I can, trying to get ready for the WCG tournament at the end of July and other than that, been playing a lot of TF2 (of course.) It's really strange, usually I can only play a game for a few months before becoming totally board with it, but for some reason TF2 has managed to stay fresh with all of the updates, so it still stays at the top of list of games to play.

Ok, that's gonna be about it from me. Sorry about the ranting on and on about charities in this one, we'll return to a normally scheduled blogging program next time.

~C

StarCraft

2009-07-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

So I finally took the plunge…after much debating with myself I finally signed up for an online WCG qualifier tournament. I really doubt I’ll get pas the first round (or the first night for that matter) but it’s pretty cool to know I’ll be in a qualifier for something that I could be a pro at.

I’ve been looking around the net to try and get some idea of what competition I was going to be up against so here’s some video of some crazy good StarCraft players:

The one thing I’ve learned over the past week or so is that I think StarCraft is the Korean national past time…crazy.

Other than StarCraft, been playing TF2 as usual, still a freakin’ awesome game and I finally got the backburner for the Pyro..that’s a great weapon I’ve had so much fun with it!

Oh yeah, if you haven’t see this yet…it’s awesome:

Ok, that’s it for now, more later on

Can't sleep yet...

2009-06-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

So here it is, about 1:30 in the morning, I just got done playing a GREAT round of TF2 with friends and also with total strangers who became quick friends, it was just a good time. Also it helps I ended up being #1 on the leader board and that always makes you feel really good.

I guess I really haven't posted much here recently, work has been crazy and then Amy and I got a new kitten and he's been really keeping us on our toes, so that would explain why I haven't been posting here that much recently. The new kitten is doing well and he is slowly adapting to all the other pets we have around. The one girl cat we have wants nothing to do with him, while the boy cat loves to play with him when he gets a chance. The dogs both think this is great new toy we've brought home just for them...hopefully they don't try and squeeze the stuffing out of this one *gross*

As I said, work has also been crazy, have been using Windows 7 though on a regular basis (it's installed on my main laptop and then my second desktop) and aside from a few very minor things that I'm not really sure are even related to Windows 7, it's been a really good OS. I can't wait until the full thing is released on October 22nd (also my birthday) of this year...it should be a good time.

On the game front, obviously I've been playing a lot of TF2 recently and I also recently got Left 4 Dead...quite possibly one of the cooler games out on the market. The game is really quite simple in design: 4 people survived a plague, and now that plague that killed everyone is turning them all into Zombies. The main goal of the game...kill Zombies and get the heck out of dodge and out of the area you are in. It almost seems too simple, but really it's just a ton of fun. No real strategy...stay together and blow the crap of things. There are various points in the game where you get rushed by hundreds of Zombies and all 4 of you stand in a circle and just cook off as many rounds as you can and kill some Zombies. I tell you, such a simple game concept really can go a long way. The other nice part about it, is 4 real humans can play all 4 characters in the game. So if you and three of your friends get together (in real life or just meet online) you all can go off and hunt Zombies as a team...pretty freakin' awesome.

Other than that, not much gaming going on...oh yeah...I did upgrade my gaming system finally. I had previously been running Pentium D processor with 3 GB of DDR 2 RAM. I had looked at the iCore7 processors and motherboards for my upgrade but that stuff is still just WAY too expensive. I ended up getting a Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz processor, with 4 GB of DDR 3 RAM. I've noticed a very marked improvement in system performance since getting everything change over.

Fear not though, I didn't trash the old parts to my system, I also bought a cheapish case and a new DVD-ROM drive and dropped my old processor, RAM and power supply into the new case and ta da...a new media center for my wife and I in our bedroom!!! It's really great having the computer in there. Amy can sit in there and do class stuff, or listen to streaming music from our server...it's just really nice.

OK, that whole amped up feeling is starting to fade, so I guess I'll head off to bed. More later on.

~C

Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King

2009-06-06T19:03:00.001-07:00

If you for some reason have been under a rock, that is the name of the new Dave Matthew’s Band Album. I grew up listening to DMB in their early years, since I grew up in Charlottesville, because of this I’ve always been a big fan of DMB. This album is something special though. It really does feel like their old albums (old being Remember two things, under the table, etc.) It’s a great album. I’d have to say my favorite song is Why I am. I really don’t know what it is about it, but something about the song just speaks to me…it’s great!

Anyway, so that’s been the big news around here. DMB played here back in April and it was an amazing concert and then with the release of the new album, I believe DMB has established themselves as true rock and roll royalty. It’s really good to see.

In other news, Amy and I got a new kitten yesterday. He’s a very cute boy and we have decided to name him Strider, after the character from Lord of the Rings. For those counting at home that now takes us to 7 pets…yes 7…there is hope in site though, one of the deals for getting this kitten is that we need to get rid of our rabbit Shaun. Shaun is a great rabbit, but it turns out that I’m allergic to rabbits so he really hasn’t worked out well. If you happen to have any interest in this rabbit, PLEASE let me know and I will be more than happy to send you more info.

On the game front, still playing lots of TF2…have actually managed to finally get the Krtizkrieg, I was so happy. I’ve also gotten all the Stout, Spy, and Medic stuff. I am super stoked about having all the medic stuff finally, but now I’m hoping to get Natasha and the backburner and I’ll be super stoked.

Ok, that’s it for now, more later on.

American Chopper and Windows 7

2009-05-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

What a great combo, right? Normally I like to have the TV on while I'm doing work at home. It gives me some nice background noise that's always changing. I know most people prefer some type of music, or some other thing, but for me, the TV or a movie seem to work best for me when working on systems.

Anyway, here I am, Thursday night and American Chopper is on. I haven't seen this show in about a year...apparently I missed somethings...Jr. no longer works at OCC, holy crap! The show has lost some of it's luster though since there's no Jr and Sr fighting, now it's just kind of strange...oh well, I guess that's just how it goes.

Now onto my current obsession, Windows 7. Been using it about 3.5 weeks or so and it's still freakin' awesome. I don't really think I've come across many new or great extra features that I haven't already written about before, but the performance just still blows me away. The boot-up time, from the time you press the power button to the time you get the login screen is WAY faster than Vista every was and I'm pretty sure it's a bit faster than XP. The time it takes to get from the login screen to a fully loaded desktop again is WAY faster than Vista (we're talking half the time of Vista.)

Ok, that's about it...tomorrow's Friday and then it's a 3 day weekend...can't wait!

~C

Short Sunday Post

2009-05-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

It's late, but I wanted to just get a quick post in before going to bed.

This weekend was awesome, my buddy Brent came down from DC to hang out for the weekend and we had a great time. Also, since I got Amy a KitchenAid stand mixer for her birthday she's been going crazy with the homemade goodies (cookies, muffins, bread, etc.) She made some amazing chocolate chip cookies yesterday, along with some lemon/blueberry muffins, which are also pretty good.

Work has been really crazy so I haven't had much time for gaming, but hopefully soon I'll be able to get back into some PC gaming again.

I'll post more later on.

~C

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T17:39:00.001-07:00

First off, a very happy Mother's day to all the mom's out there.

Ok, that's out of the way, now on to business. As you could have probably guessed I've really been digging into Windows 7 over the past week and have found a lot of really cool features that Microsoft has added in.

First is XP mode...this feature is freaking amazing. Of course with something this great M$ can't just give it away to the masses to make it easy, no...there are limits. When Windows 7 is released (currently rumored date is October 23rd) you will only be able to get XP mode with Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional Editions. If you have older app's that still need XP though, this is the answer! Basically this is like running the old Microsoft Virtual PC on your machine, but with a twist. Once you install an app on your virtual machine, it will be available from the start menu in Windows 7. You can even pin the app to your task bar. I finally got all the kinks worked out and installed on Friday afternoon and I'm here to say, it's really good. I'm currently running a copy of CFdesign v9 in XP mode and it runs super smooth. I'm really enjoying it. I plan on playing with this a lot more next week at work, so I'll let you know how that turns out.

Up until now I've really only been running Windows 7 on a laptop, but I finally got around to getting a 64 bit version installed on spare desktop I have at my desk and I have to say, it's really nice. I do think it runs smooth than Vista, and for sure it installs WAY faster than Vista.

I think at this point (about a week into my tests) I'm really happy with Windows 7 and glad to see that M$ finally got their heads out of their butts and decided to put out another quality OS that will not only be "pretty" for the user, but also has functions that won't drive the IT pro completely mad (like UAC.)

On the gaming front, I've been playing a lot of Guitar Hero World Tour (since I gave it to Amy for her birthday.) I'm really digging the ability to play the drums in the game. Since I used to be a real drummer (in a band and everything) it's a nice feeling to get back into that in the virtual world. The songs on World Tour are WAY better than any of the other games too. Lots of well known songs by well known artists, and all are original tracks, no "Song name - originally done by (insert original band here)." That part always did get me with Guitar Hero, I never did see why they didn't take the effort to market one of the most popular games in the world to the artists better. I guess they finally learned this time around...thank goodness.

Ok, that's gonna be about it from me...more later on.

~C

Windows 7 Review

2009-05-03T17:55:00.001-07:00

So it’s been about 4 days since I originally downloaded and installed Windows 7 on a Dell Vostro 1400 with an Intel Celeron Processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 150 GB HDD.

First a few thoughts on the system itself. We got this system back in the early days of Vista as a machine for us to test various applications out on, to confirm or deny Vista compatibility. We really haven’t used it since the IT department made the move to upgrade all our systems to Vista (basically since SP1 was released.) So really it’s been a little laptop that’s sat on a shelf completely unused.

I downloaded Windows 7 Ultimate RC on the 30th, the first day it was available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers. After battling though the multiple problems with Microsoft’s Website due to massive amounts of traffic I was able to get my hands and get it burned onto a DVD…next step, stick the DVD in and get this thing installed.

I had used the Beta when it was released back in January so there was really nothing surprising about the start-up and installation. I will say, after doing about 100 Vista installs at this point, Windows 7 does install way faster than Vista ever has (even on the crappy little laptop I’m using as a tester.)

After going though the OS install (probably about a 15-20 minute process total) it came time to start making the process work. To my pleasant surprise 99% of the drivers on this old little laptop were already recognized and installed. After a single reboot I had the video card drivers installed, and after a quick trip to the Dell website I also managed to get the Wireless card drivers installed (just used the Vista x86 drivers and they worked no problem.)

Now I was ready to start installing app’s. I started simple, Office 2007, of course no problems. Next came Google Chrome, again no problems. After that, I decided to go a bit off the beaten path and installed Rocket Dock, again I had no problem getting it installed and running. Ok, time for the big test, I decided to install Daemon Tools Lite. This really is a unique app that, while still very popular amount the IT crowd, it doesn’t exactly have a wide user base. Again to my surprise it worked with no problem, I was amazed. After installing a few other App’s, including Windows Live Writer, FeedDemon 3.0 Beta, and Twhirl, I was ready to go with this laptop.

After using the laptop for about 30 seconds I quickly closed and uninstalled Rocket Dock. The first and so far coolest feature I’ve found with Win 7 is the ability to pin things to your taskbar. I know this is one of those very touted features that M$ has been talking about forever, but when I finally got the play with it, it’s pretty nice. They claimed it would give more of an OSX feel, I really don’t agree with that, since I find Rocket Dock does a WAY better job of that. It is a nice feature though, and cuts down on what has become one of my biggest complaints of Windows, that being the clutter on the bottom task bar. It also helps you to keep your desktop nice and icon free (something I’ve become a HUGE fan of since starting to use Rocket Dock.)

Yet another nice feature of Windows 7 is the constant changing background. I know this will become a fan favorite feature amount most users, and I do think it’s pretty cool. Basically whatever theme you choose (even custom made themes) you can choose to have various backgrounds move in a slide show form. You can change how often the backgrounds change (anything from 1 minute, to once a day.) It’s pretty nice.

The best part of Win 7 that I’ve seen so far, is the biggest thing M$ has been talking about. We all know Vista is a hog, both in HDD and RAM usage. Win 7 is the opposite. It also seems (at least in my tests so far) that it’s got a smaller overall footprint than XP…simply amazing!

One more upside to Win 7 is the UAC. As promised it has been GREATLY toned down (THANK GOD!) I’ve installed a number of app’s at this point and while I am prompted one extra time when making Windows Wide changes, I really haven’t had to make any custom adjustments to the UAC because it got so annoying. I can get into the control panel, see the device manager, and I’m not even prompted by UAC, it’s a very nice change…for once.

Now this hasn’t been a total Windows 7 love-fest. There have been a few things I’ve run into that I find less than wonderful. First off is the icon for network connections. In Vista the little network connection icon in the task bar has two different pictures, a little picture of two monitors when you’re not connected the net and a picture of the two monitors plus a little picture of a globe when connected the net…this does not exist in Win 7. There’s only one picture. A single monitor with what I guess is a little antenna and it doesn’t matter if you have local access only or connection to the net, it all looks the same. I know this isn’t a huge deal for most users, but as an IT guy it’s nice to be able to look down real quick and see if the system is connected or not.

The other annoying feature is the notification center. That thing gets SUPER annoying quick. If your mouse it’ll let you know something’s going on. I did find a way to turn off the annoying pop-up’s that tell you everything is wrong, so the flag just sits there taunting you, daring you to click on the icon so you can feel bad that according to Windows 7, you’re computer is all jacked up. I’m still holding out hope that maybe, just maybe these two things will be fixed in the final release, but from what M$ has been saying, I really don’t think it’s going to happen.

Well, I know this has been a really long post and I’m sorry about that, but I wanted to get as much detail out as I could about the system. There’s also a current rumor that Win 7 is set to release on October 23rd. Microsoft is keeping mum on the news and is still holding to it’s official story that it won’t be released until early 2010. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Ok, that’s gonna be it from me. I’m sure I’ll be writing more on Windows 7 as I mess around with it more so stay tuned.

A nice Saturday

2009-04-25T08:11:00.001-07:00

Here I am sitting outside (I know…shocking) and the dogs are outside with me. Zephyr is sitting up on the hill and Beatrice is now chasing Zephyr around.

It’s good to see BZ up and going this morning. Yesterday Amy took her to the clinic and she had a dental. Now I’m not really 100% sure what happens during a dental but I do know that they do knock the dogs out with gas, and Beatrice apparently doesn’t respond too well to the anesthesia. When she got home yesterday she was very tired and really wanted nothing to do with anyone (even Zephyr.) It was really strange. This morning she was still a bit out of it, but it seems like this being outside is helping her get herself back together. Maybe a bit of ball play would wake her up…hmmmm…I’ll do it in a bit.

Today also marks the first time that I’ve tried out the Suns Virtual Box Virtual Machine system that I found on Lifehacker a few days ago. You can Google virtual box and you’ll get what I’m talking about. It’s actually a really nice, really simple to set-up VM client, sort of like the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. This one is totally free though (big bonus.) I downloaded the latest flavor of Ubuntu this morning Jaunty Jackalope, so far so good. Since it’s really my first time with a full blow version of Linux to mess around with on my own, I’m really going to have to dive in over the next few days and see if Linux really has become as easy to use as everyone now claims it is. I have messed with Ubuntu previously, about 3 or 4 years ago, and I know many improvements have been made since you now get Ubuntu installed on your Dell machines. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ok, so Beatrice is looking at me being very hot, so I guess it’s time to go inside. I’ll write more later.

Tuesday Night Rant

2009-04-21T18:12:00.001-07:00

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here so I thought I should get something here.

Life has been pretty crazy since we got back from Louisville. Work has been really busy, since we still only have two IT guys it’s pretty nuts.

Home life has been nice though, we had some friends over last weekend which was very nice and we’re going to have a birthday party for Amy this weekend so that should be good time too.

Now, onto the real meat and potatoes of this rant…more random stuff :)

Fringe: If you haven’t seen this show, you need to either turn on Fox right now or check out the Fringe channel on Hulu http://www.hulu.com/fringe. It’s an awesome show. More of a mix between Bones and X-Files. Since I am an X-Phile and also a huge fan of Bones, it’s pretty much the perfect show for me. It’s been on a 2 month hiatus back at the beginning of the year due to the beginning of American Idol, the election, and then all of the presidential press conferences. It’s no problem though since the show is SO AMAZING!

HULU: Another one of those super amazing things…streaming TV…how cool is this? I know I’ve talked about this some before, and also just linked it above, but it’s really great. Mostly they have Fox, NBC, and CBS network shows, but it’s limited commercials, plus they also have movies, mind you only old ones and less popular ones, but still, you can find an occasional gem on there that’s good for a laugh, or good when you have about 2 hours to kill.

Games: Not really much new on the gaming front for me, still playing TF2 (not much recently though.) Did bust out some old school StarCraft recently though, that was a good time. It made me realize how much I really need to practice before getting back into the LAN party world since I used to be able to tear up some StarCraft, but I couldn’t really even keep up with the AI when I played, it was a strange feeling.

Ok, Fringe is on, I’ll post more later on.

Post from Louisville

2009-04-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

For the past 3 days Amy and I have been in Louisville for a wedding. Amy's old college room mate Ingrid got married today. It was a beautiful wedding and a good time at the reception.

Amy and I decided to make this a full blown road trip...we started out leaving early Wednesday morning, and headed off to Tennessee to visit my mom's parents (which Amy had never met.) Then we left Thursday afternoon to come to Louisville to hang out with Ingrid and her fiance and attend the wedding today.

It's been a great trip. We got to see the Jim Beam Distillery...awesome! Aside from being pretty cold, it was a good time and even got to sample a few of the products from the factory. It was great. After that Amy and I went to Zappos, for those of you who don't know this is a massive online shoe store and they have a big outlet store in Louisville. They had great deals on shoes and Amy was able to score 4 (yes, count 'em 4) pairs of Dansko's for the price of one normal pair...craziness. Amy is super excited though cause now she has Dansko's that will last her a super long time.

In other news, not much else has been going on as far as gaming goes. Hopefully I'll be able to get some TF2 play in soon, I'm hoping to get my Medic fully upgraded with all the new weapons so I can be a much more effective medic for the team. I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, it's getting late and Amy and I have to get up early to start back on what will probably be a 10 hour trip home. I'll post more later on.

~C

Thursday Blues

2009-03-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

So I just realized it's been a REALLY long time since I've blogged, so I thought it was about time for another round.

Nothing really crazy has been going on since I last wrote. I've been working the plans for our Germany trip in October and next week we're headed off to Tennessee to visit my mom's parents (who Amy has yet to meet...yes I know we've been married 3 1/2 years), and then off to Ingrid's wedding in Kentucky. Should be a good time, and it'll be a nice long road trip for Amy and I.

Other than that, not much really going on. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to blogging on a more regular basis, but we'll see.

~C

Snow Day with the Dogs

2009-03-05T19:11:00.001-08:00

So I finally got off my lazy butt and uploaded the video we took of the dogs to you tube. Enjoy:

~C

Snow Day

2009-03-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

So yesterday my wife and I woke up to find everything covered in a very deep blanket of white snow. We went out to measure and come to find out we got about 5.5” of the white stuff…awesome! Since we couldn’t even the road (it really was totally white) I got to stay home and work from home for the day.

It’s always a nice feeling to be able to stay home and work, got to spend time with the dogs and Amy, so it was a nice time.

Ok, on to different subjects…gaming! Last weekend I went over to my buddies house and we played Team Fortress 2 for a long time…it was tons of fun. I’m really start to get into the groove of being a Medic when my team is on offense, and then be an Engineer when my team is defense….oh yeah, speaking of Engineer, a great story:

We were playing the map that only has 2 capture points and we were on defense…at one point on a team of 15, there were 11 engineers…we didn’t bother protecting the first point, but the second point was totally on lock-down…the other team couldn’t even get near the cap point…it was so much fun. Granted, we went on offense the next game and couldn’t even get near the first cap point…oh well, that’s life. It was a blast though!

Aside from that I’ve been playing some more DoW 2, and trying to dig deeper into the game, I want to fully understand it before I write my next review. I still think it’s a good game, but it is very different from any other RTS you’ve ever played.

Anyway, that’s about it from me. More later on.

~C

Back to it (Dawn of War 2 Review)

2009-02-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, another Sunday evening and another few minutes to blog about life...the best way to unwind from a busy weekend.

So Dawn of War II came out and after much pain and suffering I was able to get my hands on it Thursday and so far, I'm fairly impressed. At first I was a bit disappointed, I have been playing the original Dawn of War for so long I went into this with the expectation that this new version would be exactly the same as the last. I was wrong.

The first and most obvious difference is that there's no building in Dawn of War II. You have one base that you get at the beginning of the game and that's it. No expanding up a crazy tech tree with lots of cool looking buildings, nope just one single building that you can upgrade to three different levels. Obviously with less building choices, this also means less unit and vehicle choices, sadness. The next thing that is different is the way unit upgrades work. It used to be that in each different building you built, you could research different upgrades...well, since you only have one base and you can't build other buildings, upgrades are handled much differently now. Each unit has war gear that they have access to, and if you have the resources, you can do the research get that war gear for the unit, this actually pretty cool. The final main difference is the character focus. In the original DoW the focus was on the entire army and putting together the best combination of vehicles / troops that you can to mount a full attack on the enemy. Now, since you building options are VERY limited, more focus gets shifted onto your commanding officer (or Champion.) Basically at the start of each game you choose what champion you want, you can choose Offense, Defense, or Medical (or something similar to medical.) Based on this choice, you have various units available to you and your champion can build different things to help with your cause.

This is good example of real game play with the Tyranids vs. Eldar:

As you can see most of the game is no longer focused on large armies going to crush you opponents, but small unit tactics and movements. Gone are the days where you can take your massive force and crush you opponent who isn't as far along in the tech tree as you are, oh well.

Now don't get me wrong, I in no way believe that these changes made in this game are for the worse. They are different and will take some getting used to, but I do think they are for the betterment of the DoW universe. The first real benefit to this whole thing is the incorporation of Tyranids into the mix. This race was totally left out of the first DoW series, and it's easy to see why. In the original game, the Tyranid Army would have to be MASSIVE in order to compare with any of the other armies, I really don't think the engine that drove DoW could of handled the amount of characters they have had to put on the map to make the Tyranid army balanced. Now with the focus being more on small unit tactics, the makers are able to bring the Nids into the mix and allow the full Warhammer 40,000 universe to join the game. Based on previous experience though, with the other races in the 40K universe, I really am wondering how they plan on bringing in races, such as the Imperial Guard (again, another group who in the original game had TONS of troops, but each unit was very weak.) I guess only time will tell how THQ plans to roll out the expansions, but I do look forward to seeing what they have in store.

Secondly, as I've said before, it forces you to change your tactics. The only real gripe I ever had with the first DoW is that it was like every other RTS out there. Get lots of resources, build a big army, go kill your opponent. With the new way they've made DoW II those tactics won't work...period. You can't even being to start building a big army. Sure you do still have collect minerals and collect energy, but from what I've seen so far the unit cap is hard set a 100 units (no matter what) so even if you do manage to get massive amounts of minerals and energy, there's no real benefit to it because you're going to rapidly hit your unit cap.

It's a crazy game, as I get more into the game and manage to get further along in the first player campaign (which is awesome by the way) I will write more here. I also have only done a little bit in the multi-player campaign but again, it looks really nice.

Other than Dawn of War life has been good. Rally trails were successful for this first time handler! I took our beagle Zephyr though the courses and we managed to get two qualifying scores and both times we placed...first time we got 5th the second time we got first! It was a good weekend in the end, and hopefully now in June we can get Zephyr's level 1 title :) One of our friends has an English Bulldog and she took her though the courses and got 4 qualifying scores, and also managed to get her title the first weekend out...we were all very proud of her :) My wife Amy, took Beatrice through (as she has for the past 3 years) but they did manage to get their level 1 championship so we are also very proud of our Mutt Pup!

On the work front, I've still been playing with Hyper-V a lot and after doing some extensive reading, discovered that M$ also has App-V which is virtualization for applications. This is something that is very interesting and we have had a few customers asking us about the possibility of running CFdesign as a virtual app.

Ok, I think that's about it for now. More later on.

~C

Rally-O Weekend

2009-02-13T14:38:00.001-08:00

So not many people know this about my wife and I, but we do compete with our dogs. Not in the normal stuff you see on TV where you owner and dog trot around and look all pretty. Also not the other thing you see on TV where the dogs go over crazy jumps and over really tall a-frames (this is agility.)

We compete in something called Rally Obedience (Rally-O for short.) It’s a great time for both the owner and the dog! We have been taking our Mutt Beatrice to competitions for the past 3 years and this is the first year that we are brining our Beagle, Zephyr, to competition with us. This also means it’s the first time that I’ve been a handler in the competition. Previously I’ve just been the equipment manager, dog holder, food getter, and video camera guy.

If you’ve been checking my facebook status recently you can see that Zephyr and I have been working really hard and we’re both really exited about the weekend and I really hope we do well.

On a gaming note, if you haven’t seen Dawn of War II is set to come out on the February 18th…I’m going to get my copy reserved this week during lunch so I can make sure I get it on the 18th. If you haven’t seen anything from DoW II yet, check this out:

Yeah, it’s going to be a crazy game…and there’s NIDS!!! Can’t wait! Anyway, off to get some dinner. More later on.

Windows Live Writer

2009-02-02T17:52:00.001-08:00

So I’m currently writing from my desktop, with out actually being logged into blogspot. How can I do this you ask?? The answer is a nifty little program called Windows Live Writer. I know it’s been out a while, but I just finally got my crap together enough to start really concentrating on this whole cloud computing thing. This is really nice though. It makes blogging WAY easier, especially since you don’t have to visit a site to login and then blog, just click an icon on your desktop and there ya go, a space to blog.

Anyway, now on to my other recent favorite topic, Hyper-V (pleas let all groans out here.)

I got my hands on Hyper-V server 2008 R2 and wow, what a huge improvement it is over the initial Beta. The command line utility that they have, has way more options and makes life way easier for those of us who have become spoiled by the WYSIWYG interfaces that exist now-a-days.

Another really nice feature that has been added in is the ability to enable Failover Clustering. This is a new feature that was rolled out with Server 2008, and from what I’ve read about it, it looks really cool, and the perfect solution for a fully VM environment. The only downside right now, besides the need for setting up a test environment and then destroying it (ok, so that’s more of the fun part and not really a challenge) but all the management tools that exist only work with server 2008 and not with hyper-v server…I know, hyper-v server is only in Beta form and I’m sure once it gets out of Beta then MS will release tools that will work with it…hopefully.

Ok, that’s about it from me. More later on.

Nintendo Acapella

2009-01-28T19:08:00.000-08:00

So I've been meaning to post this for a while. I will give credit to my wife Amy for finding this and showing it to me...enjoy!

~C

Back in the Saddle

2009-01-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

So after a brief respite to recover from kick-off, here I am again, another Sunday evening and another entry into the good 'ol blog. Not much has really changed since the last entry. I did manage to get my brother a new / first system built. That was kind of cool. Instead of a traditional monitor, we ended up hooking up the system to his big 42" Plasma TV, it looks pretty nice, crappy resolution (I think we maxed it out at 1280 x 1024) but still, looks really pretty.

Aside from that, I haven't been doing much gaming (kind of sad really.) I've been back playing my PSP more recently, got Midnight Club LA remix, which is the newest installment of the Midnight Club games. I was totally addicted to Midnight Club 3 when we had our PS2, and I was really bummed that I wasn't going to be able to play the series when we got rid of the PS2, but with the release of Midnight Club LA, Sony decided to port it to the PSP, I was super stoked!

So yeah, it's probably not as pretty as it is on the PS3, but for me, I get to feed my addiction to high performance rice rockets, and it's a fun game too.

On another note, I did promise in the last blog to talk some about dodge ball during kick-off...it really was awesome. One of the guys from work used to work up in DC so he knew this nice health club that was fairly close to the hotel where we could reserve a gym and they'd let us play dodge ball. In the end I think the staff had way more fun watching us than anything else. Literally it was about 10 engineers, 1 IT guy (me), a handful of sales guys, and two girls who are two of our new NBD hires. This had to look crazy, and pretty dorky at the same time. It was a ton of though, I ended up doing pretty well, I was only the first one out a few games and most of time I was hanging around until the bitter end, for better or worse.

Anyway, that's about it from me tonight, I'll post more later on.

~C

Back Home

2009-01-15T19:03:00.000-08:00

After a long week in DC, I'm finally back home. Feels good to come home after long trips like that.

DC was a blast though, I have lots of fun stories to tell, but for right now just a few of the main points:

- Hotel = Awesome
- Paying for Internet = Lame
- Dodge Ball, 30 engineers, what could go wrong?
- SalesForce class, coldest day of the year, I'm walking around in DC, good idea, I think not...good class though.

Like I said, I'll elaborate more on these later, especially the dodge ball game.

~C

Having fun in Herndon

2009-01-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

So every year my company has the big meeting, where all of the employees from all over the world come together for 3 - 4 days of learning, fun, and general silliness at times. This year, kick-off, as we call it, is happening right near the beautiful Dullas Airport...yeah, let me tell ya, lots to see here.

It is a good time so far though. Today we had our big group meeting where everyone in the company piles into one room and we talk about the previous year, both the good and the bad, and then we shift focus to the coming year and set the expectations and goals for the year. It's a lot of info to absorb in 8 hours, and frankly my head is still swimming, but I know my roll fairly well in the company, so I feel pretty good.

This evening we got to eat at this restaurant called Red, Hot, and Blue. It was a pretty good BBQ joint (still nothing like Belmot BBQ, but pretty good.) They had pulled chicken, pulled pork, and ribs...so really you just couldn't go wrong.

It was very nice and then a fair number of us came back to the hotel for a few drinks, and here I am back in my room getting ready for bed.

In other, more geek-like, news, the public Beta of windows 7 was released last Friday (it was available to those with MSDN subscriptions on Thursday though.) So I got my hands on both the 64 and 32 bit versions. So far I've only had time to install the 32 bit version on a Virtual Machine, but so far, it really does look just like Vista, with a few different colors, and the UAC is designed differently (thank goodness) but otherwise, it feels about the same.

My plan, once I get back from DC, is to start running some tests to see how Windows 7 handles some of the programs that we know work really well on Vista (ok, so really I'm going to install my companies software, CFdesign, and see how it does.) It should be really interesting to see if Microsoft really has changed anything in the back-end. I'm sure I'll end up posting results here and letting you all know.

Ok, it's now past mid-night so it's time for bed. More soon.

~C

Facebook

2009-01-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but a few months ago I took the plunge and got my own facebook account (mostly at the urging of Amy.) It's been good so far, not nearly as annoying as I thought it would be.

Anyway, since I just liked this blog on my account, figured I should at least write SOMETHING in here.

More later on.

~C

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are again, another year has come and gone and we're into 2009. In case you fell asleep and missed it, here's the ball drop from Times Square in New York:

Just wanted to wish you all a very Happy New year. I've had a ton of fun posting in 2008, hopefully I can keep it going strong in 2009.

~C

Oil Changes and Vista

2008-12-30T07:40:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting here at the car dealership getting my wife's oil changed in her car (I get the glory of repeating this process again tomorrow for my car...joy.) It is nice though, since the Mazda dealership offers free Wifi so I can bring my laptop and mess around on the net while waiting for my car to get done.

I also get to roam around the dealership lot and check out all the new cars and see what's out on the market that's cool. The thing I found that interests me the most is the new 09 Mazda CX-7. If you don't know what it is, it's Mazda's first step into the crossover market (and from what I remember, I believe it was one of the very first, if not the first crossover SUV to be offered on the market.) It's a pretty cool car. The 09 is nice because they retooled the engine to take regular unleaded fuel, as opposed to the 07 and 08's which had to user super unleaded fuel.

Anyway, onto more interesting things, games (of course.) I took the plunge over Christmas and reformatted my desktop to Vista. Mind you, I still have my XP partition, just in case, but mainly I'm going to give Vista a real try from a gaming perspective, and see how it does.

I'm now about a week into it, and have everything pretty much set-up the way I like and it seems to be running fine. I've been playing Command and Conquer 3 on it and have had zero problems running it. When I get back home this afternoon I plan on getting Dawn of War: Soulstorm installed and see how that runs on it. I'm guessing there won't really be any problems. The only game that I know is having problems currently is Diablo II, since it's so old. I'm hoping Star Craft won't have any problems with Vista, but I'm really not holding out any hope there.

I also read on Life Hacker that the beta for Windows 7 is out in the wild (even though it's not supposed to be released until sometime in early 09.) I really can't wait to get my hands on copy because everything I've heard has been good about Windows 7. People are saying it's the most stable beta M$ has ever put out, so I'm kind of curious to see what they are talking about. I'll let you know as soon as I get my hands on a copy.

Oh yeah, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but if you haven't seen you should check out Rocket Dock:

The cool part is that the software is free, you download it from here: Rocket Dock. On my Vista machine, I have Rocket dock as opposed to any icons on my desktop. It's pretty nice, it also helps keep your desktop clean and tidy (something I'm a big fan of.)

Anyway, I think Amy's care is almost done. More later on.

~C

CFdesign 2008

2008-12-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

So since I posted the CFdesign model from 2007, here's the one from 2008:

Anyway, Christmas is over, it was tons of fun and Santa was good to both Amy and I. The best part is now I'm on vacation until the 2nd of January. I'm sure I'll be blogging more as my vacation continues, but for now, off to play some Command and Conquer 3!

~C

FlashMob Rave at UVA

2008-12-14T17:35:00.000-08:00

So I thought this was amusing. Last night at my company Christmas party, one of the guys talked about this random rave he went to in a library at UVA. Well, here it is:

Yeah, I think the video is worth 1000 words...

~C

Christmas Party Saturday

2008-12-13T06:43:00.000-08:00

So somehow all of the stars aligned properly, and both Amy and I have our company Christmas parties tonight.

It was looking pretty bleak because Amy's party was originally set to start at 6 and my Christmas party was set to start at 6:30, so that wasn't going to work. Amy ended up having a talk with her boss, and that party got moved to starting at 4:30 so we can do both parties tonight.

I'm sure it's going to be crazy and if we get any fun pictures I'll probably post them here.

Oh well, off to Christmas present wrapping and light hanging up.

~C

Just a short post

2008-12-11T19:23:00.000-08:00

Just a short post before heading off to bed. Work is crazy, but I just really wanted to share this video with you:

And just cause it's fun, check this out:

This was made by one of the guys from my work Derrek (thevirutalengineer), it's appropriate for the season and it's a fun use of our software CFdesign.

Anyway, Happy Holiday's everyone! I'm sure I'll post more during the Christmas Holiday.

~C

Christmas and the 2008 Toy Lift

2008-12-06T16:06:00.000-08:00

So the holiday's are finally upon us. Thanksgiving was nice, we ended up eating dinner with Amy's mom, her older brother, and her grandmother. After dinner it was the traditional going though all of the Black Friday ad's to plan out where we would go shopping the next day.

It was a good time, Amy and I put a game plan together and in the end, we were pretty successful on the day. Of course I'm going to say here where all we went, it may give away some peoples Christmas presents :P

Anyway, so sense the holiday's are in full swing, it came time for the annual toy lift in Charlottesville. This year was it's 20 anniversary and I decided to volunteer this year at the toy lift. I have to say, it's a good feeling to help out, the toy lift is a great cause, and the work you do goes directly towards helping less fortunate kids for the holidays...it was a good time. Mind you, it was freezing cold and I was almost a solid block of ice at the end of it, but it was totally worth it.

Other than that, it's been pretty quite here, work, work and more work. Next Saturday we have both Amy and my Holiday Parties, so that should keep us pretty busy.

Ok, that's about it, more later on.

~C

Sunday night & G 'n R

2008-11-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

So I was listening to the radio the other day (it's a rare thing I do) and I heard that Guns and Roses has FINALLY released their new album Chinese Democracy...to say this album has been a long time coming is an understatement. The last time Guns 'n Roses released an album was back in 1991 with Use your Illusions I and II (I mean there was the Spaghetti Incident, but since most of that music came from Charles Manson, I'm just not gonna count it.) So I was 11 years old the last time they release an album...in case you hadn't figured it out yet, I'm 29 now...wow!

In reality it speaks volumes to the star power of Axel Rose and Guns 'N Roses in general that they could wait 18 years to release their next album and it almost feels like they haven't left the scene at all. Granted the whole band has changed, and I'm not really even sure Slash is in the band anymore, but still...amazing.

I'm currently listening to the album, and it's not that bad really. Kind of feels a bit like old G 'n R...maybe a little more subdued, but still Axel's voice is freakin' amazing and whoever is playing guitar (if it's not Slash) is also just sick!

Anyway, so yes a very cool new album from GNR (finally.) In other news I'm coming up on my one year anniversary at my job...that's pretty exciting. I worked at my last job for 2 years, but I can say this, I'm way happier at this anniversary then I was at my 1 year at Sri Trang...way happier...you can even ask my wife, and she will agree.

Ok, off to spend some QT with the wife before trying to get to bed early to start this short week off right.

~C

Wednesday rantings

2008-11-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

So here we are again, another Wednesday done and Bones about to come on TV...seems like this is optimal blog time for me.

Anyway, life has been good recently, very busy (as you can tell from my lack of blogging), but still very good. I have been doing more and more with servers at work, and Hyper-V is really taking off, and we're doing more and more with it and it's been a really great learning experience.

In other news I finally gave in to my wife and joined the world of Social Networking via Facebook. I'm listed as Charlie Hall, so if you really want to check me out, go for it...who knows I may even add you as a friend.

Oh yeah, so I finally got my hands on the new Dell Precision M6400 today...this laptop is amazing, it's large (it has a full numeric keypad in addition to the keyboard.) It is really cool though. You can really tell Dell is now moving towards the more "sleek and sexy" style that they started with their XPS systems. It's nice to see it finally moving to their enterprise stuff though. I've installed Vista Business on it, so I'll let you know how it turns out, hopefully well since it's now my main work laptop.

Ok, that's about it, more later on.

~C

Post Election thoughts and Hyper-V

2008-11-10T17:04:00.001-08:00

So the election ended (actually ended about 9pm EST once Ohio went Obama.) But we do have a new president and he is a Democrat. For better or worse, I'm not really sure and I will not use this blog as a political soap box.

I am sad for one of my buddies who has done a vast amount of work for the McCain campaign and was promised a job in the White House if McCain would have won, which he didn't so my buddy was pretty torn up about it.

He came down Wednesday and we went to the NIN concert together and I'm thinking that was good for him. I mean, angry, hate filled music, along with the most amazing light show you've ever seen in your life...always does a body good. The show was amazing, like nothing I've ever seen before as far as lights go. I would describe it for you, but I don't think the written word can even do the show justice...you just have to experience it for yourself, it was that good.

Anyway, so the NIN show ruled, and I'm glad the election is over and it was a clean election (unless you live in District 5 in Virginia which still has a contested race.) On to matters related to work....

We have been using the new Virtual Machine technology from Microsoft called Hyper-V. If you haven't seen this technology yet, it's really cool stuff. Basically it has all the parts of VMWare but way easier to use. There are some draw-backs to Hyper-V that I've discovered. The biggest one being that Trend Micro Office Scan(our anti-virus and firewall software) doesn't play nice with Hyper-V at all. From what I've been able to tell, it seems that Office Scan's firewall will only recognize physical NIC's and not the virtual NIC (which is what Hyper-V uses for network communication.) This causes a huge problem because the default policy for Trend for any network card, is to plug up all firewall holes, and not let anything in, or out. So then you run into problems where you can't connect to the VM's you just created and the VM's themselves won't even start. Kind of annoying, but I think I have a workaround that will allow us to have Trend installed on the machine and still use Hyper-V.

I have had some good luck with VM's to this point though. We have some of our various services (Virus Scanning and CAD licensing) being hosted on VM's now and they seem to be running with out a hitch *knock on wood*

Ok, that's about it from me for now. More later on.

~C

Election Night

2008-11-04T16:59:00.001-08:00

After a full year of going back and forth, all the political ad's all the talks, debates, and yes even all the smear ads (both sides did it, don't even try and say your side didn't do it.) It's all come down to this, election night.

One of my buddies works on Capital Hill (for the republican side) so this election (along with the last few) has special meaning to me. It's always been fun to debate with my buddy and have good spirited political conversations.

Who will win, I have no idea. I know who I voted for and hopefully I did vote for the next president of the US, but until all the votes are counted and the opponent concedes election night will continue.

My only hope for the US election is that it doesn't digress into the mud slinging, chad counting, nightmare that was the 2000 election...as long as both parties choose to take the high road and when it looks like it's the end just give up the race and start the healing process...the US has larger problems that we need to deal with.

Ok, that's it for my political rant, time for more interesting things...games and concerts!

I did score Fallout 3 the day it came and all I have to say is...WOW...the game is amazing...it's freaking huge, but it's great so far. I haven't gotten very far in the game (mostly due to a very wrong turn at the beginning of the game) but I'm starting to figure things out and do what I need to do to win, so I'll let you know how it turns out.

The other really exciting thing is that I got a new video card for my PC. It's an ASUS NVIDIA GForce 8600 GT...it's a pretty sweet little card, with 512 MB of on board DDR3 RAM(!) I fired up Fallout 3 the night I got it (the night before I got my video card) and it detected only medium graphics settings, but I popped the new video card in, fired up Fallout 3 and it detected high video settings :) It's a great card and I'm looking forward to being able to use it for a long while.

So yeah, Fallout 3 does rock but I really haven't gotten to spend much time playing it...why you may ask...what could keep you away from a game that will definitely be nominated for game of the year? One word...work...yes that's right that four letter word that we all know. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, I really do, but it's just been crazy busy for the past few weeks. I really don't know what happened, weather the whole world decided that they really did want IT, or my project load just suddenly all came to a head, but whatever it is, it's just been crazy. I'm getting to do lots of fun stuff. We've started to do more with virtulizatiton with Microsoft Hyper-V, and it's really cool. It is much more simplistic than VMWare, but I have noticed some draw backs, and this could be because I haven't messed with it enough, but I'll let you know as I get to play with this more.

So yeah, let's see, Election, games, work, oh yeah, music...always fun. Tomorrow night is the Nine Inch Nails concert here in c'ville and my buddy from DC is coming down and we're going to go to the concert...it should be rocking.

That's NIN live this year...just a taste of what we'll get to see tomorrow night. There's supposed to be an opening group too which will be Health. This should be a good time. I'm only working a half day tomorrow and then taking all of Thursday off to recover from the concert!

Well, I think that's about it for me. Off to watch the political drabble that is all of the election night specials...we'll see who walks away with the "W"

~C

Rainy Days

2008-10-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

It's finally Saturday...a rainy Saturday, but at least it's the weekend. It's been a crazy week here. My birthday was this week and I was gone to Richmond on my birthday during the day for a seminar given by Dell on their new EqualLogic SAN storage devices. This is an awesome toy! It also costs about 40,000 bucks...so it better be REALLY awesome. The system they were showing only had about 3.6 TB of data storage, but it is really cool and it seems pretty durable too. At the end of the demo one of the Dell rep's started pulling out drives (I think in total she pulled out 4 or 5 drives) and then pulled out a power supply, then she pulled out one of the controller drives and the thing was kind of running still...it was crazy. But she never did turn the drive off, and they put all the pieces back in and it kept running just fine. It was pretty amazing.

What wasn't as amazing was the food. The seminar was held at Ruth's Chris steakhouse in Richmond. From what I understand this is some super fancy place that charges big bucks for food. I had the steak option (they also had a chicken and a crab cake option) and don't get me wrong it was a good steak, but it really wasn't anything that made me say WOW. Also it kind of scared me that when I looked on the menu online, there were no prices listed...anywhere...I guess if you have to ask how much, you shouldn't be going.

Oh well, after I got home from Richmond, we had some friends over and ordered pizza's and hung out and played Wii until all hours. I did finally get to play Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in dual mode and that was pretty cool. Apparently you can't play dual mode in single player though, you can only do it against another live person, which seems kind of dumb if you ask me. Oh well, maybe for the next Star Wars games they'll get their stuff together a little better.

So let's see, what else is going on...oh yeah, Fallout 3 is set to be released on Tuesday, which should be awesome! I think I'm going to go today and pre-order it from GameStop. It's strange, I haven't really touched fallout since fallout 2 came out and I got it in Germany, but the game has always had this strange lure for me...I'm generally not really much of a Role Playing game fan, but that game is just so cool, and it always has a really fun plot setting (for Fallout 3 it's set in DC after the Apocalypse.)

Ok, that's about it for now.

~C

One more thing

2008-10-15T18:58:00.001-07:00

So one more thing for tonight.

One of the guys at my job is on this "living in the clouds" kick recently and I think it's a pretty cool idea. Basically the idea is that you can live your whole life totally on the net, social networking, file storage, email, everything...it's a cool idea no doubt, but it got me thinking about online storage and how there has to be something where you get more than 1GB of free online storage....

Enter Orbit Files (http://www.orbitfiles.com) These guys give you 6GB of online storage for free and to top it all off they have their own software that allows you to do mass uploads without having to hit the website...that is awesome.

Anyway, go check it out it definitely worth your time.

~C

Guitar Hero 3

2008-10-15T16:57:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned previously, my wife and I took the plunge into being a full Nintendo family (2 DS's and a Wii.) With big trade in we managed to score Guitar Hero 3 for Wii along with two guitars. It is this that I will spend most of the time blogging about.

When we got Guitar Hero for Wii my wife took a renewed interest in it and has actually been doing quite well (she's currently playing Anarchy in the UK on medium.) While we are no means hard-core guitar hero junkies, we both greatly enjoy the game. I'm almost though the entire medium game (just beat Slash) while Amy is making good progress in the UK. Her character though....oh lord....she chose the J-Pop girl (her name currently escapes me) but she took some of the money she won and got the puffball outfit (where the girls has two massive puffs on the side of her head) got some horrid colored outfit and then has the star guitar with the black and red finish...let me tell you, it's one of the scariest things I've ever seen in a video game (and I've played a lot of crazy games.) NOTE: She just got 3 stars in Anarchy in the UK (it was kind of rough toward the end there.) My wife did manage to score 5 starts on My Name is Jonas which she was super proud of.

Ok, so that's not Amy playing but the song is freakin' awesome so I decided to put the video in there. Here's the real band Weezer doing it too:

Kind of cool really how many groups have finally caught on to the Guitar Hero franchise. I'm pretty excited to see what's in store for the new Guitar Hero game due out later this month, from the previews it looks like it's going to be an awesome game. I am a bit sad to see them moving more toward the Rock Band style, with the drums and the singer and the guitar, but hopefully the game will still rock. Ok, just made the mistake of looking up at the TV screen to see Amy's scary as hell character again...am gonna have nightmares about that thing tonight...mark my words. Now she's on to Shanker's Island and the *shudder* Scorpions Rock You Like a Hurricane. Yet another group if they would have broken up in the 80's like the rest of the Hair Bands, the world would have been a better place.

I can remember being in Germany for the first time in the mid-90's (summer of 96 to be exact) and the Scorpions had a huge hit in Germany (right along with the Macarena....yeah, nough said) but the German's thought they were amazing. Then I come back to the US and sure as anything, the song is popular over here now too...I just couldn't win that summer (musically that is.)

NOTE: Holiday in Cambodia, is not agreeing well with Amy currently

Anyway, on other musical fronts, Friday is the Elton John concert...I'm really excited about this concert. Most of the people at work I've talked to about the concert seem really apathetic towards the show. I mean it's not like the guy isn't one of the most influential artists of our time or anything...right? I mean, yeah, he's gay, but so what...dude still rocks.

NOTE: Amy's moved on to the battle with Slash now...this should be good...and Slash got to use his death drain.

Ok, well Amy's gone on to playing bonus songs, maybe I can get my turn in finally.

More later on.

~C

Fall is finally here

2008-10-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

So I'll have to admit, I'm a huge fan of fall, winter and spring (basically everything except summer.) I really seem to like fall the most. If you think about it what's not to love about fall.

The weather starts to cool down, the leaves start to change color, Halloween is right around the corner, my birthday is also right around the corner :) It's a great time of the year.

In other exciting news, we're going to see Elton John this coming Friday...this concert should be freakin' awesome. The tickets were a bit pricey, but I mean come on...it's Elton John...you know it's gonna be a crazy show. Our seats aren't bad either, so I'm pretty excited about the show, should be a really good time.

Last weekend we also decided that we weren't really using the PS2 so we traded in all of our PS2 gear and made the move to be a fully Nintendo family. As far as consoles go we now have a Wii and 2 Nintendo DSs'. It was kind of a nice feeling to downsize to one next gen console. We also picked up Guitar Hero III for Wii (we had it for PS2 and loved the game) with our trade in cash, and we also got 2 Wii wireless guitar's...it's really nice to play with no cords, and also this way the dogs and the cat's can't try and eat the cords while we're playing the game (crucial!)

I also learned that Blizzard has announced that StarCraft2 is due out by the end of this year (which I'm guessing actually means it'll be out sometime during Q2 of 2009...if we're lucky.) I also read a little snippet on Slashdot about how Blizzard is planning on making the game a trilogy. From what the article says it looks like Blizzard will release 3 games, one for each race (Terran, Zerg, and Protoss) of course at this point, it's really hard to tell exactly what Blizzard is really going to do. They have a long rep of saying things just to get more hype about the game. I'm sure in the end, no matter what they do this game is going to be freakin' awesome and I can't wait until it comes out.

Also I saw that fallout 3 is set to come out around the 26th of this month. That's another classic game that holds a very special place in my heart. I remember when I was living in Germany I bought fallout (thought it was in English) and the game ended up being fully in German, except for the parts where there were proper names. It was kind of funny actually, the game would be going along in German in one voice and then it would be a completely different voice with the English proper name, it just struck me as amusing. Anyway, the third installment of the fallout series looks really awesome. They have this targeting thing where you can target an enemy and then choose (based on percentage) which portion of the body you want to shoot...it just looks really cool.

Ok, that's about it from me.

~C

Friday and the weekend

2008-09-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

It's the end of week again...yay! It's always a nice feeling to come to the end of the week and start the weekend. Also the weather is starting to finally cool down here, and that's always a good sign that fall (and my birthday) are right around the corner.

On a very positive note, Carl is now out of the bathroom and roaming around the house, just like he loves. He seems to be doing quite well and, especially now, he seems quite happy.

Oh yeah, if you haven't seen this yet you should totally check out Evernote:

It's a really cool virtual notebook. The really nice part is that if you install Evernote on multiple systems you can sync your "notebook" up and have your notes wherever you go (they also have a mobile version also.) How sick is that? Other great thing is that's it's free (always awesome.)

Ok, that's it for now, more later.

~C

Quick cat update

2008-09-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

So I think I've mentioned before that our cat Carl was in the hospital on Friday with a puking problem. The vet preformed surgery on Friday and then Amy brought him home Friday night and we turned the office of our house into a cat hospital. Luckily that was only for one night and this morning he moved into the bathroom where he could still be isolated, but didn't need to restricted in his movements.

He seems to be doing better though. Amy currently has him on some good pain killers so he's a pretty happy guy. Just laying on the floor all stretched out...it's actually pretty cute to see.

Anyway, on the college football front, VT managed to pull a win out today @ UNC so that was a nice treat and it looks like the Cinderella team ECU finally put their magical season to an end when they lost to NC State today...now hopefully they can regroup and beat-up on UVA next weekend (hehe).

Ok, that's it from me, off to bed.

~C

Bioshock

2008-09-18T12:33:00.001-07:00

So last night I finally beat Bioshock....yay! I got the "bad" ending since I had harvested most of the little sisters and only towards the very end when Tannenbaum gave her plee of mercy for the little sisters (plus I had some 1500 + Adam) did I stop harvesting the little sisters. Guess it was too little too late hu? Oh well, it's still a nice feeling to have beat that game.

Some of the Plasmids you can get are really cool though. Incenrate 3 is the best thing in the world...nothing says lovin' like being able to use an electro bolt to disable a camera or turret, and then use Incenrate 3 to blow the thing sky high, it's a great feeling.

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about here's the ending that I got:

Now, if you're a good person and save all the little sisters here's the end you'll get:

Yeah, it's a pretty cool game. Now maybe I can a bit more into TF2 again (since it's been a while since I've played.) Also looking forward to playing NCAA 2009 for Wii and getting though my first season. I'm playing as VT and only have one loss so far, so I'm doing pretty good. I also think I may land a top tier QB recruit which would be awesome!

Ok, that's it for now.

~C

Vacation Days

2008-09-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Vacation's a great time...since Wednesday I've been on vacation and it's awesome. Believe it or not I've actually been pretty productive this vacation too.

One of our cat's, Carl, has been pretty sick so that's sucked a lot and I've been pretty busy running back between the Vet and home to make sure Carl has everything he needs, and then trying to get some other things done that I've been meaning to do for months. It is a nice feeling to get some stuff done though.

On a more fun note, last Sunday Amy and I went and saw Jeff Dunham...the ventriloquist who has all the different puppets...it was really freakin' funny. There was this opening act buy a guy named "Guitar Guy" he was really good too.

Here's a video of him:

Also here's a video of Jeff Dunham:

and one more note, I did manage to score Elton John tickets which will be an awesome show! I can't wait.

Anyway, watching South Park the movie right now, so more later

~C

End of week

2008-09-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

So the week comes to an end (yay). It always feels nice when Friday comes around. You don't have any work plans for the next day, you can stay up as late as you want playing games (ok, so at least I can stay up late playing games) since you know you don't have to wake up early the next morning for work.

It's just a nice feeling...

On another front, Elton John tickets go on sale for his concert in Charlottesville tomorrow morning @ 10 am. It seems the whole of Charlottesville is up in arms about this concert. All the major music communities can't shut-up about Elton John. Mind you, I'm one of those people who will be up bright and early tomorrow morning to try and get tickets online, so I guess I really don't have much room to talk. It should be a good concert though, I mean, it's freakin' Elton John...can't really go wrong with that.

So I guess I really haven't talked that much about gaming, and since I'm a basically a hard-core gamer at heart now would be a good time to talk about it...

My current games include: Diablo II (can't get of enough of the main reason why my college GPA suffered), Battlefield 2, NCAA 2009 (for Wii), Dawn of War: Soulstorm, StarCraft (gotta get ready for SC II when Blizzard gets their crap together and releases the game), Bioshock, and of course TF2 (if you don't know what this means...go find out...now...go on....I'll wait.)

So yeah, I guess I'm more of an RTS junky, I really enjoy them...I know here comes the comments of how great Supreme Commander is, and I have the game and have played it, but for some reason I just don't find it awesome as something like SoulStorm or StarCraft. I've also really come to love FPS game as I get better at them. I've been playing FPS since Quake and Doom back in the day, but something about RTS games just talks to me...no idea...I guess it's the fact that RTS games takes some more building and planning, and you actually know, going into the game, that you'll get some real play time and not just 3 seconds of being alive until the guy who is l337 comes and frags you from behind.

The last game I tried is Warmonger. If you haven't tried it make sure you're system can launch nuclear missiles with ease, cause about the level of computer power required to run this game. I really don't have a crappy system, first gen Intel dual core processor 2.86 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800 video card...by no means anything crappy, but this game brings my system literally to it's knees...even on the lowest settings, it still is super jerky and plays really poorly. I don't know, maybe my system is now out of date? Just seemed strange, especially since I can still run games like Bioshock with no effort from my system...oh well, I guess if I can't play a random online free game, I'll be OK.

Ok, I think that's it for tonight...I'll let you know if I manage to score Elton John tickets!

Fingers and Bones

2008-09-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

So about 3 weeks ago, I get this growth on my left middle finger. It kind of kept growing and then, being the super intelligent person I am, I was picking at it one day, and it started bleeding. It really did not bother me too much, but then after about 20 minutes it still had not stopped bleeding. Realizing this maybe a problem, the next day I called the doctor and he scheduled to see me that day.

I show up to the doctor and he does what any normal doctor would do for something that looks like a wart, he assumed it was a wart and used a freezing liquid to freeze it. He told me if had not fallen off in a week, that I should give him a call. Well, at the end of one week, not only had the growth not fallen off, but it was actually still bleeding...hmmmm...this can't be good. So I called the doctor again, talked to him for a few minutes, and he promptly referred me to a dermatologist.

Upon arrival at the dermatologists office they took me into a room where the doctor took a look and present me with 3 options:

1) Do nothing and come back in a couple of weeks
2) Shave the top of the growth off as a sample and test that
3) Dig down very deep and get the whole thing for sure

So, at this point I should probably mention when it comes to hacking up my body, I'm pretty much a wuss...as most people are...I'm really not a fan of people slicing things off of my body, much less digging deep into my finger. Well, I chose option 2 and it was off to the races. I'll omit all the bloody details here for the sake of you the reader, but suffice to say it was pretty much the grossest thing I've ever seen.

Now here I am, about 2 days into it, the doctor told me I'd have to keep this thing covered for 4-6 weeks and it hurts if I even think about touching it. The best part of the whole thing was that the best explanation the doctor could give me as to why this growth happened...no idea...awesome!

Oh well, it is feeling a bit better and at least I don't have a growth on my finger, so I guess it's all for the better in the end.

Ok, on to the other part of this blog post...Bones!

This is by far one of the greatest shows on TV, the writers of this show seem to have landed on a good mix of individual character development along with many excellent stand alone plots that even the most casual view could pick up the full story line with very little problems.

Well, I think that's about it for the evening.

~C

Done with work

2008-09-10T14:13:00.001-07:00

Another day comes to an end, and we get through dreaded Wednesday, or in corporate speak "Hump Day."

Have you ever noticed how only the executives really try and use, as I call it, corporate speak...you know what it is and guaranteed if you've work for any company, big or small, you've heard it. The boss comes around talking about "Wrapping his mind around a project" or "locking and reloading" on a given situation. I'd really like to know who came up with these completely idiotic sayings and then how do corporate execs manage to instantly pick-up on this vocabulary.

Is there a book for this that gets handed to you when you become an exec? If so, I really wish I could find my companies stash of those and trash them, just so I wouldn't have to go into one more "brainstorming" session...which I'm pretty sure means "I have no idea what we're talking about but I'm hoping in the context of this meeting I'll figure it out."

Oh well, at least tomorrow is Thursday and then comes the best day in the week, FRIDAY...the day we all live for....

~C

A bit about me

2008-09-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hello....

So it seems you have stumbled into my little corner of the blogging world. Well, I guess introductions are in order then. My name is Charlie and I'm the Systems Administrator for a company called Blue Ridge Numerics, Inc. (http://www.cfdesign.com.)

In my free time (if you couldn't guess by the blog title) I'm an avid gamer, mostly of the PC genre, but also enjoy the occasional board game (Settlers of Katan), or playing the Nintendo Wii that my wife Amy managed to score for us.

Well, I think that's about it now, I'm sure I'll post more later.