Andrews Blog

OMG Cool trailer! - July 4, 2008

2008-07-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

A trailer for The Day the Earth Stood Still just came to my attention. It looks appropriately cool, even if Keanu Reeves is in it.

Recent Gaming Discoveries - March 2. 2008

2008-03-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

Hiya all.

Well, recently I've got back into pira...buying games. Yup, I shelled out money for games. I feel like I sold out, but in the end it was worth it. Anyways, I'm gonna outline my "reviews" of the games.

First off, The Orange Box....

What can I say about Orange Box. Hrrm...OMFGZOMGZORSWTFBBQ! This game is awesome. Completely and totally awesome. I used to love me some TFC and TF2 is the perfect sequel. Dear lord it was worth every dime. Oh yeah, portal was cool too. I still haven't played HL2. To hell with it.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Also worth the money. I suggest buying it retail and not from steam...big download made me sad. Took forever. Though you do have steam's autoupdater. Single player was fun, but too short. No replay there either. Where this game shines is its multiplayer. While the matchmaking system BLOWS, the gameplay rocks. Making kits is really great (P90 and Deagle with Frag x 3, Double Tap, and Steady aim FTW!), UAV/airstrike/helicopter are great/lame as hell depending on what end your on, and hardcore mode makes the game immensely more fun. If you love FPS multiplayer, this one and TF2 are the ones to have!

World in Conflict:
Blah. Got talked into buying an RTS. Played for a bit and decided to hell with it. Wish I had saved my $50.

Gary's Mod:
Oh...hell...yeah. With my finally legal copy of HL2, I could purchase Gary's Mod from steam. For $10, I've had HOURS of fun. Seriously, I love sandbox game play, and multiplayer could be good if I could manage to find a server. Go out and get some mods: Wire, life support, spacebuild, etc. and just have a fucking blast.

Bioshock:
Meh. Everyone was ZOMG BIOFREAKINGSHOCK IS AWESOME! THIS IS AWESOME! I respond with a Meh. I tried to like it, I really did. Plasmids were cool for a while, the setting was neat...but I just couldn't get into it. I dunno what it was about it, but I can't enjoy it.

Unreal Tournament 3:
OMFG! Hells yes! I've loved Unreal since forever, and UT3 cements it. Throw those graphics up to 1900x1220. Hell yes. So hot..want to touch the hiney. Gameplay is sweet, the story rocks, multiplayer rocks, everything rocks. ROCK ON!

Crysis:
Bleh. TOO OVER HYPED. Multiplayer blows, too many cheaters. Sure, the gizmos made it fun for a while (its fun using super strength to kill unwitting enemies) but it didn't last for me. Not to mention that it made MY system stutter, and I have 4gb ram, a quad core, and an 8800GTS 640mb SLI. Yup, made it stutter.

Test Drive Unlimited:
Cool concept, bad execution. I have still not managed to get online with the S.O.B. At least it gives me a fun game to use my G25 wheel for. [Editors note: Please be advised I haven't tried real hard to get this to work. I messed with it, got pissed, played single player for a while and got real far and found out I would have to start over to play online. Bad juju!]

Guitar Hero III:
Yup, I bought GHIII for the PC. I don't have a console that plays it (well..I don't want mono sound on my Wii...freaking Activision). Besides, let me see your PS3 of Xbox360 output 1920x1200. Yeah, that's what I though! I love this game. I'm no power player, it's strictly medium/hard for me (expert is IMPOSSIBLE!). The one thing I want is FREAKING DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT. I would pay for some of the songs that have been released for the consoles. Get off your asses and give me more tracks! oh yeah, and on co-op..always stick the younger sibling on the keyboard and take the guitar so you can SCHOOL THEM! Muwahahhahaha.

Anyways, that's all for now. Oh yeah, and I am now cloning my blog to myspace. Go me!

Conga rats, you made it to the end. Now you get to find out how to game with me!
On xfire I am andrewthetechie (big surprise huh?)
my steam page is http://www.steamcommunity.com/id/andrewthetechie

Managing Cisco via Serial from a Mac - Feburary 5, 2008

2008-02-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

This post is being written from class...SHH!

I'm in my cisco networking class, and we're working on our 2600 series routers. After getting frustrated with having to drag out hold laptops and desktops to do serial, I decided to hook my Mac up with a USB to serial adapter.

Here's how I did it and what advice I have:
1. Purchased a generic USB to serial with a Prolific 2303 chipset. Most usb-to-serial adapters have this.
2. Googled A BUNCH! (you'll be able to skip this step if you're reading this)
3. Installed the opensources PL2303 drivers for OS X from here.
4. Reboot. Don't bother with trying to kextload, while it says it works it doesn't seem to.
5. Plug in USB to Serial adapter.
6. In terminal type ls -l /dev/tty.* Look for the one that has PL2303 in it. If it's there, you're golden!
7. Download ZTerm. Here's your terminal emulator
-OR-
8. Use screen. type this in terminal: screen /dev/tty.PL2303-(your device ID here) 9600 You get your device ID from your ls -l /dev/tty.* 9600 is the baud rate.

Congrats, you now have hyperterminal to log into your routers via a serial interface! Woohoo!

Cool day - January 3,2008

2008-01-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

Today has been a good day.

What are we worth? - December 23, 2007

2007-12-23T16:13:00.000-08:00

I was watching MASH the other day, I know, older then I am..but still so very poignant. I tend to pay a lot of attention to what Alan Alda's character Hawkeye has to say.

In the 14th episode of season one, so aptly titled "Love Story", Hawkeye is talking to Colonel Blake and says this: "Without love, what are we worth? 89 cents. 89 cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely." Blake's response is comedic at best, but that line caught me. How true is that? Without love, we're nothing.

Glad I'm in love now.

Eve Online - December 6, 2007

2007-12-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

Eve Online posted a major patch today, Trinity. It looks beautiful. CCP of course arsed it p. Someone at CCP decided to name an important Eve file boot.ini. Hrrm, eerily familiar to a windows system file, no?

Well, the patcher deleted boot.ini from / instead of ./ and all kinds of pooch screwing occured. Most of the affected (yours truly included) managed to fix it easily.

Just goes to show good QA is needed everywhere.

Interesting Lyrics- December 1, 2007

2007-12-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Well, party shuffle on iTunes strikes again. My 300gbs of music (All LEGALLY ACQUIRED!) are full of stuff I've never heard, and this time I came across something worth sharing.

Omega by Stone Sour. Quite interesting lyrics.

What a skeletal wreck of man this is
Translucent flesh and feeble bones
The kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic tones
Running rampant with free thought to free form, in the free in the clear
And the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a laundry mat to sift and focus
On the bigger...better...now...

We all have a little sin that needs venting
Virtues for the renting and laws and systems and stems that riff from the branches of office
Do you know what your post entails?
Do you serve a purpose? or purposely serve?

Wind down inside atavistic galore
The value of a summer spent and a winter earned

For the rest of us there is always Sunday
The day of the week that reeks of rest but all we do is catch our breaths
So we can wade naked into the bloody pool
And place our hand on the big black book
To watch the knives zig zag between our aching fingers

A vacation is a countdown
T-minus your life and counting
Time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube and hope you get a taste

What the fuck is all this for?
What the hells going on?
Shut up!

I could go on and on, but lets move on...shall we?

Say, you're me and I'm you and they all watch the things we do
And like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs
Haven't felt like this in years
The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse
Let me go and plunge me into the dead spot again

Thats where you go when theres no one else around
Its just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there?

Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with there thumb on the pulse and a finger on the trigger

Classified my ass, thats a fucking secret and you know it
Government is another way to say...better...than...you...

Its like ice but no pick, a murder charge that wont stick
Its like a whole other world where you can smell the food but you cant touch the silverware...what luck
Fascism you can vote for...isn't that sweet

And were all gonna die some day, cause thats the American way
And Ive drunk to much and said to little
When your gaffer taped in the middle, say a prayer, say a phrase, get yourself together and...

See whats happening

Shut up
Fuck you, fuck you

I'm sorry I could go on and on
But its time to move on...so...

Remember..
You're a wreck
An accident, forget the freak you're just nature
Keep the gun oiled and the temple clean, shit snort and blaspheme
Let the heads cool and the engine run
Because in then end everything we do...
Is just everything we've done

I'm sick - October 19, 2007

2007-10-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm sick. Again.

It is the little monsters, I mean wonderful students I work with. They are all living in close conditions, they get sick..we all get sick. I think the only staff members that aren't sick are those that aren't here!

Today sucked - 10/6/07

2007-10-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, big gap between posts. So shoot me.

I found a fun thing on the interwebs today and added to my Flickr photostream. Go look at it. NOW!

Today sucked - September 23, 2007

2007-09-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Just for the record, today was crappy. I let people down, ended up feeling like crap..and now I can't sleep. Andrew FTW!

Today's Stuff - August 27, 2007

2007-08-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

Well, you know its bad when you find a $17 check and it makes you happy. Almost doubled the money in my bank account. GO me!

I am so tired today...so very tired.

This year's crop - August 20, 2007

2007-08-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Another post today, the more useful one I promised.

As you know, I am the Director of IT at SVA. Nerd Leader so to speak, a phrase coined by me for my former boss when I was but a wee little nerdling. This year, I have 4 new nerdlings (and Matt) to take under wing and teach.

There are photos up on Flickr in the office stream. Go take a look and leave some love in the comments for my new nerds.

Women - August 20, 2007

2007-08-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

Women..I just can't understand them. What the hell is up with "Oh, there is nothing wrong" when there most definitely is something wrong. BE FREAKING HONEST WITH ME!

This is directed at someone in particular who doesn't even look at my blog. Just decided to vent it anyways. There will be a more useful post later.

One more cool tidbit - August 17, 2007

2007-08-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

When it rains..it pours. Two posts in one day, who would ever think I was capable of that.

Anyone with a smart phone or a phone with a web browser should go hit up http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/08/introduction-to-joey-video/

Basically Mozilla (same folks that make the best browser and best email client in the world) came up with a cool way to send mobile content to your phone. Joey is a service, that combined with a little mobile app and a firefox extension, allows you to take any website and/or the media from a website (think youtube videos) and convert them to run nicely on your phone, all using their servers for free.

I've got it running on my AT&T 8525 and Firefox on my Windows Box at work and my Powerbook. I love it. So far ripped down some corporeal videos so I can share with random street folks.

Oh, and a quick note to AT&T...GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES AND GET ME 3G IN NEW MARKET. That is all.

Random media time - August 17, 2007

2007-08-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

I know...I know, haven't kept the blog updated. Give me a break, SVA started. I'm working like crazy.

Quick life update then on to more fun stuff...

I am moving out some point next week. My friend Rob and I are getting an apartment in Mount Jackson, little three bedroom jobbie that is pretty nice. Hardwood, dining room, living room, offices off the bedrooms.

SVA is going fine. Got 5 guys working for me, Matt is one of them. The other guys are all new, but there is definitely lots of potential. They do a good job so far, but it reallly makes me feel old. I barely remember my first days here...seems like I have been staff forever. And getting "Mr. Herrington" really sucks. Its ANDREW...Mr. Herrington is my father.

Alright, on to the fun. I found some cool youtube videos and a band I want to share. The band is Corporeal. I heard about them from E3 this year. Turns out a bunch of kids came up with an adaptation of the Halo theme for their highschool garageband. Fast forward a year and bungie invites them to E3. Anyways, a link to their original mix and the embed below is their E3 performance. http://youtube.com/watch?v=VLt5_ME_2_M

Another whiney post for today - August 5, 2007

2007-08-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to be one place in the whole world, more then anything? Yeah..I do. Sadly, I can't be and its driving me nuts. I can't even sleep and I have work at 6am. Yay me!

Boredom Day - August 5, 2007

2007-08-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

Garrgh, today has been terrible. I've wanted to just go(those of you in the know know where)..and I can't. I ended up at work for a couple hours, story of my life right. This next week is going to be hell week, I am planning 80 hours plus at work and then I still have shit I have to do around the house.

Oh yeah..the apartment didn't happen. Still living in the parents basement. Its not all bad, but I am just really wishing to be out on my own. It really sucks to be working as much as I do to come home to my parents' house. I love them dearly, but at 19 and basically taking care of myself, I am ready to be on my own.

Enough ranting about that. Basically its 8:30 at night, I've done nothing of value this weekend besides work, and I am sitting at my desk listening to music at a level that is sure to annoy the folks upstairs from me. Let's see how long it lasts...

Oh, speaking of computer, the years of me dumpsterdiving and being stuck in the dark ages, I finally have something of value. Intel Core2 Quad on an EVGA Nforce 680i with 4gb ram, and 2x EVGA 8800GTS in SLI mode. It rock major socks.

Enough rant, I basically just posted this to show that I am not dead. See, still alive. Yay life!

SysAdmin Day - July 27, 2007

2007-07-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Woohoo...Sysadmin Appreciation day is here!

http://www.sysadminday.com/

Seeing as I am a sysadmin, this is like the best holiday that exists to me. Make sure you get me lots of gifts.

Opening Post - July 27, 2007

2007-07-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

My inaugural post...hrrm..what to say?

Well, I have had approximately two hours of sleep in the last 4 days, work is wearing me down, and I am barely alive.

Yup...I love life.