The Jaguar's Blog

The Anticipation Builds

Skunkmanor! — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:44:09 GMT

I'm not sure if anyone will see this prior to the game, because I don't want to spam everyone again with email pointing to the blog, but I figured I'd update some information. Hopefully everyone has had a chance to read the player's guide by now and hopefully it raised some more questions.

First off, you don't have to choose the character traits listed there. You can be from anywhere in the world and have any reason to be there. Hopefully you have some idea of what class race you'll be playing and have worked out some of your basic character traits. Hopefully someone picked a cleric or has the alchemist profession.

I forgot to mention in the last post, but also hope it wasn't too important that I mentioned in advance: I don't allow evil aligned characters. It's my job to play the evil, not the player's.

I also keep getting questions about who all is part of the group so I figured I'd answer that here. Obviously there's me and Magen. We'll be joined by Joe and Debby Wager. They haven't played before, but not only did they both work for the The Leading Edge Magazine, Joe grew up in Thousand Oaks. So even though we didn't meet them until we moved into our current ward, we should have met them sooner. Dave Shelley, aka The Schnahz will be appearing shortly after his nose arrives. We also have my brother and sister-in-law, Bryce and Laura "Poozer" Bangerter coming in from Harriman for a special guest appearance. Charlie Payne will be up from Hurricane as often as he can, but won't be making it this Saturday.

Over a Year!

Skunkmanor! — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:37:16 GMT

Amazing.
It's not that I thought I'd use this blog a lot. It's that I'm amazed I left it up and running for so long. I'll be working on a new website for my gaming campaigns this week with my brother-in-law Dave, but for now, I figured I'd use this already working website to post the info on this weekend's game.

It's in the exciting world of the Pathfinder RPG. That name is a big disappointment. They obviously have plenty of creative talent over at Paizo Publishing right now and they choose a name that even a Japanese car manufacturer could come up with. Oh well. There's enough material in the stuff I'm reading to redeem them. I've heard it said that Pathfinder is Dungeons and Dragons 3.75. I disagree. It deserves the title of fourth edition much more than the current holder.

The first game this weekend is to help people get their characters started and to start the adventure. It's also to help all of us learn the Pathfinder system. Having never been very fluent with version 3, let alone 3.5, it's mostly new to me. I've been doing a lot of reading and studying and mental practice sessions to check balance, rotate the tires, etc. Combat is not my kid's father's combat system. It's more complicated: and more robust. I'm sure in the end we'll simplify some stuff, but to start with, we have to know what it is that needs to be simplified.

Since I'm way out of practice writing adventures, I'm wimping out and using a pre-fab. It's very good though and even includes a player's guide to help people get started: Council of Thieves Player's Guide. I've been reading and re-reading things to see not only how things are in that part of the world, but how things relate to other parts of the world. It's an interesting political setting. I hold to my belief in RPGs that nothing helps the PCs look more heroic than putting a very dark setting behind them and letting them shine. This adventure does that really well.

In addition to the information in the player's guide, the group might be interested to know that yes, the GM is allowing tiefling characters. I'm adjusting stats and abilities to fit the campaign. I'm also allowing aasinar (the celestial version of tieflings), but since the group already has one, I'll want to hear quite the back story on why I should allow two. Yes, someone already has their character ready. Magen is playing an aasinar ranger. Dave doesn't have his ready, but is thinking of playing a monk.

Some house rules to think about:
1. I don't restrict weapons by class usually. I don't allow exotic weapons unless you're from the region the weapon comes from, or use a feat to learn it. I will allow your rogue to carry around a two handed battle-axe, but I want to know WHY they carry it, despite the penalty I'll give on stealth checks. The only exception to my weapons rule is that monks are restricted exactly as outlined in the core rules.

2. There is no penalty to taking a profession skill. If your character wants to have a former profession as part of their background, they get one free point to spend on it. All additional points have to be spent as normal.

3. The feat table is a nice guideline for customizing your character, but isn't the end of that creativity. You can ask to add any feat you want for your character that you feel makes him or her unique. I'll work with you to balance the feat. For those that don't know what I'm talking about: don't worry. It will make sense when the time comes. Just don't be afraid to make up unique things about your character. Asking for a +1 one bonus to hit with the bow because they've been practicing archery since they could draw more than 5 pounds is perfectly acceptable.

4. I don't trust others to make a barbarian that balances out. I will allow the players to choose a barbarian,but be warned, I'll tear away abilities and strip down rage stuff in a heart beat if I think it's interfering with game balance. Only choose that class if you're able to not take me being a turd personally.

5. All GMs we'll have for Pathfinder so far will not be using the Vancian magic system outlined in the rules. This means that if it says something about memorizing specific spells in advance, we don't do that. You choose your spells as you cast them. You still can only cast the same number per day as it specifies. I've been doing that for a long time and never run into balance issues. This means that a sorcerer and a wizard are just different flavors of the same thing. There's enough difference though, that I'm leaving both classes in my campaign.

You won't need the rule books to play with the group. I have both the printed copy and PDF versions of the core rulebooks and I'm printing plenty of copies of necessary tables and stuff. You can get the main books either at Hastur's Games on State Street, or from Paizo directly here. I recommend getting the PDF from the site first to see if you want to fork out the money for the printed copies.

I totally recommend against getting the Campaign Setting book. I have the older one and might be picking up the newer one in May. Campaign books are needed only occasionally and it's pretty easy to pass a single copy around. I have the PDF of the Beastiary already and just print up the monsters I need. I almost recommend the PDF over the print edition.

I'll start pointing everyone to the blog when I get back from lunch. =) Hope this helps.

Customer Loyalty vs. a Clean Uninstall

Skunkmanor! — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:33:55 GMT

I've been working on a few of the machines around the house, specifically the ones that my wife and I use. I had been a really big fan of BitDefender AV for a couple of years. My brother-in-law had pointed me towards it as being low profile and low maintenance. v10 had been, but when I switched to Vista x64, v10 didn't support it. I contacted customer support and they nicely extended my subscription so that I wouldn't lose time while I waited for the 2008 version to come out

Well, 2008 was a little more intrusive, and a little more high maintenance. They took out my absolute favorite features: allowing you to shut down after a scan and place a desktop icon for a particular scan. That was great for putting the program on other people's machines and making an easy way for them to scan.

The 2009 version brought back the shut down after scan option, but also a lot of instability. Sometimes it just simply would not load properly and required a reboot. Checking their customer support area showed similar problems and an almost complete and total lack of assistance from the company on resolving the issues.

I was particuarly upset to see that their support regarding getting their anti-spam feature to work in Thunderbird, was to either switch to Outlook, or turn it off. The new parental controls they were touting only worked if the machine was on a standard account, otherwise blocked websites popped up a window asking if it should be directly added to the white list. I want my kids to be able to install programs and I don't want to have to set up a domain just to make is so that a program written by half-wits will function.

So the only option left was to uninstall BitDefender and put on something else. That's no big deal. In addition to the standard windows uninstall, BitDefender has a "hard" uninstall utility. I used both and made a shocking discovery.

I'm no programmer, or IT professional (as I'm often making sure everyone knows), but what it looks like is happening is two things. First off, they replaced some vital part of the network dlls in windows and didn't give me anyway to restore them properly. I noticed this because of numerous network errors. On my wife's machine a "Diagnose and Repair" always resulted in an unsolvable connection error, even if I was able to connect to the internet. On all the machine's involved, the Toleda driver that translates IPv4 to IPv6 was permanently disabled. While that's hardly a necessary driver, it's problem seemed to have been more of a sign of other problems than a symptom of the true problem.

Things didn't stop there though. It also looks like BitDefender used part of the Visual Studio 2005 redistributable, but without actually installing it. This made it so that an uninstall of BitDefender would break other programs that needed AND make it impossible to install it again for most people with my technical knowledge or below. I tried installs followed by uninstalls with and without registry sweeps. I tried copying registry entries from working installs to non-working installs. I even tried manual uninstalls etc. No dice.

So all of this lead to me having to do complete reinstalls on machines that had been newly setup in the last couple of weeks. If someone out there reading this happens to write code and also have the cluefullness of a chipmunk looking for seeds in winter, let me tell you something: Make sure your installs and uninstalls work before pawning them off on the public.

Giving up on Vista x64

Skunkmanor! — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:20:42 GMT

     Well, it's time to throw in the towel.
     I'm all for moving ahead with technology, and having the 64-bit version of Vista seemed like a good way to help technology make the next step: the one they've been putting off for about a decade. Well, they can have it. The next step is across a very slippery stone.
     I didn't know the exact cause of why Lord of the Rings Online was acting so sluggish on my machine. I assumed it was some problem with the game, because so had a lot of people. But one evening a few days ago while I was working on my son's machine, I noticed that his dual core Pentium was running the game faster than my quad-core AMD. Well that narrowed down the problem a bit, and while I admit I did think that the AMD vs Intel could be the culprit, I figured the more likely and easier to test out problem would be in the 32 bit vs. 64 bit arena.
     I wasn't disappointed. The problem was in the OS. I'm sure there's more technical ways to describe it, but I look at it like a dam with 32 openings across it versus one with 64. Now by theory, if the openings are the same size, you should be able to move more water through them in the same amount of time. What happens with some programs (and I'm not blaming Windoze here. Really. Well... maybe a little.) is that if you put enough water behind it to move past the 64 openings, and then clog even a few of them, you can end up with a big backlog in no time.
     I'm a fairly patient person. I remember a time when you even had to wait for games on the Commodore 64 to load up. Some of the really good ones took about five to ten minutes. And checking an old 5 1/4 inch disk could take hours. I don't mind if my word processor takes a little bit of time, or even if I have to wait a bit on a web page to load. Firefox usually gives up before I would have. But when I'm in game mode, it's got to be smooth, it's got to be quick, and not only does choppy graphics upset my stomach, but it also makes me want to play something else.
     So I did a quick experiment and changed my machine over to the 32-bit version of Windows. For those number crunchers that might be wondering, I'm running a Phenom 2.3 GigHz with 5 gig of memory (KIngston if you're a real connesiour), and a 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive (Seagate 400 gig). The video card is my weakest point, in my opinion, a KTX version of the GeForce 8600GT with 512 meg of memory. There's a few reasons I don't strongly recommend the brand, but that's not the subject for today.
    Highest graphics settings in the laggiest part of Lord of the Rings Online (West Bree), and the game hardly ever skipped a beat. I had worse stuttering in Ironforge near the auction house on a slightly slower machine in XP. So that made up my mind. I might have lost a few files in the change-over, but it was well worth it. That only left me with one other small problem: I'd need to switch over my wife's machine, and there's no way for me ever to know what she might really mind missing. Better to keep it all, and Vista won't do a 64x down to x86 "upgrade."
    I was smart though, see? I did a complete system backup first and then got the x86 version on the machine and went to restore the back-up (I'm not sure how I figured Windoze would know what would work in one environment versus the other, but it can be surprisingly smart at times. This wasn't one of those cases though.) Windoze said: "There's nothing on this disk." Oh crud! Nothing? As in, "This disk contains no data?" I just wiped the hard drive. Oh no. My wife is going to be livid.
    Now don't get the wrong impression here, my wife is a very nice person, and I have yet to find her limit with me. She's married to a crazy person and she knows it. But all her data? All of her homework for her pre-pharmacy classes? The house plans she likes to draw up? Her novel... oh that novel... the one that's she been working on for 10 years.... oh boy.... (I keep it backed up, but I was a little distraut when I was thinking this.)
     What did they say in those classes at VA? Yeah, breathe deep. If you get dizzy it's... it's... whoa... dizzy... what do you do for dizzy? Is there a pill for that? Paper bag... something to do with a paper bag. Our kids are out of the brown paper bag for lunch stage, but that didn't stop me from looking all over the computer room for a brown paper bag. Nevermind that we kept them in the third drawer down to the left of the stove. Lucky we didn't have any, or I'd have tried to inhale it.
      But there is something I read in a newspaper article awhile back and my mind was just out of joint enough that it was able to make a huge irrational leap to safety. The article talked about how soldiers who suffered from PTSD often had to learn to forgive: their enemies, their friends that let them down, themselves for letting their friends down. A lot of stress that's part of PTSD comes from holding onto things that are better off let go. Maybe I'll do a blog on that sometime, because it's not all related to the stressful event.
      The thought of that triggered the jump in my mind that I talked about though. I knew my wife would be upset at me, but I also knew that she would forgive me. I even knew that it didn't warrant a cold night for me, just maybe a quieter one than usual. And that calmed me enough that a more rational thought was able to hit me. "Can an x86 version of the OS read an x64 OS's backup?" The answer is no. It can't.

How to do the actual transfer:
      And if someone was reading this blog hoping for an answer to how to covert an x64 Vista to an x86 Vista, I'm sorry. The answer is in the story though. It's just subtle. You're not going to get a stable copy of what you had on the first try. It's difficult at best to determine what programs load things differently, so you have to go through a slow process to get it back. (A Windoze Easy Transfer will fail right off. Won't even let you try) The best way is to get a small second drive. There's a little computer shop called Messik's Computers near here that I go to and he sells a 250gig SATA Seagate (7200 rpm) for $65. Backup the users directory and Program Data to the second drive. This is usually about 99% of what you need as personal stuff off the drive. I'm assuming here that you know enough to be able to see the hidden files. Turning that and the stupid "hide known extensions" options off are among the first things I do on a new install.
      Next, do a complete PC backup to your extra drive. When that's complete, change the folder name by adding an .x64 to the end, so you know it's a backup of the x64 system. Blast your OS hard drive and then install the x86 version. When it's done installing, and after you've moved over your documents and pictures etc, do a complete PC backup again. Relabel the backup so you know which version it is. Windoze will nicely correct you if you get it wrong, but it's a little faster and less strenuous this way.
     Ok, now you're ready to start re-installing all your apps. If moving app data or program data over from the backup makes things unstable, change the last backups name, and then do a restore. The restore option comes from the install disk. Instead of installing, take the repair option and give it a moment to figure itself out, then it will give you an option to restore a complete PC backup.
     It's a little more tricky if you forgot to move some data over from the old install, but not too bad. First off, do a complete PC backup of your stable x86 installation, remove the .x86 extention you added, and then format the drive. Since Windows is sometimes hesitant to allow you to delete the OS drive, ou can do this by starting the x86 version of the install, formatting the hard drive and then aborting and running the x64 install. The reason for this awkward switching is because the x64 doesn't want to even think about installing on an x86 installation, you have to clear it first. and not only that, but the x86 version won't do an x64 restore.
     From there it's just a matter of moving over the data you need. You don't need to take another x64 backup, so just do the format using the x64 install and then abort and switch etc... Good luck, but I hope you never need to do this. Maybe in a few years though it will be helpful for doing the reverse and maybe by then Windoze 7 will have a real backup utility.

Working for Peanut.... er Programmers.

Skunkmanor! — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:04:14 GMT

Eventually a new company will be starting called "Blue Ruby Games." I'm working as an intinerate IT guy for it right now and helping network out new talent. I do it for the fun of it and because the nu... pean... er programmer behind it is a relation and long-time friend. He's working the actual programming issues and I just sit around and wait for myself to become useful.

There's somethings I've notice about working with programmers. In a lot of ways, they're just like other human beings. They like to feel respected and needed in their jobs. They like to be appreciated and have many ways that they are open to feeling that. If you say nice things to them, they work harder and faster. If you don't say nice things to them, they find ways to work softer and slower.

Unlike most human beings however, they speak a language all their own and learning to master it can take a while. In a process where you can't do the art, you can't do the programming, and you can't even do much in the way of design, you can easily find your niche by learning how to talk to the artists, programmers, and designers.

So far, that's where I fit in.

Right to Annonymity--Yeah Right....

Skunkmanor! — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:16:35 GMT

I already know there's been a lot said on the internet about how people can act like total 'tards if they feel like they have complete anonymity. But I wanted to do a blog entry on one of the annoying and one of the dangerous types.

Let my start by saying that there's no where in the United States Constitution that allows the right to complete and total anonnymity. That's a myth. I've been through there a few times, and just like the phrase, "separation of church and state" (a topic for another entry), there's no mention of that. Trying filing for taxes or buying a car without putting in your name and physical address if you're dumb enough to think there is. I'm not sure where the myth comes from, but let me give you a couple of examples of how people actually knowing who you are can change things.

The first has to do with actually knowing who a person is. I'm going to have to be fairly vague on this because while I don't believe the person has the right to annonymity, I do believe that a person has a right to privacy. Be sure to not confuse the two. It's a little like the difference to the right of free speech and the right to decide not to spend my money or time listening to someone else's right to free speech. It's a very important destinction.

In the various MMOs I play and have played, I came across someone that was known to be of the internet child-predator type. The company hosting the game claimed to have their hands tied because they had no hard evidence, but when you have about 50 customers screaming in rational fear for their children and about 100 more screaming out of fear because of what the other 50 know, you'd think there'd be more to be done.

I started gathering information. The person happened to have a web site that used Pay-Pal. I did a lot of talking and found the site. I won't go into details of what I did next because again, I don't want to encourage people to violate other's privacy, but I tracked down the actual name, email address and physical address of the offending party.

Then I sent one (that one, as in a single (1), and not at all related to sending multiple) email to the person. I didn't say much. I gave my name and some basic contact information, and let him know that I'd heard reports of some of his activities and that it concerned me. I signed off with his real name, address, and phone number.

He wasn't seen under that name on that game again.

Many people act diffently if they think you have no way of knowing who they are. This is well enough known that many schools and churches have banned masks as part of Halloween parties. There's also the type of person out there that acts differently because they think that they are in an environment where no one will challenge them.

This came up just a fews ago while I was playing Lord of the Rings Online. My wife and I had used a quest item to get a special mob ("monster") to spawn ("show up"). From out of nowhere this person came running up, and before I even target the monster, hit it once ("tapping" this is sometimes called. It makes it so that no one else can get credit for the kill) and took it down. They were about to leave when I mentioned that what they had done was pretty rude. And yes, I didn't word it any more harshly than that.

I was told that they were sorry, but they didn't know it was a quest mob and that they hadn't seen the two players there (one with bright red armour and bright orange hair.) I mentioned that the mob didn't appear in any other form anywhere in the area and the fact that even if my bright colors had been missed, my wife's character was wearing bright blue armor.

The person then got on my case for not excepting the apology. I told them that the apology was welcome and accepted, but the lame excuses weren't. Either someone was embarrassed by what their five-year old did while they were afk, or they thought they could get away with it without anyone saying anything.

I'm not saying that I'm immune to acting like a 'tard when people don't know I am, but I do like to think that I try to not roll downhill with the rest of it. I also encourage others to think a little bit about and try to do the same. It sure would change the internet if words like: troll, flamer, and ashatt, were removed from our vocabulary because they no longer described anything valid.

Hunting in the great IRCd jungle.

Skunkmanor! — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:57:38 GMT

I started working with web servers with Windows XP and then quickly moved to SuSE 10. After a couple of happy years in the Linux world, I took the opportunity to change over to Windows Server 2008 and haven't looked back... well at least not that often... well ok, only when stupid things force me to look back.

And today the big thing that has me looking back to the 'nix days is trying to find an IRCd program that runs on my server. And no, I'm not looking back with feelings of unbridled nostalgia. That red I'm seeing is no rose tint. Nope, I'm wondering when IRC is going to come out of the dark ages. I have some news for some open source people out there and that is: No one happily manually edits a 1000+ line configuration file anymore. I'm sure the coding process is hard, I know I can't do it, but you don't have to show off all the code in your configuration file. Get serious!

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for open source. There's some things that don't need a piece of the corporate pie and open source encourages sharing in a world where sharing is too often viewed as weak. Two of my all-time favorite utility type programs are open source: ISO Recorder and hMailServer. And as if marvels don't cease both of those were mostly written by one person each. Alex Feinman and Martin respectively. No, open source is good.

First I tried UnrealIRCd, which had worked pretty good with SuSE. I went out there and downloaded it and then did the install. After that the release notes pop up saying basically, that the code for UnrealIRCd is outdated and so they were starting a "new fork" on the code and would be working on a new version of IRCd called "InspIRCd" Yeah right... inspired... sure they are. I've seen people speak for a half-hour on the first Sunday of a month more "inspIRCd." Sheesh. Could have mentioned that before the install, like maybe on the downloads page?

So I uninstall the uninspired version and use the handy little .msi to install the inspired version. It asks at the end if I want to run the daemon and I think to myself, "Wow, that's slick if it can run already." Did they think that the install would autoconfigure the files for my system? Obviously not, because the first message I get as the daemon starts up is that there is no configuration file. It tells me I need to edit the files in the conf directory. Dummconf directory. A dialogue telling me that would have been more inspired than opening a program that can't possibly work.

So I start delving into the file. About half-way in there's actually a place that tells me that I need to comment out the next line, since they only put it there to force me to go through the configuration file. I'm laughing on the inside. Using my inspiring "inside voice." That's where I closed the text editor, told it not to bother saving and uninstalled the uninspired mess... part II.

Chat would be nice to have, but I don't need it. I can't code it. I'm patient though. I'll keep looking. And hoping. Maybe if I click my heels together three time and repeat "There's no chat on the homepage." I'll wake up magically on a homepage with chat installed.

Darn. It didn't work. Maybe if I paint my sneakers red or something...

Working the Issues

Skunkmanor! — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:32:05 GMT

Today's main goal on the server is getting things installed so that I can use a blog. Not that I think anyone would care much about what I can do with the server, but it gives me something to do and can serve as a handy reminder of things that I might have planned on. And hey, everyone can use a springboard for ideas and thoughts every now and again.

This entry will be really short, since it's only purpose really is to set up an entry that isn't the default entry that comes with DasBlog2. There actually weren't many issues to work. Two files needed to be edited manually, permissions needed to be sent and stuff copied and pasted into the right places. We'll see how the blog works out and if I actually am interested in it.

Today's jobs also include putting in the attic ladder, and setting up a bb to support Dave's ideas for Blue Ruby Games. I'm also still keeping up on making sure the new video cards work well. I'm a little paranoid about this KFA2 manufacturer. While the got pretty good reviews at TigerDirect.com they're new enough and the language translation at their website is poor enough, that I'll be a little queasy about it for a few more weeks. I did re-arrange the cards in all the PCs so that the PCI-E is one slot away from anything else.

It's kind of fun talking to myself. I might actually keep this up.