In a not too surprising example of how Homeland Security seems anything but secure, control of six major U.S. ports is about to be turned over to a company in the UAE. Now even if 9/11 had not happened, turning over control of your major ports to a foreign company/country is just plain stupid. Why don’t we just outsource our southwestern border patrols to Mexico while we’re at it. I’m sure they could do it for less money!
Except for being sick the whole weekend, I had a lot of fun dragging out, dusting off, firing up the old Sega Saturn. For me the highlight of it all was finally finishing D after 11 years. In the end I cheated a little on the garden puzzle (push the green button for Sagitarius and the light blue button for Aquarius). I felt justified because I finally realized that the Knight Room level is just a cheap time synch. Anyone who has played D knows that you will suffer many many falls into the pit in the Knight Room no matter what you do with the controls. Getting through this level is virtually random. I did it once before years ago, but used up so much time that I ran out. D has a two hour time limit and no saves. Now, 11 years later, I realized that the only reason you’d need to go to the Knight Room is to get the sword to open the Observatory door where you would get the clue to which buttons to press on Sagitarius and Aquarius. Well, I’d already seen that and missed the clue anyway because it was far too simple. So I skipped that nonsense and finally finished the game. Clearly, the true purpose of the Knight Room is to slow the player down, boo! Later I played it through again for the kids because they wanted to see how the story ended and just what D stood for. All in all, I’d say that D was an okay game more interesting for the style than the gameplay which consisted of extremely simple puzzles.
Other old favorites to make an appearance were Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2, the reason I wanted a Saturn in the first place, and Virtua Fighter 2. Forget Grand Theft Auto! Capping bad guy asses with a big orange light pistol is a lot more fun! I remember driving all over Chicago before finding a copy of Virtua Cop that included the Stinger light gun which is really the only way to play the game well.
So thanks again Saturn for all of the fun!
Nostalgia is a bug that bites very hard. Last week I watched an Icons episode featuring Yu Suzuki who is probably best known for the Virtua Fighter series of 3D fighting games and more recently the sprawling adventure/rpg Shenmue. The young Suzuki sounded a lot like my oldest son, so I TiVo’d the show and watched it again with my son. This lead to digging up my old Shenmue discs for movie clips and to my joy finding the soundtrack available free and legal online. Now my son has discovered my old Sega Saturn games, including Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 2. So the Saturn is being dragged out this weekend for some serious gameplay. I hope the thing still works!
Yesterday I had the opportunity to buy a couple of cans of Sapporo beer which is one of my favorites. So once my little kaiju had gone to bed, I cracked one of those bad boys open and started to relax at the computer a bit. A little while later I felt compelled to practice my Japanese writing, so grabbed my workbook and headed off to the living room.
I was only working on A through Ko which are pretty simple, but try as I might things just wouldn’t come out right. Well, in one of those “Duh!” moments, I realized that I was already pretty wasted and should have been happy to get as far as I had already. An hour or so later things started coming out the way I wanted them to. So all you kids out there, don’t drink and do kana! It may not be the law, but it’s still a good idea!:oops:
Yesterday I was soooo happy to get a Valentine’s Day card! The card was from my wife, but that is not a usual occurence most years since of the two of us, I go more for sappy romantic stuff on average than she does. I was so happy I actually had to restrain myself a bit. Not only did she get me a card, she also got me the Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated. This last part I felt was a bit odd (in part because I generally prefer to ogle Asian women) and in fact I would have preferred chocolate, but it’s the thought that counts! I was sure that once again I’d be forgotten because she didn’t have time to get a card. Yayyyy! 😀
While the rest of the world is enjoying the Winter Olympics, I’ve been counting down the days until the Daytona 500 kicks off my favorite sport, NASCAR auto racing. So I was absolutely shocked when I read the news that Jimmy Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus had been ejected from NASCAR’s premiere event. The thing that got me was just how blatant the attempt to break the rules had been. I mean, things like the car being too low, or a spoiler angle being off are one thing, but a device to raise the rear window is no accident or oversight!
Knaus’ team has been one of the strongest and most consistent during his tenure, but this rules violation suddenly casts all of their success under a different light. Allegations of cheating and forbidden technologies, like traction control, abound during a typical season. But for a team of such stature as Hendrick’s number 48 Lowes Chevy team to be caught red handed is a real bombshell. And it is also a warning for any other teams out there that think that they’ve gotten too big for NASCAR.
Well, in the end, Knaus should count himself lucky. In some other sports blatantly breaking the rules like this might draw a full season suspension or even a ban. So based on what has been reported so far, Mr. Hendrick might not want to complain too loudly.
Yesterday I successfully replaced the battery in my aging 3rd generation iPod. I bought the replacement battery and installation kit from Other World Computing and let me say right now that THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR WEAK OF HANDS! I say that because, just as the instructions warn, opening the iPod case is very difficult and you will fail many times before succeeding. Once inside, you’d better have two things, one, rock solid confidence in your mechanical skills, and two be ready to buy a new iPod if you fail or slip! The last thing I’d say is make sure you print out the instructions from the web site because the bundled instructions are really too small to read.
In the end, all went well and my little 10GB pod now has a new lease on life! So am I 1337 yet?
Sony announced that they are going to bundle UMDs with DVDs for some movie releases. WoooHooo! This is pretty good news for PSP owners, like me, who don’t want to buy the same movie twice or go through the hassle of ripping to the PC in order to write the movie to the PSP memory stick. I’m glad that Sony is bit by bit making life a little easier for PSP users. So soon, it will be even easier for me to sneak off take a little break from the kids for some portable cinematic fun! Now if Sony could only create something equivalent to iTMS for the PSP that’s just as easy to use, then we’d really have something to write about.
Winter has returned to Chicago! Temperatures have dipped into the 20’s and once again everyone is all bundled up. Still, after a good solid week of strong, 2 mile lunch time walks, I wasn’t going to let a little cold weather get in my way. And I’m glad I didn’t since the sights I witness along the way are every bit as much a reason for my lunch time excursions as the need for exercise.
One of the nicer things about this winter has been the variety of stylish boots the ladies have been wearing. While spying a pair of these on the return leg of my walk, I noticed what I’ll call “Chicago Rouge”. This was the delightful rosy coloration of the cheeks of the lady to whom the boots were attached. She had a chill induced blush that, in her case, perfectly complimented her looks and attire. Sometimes I love winter in Chicago!
GamesIndustry.biz has a story about a Sony employee who was fired for comments regarding the PS3 versus the Xbox 360 in his company blog. He was fired even after getting all required approvals for the post. Basically he said in his blog, that from what he was hearing in the development community, the Xbox 360 was a more capable box.
This reminds me of a move at one of Ford’s plants to ban non-Ford cars from the employee parking lot. This is just another heavy handed attempt to control people body and soul. Now I can understand the desire to pump up your own products, but moves like these are way too Orwellian for my tastes.
So we have another hard lesson about blogging for or about work. Fired SOE 3D artist Josh Robinson puts it best saying, “I guess the new rule for me is, don’t ever say anything at all about anything. Ever… Ever.”
Out on my lunch time walk in downtown Chicago, I couldn’t help but notice a number of very attractive dark ladies. Hooray! When this happens I’m always reminded a girl I went to grade school with named Lisa. She was really quite dark, black (#000000) actually and very pretty. Alas, I was too immature at the time to act appropriately, or at least better than grabbing her bottom on occasion. The really sad thing is that I also remember growing up, that even among black people, those of us that were actually black in color were often made fun of. The “high yellow” girls were the real prizes to be sought after.
I never felt that way, so today I say hooray for the dark girls! 😉
Might as well face it, we’re addicted to oil… It’s nice that President Bush at least in words is acknowledging the need to break U.S. dependency on foreign oil, but he didn’t lay out anything new or detailed on how to get there. Indeed, he took the politically safe route that pushes the goal far into the future to 2025 and seems to favor the popular, but inefficient, ethanol to the front. Oh well, it isn’t fair to expect a lot from a state of the union address, still one always hopes.
All in all, the president’s address seemed to be more of the same. So along those lines, America leadership and resisting isolationism would seem to mean that we will be invading Iran pretty soon and won’t be out of Iraq any time soon. Our need to be competitive with India and China actually means that U.S. companies will remain free to export more jobs to those countries not because they are better educated than Americans, but because they are cheaper. And the endless war on terrorism means that the illegal domestic spying will continue. Oh well, I guess there is some comfort in consistency…
æ å–œ 發 財! Happy Chinese New Year! Today begins the year of the dog and boy are the kids dog tired after a day of celebrating my youngest daughter’s birthday at the bowling alley! And quite by coincidence, the birthday girl wanted a dog themed party to boot! Arf!
* BTW, I apologize in advance for my probably incorrect transliteration of the Chinese. I felt that this choice made it easier for an English speaker to pronounce the Cantonese version of the expression.
If you use a computer regularly, then you know that there are few things more fearful than the sound of nearly constant hard drive access, even when nothing else is being done on the computer. To make a long story short, Norton GoBack was the culprit. After I removed it from my wife’s computer, the constant hard drive access (and the noise of it) were gone. This is actually the second time I’ve been burned by GoBack, I won’t be burned again!
After wrestling with my daughter’s laptop wireless access today and having had long battles with the TiVo network access and the other kid PC, I’ve come to the conclusion that my Linksys WAP11 sucks! It seems to be locking up randomly requiring a reset or power cycle. It’s about 3 years old, but has really only been getting real use the last year. This is really sad, Linksys used to be a brand you could depend on, but clearly this has changed. And it would seem that I’m not the only one who thinks this.
Linksys WAP11: Worst Access Point Ever
I also had trouble with a Linksys wireless PCI card fresh out of the box a few months ago. I ended up returning it and getting some noname brand from a Taiwanese company which worked without a single hiccup. I wonder if they make access points too?