Random Brain Dump

A news reporter in LA uncovers scams at Jiffy Lube.

I hate Jiffy Lube. Some years ago, I took my old Celica for an oil change there before a long trip. I discovered later that the goofballs who worked there didn’t fill up the minimal amount of oil. Had I taken my car to Sacramento as planned, the Celica would probably be incinerated somewhere on interstate 80.

Jiffy Lube sucks.

A few years ago, a co-worker of mine Dan Hutchins gave me a copy of a strategy game called Age of Kings (AoK). Dan was a game reviewer so he gets all sorts of free games to evaluate. The basic premise of AoK is that you choose one of many civilizations from the middle ages, build up its economy and raise armies to conqueror other civilizations. I got a few of my buddies into it and pretty soon we were playing regularly online as a clan. The battles were always intense.

At the some point, I had to quit being an avid gamer with the birth of Allison– 2 kids were too demanding for any regular gaming. I constantly found my attention diverted while I was in middle of battles. Unfortunately, the “clan” was disbanded. I now definitely have a lot less time devoted to gaming than those “golden days.” However, the gamer in me never completely stopped playing. While still unable to play regularly, I discover that just 2 or 3 hours gaming on a Fri nite is very doable and with minimal interuption now that the kids are a few years older. With a beer next to me, it’s a good way to unwind after a week of work for me, though my wife wonders how I can still look at a computer monitor after a full work week (I’m a software developer). 🙂

I went through several games since AoK: Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 3, Battlefield 2, Rise of Nations etc… Despite the impressive array of 3D graphics, I must say I still miss the old gameplay, intensity and depth of AoK. Some of these 1st person shooters, while intense & fun to play, were making me nauseous! I tend to stick with strategy genre too. So a few weeks ago, my friend Alex & I were discussing how it was so much fun playing online with friends. Alex suggested that I revive the old AoK clan again.

So, this is a call to arms to my fellow weekend warriors. Let’s do AoK again. If you’re interested in playing, send me an email with your IM. I will place you on my AoK mailing list. Sorry, this is by private invitation only. No inquiries please, if I don’t know you.

Here’s the basic info on the game:
• We run version 1.0c of the Age of Kings with The Conquerors expansion pack. You can verify the version # by creating a multiplayer game, the version # is displayed between the player number & team number
• Game time: Fri 10PM
• Install & run XFire, for basic communication & coordination. Be sure that I have your XFire username.
• Open port 47624 (TCP & UDP) if you’re behind a router/firewall. You should only need to do port forwarding, port triggering shouldn’t be necessary. If your game still fails to connect, open these additional ports: 28800-29000 (TCP), 2300-2400 (TCP), 2300-2400 (UDP). If that still doesn’t work, put your machine in a DMZ.
• Game manual can be found in aoe2/aoc/AGE2_X1/DOCS folder of the CD

Connecting to our games:
1. Start the game (Aok: The Conquerors v1.0c)
2. Click on Multi-player
3. For Connection Type, select TCP/IP
4. Enter the server IP address (if you’re connecting for 1st time)
5. You should see a game if it’s being hosted
6. Select the game and click on Join

I ran across this little nifty tool called TaskSwitchXP. It enhances the old boring Windows task switcher by displaying small snapshot of each app. Simple enhancement but very cool & useful. Check it out.

The Oregon State Linux Users Group honors Firefox’s 200 million download milestone by creating this huge crop circle of the Firefox logo in the middle of an oat field. It’s 220 feet in diameter. How freakingly cool is that?

There is actually intelligent life out there on planet Earth! 😉

Here’s a blog advocating the idea of killing the caps lock key. The reasons seem justified to me. The little used key occupies precious keyboard real estate. I myself remaps it to the control key (old habits from the old days of mainframe keyboards). So, I’d say let’s kill it!

NASA announces that Voyager 1 reaches 100 astronomical units, or 9.3 billion miles, from the sun on Tue 8/15 at 2:13 PM (PST). It’s 100 times more distant from the sun than the Earth is. Traveling 1 million miles a day, it’s the most distant human-made object in space and is traveling at the outer edge of our solar system. It will hit interstellar space in 10 years.

And to think that the spacecraft was launched some 30 years ago. A mind boggling human achievement!

This past weekend, our family went down to LA. While we were there, we took the kids to Pharoah’s Lost Kingdom in Redlands. The place is a huge: rides, miniture golf, games and a water park. It was a hot afternoon, so the kids spent all the time in the kiddie pools. Katelyn & Andre were hitting the water slides non-stop, while the younger kids, Allison & Justine, spent most their time in the wading pool & float around the lazy river.

Of course, I brought my camera and spent most my time snapping shots. I was a bit nervous with all the kids splashing water all around, but in the end I managed to keep my camera dry.

Here’re a few of the shots.

just something I came across reading, this joke is so bad, it’s good! 🙂

A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car. The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is dead. The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry.

A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She steps out of the car and asks the man what’s wrong. “I feel terrible,” he explains, “I accidentally hit this rabbit and killed it.” The blonde says, “Don’t worry.” She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp, dead rabbit, bends down, and sprays the contents onto the rabbit. The rabbit jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road.

Ten feet away the rabbit stops, turns around and waves again, he hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again, until he hops out of sight.

The man is astonished.

He runs over to the woman and demands, “What is in that can? What did spray on that rabbit?”

The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label.

It says, – “Hair Spray – Restores life to dead hair, adds a permanent wave.”

in Silicon Valley…
🙂

Some interesting (to me anyway) 30 day stats (6/28 – 7/28) on rexlam.com:

Hits
Total : 13066
Unique: 956 (unique)

Platforms
Indeterminable 57%
Windows XP 41%
Windows 2000 2%

Browser
Bots 40%
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Firefox 1.5.0.5 2%
IE 5.5 1%

Search Referrers
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search.yahoo.com 34
pslranugget.blogspot.com 17
my.yahoo.com 9

Search Strings
audrey woulard 39
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Audrey Woulard 4
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Countries
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