I An Be Wiitahded
December 30, 2008
Bea’s Mom couldn’t have known the full extent of what she was doing when she bought a Wii. Classic case of good intentions gone awry.
I spent a good part of the evening tonight doing two things: reading Neil Stephenson’s Anathem
Holy Crap. Part of my right arm is sore from the Duels, but damn is it fun – it’s your traditional Mortal Kombat / Street Fighter style, but in a less 2d environment, and you lightsaber movements are controlled by your wiimote. The wiimote even makes the lightsaber sounds we nerds (and regular people, too) love. And I have to hand it to Nintendo, this is the funniest commercial I’ve seen in a while.
Mario Kart is terribly fun too – and when Bea’s 3 year old sister comes over, she can even play it (about as well as one would expect, but hey – she’s 3).
As for Dr. Mario, need I say more! Wii friends, buy it! it’s 8 damn dollars! Drop me a line, we’ll play online!
If you have a Wii and want my console code, drop me a comment here, and I’ll send it to the email you enter in the appropriate comment field. Jonah, I’m lookin’ at you!
Adventures in Friendly-Fire
December 23, 2008
Last night was another fun campaign of Left 4 Dead with M.Roman (Demotros), W.Curry (Squillis), and Curry’s brother (BaczandeR). We ran through the Death Toll campaign in just under and hour and a half, and luckily everyone had a voice setup going, so we could talk throughout. This morning I even went so far as to create a group for those of us who play together, and named it Left 4 Yo Moms. Helllllooooooo fifth grade!
Anyways, the kicker of last night’s game was a bit of ‘life imitating art’ at the very very end of the campaign. Three of us are on the rescue boat, ready to head out to sea and safety and Roman was making his way, fighting through the horde of zombies. We are of course, laying down cover fire to make it easier for him – this is a team effort, right?
Well, tell that to Curry – he apparently dealt Roman a crippling blow by shooting him ( at that point, you’re firing wildly, it happens ). Usually, you’d just take some damage, but when your health is low enough, you’ll end up lying on the ground, incapacitated but still able to shoot. I’m sure we would have gone back to get him, had we the chance – the boat just took off.
The funny part is that Rooster Teeth – the madmen behind Red vs. Blue – apparently had foreseen this outcome, and gave us this:
Department of Redundancy Department
December 12, 2008
I got a call (well, a text, really) this morning, prompting me to hurriedly run out of my house and head to the office. My linux server, the workhorse, the reliable one, was apparently offline. Suck.
I get there, and while it is powered up, it is absolutely unresponsive. Might as well had been off. So, I powercycle it, and up it boots. Unfortunately on the front of the case is a orange blinky light. As it turns out, one of the two Ghostbusters-esque power supplies (PSU) (hooray, redundancy!) is dead. Boo, hiss.
Because there are two PSUs in the rig, it just pulls all the power from the other, good, PSU. That’s all fine and dandy, unless there is a power hiccup.
“But wait!”, I hear you cry, “What about UPSes? Don’t you have battery backups?” Very good point, young reader. I indeed do have UPSes. Two APC Smart UPS 1000s, to be exact. And to be extra redundant, one PSU from each server is connected to each battery, instead of each server getting its own dedicated battery. This way, if a UPS fails during an outage, one battery can still provide power to both servers.
Back to the power hiccup. Apparently, one of the UPSes died recently. Not a biggie, right? That’s why I mixed the power sources. Normally, it would not be a big deal, unless THE REMAINING GOOD PSU IS PLUGGED INTO THE BAD UPS!
Yeah. So, in the interest of visual simplicity, the setup is below:
GREEN = Power, battery backup.
ORANGE = Power, no battery backup.
RED = Dead
