Wintermute's Blog @ Nitemare Cafe

I know I haven't posted much lately, but for anyone interested, I've set up a twitter account that I also fairly faithfully neglect... I was considering using it and my also-neglected flickr account, and combining them into a mobile blog, which I can also neglect. Or not. Depends on what life throws my way.

Speaking of life, it's been pretty busy, which accounts for the neglect mentioned above. Work has been a bit stressful, and there's lots to do around the house, so when I'm not busy with one of them, I tend to just want to veg in front of the TV to unwind. And if I'm not just vegging, I'm probably on the Wii.

It's been awhile since I've owned a current gaming rig. My desktop is ancient, my laptops are under-powered for games, and I got my wife a PS2... for Christmas of last year, so it's not exactly current. But after hearing some good things about the Wii and Wii Fit, I talked with my wife and we bought both. I'm glad we did, because it's the best exercise investment I've made in a long time. The cost was on-par with some equipment which is currently gathering dust in a closet, waiting for us to decide which room to set up as a home gym, but the Wii is getting some serious use within the first couple of weeks. I absolutely love the boxing that comes with the included Wii Sports (though there's an annoying flaw in the scoring routine. Sometimes I'll win a match by KO but lose six points. I'll fight a similarly-matched opponent, get knocked out myself, and lose seven. How can a win by KO only be worth 1 point more than a loss by KO? And how can a win cost points in the standings? I think the scoring algorithm needs tweaked a bit in future revisions, as it takes away from the enjoyment of the game.) Between that and the games bundled with the balance board in Wii Fit, I've been slowly working towards getting in shape.

Make no mistake, Wesley Crusher may have sucked... but Wil Wheaton rules!

Things that are younger than John McCain.

I'm seriously considering moving my domains completely onto Google's free services, because I've been having some major reliability issues with Time Warner's RoadRunner service. Any time I download anything large-ish, such as a perfectly legal Ububtu iso, my connection seems to stall and I have to reset my modem, sometimes several times before the download completes. Then, sometimes, the connection drops after days of being stable with little to no activity. It's unpredictable and driving me nuts. I live in the city now, so DSL is a sorta-option other than the no POTS line and intense hatred of all things AT&T and their TOS which would prevent it. (I believe TW's TOS allows it. If not, they don't enforce it via technology. Unless that's what's causing my stalled connections...) I could take Brandon up on his offer to host me, but I hate to take advantage of a friend who does web hosting as part of their living. I could also pay for co-location somewhere. Or I could talk to my boss about hanging the server off of work's T1. None of the hosting solutions solve my connectivity problems, though, so maybe the solution is to write a script that monitors connectivity and uses an opto-isolated relay off the parallel port of the server to momentarily cut power to my cable modem, thus resetting it, whenever the connection stalls. That seems to be the funner, more geeky, solution anyhow :)

Sorry it's taken me so long to get my thoughts together, but here's my Penguicon 6.0 report. Hope everyone enjoys it...

Penguicon was a last-minute thing for me. My wife stumbled across the website after work on the week of the con while my boss and I were standing in her office, she mentioned it being something I'd probably be interested in, and my boss asked if I wanted to go. That was probably Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, travel arrangements were made, a hotel room was booked (at the overflow hotel), and I had Friday off. The drive up to Troy, Michigan, was pretty uneventful other than I-75 being closed in Detroit. The Penguicon website maybe should have mentioned that ;)

I arrived at the con a little early and asked about registration. I was pointed to one table and told 3:30. 3:30 came and went with no one at the table, but a line was forming at a table on the opposite side that I had been pointed to. So I jumped in line and waited. And waited. And eventually it was confirmed that I was in the correct line, but there was some confusion at the registration desk. Jokes were made about registration computers running Vista, but it turns out that the paper registration forms just weren't there yet. Lovely. So, closing in on 5 or so, I was finally registered. Unfortunately, it was a little to late to make it to one of the talks that I had hoped to attend. Instead, I just sort of hung out until opening ceremonies, which were a bit uneventful for such an event-packed con.

At 8 PM on Friday, I saw "I Stopped Sleeping (How to Succeed in Webcomics)" followed by "A Murder of Crows" at 9. Both were interesting discussions, and I met Randall Munroe (of xkcd just before the webcomic panel. I tried not to go all fan-boy on him. I simply introduced myself, shook his hand, told him how much I loved the comic, at which point he beat me within an inch of my life. Apparently, he likes to do that to people who approach him about how much they love his comic. If only I had overheard his comment a moment earlier...(OK. Only he and the three people who heard him joking around will probably get that joke, but it's funny, dammit. Trust me.) From there, I sorta hung out until deciding to call it a night and walk back to my hotel.

I started Saturday with Jason Scott's talk on Interactive Fiction. At this point, the lack of organization was already apparent (from registration the night before), but the bed on the stage pretty much sealed it. It was a good talk, though, even though Jason was surprised be the lack of video in the room for his presentation.

Even with the lack of organization, Penguicon was very enjoyable as an attendee. I won't bore anyone with further details, other than to mention a couple more highlights of the event. The panel discussion "Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse" on Friday night was an absolute riot. And if you ever get the chance, you have *got* to see the giant telsa coils in concert.

All in all, I had an excellent time. Next year, I'm dragging the wife along :)

If any of my old BBS users are reading this and would like a nitemarecafe.com email address, drop me a line and I'll set you up.

I'm currenly in Troy, MI, at PenguiCon 6.0, patiently waiting for registration to start. If anyone happens to notice the guy with the Tux tattoo on his right ankle, that's me!

OK. As of Friday at 5pm, The Blitz is now The Rock, and it doesn't *totally* suck. The thing that really sucks is that there are currently no live DJ's. This makes it sound sort of like my MP3 player on random shuffle, but with commercials and a slightly larger play-list. The good news is that I messaged the station on MySpace on Friday, and here's their reply from earlier today:

Well the DJs will be back sometime in May. Right now we are just concentrating on the music right now and will start to introduce other programs in time. The morning show will also be returning sometime in May. Thanks for your questions and we hope that you will enjoy the station again!

I appreciate a couple of things about this reply. First, I appreciate the personal response, even though I'm sure they've been busy dealing with hundreds of friends requests, dozens of comments to approve, and who knows how many messages. I also appreciate that the talent will, in fact, be back on-air sometime in May. I can't wait, because the DJ's are what give a radio station it's personality. Otherwise, I'd listen to my MP3 player on random shuffle, commercial-free.

This morning, I get in my car and tune the radio the 99.7 The Blitz, and out comes a message saying "Please stand by, the radio station is rebooting." The website says the same thing. So does the official MySpace page. So, I dig around a bit and find this via Yahoo Answers (link):

Mo from the morning show posted this bulletin: to avoid hundreds of individual inquiries, i was informed today that the blitz is changing formats beginning friday april 4th at 5pm. i do not know what the new music music will be, i will find out when you do, all i have been told is i am still under contract, the plan is to restart the morning show with the new format but not until the music takes hold which means though i will be paid, blazor and i are off air for the next two months. in thirty days you will here promos for the new show which i believe will be blazor and mo, even though it should be the other way around because i am way better looking. but i digress. will be here drinking for the next two months and mo’s mix is still a go for april 18th so i better see you there.

—mo rocka

A little more digging reveals a blurb in the Columbus Dispatch (link):

"I can say this is not a whim and that it's not based on personal preference," Fish said. "We did some pretty major research of the market to establish what the best opportunity was."

"The Blitz was a cool concept that lasted awhile," Fish said. "Hopefully . . . (the new format) will (make) our advertisers happy."

Let's all hope he considered the listeners, too. Classic rock stations like 96.3 and 105.7 are OK, but The Blitz is better. 107.1 changed formats to country awhile back, leaving 99.7 the only station with its format in the area. If 99.7 changes too much, there will be a definite void on the Columbus radio dial.

And now, I'll leave you with this 80's poem:

Disco sucks,
Punk is dead.
So give me ROCK,
Or give me head!

Update: Apparently, their call-sign changes to WRKZ today as well. (link)
Update2: WRKZ used to be the call letters for 93.7, K-Rock, (before changing call letters themselves) in Pittsburgh. (link) Not that the old K-Rock is going to have anything to do with whatever The Blitz becomes at 5PM today.
Update3: 997rock.com points to the same page as wbzx.com. (link) I guess we'll find out if the word "rock" within the domain name is a good sign in just over an hour.
Update4: The Blitz is now The Rock. Looking at the new site, it looks like the new format is similar to 105.7 The Brew. But hopefully they'll include the stuff they played as The Blitz in their new format. I guess we'll see. On the plus side, we can listen online now...
Update5: Bring back The Blitz! 'nuff said...

In case there was any doubt:

100% Geek