Author: Tom Kern

Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell

So the addiction Du Jour is facebook… You know it’s really great if your wanting timely updates on what your “friends” are up to when your not hanging out.  At least I haven’t gone down the road of twitter, just remember I have 2.5 blogs there is absolutely no reason for me to have a twitter account too.  Now there is no way to justify any of this social networking stuff other then to say, I could do things that quasi randomly qualify as socalizing or I could keep working Gears Of War (you know since that is such a new game)

Speaking of Gears of War… it’s better then I expected (so far a whole two levels into it) and I like it better then the whole Halo 3 experince.  I however chalk up this feeling in large part to the fact that I didn’t get into Halo until the third one and I’m in on the first Gears title… it doesn’t hurt there is a second one coming out in a few weeks.

Ironically enough after the election… so I guess I can’t tune out Obama -V- McCain any time soon.

Damit

Shoes and bad weather….

You know this whole thing about being one of three people who believe in the Cardinals every year is, when they are on a roll people truly think they are on a roll.  And when they flop two things happen;

1. People go “Oh hey there are those lovable losers the Cardinals”!

2. People like me who talk shit about the opponent of the week end up receiving it twice as worse on Monday.

Yes it’s going to be a long Monday and if San Diego loses tomorrow night against the NY Bretts I’m really not going to be happy.  I mean it’s one thing for the Cardinals to be 0-3 to start the season it’s almost unthinkable for the Chargers to be 0-3.  Though after last years rough start they did make it to the AFC championship game where they lost to the Patriots who lost to the Dolphins this week who lost the Cardinals last week… So in some cosmic sense that probably means something but I’ve not had nearly enough beer tonight to even begin thinking about what that might be.

That is a question for minds greater then my own.

Now on to things that I might actually be able to do something about.

Last year I traded in my rather shitty Cisco / Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD Cable box for the sublime bliss that is a TiVo HD.   And through the power of the Internet and upgrades to the operating system the TiVo has been coming out with new features.  The latest of which is the ability to watch youtube videos on my 52 inch HD tv.  You know because youtube videos need to be watched in 52 inches of HD.  Another feature is the hook into the Amazon video no demand service for downloading pay content of TV shows and Movies as well as free Promo content (think pilots and season premieres) right off the top these are two things that I couldn’t do with my former cable box nor could I transfer shows to my desktop computer and then to another device to watch later.

So why am I writing about this? Well the question hit me recently downloading TV shows is pretty common now with iTunes and Amazon video on demand.  Which if I like the show I have no problem paying for a copy that I can keep and watch when I want to how I want to (though we aren’t quite to that point yet we are finally making progress).  Now what we need is a TiVo hook into Hulu.com which has tv shows for free for you to watch on the internet.  And these are shows that are meant to be watched in 52 inches of HD glory.  I will admit there are a couple of shows that I want to check out (Fringe, Doll House, Sanctuary) but I don’t want to record them on my TiVo since I feel that commits me on some level to watching them and I have enough crap being recorded on there and I’m pushing up against the space limits as it is in my TiVo Box.  So I guess my next great hope for TiVo is to figure out a way to get Streaming programs with their associated commercials (like 5 minutes per 43 minutes of program) to stream to my TiVo… I don’t want to buy them but I do want to watch them.

So now to circle this back around… NBC has their web strategy all wrong… at least for as far as I can tell.

First during the Olympics they made you download Microsoft Silverlight to watch the competition online.  Which great and all, but I don’t have that crap loaded on my either my PC or MAC and I just want to watch Michael Phelps and the Redeem Team kick some ass.

Second I was watching tonight’s Sunday Night NFL game between the Packers and Cowboys on TV and decided to check out the webcast of it.  It was alright the raw feeds from the other cameras on the field are a nice touch to bad you have to sit through a commercial to get to it, sit through the commercials during the main game broadcast and if you get to click happy on the extra cameras guess what else you get?  Yep another commercial.  So really my only incentive to watch the webcast is to make sure I see every commercial possible.

Finally, in NBC’s infinite wisdom it has taken product placement to a whole new level and for as far as I can tell the only reason any of this is going on is because NBC has no clue.  Some examples of this are Eureka on Sci-Fi (which is a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC-Universal) whose whole third season is being sponsored by Degree Deodorant (to the point that a “experimental new formula” was a key component in solving the problem of the week in one episode (my two suns).

And then there’s “Knight Rider” I expect a certain amount of cheese, but this is bordering on the absurd.  First there is the obligatory Ford product placement in the new KITT (the Mustang VS the Old Trans AM)… but wait there’s more KITT has a new mode it’s called F-150 mode!  So not only is NBC killing a tv show that I remember fondly as a child, but they are also turning the car into a transformer.  The only way it could have been better is if another one of the new modes was “Expedition Mode with environmentally friendly and carbon neutral diesel hybrid engine” oh wait I may have given away a key plot point to a future episode.

No wonder the writers striked if I had to deal with this crap I would want more money too.

Also you may have noticed that I’ve taken the approach of calling several things out by explicit name this evening… Well this is my attempt at a Google Bomb.  Maybe just maybe if I put enough pop culture geek references then maybe someone other then my 3 loyal readers will read this.  Or NBC-Universal is going to be making a call to their sister company GE Nuclear Weapons and Microwaves and “take care of the trouble maker in Phoenix”

iPod magnetic

How you know you’ve been living in Arizona for to long, 88 Degrees and no breeze is a glorious night to sit on the back porch and blog.

I picked up a new iPod this week and I’ve been in awe of this little device once again. If your a long time reader you know that I spent the better part of 2004 gushing about my at the time state of the art top of the line 15GB 3g iPod. The iPod line has come a long way in that time, I picked up the new one knowing it would be infitenly thinner and have a better screen then either of the last two. What I didn’t count on as triple the battery life for some reason I though the iPod was still stuck in the 15 to 20 hour range not in 30+ territory.

And then there’s the choice of sync it to PC or Mac… and well I chose Mac this time around for no other reason then it seemed right. 6 hours later I read the first reports of iPods with iTunes 8 BSODing windows boxes. Hmmmm I made the right choice, well that and it turns out that firewire is no longer supported as a syncing cable (which dissapoints me just a bit I always have enough firewire ports I never have enough USB ports) Oh well I will survive.

So hows the lazy man playlist maker aka Genius? Take it or leave it on iTunes… I acually like it on the iPod though.

I did a genius list off of Pink Floyd’s “High Hopes” and in no particular order here is a sampling of 5 songs….

Pearl Jam, Given to fly
Radiohead, Lucky
Rage Against the Machine, People of the sun
Smashing Pumpkins, Zero
Led Zepplin, No Quarter

It’s eclectic… I can’t say that would have Rage and that particular Smashing Pumpkins song in a play list based off of a Pink Floyd song but I’m not going to entirely disagree with them either.

So genius is nice for random playlists that you haven’t been listening to for forever and a day. My only gripe is one of my long standing gripes in that there is no easy way to find and fix corrupted files in iTunes that “skip” in my iPod. And when I say skip I mean the song skips to the next song in the list.

Also the FM adapter I picked up either sucks or is broken… more research is requried.

Sad, on multiple levels…

I was doing a Analytics check of the old blog tonight as I do from time to time. And noticed something rather odd on the key word searches for this place…

Yes that right folks… people come here to find Curtis Kinney.

Now when I “googled” Mr. Kinney…. I found him after 7 pages and only as a comment and I was using “curtis kinney” as a search string.

The messed up part… at 5 minutes on the site and two hits Curtis is the biggest draw on this place.

Truly messed up.

Deja Moo…

It’s the feeling that you’ve heard this bullshit before.

And with the exception of the gratioutis nudity I’m pretty sure you have heard all of this before.

Oh wait this is a “family” blog… The gratioutius nudity is going to be covered up by bits of duck tape.

There that’s better

Go read another post…. I’ve got nothing… I just had “Deja Moo” pop into my head while I’ve been listening to Pearl Jam bootlegs…

Oh wait!  I remember what I was going to do now… more cards to the game (which is really nothing more then a creative release for me so I have no intention of having any of it make sense 🙂 )

The Intern…(experienced)(lackey)

A know it all user…  You know, the one who “already knows all that stuff about security” and “yes, I already tried all the normal troubleshooting thing, this problem is different… oh wait, your right, it isn’t plugged in” and “I should have admin privileges on my machine because I can’t get around the firewall…er.. I mean use the programs I need to without it”

+3 to all tasks/projects that require low level lackey work

-1 if any task involves using the internet in a research fashion…. since we all know that interns only use the internet for Porn and Movies.

The Intern…(newb) (lackey)

This person is a empty vessel waiting to be filled…. or crushed your choice.

+2 to all tasks/projects that require low level lackey work

-3 if any task involves using the internet in a research fashion…. since we all know that interns only use the internet for Porn and Movies.

Standard Issue Cody… (character card)

Security Guru in every sense of the word… comes with the business savvy and look to sell any project to management.  Can implement most projects on time and on budget. Open to all operating systems and vendors has natural talent to “just pick this shit up”

+5 to time manangement

+2 to security tasks

When combined with any other “Standard Issue” character all attibutes go up by one.  When combined with an experinced Intern and Standard issue all attributes go up by 5.

Security Consultant….(action card)

This guy will tell you everything you want to hear for the right price.

Use this card at any time to prove a project is secure or not (roll d6) If the project is secure all players give one card from their hand.  If the project is not secure, place all of your cards face up each player may pick one.

Character #31337 (lackey)

Claims to be a IT guru extraordinaire but always seems to be asking coworkers how to map a drive or install a printer.

Lose one point to all attributes since your always cleaning up after this character…

Upside… card can be transfered to another department with transfer card and project card.

Downside… card must be played upon getting it… if you already have a lackey they go into the discard pile.

Character #136 — The Mrs. (action card)

I’m really good at throwing wrenches at Mr.’s project deadlines. For instance, the two weeks of paternity leave he had to take. The extra days off because of illness, emergency room visits, mental breakdowns, road trips, etc. My insistence that he is working way too many hours…Who works a 40 hour week these days anyhow…Or that he work from home because I really think I have to move to another state ASAP. Or, on a smaller scale, there’s the list of tasks that I send him to work with each week — call the bank, set up the 529, decide on a date for a trip, bitch out the furniture store guy, get renter’s insurance — All things that I can’t do myself.

Play on any other player to slow them down in finishing their work (-3 to time management)

Oh and just in case….

If you haven’t figured it out already… I now consider this my main corner of drivel… please update your bookmarks/rss feeds accordingly.

and maybe if you comment alot I will post my character cards from my game 🙂

iShit convert no more….

one month and six days into the iPhone 2.0 era I can say that I have finally been able to shake the iShit desire and be happy with my blackberry….

What caused the change of heart? Not much but I’m going to chalk alot of it up to the blackberry being just a all around solid phone and email machine. I’ve had the blackberry for 6 months on verizon and I’ve dropped one call (and that call was in a basement where everyone else got zero bars…) truly this phone is the first one that hasn’t made me want to change phones within my normal 6 to 9 month period.

The fact that it does data just as well as it does voice is at this point just a bonus.

Now granted the iShit does have several things working against it here in Phoenix… first is the network (AT&T) which has less then stellar coverage in the region (for the record the other GSM provider T-Mobile is only moderately better) and Phoenix is a core market for Verzion (stretching back to the days of US West Cellular in the 80’s and early to mid 90’s) I’m hard pressed to go anywhere in Phoenix and not have really good coverage (actually for the record I’m hard pressed to go anywhere in the country and not have good coverage).

So why the decidedly un-iShit friendly pose all of a sudden… reports on the internet and people I know personally who have had really bad experiences with the iShit 2.0. Which is unfortunate because I truly love my Mac Book Pro and will be buying another Mac either as a home server or as a play machine in the next year or so. It’s all really kind of sad for the iShit.

But let’s all remember that that fine folks at Apple started life as a computer company and not as a celluar device company… though imagine if they had gotten in on the cell game back in the late 90’s or early 2000’s… man that would have been sweet.

Oh well.

A whole new deck…

So for those who read this corner of the internet and haven’t talked to me directly in the last couple of weeks, I recently lost my long time partner in crime at work to another facility. It’s sucked not having a someone to work with directly, but at the same time it also helps to put things in perspective.

Suddenly the CT scanner not talking to PACS is not the issues it once was, now instead of it being “Top immediate priority” it’s been bumped to “I will deal with it after lunch…”. It’s all about achieving some sort of balance.

I’ve never been good at achieving balance.

One of the neat side effects of my brain being over stimulated for the better part of the day is. I come up with some of the most random things.

I now present to you the latest creation of my over stimulated brain cell…

“IT PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION FROM HELL!!”

The game… set the IT project cards out face down and select…

2 cards for a “easy game”

4 cards for a “challenging game”

8 cards for a “hard game”

The objective… to complete the projects listed on each card with in the allotted time frame for the project. Project times are stack able (i.e. in a easy game if you have one project that runs 3 months and another card that runs 9 months you have a total of 12 months to complete both projects). Each complete turn around the table is “1 month” of game time (so in the above example there are 12 complete turns around the table to complete the projects)

Project tasks are assigned from the “Task deck” after the projects have been selected. All the tasks assigned to a project need to be completed in order for a project to be considered completed. Each project has a base number of tasks assigned to it additional tasks may be assigned from the task cards themselves. Tasks are completed based on your character card (we will get to that later) abilities and cards from the actions deck.

The “Action Deck” contains all of your functions you can perform durning your turn. Each player draws 7 cards at the start of the game (additional or fewer cards can be drawn based on character card stats). When a action card it played on a task the player rolls the 10 sided dice (10d) and the task is completed based upon the 10d roll, player abilities, and completion critera on the card. Other players can play their action cards to either help or hinder you. Remember not all wolves will eat you and not all knights in shining armor are good.

The Character deck has all the characters needed for a IT project. Characters come in two varieties characters who’s objective is to complete the project (Analysts, Engineer, Project Manager) and those whose job it is to make sure things stay the way they are (Bad Engineer, End User, Bad Project Manager). There are those who do not care if a project suceeds, but can play both sides of the field. This is a any of the “Director” cards.

Next thing… come up with some character cards….