its.moo

Rebuilding Server

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:33:00 +0000

Rebuilding my server here at the house this weekend (if I have time), thinking about putting Ubuntu Server on there instead of Gentoo. I don't really know why, I've just been fairly pleased with managing the Ubuntu virtual machines lately and are growing more accustomed to them over Gentoo. Am I losing my inner-geek?

To go with this currently deciding between continuing with my existing vserver setup, or swapping over to using KVM. This would give me some more flexibility in the supported virtual machines, but if I'm only messing with linux virtual servers, does it really benefit me at all to go with KVM?

Once I get all of this situated and get things configured and up and running reliably, I'm going to go ahead and move the remaining web hosting sites over to my internal server and close out my current colocation box. I see no reason to keep spending money when I have this server sitting here.

New Super Mario Bros Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:10:00 +0000

The New Super Mario Bros Wii has been released, and so far.. thumbs up. The gameplay is everything you expect from the Super Mario Bros franchise, along with the pure fun and enjoyment that comes with it.

There are a couple new costumes for Mario and friends to put on, some new control aspects using the Wiimote, although they are not overused. It's refreshing to see a quality 2d Super Mario Bros return to the big screen, having had the pleasure of this title originally being released on the Nintendo DS and loving it.

The multi player takes a minute to get used to since the characters can't go through each other; you are certain to bump each other off ledges and have some general confusion when trying to get through the levels, but you learn to work with this quick enough and you will get some great laughs in the process.

The worlds you encounter definitely follow the themes from the franchise, pulling areas in from all the previous titles, including the often forgotten Super Mario Bros 2. The world map follows the pattern of Super Mario World to navigate between Worlds and Maps, working to conquer the Fortress and then the Caste for each World. There are mini-games to earn power ups spread through the maps, as well as hidden warp zones (one of which I uncovered by accident earlier).

The one big feature missing that would make this title really impress would be online multi player. Interacting with the other players seems to add so much to this title, although I doubt it would be quite the same without being in the same room anyway, at least without head sets, but it would still add a lot to the game over playing single player mode.

All in all, one of my favorite games in a long time. If you are a fan of the classics, pick up your copy today along with a copy of Punch Out, it's well worth it. Being an obsessive 2d Super Mario fan, I would pick up a Wii just for this game... just like I did the DS. Fortunately for my pocket, I already had a Wii.

The Ultmate Figher - One Soldier Left

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Welcome to The Ultimate Figher - One Soldier Left

The episode started things off as usual, recapping the previous fight. Things ended Matt getting a winded victory over .., both fighters barely able to stand. After witnessing the close decision loss, and feeling things should have gone to a third round, Rampage threw a temper tantrum tearing up a flimsy door in the facility.

After the fight the teams head back to the house for some recouperation time so they can work towards the last remaining fight of this round, Team Rampage's Marcus "Big Baby" Jones vs Michael Wessel. While at the house that night, Matt goes straight to bed, not feeling very well. Wes Sims was the lone individual that felt that celebration was in order, not wanting to allow Matt to be the "Party Pooper" decides to check in on him, and go ahead and spray the room down with silly string before allowing him to return to his slumber. From the looks of things, Matt might need more time to recover than the show's schedule is going to allow.

On with the training of both the final participants for the qualifier round, Rampage is looking to push Marcus hard, his last soldier for a Rampage victory. The team wants to get respect back, and Marcus is their only chance. In interviews Marcus details how he is taking advantage of being the final fight, working and learning the entire time leading up to the fight. He is quite confident he can pull out a win.. the win.. Rampage's win.

The next morning Marcus is awaken by a "scorpian-spider-laviathon" creature and screams like a girl. He completely panics, screams of terror, completely immobilized being held captive by the creature. Justen Wren comes to Marcus' aid to kill the spider, but doesn't let him off the hook that easily. Justen teases Big Baby a bit before setting it aside until the rest of the crew is around, at which time the carcass gets thrown on Marcus who jumps up running from the room, cries of terror that can be heard for miles!

Back in his proper mind set, we get some background on Marcus. He speaks of his football background, and confesses that although he was able to get in and get some play time due to his natural physical abilities, he never was engulfed into football the way he is with MMA. He says he is really able to excel because he eats, lives and breathes MMA, 24/7. Even with this, Rampage is seen questioning whether the big giddy puppy has the fighter instinct.

Michael's background and frame of mind is a bit different than Marcus. Michael is here trying for his big shot, sacrificing personal time with his wife during a difficult battle with cancer. He speaks of the daily cards and letters that he sends to help show his support for her, and wishes he could be there for her. This would seem to me to be a pretty large distraction when it comes to proper focus leading up to a fight with a short training schedule.

Michael continues to train hard, and with the game plan wants to stand up and bang with Big Baby, let him feel the thunder. Rashad emphasizes no take-downs, keep it standing and let him feel it. Michael has UFC fight experience which should give him an edge in the fight, as long as he sticks to the strategy. He talks of Marcus being a "massive, massive man" but seems intent on putting that aside to "beat the shit out of him."

In the next round of prankster antics some sketches are posted of Marcus, with various comic-style speech bubbles coming from him, wanting a new coach among other comical remarks. At the bottom of one of the sketches Michael added "sucks balls."

When Marcus finds the sketches on the window in the house, he is less than pleased. Big Baby overreacts a bit to the prank, yelling that what if his family were watching and sees that.. his kids. Most of the house agrees, he's overreacting and needs to learn to take a joke.

It's almost fight time for the week, so we get things rolling by gathering up both teams at the gym to do weigh-ins. You can't bring the groups together without some witty banter amongst the teams, and this opportunity is no exception. Things get started with Rampage and Roy Nelson pulling up their shirts and doing a bellly-slap against each other. This was NOT a pretty sight.

Rampage decide to mess around a bit with "Titties" again, that seems to be the thing to do. At first they were cutting up together and playing around a bit, but when Rampage reached up and grabbed a handful of man-boob, it was clear he had crossed the line. The gloves were off as Titties stared down Rampage, an iminent throw down only avoided by teammates coming to break things up. This was looking pretty serious. The actual weigh-in was quick, Michael weighing in at 260 and Marcus putting up a strong 262.

Now it's fight time, let's get things rolling! Things look like they will start out slow with some feeling out, but Michael goes right after Marcus throwing some strong punches. Marcus is getting hit with a few, but nothing that appears to really be a concern. Once Big Baby gets a feel for the power coming at him, he goes on in with his arms extended to minimize damage, "Mummy Style" as labeled during Rampage's recap, and gets ahold of Michael.

Unable to get some range to throw some shots, Michael goes for a trip. As Marcus starts to fall, he rolls things over so that he lands on top, in a half guard. Eager to get off the ground, Michael decided to give up his back and try to get to his feet quickly. Unfortunately Marcus was too quick, grabbing on to Michael and slowly and loosely going for a rear naked choke. The hold was rather loose, allowing Michael to just roll over into Marcus' full guard.

Things looked to be in a rather safe position for Michael, he should be able to possibly work the ground a bit, or stand things back up. It looks like Michael is doing just this, making an effort to stand up out of the full guard and Marcus flips the leg over and yanks hard into an arm bar. Michael taps almost instantly, appearing to have possibly broken his arm with the snap of Marcus' extension.

Marcus "Big Baby" Jones.. the Last Soldier. Victorious, breaking Team Rampage's cherry and moving to the next round of fights. Team Rashad finishes with a 7-1 record going into the quarter final match-ups.

After interviewing each of the fighters with both coaches and Dana present, it's time for the quarterfinal match-ups to be announced.

Roy v Justin
Brandon v John
James v Matt
Marcus v Darrell

To close out the show, following the match-up announcements, Rashad asks if Team Rampage wants to work with the guys on his team, help everyone out with some good training and making things easier with him having 7 of his 8 fights working towards their own matches. Team Rampage stands strong, led by Kimbo's stance that he is going to support his coach and his team. Once Kimbo speaks, the sheep follow suit.. They'll all help train Marcus and back what little remains of their team.

Looks like Marcus and Team Rampage have a bit of a leg-up for the remainder of the fights as far as training diversity. If this wasn't enough, Dana throws Rampage a bone and lets him pick his fight for the quarterfinals. Marcus might go a bit further than expected when you take this into consideration.

And now we wait for next week...

Damn Yankees

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:48:00 +0000

Those damn Yankees. I know, we've heard it before. We will hear it again. Tonight they should finish out the 2009 World Series with the Evil Empire blowing away the Phillys. The only silver lining here is hey, you too can go place a bet and take home some cash out of it. ;) Rest assured this will not make anyone but you feel any better about it, but hey.. take your winnings and save a puppy or something. Help bring balance to the universe.

Other smart bets for tonight are the Falcons +12 and the over 55 bets for Monday Night Football, and for NBA fans pick up the Bobcats -7 and again the over on that game as well.

Hell, if we go 5-0 on the bets go ahead and save two puppies. ;)

titans win one

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:30:00 +0000

Vince Young led the Tennessee Titans to their first victory of the season (1-6) today against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Young had a great outing, although he did not win the game alone. He led as a leader should, and helped to inspire this team to perform at it's best. Welcome back Vince, hopefully you will continue to develop and improve over the upcoming weeks.

Chris Johnson also earns a mention in his performance today, setting a franchise record with 228 rushing yards, leading to a pair of touchdowns. Congrats to Chris and the offensive line for helping make it happen.

In other NFL news, the Broncos faced a defeat at the hands of murderous Ray Ray and his fellow Ravens, leaving only the Indianapolis Colts undefeated this season. Brett Favre lead the Vikings to victory to sweep the Packers this season (and covering the points total spread, tks Brett), the Giants floundered (damn it Ely, didn't win much less cover the spread.. that one is going to hurt) against the Eagles, Chargers took a victory over the Raiders (but didn't cover), and goodness the Bears decided to play this week (who knew?!?).

Overall a great Sunday of NFL action, now it's time to get back to work.

nfl sunday week 8

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:23:00 +0000

Welcome to Week 8 of the 2009 NFL Season. Some exciting matchups this week for sure.

You've already read my stance on VY coming out and showing what he can do. We'll see how that goes. With any luck the Titans can break the downward spiral they are currently in.

Other games to keep an eye on, Brett Favre is returning to Green Bay with the Vikings in hopes of a repeat of the recent Monday Night Football performance. This should be another high scoring slug fest that shouldn't be missed. I've got my money on this one going over the 47 points.

The undefeated Broncos are headed to Ravens territory, and despite a 3-3 record the Ravens should not be taken lightly. This one will be a slug fest as the Ravens are notorious over the years for stepping up and handing teams their first defeat.

For people paying attention to the spread I'm taking the Giants, Cowboys and Chargers all to overtake their respective matchups. We'll see how that goes. ;)

One hour until kick off, if you don't have the Red Zone Channel, GET IT. There's no better way to take in the entirety of Sunday's games.

witches angels and a penguin too

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:57:00 +0000

I hope everyone had a pleasant Halloween full of ghosts and goblins, perhaps a haunted house and of course plenty of treats to keep you kickin" for a few days.

I took Kylie over to my sister's house to spend the evening with her three cousins. A pleasant evening, though a bit chilly (shocked, I know.. at the end of October it turns out it gets cold, who knew?). We walked around some houses in their neighborhood, then went to visit a friend of theirs that lives a few miles away. Overall an easy going evening that I can't complain about.

Now, back to work. Things to do, little time to do it. Let's get to it.

fedors return

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:48:00 +0000

We are now one week away from the return of Fedor. This will be the first time Fedor appears in a cage, and more importantly the first time for the national broadcast audience on CBS.

Fedor has a celebrated history as the best in the world amongst heavyweights in the MMA genre. Few will dispute this claim, though more and more are becoming skeptical that he is still deserving of this pristine ranking. It has been quite some time since Fedor faced an opponent that people consider to be in their prime, with most of his recent encounters being ex-champions that are no longer in the UFC that may or may not be representative of the level of fighting they put forth when they were the champions.

When Affliction folded their MMA promotion aspirations and Fedor was given the opportunity to seek out a contract with another organization, many hoped to finally see Fedor step in and measure up against the top talent that the UFC heavyweight division has to offer. Fedor did not share this same desire. Putting the best interest of M1 Global promotions company Fedor has a part ownership in (tongue in cheek rumored to be a front for the russian mafia) ahead of his own legacy, Fedor signed with Strikeforce who agreed to hand over a piece of the pie, something the UFC refused to do. This was a great disappointment for many, with the heavyweight division of Strikeforce severely lacking any real talent.

So now the time has come, and Fedor will have his first title defense in Strikefore against Brett Rogers. Saturday November 7th we will see how Fedor performs against the undefeated Rogers, though I don't think many consider him real competition.

Is this a real fight for Fedor? I don't think so... but I will still tune in and there will be some hope inside me that Rogers has a good day and catches Fedor with his guard down. ;) You never know...

the return of VY

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:29:00 +0000

The Tennessee Titans have had a dismal start to this season, currently starting at 0-6. The time has come to make a change. Do I blame Collins for being a bad QB? No, I most certainly do not. Collins has served this team well over the past couple years, and I do not feel that Collins lost those six games single handed. Collins is a consistent QB that is more than capable of getting the job done. Sometimes that is not enough.

Vince Young, although less of a consistent QB than Collins, has a playmaker ability that Collins has never displayed, and this playmaker ability has the potential to ignite the spark in every player on his team, both offense and defense. This is what the Titans need right now to get back on the path to victory. Will it happen? Only time will tell.

I certainly hope we see the potential unleashed when VY takes the reigns of the 2009 Titans this Sunday.

halloween 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:13:00 +0000

Welcome to Halloween 2009 :) No, I'm not planning on doing anything special this year. Sarah is out of town at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, and unless I dig one of my old costumes out of the closet, I don't have anything to wear. Who knows, we'll see how the day turns out. Kylie will be putting her witch costume on again, and either going around locally or joining her cousins.

Today I'll be spending some time working on a project I need to finish for work. Hopefully that won't tie up too much of my day, and I can leave some to finish up after the game tomorrow if necessary.

Well, on with it... cya

welcome home

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:35:00 +0000

A quick welcome home, just got back from a weekend retreat to the great city of Las Vegas with a group of friends. That was one crazy weekend I don't think any of us will ever forget.

Back to reality, working hard trying to finish up some code changes and adapting myself to the new architecture of the project I'm working on. This product was pretty much a complete rewrite, using a custom window architecture based upon extjs, ajax calls to the orchestration layer, and soap/rest calls to the backend systems. Taking a bit of an adjustment to get caught up to speed as I had to jump into the deep end without any documentation on what they've done so far, and little to no documentation on what I needed to accomplish. Oh dear.

I got quite a bit done yesterday and today, making some good progress on getting the hang of how they want to do things. Should hopefully have these changes wrapped up after my girl goes to bed tonight, or possibly tomorrow if necessary.

catching up

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:30:00 +0000

wow been quite a while, almost forgot this blog was here. mostly just been posting on twitter (which auto-posts to facebook).

not much new to talk about i guess, just a lot going on in life and trying to stay ahead of it all. :) keeps me on my toes.

meh, more later if i figure i want to keep this thing up. we'll see.

penguino

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:47:00 +0000

Things have been pretty crazy lately. I just wanted to take a moment and step back and remark about something that brings me to ease. Penguin Origami. ;) Enjoy.

h3 is here

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:22:00 +0000

One week ago Halo 3 was released for the Xbox360. You might recall my post a while back during the beta about how much fun I had playing it. Well, the final release does not disappoint. I can't say much for the campaign mode, single or multiplayer version, as that's not really what I enjoy. What I can say is that I am having a great deal of fun with various different types of matchups and objective matches with 8-12 people playing, making up two teams. Quite enjoyable.

If you have a 360, go rent the game and check it out. You'll get hooked.

caught in the act

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:05:00 +0000

I'm sure by now everyone that would care has heard all about how the Patriots got busted video taping the defensive signals used by an opposing team during a game. The NFL came down pretty heavy on them ($750k in fines and one or two draft picks depending on how well the Patriots finish up this year) but I'm a bit confused.

When the news first broke, I heard in conjunction with the claims of the confiscated camera and reported video taping that the NFL detected some "frequency irregularities" during the game. The NFL monitors frequency usage during the game to ensure everyone is playing fair in that respect, and there were apparently some issues.

When taking that into consideration.. by itself taping of the signals is not very useful in this game itself, although one could find it somewhat useful if orchistrated just perfectly for a halftime adjustment.. combined with illegal communications with the players on the field, there could be an incredible advantage gained.

Unfortunately in the past week with every sports show talking about it since, nobody has mentioned the frequency usage issues any further.

What happened to it? That's HUGE? Did it not happen? Was it misreported? Or was it played down by the NFL to punish the patriots in their own way while maintaining public image?

glasses

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:54:00 +0000

My glasses arrived yesterday. Gotta love it. Ok, maybe you don't. But I do. Thank you eBay ;)

Oh, and what the hell is wrong with me that I feel the need to buy useless pacman crap? Damn it lol :)

comcast sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:12:00 +0000

You know what pisses me off? Things like this. Comcast has begun cutting off service of people who download too much, saying those users are being unfair to other users of the service.

Hello!?! You sell an internet service, where you limit speeds to a certain amount. You don't even gurantee those speeds. A user should have the right to use as much of that alloted speed as they can, as much as they want. If you aren't happy with how much they are able to use it, then scale back the download speeds and stop playing the marketing game. You got yourself into the mess trying to beat everyone else with claims of higher speed downloads and all that. You started it Comcast. It's not like it matters anyway, they only download excessively around 20 days on average per month, to account for the ever present modem resets and other downtime Comcast customers are forced to deal with.

When I moved into my new house, I brought over my ClearWire wireless internet, and signed up for DirecTV. I had reservations.. concerns over whether or not Halo 3 will play cleanly over this wireless connection. I had reservations over whether I wanted DirecTV and either have to pay extra to have high def at every TV, or go with comcast where I can get high def boxes for the same lease fee I'm paying for standard boxes with DirecTV. Those reservations are gone. Comcast is crap. Always has been. Always will be as long as they keep thinking like this.

Oh, and I *love* the fact that Comcast is about to be in a real mess when the law suits start coming in for Comcast's efforts to battle torrent downloads. I didn't say illegal torrent downloads, as they don't distinguish between legal torrents and illegal torrents. They have been forging packets causing problems with transmissions of torrent downloads in an effort to slow down torrent downloads. Turns out, forging packets in that manner is QUITE illegal in this country. They could have just dropped the packets, and that's fine. But instead to cause a real mess they decided to started forging packets. Bad Comcast. I really hope that one comes back to bite you.

Once again, if you aren't happy with what people are using all your precious bandwidth for, stop increasing your limits for marketing purposes, only to circumvent people who actually try to use what you advertise.

bourne again

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:13:00 +0000

Went to see Bourne Ultimatum today, and it was a pretty good movie. A bit slow at times during the movie, but overall it was a good movie, well worth the cost of admission if you found the previous two bourne flicks enjoyable.

return of the nine

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:55:00 +0000

The Nine has returned to ABC (thanks to Sherri for pointing it out to me, as it would have gone unnoticed) and man am I happy!

This show is absolutely amazing. It is REALLY good, and I have no idea why it was not able to maintain ratings enough to warrant keeping it on the air.

There have been two episodes so far since the return, and I think we expect four more before it's gone again, but still. What a great show.

Check it out if you haven't already. I think every episode so far can be streamed from the ABC web site, or if you are into torrents/xvid, so be it.

back to the boro

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:55:00 +0000

We are back from our vacation, back in the boro. Had a wonderful week, and although I hate to see it end, it sure is comforting to be back home.

fishing fun

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:24:00 +0000

Went fishing in the gulf and had a great time. Had to throw quite a few back, but man we had a blast! ;) A few more pics available here.

Well, the time has come to head back to Tennessee. A great trip this year, and we'll see if we can't top it next year somehow. See everyone soon.

slingshot

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:46:00 +0000

Headed to Florida for a little bit of family relaxation in the sun, should be a great time.. but what I'm REALLY looking forward to is hoping to find a slingshot. I rode one of these with my sister back in Gatlinburg quite a few years ago.. and would really like to ride one again. Very cool ride if you ever get a chance to check one out.

Planning to go out for some deep sea fishing while down there, which should be pretty awesome. Very excited about that too, just not quite as much as the slingshot. ;)

Gotta have priorities, that's all I'm sayin...

deathly hallows

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:59:00 +0000

The time has finally arrived, the final book in the harry potter series finally released. A great story, JK Rowling has done the book justice for sure.

If you haven't read the other books yet, get at it. It's a fantastic series for most any age.

I won't post any spoilers here, don't want to ruin it for anyone, but just know that the story is awesome from start to finish. Once you start reading this one, you absolutely cannot put it down. Make sure you wait until you have a day or two to spend without moving, stuck with your nose in the book.

halo is back

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Thu, 24 May 2007 04:26:00 +0000

halo is back folks. a long time ago a company bought by microsoft brought us halo on the xbox. wow. that was one hell of a game, but there was just one problem. the sequel sucked.

yes, that's right folks. i said it. so what. :) i didn't like the sequel, halo 2, and even people that play the game religiously will tell you it just didn't have the feel and appeal as the first game.

bungie has just started beta testing xbox live multiplayer action for halo 3, and i must say they've brought back the feel and the fun of the original. a great game, and i'll keep playing until the beta ends on jun 10th, and then i'll be one of the first in line to pick up the final version come september 25th.

i'm not even that good.. but i'm trying to clean up my game and get a it better. :) a really fun game, you should check it out if you can.

1000 words

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:58:00 +0000

words: may exemption miscommunication sonic red robin pam

A new feature I'm going to post periodically. Pick a few words that are related to your day, head over to google search, and find a pic that catches your eye in the results. How does it relate? Who the hell knows. :)