Arizona isn’t racist, they’re just playing the hand they were dealt.

Posted on June 8, 2012 by SJ

Caught Ralphie May’s latest routine on Netflix last night, really funny stuff however he went off about Arizona and how their actions are racist because they aren’t stopping white people on suspicion of being illegal aliens from Canada…  Hello?  We’re not talking about North Dakota here, and if the federally backed ‘border patrol’ could do its job – Arizona wouldn’t have to go to such measures to protect itself.

The government for way too long has maintained a ‘look, but don’t touch’ policy when it comes to the border patrol dealing with the borders.  Observe them, arrest illegals only if you absolutely have to, but there’s almost a ‘wink and a nod’ attitude when it comes to dealing with it since such a significant portion of our economy depends on low-cost immigrant labor.  Now I’m all for securing the borders and making it more difficult for illegals to gain entry – but just the same – we need to pay attention.

We should make it easier for the folks who want to work to come here and work, citizen or not.  We should make it easier for the folks who want to be legal – to get legal.  We should have a policy that says ‘come on in, but do it our way’ and make ‘our way’ much more attractive than risking life and limb to get here.  That whole ‘voluntarily leave and then sign up to get back in the right way’ is a copout.  With the level of technology we have, all we need to do is get a name, a photo, a finger print, put it in a database, then when they want to come in for work – scan their prints and tell them ‘buenos dias.’

Sure they steal jobs – if you want to make less than minimum wage in conditions that’d make you puke – go steal one back.  Sure they use our health care system, the hospitals are required to treat anyone that walks in the door whether or not they can pay.  ‘But they don’t pay taxes!’  Neither do a lot of the folks who ARE citizens and rely on the ‘triage’ level of support from walking in to a hospital.

It’s all a wash, I don’t know a single cracker capable of working as hard, as long, and for as little pay as an illegal.  Putting them ‘in the system’ opens the door to making them as fat, lazy, and jaded as the rest of us.  Our work ethic was traded for lower prices, the simple truth is that if you employ an American to produce a product, the price of that product will rise.  As Ralphie said – nobody’s going to pay $3.50 for a burger and $10 for the pickle.

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Tales of Pepi Miststück, the neighbor from Hell.

Posted on June 1, 2012 by SJ

(This is based on a true story, names and genders may have been changed)

Growing up in the suburban town of Warwick, NY – I was blessed with an environment conducive to a happy life.  However, every rose has a thorn, and mine took the form of Pepi Miststück, and his wife Massel.

Early on, I can recall eating dinner at their home once or twice, as their kids were friends with my siblings.  I would later discover this was more of a case of parents keeping quiet and letting ‘kids be kids.’  The problems began long before I was a gleam in my father’s eye… before my family had even moved to the town.  Our neighborhood had been built over an old apple orchard, Pepi got in on the ground floor, purchasing one of the first lots.  He’d actually tried to purchase the adjacent lots as well, in the end only successfully getting 3 lots.  The remaining 2 were developed into my family homestead, and another neighbor.

Two other families had lived in the house before us, one owner died, and the other owner – a black belt – moved out before he used his skills to give Pepi a dirt nap.  Days after my family moved in, a young couple with two small children, Pepi was on site – telling them what needed to be done with the house and the property.

It didn’t take long for my folks, both children of NYC in the mid 1900’s, kindly asked the schlemiel to take a hike.  Pepi had successfully driven two families from the home, and was hell bent on driving us out as well…  As my folks bought the house in 1971, and still happily live there over 40 years later, you can say he wasn’t very successful… but he still hasn’t stopped trying.

A few gems to start, I’ll add more as I remember them…

One of my earliest memories of Pepi’s depravity was around Christmas time.  I was probably around 10 years old.  That year, the day after Christmas was very windy.  Now Pepi’s house was in the ‘sac’ of the Cull-De-Sac, which was at the bottom of a hill lined with about 6-8 homes on each side.  After the holiday, everyone had put out very large bags of torn wrapping paper at the curbside.  Over the course of the day, these bags proceeded to blow down the road and wound up scattered all over Pepi’s property.

His response was to collect the bags, put them on our yard with our bags… within minutes or hours, they’d wind up back on his yard.  Now I can’t recall exactly how we kept ours from blowing away – probably because we had one of those huge garbage cans (what an idea!) – but as the day progressed, the pile of bags near our driveway would shrink and grow.  Eventually, this wore pretty thin with Pepi, and in a fit of rage / stupidity, he decided to bring the bags back up to our yard, and rip one open.

Simple theory, right?  Rip the bag, wrapping papers, spread out all over our property because of the wind, and he gets his tiny victory…  In actuality, the bags and the papers all ended up over his entire yard (figure 2/3 of an acre, remember he bought 2 lots).  This sent him into a fury.  He collected some samples with the name tags still on them, and called the police…

Now remember, our garbage is still neatly tucked in our garbage can…

The police arrive, and Pepi cries foul, showing the name tags… none of which match anyone in our immediate or extended family.  Tags from at least 4 different families all the way at the top of the hill.  Police didn’t do anything, Pepi looked like the shmuck that he was, and life went on.

Another time, one of my siblings had picked up an old muscle-car from the 60’s…

He worked on it day and night, tuning it into a precision instrument of raw horsepower.  The only thing is, while it went very fast, very quick – it still had an old fashioned single-piston master cylinder.  One day as he returned home the brakes decided to fail at the top of our street.  He managed to slow it down to around 30mph by the time he reached our house.  His only option to stop the car without hurting anyone was a small oak tree in our front yard that had the circumference of a beer can.

Sure enough, he nailed it dead center, and the tree sacrificed itself to save him and his friend.  The car was totaled and left hanging over the driveway.  After hearing the crash, we all ran out of the house to see what happened and make sure he was ok.  Pepi’s wife, Massel, instead decided to call the police and claim that he had actually rammed into their house… and followed it up by coming outside and screaming at him.

Now, when I was 6 years old – I did something pretty stupid.

A friend of mine from down the street had introduced me to a cigarette lighter, and we would hang out in the woods near Pepi’s house, burning leaves and putting them out.  One day, while bored I thought ‘why don’t I go play with fire.’  Yes, I actually thought that.  So I snuck into the treeline adjacent to Pepi’s house and started to light up some leaves on a very dry and sunny summer day.  The first few batches lit up and burned away, but that last leaf caught under a pile of wood that Pepi had discarded in the woods, and try as I might to put the flames out, I couldn’t.  Now Pepi didn’t just dump wood back there, he dumped everything back there.  Wood, appliances, garbage – and besides the leaves, guess what burned up?  All of the crap he was illegally discarding (if memory serves, I think part of the fallout of the fire was he getting a fine for dumping garbage and other combustible materials improperly).  He had actually been away that day, thank God… Once the fire took and I realized I couldn’t put it out, I ran screaming.  My mom recalls seeing me running towards her, screaming, with a wall of flame behind me.  Two fire trucks came and quickly put it out, I got to sit in a police car and get scared out of EVER doing something so stupid again, even made the front page of the weekly local newspaper.  It was a pretty traumatic experience, but chances are had Pepi not been storing piles of combustible garbage – it may never have happened.

Cars… ah yes, the cars!

One thing I noticed early on is that any time my folks would get a new car, within a month – the Miststück family had picked up the same exact car, with a different color, and generally a higher trim level.  If we had a base model, they would get the fully-loaded model.  This went on for at least 15 years.  Imitation?  Envy?  Who knows.  The one thing we always knew would set him off was parking in front of his house.  It wasn’t illegal, but it just caused the right synapses to fire in his pea brain to whine, complain, yell, and threaten whichever member of our family was in sight.  Now we – not being a group of Zhlub’s – wouldn’t block his driveway.  On the other hand, he would make a point any time there was a family event at their home – have someone block our driveway.  Of course, my family is a family of doers – not talkers.  So one day when their son-in-law decided to park his car in front of our driveway, we simply went out, picked it up, and moved it out of the way.  Hilarity ensued, police were called, (by now pretty much every level of town government knew and accepted the fact that Pepi was a meshungina looked at the situation, and left Pepi to stew in his own lunacy.

One night, Pepi came home and saw a car parked in front of his house.  This of course impeded him from swooping around the cull-de-sac like he usually did so he could back in to his driveway.  So he sat there, in his car, laying on the horn, and expecting us to come out and move the car.  Instead, he ended up in a shouting match with my Dad, who invited him to ‘come a little closer (as in come onto our property) and discuss it.’  Growing up, and even today in his 70’s, my old man is built like a freight train.  Had that incident gone another way, I have little doubt that it would have lasted more than one punch from my Dad’s giant fists.  Thankfully though, Pepi did what he usually did when confronted – and scurried into his house to call the police.  A female officer arrived (lets just say Pepi’s treatment of women has always been questionable) and the end result of that conversation was the officer clearly telling Pepi that if he calls them one more time for this sort of thing, they would bring HIM in.  Eventually Pepi figured out that when the town oiled the road again, they would leave quite a bit of extra gravel lying around, which he would collect well after dark and end up building himself a small turnaround near his garage so he could back the car in regardless of who was parked in the road.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the same thought when it came to get our cars off the road for winter, as the usual practice of parking the extra car on the lawn was hindered by Pepi calling the town zoning department and complaining that we were doing what everyone else in the neighborhood was doing that time of year and didn’t have the forethought to steal a ton of fresh gravel to make a proper driveway.  We ended up having to make our own gravel parking spot (to code of course) to satisfy the shmuck.

To this day, for nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing that it raises his blood pressure a few bpm’s – I always make a point to park in front of his house whenever I visit.  Sure its petty, I could be the better man, but that’s my dad’s job.

I’ll add more stories as time goes on, but for now – enjoy, and feel free to share your bad neighbor stories in the comment section.

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Justice for Martin *AND* Zimmerman

Posted on April 12, 2012 by SJ

I’ve been following the Treyvon Martin / George Zimmerman case since the story broke over a month ago.  In the interim, I’ve seen the media manipulate the events for ratings, race baiting stooges like Al Sharpton insert themselves in the events for attention, and an understandable outcry over the reported events.

Cliffs Notes Version:

George Zimmerman was the head of neighborhood watch.  He saw someone acting funny, and reported it to 911 because there had been several burglaries in his neighborhood.  The operator advised him not to follow Treyvon Martin, but he apparently did so anyhow. (now this is where things get foggy depending on which media outlet you subscribe to) – Zimmerman either pulled open his jacket to reveal a Punisher t-shirt and executed Treyvon Martin on the spot, or (and this is the version I believe) – Martin saw Zimmerman following him, confronted him, threw him a beating, and was shot to death as a result.

My take:

One of the spins on this which I absolutely do not believe, is that the only reason Zimmerman was following Martin was to get the street-name.  The guy is the head of neighborhood watch, he has a record of calling 911 and getting results – he knew what street he was on.  I also don’t believe that Martin set out to kill the teenager.  It irked me to no end that the media has constantly portrayed Martin as innocent in this, going as far as to only show a non-current photo of a smiling early-teenager to further reinforce the innocent victim spin.  He didn’t deserve to die, but he wasn’t innocent.

Neither of them are innocent in this IMHO.  Zimmerman did his due diligence in calling 911 and reporting something he believed to be suspicious.  His first mistake was ignoring the 911 operator’s request to stop following Martin which subsequently spurred the chain of events leading to Martin’s death.  Martin was obviously a ‘take no shit’ type of guy, so when he realized he was being followed, he confronted Zimmerman.  Neither of them backed down and their mistakes culminated in a tragedy.

Should Zimmerman be punished for his part in contributing to the tragedy?  Absolutely.  He’s not a cop.  I’ve been told by 911 operators not to follow someone I believed was driving drunk – and I complied.  Does he deserve to be convicted of 2nd degree murder?  Absolutely not.  Reckless endangerment or involuntary manslaughter would make more sense to this arm-chair quarterback.  As for all the talk of racial profiling, unless there were two teenagers out there of different races, and Zimmerman decided to pick Martin and ignore the other (fill in the race) teenager, it wasn’t profiling, it was wrong place, wrong time.

The ‘stand your ground’ law is a good idea, but just the same – if a cop is involved in a shooting he/she is relieved of duty until the investigation completes.  That Zimmerman was able to shoot and kill another human being and be home in time for dinner while the other party was stored in a morgue as ‘john doe’ for more than a few days just doesn’t make sense to me.  He should have been arrested, processed, and the courts should have made the decision on his guilt or innocence from day one, after 40 days of the media and talking heads spinning the event for their own benefit.

Both of them made mistakes, both of them are guilty of a crime, and unfortunately a life was lost because of their mistakes.  It’s a tragedy no matter how you look at it.  Zimmerman should be charged with a crime, not to dissuade potential victims from ‘standing their ground’ but to remind people that there are limits to what can and should be done when confronted with a situation like this.  If both of them backed down, Martin would likely still be alive today.

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Zen and the Art of IID Maintenance

Posted on April 3, 2012 by SJ

Just the other day I had an Ignition Interlock Device (IID) removed from my car.

Now drunk driving *IS* a big problem.  More people do it with or without thinking than you could even imagine.  If there was a breathalyzer checkpoint at the door of any bar in the tri-state area, I’d imagine that bar would look like one hopping place because while many enter, very few would actually be able to leave when they wanted to.

In New York State, should you be the lucky recipient of a DWI, you will be subject to fines (around $900), a state government surcharge ($750), lawyers fees (at last estimate around… $3000), impound fees ($300+), suspension and/or restriction of your driving privileges, being hurled back into the assigned-risk insurance pool (75% surcharge on your standard automotive policy for 39 months), and of course – the pièce de résistance, an IID ($120 install, $120 monthly monitoring, $80 removal, and $60 per reset due to a fail).

Now the theory behind the IID is that when installed in the vehicle of a DWI offender, it will prevent the car from being started if the driver blows over .020% BAC.  The devices have many countermeasures to prevent tampering such as built-in infra-red cameras to identify who is taking the test, rolling retests (every 15-30 minutes), as well a spiffy data log which keeps track of whether power to the device has been interrupted in any way.  Blow anything but a fresh lungful of bad breath, a violation is logged, reported to your case-worker instantly, and you may or may not find yourself back in court.  Following that theory, it works.  In reality…

From day 1 you will be told that these devices never malfunction.  That is an absolute lie.

Like any other modern electronic device, an IID can and will malfunction.  From false positives due to alcohol based mouthwash like Listerine or Scope, or energy drinks like Red Bull, to failed readings which trigger an ‘Abort’ or ‘Wait’ alert, to failing due to internal corrosion, hardware defect, etc… they are fully capable of keeping both inebriated and stone sober drivers from getting behind the wheel of their cars.

If you ask what to avoid besides alcohol, you won’t be told anything – everyone involved knows what can trigger these things to fail – but to admit that drinking a Red Bull or eating the wrong type of bread would cause a fail would be admitting that the IID can malfunction.  If the manufacturer, the government, or even the well-intentioned groups like MADD who champion the cause of these devices were to ever acknowledge that the IID is not 100% effective – it would quickly open up the laws that require their use to attack.  With no laws to require an IID, the revenue stream into the Government as well as the manufacturers which rely on raking in BAC violations would be drastically cut if not eliminated… and therein lies the rub.

I’ve had the IID replaced a total of 4 times across 2 vehicles.  Remember – these DO NOT malfunction…but why have them replaced if they’re always working as expected?  The very last time I had one replaced, the regional manager of the interlock company went as far as to accuse me of tampering with the device to make it fail.

Consider the logic at work here folks, it is mind boggling.  The device malfunctions, as a result I am late to work, late to appointments, have to completely scrap plans, and not to mention drop $60 to have the unit reset and re-calibrated so the car isn’t locked out 5 days after the initial malfunction…. And I was supposedly doing this ON PURPOSE!?  Every time it was obvious that the unit was malfunctioning, the regional manager fought tooth and nail against replacing the unit.  We were told repeatedly that we were the ONLY ONES having problems with these devices (a quick trip to Google will prove otherwise).  After all of the BS, and after paying enough reset fees, eventually they would authorize the replacement (with no mention of malfunction in the reason behind it).

After repeated calls to the regional manager went un-answered (mind you, she ASKED for me to call and discuss what was going on) – I resorted to my tried and true method of problem resolution commonly referred to as “Sherman’s March to The Sea.”  Using Google.com, I located the contact information for the top executives and owners of the interlock company, and emailed them directly to explain the situation and ask VERY NICELY for a resolution.

Within 2 days, the installer had contacted me and advised that the replacement was approved – and the best part – the regional manager was no longer with the company.

The culprit here – and this is key because I was *NEVER* told that they would cause a false positive or malfunction, was my electronic cigarette.  Early on I had discovered that any flavored electronic cigarette would quickly trigger a fail.  After much hyperventilating the fail would clear on a retest, but this is what the manufacturers and government force you to do – learn by trial and error – all the while forking over hard earned cash to resolve problems with a device they say NEVER MALFUNCTIONS.

For months then, I continued not smoking real cigarettes – instead smoking my electronic variety which did not trigger any failures or malfunctions…  that is until the outside temperature dropped below 32F.  Almost overnight the unit would fail nearly every test until it warmed up enough, even failing for the installer after driving an hour to have the unit reset.  The very day I had the unit replaced the first time, I decided ‘no more e-cigarettes while driving’ thinking that would be enough.  NAY.  After sitting at my desk for 8 hours and attempting to leave for the day (and not vaping for an hour prior to leaving) – the IID repeatedly failed me.  Eventually I gave up, abandoned the car at my office, and got a ride home.

Now since these devices never malfunction, I had to resort to my own methods of avoiding these malfunctions.  A few things worked…  First was unplugging the head unit and bringing it inside with me when it wasn’t in use.  From a warm start, it would either WARN or pass on the first test… but the common thing here was normally that my first test of the morning would pass, then after about 10 minutes I would fail the retest.  The other thing was to make sure I removed the clear plastic mouthpiece when the device wasn’t in use, which allowed the condensation from my breath to slowly evaporate from the IID.

Still, despite those efforts – it still malfunctioned – and I was never advised to modify my behavior, simply that the IID does NOT MALFUNCTION, that NOBODY HAS EVER HAD A PROBLEM LIKE THIS, and that I must be DOING THIS ON PURPOSE.  After the final replacement, I stopped using my e-cigarrettes, and from that day to the joyous removal date – no malfunctions.  My best guess here is that the chemicals in the e-cigarette liquid must have built up on the sensor as once the device began to malfunction, all BAC readings were in the .020% range.

Recently passed laws make the absurd requirement of installing an IID in every household vehicle (regardless of guilt or innocence) that the offender may have access to drive.  Local municipalities are going even further, attempting to enact policies which prohibit your God given and constitutionally protected right to have a drink (as long as you don’t drive).  IID’s are becoming more widespread every day despite their inherent flaws and numerous malfunctions (ever see a BAC test given at a police station?  Did you wonder why the officer keeps telling the suspect to blow even after the test has apparently completed?  It’s to drive every bit of alcohol from your lungs and into the machine, so that your BAC reading is actually HIGHER than what is ACTUALLY IN YOUR BLOOD).

So to anyone who has to deal with an IID in their life, please remember the following (I am not responsible for anything that happens to you if you do or do not heed my suggestions) :

  • Don’t drink and drive!!!
  • Get help!!!  Even if you don’t THINK you’re an alcoholic, go to AA, get substance abuse counceling, and see first hand what alcohol abuse can do to people…  if that doesn’t elevate your thinking, nothing short of a bullet in the head is going to help you.
  • Buy a portable breathalyzer, they range in price from $10 to $100 and can be found in many convenience stores (even Best Buy sells them).  When in doubt, take a breath test.  I picked up a small keychain unit for $10 at Best Buy which let me know when my BAC was negligible.
  • Don’t believe the hype, the units malfunction every day, keep track of every malfunction (date, time, what you’ve eaten, drank, or smoked).  Report any and every malfunction to the installer as well as your case worker.  If you’re called back to court, the malfunction log is your friend.  A replacement could get every reading on the unit invalidated.
  • If you’re ever stopped for suspicion of DWI, and you know you are drunk, don’t admit to drinking anything, don’t admit to being drunk, be polite and cooperative – but remember – they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are committing a crime.  You have the right to remain silent whether or not you are under arrest.  Worst case, you take a field sobriety test, you get arrested, and eventually wind up at the station.  Refusing to take a breathalyzer test results in an immediate 6-month suspension of driving privileges.  Demand an actual blood test, it is the only truly accurate way to determine BAC, and could be the difference between having a criminal record or just having a bad night.  You could fail a field sobriety test, get arrested, and unless you were completely trashed – by the time you get that blood test – be in the clear or have a BAC reading within DAI range (driving while abilities impaired).
  • If you are arrested, get a good lawyer, and get everything in writing.  The court is not going to grant you any quarter, they are hell bent on making an example out of every single person before the bench regardless of guilt, innocence, or context.  DWI is a big problem, but also a huge money-maker for the Government as well as IID manufacturers, so they have every intention of squeezing you dry and burying you – with the end result being that you may or may not (depending on whether you’re an alcoholic, an idiot, or just plain unlucky) drive drunk again.

I’m glad it is done with.  I’ve never been arrested for DWI, DUI, or DAI – everyone has driven at while at least buzzed, but I pray that you never have to see the effect this has on those you love.  It is an unmitigated nightmare at every level.  Driving under the influence of alcohol is stupid, avoidable, and not worth losing your money, self respect, or life.  Avoid driving after drinking at all costs.

Posted in Driving, Uncategorized, Vaping | Leave a comment

Hacking the Checkpoint UTM-1 Firewall for Performance

Posted on February 1, 2012 by SJ

Checkpoint is a company that creates firewalls for computer networks.  Many years ago I decided to phase out our antiquated Cisco PIX firewalls and implement something more robust which could provide more services than just basic firewalling.  For the longest time, Checkpoint just sold the software which could be installed on anything.  The problem was that its software was already vastly more expensive than its competitors, and the hardware required to run the software wasn’t cheap either.

When they began to offer a full package, both hardware and software, I just about leapt at it after comparing it to several competitors including Cisco, Sonicwall, and Watchguard.  It cost the most, but provided the most features that I could actually use.  As time progressed, they released new software versions, added new features, and at the point of this writing – the firewall not only controls inbound and outbound connections, it also protects us from spam, viruses, worms, spyware, exploits, etc…  There isn’t much that can get past one of these things.

From the start, I did have some reservations regarding the UTM-1 450.  At its core, it was an Intel Celeron based system with 1gb of ram and a standard 80GB Seagate hard disk.  From my experience, Celeron CPU’s sucked, and putting a standard hard disk in such a critical network component added a point of failure that other systems which stored data in solid state memory didn’t have.  Still, the Linux based operating system was efficient enough to get the job done on the hardware we had.  In order to mitigate the drive failure, I went ahead and created “clusters” of these firewalls so that in the event one failed – the other could take over until I fixed the problem.

Over the years though, the ability of the hardware to support what the software could provide decreased dramatically. One of the most common tasks with these firewalls involves updating the rules and then copying or “pushing” those rules out to the firewalls.  That process which used to take a few minutes now took over 10 minutes.  Adding insult to injury, the level of resource starvation due to the software requirements would make all network traffic grind to a halt until the update completed.  I had looked into upgrading to the latest comparable offering from Checkpoint, but the pricing had me looking for other options…  I finally decided to do some research, and see if I could pull some greater performance from what I had.

I had gone into this thinking the biggest bottleneck of all was the CPU, and while it was a contributing factor, the main problem was that the standard hard drive couldn’t keep up with what Checkpoint’s R75.10 needed.

In order for the CPU to be recognized, I installed a fresh copy of R75 SPLAT (instead of the Appliance version).  The old CPU supported PAE (Physical Address Extension) but the new one did not, after tinkering with a stock 2.6.18 kernel to make it look like Checkpoint’s for a while, I decided to try the fresh installation route which worked splendidly.  Also, after cloning the hard disk to the SSD, I had to re-install the grub boot loader to the MBR.

Now from what I’ve read, the Nexcom-1042 system board behind the 450 has a hardware limit of 1gb of RAM.  I’m going to pick up a stick of 2gb DDR and see for myself though.  If I can get 2gb in there, I may be able to mount the /tmp/ directory on a ram drive instead of the SSD.

Some other tweaks I have made enable the management server to use certificate based authentication to access the root account on the enforcement points, which allows me to not only back up the management server via upgrade_export, but to also backup the individual enforcement points.  Lastly, I’ve been exploring the ‘etherlike’ mibs and have written a basic Nagios plugin for the UTM which allows me to calculate the current bandwidth (so I can generate and maintain historical data on the firewall’s bandwidth utilization via nagios).  I’m going to expand the plugin to provide even more data, none of the plugins currently available really gave me what I want.

Just to summarize what I did here:

  • Replaced the Celeron 1.5ghz CPU with a Pentium M 2.0ghz CPU.  On paper, you get .5ghz more clock speed and an extra 1MB of L2 Cache.  In reality there is a marginal boost in performance, the greatest bump comes from the extra L2 cache.
  • Replaced the standard Seagate 80gb 7200RPM IDE hard disk with a Crucial 64gb SATA SSD (running through a SATA to IDE adapter).  I needed to make a few tweaks to the kernel settings to optimize the SSD, but once done, it had some blazing performance.

As far as hard disk benchmarks are concerned:

 

Seagate:

  • Read: 63 MB/s
  • Write: 32 MB/s

 Crucial SSD:

 

  • Read: 89 MB/s
  • Write: 134 MB/s

That’s a 41% improvement in read speed, and a 318% percent improvement in write speed.  Those rule updates which took over 10 minutes and thrashed network connectivity now complete in under a minute, and there’s no impact on network connectivity… for about $150 worth of parts.

1.       Replaced the Celeron 1.5ghz CPU with a Pentium M 2.0ghz CPU.  On paper, you get .5ghz more clock speed and an extra 1MB of L2 Cache.  In reality there is a marginal boost in performance, the greatest bump comes from the extra L2 cache.

2.       Replaced the standard Seagate 80gb 7200RPM IDE hard disk with a Crucial 64gb SATA SSD (running through a SATA to IDE adapter).  I needed to make a few tweaks to the kernel settings to optimize the SSD, but once done, it had some blazing performance.

Posted in Computers | Leave a comment

Flatout 3 STINKS

Posted on January 28, 2012 by SJ

Arcade racing titles are few and far between these days.  The days of the old Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 and Carmageddon have long since past.  A ray of sunshine existed for some time with the Flatout series.  In addition to your standard arcade formula was a fun mode that involved catapulting your driver out of the car into various targets.  The pinnacle of the Flatout series was Ultimate Carnage.  Great arcade style racing, smooth progression, hours upon hours of vehicular carnage and fun.  When I saw Flatout 3 on Steam, I bought it without question… whoops.

 

Where UC had a logical tree-style progression through the race and carnage modes, 3 gives you a ridiculous selection of half assed modes.  The entire game feels like a B side.  Plenty of detailed tracks, plenty of cars, but no balance whatsoever.  Every race is a practice in sheer frustration.  Vehicles either have control or speed, the AI is absurdly aggressive, some of the tracks are insanely huge, and just about every car you can get does a few percentage of damage to the AI cars while you’ll self destruct after tapping the smallest obstacle.

In short, the game feels rushed, sloppy, and incomplete… not even close to the $30 sticker price that makes me wish Steam had a return policy.  If you enjoy a good arcade racer, pick up Flatout Ultimate Carnage, and spare yourself the steaming pungent load of shit that is Flatout 3.

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Zen and The Art of Home Ownership

Posted on November 3, 2011 by SJ

We’ve been in the new house for a little over 2 months now and I’ve really taken to my new role as handyman.  In the past I’ve always fixed things in my various apartments if I could, but now it is all on me to keep the place running well.  Big or small, I’ve been having a blast fixing things.  When we first moved in, for some oddball reason the kitchen faucet was on BACKWARDS… the handle was facing the back of the sink.  Then we’ve got these pull out shelves in our under-counter cabinets where we store our dishes, cookware, etc…  They had a habit of falling off the tracks at the rear.  The braces are supposed to snap in tight so the rails stay attached, but they were moving around freely.  That’s where the cable ties came in, I used them to keep the rails from sliding away from each other and has worked well so far.  I’m going to get stronger brackets at some point.  Next up was the icemaker in the fridge.  We had one, but it wasn’t hooked up… another easy fix.  I just picked up the kit at Michaels in Middletown and hooked it up.  It took a bit of tweaking to get the duration that water flows into the ice maker correct, but it works perfect now.  Our kitchen pantry is a small closet under the stairs that lead to the second floor.  It had some massively deep shelves on it that could hold a lot, but made retrieving what we needed a real pain in the ass.  I knocked the shelves out altogether and relocated some utility shelving from the attic into the pantry.  Eventually I’m going to install sliding shelves in there.  The real kicker was that the last owner used telephone wire to connect the furnace to the thermostat in the living room, and routed it loosely through the pantry.  I’ve replaced the manual thermostat with a programmable unit, but still need to run a new line that I can neatly route out of the way.  Some of the outlets in the house are still 2 prongs, I’ve had to swap them out with 3 prongs, not a big deal.  After the hurricane tore through the area, I picked up a 6800 watt generator… coincidentally, as I drove home with the generator in tow the power (which had been out for 2 days) had come back on, so the thing sat in my garage for several weeks before the October storm hit.  Saturday afternoon, the power to my house went out in the middle of the storm, so I ran out to Lowes to get what I thought I needed.  There was already a 60 amp run from the house to the garage, but the problem was that the outlet was a 50 amp 3-prong, and the generator had a 30 amp 4 prong.  I accidentally picked up a 3 prong plug for the generator, as well as a heavy duty cord for the massive 3 prong outlet on the wall.  I wired a connection and managed to get everything on phase A in the house running.  Come Sunday when I finally had a chance to get out again to pick up the correct parts, Lowes was closed at 7pm, and Home Depot was completely sold out of the plugs and recepticals I needed.  Seriously – you’d think these places might consider staying open LATE when the surrounding area gets pimp smacked by mother nature.  First thing Monday I went to Werners in Florida and picked up the plugs, the 10 gauge wire, everything I needed – end result, the entire house had power.  The generator ran for a good 34 hours straight without a single problem, its 6 gallon tank would get me a good 10+ hours depending on the load.  When the power came back on Monday evening, I relocated the plug for our stove’s electronic ignition to its original outlet and immediately smelled gas.  Looking at the stove, the previous owner ran 3/8″ copper pipe directly from the tank in the back, around the side of the house, through the wall, and up to the stove.  The problem is that copper pipe doesn’t like to bend too much and it finally snapped.  I shut off the gas at the tank outside, and then crimped the pipe flat with a pair of channel lock pliers to seal the leak.  See – the building code says that you run the supply line to a shut off valve and then run flex pipe to the stove.  Again I headed out to my home away from home, lowes – picked up a flaring tool, a complete gas stove hookup kit, shutoff valve, flaring adapter, flaring nut, gas line pipe thread tape, and fixed it all up again.

At least now if the power goes out (like it did the other night for about an hour) I can have the house back online in under 5 minutes…  I still have a fairly long list of things to address – but so far I’m having fun with it. 🙂  One thing is certain, if I ever look to buy another house, I’ll have a list of things to check even before I bring in the home inspector, etc…

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Tower Defense Games for the iPad

Posted on September 27, 2011 by SJ

After doing many searches for this very topic via Google, and seeing numerous posts with the same 4 or 5 titles, I’ve decided to compile a list here for anyone browsing the Internet for a Tower Defense fix on their iPad.  I’m currently running an iPad 2 as my tablet of choice, and while I do manage to get a ton of work done on it, I also have an immense collection of games.  My favorite genre of course is Tower Defense.  A typical TD title involves enemies crossing a field, and the player must implement any number of defense structures to stop them.  It sounds simple, the concept is, but how that concept is put into action is what separates a good TD title from utter rubbish.

The following list is in alphabetical order, listing games that I have played through the single player campaigns until completion, and earned my miniscule contribution to the developers retirement plans.

  1. 3 Kingdoms TD – Legend of Shu. Straight forward TD with an Asian theme and guided maps.
  2. Anomaly HD.  A different take on the TD concept, in this game you are the attacker controlling a single wave of units as you attempt to push out an unknown invasion force from Iraq.  Units can be upgraded and rerouted on the fly.
  3. Castle Attack HD. More or less a “Plants Vs. Zombies” knockoff, where you must prevent various units from crossing the field of battle.
  4. Epic War TD / Pro.  Typical TD, tons of creeps, decent weapon selection, very challenging, guided maps.  Many of the titles I’ve played involve accessing new maps only after succeeding at a previous one.  This title has all maps unlocked to begin with.  My biggest complaint however is that after purchasing, you are forced to go to either an advertisement for the new content, or the new content itself.  I’d like one reminder, maybe a link on the main screen, but I don’t need to be reminded every time I load the game that you’ve got new crap.
  5. Fieldrunners. Fun game with mainly open maps.
  6. GDefense HD.  Typical tower defense, mainly open map, ants trying to reach your food.  Kill them at all costs.  Can be frustrating when certain bugs are able to go over structures that others must go around.
  7. GemCraft.  Guided maps, use various gems to power your towers and traps.  A little more complicated than I’d care to deal with, but fun.
  8. geoDefense.  Vector graphics stand out in this TD title, which can be excruciatingly difficult, and guided maps that are as confusing as they are fun.
  9. GunsNGlory.  This game could be better if it had a fast forward button.
  10. iBomber Defense. Guided maps and a world war 2 theme.
  11. Medieval HD. Two castles, one field, upgradable units and weaponry.  Fun until you have everything just about maxed out.
  12. LandGrabbers.  Not so much tower defense, but fun nonetheless.  Multiple enemies per map all competing for the same structures, whoever controls all the structures first wins.
  13. Lord Of The Rings Prologue. Besides familiar characters, nothing much to say here.  I didn’t care for it.
  14. Sentinel 3. Typical tower defense with guided maps.
  15. Starfall. Amazing TD with a combination of challenging open and guided maps.
  16. Swarm. Same setup as geoDefense, only with open maps.
  17. TanksNTurrets HD. Typical TD, guided maps and challenging gameplay until you figure out that all you need are rocket towers.
  18. Tower Defense HD.  Typical TD with open and guided maps.

I’m still waiting for TowerMadness to either have a free offer or come down in price, as I’m not paying $7.99 for any game I don’t care how popular it is.  I’ve played the iPhone version which is OK, but I generally prefer games that are already optimized for the iPad.

The following list are TD style games that I’ve either played, tried to play, but either way determined that they are complete rubbish.

  1. AutoRobot HD EX.  I generally try a free version of a game before paying for it.  In this case, loading the game resulted in a forced full screen video advertisement.  By forced I mean that it opens, gives you the option to exit it, and a few seconds after you reach the main menu you are forced to view it again.  Adding insult to injury, if you try to watch the whole ad just to play the game, you can’t escape the ‘Click here for more information’ screen.  I even tried starting the game before the ad, and you can hear it playing in the background behind the ad – but you have no way of actually getting to it.  Pointless rubbish.
  2. Kretures HD Lite.  Huge maps, weapons with vast range, but completely chaotic.  Needs more structure IMHO.
  3. TapDefenseHD. Guided maps, can’t recall why I disliked it, but I played it for about 5 minutes then deleted it.
  4. Three Kingdoms TD – Fate of Wei.  Updated game from the “3 Kingdoms” franchise.  Might be fun if it worked correctly.  One of the fun parts of the 3 Kingdoms games I found were ‘magic’ units that could only be seen by specific towers.  In the version on the top list, you start the game with wizards who can see these creeps and make them visible to all other towers.  In this version, you have 20 lives and none of the characters you start with on the first map can see the 20 creeps that are invisible.  Rubbish!

There are a few other games I’ve played and have enjoyed, but I’ll save those for a non Tower-Defense related post.

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GPS for Android

Posted on July 26, 2011 by SJ

I’m a big fan of GPS, even when I know where to go, I like to keep an eye on the statistics of my current trip.  My first experience was with a Garmin Nuvi, which still works fine – but mainly I use the Google Navigation on my Incredible.  Problem is, Google Navigation isn’t very smart.  The app doesn’t allow you to choose between the ‘shortest’ or the ‘fastest’ route to a location, instead it simply believes that the route it suggest is what is best for you.  Most times, that may not be a big deal, however in the case of my recent drive to North Carolina, it added nearly 2 hours to the drive.

Instead of keeping me on the highway for a majority of the trip, it sent me on back roads which shortened the overall drive by about 100 miles.  This would have been fine if the short cut wasn’t packed with 30mph zones and traffic lights.  Pretty much every other GPS and mapping application out there skipped the back roads and sent me on a more direct route.  100 more miles, nearly 2 hours less to drive.  That lead me to the Android Market to find a suitable replacement that provided more accurate routing.

Right now my top 2 are Waze and Sygic.

Waze is free, and community based.  So far its directions aren’t the best (a recent trip from North Jersey to my house skipped 3 other routes that I know for a fact are faster) – but it has a large user base and they constantly keep other users up to date on traffic, hazards, speed traps, etc… in the area.    The graphics are basic but effective, the navigation voice appears to be human (instead of the robot used by Google Nav), and the vehicle tracking is accurate.  That’s one thing I like about most GPS units, it shows you where your car is… something lacking in the next option, Sygic.

Sygic is a paid application, it runs $15.99 in Euros and has the bonus of being able to download updated maps directly to the SD storage on the phone.  Sygic attempts to bring a more traditional GPS interface to the Android phone, multiple map packages, voices, etc…  Its directions are accurate, and its short/fast options are also well implemented.  My biggest complaints are that Sygic will take the turn for you – and then auto-correct.  Meaning if it asks you take a left, and you continue straight, the mini-map will take the turn and for a few moments continue on before it corrects.  I’ve found other GPS options handle recalculating much quicker.  My other complaint is that the icon for your current location is a HUGE ORANGE ARROW that takes up a VERY large portion of the screen unless you’re driving very fast.  I want a small icon, that’s it.  Voice navigation is computerized, but also better than the Google Nav option.

I attempted to purchase Sygic the other day but had some trouble with the card processing…. going to give it another shot.  As much as I am enjoying Waze, I need a GPS app I can count on, and Sygic is it.

Posted in Android, Computers, Driving | Leave a comment

A question…

Posted on July 21, 2011 by SJ

Nagasaki, 1945 – After the atomic bomb…

Nagasaki, 2011 – After the earthquake and tsunami…

What the FUCK is that arch made of?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment