To play a video game

For some reason, I decided that I needed to be able to play old arcade games on my LCD upstairs. It actually started at work with a conversation with a guy about this Xbox I hacked for him. When I gave it to him, it had a MAME emulator and the Simpsons arcade game on it. He had messed with it and it stopped working. I was explaining how to fix this when I got this idea to set up an arcade game in the game room... it seemed fitting.

We had a media PC hooked up to the game room TV back when it was a 32'' CRT. I kind of forgot about it since we got the big TV downstairs. When we got the 46" in the game room, I replaced the media PC with a netbook. I decided to take today and get MAME running on it.



Getting the emulator to work was pretty easy. The hard part was getting my controller to work with MAME. I started out with this really nice software called Pinnacle. It was reccomended by a few sites I checked. I downloaded the trial and it worked like a champ but they wanted $20 for it! That's way too much money for a gamepad mapper. So, I looked for an opensource alternative. I found JoytoKey. It did the same thing for free so that rocks!

I played through Golden Axe and started up on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. I think I'll finally beat The Simpsons after that. The cool thing is that since it's running on the netbook, I can take it with me when I travel. Maybe next time I'm at NSA, I'll throw some Shinobi up on the projector during one of my briefs.

I'm still going to use IE

Check out this really cool advert for Google Chrome.



I'm going to stick with IE for now though. I was a big Firefox supporter because of how it handled tabbed browsing and, at the time it performed better than IE 7 and way better than IE 6! I have to say though, IE 8 works really well with Windows 7. For now, that's where I'm staying.

The problem is that Joy would use IE and I'd stay on Fire Fox. This would keep all our cookies happy. Now, we both fight by logging each other off our respective sites. It's not like we don't have enough PC's. I have my desktop, Joy has hers... there's Hayden's netbook, my netbook... we have the server under the stairs. Hell, we even have browsers on the 2 media centers. Not to mention the PSP and DS browsers... and my phone... and her phone... well you get the idea.

I guess I have to start a campaign about how awesome Firefox is so she'll stay off IE. Man, that's going to feel weird.

Playing golf

Instead of working, I got a chance to play golf. I really hate golf. It's boring and Texas is really hot. Some idiot decided that we should have a 1300 tee time, so it was extra hot. The two things that made it fun were that I got to drive the golf cart and that we had beer. I'm proud to say that I waited a full 3 and a half holes before trying to pull a donut. Whenever I tried to hit well, I just hit a miserabley short drive and when I decided just to whack the hell out of it, it went flying... hard right.

It was a good day over all... a lot better than going to work! Tonight turned out really nice with a strong wind at about 76 degrees. I've got all the windows open and I'm going to vacuum a little. Yeah, I'm a wild man!

Hacking the Wii

So, I got the Wii to play games right off a USB hard drive. It was actually pretty easy to do... and it took me till 1:30 am to finish it.

Windows 7

Man it's been busy lately. I've taken up a second job of sorts. I've started a small side buisness called Network Engineering Solutions where I take small business networks and make them not stupid. It's funny, I actually feel sorry for some of these people. They hire "professionals" that have no idea how to run a network or set up a back-up plan or anything. This one account I have was just a mess. The guy had them buy a network printer, which he added localy to each PC, there were share files everywhere... just a huge mess. So, like I said... it's 99% common sense.

Anyway, I've decided to go all out Windows 7. I've got a copy on the mini 10 and on the main Windows PC. So far my only problem has been Logitech mouse drivers. Turns out it's the crappy drivers. My old drivers (that I got with the mouse) worked awesome!

So, things have been crazy busy. We finally got a new TV for the upstairs and finished up the seiling fan installs. Hopefully, this will drive down the electic bill this year. I have to get back to college and get a Masters... so that will be fun. I also have to get my CISSP. Joy is plugging away at work. I think she's getting sick of her job. I hope not... she's good at it and seems to like the schedule. We're just pushing forward. Hayden's doing really well in school now. The big question is whether or not to hold him back. His reading isn't awesome... I guess we can press forward and just really work with him over the weekend. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Grandma Sno is having a birthday, so we'll see some more of Joy's family. That's always a blast. Donna was down a few weeks ago and out of all the awesome stuff she made the only thing that stuck is this stew she made the first day. It's actually really awesome so it's all good.

Work is good, I'm doing well and got a good raise this year... but I've been getting good raises every year... one way or another! I like being a Sr Systems Engineer... it sounds important. I know Joy hates the travel but it's helping pave the way for our future. Honestly, if I have to travel a little to give my family a better life... then so be it.

Men with purses... the new hotness

Ipad man-bags are about to become a reality.

I was thinking this last week. IPads are going to have to be carried in something right? That means that there's about to be Starbucks full of hipsters with man-bags... and armed rednecks. I think that this apocalyptic combination will be soon be the source of tremendous lulz... and gunshot wounds.

I don't like Macs. I'm not a stranger to the tech. I've used Apple products in recreation as well as at the office. They are great machines. They're just not $3,000 great machines. For 3k, I expect sentience... or at the very least games. The Mac fails to deliver on both these fronts. Now, they do some cool things. The audio and imagery tools are really outstanding. If you're a graphics artist or a musician this is the platform you want. If you're going to surf the web at your favorite trendy coffee shop.... you're a douche.

From where I stand, the IPad is a failure waiting to happen. It's that perfect awkward size, too big to be portable and too small to be functional. Unfortunately, that won't stop the hipsters from surfing the web on their shiny new IPad... that they brought in their man-purse. I weep for my generation.

Real men take security seriously

I don't know if life could be considered a competition but, if it's your job to drive this thing around... you lost.