Month: September 2008

09/12/2008

I managed to get a Super Nintendo emulator running on my hacked Xbox, which means I can play all of those cheesy arcade games I played at Dirk’s house when I was fourteen or whatever. I still remember when Tetris was the newest craze, when Super Mario World seemed unbeatable, and when Zelda’s quest was the coolest thing. I even remember Super Bomberman and Starfox from– I’m a little ashamed to admit– my college days.

But my favorite was Gradius, and now I’ve got it on my bigscreen in all its glory. Too bad I can’t beat the first level– clearly my skills have become rusty over the past twenty years.

Ahh, good times. Now my kids can see these games and tell me how much the graphics suck compared to today’s games.

09/12/2008

Every Friday evening we have Pizza and Movie Night, where we make homemade pizza and watch a movie that’s appropriate for the fam. Tonight we thoroughly enjoyed the Rifftrax version of Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. Rifftrax is the brainchild of Mike Nelson, famous for creating the 90’s TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. Basically it’s an audio track that you play while you watch a movie on DVD, and it’s Mike and a couple of his buddies cracking jokes throughout the movie.

What an absolute riot. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in a long time. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, and the kids were howling. Next time I think we’re going to take a look at the Rifftrax treatment of Lord of the Rings, which should be a real hoot as we laugh at The Dark Lord Sauron.

09/12/2008

Wow, it’s so wonderful having an account rep over at Dell.

Okay, not really. I’ve been ordering servers from them for about six years, and have spent tens of thousands of dollars. I’ve been assigned to three or four different reps over that time, as people come and go from the company. And every time I need to order a new server I call whoever my latest rep is, and ask if there’s any kind of deal they can offer me.

Keep in mind that I can go to the Dell web site and order a server any time, but I go through my account rep because I hope (foolishly, as it turns out) that they can beat the price offered to the unwashed heathen of the general public. But every time, I get the same line: something about “Well, gosh, Mr. Schroeder, those servers are priced so competitively that I can’t possibly beat the price! We’re actually losing money on them!”

Yes, that’s right– I’ve heard that last line more times than I can count. Dell is losing money on the servers they sell. For years. It’s amazing they’re still in business, since apparently their business model includes selling things for less than their cost. I’m no financial wizard, but that just seems like a dead-end route.

So anyway, I’m going to pick up one of their new Inspiron Mini laptops, which are spiffy little machines you can tuck in your back pocket. Okay, admittedly your back pocket would have to be unusually large, but it’s still about a fourth the size of my current Inspiron 8600 beast.

Because I was feeling particularly optimistic today, I called my newest rep, whose name is Ryan (no kidding) Krszjzaniek. And I was underwhelmed once again when he told me that he really can’t beat the price on the web site. “Those are brand new items,” he told me. “The pricing is very aggressive right now.”

Sigh.

So I find myself wondering what the heck those account reps really do. He must get some kind of commission on his sales to me, because he’s constantly sending me e-mail offers that include incredible deals like “buy three laptops, get one free!”. Whee. And every time I talk to him and find out he can’t help me at all, he’s asking whether there are any “upcoming projects” that might require me to call him and buy still more stuff at non-discounted prices. At least he doesn’t call me every other week like one of my old reps (despite repeatedly telling the guy that thanks, but I’ll call you when I need something).

Hopefully this little laptop will be as cool as it seems… should be fun.

09/09/2008

So tomorrow the smart guys over at CERN are going to fire up the Large Hadron Collider, which is the biggest particle accelerator ever built. There are some really cool experiments they can run with the kind of beam energy it produces, but there’s a huge hubbub right now because tomorrow morning (September 10) they’re going to “turn it on”. And some people think it’s going to create a black hole that will destroy the planet.

Of course, these are people who not only don’t know the facts, but aren’t terribly well-versed in science. The facts include such tidbits as:

  • The LHC has already been “turned on” and in fact has been undergoing testing for a few months now.
  • Tomorrow’s run will be at around 7% of its full operational level.
  • The Tevatron at Fermilab has been running at energies far higher than that for years, with no observed planet-destroying black hole activity.

    • And the science:

  • Even if a black hole was produced (an occurrence whose likelihood makes the lottery look like a good bet) it would be so small it would almost instantly evaporate in a burst of Hawking radiation.
  • Even if it didn’t evaporate– which would require Stephen Hawking, the smartest man alive, to be wrong– it would be so miniscule that its event horizon wouldn’t be more than an atom’s width.
  • And with an event horizon like that, it most certainly wouldn’t be able to destroy the planet.

    • But hey, sensationalism is much more fun, so there are people making death threats against the scientists, and of course a flurry of lawsuits intended to shut down the whole experiment. It’s laughable, really, but I suppose it underscores the fact that in general people are pretty ignorant of science. Or at least high-energy particle physics.

    Had I been planning ahead, I would’ve arranged an End of the World party last weekend or something. That would’ve been fun.

    In the meantime, someone thoughtfully created a web site that will tell us the current status of the LHC’s planet-busting mission. It’s hosted at www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com and currently says

    So if the earth is indeed destroyed, remember to check the web site to confirm it.

09/07/2008

My friends the Wyziks celebrated the first birthday of their son Simon today, so I sent them a little note along these lines:

I don’t know if this happened to Simon, but it happened to EVERY ONE of my kids: on their first birthday we’d give them a cupcake or Rice Krispie Treat or whatever with a candle on it, and they’d be fascinated by the candle. So, naturally, being one year old and having the brainpower of cabbage, they’d reach out to touch the magical flickering light.

The results were pretty predictable, and of course we’d all laugh. I’m sure we’re going to Parent Hell for it, but I figure it teaches the little tykes a good lesson.

So if Simon didn’t get to experience his own journey of discovery about fire, I recommend it. Do it now before it’s too late and he’s a 14-year-old pyromaniac lighting M-60’s in your back yard.

Ahh, good times. The sequence below is Zack, circa 2002.

09/04/2008

So last night I was driving down I-25 and there was an amazing sunset over the mountains. Gorgeous.

Since I have this spiffy new e-mail capability, I thought how cool it would be to send a quick message from my cell phone to my blog. So I flipped open the phone and started texting.

driving down i25. beautiful.

It took me about three miles to get that in, because of course I’m flying down the road at 80mph and have to keep at least half an eye on my driving. Then I had to enter the e-mail address for the message, and wow is it tricky to do that when you don’t know how to create an at-sign on a teensy phone keypad.

In the end I decided that mentioning the beautiful sunset could probably wait until a time when I wasn’t careening along at 80mph.

09/02/2008

More updates to the ol’ blog software… I fixed the RSS feed (which has been broken for years) and updated a bunch of programming and URLs so things are more organized and have nicer links.

One of these days I’m going to redesign it and (drumroll please) add commenting capabilities, which all three of my fans have requested.