Free MMORPGs?

 Gaming  No Responses »
Aug 312008
 

It looks like some Germany-based company is starting a semi-WoW clone, except it’s free.  Runes of Magic was reviewed by Kotaku where they outlined the similarities in brief between RoM and WoW.  Then they started to talk about the differences.  Some of the differences sound pretty interesting.  For PVP, they have something called “server wars” where people from different servers can compete for the honor of their server (and presumably some reward).

What interests me the most is:  How does a free MMORPG make money?

PS, I might check it out.  Hard to say, as attractive as MMORPGs are occasionally, I just don’t have the time with everything else I schedule in to my life.  And quite frankly, I think I may be past sitting in front of a computer screen for multiplayer gaming as anything other than an occasional past time.

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am

Chicken “Chalupas”

 Food  No Responses »
Aug 302008
 

I do love me some Chicken Chalupas.  Thanks to Scott for introducing me to this recipe back when we were roommates.  (He’s rather organized about collecting recipes and was really good at finding recipes that took less than 30 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of cooking, and were tasty to boot!) 

Ingrediants:

  • 1 package of Flour tortillas (6-8 needed for provided proportions)
  • 2 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breast meat (4-5 half breasts)
  • 16 oz of sour cream
  • 16 oz (1 can) of Creme of Mushroom soup
  • 8 oz (1 small can) of Olives
  • 8 oz (1 small can) of green chiles (or substitute jalepenos of varying hotness)
  • 8 oz (2 cups) of grated cheese (I prefer purchasing the pre-packaged mexican blend cheese)

Directions:

  1. Chop and grill/fry/cool the chicken.  3/4th inch cubes of chicken is just fine, while the chicken is cooking, continue to step 2.  For health reasons, make sure that you pre-cook the chicken to at least 165 degrees before settling on your desired cooking temp.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine sour cream, creme of mushroom soup, grated cheese, olives, and chiles, mix thoroughly to make a “white sauce” mix
  3. Take a measuring cup, fill 2 cups of the mix from step 2 in to the measuring cup
  4. Pre-heat oven to 425. 
  5. Take the chicken off the grill/pan/whatever.  Make sure you remove excess fat/water before proceeding.  Mix cooked chicken in mixing bowl with remainder of white sauce mix.
  6. Wrap chicken-mix with tortilla (enchilada or chalupa style) and place in square glass baking dish, you should be able to fill 4-6 tortillas
  7. Now take the mix we set aside in step 3 and spread it over the top of the chalupas
  8. Now put baking dish in to the oven and wait 30 minutes.  If your oven is too hot, the tortillas will get crisp, this is not desired.  If your experiencing this, reduce heat 25 degrees and extend cooking by another 5 minutes or so.

Eat. Enjoy.

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am

Unfair law protects dogs, but not renters

 Personal  No Responses »
Aug 292008
 

http://www.weather.com/weather/newscenter/alerts/?alertId=641278&dbSeq=null&cameFrom=national

Heat advisory

/O.CON.KMTR.HT.Y.0009.000000T0000Z- 080830T0100Z/ EAST BAY INTERIOR VALLEYS-SANTA CLARA VALLEY…INCLUDING SAN JOSE- 403 AM PDT FRI AUG 29 2008

…HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM PDT THIS EVENING FOR THE EAST BAY INTERIOR VALLEYS AND THE SANTA CLARA VALLEY INCLUDING SAN JOSE…

NEAR OR RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURES FROM 95 TO 105 ARE FORECAST AGAIN THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE EAST BAY INTERIOR VALLEYS AND THE SANTA CLARA VALLEY. A WEAK SEABREEZE WILL LIKELY BRING COOLER TEMPERATURES LATER THIS EVENING WITH MUCH COOLER DAYTIME HIGHS FORECAST OVER THE WEEKEND.

A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS EXPECTED. HOT TEMPERATURES WILL CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE POSSIBLE. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS…STAY IN AN AIR- CONDITIONED ROOM…STAY OUT OF THE SUN…AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

The property owner for my current residence has only provided one 8000 BTU (300-350 sq ft) cooler for an entire house (2000 sq ft) that is located in the San Jose area.

Pet owners are jailed for cruelty to animals over heat stroke, yet California law does not protect renters (specifically, there is no obligation in the implied warranty of habitability which requires an owner or property landlord to provide air conditioning, yet pet owners can be jailed if their pets are left in the heat.)  It’s outrageous!

 Posted by John Williams at 9:04 am

Goal for August, Final Update, and Goal for September/October

 Nortel, Telecom  No Responses »
Aug 292008
 

My Goal for August is complete.

Now, to set a goal for September…thinking about this for the last week really stretched me.  There are a number of things that I know which I could blog about, but the problem is that every one of those things is considered confidential piece of information.  Access to and usage of the PDT (i.e., Problem Determination Tool) interface for a Nortel Meridian-1/CS1000 is taught in a series of classes, twice a year (6-12 classes total, given about every 6 months) directly by Nortel.  And the truth is that most of what I know was learned outside of that class by watching the experts at work and taking notes along the way.

I think I’d like to aim for a BARS/NARS 101, 201, 301 type tutorials like what ghtrouthas done, but only more detailed.  Frankly, nothing can really replace the original GHTrout BARS 101 tutorial, but I can certainly try to cover things that he did not and put together a walk through for a 201, 301 type course.  Unfortunately, I think that working out the course material might make that topic a little too difficult to tackle in September.  So instead, I’ll plan on making September my month to put together the outline for that, and also to make September my month to work on:

  1. Prepare for the onslaught of blog scraping.
  2. Install FeedEntryHeader and test thoroughly.
  3. Write 101 style tutorials for the following:
    1. Adding, Changing, Deleting a set (NOTE: impossible to discuss all set types, so it’s basic 101 material only)
    2. Adding, Changing, Deleting a calling party name display record
    3. Managing descriptions (DES), tips & tricks
  4. Write course outline for 101, 201, 301 on BARS/NARS

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am

My Desktop & WordPress

 WebDev  No Responses »
Aug 282008
 

A couple of posts back, I talked about possibly putting a WordPress blog on my (work) desktop for work notes.  One of the problems that I’ve been having with the work implementation of WordPress is that I cannot manage files (or upload them) to the wordpress installation, and the spell check function in the wordpress editor doesn’t work properly.  I’ve not had time yet to troubleshoot the problem in house (need to get a machine and replicate the environment in order to determine if there is something wrong with the work environment vs the scripts themselves.)

I found this post on iis.net which talks about issues with PHP, file upload and Frontpage.

http://forums.iis.net/t/1147328.aspx

Oh how I hate Frontpage.

 Posted by John Williams at 8:43 am

Settlers

 Gaming  No Responses »
Aug 282008
 

Settlers has finally come to Steam.  Perhaps I can talk some of my friends in to picking it up.  The MetaCritic review is mostly promising.  Granted it didn’t rate higher than Half-Life 2 or Halo, but it still came in with a fairly solid, middle-of-the-road score.  I managed to snag one friend in to Steam with free copies of Half-Life 2 that came with my purchase of the Orange Box, and I’m hoping to snag another with a free test run of Team Fortress 2.  (Lots of cartoony campy goodness.)

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am

Vin Diesal says there will be sequals

 TV & Movies  No Responses »
Aug 272008
 

Despite the fact that Riddick is less than a household name, he’s still uber cool.  Vin Diesal seems to agree and has promised that there will not just be one more movie in the series, but two.  The question for him is not if there will be two, but if they will try to film them back to back, “[taking] a page from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ guys”.  Actually, wouldn’t it be more accurate to liken Riddick sequals to the Matrix?  (As I recall, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions were films simultaneously.)  Although, I do find it amusing that Vin Diesal effectively pronounces that a Chronicles of Riddick trilogy is to Pitch Black what Lord of the Rings is to the Hobbit.

 Posted by John Williams at 8:16 am

Web Design Blogs

 WebDev  No Responses »
Aug 272008
 

As I am working more and more on my blog, I find myself searching for useful tutorials and information on both design, code and CMS management topics.  I found that SmashingMagazine.com has a wonderful list of 100 WordPress themes, which all appear to be free. (Although, I’ve not validating that they’re all compatible with the latest WordPress release, and this post was published back in January, before 2.6 was released.)

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am

VOX BBQ

 Personal  No Responses »
Aug 262008
 



DSC_3645

Originally uploaded by x11tech

Fun was had by all at the VOX company BBQ. Even the kids got in on it by smacking the pinata around.

 Posted by John Williams at 11:50 am

Traveling Faster than Light

 Other  No Responses »
Aug 262008
 

As interesting as the article is, the commentary is more interesting:

Hi, I’m a great modern scientist. When my theories of the universe only account for 4% of what I observe, I automatically just assume that my understanding of the 4% cannot possibly be wrong…therefore I’ll just insert fudge factors for “extra mass” and “extra energy”…then my equations look right again. Once I’m all done I’ll call it “dark stuff” and repeat it so often the the general public starts deciding that I actually know what I’m talking about. Pretty soon I start writing articles about how I’m going to use my 4% of the universe that I CAN explain to manipulate the 96% of the universe that I CAN’T explain so that I have a reasonable-sounding way to travel faster than the speed of light. Ah…I love being a great modern scientist.

The article basically talks about how it might be possible to interact with “dark energy and dark matter” which theoretically make up 96% of our universe and is naturally invisible (undetectable) to humans whereby a dark matter/energy vacuum could be created in front of an object and the dark matter/energy pressure from behind the object could be used to propel the object much in the same way that a surfer is propelled by waves.  Only these waves would be moving faster than light.

In the end, 10 years ago we would not have considered invisibility or antigeria.  Today they have left science fiction and entered science theory/fact.

Personally, I think Agent K’s quote from MIB is most appropriate:

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

 Posted by John Williams at 7:00 am
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