Saturday, May 31, 2008

Fire Behind Me


I started smelling smoke through my home office window, then saw flashlights in the yard below me, closed all my windows and ran out to open the gates for the police, told them it was the neighbors place behind me. The police went back to investigate while I stayed in the fresh air. They told the firetrucks where to go, who then had at it. Sounds of saws cutting into the garage roof. Well, it use to be a garage. My landlady just told me that a family was living in it. Not tonight. Finally came back upstairs and found my camera in time to see them mopping up. Sorry folk, no flame pictures for you. I'm going to need to air out my apartment once the smoke from next door settles down, yuck.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

In the Public Domain


I've been lurking on http://www.librivox.org/ for a couple of years now, enjoying an old book now and then from their ever growing catalog. Well, last night I finally contributed by reading in their weekly poetry reading. You can hear it all who recorded this weeks poem in this thread here. The professionalism some put into this free audio book hobby is amazing. I am grateful that they also encourage amatuers like me to contribute. Check them out, you may find something worth listening to, or even participate in reading for.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Have a Safe Memorial Day

Hug a serviceman today. Though, not from behind, or you'll be thrown to the mat and have your life threatened.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

But How?

Hey Uncle Proto,
How did you geocache in the olden days?
With a compass and a paper map, that's how!
And we liked it!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Mariah

And then, the winds came. The winds stayed for the first five innings of Wednesday night's game. Took a little washed out video with my cheap camera. Notice how the flags are just streaming in flat out. Debris was flying everywhere at times. Grounds crew kept it as nice as they could between innings.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Ran Me Off

Woke up starting to blame my lack of poker playing to gypsies and armenians gambling in the micro and low limit games and not taking them seriously enough to play the game. Then I started to rationalize not playing by buying another set of baseball season tickets and a continue making payments on a year and a half old car [my favorite toy ever!], but none of this explains the waning interest in poker. To get the feeling waxing again, I've started re-reading the books I have, again watching the dvds, and to remember the passion I had a few years ago for this game. The passion was ruined by my lack of understanding of the other people playing the game. The game isn't about cards and chips, but people. I may even try to do some of the things that Daniel has done, and not play the cards, but ignore them, ignore the chips, and react and provoke actions, of the people. Some of that, but I want to start playing again, and win a few more tournaments.

Friday, May 16, 2008

I am Iron Man

Cool flick. A nice story line, similar to most other superhero story lines, yet just enough of a twist to keep me interested even through the added scene after the credits finish rolling. I think this movie has made enough money that a sequel is coming. And I hope it does just as well. Now, where is my torch, hammer, and power source, it's time to build another suit...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Wandering Week


Listening to the Dodgers lose five straight is never fun. Though there were moments of fun. Streak finally broken in Wisconsin this evening. One more game there on Thursday afternoon before moving on. Enough of baseball for today. Took mom out to a nice restaurant last Sunday afternoon and got current on family history. We are flung all over California, with some in Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and soon New Mexico. Arizona was so forty/fifty years ago for any of us. Southern California Electric is now billing a tiered system. If you use a nominal amount, which I do even with all these computers because no air conditioning, one stays in tier one. Use a lot of electricity in a month, and you could get a bill that includes tier five rates. Here in the LA basin it is not so bad. In the San Fernando Valley, it gets very hot, very quickly, and longer to get to tier two to make it 'fair'. Fair is a concept that eludes me. Whenever a large organization, like a utility, tries to be 'fair' someone is going to feel put upon. I haven't heard a major outcry yet, but this next month should be a good test as we start having triple digit days and very cool and breezy evenings. If I ever get my air conditioner rolled out of the closet and hooked up, I may jump straight to tier three rates and have a lot of fun figuring out my bill. It might even be over thirty bucks a month! Sure was lucky to find a place upstairs with windows on all four sides. If only it was closer to the beach, like fifteen miles closer. Or to the mountains. No, it would only add to my commute four point five days a week. And paying fifty bucks for twelve gallons of ninety one octane is about half-way to my point of consideration of an alternate method of transportation. In the mean time, the cooper is still my favorite toy.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Weekly Fun





Another fun week so far at Dodger Stadium. No more whining about being in last place as for the last two weeks they've been the hottest team in baseball and worked their way up to 2nd in the west. Just took two out of three from the Metropolitans and pushed them from tied for 2nd in the east to tied for 3rd. Poor Mets. They'll do better elsewhere. Today was a day game, so I took a vacation day from work and enjoyed sleeping in late, and being served my brunch and brew all game long. Fun, fun, fun. Until we lost the game, but hey, it's not what's happening, it's who you are with, and I was with folk whose company I value. Just a few snaps above, one is a railroad map that I finished working on and uploaded to hooked gamers railroad site, two of them are folk playing the baseball video games on the club level of the stadium. Yes, they play those while the real game is going on. The second machine from the left had the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death blinking, so it wasn't working so well. Sometimes when I walkby, I may pull a trigger or two pitching and batting who knows who to who knows what. Today I snapped photos of those staying at it a bit longer than I do. The fourth picture shows last night in the parking lot where a helicopter with a search light [night sun] leading in a few police cars to break up twenty folk from having a post game tailgate. Too bad the story does not come out in my cheap little camera's attempt at capturing it. I would get a new camera, maybe one with an optical zoom, if I knew I was going to use it more than once a month like this one. I take it with me a lot of places now, just haven't been using it. Maybe I'll break down and buy a cell phone that would do the work too, and send it to this site. Nay, it's the old circle. No cell phone, no girlfriend, no girlfriend, no cell phone needed.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Well, thanks for writing back, finally.

Grrr, the longest reply so far. Going to be tough to get this internet restriction lifted. Prohibition is just wrong, some see it, my senators do not.

Dear Mr. Dragon:

Thank you for contacting me regarding Internet gambling. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me on this important topic and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

There is no doubt that the Internet and related technologies have had a remarkable effect on the U.S. economy in recent years. The flow of commerce on the Internet has enhanced American industry's ability to distribute goods economically and efficiently. The continuing development of this industry in California has provided hundreds of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and I am committed to strengthening online commerce and preserving and expanding this vital job base.

While the advent of the Internet has been beneficial to American society, I believe the same cannot be said for Internet-based gambling. Internet gambling has become too easily accessible to minors, subject to fraud and criminal misuse, and too easily used as a tool to evade State gambling laws.

I understand your thoughts on internet gambling, and as you may be aware, I have supported legislation aimed at curbing Internet gambling during my tenure in the Senate. For example, I supported the SAFE Port Act, passed into law as Public Law 109-347, which included (as Title VIII) the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Please know that I have read your letter with interest and value your thoughts. Additionally, I appreciate hearing your concerns that such restrictions are vague for poker players, and your support for legislation to exempt online poker from the Act. While we do not necessarily agree on this particular topic, be assured that I will certainly keep your thoughts in mind should this issue come before me during the 110th Congress.

Again, thank you for your letter. I hop you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. Best regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein

United States Senator

Thursday, May 1, 2008

2GB memory limit crash when more RAM is available

This fix is for those of you that have applications that crash under Vista 32 or 64 a lot. The crashes are apparently due to a 32-bit application without LARGEADDRESSAWARE being able to see and use more then 2 GB on any Microsoft OS (32 or 64 bit). This doesn't mean the OS can't see more memory. The operating system sees it fine, the application runs into trouble when it sees it and freaks out. The program was designed to only see 2gb total, so it doesn't matter if it is in x32 or x64, the program is restricted. Since the OS and other resources eat up that same memory, it will crash. Why doesn't it happen under XP?It does, just not as often because XP uses less ram as a whole. Vista eats up more resources and exploits the problem better.Here is the fix. Hours of web trolling helped mad_boris find this. You actually have to manually patch your own software. Whichever primary executable you are using is the one to fix. Crashes are now very very rare after applying this fix. This method actually patches your main executable with the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag so it will address more memory. Why application developers have not see this as a problem, I don't know.
Mad_Boris uploaded this:
http://files.filefront.com/3GB_enabler2zip/;6791818;/fileinfo.html
In this zip file, you should find editbin.exe
Don't forget to backup your original applicationName.exe file (for future patch compatibility)FOR VISTA 32 and 64 "Vista 32 users may have to apply second step as well."
1. Copy your applicationName.exe from your application folder to your editbin "3gb_enabler2 unzipped" folder.
2. Open an Elevated Command Prompt with Administrator Privileges.
3. Change to the folder where you unzipped editbin.exe.
4a. type "editbin.exe /LARGEADDRESSAWARE applicationName.exe" without the quotes and rename it to applicationName_copy.exe
EXTRA STEP VISTA 32: x64 users do not have to do this at all as x64 has no problems giving 4gb+ ram to 32 bit apps.. however.. Vista 32 users may.
4b. type "BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 2900" without the quotes. NOTE: System boards vary. if 2900 does not work try 3072 bcdedit.exe is in thewindows\system32 folder.
5. Copy the patched applicationName_copy.exe back to your /bin directory.
6. You can either change existing shortcuts, or create a shortcut to point to the patched executable applicationName_copy.exe, or rename the original toapplicationName_orginal.exe and the copy to back to applicationName.exe Whichever method is better for you.
The clue is '32-bit applications' without LARGEADDRESSAWARE in their file header can't see and use more then 2 GB on any Microsoft OS (32 or 64 bit). Does not depend on how many GB you have installed. Some applications and games on max settings use more then 1.5 GB memory. Vista after starting up uses about 500 MB. 1.5 GB + 500 MB = 2 GB - max memory limit has been reached and will cause crash when your application tries to use more memory. With LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag your '32-bit application, can now use 3 GB on 32 bit Windows and 4 GB on 64 bit Windows. It is more then enough for most application max settings to handle in 2008.