[TMI] My little vial of…
So yeah, this will venture into the territory of TMI. If you are uncomfortable around discussions of bodily functions, now is your chance to turn back.
It also makes use of a number of swear words that are, in fact, used for their exact biological definitions.
So if you continue, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The Stupid, it burns us
So yes, I’ve had to deal with some stupid, stupid things these last few days. But all-in-all not a BAD week. And reasonably productive to boot. So, in no particular order, mixing tech with non-tech :
- Be aware that the WPG2 plugin for WordPress does some stupid theme handling hacks that make it not send the header or footer when using something like the WordPress Mobile Edition or WordPress Mobile Pack plugins (or any other plugin that dynamically changes the theme at page load time). The fix, after tracing through the plugin, is to copy two files (wpg2header.php and wpg2footer.php) from the active theme into the mobile theme. And voila, it works. Those of you with iPhone and Blackberrys and other mobile browserscan now see the Red Wombat Studio and Miss Monster galleries properly now.
- We have our last con of 2010 in less than two weeks. We will be taking Jennie with us to meet the Anthrocon crowd. I will probably be sending the usual Twitter updates as well. You have all been warned.
- We get to play D&D tomorrow night for the first time in two weeks. I’m very excited, and cannot wait to run these next few encounters. The next combat will be VERY tricky, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun. Once they get through this next bit of roleplay. I will be making maps later today, and they will be…interesting.
- My Facebook account has been disabled for close to two weeks now. It will be interesting to see if it actually DOES get deleted in the next few days like they claim it will.
- And finally, the one bit of stupid that had me ready to break faces on Friday :
I am not an Exchange admin, but I end up touching it more than I’d like to at work. Which me leads to remind everyone who IS an exchange Admin of the following :
It is a BAD IDEA to set up your exchange server to journal all the mail to an external location.
Another exchange server internally? sure.
An internal SMTP server with LOTS of disk? don’t see why not.
A gmail.com address? Oh HELL NO.
See, funny thing, when gmail gets over 200 messages an hour destined to a single address from a single IP, they cut you off. As in, all mail for gmail addresses (good AND bad) get rejected as bulk-mail for a few hours. Which means that even GOOD messages for gmail recipients get rejected, and when it lets you back in, you can BET they’ll cut you off not long after after because of the FUCKING MAIL JOURNAL THAT HAS NOW BEEN BACKING UP FOR A FEW HOURS.
And this does not even BEGIN to touch on the security implications of such a thing. Exchange journaling sends a copy of EVERY email sent to or from the server to the target address.
Yes, you read that right : EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Upon discovery of this abomination of a configuration at work, I turned that bullshit OFF, thank you very much, and proceeded to clean up the queues so the 400+ journal messages waiting to go out to gmail got flushed. Well, except for about 16 of them, which I figured would timeout after a day or two.
No such luck – Exchange proceeded to try to resend quietly every few hours FOR OVER FOUR WEEKS until I finally managed to nuke the fuckers from orbit on Friday (of course, that required not only a complete shutdown and restart of the exchange services, but a reboot of 2K8 on top of that…), all the while swearing at exchange for allowing such an abomination and making a list of people to curb stomp should it be their mis-pleasure to ever meet me in person.
- OpenNMS is, as usual, the bestest thing ever. Their remote poller has some quirks, but damn, it’s still the best monitoring package I’ve ever used.
[A-Kon 21] Pocky Fuelled Brutality
Back at work after a weekend I now dub “Pocky Fuelled Brutality” – that is A-Kon 21. We had a lot of fun, but the con was very large, and very long by our standards. It kinda blurs, so here are the high points :
- Ursula‘s fans are, as always, awesome. We were honoured to meet all of you, and very happy y’all came out.
- Why didn’t someone warn us that Anime Fans do not, in fact, sleep?
- The con staff was amazing, and I hope we expressed that adequately to the ones we had the pleasure of talking to through the course of the weekend.
- Never, ever, ever let an energy drink company give away product for free at a con. Ever. [1]
- I am more of a bear than Randy Milholland from the neck down. He’s got me beat from the neck up.[2]
- J. Grant is one mad motherfucker.[3] I look forward to the next time he, Mel, Ursula, and I can hang out.
- Jennie is, as always, awsome.
- I may have fanboyed over Raistlin (AKA Ebenezer) just a little. He didn’t seem to mind.
- There were fewer height/weight inappropriate costumes than the last Anime con I went to.[4]
- The Dallas people are awesome, and we do want to go back. Maybe next time for fun, and not just airport-hotel-con-hotel-airport[5].
- If I never hear the term “buttscratcher” again as long as I live, I might die happy.[6]
[1] To the NOS Energy Drink distributors who were giving that shit away in bulk : I hate you with a hate that burns like the very flames of hell powered by a nuclear rage.
[2] I blame genetics.
[3] You know Two Lumps is awesome, but did you read Flem Comics? You need to read Flem Comics. NOW. From the beginning. DO IT BITCHES!
[4] Although it was fun introducing one friend to the term “Sailor Bubba”….
[5] That’s a lie – we did spend some time outside the hotel, mostly Sunday night, which J. documented gloriously.
[6] Seriously, whoever decided that the Family Guy “Buttscratcher” bit needed to be the con’s verbal meme needs to die in a fire. While being molested by flaming weasels. Flaming rabid ass weasels who have been fed large quantities of Pocky and NOS energy drink laced with crystal meth.
On BBQ
In North Carolina, nay, the South altogether, you must understand that BBQ is a NOUN, not a verb. And each region has it’s specialty, and everyone else are heathens.
This is PARTICULARLY true in the Carolinas, where the regions are particularly proud of their variety. Eastern NC (whole hog, vinegar based sauce), Western NC (aka Lexington BBQ – shoulder only, tomato based sauce), and South Carolina (Mustard and Vinegar based sauce). Many an argument has been had over the validity of a particular variety, who’s momma makes the best sauce, and who’s daddy roasts the best pig[1].
But we all agree on one thing – no matter what region you are from, Carolina BBQ is by far the best in the world, and we all agree that anyone who disagrees with THAT needs to have their head checked.
Now, I am all about Eastern NC BBQ, something I didn’t truly appreciate until I had been out of state for a few years, and couldn’t GET it anymore. When people said “we’re having a BBQ” and it was nothing more than grilled meats, MAYBE with memphis style sauce on chicken or ribs, I had to check my temper and explain to them what REAL BBQ is, and how they were doing it wrong.
It was then that I realized something important – the North Carolina BBQ had gotten into my blood. Nay, into my very genetic makeup.
And that really, there was no hope for me but to return to NC (and I may give many other reasons when asked why I came home, but really, how can someone live where BBQ is a VERB?), so that I could once again have proper Eastern NC BBQ on demand.
What brings this on?
We went to a pig-pickin’ yesterday. This is a Southern tradition, whereby a large grill (usually converted from an oil drum or two) is used to roast a pig (half or whole) for several hours until done (the best start cooking at 4am, and serve the food somewhere around 4pm) while being basted in that tangy/spicy/sweet Eastern NC vinegar sauce the whole time. Oh, you can do it sans sauce, and add after, but it’s not the same.
And Ursula? I love her, but she doesn’t get it. Yet.
It only took me 30 years to discover that I love sweet tea[2]. Give it a few years, and then we’ll be far away, and she’ll get the craving for proper NC BBQ. and we won’t be able to get it, and shortly after we get off the plane, we’ll be at one of the reputable Eastern NC BBQ places[3]
And then I’ll know she’s truly adapted.
[1] As well as the official record of parentage of your opponent in the discussion, including but not limited to the nature of the honor of the opponent’s mother. Also up for debate are the breeding habits of your opponent, their father, and the pig which they roast. So yeah, BBQ discussions can get heated in these parts.
[2] At a wedding they had nothing but water and sweet tea. And after a lifetime of having mediocre sweet tea forced upon me I had given up, and was drinking this because, well, it wasn’t water. This particular tea was the nectar of heaven. And that was it, I was hooked.
[3] Cooper’s in Raleigh,Allen & Son’s in Hillsboro or Bynum, and Old Tymme in Cary. And if all else fails, Smithfield’s. I’m not saying The Pitt in Raleigh isn’t good, but I want a place that specializes in Eastern BBQ and fried chicken (and MAYBE fried fish).
[D&D] Item : Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Soap
Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Soap
Category: Gear
Price: 10 sp
Weight: 2 oz solid, 4 oz liquid
Description: Cleric Bronner’s Mysical Soap can remove almost any stain or scent. For one encounter after use, Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Soap grants a +2 Bonus against smells, stinks, or funks, or breath weapons.
No one is really sure where Cleric Bronner comes from, or where he goes to. All anyone knows is the Cleric Bronner spreads the gospel of his Mystical Soap in every dimension, creating monasteries dedicated to his “Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen” and the making of soaps. The soaps are of high quality, inexpensive for the common adventurer, and get out almost any stains or stenches (including the lich crotch musk so common to enchanted jockstraps).
As far as anyone knows, the soaps themselves are not magical, just made from a formula of the highest quality and secrecy. It is known that all ingredients are organic, fair trade, and natural, unlike many other soaps, which are made via conjuration and poaching.
The labels of the soaps also serve as an evangelical device – each label is printed with “highlights” of the “Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen”, although not a COMPLETE rendition of all it’s tenets. If anything, each variety of soap contains some fragment of this legendary moral guide, but no one has ever managed to piece it all together despite centuries of trying.
Here is a sample from the Wolfsbane Soap :
“3rd: For the University: A kelpie can only love its friend! Lacking frontal lobes, it must fear-smear-slay-slander-dominate-dictate-distort or devour anything it does not understand or disagrees with, that’s a kelpie! But a humanoid being knowing full-truth, the Kingdom of He Who Was’s Law, must teach friend & enemy the Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen to help unite all hunanoid-kind in our Eternal Creator’s great All-One-God-Faith, or that being is not yet Humanoid, a traitor to He Who Was’s Race!”
And a sample from the Greenbane Soap :
“Like a beacon breaking through dark clouds that pass; your deep embrace, your sensuous kiss, who else but He Who Was can make Love last 1 trillion years of sweet eternities! Who else but He Who Was! We are not true, while calculated calm controls us; blood flows near spirit in cold divided flame! Only love’s stormy passion, striking deep within us; can turn blood to spirit & spirit to blood, untamed! Spirit to blood, untamed!”
Consultation with the soap-making monks and nuns of Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Monistaries has resulted in the beleif that you have to be truely devoted and spend years studying (and inhaling soap fumes) to fully understand the Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen. But most of the Prime Material Planes are willing to accept that.
Because it’s REALLY good soap.
Available wherever adventuring gear is sold, in solid bars or vial of liquid, and in a variety of pleasing scents.
The iPad 3G review
So I’ve had my iPad for about a week and a half now. I think I’ve gotten enough use time out of it for a bit of a review. Overall : I like it. No, I love it. It goes where I go, it acts as an excellent remote terminal (issh, logmein, vnc all make this possible), it does me email (imap on one account, exchange on the other), calendar and address book are well done, and the apple esthetics are glorious. I’m actually using the wordpress app to write this review. I have, for the most part, stopped lugging around my MacBook Pro in favor of the iPad for most, if not all, of my daily computing needs. With pages, numbers, and keynote, I’m able to do most of my document viewing and editing on the fly. I have the VGA cable, and can project from it, which is very, very, cool. The 3G model I have let’s me get my stuff anywhere and damn near everywhere.
iBooks is AWESOME. I’ve loaded it up with ePub docs, and a few choice free selections from the iBookstore. And they eat kindle for breakfast, IMHO. I cannot wait for more publishers to support the ePub standard, or offer their books in the iBookstore.
My gripes are, for the most part, with the third party apps. I have Things and 1Password on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They sync to each other, so i can have the data wherever. However, they only sync if they are on the same local wifi with the Mac – the primary sync point. Minor complaint, but it means if I check something off on my phone, or add a password on my iPad, until I get all three devices together, it’s, well, out of sync. Now, if I add an address, it shows up everywhere no matter where I am, thanks to MobileMe. And I wonder – why don’t third party apps use something like WebDAV or iDisk or dropbox for this? Omnifocus does it with their iPhone and desktop apps, why not others (and I’d use omnifocus, but it isn’t iPad capable – yet).
Also, why are so many vendors bypassing the Universal app (i.e. Both ipad and iphone versions in one app) capability? Suggestion to developers : sell the iPhone only version for, say, $5, a Universal app for $15, instead of an iPhone only app for $5 and an iPad only app for $10. You still get your $15, I get one app that works properly on both – unlike having to look in iTunes to figure out which “AIM” is for the iPad, and which is for the iPhone. See those three remote admin apps up there, iPhone/iPad developers? UNIVERSAL. Cost a bit more than the iPhone or iPad only versions, but I’ll pay more for a single app that does both.
But that’s it for my gripes. From a user perspective, I am totally in love with this device, and cannot wait to get on the road this con season and do more with it.
Now I have a LOT of friends who gripe that it’s not an open platform, that the hardware isn’t accessible, that the os is locked down. And yes, all that is true. And I can say that in some ways, i’d like it better if the platform were more open in those areas. But I also see that as a good thing – when one company makes an exceptional device that’s closed, the community answers within a year or two with something better. Which means the closed vendor has to try harder and innovate more. Which pushes the community harder, etc., etc. Competition is good for everyone. And the challenge to the open platform community is this : build something better, that is more open, that will have me leaving this platform and not looking back.
No rest for the weary
So I just realized it’s been almost two weeks since I wrote my last update. My, how time flies. Since then, I’ve been somewhat busy. In no particular order I have :
- Converted DarkCanvas.com to Drupal
- Converted UrsulaVernon.com to Drupal
- Converted GuardiansOfAngels.com to Drupal
- Worked a lot on the next generation site/codebase for exitevent.com
- Have most of a wordpress site built for an artist (I’ll let them announce when it’s done)
- Built two more wordpress blogs for Ursula Tea with the Squash God and Squash’s Garden
- rearranged redwombatstudio.com to accomodate those blogs
- built the wordpress theme for my tax preparer’s site – we still need the content, but it’s progressing
- learned how to make OSX Mail.app stationary, and built the same for a newsletter I contribute to
- Interviewed for a job
- got the job
I have not started at the new job just yet – they’re working on the background checks and employment verifications now, so the start date is still a bit fluid. So I’ve been using the time, as you can see, playing catch-up and learning something new (i.e. Drupal).
It’s a good feeling to be in a spot where not only is my inbox cleaned out, but my to-do list is managed again, and I’m not starting the next thing with a backlog.
All I have to do now is make sure I don’t get ANOTHER backlog….
[D&D] Playing tabletop D&D Online – How we do it
A regular question I see on Twitter and Facebook is “Hey, are you playing D&D online?” The answer is “yes” – and here’s how we do it.
First up, you need a couple of things :
Player Tools
- D&D Character Builder
- OpenRPG v 1.8
- Ventrilo (although any group-chat capable VoiP will do)
DM Tools
- All of the above
- D&D Adventure Tools
- D&D Compendium
- Combat Manager
- An Image Editor (GIMP or Pixelmator in my case)
- A collection of Icons for players, monsters & etc
- A web server for the images
In a nutshell, We use Character Builder for managing the character sheets, OpenRPG to view the map and miniatures, and Ventrilo to do voice chat.
This all allows us to simulate the tabletop experience over the internet and the vast distances that (mostly) separate us. Dice rolls, movement, monster positions, etc are all handed by OpenRPG. Players email me their character sheet files from the Character Builder on a regular basis (i.e. when something changes). For ease of use and administration, I have OpenRPG running in “server mode” on one of my remote linux servers, so that I don’t have to mess around with firewall settings and trying to run the server on my laptop with everything else.
About once a week (usually the day before) I use the image editor to generate a map image for use in OpenRPG. Sometimes it’s fancy, sometimes not. The basic square on the map is 50×50, so the image size is based around that. I upload the map & any new icons to the web server, and then use the OpenRPG map tools to put together the basic layout for the night. I then use Adventure Tools, the Compendium and Combat Manager to set up any combat encounters in advance.
On the night of the game, I use two monitors – on the “main” screen of my laptop I have openRPG, and on the second screen (to my left) I have Combat Tracker. This gives me a full heads-up-view of both the player positions, monster positions, and everyone’s status. Used that Daily? Marked in CT. Monster has 30 HP? Tracked. Rooster the Paladin is blinded? That’s there too. VERY handy.
Now, later this month, rumor has it we’ll all be in one place at one time. And this means real maps, real dice, and my laptop with JUST combat tracker up and running. Unless my iPad comes in soon, and someone has made something similar to Combat manager for that.
I can dream, can’t I?
And then it was spring… no, wait, summer.
I love living in NC. And I love my house. There’s just one teeny, tiny design flaw with it – the airflow.
My house has 15 windows in the back, and 5 windows in the front. And because of how the house is situated on the property, all 15 of the back windows get the bulk of the sun on any given day. This is GREAT in the winter, and REALLY, REALLY warm in the spring/summer. Also, in order for air to flow through the house, both front and back windows need to be open. And no matter what time of year, the air generally flows from the front of the house to the back of the house.
You start to see the problem, I’m sure.
So, we’ve had our two weeks of spring, and now that it’s getting into the mid-80F range every day, it’s time to turn on the AC – that or I can plan on sweating like a fiend until about 3am, when enough air has moved through the house to cool it back down.
And it’s only April.
Something tells me it’s gonna be a hot summer this year.
40 days without Google
So as detailed in my twitter several weeks ago, I decided to give up Google for Lent this year.
“This has got to be,” I said to myself, “easier than giving up something physical, and much easier to keep from using. Right?”
Riiight.
Really, I had a lot of Google-fu in my life. GMail, GCalendar, GReader, Wave, GTalk…and the holiest of holies, Google Search. And hey, from a technical perspective, it wasn’t that hard. Honestly, the hardest part was moving all my mail back to a server I own and control, and getting a webmail interface set up to it.
With my iPhone and OSX Apps (iCal & NetNewsWire in particular) email and rss feeds and calendaring hasn’t changed hardly any. OK, I see more of the spam that comes in.
But searching? The time came when I had to find something using Yahoo. And then Bing. And then…well, crap, are there any other search engines anymore?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Searching became an ISSUE. I discovered that the UI for the other searches are cluttered, full of crap, and quite honestly, nearly useless. Three pages of SHIT to find the one link worth a damn. And the mobile UI on those guys? Ewww. And yes, there were times when I’d break down, and use google search because, well, when it comes to search, they’re still the best of the best, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to navigate and actually FIND what you’re looking for.
It may be easier to give up smoking than to stop using google search.
So when Sunday rolls around, and I can go back to google if I want, the first thing I’m doing is resetting my default searches back to their goodness. I can live without gmail, and google calendar syncs nicely with iCal (thank you BusySync), and hopefully netnewswire will finally sync to the google reader shared stuff someday soon. But google search?
I may need an intervention to give that up ever again.