Thursday already?

September 2, 2004

Time to do some work on my website, methinks. It’s been far too long since I sat down and both did maintainance on my site as well as added new pictures. I really need to get on that. I tweaked a bit of my front page so that the link images aren’t loading off my own website and are instead being pulled from the advertising site which does nothing except decrease my website’s bandwidth (by a very small amount) and increase theirs (by the same amount mine decreased).

Anyone need a GMail invite? Gmail, for those not abreast of technology news or having been living under a rock for the last five months, is Google’s free web-based email service with a gigabyte of storage space. Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Lycos, etc, have all been playing catch-up since Google announced their product, and getting caught with offering only 2 MB or 4 MB of storage when a new competitor was offering a few hundred times that amount was a bit of a wake-up call for the web email industry. In any case, due to the limited signups, they offer “invitations” current subscribers who can give away invitations to whomever they choose. I have four invitations left from my current batch, and instead of offering them to some random strange on a website like Fark.com, I thought I’d offer them to someone on MY website. The first four people to send me an email asking for an invitation with your current email address and first and last name (if I don’t know them already) will get one to use. I have one, obviously, but it’s not my primary email address. I’m really only using it as a “throwaway” account where I can give out an email address if I think that there’s a good chance that I’ll get spam from that encounter.

As a matter of fact, I’ve given it out only once and I’m already getting loads of spam. Good thing Gmail has a killer spam filter. Not quite as good as the one I use on my primary account, but good nonetheless.

I was reading a couple of days ago how the Star Wars online roleplaying game that took over my life for a couple of months has finally changed the process in which to become a Jedi, and I came close to reinstalling the game to check it out. Then I remembered all the other problems I had with the game (besides having a previously annoying way to become a Jedi) and I thought better. If I do reinstall the game, it won’t be until after they redo the combat system in the game, which has been a long time coming and encompasses a lot of my complaints.

In the meantime, at least as far as gaming goes, I’m not doing much. I’ve toyed with a few games now and then, but nothing’s sucked me in in a long time. I’m waiting for Half-Life 2, but I’m not sure when that will be released. I downloaded a “trial” version of a game called City of Heroes that I’ve heard good things about, but I haven’t bothered installing it yet. Same general formula as the Star Wars game (that is, online role-playing game), but you play a superhero that you create in a Metropolis/Gotham City-esque urban setting. Not a bad idea, actually. The other game I’m looking forward to trying out is a stress test of the onloine role-playing game World of Warcraft. I’ve previously poo-pooed the game, but I hear excellent things about it from the beat testers, and let’s face it, the company who makes it (Blizzard) also made Diablo II, which drives me into a gaming frenzy about once or twice a year for a period of a few weeks. They make good games. The stress test means the game is done and they just need to see how many people can play at once and find out how well their software deals with a lot of people at once. It starts today, so when I get home from work I’m going to download it and give it a shot. I have this fairly powerful computer at home, and at the moment it’s pretty much serving no other purpose than to crunch packets for Stanford’s Folding@Home protein folding program. Previously my computer’s spare CPU cycles (when it’s sitting idle and not doing anything) were dedicated to crunching numbers for the distributed.net project that involved tryign to break commercial-grade encryption, but I switched when their project I’d been working on for a good three years came to a conclusion. Both projects are similar to the SETI@Home project, which is probably the best-known of the distributed computing projects.

As a side note to that story, during college Dan and I (or should I say just to bug my nameless grammar Nazi, DAN AND ME) had a competition to see who could crunch more data in any given day. If I remember correctly, I managed to submit more blocks every day but he had a longer time involved in the project. Well, assuming he didn’t use his Mac, that is. That thing crunched numbers like there was no tomorrow. When he used his Mac to work on the project, he would beat me hands down every day, even though I’d submitted more overall blocks during my course working on the project. Anyway, to make up for his computer wiping the floor with my computer, I started installing the software on computers that didn’t belong to me–mostly lab computers at school when I worked in the ITS department. One time I installed it on a non-lab computer in one of the offices, but I felt guilty about that since I couldn’t monitor the software. Anyhow, one time I checked the computers I’d installed the software on and found that Dan had switched out my email address for his, essentially making the computers I’d installed the software on submitting blocks to be tallied for him and not me. I quietly changed them back and then checked on them every couple of weeks. Right before I left college IO made sure they were still submitting blocks in my name and not his, and I let it be.

I had assumed he’d changed them at some point thinking I’d never notice the change, and I was torn inside. On one hand, I wanted to rub his face in it that I’d discovered his little deception, but on the other hand I wanted to hide the fact I’d undone his little prank so that he wouldn’t try it again. The better part of me prevailed, and I kept quiet. Until now. So without any trace of modesty and maturity I say to Dan:

HA HA! You thought you could trick me but it didn’t work!

Now that I have that out of my system, I feel much better. Instead of Dan, my current adversary is my Dad. He’s been doing the project for slightly longer than I have and has consistently used faster computers, so therefore he’s submitted about 25% more work units than I have for the Folding@Home project. I’m slowly catching up to him, I think, but I’d have to see a six-month history of our scores to find out if I’m gaining on him. Interestingly enough, he has submitted more work units than I have, but I have a better score and a higher rank. I guess that means I’ve done harder work units than he has, but who knows? Hopefully by installing the client on my work computer I’ll make up some of the difference, but really, this thing is a piece of crap. But that still doesn’t solve my problem of my computer mostly sitting idle (not its CPU, at least). Let’s hope that something in the gaming world catches my attention soon.

Three day weekend this week. I’ll probably get off work early on Friday, too. I hope I can find something to do this weekend. I also found out that I have about two days of paid vacation that I can use for either calling in sick or taking time off. Two days may not sound like much to you, but for me, that’s a boon. I may wait until I have three or four days and take a week off, assuming I can find something to do. They expire at the end of the year, so I have to use them by then.

Anyhow, that’s my life up to the moment. Mostly. Ciao.

Posted in Geekery, General