The Littlest Gangster

When she gets up in the morning, my wife is greeted by our cats, Oliver and Mia, who bustle about as Sandy makes her breakfast. Every now and again, the cats will get a treat of wet food, with each cat getting a portion in a separate bowl. Other times, if they don’t get their treat breakfast, Oliver will jump up on the kitchen table and sit patiently while Sandy eats her breakfast and reads a book — he’s her "breakfast buddy." He likes being up there, and every now and then Sandy might give him a tiny morsel of food.

One day, I got an IM from Sandy saying, "Oliver was being a food bully [this morning]." I assumed that Oliver was stealing some of Mia’s special wet food breakfast, as sometimes he will try and assert his authority like that. However, that wasn’t the case at all — Oliver kept putting his paw on Sandy’s book to push it out of the way, so he could perhaps sneak some people food! The way Sandy phrased it, though, made it sound like Oliver was shaking Sandy down for food, in exchange for letting her read her book. "He was like, ‘You wanna read? You give mes your breakfasts.’"

I thought this was hilarious — the thought that Oliver was demanding "protection money" made me imagine him as a very small fedora-wearing gangster, spouting veiled threats like, "You know, it would be a real shame if some kind of wild animal tore up your book, eh?" And so, for the next few days, I called him "Little Gangster."

For the record, he’s behaved himself since then.

Fun By Proxy

A former coworker of mine passed along a link to a pretty good read — a "Let’s Play" thread going through Knights of the Old Republic II (a game produced by my former employer, Obsidian Entertainment). If you’re not familiar with the "Let’s Play" concept, it is essentially a running commentary (with screenshots or video) of a game playthrough. Good LPs are well-written, involve the audience in making key game decisions, and provide insight on aspects of a game that readers may not have experienced. The KOTOR2 thread mentioned has tons of detail about alternate paths through the game, content that was cut from the game, and story explanation. It’s extremely long, but worth reading if you’re interested in the game. There’s also a site, letsplayarchive.com, which reposts these sorts of threads.

This kind of discussion, along with the general popularity of gaming message boards, is something of a counterexample to a popular view of gamers, one which I most recently saw in a commercial. (I believe it was some sort of insurance commercial, but I could be mistaken.) The commercial’s message had something to do with making lifestyle changes — one scene showed a lone child, playing a videogame, in a nearly monochromatic home. The next shot showed the same kid outside playing basketball in the driveway with another kid, the frame being much more lively and colorful. There are two messages here: 1) exercise is better than sitting on the couch, and 2) playing videogames is a solitary, anti-social activity. I have absolutely no problems at all with the first message — however, the second is more than a bit misleading.

Why? Well, the act of playing a single-player game may be a solitary experience, but everybody loves to talk about games too. Whether it be discussing their exploits (AARs, or "after action reports"), talking strategy, aesthetics, or preferences, or just seeing what other people think about games, there’s no shortage of discussion out there. With that in mind, it seems to me that playing games is no less social than reading a book or listening to music, from a standpoint of encouraging interaction and sociability with others. Of course, nobody would insinuate those other activities were "poor lifestyle choices." Games just happen to be a convenient whipping boy for those looking for an easy way to communicate the idea of "wasted time."

Epiphany, Retirement

It’s been awhile since I last posted — I’ve been pretty busy in the interim but I’ll try to get back to a more regular posting schedule.

I realized the other day that the reason USB memory stick transfers were so slow on my machine was because my keyboard, a Microsoft Natural Pro, was probably a USB 1.1 device. Merely having it plugged into my machine would result in the USB 2.0 controller dropping down to a slower compatibility mode, which would also affect any other devices on the same bus — like a memory stick, external hard drive, or what have you.

I had difficulty finding information about my keyboard online — it was produced in 1999 and has been out of production for several years, as far as I can tell. I read online that the USB 2.0 spec was finalized in 2000, though, so I could infer that my keyboard didn’t support it. In the end, I decided to retire my keyboard, after about 7 years of ownership, even though it’s still working fine. My keyboard has survived several computer upgrades and a move across the state, but it bothered me that it was potentially slowing down other parts of the system.

Its replacement is the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 — I didn’t really consider many other brands, as I liked the layout of my previous keyboard, and the off-brand ones that I looked at seemed pretty flimsy or otherwise undesirable. So far my experience has been very positive — the additional angling provided by the removable shim underneath the keyboard feels pretty good, and the key action is a fair bit quieter than the old Natural Pro without sacrificing feel. My only complaint is that it seems like I have to press the ‘y’ key very hard — sometimes it misses a keypress — but that may be an acclimation issue rather than a technical fault.

Fire Joe Morgan

The name reminds me of Fire Pro Wrestling, but Fire Joe Morgan is actually a site whose focus is tearing apart shoddy baseball writing and reporting. The authors are of the sabermetric school of baseball thought (that is, guided by objective statistical analysis), and bristle at constantly being stereotyped by the old guard as stats nerds living in their parents’ basement. Joe Morgan is not their only target, mind you — he just happened to be a convenient way to make a catchy site name.

Even though my love for baseball has waned considerably in the last few years, I still find reading the site hilarious. If you have any inkling about sabermetrics, or just like to read cranky people ripping on stuff, definitely check it out.

Arsenal Home Finishers

I’ve been a bit remiss in not writing over the last week or so, so I’ll try to catch up on a few things. The Arsenal finished their home games with a pair against the Utah Flash and the Los Angeles D-Fenders, losing 107-101 to Utah but beating the D-Fenders 109-106 in a pretty thrilling overtime finish.

The loss to the Flash was a bit of a letdown, as the Arsenal were up by as many as 15, but couldn’t stop a furious rally down the stretch. After that game, I was worried that the Arsenal would be flat against the D-Fenders the next night, and the first quarter proved my fears were well-founded, with the D-Fenders jumping out to a 34-16 lead. The Arsenal clawed their way back, though, and crept ahead, keyed by a pretty decent night at the free throw line and a lack of turnovers. Overtime was where it was finally decided, at the free throw line. Dancin’ Marcus Campbell had a great game, finishing with 20 points and 23 boards, and, most surprisingly, shooting 80% from the free throw line.

Los Angeles wasted a great performance from Sean Banks, who scored 38 points, and somehow made 15-of-18 free throws despite having a horribly ugly, flat shot at the line. With that loss, they also fell behind the Idaho Stampede in the Western Division title race, and may miss out on their opportunity for a first-round bye in the playoffs. Perhaps my prediction of the Arsenal playing spoilers wasn’t so far from the mark — the Austin Toros, whom Anaheim took care of two weeks ago, still haven’t clinched their division yet.

The Arsenal finish the season on the road against the D-Fenders and then the lowly Bakersfield Jam, who have just barely eked into the double-digit wins category. I have to say that I’m sad that the season is almost over — I really enjoyed having the opportunity to go to almost all of the home games, and to see decent teams from a close vantage point. Fortunately for my basketball jones, the NBA playoffs this year are shaping up to be absolutely fantastic, and they’ll last a lot longer than the D-League playoffs…

NCAA Update

I won my Yahoo bracket handily, picking 46 out of 63 games correctly. I only had two mistakes in the regional finals, and from that point onwards, my picks were on the money.

This is a nice change from last year, when I did much worse. I find it interesting that the highest scoring brackets (all 5 of them) only racked up 175 points in total. This makes the million-dollar prize for picking all the winners correctly seem, in hindsight, a rather safe bet for Yahoo to make.

Nothing Is Secure By Default

My recent experiences in setting up another server and site have served as a reminder that, on the net, it seems like nothing is secure by default. FTP sends your credentials over the wire in plain text. Telnet, of course, isn’t secure for the same reasons. Most ISP mail providers don’t use SSL or secure authentication for their POP3/IMAP connections, which, again, means that your login credentials are insecure. Some web content management systems (like Drupal, by default) don’t deal with passwords in a non-SSL environment as securely as they should. (Using a challenge-response authentication mechanism is better than nothing, if you can’t use SSL.) Web publishing protocols like the Blogger, WordPress, and other APIs tend to send your password over the wire as plain text, as well — and if you’re using a connection such as a public wifi hotspot, you are definitely vulnerable. (It looks like the Atom Publishing Protocol may help resolve this issue, but this isn’t a viable option yet.)

Now, thankfully, there are secure alternatives for most of the activities described in the last paragraph. For example, you can use FTPS or SFTP to transfer files securely, or SSH as a replacement for Telnet (and as a way to tunnel almost anything securely). You can find plugins for insecure content management systems to make them more secure, or simply administer them via HTTPS.

However, when you don’t control the server-side of the equation, your options may be limited. My mail account with my ISP, for example, can only be accessed securely via their web mail interface — they don’t appear to support any of the standard POP3/IMAP security mechanisms, which is disappointing.

The most unfortunate thing about this situation is that you need to go to quite a bit of trouble to set all of these secure alternatives up, and it’s more effort than most users will put up with. It’s also not obvious that things are insecure in many cases — while web users are probably used to the “lock” graphic indicating a secure web page, there’s no similar convention for other programs like FTP and e-mail clients, and no warnings about insecure transfers. Unfortunately, it’s going to take some kind of massive industry-wide effort to really effect any change or move to secure protocols. The insecure defaults are deeply entrenched — so much so that it would be really difficult to get people to “fix” something that, to them, isn’t “broken.”

This Happened At My Old Workplace

The building sits right next to a freeway, protected only by a chain-link fence. The rear entrances to the building are connected to the parking lot by walkways that parallel the freeway. We would often speculate about the prospect of a car breaking through the fence and smashing into the building, which is part of the reason why I stopped using that exit and instead went out the front. Well, apparently today a car did bust through the fence, and was stopped only by the noble sacrifice of a nearby tree.  Pretty crazy.