I did it.

Can you....

... find my parent's phone number with just the following information?

Many people on this site know my real name is Kevin Jonas.  Which happens to be the name of one of the Jonas Brothers.  I have the email address kevin.jonas@gmail.com and I get messages from teens all the time.

If you just know my name can you find my parent's phone number?  I'll even give you a clue, the area code is 715.

Here's what happened this weekend.  I was at my parents for Thanksgiving.  Around 9 at night I was playing pool with my dad.  The phone rang and my mom answered it.  She transfered the call to the basement phone and yelled the call was for me.  Now, my mom should have known better and so should have I once I saw the caller ID.  The only people that call me at my parents during a holiday are friends of mine that are visiting their relatives.  My mom knows who they are.  So I puick up the phone and a girl asks "Is this Kevin?"  I say yes, though I should have said he wasn't available once I saw the caller ID.  I hear giggling and she hangs up.

So now I realise what happened.  Some girls got my parent's phone number and prank called it.  I looked up the phone number form caller ID and it said it didn;t belong to anyone but it was a Kirkwood, MO number.  I looked up the name and the name existed in Kirkwood, MO but the phone number didn't match.  I found out hte phone number belonged to McLeodUSA so I emailed them.  They said the phone number was not on account.  Damn, nice fake.  I did some research and there is something called SpoofCard.  I am surprised that the kids were smart enough to make the spoof somewhat realistic.

What worries me is the kids have a the number now and possibly the address.  I suspect the number will be all over social networking sites now.

I was wondering how they got my parent's phone number?  I haven't lived at my parent's for many years.  What public records would you look at and where do I find them?

Hmmm, it's not Vista 64bit...

I've been having problems with my computer and I assumed it was becaus eI was running Vista 64bit. A couple of weeks ago i downgraded to 32bit Vista. All of the same problems occur.

First, my computer will randomly blue screen with the same error. It appears Vista doesn't like my onboard network card. This is why I assumed it was a 64bit problem as Vista 64bit is known to have hardware issues.

Second, when I open hotmail in IE it opens opens a ton of windows. On my XP laptop it doesn't do that. Again, I thought maybe it was the 64bit version of IE. This is on a fresh install with only trusted software installed (virus scanner, spyware remover, AIM and Messenger clients, Visual Studio 2008 Express, and SQL server).

Third, my video card driver would randomly crash during games. Again, doing research I found Vista 64bit doesn't completely like my video card (xfx 8800GTS 320meg).

So at the risk of not being able to use all of my 4gig of memory I downgraded to Vista 32bit. Well, all of the same problems have occured. For the video card and network card I think the hardware may not be functioning properly. As for IE I have no idea why it does that. It doesn't do it on my work machine with is a Vista machine. I have a theory. I need to test it out after I install each bit of software. I have a feeling the problem is the virus scanner or spyware remover since those interact with the browser. I will do a fresh install. Then after each program I install I will check hotmail.

So now I am debating about going back to Vista 64 so I have a reason to test this.

...and you will go blind.

My Gears Review and other ramblings

Overall it isn't that much different from Gears 1.  However it is different enough to warrant buying it.

I didn't play multiplayer much on the first game because of two major issues I had with that.  First is the artist direction of the game.  With everything being shades of grey or brown everything looks the same.  I had a difficult time distinguishing friend from foe.  They solves this in Gears 2.  the Gears have a distinctive blue color scheme, the locust have a red scheme, and the levels actually have color.  That's one thing I noticed about single player, especially once I got to the palace.  There's a bunch of color.  It isn't as bright as UT3 is but it is enough to not look dull.

The other issue I have with Gears is the weapon balance.  UT3 has great weapon balancing.  You'd think from the same engine and makers Gears would.  Nope.  They didn't fix it in Gears 2.  I have two problems with the weapons balancing.  The power weapons are so powerful people rush to them.  The team that has control of hte power weapons usually win.  The other is the default weapons have a huge difference in power.  I unloded an entire lancer clip into someone.  Yes, the entire clip, not a bullet missed.  The perosn was in cover but I was on the same side of the cover as him.  He got up, turned to look at me, and one burst of the hammershot and I was down.

However, this time around Epic did do some major improvements.  First the party system and general menu mechanics is awesome.  It's really easy to get people together and setup games.  The "What's Up" view of your friends list is awesome because it highlights the people currently in the game.  It lists everyone else as greyed out.  However, anyone online and not in the game will be listed first.  This makes so much sense I think other games will copy this.

I love the addition of bots.  If you want to play with a couple of friends but do not want to deal with the public bullshit you can.  The bot AI is pretty good.  This isn't surprising considering UT3's bots are pretty good (once you bmp the difficulty up).

One feature I have always complained about with most games is when you set the room to private it is invite only.  Your friends cannot just join.  In Gears 2 a private room is open to friends joining at will.  This needs to be an option.  I don't mind friends joining my game when they want, I do mind friend of friends joining though.  Resistance 2 has a great party system.  You can set it up so it is invite only along with only allowing friends, clan members, or public.  That's how it should be.  

A slight subject change: 360 needs clan support.  Several PS3 games have clan support.  Warhawk's clan support is decent.  Socom's clan support isn't finished, they are going to patch it.  Resistance 2's clan support could be the template for other games to follow.

LittleBigPlanet for the PS3 has a cool invite system.  You can either invite friends or ask a friend if you can join.  When you select a friend from your friends list you have the option to Join or Invite.  If you select Join your friend will get a message.  If the friend accepts you will join.

In the theme of comparing features of PS3 games and 360 games Socom allows you to sort your friends list.  In a lobby you can bring up the friends list to invite people.  At first there is no order to the list, it seems very random.  However, you can highlight any column and sort by it.  So if you want to sort alphabetically you can.  If you want to sort by people in the game or not you can.  With Gears 2 having a similar feature and not using the guide's friends list I could see other 360 games doing the same thing.  While Microsoft did provide the basic tools needed this is a great example that if you give the developer enough space they can come up with something better yet still work with the existing system.  Sony needs to learn that they can provide a basic toolset to the developer to handle online games so there is consistancy yet it can be open enough so the developer can do what they want.

After this holiday season I will say that the PS3 is really close to being as good as the 360 online.  Because it is completely up to the developers on the PS3 how you play online games is inconsistant.  However, if the developers put the work in they can come up with some really good multiplaye systems.  All the PS3 really needs to allow now is voice messages and private chat.