The Occasional Blog » Geek

A Night with Adam and Jamie

Mike — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:25:11 +0000

My family and I had the opportunity to go see Behind the Myths tour staring Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman two weeks ago. The best way to describe the experience is as “the world’s best school assembly.” They spent time doing some Q&A, explanation on how the show started, their own backgrounds, and general insight as to how they approach the show and the myths they examine.

A big intent of the show is to help people consider and examine the world around them. It was a very fun evening and I’m looking forward to seeing their companion show MythBusters: The Explosive Exhibition when (if) it comes within driving distance.

Player One Start

Mike — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:11:41 +0000

I got the iCade on Monday and loaded up my iPad will all the ROMs I have and set it up at work. Not everyone has wandered by, yet, but those that have seen it have be having a fun time playing some of the old classics.

I’ll probably bring it back home over the three-day weekend since I haven’t had much time to play with it, myself. ;-)

Let the games begin

Mike — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:38:37 +0000

I’ve been a gamer from the beginning. Good or bad, I’m old enough to have lived through the golden age of video games during my formative years. It was a great way to spend far too much money (and kept me off the streets). Yes, I work in the video game industry (coincidence?), but I believe that some of the most creative games were created ‘back in the day’ due to the fact there were so few rules and genres to be hampered by.

The golden age is coming back for me due to some fortunate recent events. First, iMAME, a version of MAME (an arcade emulator), was released for the iPad a week ago which only lasted for a day before being pulled by Apple in the App Store (presumably for copyright concerns). I was able to get a copy prior to it disappearing. Second, I just submitted an order for a half-price ION Audio iCade which is supported by many games on the iPad, including iMAME.

I’m looking forward to giving some of my favorite games a spin.

Well, it does make sense

Mike — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:28:55 +0000

A ran across this on Twitter and thought it was too funny:

Source: @TDMoss

A geek confession

Mike — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:45:11 +0000

I have been a geek pretty much my entire life. I am a geek both at work and at home and am comfortable and, in fact, proud of it. Some examples:

I have built my own PC
Built a Linux installation from scratch
Seen Star Wars, the original, in a theater, eight times
I always worry about having the right cables available, just in case
I have more screens in use or at-the-ready than I should at any given time
I’ve been to Maker Faire

That last one is where this confession is related to.

I have one confession that I fear will lower my geek cred with all that know me:

I’ve never seen Doctor Who.

There, I said it. At Maker Faire, we watched a talk by Adam Savage from MythBusters and at the end, he was coaxed into performing an über-geeky, go-go dance to the Dr. Who theme with ArcAttack! It was a lot of fun but it reminded me of this significant lapse in my geek development.

I know that the show is where the Tardis, Daleks, and the Sonic Screwdriver comes from. I just don’t really know what they are. I’d like to rectify that. The question is how does one start? The original series? The new one? Please comment below and help straighten me out.

Motherships

Mike — Sun, 08 May 2011 05:10:01 +0000

This week my boss heads to London for a meeting of the combined IT groups from the three primary PlayStation divisions. It’s the same trip I went to last year that resulted in my extended stay. This time, however, I am unable to go as I had already made plans to attend Maker Faire with my family.

While thinking about that trip, I realized that while I don’t travel too often, I have had the opportunity through work to visit quite a few ‘motherships.’ Since I’m a geek by profession, they’re ones most people wouldn’t care about but some might find the list interesting:

Sony Computer Entertainment America (my employer) – Foster City, CA
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe – London, UK
Sony City – Shinagawa, Japan
NetApp (storage vendor) – Sunnyvale, CA
EMC (storage vendor) – Hopkinton, MA
Apple – Cupertino, CA

I have a love/hate relationship with traveling. I like the experience, but can’t say that I wish to do more. I can’t think of any upcoming additions to the list but who knows what the future has in store.

IRC: Our IT secret weapon

Mike — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:58:58 +0000

While I’ve be using this Internet thing for many (many) years, I never really got into the whole IRC chat. When I transferred into the IT group almost six years ago, I was introduced into the internal IRC server that they used regularly.

For the unfamiliar, IRC is a chat server and protocol developed in 1988 that enables standard text chat rooms. It’s nothing special but utility items rarely are. It’s how you use it that makes it work.

Did You Know? Our original IRC service we hosted was on a racked-up PlayStation 2 in one of our data centers?

Six years ago, the IT group I joined was relatively small and we were all in the same hallway. As a result, coordinating and collaborating wasn’t a challenge. Our IRC server was in use back then but was mostly for color commentary on recent events or sharing other geeky tidbits (this was before Facebook and Twitter). As our group grew, however, we became more spread out and IRC started taking on a more tactical vibe. That trend continued as we spread out and more people were still working together on projects. Worst yet, it was becoming more commonplace that you didn’t even know who the right individual might be regarding a particular service or skill.

Today, our IRC server has over a dozen different channels with fun and more business-like exchanges happening every day in each. The real strength, however, is when something has gone sideways. If a system has gone down and our NOC pages one or more admins to work on something, our IRC server becomes exceedingly useful so that status and collaboration can be easily done. Transcripts are often utilized for updating tickets or producing root cause analysis (RCA) documents.

Did You Know? I have the fortune of working with ‘Dalvenjah’ of DALnet fame?

Having not used IRC before I joined the team, I have since grown to truly feel badly for any IT shop that doesn’t use it or something similar. I can only imagine how worse-off we would be if it wasn’t available.

I still like my iPhone, but…

Mike — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:10:12 +0000

Very creative and very beautiful.

We’re back online

Mike — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 13:54:08 +0000

Wow, that was an experience I’d like to avoid in the future. Yesterday, I was able to successfully connect our router to the new DSL circuit and get the house fully transitioned over. That makes the final count of ‘days without broadband’ 10. Granted, I was able to utilize a borrowed MiFi but that provided what was essentially minimal connectivity. Things would have been quite ugly if that wasn’t available.

The two heros to come out of the experience are Xochitl who is a customer service supervisor for DSL Extreme. And Mike, a field technician for Verizon. Both of them were genuinely interested in working through the problem and each were essential in getting to a resolution.

Now I need to figure out what to do with a considerable amount of Verizon FiOS equipment (router, UPS, Optical Network Terminal, etc.). I wonder if there’s an aftermarket for it? I’ll likely just leave it all in place. Hey, maybe there’s a chance I’ll be able to go back to FiOS?

Surfing like it’s 1999

Mike — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:51:04 +0000

I’ve been a DSL Extreme customer for years starting back in the modem days. When they made FiOS-based service available in my area, I was quite excited about moving from 3000/768 to 20000/20000 and jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, Verizon changed their policies and decided to no longer allow independent ISPs access to their circuits. As a result, I was given a choice; move my FiOS service directly to Verizon (become a Verizon customer) or drop FiOS. Fortunately, when the fibre optic cable was run to my house they did so without removing my copper-pair phone line (they usually do) so I am able to go back to DSL. That is the direction I chose to take due to my desire to continue to host my server (the one you’re reading this on) which would be a violation of their terms of service. An order was placed for 7100/768 DSL last week and I confirmed that both circuits would be up for me to transition.

Then this past Tuesday, a Verizon service worker came by to install a dry-loop circuit for the new DSL service. Since I only have a single pair providing the phone service, we both agreed that disconnecting that to install the new circuit would be bad and canceled the work order so that it could be re-submitted correctly. The problem was, it still somehow got communicated/interpreted by DSL Extreme as a success so they requested the disconnect of FiOS (which they said they weren’t going to do, btw).

Now, I’m 5-7 days out from having DSL, have FiOS that is dark and cannot be re-instated without a request for new service which doesn’t fly (I was moving away from them, remember?). My only viable fall-back was to borrow a MiFi and get minimal functionality working so that essential services are available. That’s why the site is slow as you read this.

Next step, talk to DSL Extreme customer support management to let them know their business practice is busted. Oh, a credit to the account would be appropriate, too.