Garfield Minus Garfield

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Welcome to
"Garfield Minus Garfield".

From the page:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

Office Mafia

So we’ve been having a really fun time at work playing a bastardized version of the game “Mafia”, also known as “Werewolf” or other things.

The basics of the game are as follows. A group of players (hopefully around 7-10) sits in a room, and each player draws slips of paper from a hat that describes their roles in the game.

The roles are:
Mafia – there are two mafia members. They are basically one team vs. everyone else.
Investigator – there is one of these.
Businessmen – basically everyone else.

There is also someone else outside the game who runs the whole thing (call him the Moderator)

Once the roles are chosen, the Moderator has everyone close their eyes. He then instructs the two Mafia members to open their eyes and see who the other is.

There are two stages of the game, called Night and Day. At Night, everyone closes their eyes, and the Mafia members are allowed to open their eyes and decide who they want to kill. They then close their eyes. Following that, the Investigator is allowed to open his eyes, and can silently ask the Moderator about a single other player. The Moderator will give a thumbs up or thumbs down indicating if the chosen player is in the Mafia or not. Then everyone opens their eyes, and the Day phase has begun. The person who was assassinated by the Mafia during the night is revealed, and is henceforth out of the game.

The Day phase is simple: someone must be arrested for the crime that was committed. As soon as the majority of the people vote on someone to throw in jail, the Day phase ends and that player is removed from the game as well.

So, in case it’s not obvious: The Mafia members are trying to prove their innocence, possibly by casting suspicion on other players. The Investigator may very well know who one of the Mafia members is, and is trying to get everyone to vote that person out (or, conversely, if he knows someone is innocent, NOT have the person voted out). The Investigator has to be careful, however, because if they reveal they are the Investigator, they will make themselves a prime target for the Mafia the following night. The other players are simply trying to vote out Mafia members and not innocent bystanders.

Days and nights are repeated until both Mafia members are thrown in jail, or everyone else is killed off.

We’ve modified the game to be played over email (and in person), and are using a “Hacker” theme instead of “Mafia”. The email changes the game a lot, since the Hackers can openly discuss their plans and strategies, instead of just silent winks and nods.

A fun little thing that happened in this game is that one of my workboys (who works on a very different level than the rest of us) sent out a pretty cryptic email that seemed to indicate that he was a hacker. I couldn’t think of any real reason why a non-hacker would want to draw attention to himself, but I COULD think of reasons why a hacker might want to openly say he was a hacker (standard reverse-psychology, as well as bragging rights if he ended up winning (“I TOLD you I was a hacker!”)). I pressed him on it further, and was able to get him to explain that he had his message was so subtle that the other non-hackers would understand, but the hackers, because of their mindset, would be biased to NOT get it. As I said, this guy works on a different level, but I am pretty convinced that he is a Developer (ie normal player).

So, I approached him privately, and we had a talk. I said that I was looking for someone to team up with and share information with, and I thought that the Hackers had a big advantage because they could work together, and the only way for the Developers to win was if we formed an alliances. He agreed, and said that was why he sent out his email. I told him that I believed him and would trust him. I said that there was no way for me to prove that I was a Developer as well, but I just wanted him to know that I believed his story.

Of course, being a Hacker, I KNOW that he’s a Developer! :)

So I “revealed” to him that I was a fellow Developer and said I was willing to work together. The fact that I trusted that HE was a Developer I guess was enough for him to return the favor and trust me. In fact, in the middle of our conversation, I left for the restroom. By the time I got back, he said “You know, I think we can logically PROVE that we’re both Developers”. Of course, I was all ears. The proof didn’t exactly pan out, but regardless, I think we’re good.

Of course, I’ve been in contact with the other Hacker about all this. In fact, we MIGHT try to have the other Hacker “reveal” himself to this guy as the Investigator. And the way he could reveal himself is by saying that he investigated ME, and found that I was a Developer (which would reinforce my story). Not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but it’s on the table.

Unfortunately, one of the players is out until Monday (which adds its own twist to the game), so the first actual vote won’t take place until then. That’s left a lot of time for public and private chatter, which has been awesome.

It’s all very Survivor-esque, and it’s been a ton of fun. I’d really like to try it in person some time. Maybe the next game night that has enough people.

Cute

Blu-Ray, PS3, Rock Band

As a recent HDTV owner, and even more recent PS3 (and thus, Blu-Ray owner), I’ve been following the HDDVD vs Blu-Ray format wars perhaps a little more closely than your average joe. I’ve hated seeing competing formats, because I think it’s paralyzed a lot of people for fear of making the wrong decision. From a consumer point of view, a single format should give you confidence that you’re not wasting your money. The beginning of the end was when Warner Home Video (who makes up a significant portion of the pie) jumped from HDDVD to exclusively Blu-ray. This turned a pretty much 50-50 split into mor e like 70-30. They announced this at CES, and shortly thereafter, a big HDDVD press conference was abruptly cancelled. They must have been really shaken by the news.




Within the following weeks, Blockbuster, Netflix, Circuit City, Amazon, and WalMart all announced that they’d offer Blu-ray exlusively, or at least push Blu as the right choice. It didn’t take long for HDDVD to crumble, and within the past week Toshiba finally shut it down altogether. With HDDVD pronounced dead, Universal and Paramount (the remaining big players on the HDDVD side) were released from their contract, and within a few days announced that they were going Blu as well.

I read an interesting (if not conspiratorial) article talking about Microsoft’s angle in this whole thing. Microsoft not only makes the Xbox (which doesn’t come with but supports an add-on HDDVD drive), and I think is also involved with the technology behind the HDDVD software. If HDDVD “wins”, everyone would basically have little Microsoft computers in their living rooms. One report was that Microsoft was “writing $150 million checks” to various entities to keep the format alive.

Today, there is an article that speculates that Sony paid Warner up to $400 million to jump ship (and start the landslide). That’s a lot of coin. Lots of people are comparing this format war to the old VHS vs. Betamax war that our parents fought in. Betamax was the Sony-backed technology, so they may or may not still be smarting a little.

So, with any luck, consumers will all go out and buy Blu-ray players. Studios will start pumping out Blu-ray titles (Lord of the Rings, please?), and we will all watch our movies in glorious high definition (DVD is 720x480 pixels. Blu-ray is up to 1920x1080 pixels. More pixels means much more detail and clarity. To say nothing of the better sound that will accompany it).

Speaking of PS3s, I conquered my Rock Band drum career on Hard difficulty last night. Actually, I only had a few stumbling points (“Don’t Fear the Reaper” (one of my favorite songs) and “Run to the Hills”, notably). RttH required some time spent in Practice Mode, playing the song on a slower speed, and I still never really got the timing down, but was able to fake my way through it. Now, onwards to Expert difficulty!

Part of what allowed me to beat Hard difficulty was I was able to get in some playtime after the ladies went to bed. And part of what allowed me to play when others were sleeping was my little arts and crafts project. The Rock Band drumkit is really nice, but the sticks make a healthy THWACK when you hit a pad. A solution posted to the various interwebs is to take some stick-back craft foam (found in the kids sections of crafts stores), and put that on your drum pads. Then, on top of that, add a layer of felt. So, that’s what I did. I cut the circles of felt and foam at different radii, which I think makes it look pretty sharp. Cuts down on the noise a lot as well, which means I can play without waking anyone up. Good times. I also got a nice metal support and some Gorilla tape (strongest tape there is!) and reinforced the kick trigger, since I could already feeling it warp a little while playing. It was only a matter of time when that bad boy snapped (which has happened to many other players).

The State of Adman

Hello everyone!

At the beginning of this year, my company announced, much to our happy surprise, that they were increasing the number of half days. Typically, the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve would be half days. With the change, we basically get a half-day before every holiday (I think it was six new half-days), including this previous Friday! Given the free afternoon, and that Diana was going to be hanging out with my mom and her mom, it seemed like a perfect time to get away and play a little golf. Thankfully, Iwan and Little Buhr thought that was a good idea as well, so we hit up Lomas for pretty much the best day of golf ever.

Iwan was in charge of the scoring. Since we were playing multiple types of games at once, this was no small feat. We played normal stroke play (with Iwan giving me and Little Buhr strokes), as well as match play. We also played “Bingo, Bango, Bongo”, where you get a point for being first on the green, closest to the pin, and longest putt. We also played “Wolf”, which is too complicated to explain here. Most important to me, however, was straight up stroke play against Little Buhr.

Little Buhr and I have recently found ourselves in somewhat of a Tournament of Champions. On a recent Mammoth trip, we played many games of 9-ball. Over New Years, we played at least a dozen games of ping pong. We recently went bowling. In each of those events, he absolutely creamed me, and I loved it. We even did a Rock Band drum battle (him on Easy and me on Expert), and he beat me there, too! I’m used to being pretty competitive in games like these. At least, I’m certainly NOT accustomed to getting crushed over and over again. So I’ve kind of entered into my own personal challenge against Little Buhr, just for fun. He is now my nemisis (which, I should say, I mean as a compliment).

We talked about this previously, and he said we should hit the golf course and that I’d probably beat him there. And so we did.

We had a ton of fun golfing on Friday. I was putting my shoes off, hitting multiple 15 footers, as well as probably the longest putt of my life, all the way across a huge green. I think I had 3 birdies. When it came to the 18th hole, I did some quick addition and saw that I was winning by two strokes. However, I finished the last hole with a 5, and Little Buhr was putting for 3, and he made it. After he made the putt, I said that I thought we’d tied, but when Iwan added up the scores, I’d actually won by a single stroke. So, a point for me in a long string of losses. I know he likes tennis, so maybe that will be our next challenge. Oh, and we also talked about kicking field goals. I think we need to arrange a field-goal kicking contest, too.

Saturday, we visited my parents who were in town for the weekend, and it was nice to see them. Allison is in a stage where she’s a little leery of anyone besides me and Diana, but she did ok. I met up with Baditude and others for some gaming later that night (Shadows over Camelot and Bohnanza). Both games require a lot of communication between players, which rubs me a little bit the wrong way. I don’t like trying to convince someone what the best move is. I don’t like other people telling me what to do, and why it’s in my best interested to do that. I don’t like seeing people make moves that are “obviously” (heavily arguable) a bad move. So many “I don’t like” statements makes it sound a little stronger than I feel, but I think I prefer games where each player makes his own decisions. A little table-talk is good, but not too much.

The gaming went late into the night, when I got a call from Diana. Little Allison was not sleeping very well, and Diana needed a break. I came home and helped out for the rest of the night while Diana slept, and Diana took over in the morning and let me sleep late. That worked out pretty well.

In spite of some sleeping issues, Allie has been doing absolutely great. She has two new tricks: spitting and sitting. She’s discovered that, like a trumpet player without a trumpet, you can make a pretty cool sound if you purse your lips together tightly and blow air out. There was one night when she was lying in her crib, happy as a clam, spitting all over the place. I took a video of it, just to get the sound.

Her other cool move is sitting up by herself. In the course of a week, she’s gone from not being able to sit up at all (no balancing, just toppling over) to staying up by herself really well. And even if she does fall over, you can tell that she’s trying NOT to fall over by throwing her weight in the proper direction. It’s pretty cool, and fun to see her sitting up like a big girl.

Sunday was a quiet day, mostly recovering from the night before. Diana and I have been watching “Band of Brothers” again, which we’re really enjoying. Monday was a day off from work, and we walked around Encinitas and had a nice family day. We also watched the latest Jason Bourne movie (Bourne Ultimatum?), which I thought was good-not-great. What’s funny is that walking around Encinitas, we went into a bookstore and Diana saw the Bourne Ultimatum The Book. She read the back cover synopsis, and it sounded TOTALLY different than the plot of the movie. The book sounded like David Webb was living a quiet life until some bad thing happened, and he had to “reprise” his role of Jason Bourne one last time. Uh, what? Anyhoo, that was crazy.

Work has been going well. Our mandate of 50 hours a week has been cut to 45 hours a week, so that’s pretty cool. My Rock Band careers are continuing along (Guitar on Expert and Drums on Hard). I’m replaying Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and loving it all over again. I still simply can’t believe how much content is packed into that game.

So, there you go. Did I forget anything?

It’s weird when universes collide.

As you all know by now, Rock Band came out recently. What followed shortly afterwards was a slew of grumpy neighbors and angry wives and girlfriends, tired of hearing the repetitive clack-clack-clack of the drums. I woke Diana up once, so I, like many other players, have been looking for a way to dampen the sound of the drums.

One of the more popular suggestions is using gum rubber, and cutting it into a circle and using glue or tape to stick it to your pad. Apparently this dampens the sound quite a bit, but also provides a good rebound effect (which apparently is important for good drummers… I’m not there yet). Demand for gum rubber is skyrocketing. Unfortunately, you can’t just go to the local supermarket and buy a sheet of gum rubber. It’s typically only sold at industrial rubber supply companies. So all of a sudden, you’ve got a glut of gamers all of a sudden talking about 40 durometer gum rubber and neoprene.

One enterprising rubber company in San Bernardino actually created a website purely as a result in the demand for gum rubber pads.

It cracks me up that quite suddenly, two completely disparate demographics (video game players and industrial rubber suppliers) are finding themselves in bed together. Who’d have ever guessed?

In more important news, life is going well. Allison is growing every day, and getting more and more control of her body. I’m pretty sure that her eyes are changing color. They’ve been a deep blue for the first months, but now are definitely changing to a steely sea blue/green. I think they’re going to turn green like her moms. I hope so. I’d much prefer that to my boring old brown. Her other big thing is standing up. She’ll tolerate lying on her back for a while if the mood strikes her. Tummy time is still going strong. Sitting (who doesn’t enjoy a good sit?) is apparently for suckers. Standing, though, is the coolest. She’ll arch her back and do whatever she can to get upright. It’s pretty funny. She’s just a little squirmy lump, but I absolutely adore her. She gives me a big smile when I come home from work, which is the best ever.

We went to the Wild Animal Park this Saturday, which was a nice morning out. Saturday night was “Rock Band and Ping Pong” night at Baditude’s, which was a ton of fun. I even managed to beat Little Buhr once at Ping Pong. I brought over my Rock Band drums and did some dueling drums, which was awesome. Sunday morning, I woke up with a migraine blind spot and Diana woke up with mastitis (funny how the word “tit” is in mastitis). Thank goodness for good medicine, though, as we’re both feeling a lot better. We headed over to Baditude’s for the first half the Super Bowl, and watched the send half at home. I don’t have any allegiance to the Giants, but I’m still sorely bitter over our loss to New England LAST year, so I was truly happy to see them lose. I was also happy for Mick, a lifelong Giants fan. Good times.

Today is Super Tuesday. I’m not very political, but I have found myself very moved every time I’ve heard Obama speak, so he’s won my vote. And I never get inspired by politicians. He actually won my vote at the 2004 DNC, before he even decided to run for President, and nothing I’ve seen has made me sway that opinion. I see him as young and fresh and able to unite the country. He may be inexperienced, but that’s not always a bad thing. And really, could he be any worse than our current situation?

I just had my annual review at work. Very vanilla, which is a good thing. I got high marks for working extended overtime these past weeks, and satisfactory on everything else. Then we talked about parenting for the rest of the time. Good times.

A Brief Rant...

Ok, I’ve had enough of this.

A huge part of my job is looking for things. Searching code for a particular bug. Searching data files for some little bit of information. Whatever.

Some ass-hats at Microsoft decided that the “Find” function in Notepad and Internet Explorer should be DIRECTIONAL.

So you get the following bullshit:



This is WRONG! This is BAD! This is NO!

Yes, there are workarounds: Jump to the top of the file and search down. Use Notepad2 and Firefox, which is what I do whenever possible. That’s not the point.

50 million Adam Points if someone can provide a rational explanation.