dkhodz's Blog - 2old2play

Time Marches On

There is a poll up at GameStooge for the "first FPS (first-person shooter) that you loved". They had options ranging all the way from Wolfenstein 3D to the Halo franchise. Made me think back a bit and come to a conclusion: no matter when I feel that I am "done" with shooters and have found a "good enough" game to end all games, there is another game around the corner worthy of my devotion! Walk through my FPS history with me, if you wish...

Wolfenstein 3D - I used to load this bad boy up on a 486 with 8MB or RAM in the basement computer lab at school! Killing Nazis and looking for hidden wall panels. Good times.

Doom - Ditto above (playing it at school). This was the first game that I thought was even remotely gory. I soon got over my hesitations and continued killing demons and looking for hidden wall panels. Even better times.

Quake/Unreal/Half-Life - I played all these PC games, but they never made a huge impression on me. I certainly never played multiplayer online with any of their variants. Star Wars: Dark Forces and Jedi Knight fall in here as well. OK times.

Goldeneye - Wow, this game seemed so cool at the time. Now it is nearly unplayable. The right gun and you were unstoppable. Many 4-player fragfests in college and just after graduation with this classic. Awesome times.

Perfect Dark (N64) - The next step up. I played the heck out of this cartridge with the bots and various meat shields that I would invite over. Much more complex than Goldeneye and "multiplayer" was possible with bots. Extremely awesome times.

You see where I am going with this, right? At one time, Perfect Dark fulfilled all my FPS needs. I thought I would never progress any further. I thought games had basically reached their full potential. Enter Halo.

Halo - Wow. Like my N64 before it, I didn't buy my XBox myself. It was a gift. An awesome one. When I figured out how to run xbconnect on my spare computer, I re-arranged my whole basement to set up my multiplayer gaming habit. The cost of broadband (stil steep at the time) was justified. Euphoric times.

Halo 2 - OK. The pinnacle. The top. Online XBox Live multiplayer. Working from home. Taking 3, 4, or 5 hour Halo 2 breaks in between "work sessions". Watching my rank like a hawk. Living and dying by the frag grenade and BR. Creating custom games. 10-hour marathon sessions. Addictive times.

Halo 3 - I sprung for a 360 to play Chromehounds, Call of Duty 2, and XBLA titles. I was ready for Halo 3. Everything that Halo 2 lacked, this title has. Cheating fixed. Forge options. How could a FPS get any better than this?

Call of Duty 4 - Don't get me wrong. I don't think COD4 is better than H3. It's not as customizable. It's not as much fun. But it's probably even more addictive. And it combined with Halo 3 make me think once again that I am at the pinnacle and that I never have to buy another FPS again.

But history tells me I am wrong. There is a COD5 coming out. Halo 3:Recon will closely follow. And I know MS and IW and Bungie and who knows, maybe even Rare will keep cranking out FPSs. As much as I'd like to just stop at one game, get really good at it and be happy playing it alone forever - that's just not reasonable to expect. Bring on Halo 4, Call of Duty 6, Perfect Dark 33 1/3, whatever. Just keep making them better and better and I'll keep revising my definition of the "pinnacle".

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When I move to Alaska

When I move to Alaska, I think I'll start an All-Alaska clan named (are you ready for this?)... 2Cold2Play. Ba-dum-TSHH!!! Thank you, I'll be here sporadically with worthless blogs when I feel like it.

By the way, I'm not planning on moving to Alaska any time soon. Especially not with winter coming soon. But maybe I could move up there and live with the grizzlies. Like Grizzly Man, but without the "turning into a bear turd" part.

Speaking of turds, um, nah I'm not gonna go there.

But seriously, we have some Canadian members on this site. Maybe they want to use "2Cold2Play"? Or does it look too much like "Coldplay"? Maybe. I guess if you don't like clan names that remind you of musicians, then you wouldn't want to be part of 2Aero2Smith, 2Modest2Mouse, 2Linkin2Park, 2inAroom2wiggleIt, 2Nu2Ponderous, or 2Tommy2Tutone either. All of which are fine clan names (especially 2inAroom2wiggleIt).

More at 11.

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New toys

I went shopping last night to fill some voids in my home entertainment lineup.

Wanted: good sound reproduction in my bedroom when I wake up in the morning, also whenever else needed.

Ideas: HD radio, streaming internet music, streaming music from my PC, some kind of alarm clock/table radio.

Solution:
Denon S-52 table radio

I ended up ditching the HD radio, USB input and CD player on the S-52 and just getting the S-32 instead. Saves $200 and I still get to wake up to nice-sounding bass and clear treble instead of my 15-year-old Sony alarm clock radio. I bought it from Fry's so I can still return it in 30 days if I want to upgrade.

It's pretty cool. It has a wireless connection for streaming music from the internet or a PC/Mac over your home network. It also has an ethernet port, which I decided to use since I have a bridged router in my bedroom anyway and it would likely be more stable for streaming music. It uses the Windows Media Player 11 streaming service, so I need to set up some playlists somehow (Winamp-generated playlists don't seem to work, although the Denon does random playback of all songs in a folder so that's pretty useful).

Sound quality is decent (I said awesome before, but you have to remember that is compared with a clock radio only). Not what you would get from separate components, but great for a small room as a non-primary audio source. I think it's like 20 watts of power or so. It even has a subwoofer jack (RCA out) if you want to add a little punch to the bass.

Next. Wanted: better remote control for my primary home theater. Currently using Yamaha programmable remote from my A/V receiver. Problem is switching inputs on my TV and receiver together is difficult due to a lack of dedicated buttons for each TV input on my current remote control.

Ideas: Programmable remote control with more functionality.

Solution: Logitech Harmony remote control with XBox 360 buttons. Why didn't I buy one earlier?

This thing is awesome. I'm sure there are better Harmony remotes, but the basic operation is just simple and stress-free.

Next. Impulse buy!

Panasonic upconverting DVD player on sale for $80. I bought an S-53 (up to 1080p). Panasonic really only makes one DVD player these days, the S-54. The S-54 adds "Viera Link" or some such nonsense over the S-53. They basically do everything. Play any disc format or file format (even divX and MPEG4). So hopefully this is the last dedicated DVD player I ever buy. This replaces my 480p RP-62 that served me faithfully throughout the 55" Mitsubishi days. I'd link a pic, but it's nothing fancy that you haven't seen before.

These buys are actually quite significant. The table radio keeps me from being tempted to move my current A/V receiver and speakers into my bedroom and buy a new HDMI-switching receiver (like castlemonster's new Onkyo) and speakers for my home theater/gaming room. The Logitech remote makes not having HDMI much less of an issue (since I am switching video through my plasma TV's 4 HDMI inputs and switching audio through my Yamaha receiver - the Harmony remote makes that work smoothly). The upconverting DVD player makes better use of my 720p plasma TV (my previous DVD player was bought when I only had the capability to display 480p or 1080i and upconverting DVD players were rare).

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Cialis

One of the side effects of Cialis (a drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction) is stated as "delayed backache".

Hmmm... you've got a 60-yr. old impotent man having sex for the first time in 12 years and you wonder why he may possibly have a backache?!?!? Must be the drug, right?

Other potential side effects include a dopey grin on your face and an acute awareness of how saggy and flabby your ancient body is.

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George Carlin RIP

So George Carlin floats up to heaven and is greeted by St. Peter at the Pearly Gate (yeah, it's just one gate... why was it ever pluralized?).

"Howdy, Pete!" says George.

"Welcome." says St. Peter.

"I am so glad I don't have to work stand-up comedy any more." continued George. "I got so tired of doing that '7 words' routine. I had better material, but all the rubes just wanted to hear me say '$hit' and 'f*ck' all the-"

At that point, St. Peter interrupted George Carlin. "You can't say those words up here, my son."

"Really?" intoned Mr. Carlin.

"Yes," replied St. Peter, "the 7 words that cannot be spoken on broadcast television also cannot be spoken in heaven. The first time one of them is uttered, the offender is cast into hell."

"Well, I'll be d@mned!" exclaimed George.

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Jimmy's Release

I said goodbye to a young friend today. Jimmy the turtle, about whom I have blogged before, has moved into a new home. Here he is in his moving van:

Jimmy's new home:

Slowly going toward his new home in a creek just by the White River in Indiana:

Saying his final goodbye:

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I am a Wildlife Champion!

Ugh. That was brutal. Once again, I owe on my Federal return because my wife divorced me, I make too much money to get a decent student loan interest deduction, and I am too poor paying off my ex's credit card bills to make a decent-sized charitable contribution that would reduce my tax liability.

On the bright side, I was $3.00 positive when I e-filed my state return! So I graciously thought of the little creatures and donated 100% of my refund to the state non-game wildlife fund. Yes, it is a pretty big deal. I think they will name the option after me next year. I mean, 100%! You can't get any better than that!

In related news, I will be returning Jimmy to the wild from whence he came. I probably never should have taken him in, but he walked out of a creek, across a grassy field, and INTO a classroom full of 3-year olds! I think he wanted to experience human life for a while. Well, he is too dang big now and as soon as he runs out of food, he is going back to the creek!

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Robot Wristwatch!

Anybody else have one of these? I did!

circa 1985... I had a wristwatch that transformed into a jet, my classmate had the watch pictured above. He liked my watch; I liked his. We traded and we were both happy. Sadly, I can't find any pics of the jet-transforming wristwatch on the net (it wasn't an actual Transformer - it was a cheap generic toy). Ah, childhood!

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Everyone Loves Fridays

I am retiring Donald Sutherland. My new blog pic that goes at the top of the site is my old avatar. My new avatar is my award for "Thread of the Year" in the OMM clan forum. You can see it below:

So what was so great about my thread (actually a series of threads)? Well, they are known collectively as the "Friday Threads"... who doesn't love Fridays? I think I only got votes because everyone loves Fridays! I'll take it. It's better than getting Smartass of the Year (which I was also nominated for but did not get - thanks Castlemonster)!

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What's Wrong With Society Today

New entry in my ongoing series "What's Wrong With Society". My last one got lots of reactions (good and bad) and caused me to wedge my foot firmly in my mouth for a time... OK here goes.

Here in Indianapolis (and likely elsewhere around the country), a local hospital was running billboard ads that advertise its pediatrician ward. That's all well and good, but check out the ads they are running. They list an ailment, followed by the name of the hospital. I had no idea you should take your child to a hospital in these cases!

Bee Sting? (name of hospital then listed)

99-degree fever? (name of hospital then listed)

There are more that I cannot recall at this time that are equally trivial concerns.

What else? Hangnail? Papercut? Stubbed Toe? I mean, come on, a 99-degree fever is a reason to rush your kid to the hospital? I think not. When I was a kid, I would run a 103-degree fever with profuse sweating, shaking, and diarrhea and I would never go to the hospital. Liquids, meds, and rest and I would get better within a day or so. I wonder how many parents out there laugh at these billboards and how many just read them and get all freaked out that they are "bad parents".

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This ever happen to you?

I was digging through my desk and found a scrap of paper I had written a note on. I pulled it out and read it.

Now why in the heck did I write "Small shadows are usually designed to apply face to a product"?

Eventually I figured out that I had originally written "Small shakers are usually designed to apply force to a product". Much more meaningful (at least to me).

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What's Wrong With Society

Fact: Indianapolis (and most towns and cities) have 20-25 mph speed limits for streets located in school zones, regardless of actual pedestrian or school-related traffic on these streets.

Fact: School zones seem to be rather broadly defined as "a street within 300 yards of a school regardless of the presence of sidewalks, school crossings, standard pedetrian crossings, or actual usage of the street for school purposes".

Fact: Kids do not walk to school in the Indianapolis suburbs. In some cases, kids that live 1 freakin' block from elementary schools wait at their driveway for a school bus to pick them up and take them to school.

Fact: I have had anywhere from one to four different schools that I have regularly driven by on my daily commute over the past 4 years. I have never ever seen a single child walking to school in a school zone in suburban Indianapolis (Fishers, Noblesville, Carmel, etc.). Ever.

Fact: I hate to drive slowly for no reason.

So why on God's green earth do we still have this antiquated "school zone speed limit" system? If there were occassionally an actual child walking along the sidewalk where the school zone was located, I would have no problem with this situation. But when a school is located on a large circle drive that connects to a side street about 400 feet away and then that side street meanders down a hill approximately 500 more feet to a major commuting road, why is said commuting road limited to 20 mph when there are 0.0 children walking along that road on any given school day? Ridiculous.

Of course, back in the day (in 1950 for example), children actually walked to school. The school was located in a city block and the playground often extended out to the sidewalk of the street. The playground was fenced, of course, but the school entrance was typically located within 50 feet of a street or road. If you lived within 20 blocks of the school, you walked. Now these still-existing schools' associated school zones are well-justified (those that are still in use at least). However, newer suburban schools are located on wide expanses of grassy fields on private lanes far from any public road whatsoever. They have parking lots with dozens and dozens of buses parked in them to pick up every last child no matter how close to school they live. Some parents prefer to drive their children themself. Either way, kids are not walking to school even if they live close. Why can't kids that live close to school walk to school?

Cue the voice of Reverend Lovejoy's wife: Won't someone please think of the children?!?! Protecting children is important, sure, to an extent. I doubt the percentage of predators and sickos is much different than it was back in the 50's - the cases are just much more publicized now. I doubt that that reason is why kids don't get forced to walk to school though. I think parents are worried that they are considered "bad parents" if they make little Jenny or Jonny walk 2 or 3 blocks to school. So they drive them. Or have the school bus waste everyone's taxpayer money by picking them up. So, if that's not gonna change... isn't it time to do away with worthless, annoying, antiquated "school zones" that are 900 feet from the school? I humbly suggest "yes".

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(Almost) Perfect Media Sharing Harmony

First off, the reason for the "(Almost)" is that there isn't one program that does everything. That would truly be perfect. That said, here is what I currently have working and a limited explanation of how... limited because even I don't know what the heck I'm doing most of the time!

I own a Windows XP PC, an Xbox 360, and an 80-gig iPod Classic (it's black, thanks for asking). My PC and 360 are on the same network. I would like to stream media between them. I would also like to sync that exact same media to my iPod and have it portable for airplane trips, car trips, whatever.

First off - streaming mp3 and pictures works fine. That is easy to do with Windows Media Player. It runs in the background of your PC, doesn't consume a huge amount of resources, and works pretty well for sharing playlists, single files, picture folders, etc. to the 360. Hopefully nobody has a problem with that. It also streams certain video files. *.wmv basically. That works fine, too assuming you set up the media sharing and network properly. I won't get into those (relatively) easy steps.

Syncing mp3 and pictures to an iPod also is accomplished pretty easily. There are a lot of programs that can manage all that, but I broke down and have been using iTunes. It's been a rocky relationship in the past, but it is finally working fine with the latest iPod Classic firmware release. iTunes is still a resource hog when syncing, but at least it's working well.

But what about videos? Well, with the latest 360 dashboard update, H.264, divx, and xvid codecs are supported by the 360. Good news is that H.264 is what you can also play on an iPod Classic. Finally, you can have one video file format for everything. Here's how I got it all working:

Windows Media Player will not recognize H.264 files as media and add them to your library for streaming to the 360. You have to update your registry for the appropriate filename extensions (*.mp4, *.m4v). I found "solutions" everywhere for this, but the set of instructions that finally worked for me was found here. Note that I already had ffdshow and Haali installed (potentially different versions than this tutorial called for) and it still worked fine without uninstalling any codec packs. The key difference with this tutorial vs. all the others that didn't work is step 6 (delete the WMP library cache). After I deleted the cache, my library updated and found my H.264 files no problem. And I could play them back on my 360 immediately due to using the registry patch (important step). Sweet.

So now you can create, download, or rip H.264 files - add them to your iTunes library and WMP library and stream/sync them wherever you want - 1 format, 1 location on your PC, excellent quality, yay! Here's what I use to get content (all programs mentioned are free) : existing files - convert them to H.264 (*.mp4) using Videora Converter. DVD (encrypted) - rip & convert them to H.264 (*.m4v) using Handbrake, while DVD43 is running in the background (to strip the CSS protection). Note that you could break the law by using DVD43. I do not advocate that. This is only to create a file that will play in your iPod (and stream to your 360). I assume you have already paid for this DVD/video file that you are ripping and/or converting. You can rip DVD's at 640x480, which is scaled to 320x240 on an iPod Classic screen, but is shown in full DVD resolution when streamed through your 360. Better quality than cable, Directv, or AT&T U-Verse... maybe even better than OTA. My sample video for learning all this was an episode of Futurama - "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" which I own on DVD. Now I need a faster PC to rip DVD's faster (22 minutes of cartoons takes about 45 minutes on my 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM and fast DVD drive).

This exercise kind of reminds of the first mp3 I ever downloaded. It was Billy Joel, "This Night". I owned it on vinyl at the time and I needed to play the song for a music theory class I was in. For those of you scratching your head and thinking "huh?" - Billy stole the melody of the chorus from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 "Pathetique". Our groundbreaking research concluded that old melodies are still relevant and appreciated today... or some such nonsense.

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The Killing Time Trilogy is Complete

Well, I got off to a good start in killing time - I overslept! Rather than go in to work late, I decided to go in to work REALLY late. I needed a good excuse so I called AT&T U-Verse customer support. I have had a minor problem with one of the three set-top TV boxes they installed. Basically, it wasn't entered in the system properly. Which is odd, because it was working fine at one point. Anyway. I called them orginally last night. They set up the third box in the system and said that after an overnight system maintenance shutdown, it should work fine in the morning (that morning being THIS morning). So I unplug it and go to bed. Wake up, plug it back in... same error message again this morning that I called about last night "Unprovisioned Client" or something screwy like that.

So I have ammunition. The Level-2 tech guy last night gave me a direct number to call and a 4-digit code to punch in to get directly to a Level-2 technician. I dial. I punch. Invalid code. What the heck? I try the code that is supposed to activate next week. Still no dice. I try this like 3 times. Finally call the normal support techline. Frickin' robotic voice man can't tell the difference between a "yes" and a "no". Why don't they just let me push a button? How is this crappy voice recognition technology better than pushing a dang button? Can't get much simpler than that. But I digress. I was on my way to be connected to an operator when they hung up on me. Something about not being able to help me at this time and then *click*. Off.

So I call again, get right through, wait for them to conjure up a Level-2 Orc Mage or Sprite Demon or whatever... get to talk to a gentleman named "Leon". Nice guy, saw the problem right away (the problem was my box was apparently supposed to have been installed somewhere else - another home maybe?). He fixed it and I got my TV working fine.

I got to work around 10am, checked my work e-mail for about 10 minutes, goofed off until 11, went to lunch, and now here I am blogging to waste more time. The afternoon should pass quickly playing Desktop Tower Defense (gotta keep plugging that game, it is fun) and doing a few work-related tasks. Hard to believe it's Friday already. I could get used to these 4-day weekends, let me tell you. Wait, I just did tell you. Nevermind.

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Day 2 of Killing Time

I got up and ate breakfast. Made me late for work, but my boss actually encourages that this week since he is taking time off (unofficially) to finish his basement. When I rolled into work about a half-hour late, I found about a half-hour of work to do. Now that is done, so I need to kill another 7.5 hours or so.

To update y'all on yesterday, I went shopping over my lunch break. I bought some new work shoes, 3 cheap Nintendo DS games at Toys 'R Us, a used CD at Half Price Books, and an XBox360 Quick Charge Kit and 4000 MS points at CompUSA for 10% off. I took almost 2 hours for lunch and then played Desktop Tower Defense for a couple hours to close out the day (see blog yesterday for link to this incredibly fun game - it loads in your browser). So anyway, I am pretty much shopped out. Unless I decide that I really need another PC monitor or I decide to go to Fry's just for fun (actually that sounds like a good plan for my lunch break).

So of course I will play some more Desktop Tower Defense. I am just getting good at it, after all! What else should I do today?

Go to Fry's and window-shop
Go home and take a nap (might not get away with it, plus I don't really NEED a nap today)
Go home and play Xbox (also might not get away with it)
Write my congressman
Re-arrange the sugar packets in the lunch room cupboard
Plot for world domination
Blog endlessly about boring topics no one wants to read about

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