June 2006 Archives

Sunday a week ago I went cherry picking for the first time (or any fruit picking for that matter). Kelly actually makes her own jam and pie filling. She had gone strawberry picking a week or so earlier. With the strawberries she made some tasty syrup for pancakes or ice cream, the syrup was created when the mixture didn't solidify into jam. Her second and third batches ended up as even better jam. Totally natural and home made.

Back to the cherry picking, we went out on Sunday afternoon. Two of her friends went to help us pick. There are several farms in north western Maryland that you can go pick your own fruit at. We went to Larriland Farm to do the picking. The tart cherries (used for pies) had just ripened. When you get there they give you bags to put your cherries in. There was a long line of trees to pick from. We walked down a ways to get ones that weren't as picked over yet. Luckily the fruit was almost perfectly ripe. We picked about 8 bags which worked out to about 24 lbs of cherries. It took us about 90 minutes to pick them.

Before we left Kelly's friends wanted to pick some more strawberries. Kelly had broken out the first time so she watched. Since I had never done it I wanted to try it. We only picked a few pounds total. I may have had a similar breakout problem as it looks like my lower legs were swarmed by bugs.

Once we got back to Kelly's place the second half of the task began. Before freezing for later use the cherries needed to be pitted. When using the proper tool it wasn't that hard to pit the cherries. First someone cleaned and removed the stems. Then using a tool like this the pit is pushed out the base of the cherry. Kelly got 6 or 7 gallon freezer bags of cherries for later pie making.

Last year Kelly entered the Maryland State Fair with her pie, she is debating doing it again. Last year she did tremendous research with lots of participants and data to determine the ideal pie. This year she could just make it. Unfortunately cherry is not my favorite flavor of pie, but I am told hers is very good.

This week Nintendo's latest portable console the DS Lite was released. It isn't a totally new console but a revision of the wildly successful DS. The DS is the latest in a long line of portable consoles from Nintendo. Nintendo entered the portable market with the GameBoy in 1989. I got one as a Christmas present in 1989. I got the system with the pack in game of Tetris, (something that Nintendo hasn't done since the NES and GameBoy at a system launch) Super Mario Land and Tennis. When I got the GameBoy my brother was pretty young so sharing wasn't as big an issue. Later my parents got my brother one of his own. The cool thing was we could play games against each other or use both gameboys with friends. I still have one of those original gameboys and it still works, more than I can say for many other consumer electronics of that age. At least one of them had the very common problem of vertical lines failing on the LCD. If I remember right it was fixed (replaced) by Nintendo. The original gameboy was actually less powerful than the NES. There were games released from 1989 to 2001 for the GB, 12 years for one console is pretty impressive.

Sometime in early 1999 I purchased a GameBoy Color. The GBC had a much better screen and it was color (duh). It also had a faster processor that made it perform much closer to the NES and even better in some cases. This system began a very cool trend of each new gameboy being able to play all previous games. This also gave it an instant game library in the hundreds. I only bought 1 or 2 GBC exclusive games.

Then in late 2001 I got a Game Boy Advance. The GBA was actually a totally new platform; however to ensure backwards compatibility it contained a much shrunken and cost reduced version of the processor from the GBC (which itself was just a faster version of the original GB). The GBA is more powerful than the SNES. This is shown in its ability to play SNES games such as Super Mario World and even games with better graphics. Older GB games stuck out a bit since the newer GBA games were about half the size of older ones. I have about 10 games for the GBA. Two of which are a new Metroid and a re-release of the original NES Metroid much tweaked. One of the problems this particular handheld had was the screen and the fact it had no backlight. The screen was denser and needed a great deal of ambient light to be viewable. There was even a mod released called Afterburner to add a backlight.

Nintendo fixed the screen problem with the release of the GameBoy Advance SP in early 2003. I got one sometime in the summer 2003. The GBASP was also the first GameBoy to feature a rechargeable battery and would run for more than 10 hours on a single charge. It was a very nice redesign and played quite well. Unfortunately this is the last GameBoy both in name and backwards compatibility. The GBASP with its ability to play all GB games ever released has a library of almost 1000 games available for it, by far the most of any console. Last fall a revised version of the GBASP was released with an even more improved screen and a longer lasting battery. I will be keeping my GBASP even though I have a DS Lite for backwards compatibility.

In late 2004 Nintendo released the DS which was short for Dual Screen. This handheld console bears a very strong resemblance to the old Nintendo Game & Watch line of games. The DS is not officially a successor to the GameBoy line but more of a spiritual one. This handheld was bit different, it had a lower screen that was a touch screen used with a stylus. The unconventional nature of the handheld slowed sales a bit I think since people were unsure of the usage of this new console. The DS is similar in performance to the N64 and this was shown with the launch title of Super Mario 64 DS. The game was actually revised and improved showing the DS to even be superior to the N64. The other cool feature the DS has is the ability to play wirelessly locally with others, often with only one cartridge needed. It also has the ability to play on the Internet via the Nintendo Wi-Fi service. In certain stores and locations you can even download games onto the DS's internal memory. With the DS Nintendo also again shrank the cartridges. The games are basically a ruggedized version of an SD card. The cards now have storage on them just like other flash media for game saves and the games no longer require battery backups like the old NES, SNES and N64 games. The DS is able to play GBA games but not GB or GBC games. Nintendo could have easily allowed GB games to physically work in the DS; however Nintendo chose not to include the hardware needed for backwards compatibility and apparently didn’t want to attempt emulation. Allowing GBA games adds a library of several hundred games, the ability to play games that are a minimum of 4 years old is more debatable. As games came out that showed how inventive the DS and its touch screen could be the system has accelerated in sales. None of the launch games particularly inspired me so I passed on the system initially.

This week Nintendo released the DS Lite, it is a revision of the DS very similar to the GBA and GBASP. It is considerably smaller, lighter and has a much better pair of screens. The battery also lasts longer due to another year or so of battery developments. The DS Lite maintains its backwards compatibility with the GBA games; however they stick out a bit due to the new shape of the Lite.

The DS just like the various GB before it and possibly even more so seem to be accessible to those who aren't traditionally gamers. There were many GameBoy games that appealed to people that didn't usually play games if they gave it a chance. With the DS Nintendo is taking it even further with the release of it’s Touch Generations line of games. Last night when I went to Kelly's I left my DS on the table while I went outside. When I came back she was playing Brain Age. I look forward to trying out some of the more original and creative games on the DS as well as playing some more of the older DS and GBA games.

Well if you tried to access the site from about 6:30 - 7:00 PM you may have noticed it was down. I was transitioning from my old DSL circuit to my new one. Previously I had a shared DSL line that is on same line as my voice service. I now have a dedicated line for DSL. This has two benefits. The first is I will no longer hear the DSL modem while making calls. The second is there is no possibility of other things on the line being blamed for any problems. I am hoping that this line will have fewer problems and if problems arise they can be resolved with less outside possibilities. Another plus is the circuit is now on a much newer line and NID that was more recently run to house.

All of my IP addresses were switched to new circuit. As a result there should be no noticeable change. If there are any problems let me know.

In October of 2003 we got a new Dell PowerVault 775 NAS server. This server was essentially a PowerEdge 2650 running Windows Storage Server 2003, which is a slightly tweaked version of Windows Server 2003. The server originally shipped with a pair of 18 GB drives in a mirror set for the OS and a trio of 147 GB drives in a RAID 5 for data storage. The first problem the server had was almost daily bluescreens. It was found that these were caused by the Dell OpenManage software. After we removed the software the server stabilized.

The next problem to show up shortly was a small amount of corruption on the data drive. A few files would get corrupted each week or so. I would run CHKDSK on the weekend and it would fix the corruption, usually with no data loss. The corruption was never large but it was consistent. I created many cases with Dell to attempt to resolve this problem. I tried to check consistency on RAID set, rebuilt the drive and tried many other similar fixes. Nothing worked long term however.

Eventually we added a PV220S to the PV775. When we did this we moved the data drives from the internal slots to the external enclosure. After doing this magically any data corruption on the data drive stopped. The news isn't all good however. The OS drives started having problems then. The server started having weird memory errors and would just generally stop responding.

I again called Dell to try and trouble shoot this new but related problem. The first thing they had me do was update drivers and firmware on RAID controllers and SCSI drives. After that they began taking dumps of drive issues using a modified version of CHKDSK. Eventually they determined there was a flaw in the RAID controller. Dell did not make the controller and thus were waiting on a fix from the ODM. As time dragged on they gave me other options. Most of the options involved removing or disabling the RAID controller. The problem with this solution was they I would need to rebuild the OS. Further I would no longer be able to use Storage Server since it was built assuming that RAID was there. I didn't think this was a good solution and decided to give them a bit longer to come up with a fix for hardware.

About a week ago Dell called and said they couldn't find a fix for the problem. As a result they would be swapping the hardware out. This brings up a whole new suite of problems. The main problem was that Dell no longer made an equivalent NAS server. We cannot get a new box running Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, which is what I really wanted. Instead we will be getting a PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003 R2. The base server will be considerably faster than the older server since it is three years newer. As a bonus we also get a new three year warranty for free.

It is still going to be a bit of a hassle for me since I will have to transition the data drives to new server as well as all the share definitions. Also I have to switch around some drives so I can send back the ones the server originally came with. Fun Fun. At least Dell followed through and resolved the issue.

Update: Woo-Hoo, well today was my lucky day it seems. Dell announced the PowerEdge 2950 with Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 today. This is the exact server I was hoping to get. Dell has cancelled the order for the 2850 that was previously discussed and will instead begin the order for a 2950. It isn't really out yet so we will have to wait a little while, but it will be worth it. This server has the latest dual core Xeon's and all the other newest technologies. Awesome.

Update 2: My Dell support person got me exactly what I wanted, it is an awesome server. Dell has a very happy customer now. Even if Dell did make me suffer for a while along the way, they made it right in the end.

The busy weekend started Friday night. One of Kelly's co-workers hosts an annual party that they call Prom. We got dressed up for the party and headed downtown. (Pictures soon) We ate at Amicci's first. It was a very nice restraint and good food. After dinner we walked over the party house. The house is a converted warehouse / loft. The house was relatively big and very open inside. One of the most interesting things for me was standing on their deck. I got to see the design and architecture of downtown Baltimore. It was very enlightening to see from that angle. I still don't get the roof decks. In the party they had a live band, a picture taking booth and lots of decorations. It had a luau theme; however we didn't dress that way, more traditional prom. Both Kelly and I were tired so we didn't stay too long. Only until about 10 PM. Pictures

On Saturday we got up and did some chores. I successfully hung a shelf in Kelly's kitchen, and then later failed at hanging one in bathroom. I also did some cleanup on her laptop to help it run as fast as possible. After our chores we headed out with one of her friends to Honfest 2006. The Honfest is a street fair with traditional craft vendors, carney food and live entertainment. I have lived in Baltimore now for over a year, however I have avoided mass crowds such as this up to this point. It was a very interesting slice of humanity that I haven't been exposed as much in my past. It was fun for the most part. The only downsides were points where it was so crowded you couldn't move and the really long lines for so-so food. We stayed at the fest for a few hours.

On Sunday we went on a REI Outdoor School Class. The one we did was an introduction to road bikes. Kelly has a road bike already so she brought hers to learn more about it. I used one of their provided bikes. The bike I rode was brand new since it was the first class they had offered. It was really cool to ride the bike as it was very different than my current mountain bike. The road bike is even lighter and has much thinner tires and frame. Also the gearing is pretty different so it is easier to go faster. We spent a while learning about the bikes, and getting the sizing right. We started out riding on the NCR trail which Kelly and I had ridden recently as well. We then went on to some local roads near the trail. The roads had some pretty big hills. One of the people in the class was not very confident in her riding and especially her shifting. She decided to stop directly in front of Kelly causing her to fall. Luckily it looked worse than it was. We then returned to our starting point for lunch. After lunch we just rode the trail again. In total we did about 25 miles. We were pretty tired afterwards.

Born September 20, 2002 - Died March 24, 2006
Some info here is from Team Xbox and The Wacko's BBQ. Some of the original videos can be found at Gamespot as well.

This game was in development for 5 years. It started out as an Xbox exclusive and looked very promising. It was originally scheduled to be released in late 2003. It was delayed multiple times to Fall 2006 before finally dying recently. Along its development life it basically led to the closure of Nihilistic Studios and the purchase of Swinging Ape Studios by Blizzard. At several points it had good screenshots, trailers and even playable versions. At one point during its development it looked like an almost finished and polished game. Somewhere along it was totally scrapped and started over again. It then expanded to being a GameCube, PS2 and Xbox game. This to me seems like it would only serve to lower the games quality and delay it even further. It is too bad that such a good premise had to die. I can't even imagine how much money was wasted on it, not to mention magazine and web articles. It was on the cover of Xbox magazine at least once if not more. It was shown publicly at E3 in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and probably behind closed doors in 2002. I guess Blizzard has money to lose and would rather not be associated with a questionable game.

A week ago I watched The Constant Gardner with Kelly and some of her friends. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect since the movie had gotten good reviews but hadn't done well in theaters. It was a pretty good movie. It had a really interesting story, one that I would be curious if there was any truth too. It was kind of a cross between a thriller and a drama. It dragged at a few times, but not too bad.

Last night Kelly indulged me and went to X-Men : The Last Stand with me. I was really looking forward to it, since X-Men was the series that began the recent rebirth of super hero movies in 2000. Unfortunately the director of the first two films moved on to direct Superman Returns. I think the combo of my high expectations and the movie not being quite as good as the last made me not enjoy the movie as much as I could have. I still really liked it, but it just wasn't amazing. It wrapped up some storylines in interesting ways. I missed the ending scene after the credits but I got the wrap-up. The word is that right now that this was the final X-Men film, but you never know after 145 million opening weekend.

About a month ago Kelly brought up the idea of biking. I finally got my bike tuned up. (Sorry Karen) Two weeks ago we went for our first ride. It was the first riding I had done on a real bike in almost two years and over a year including exercise bikes. To say I was a little out of condition would be accurate.

Kelly had a true road bike as opposed to my general purpose mountain bike. Mostly this means she can ride a whole lot faster than me. Also she has better conditioning than me. We started this ride with her leading and me attempting to keep up. I was basically riding in my highest gear as fast as I could. Let’s just say this tired me out pretty quick. We rode about 12 miles on this first ride. After wards my sorest part was my butt.

After that ride I decided to get a few things. The first addition was a new bike seat that doesn't hurt nearly so much. Then I added a water bottle holder that mounts on the frame. That way I could drink while riding. The last add-on was a really cool trip meter. It calculates things like MPH, trip time, and distance. It even does some calorie things, however they are guesses at best.

Last Sunday we went on another ride. This time I got to lead so I could set the pace. This seemed to work better, for me at least. Once I found my stride we were keeping a good pace of 13-14 MPH. I was not nearly so tired this time and probably could have rode even farther. We rode about 14 miles. Hopefully we can keep extending our distance.

This coming Sunday we are doing a ride setup by REI. I will get to try out a road bike and see how I like it. However the guy at REI told Kelly that she shouldn't be riding her bike on the trail we ride on. The trail goes up to York, some day we might be able to make it there.

Last Tuesday Kelly and I and some of her friends went to a Baltimore Orioles game. It was a bit on the warm side (90+) but otherwise a good night. We sat in the right field bleachers. Kelly wasn't too thrilled about the huge watch for flying balls sign. The game was against Tampa Bay so I figured the fact that it was two of the worst teams in baseball there wouldn't be much worry of this.

However the final score of 7 to 5 had a total of 5 home runs. The scoring was quite amazing considering the teams. Check out the stats if you care.

The only downside was a very sub par pretzel that Kelly had. The pretzel was even more unfortunate since she was looking forward to it.

Well I have been working on reducing the huge amount of comment spam on my main blog. In the process I was playing with some of the MovableType Spam Plug-In options. One wasn't acting the way I thought. I filled a support request on it. Indeed it seems it was a reproducible bug. Yay! The interesting thing however was the response.
"I'll file a case to have this reviewed for possible correction in the future."
The key word there is possible? Huh? You have a verified bug and it may be corrected. Oh well.