OceanPark

11-30-04 And the Winner is...Tai Collins

I like to pay attention to the little milestones in my life. So, last night, I was watching the stats on this blog, refreshing the page a few times, waiting to see the visitor count roll to 5,000 for the year.

5,000 visitors to this site. Pretty interesting when you consider that this is a purely therapeutic way for me to blow off steam once in awhile, regardless of whether anyone reads it or not.

Anyway, it never rolled and when I looked again today, I had missed the moment. The count had rolled to 5,035. Most of it is fairly recent. There were 202 visitors in just the past week.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of those people wind up here by accident. As far as regular readers are concerned, I really only know of family members and a certain very bored Lutheran Minister in Canada.

The somewhat creepy part of this is that I can call up each site visit, and what appears on my screen is the actual search page result of the person who wound up here.

There apparently is a pretty popular place somewhere in Asia called Ocean Park. Some of those folks wind up here by accident. But by far the biggest source of visitors have been lured by a passing reference to former Virginia Governor Chuck Robb and his liaison with former Miss Virginia, Tai Collins. There is little doubt that the Internet is still mostly populated by horny guys who don't have girlfriends or wives.

Well, in honor of Miss Collins, who really looks...well...pretty generic in my opinion, and her unexpected role in bringing my blog more than half of my "hits," she is depicted here. That ought to be good for another 5,000 hits by this time next year.

Chuckle.

11-28-04 Game Levels

Halo: Combat Evolved (pc version) Tenth time through, third time on Legendary (most difficult). Level: "The Library; Follow the Monitor to the Index." (All of the links here are to walkthroughs of each game.)

Deus Ex, Game of the Year Edition* for pc. Third time through. Level: "Paris."

Deus Ex Invisible War (the sequel) for pc. Fifteenth time through. Difficulty: Realistic. Level: Mako Ballistics.

Halo 2, xbox version (it was either play now and use the dum down  graphics and controls or wait a year or two before they have jostled as many coins as possible out of the xbox crowd and can finally put together a proper pc version...sigh) First time playing. Level: Priority Shift. No, I haven't even defused the bomb yet, because I'm horrible at xbox! The controls are pathetically inaccurate if you are used to the accuracy and precision of the keyboard controls and the mouse in pc gaming (and I use a Logitech MX-510 performance mouse, which is awesome. Don't let anyone tell you that a precise mouse won't make a difference in game play experience.) The xbox itself is the rough equivalent of an early Pentium III chip, which is also a relic. And the video quality and video memory of the thing is also compromised. I  basically have a mid-level video gaming card: an ATi Radeon Pro 9600 w/ 128Mb of DDR RAM, a 400Mhz core clock speed and 600MHz of RAM clock speed, four shader pixel pipelines and two vertex pipelines. In other words, the card doesn't even begin to compare to state of the art video cards, which have 256Mb of faster GDDR3 RAM, core clock speeds of 520MHz, RAM clock speeds of up to 1120MHz, sixteen shader pixel pipelines and six vertex pipelines. But I still have a rich game play experience with incredible attention to detail. If I've emptied a clip into a wall and come back to the same location several stages later in the game, the expelled shells are still there on the ground and the powder burns are still on the wall. You can't get that with an xbox, where it will look as though you have never been there before. (Gee, do I hate the fact that Microsoft/Bungie didn't release xbox and pc versions at the same time? YESSS!)

Half Life 2 for pc (thank God), First time through. Level: nearing end of Route Kanal. Yes, I am taking my time. This is an AMAZING game, featuring, perhaps for the first time ever, graphically realistic depictions of humans in every detail, eyes, movement, expressions. I'm savoring it. I'm also remembering how long a wait we all had, years in fact, before these games were finally realized. Yeah, I know, people are already bragging about finishing Halo 2 AND Half Life 2 on their most difficult level. Trust me on this. Three-fourths of them are lying. And for the 25% who aren't, what's the rush? If you get a fine bottle of wine, do you chug the thing?!? This is digital art. I must have spent 20 minutes one night just marveling at the realism of the water in the canal, how the reflections shimmered on it, how every piece of litter bobbing up and down moved at its own speed. Take your time and enjoy it.

Half Life* for pc, game of the year edition. Level: Training. Just began playing it this morning. Like Deus Ex, this earned game of the year honors*. If you love the sequels, you can stretch out the enjoyment by going back and playing the original. Granted, computer graphics are like dog years, and games put out in 2001 will look like, well, like you're playing on an xbox(!), but it's worth it because it's like a great old black and white movie. The story had to be great because there were no visual bells and whistles. Deus Ex as a game was also much more challenging to play than its sequel and I wound up enjoying it more as well.

Midtown Madness 2 (with my four year-old son on his computer). Well, we could have sat there waiting to win six races or fulfill other silly requirements to unlock all of the really cool vehicles in the game, like the Hummer, the Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, the Audi TT and the Panoz GTR-1, or dad could just hack the game and unlock them all. Daddy hacked the game. Life is short, and how many times do you get to watch a four-year-old behind the wheel of a Hummer in downtown London?

11-25-04 You Might Be a Geek If...

You might just be a Geek if...

1) Your idea of a great Thanksgiving Day would be feigning illness, avoiding the relatives, staying home and having a day long frag fest playing Halo 2 and Half Life 2.

2) Your idea of reading a magazine about high performance equipment is picking up a copy of Maximum PC and not Motor Trend.

3) You won't buy a new computer chip without first consulting all of the benchmark tests on it at anandtech.

4) You walk around town wearing a t-shirt that says "Properly Equipped" and people have to wait to see the back of the shirt before they realize it's about a video card.

5) You decide your four-year-old son needs his own computer for his video games, so you buy him a used AMD 64 Dual Opteron 246 workstation.

6) You're idea of a good friend is one who always remembers to bring back swag for you from the latest high-tech conference.

7) You can read an email from another geek without resorting to The Hacker's Dictionary.

8) You didn't have a serious date with a girl until you were 20.

9) You married the same girl.

10) You are STILL with the same girl.

11) The principal tech writer at your newspaper tells you that you need to start reading more mainstream stuff, like Wired.

12) Half Life 2 is released online at 12:07 a.m. and you are downloading it at, well, 12:07:01 a.m.

13) You can't wait to read the next issue of 2600.

14) You actually understand at least one-fourth of what you read in 2600.

15) Your idea of organizing the office is the weekly defrag and the hunt for spyware on your boxes.

16) You dump the Bill in favor of the Penguin.

17) You dump Internet Ex-Snorer for Mozilla Firefox.

18) You dump Outlook Express in favor of a news reader than can decode yEnc binaries.

19) You refuse to pay for anti-spyware programs and prefer scouring technical pages for clues to eradicating crap like Twain Tech on your own.

20) You perfect a seven megabyte email bomb that repeats every minute for 24 hours to send to the last site that dropped Twain Tech on your computer.

21) The email bomb contains the Denis Leary song lyrics: A-S-S-H-O-L-E, A-S-S-H-O-L-E, He's an Asshole, what an asshole."

22) You could go on with these for another hour or so, but you'd rather get back to playing Half Life 2.

11-19-04 The Best of Times to be a Gamer

Why, it's almost enough to make up for the breakup of my beloved Los Angeles Lakers, whose championship components (three NBA titles, four NBA Finals appearances, five playoff appearances in five years) have been scattered all over save for the womanizing, lying, narcissistic, envious and all around horse's ass, Kobe Bryant.

Phil Jackson is making the rounds for his recent book, 'The Last Season.' The Big Unstoppable, Shaquille O'Neal, is playing for the Miami Heat. Horace Grant and Rick Fox have retired. And Derek Fisher is playing for the Golden State Warriors.

But it is the best of times to be a gamer again.

Two nights ago, I downloaded VALVe's oft-delayed and much anticipated Half Life 2 off of the Steam web site and began to play. Just a few days earlier, I bought the collector's edition version of Halo2 for Xbox and I'm playing that as well. In the meantime, the 'game of the year' edition of the original Half Life arrived in the mail today and I'm about to download that. And I'm about to load 'Rome: Total War,' whose game engine is so good that the History Channel used it to illustrate epic battles of the past.

Good thing I have a job and mouths to feed, or else I might never leave the house again.

About the only sad thing of note today was a discovery I just made. It shook me to my knees, Roelof Engelbrecht, one of the pioneers of the greatest distributed computing project of all time (well over five million users), seti at home, died two days ago. I'm in shock. I figured he was fine after he raised enough money for that liver transplant. How wrong I was. I never met him, but I'll miss him just the same. I'll miss the frequent trips to his web site, looking to see whether he had upgraded his processing add-on, SETISpy. It's like losing an old friend.

I hope he's in a better place now. Rest in peace, Roelof.

11-11-04 A Veteran Who Never Came Home

Master Sgt. James Henry McLean, Medic, United States Army, Advisory Team 88, Military Assistance Command* - Vietnam. Assignment: III Corps, South Vietnamese Regional Forces Unit, Duc Phong, Phuoc Long Province, Republic of South Vietnam. Grid coordinates** YU 458 068.  D.O.B. - June 16, 1944. Date of presumed capture by Viet Cong forces - February 9, 1965. Coordinates of capture - 114847N 1071522E.

Midnight (2400 hours), February 9, 1965 -  Duc Phong base comes under attack by a Viet Cong force of undetermined size and is overrun. At first light, February 10 - ARVN 36th Ranger Battalion attempts to retake the area. 0930 Hours, February 10 - an American captive is seen near grid coordinates YU 452 065. Heavy VC groundfire prevents a rescue attempt by helicopter. 1530 Hours, February 10 - 36th Ranger Battalion retakes Duc Phong base and recovers the remains of three American advisors. McLean is not among them.

An ARVN officer captured during the same attack and released on March 27, 1965 reports that McLean was captured unharmed. He said that the VC moved the prisoners northwest at a rapid pace for two days, then in another direction for another two days. The officer says that McLean and the other prisoners were held near ground coordinate YU 390 300 or YU 480 210.

June, 1965 - ARVN Ranger Sergeant who had been held captive  reports that McLean was alive and well and a prisoner in a camp believed to be in the vicinity of ground coordinate YU 345 125 as late as June 9th.

September, 1965 - Two released ARVN prisoners report that they were held with McLean near ground coordinate YU 477 289. A helicopter raid at that location by U.S. Special Forces turns up nothing on  McLean's whereabouts.

August, 1966 - Captured Montagnard fighter who escaped a camp located near ground coordinate YU 380 300 reports that McLean was alive, but suffering from malaria. He said that the prisoners were moved to different camps every two months.

October 20, 1966 (last sighting) - ARVN intelligence agent reports seeing McLean alive near the grid coordinates YU 336 155.

Late 1966 - U.S. Special Forces operation at ground coordinates YU 155 594 turns up a headband bearing  McLean's name and service number.

1973 - general P.O.W. release. McLean is not among them.

McLean's name is absent from lists of P.O.W.s who died in captivity.

What happened to James McLean?

*"The United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was established on Feb. 8, 1962, as a unified command subordinate to the commander-in-chief, Pacific. MACV had the mission of assisting the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces maintain internal security against subversion and insurgency and to resist external aggression. With headquarters in Saigon, MACV controls all of the United States Armed Forces in  Vietnam. MACV is involved in two basic activities. Its forces constantly seek to engage the enemy in combat on the ground and territorial waters of the Republic of Vietnam, and to provide assistance to the constitutional government of Vietnam in building a free society capable of defending itself."

**Refers to the use of grids, 100,000 meters by 100,000 meters square from the Universal Transmercator (UTM) Grid Zone. The UTM map of the world dispenses with latitude and longitude in favor of a system of metric coordinates (usually six digits) which enable the user of the map to specify a location within 100 meters.

11-10-04 Not Even Darwin Saw This One Coming

The next step in evolution: amphibious quarterbacks:

Home Edition, Sports, Page D-1
Sports Desk
20 inches; 736 words
Type of Material: Game story

By Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

INDIANAPOLIS -- It sounds like a left-handed compliment, but Peyton Manning might be the best "amphibious" quarterback in the NFL.

Manning, who threw four touchdown passes Monday to power the Indianapolis Colts past the Minnesota Vikings, 31-28, set up the game-winning field goal with a play that required the hands of a magician. On third and five, with a defender in his face, he improvised by throwing a left-handed shovel pass for the first down.

Not since his days at Isidore Newman High had he thrown a pass with his left hand.

"My high school coach used to tell me, 'You've got to be amphibious when you're sprinting to the left,' " Manning said with a smile. "I'd say, 'You mean ambidextrous.' [He'd say], 'Nah, nah, amphibious.' That was his expression."

11-2-04 Election Day, USA

表决.
表決.
投票.
투표.
Вотум.
Ψηφοφορία.
Wahlen.
Stemmen.
Votare.
Voto.
Vote.

11-1-04 Mystery at Disneyland

So, my four-year-old son, Julian, who has been led to believe from the movies 'Toy Story' and 'Toy Story 2' that Space Command Ranger Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody are the best of friends, uncovers something amiss on his first trip to Disneyland today. We first take in a musical show at 'Club Buzz,' where the Space Ranger performs, accompanied by cute dancing and singing space cadet girls. Buzz even gets to fight his nemesis, the evil Emperor Zurg. But there's no Sheriff Woody in sight. Hmmm.
Of course, this means my wife and I have to help Julian find Woody now. Fortunately, we stumble across the Sheriff outside a saloon in Frontierland (where else?), quietly signing autographs. No Club Woody. No cute sidekicks, and Woody is utterly silent, bereft even of those hokey lines like 'Somebody poisoned the waterhole!"
Julian, as serious as any four-year-old can get, says: 'Woody, I have to tell you something. Buzz has a club!'
Of course, the mystery only deepens when Woody says nothing and only pats my son on the head.
Hours later, after the hair-raising Pirates of the Caribbean, after Toontown and a meeting with Mickey Mouse and Goofy, after a train ride and even after his first time behind the wheel of a go-kart, Julian just can't let this Buzz/Woody thing go. He insists we pay a return visit to Club Buzz before we go home.
We sit through another show as night falls. Again, no Woody. Now, Julian insists we stand in line after the show to to talk to Buzz. After a long wait (We were the last in line seeking autographs and photos with Buzz), Julian's moment arrives. Finally, he's going to get to the bottom of this.
'Buzz,' he says, 'I met Woody today.' Which seemed as good a way as any, even to a longtime journalist, to elicit an explanation. But Buzz, who of course wasn't really doing any of the talking during the show, is also silent. No doubt curiously quiet to my son. He does, however, give my son an autograph, which does nothing to ease Julian's concern.
My boy fell fast asleep in the car on the way home and had to be carried straight to bed. No doubt, come morning, there will be questions. What the heck happened between Woody and Buzz??
I have a few hours to think of something good.