All I have to say is that I'm glad I'm not a Windows administrator.
Patching three machines to "Current" security-patch levels without the use of the network cables (which are now dangling from behind them in the rack) has to be a pain in the arse.
Glad I'm a Linux guy, and not a Windows guy.
Katrina is wreaking havoc in the South, of that there can be no doubt, and my hopes for safety and security go out to everyone down there.
Everyone, that is, except Biloxi, MS Mayor A.J. Halloway, quoted in a CNN article:
"This is our tsunami," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway told the Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper, referring to the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed more than 226,000 people in the Indian Ocean region.
"This is our tsunami"?!?! Seriously, dude, here's a fucking reality check for you.
There were 226,000 dead people in the tsunami.
There are, right now, maybe 100 people dead from Katrina. That's being generous. Mississippi is reporting 55 right now, Florida 10. I'll pad a little for reports not yet in.
If ten times as many people died in Katrina as presently did, it still wouldn't come close to the death toll from the tsunami.
If one hundred times as many people died in Katrina as presently have, you'd still be a far fucking cry from the tsunami's death count.
If one thousand fucking times as many people died from Katrina, only then would you finally have reached HALF the death toll as the Indian tsunami.
It's tragic that anyone died at all, but don't sit there and have the balls to compare your pissant little "under 100 dead across a thousand or so miles of coast" with "nearly a quarter of a million people dead".
Jesus Christ, that's like seeing a hundred people trapped in a burning temple and saying "oh, woe is us, this is our Holocaust!" ... it's just so completely on the wrong end of a completely different scale as to be laughable, insulting, arrogant, and self-absorbed, all wrapped into a single nasty package.
The New York Times did a story on how AOL just got pimpsmacked for making it extremely difficult for users to cancel their service.
Apparently, though, they lifted one of the comments from my Sweet Jesus, AOL Guy! I Want To Cancel My Goddamn Service! post from a couple years ago.
Kinda a bummer that the quote they lifted was some guy claiming it wasn't all hard to cancel, when they had such a quote-rich main-post to lift from, but, ah well... I still got a link from the Times. :-)
As seen on Jurist, a New Jersey court of appeals has ruled that a company with no nexus in New Jersey (as it was previously defined) now is liable for paying New Jersey taxes simply because it ships product into New Jersey.
Seems like a good reason for businesses to simply say "We will not ship to NJ. Please move to a state that isn't as boneheaded as yours is. Thank you for playing."
Although, obviously, it's pretty tough for NJ to really enforce it (after all, with the company completely lacking in NJ nexus, there's no assets for NJ to seize or anything like that).
Also, the company probably should appeal...something about "interstate commerce" being the domain of the federal government, not the states themselves. I remember reading that in a document somewhere once...
My life is in scheduling hell for the next few months, certainly at least the next month and a half or so. What's got Derek so busy that he's bad at returning your (e-mail, calls, letters, smoke-signals) or forgetting your (birthday, anniversary, wedding, bar mitzvah)?
I've got a lot on my plate for the next few months, so if you're one of the people I forget, or ignore, or whose call I don't return, please don't take it personal, just realize that my next few months are filled to 110% capacity with stuff, and there's going to be some stuff that slips through the cracks.
Wow... talk about getting busy...
Friday
Friday morning, as I was helping George get ready to run his session of last year's Barroom Blitz scenario, we discovered something horrific -- it wasn't scheduled to be run "8 a.m. Friday" as we both thought, but instead was supposed to run at "9 p.m. Thursday". Which was, of course, slightly problematic to discover Friday morning. Very uncool, and if you're one of the folks who got screwed by that mishap, I apologize profusely. Stop me next year (at a Blitz III session, fate willing) and I'll apologize in person and try to make it up to you somehow.
08:00 - 12:00 - Diplomacy Tournament Qualifier
I had registered for the Intro to Diplomacy event, which was essentially a non-qualifying event... it's designed for "newbs", but also people who have something scheduled for the finals round often play in the "Intro". However, the qualifier round was short a couple players to make the numbers work, so I was one of the people they asked (since I was a previous Diplomacy Tournament veteran) to step up into the big game.
I drew Russia. I got caught in the worst situation -- a Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany alliance, bent on destroying Russia and Italy. With a strong alliance there that couldn't be broken, I was definitely on the short end of the stick. I take pride, though, in my ability to survive through the entire 5-year run of the qualifier round, including a surprise snatching of life from death's jaws when Italy and a (now-backstabbed) Germany helped my only surviving unit obtain a supply-center-in-exile in Munich.
12:00 noon - 4:00 p.m. - An event that shall remain nameless
OK, now that I'm a repeat veteran of GenCon DMing, I've got some pointers for potential DMs:
9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. - Barroom Blitz II
More to come on this, it deserves its own entry covering all three runs.
Saturday
8:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon - Barroom Blitz I
Since this was going to be George's first run through the Blitz I scenario as a DM, I figured I'd tag along, give him a hand with it, and act as a resource since I've done it a number of times now. It went pretty well. It was extremely short-handed (9 out of 16 players), but it still went pretty well.
afternoon
I spent the afternoon really going over the retail floor yesterday. I wasn't feeling too hot (I've been picking up something of a sore throat this weekend) so I blew off my six-hour afternoon slot for a more casual stroll around the floor, looking at some of the new products out there (and being sure to stop by every software vendor I saw to give him shit if they didn't have a Mac version -- they don't know we're out there wanting the stuff if you don't tell them).
9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. - Barroom Blitz II
Like before, I'll give this it's own entry.
Sunday
10:00 a.m. - 1:45 p.m. - World Series of GenCon
The "last chance for a trip to Vegas" turned out to be a bust of sorts. Sundays being Sundays at GenCon, turnout for the event was horrible. A minimum of 75 people needed to show up for there to be a trip awarded, but it didn't happen. Instead, they gave everyone one of several options: Everyone could do a couple up-front rebuys to bring the "total buy-in" to the amount needed to make the event sanctioned, we could accept lesser prizes for first place (options were given on a poker table or a case of the limited edition WSOG poker-chips the tournament was using), or they would offer up refunds.
Since the first option was never going to happen (you couldn't get everyone to agree to pay more money, especially on the last day of the 'con after everyone's been spending money all week), some people took refunds, and the remaining 40 of us competed for the lesser prizes.
At my first table, the guy two seats to my left was a definite fish. He thought he was good, but .. seriously here.... there's four to the nut-straight on the table, and you've got two pair, do you:
Yeah, he had four outs (two actually, considering cards it was later revealed had been mucked) but seriously, that doesn't seem to me to be smart play. After blowing through his third rebuy, he was trying to buy generic tickets from players at the table to get the five he needed for a rebuy, but he only had $6.50 instead of the needed $7.50... I happily chipped in the missing buck for him. "Nothing person, but for as fast as we're all collecting your chips tonight, I'll happily help you put chips into our stacks."
At my first two tables, I was doing really well, got some really nice flops, and doubled-up on several full-houses and straights, and was doing pretty well. At my third table, though, my luck disappeared and I couldn't catch a hand to save my life. As the blinds went up, my ability to survive definitely seemed to be in doubt. However, they broke our table up and moved us all up to the final table before the blinds got me totally hosed.
In UTG+2, with only enough chips to pay for a small and big blind, I got dealt pocket bullets. There was not going to be a better chance than this, and even though the guy across from me (a pro dealer) later told me it was clear to him that I had them [Note to self: Must play more face-to-face tournies to improve the poker face], I got two callers. Unfortunately, though -- as so often happens in our home-game -- pocket aces simply couldn't cut it, and I was eliminated in 9th place.
I was pretty happy with the outcome, though. It was my first final-table at a tournament of any sort, and I think I played well the whole way throughout. If you don't catch cards, you don't catch cards, and the blinds crippled me along the way, simple as that. My game improved over my last tournament and I'm happy with that.
After the tournament, Chaz and I perused the retail floor, looking for bargains from people who don't want to bring stuff home, and eventually headed over to Steak-n-Shake for dinner, and then back to the room.
Now, it's 11:00, starting to wind down, getting ready to pack it in for the night, and head out on the road tomorrow morning back for New York.
As it turns out, GenCon'06 is earlier in the month next year, so we've already booked the reservations for next year's hotel. Surprisingly (and possibly because the Westin hasn't been told about the 'Con dates yet), the rate I reserved at for next year is $40/night cheaper than what I paid this year. All the other close hotels are already sold out, with only one or two exceptions, so I can't be the only one who thinks about this every year. (While at GenCon, reserve your room directly for the following year... screw the "lottery luck of the draw" of waiting to use the housing bureau, get the rooms up-front, maybe pay slightly higher, but have a better chance of getting something decent).
See you all next year.
8:00 am - 12:00 noon : Barroom Blitz II (as DM)
Ummm, I'm going to reserve comment on any of my Blitz sessions until Saturday evening, after I've run all three sessions, lest someone who is in the Friday night or Saturday night sessions read this and get spoilers they shouldn't have.
12:00 noon - 4:00 pm : Luckily Reds Breathe Fire
I'd been in Kent King's Demons in the Drink session (which is the prequel to this session) last year at GenCon 2004. I really enjoy Kent's DMing style and the stories he chooses to tell. Plus, I've had him as a player and he is clearly a class act. If you're looking for events in a GenCon catalog and you see his name, definitely grab it. You won't be sorry.
8:00 pm - well, sadly, 8:45 pm - World Series of GenCon 2005
I entered into the World Series of Gen Con poker tournament this evening. It was a $15.00 buy-in that bought you T$1000. The top three winners from the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night events, as well as one lucky person from the Sunday afternoon "Last Chance" event, will all be flown out - and have their expenses paid - to Vegas to compete at a "final table" for real prizes (although, because of quirks in the gambling laws, they obviously cannot tell us here what those prizes are, because that would make this a gambling event ... seriously, it's funny shit, if you think about it... instead because they don't offer "payouts", and because you CAN get in for free (just with a reduced chip-stack, and only if there are openings which there never are) it's a "Sweepstakes".
Anyhow, I couldn't catch cards to save my life. Well, that's not entirely true, my pocket nines formed a set early on that matured into a really nice nines-full-of-twos two cards later, allowing me to bust someone out, but pretty much beyond that point, I couldn't win a hand to save my life, and ended out severely short-stacked at about T$400, with the blinds at 50/100... I scored pocket 8s, went all-in, cuz that was pretty much as good as it was going to get at that point, and lost the coin-toss to two over-cards on the river. That's poker, though.
I'm entered into the Sunday tournament, though. The Sunday event has fewer "winners", but Sunday is always such a weak day for players and events that I expect turnout to be fairly low, so the reduced competition may help. Also, because of a change to the format, most of the marketing material says that the Sunday is an invitational only, so unless you see the new posters and go "Ah-HA!" you probably don't think you can attend the Sunday session anyway. Heh.
9:00 pm - 1:00 am : Illuminati [classic, not INWO]
This was probably the most interesting game of Illuminati I've played in years. I drew, early on, a card that would allow me to retroactively change any die roll to a 12 (a failure).
I had drawn the Discordian Society, so my goal was to collect five Weird groups. By my third turn I had already gathered three of them. During a fierce battle for the third, the guy sitting across from me, playing the Gnomes, had elected not to get involved (as everyone else at the table tried to prevent me from getting it). One of the rules is that if you haven't got a subordinate power in your control by the end of your third turn, you're immediately eliminated. When it came to be his turn (his third turn) he still had no groups. He declared a privileged attack, so nobody could interfere with the attack, and then went after a group, succeeding with ease.
Except that I stopped play, and asked him how much it was worth to him for me not to play my "You rolled a 12, dipshit" card. I knew he had a stack, and he started out by offering 10MB. I countered with 30MB. In the end, we haggled for a few and settled out at 18MB. I was nice to him because he had been nice to me, and because (out of game) I'd have felt sorta shitty knocking a player out that early into the game. Yeah, we were playing at an "all-experts" table, and it would have totally been the right play from a strictly-rules sense, but there's also "fun" aspects to be concerned with, too.
However, the fact that I neither (a) played the card, nor (b) completley bankrupted him, earned him and I the attention of the rest of the board for the rest of the evening, him moreso than me. He was, as I said, playing the Gnomes. His job is to hoard money. He was being very cheap, which is his role. Although, he got a little too cheap, and ended up painting a bullseye on his head. (Every player competes against each other, but there's also a lot of cooperative "Yeah, but we can't let HIM get any closer or we all lose." types of moments in Illuminati).
For the next dozen turns, the Gnomes were basically crushed. Any time they accumulated any money whatsoever they were beaten down, forced to spend it. Then their power structure was attacked, and -- now poor -- they were unable to defend it. Eventually they were down to only two groups, and no cash except the income they earned from that particular turn.
Then came the most stunning event of the night. There were three camps of players really: (a) me and the Gnomes, who were on the shitlist (although my name was in very small letters after they'd eliminated one or two of the groups I controlled, because I hadn't pissed them off lately, and with only 1 Weird group I was no threat)... (b) the four players to my right who were really annoyed and pushed over the edge when the Gnomes wouldn't spend 5MB out of their 50MB stash to help prevent a critical move from happening earlier, and (c) a guy to my left who was playing The Network, who seemed to be really good at playing the game and had managed to stay completely neutral in everything.
After getting crushed one too many times, the Gnomes did something completely stunning. They captured (with some resistance, but not enough) another group. Then -- looking straight at the four players who were all approaching their own victory conditions on the next turn or so -- he transferred a chunk of his power structure to The Network, giving him the victory at least two turns before he could ever have gotten it.
There then followed some heated discussion about "throwing the game". I came to the Gnomes' defense, pointing out that you can't throw a game you can't win, and it was clear they couldn't win. Further, part of Illuminati is the whole intrigue, backstabbing, deception, etc., and thus (as a corollary to that) is the concept that if you piss someone off enough, they might very well decide that if they can't win, well then by the gods, neither can you, and ensure that you don't get the victory.
Luckily, after the "heated discussion", the conversation turned to more amenable topics, and everyone ended up sitting around bullshitting for an hour, before I decided to head back up to the room, write this summary for those who care, and head off to bed.
Little George is running the original Barroom Blitz scenario tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. ... this'll probably be the first time George's gotten up for anything at 8:00 in his entire life. :-) [just kidding, G!]
I'm spec'ing out a new backup solution at work, and the current frontrunner is Computer Associates' ARCserve product. We needed to get a couple agents for Solaris added to the quote, to back up a few legacy servers that haven't been migrated to Linux yet.
When the VAR sent us the quote, she said "This is the only SKU I could find, it must be what you want". Whereas the other per-client costs were around $200 or so, this was about $2600 per client. I asked her "Are you sure you're quoting me the agent, not the server itself?" She assured me that she is, and that she spoke to Computer Associates as well. Even when I pointed out "But that product description doesn't say 'ARCserve Client Agent for (fill-in-the-blank)' like the others do, it simply says 'ARCserve for Solaris', which makes it seem a whole lot like the server and not the agent." She assured me again that CA had told her which SKU to use, etc., etc.
I was a little dubious, so I contacted CA directly. I asked them "What SKU should I be getting a quote on for this line item, because this pricing seems dorked?" They told me that a product specialist would call me back.
While waiting for the callback, I did some Googling and found that any number of places would happily sell me the exact product I'm looking for, with a SKU of BABWBR1100S19.
A little later, the CA person calls me back, and asks again what I'm looking for. I'm really clear this time, I spell it out exactly, I even say "Can I just give you the SKU that it looks like is exactly what I'm looking for, so you can bring that up in the system?"
He looks it up. He can't find it. There's umpteen-gajillion vendors selling this product, and CA can't find it in their database.
I totally have renewed faith in the VAR, though, because if CA can't find the product I want when I give them the freakin' exact SKU, how could a VAR be expected to find it?
Anyhow, CA is now tracking down what they need to do to confirm that the SKU I gave them is in fact the SKU I need, but I have to admit the whole situation is comical.
On the way to work this morning, the "Check Engine" lamp lit on the dashboard. It occurs to me how much of a scam this whole check engine light is:
But it looks like I'll be driving the Jeep around for a bit, since I won't have any opportunities before GenCon to get the Miata over to either Middletown (where it got worked on last time) or Albany (closer).
Ugh.
OK, it's no secret I've always abhorred qmail. Now, it appears to have reached an all-time peak.
While trying to diagnose a "what's happening to our mail, it's not getting through" condition, I found lots of this error on the server that was apparently the culprit:
2005-08-11 13:12:31.061306500 starting delivery 2753: msg 34103 to local XXXXXXXXX-deballing@XXXXXXXX
2005-08-11 13:12:31.122103500 delivery 2753: success: lseek_error_29/lseek_errno=29/did_0+0+1/
Yup, you read that right... qmail SAW the error, knew enough to log it, and yet still called it a "success", so it pulled it out of its queue.
I'm looking for two things:
So I got a new cel-phone today from work. (I'll be carrying two phones, my own that I love and adore, and the cheezy, crappy, Cellular One phone that work provides). After I get home, I start customizing the settings on it, making it be "how I want it to be, etc., etc."
At some point, in the equation, the phone becomes completely unresponsive and says only:
Enter PUK Code:
So I call Hell One to find out what it's all about. Now, this is a huge college account. There's probably a hundred or so phones on this account I imagine...
CSR: Can you give me the billing address on the account?
Me: Blah blah blah
CSR: And your name?
Me: Blah Blah Blah.
CSR: You're not one of the authorized contacts, do you have the password?
Me: Nope.
CSR: What can I do for you today?
Me: I was changing the settings on my phone, and it now says "Enter PUK code," whatever that means.
CSR: That's a PIN Unlock code, it means your SIM card has locked itself up.
Me: So I need to enter something to make it stop?
CSR: Yes, but I can only give that info to the authorized contact.
Me: Right, that would be $NAME, but she's on vacation.
CSR: Correct, I do see $NAME as the authorized contact.
Me: So what should I do? She's on vacation, and this is my 24x7 call thing.
CSR: I can only give the PUK to an authorized contact. Do you have any way of getting in touch with her?
Me: It's called "vacation" for a reason. Who else is an authorized contact?
CSR: I could only give that information --
Me: -- to an authorized contact. Blah blah blah. We're a big college, man, I can't just go through the employee and faculty directory in alphabetical order asking if they're an authorized contact on the cellular account. You need to tell me at least who I should be speaking with to get this resolved.
CSR: Sir, there is only $NAME on the account. She is the only person listed.
Me: Seriously? You gotta be kidding me? So how the fuck do I get this broken phone resolved?
CSR: It's not broken. It's locked.
Me: Can I make calls on it? No? Then it's broken.
CSR: Would you like the number to the insurance company for Cell One phones?
Me: Is this phone covered with an insurance plan?
CSR: I couldn't tell you that --
Me: Fuck you. This attitude you've got right here? This is why I don't pay you guys a dime, and I've got my phone through Verizon. Let me speak to a supervisor.
CSR: One second please.
(some time goes by)
CSR: Sir, I spoke to my supervisor and he says that without you being an authorized person, we couldn't --
Me: Good, then he can tell me that himself when you put him on the phone. I no longer wish to talk to you, I wish to talk to him. Put him on.
CSR: One second please.
(some time goes by)
CSR: I have $SUPERVISOR, he will further assist you.
Supervisor: How can I help you today?
Me: My phone went into this "Enter PUK Code" mode all by itself, and I have no way of getting it to work.
Supervisor: We could only give that info to an authorized person on the account.
Me: Right, but $NAME is out on vacation, so I'm pretty well screwed, and this is supposed to be used for 24x7 on-call service.
Supervisor: How about $OTHER_NAME or $THIRD_NAME, can you reach them?
Me: They're authorized contacts?!
Supervisor: Yes, sir.
Me: That little fucktard told me definitively that there were no other contacts other than $NAME.
Supervisor: No, sir. Both $OTHER_NAME and $THIRD_NAME could get that information for you.
Me: Man, I'm glad I asked to speak to a supervisor. I managed to reach someone who wasn't either going to lie to me or just be too stupid to read the screen right. Thank you very much, I'll chat with $OTHER_NAME and get it all fixed up.
Remember that four-hour O'Hare layover I mentioned? I'm glad I had it. My flight out of PDX this morning is three hours delayed. This means that, due to my scheduled layover, I didn't have to go through "connection rebooking hell". Also, since PDX has free WiFi in the airport gates and O'Hare doesn't have any sort of WiFi at all, not even for-pay(?!?!!), I was probably the only person on this flight to be happy for the three hour delay.
It's been a long week this week at OSCON, and I haven't been blogging much here, mainly because I was asked to write about my OSCON experiences for the O'Reilly Network of blogs. So there's a couple entries there, on specific topics from this past week.
It was a long, interesting, week, though. I had a great time doing lots of things.... got to see some people that I really only get to see once or twice a year at various conferences... got to meet some people I hadn't met before.
Some of the highlights, outside the normal sessions:
There's people I miss, though ... I haven't seen Jon Orwant in four years now. (Come back, Jon, we miss you! *grin* Maybe if you throw another coffee mug against a wall, Arthur Dent style, we can get a release of Perl 6)
It's a long flight back home tomorrow. Luckily the week has exhausted me enough that I'll fall asleep early this evening, so I can get up early for my flight.
Apparently the "open source friendly" folks at Slashdot dind't think to wonder "hey, I wonder if there'll be some people with aggregators at OSCON this year?"
I opened up NetNewsWire, and found:
Your RSS reader is abusing the Slashdot server. You are requesting pages more often than our terms of service allow. Please see the FAQ link for more information, and if you email us, include your IP's srcid: 203104289e737f9d.
Morons.
How cool is this? A local theater is showing, until Thursday Wednesday, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
James, Ask, Meng, Radwin, and Jeremy are going to get together for the 8:25 showing on Wednesday. What better thing is there to do than to see the best of all the Star Trek movies ever, up on the big screen?
UPDATE: Apparently the theatre that is showing Khan loses the print after the Wednesday showing. Yahoo!Movies has bad info (bad Yahoo, no cookie!). SO... considering how late in the day it is today, the new plan is for tomorrow (Wednesday) evening.
