The personal website for Stephen Toulouse

Recipe File: Pan Seared Duck Breast with Ducky Hominy Grits

stepto@stepto.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:20:17 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Pan Seared Duck Breast with Ducky Hominy Grits

Body:

Duck in any great quantity is bad for you. But ever since The Fantastic Mr. Fox, combined with the Christmas dinner from A Christmas Story, I’ve been enamored with the bird in its various ways of preparation. Properly prepared, duck breast can be one of the most amazing experiences you’ve ever had with a red meat bird. It’s like the anti-ostrich in terms of health benefits. The closest thing I can compare it to is prime steak, especially when it’s done leg confit or seared breast.

This recipe we’ll be doing pan seared breast, medium rare.

Ingredients:

4 six ounce Duck Breasts, fat and skin attached
1 tablespoon course sea salt
3 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 cup white onion, minced
2 tablespoons garlic, minced
1/4 cup white wine

Grits:

1 cup regular grits (not instant)
1 teaspoon sea salt
4 cups water
5 teaspoons Duck fat (Rendered from duck breasts above)

Using a serrated knife, score the fat side of the duck breasts deeply crossways. When done there should be 2 or 3 deep cut X shapes on the fat side of the breasts. Lightly dust the fat side in pepper and sea salt but leave at least half of each available. Flip the breasts over and coat the other side in the remaining sea salt and pepper.

Bring the four cups water to a boil in a deep pan. Add in slowly the one cup of grits. Let boil/simmer for 30 minutes.

While that’s going, combine the onion, garlic and wine into a shallow frying pan. Cook at medium heat until most of the wine has boiled off and the garlic and onion are soft. At just the moment where the wine is still liquid in the pan and the other ingredients are soft, place the breasts in fat side down on medium heat still. There should be immediate sizzle when the fat is placed. Tend carefully for 6 minutes as the fat renders and shrinks. The red side of the breast should become a deeper red and bloody, and the breasts should shrink noticeably in size. That’s ok. Carefully watch because as the fat renders it will deepen the oil in the pan and you have to be careful not to let it brown. While this is going on, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

After six minutes, flip the breasts to the meat side and cook in the oil for 4 minutes. Once done, remove the breasts and set in a roasting pan.

Take the rendered duck fat, should be roughly 5 teaspoons worth (discard the rest) and beat it slowly into the grits until they are done.

Put the duck breasts in the oven, fat side up, for six minutes.

Remove the duck breasts from the oven and slice into half inch thick slices with the fat attached. Color should be that of medium rare steak. Nice and juicy red in the center. Serve with a dollop of the duck fat grits on the side and a nice green salad.

Enjoy!

Category: Recipe

Published: 11/1/2009 8:20 PM

Modified: 11/1/2009 8:20 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

A Geekster’s Paradise Part 4: On Hungarian Phrase Books

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:14:08 GMT

Title: A Geekster’s Paradise Part 4: On Hungarian Phrase Books

Body:

I couldn’t believe my luck at finding the original Wing Commander Tiger’s Claw, and the Robosport install sheet.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when you stare into the wormhole, the wormhole totally makes eye contact then talks to its friend for a sec then makes eye contact again and then you are all “crap does that mean I should talk to it or what?” then it talks to the friend again then totally gives you a full-on stare and you are all like “ok I will make my move” and you head to it, but then the wormhole completely acts like it never looked at you at all and you panic and stammer,

“There’s…uh…hey. How…I mean…uh…can you…isn't it…uh…wow who knew Mrs. Kintzeg would be the dance chaperone.”

Then you realize the wormhole’s friend is totally giving you the adoring eyes hey, wow she’s hot and it’s an 80’s teen comedy and you realize you liked her all along.

Yeah, that’s when I discovered this:

Now, you have to remember, I’m old. I’m like, really old. My age from first digit added with the second equals 10. FOR ONLY THE THIRD TIME IN MY LIFE. And despite my deep, deep steeping in where this book came from, I totally was all “wtf is this” and opened it and realized I liked her all along:

Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the PC was an outstanding bridge from a comedy troupe to a PC game. Back then, the bar for achieving such a crossover that worked was lower, because the amount of people you had to spend in resources to create An Incredible Game Experience (TM) was lower than the amount of people you had to dedicate to Make Something The Fans Will Love (TM). Today, it's pretty much the inverse. If I wanted to create Big Bang Theory: The Game, I would have to spend so much money on the game part that the humor of the original source would get diluted.

In this case, the game chose to specialize on a particular facet of the Monty Python universe: Terry Gilliam’s animation. This was a platformer set entirely in the world of the show’s animation. Even the copy protection was integrated into the show, as you had to choose between types of cheese from the phrase book.

You ended up controlling D.P. Gumby through levels containing all manner of Pythonesque obstacles (Think parrots. Vikings. One (or more) Spanish Inquisitions, and thank god, Spam) all in the Gilliam style, which translated surprisingly well to the 256 palette of MS-DOS based VGA games.

The best part was at the end of each level you threw up what you collected into a huge pit (note, those words have never been typed together.) If you did ok you got a part of your mind in reward. And in bonus rounds (featuring the ministry of pointless arguments) you could lower your score significantly.

Oh, did I mention that in this game, the lower your score, the better? You start out at 1 billion points and count down.

When I opened that phrase book and was stupidly going “what is this?” I both failed and scored in geekdom.

Then Lady in Red started playing, I saw it for what it was, and we slow danced. And I totally rocked the “take her arm part” at the opening with the “ask her to dance” part.

Category: Nostalgia

Published: 10/28/2009 9:14 PM

Modified: 10/28/2009 9:19 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

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A Geekster's Paradise Part 2: The Wheatoning

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:45:50 GMT

Title: A Geekster's Paradise Part 2: The Wheatoning

Body:

I will shortly continue my exploration of classic early 1990's game manuals...shortly. But in the words of Stephen Hawking: You folks gotta' getcha' summa' 'dis right here*.

So, I'd been waiting for tonight for a while. This evening the LA Kings were battling the Dallas Stars at the same time that Wil Wheaton's episode of Big Bang Theory was airing on CBS while he was stuck at w00tstock and wow if this sentence was any longer we could market it as a penis extender.

I had prepared Rochto for the battle royale that was going to be the hockey match tweeting, because Wil and I had created a fun sort of back and forth on Twitter for our various teams.

But in the mean time, three things happened. I got caught in a vortex of work banning miscreants, and Wil got caught up in a vortex of how awesome it must be to get to hang out with Adam Savage and Paul and Storm and also be on TV at the same time. And lastly, The Dallas Stars got pummeled, nay *batted about* by the LA Kings.

That's not to say that I am (I'm not) as most Firefly fans would put it, BITTER. Because in this life we all have our moments which are wonderful. Mine tends to happen every day when I protect the Xbox LIVE service from what I affectionately call "poopheads." I am indeed, fortunate in my work.

But to get back to the point, during tonight's episode of Big Bang Theory (a show that I delight in holding close to my geek vest) I was forced to share my treasure with Rochto, an avowed Wil Wheaton fan.

"This is silly" was her judgment.

"Wait," I said, knowing more than I should about the show, "you don't understand. When the guy starts making fun of his opponent in a card based game like that using Wrath of Khan quotes, that guy is totally me"

Her stare was cold, her words, cutting:

"Yeah I got that. He kinda made me think that when he said the card game was 'Kha-an.'"

Not only did Wil Wheaton's LA Kings destroy my Stars this evening, Big Bang Theory's...theories...caused my wife to slice my geek heart to the very...bone?

The crushing moment was when I realized, my grandmother still alive is my Meemaw, however there's no tea party like Wil’s nana's tea party. **

Wheaton had won. Geek Wise, Hockey Wise, everything wise. So I made sure I paid special attention to his gamertag. Oh sure he says "Don't be a dick", but does he practice, what he preaches?***

*In fairness I only ever heard Hawking say that one time.

** No, really, you gotta see the episode to get that.

*** yeah he does. Damn it.

Category: misc

Published: 10/20/2009 4:45 PM

Modified: 10/28/2009 8:33 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

A Geekster's Paradise Part 3

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:43:08 GMT

Title: A Geekster's Paradise Part 3

Body:

Underneath the Tiger’s Claw in the Box was this:

Early 16-bit Windows gaming was a leap forward in what you had to do to get it to run, but also a big step backward in terms of graphical quality. Windows 3.1 abstracted a lot of what hardware could do through virtual device drivers. This had a benefit in multiple programs could use the hardware at the same time, as opposed to MS-DOS based programs which had to run one at a time due to their exclusive hardware access.

So because MS-DOS got direct access to things like the Video card, you could have high performance, great looking games. But Windows was often relegated to whatever your Video driver color depth ran at (usually 16, sometimes 256 colors) and a much lower performance capability. An analogy to all of this technobabble is that a minivan is optimized to get a group of people somewhere, while a Ducati is optimized to getting one person there, awesomely.

This meant the vast majority of 16-bit Windows games were turn based strategy games, and one of my favorites was Robosport.

When I brought up my treasure trove of game manuals to E and Major Nelson and got to Robotsport, E actually squeed when I mentioned it.

“I remember that!” He said, “you had to pick the right robots and program them to beat each level. “

This is what made the game endless hours of fun. Graphically it was very simple, but the play mechanics had tons of combinations. You basically had 5 types of robots, and you program them to take actions within the isometric view of the “arena” to take out the enemy robots. At the beginning of each turn you survey the overall layout of the arena. Things we take for granted in turn based play or real time strategy games today were available in Robosport by programming your robots. You would program their path, stance, guard, shoot, attack, rescue, etc.

It was also the first game I’m aware of for Windows that had cross platform Multiplay. You could play over a modem with friends running Robosport on MacOS or Amiga.

I spent many hours playing Robosport, naming my robot teams (I always used names and themes from Silent Running, and delighted in using the quote “Poor Louie god bless him; he's not with us anymore” when the bot named Louie got killed.)

One last note about this particular manual. Go back and look at the picture of it. Notice the first line of the Installation section: “Please make backup copies of your Robosport disks. Really. You want to do this.” Ahhh those were the days.

Category: Nostalgia

Published: 10/21/2009 10:43 AM

Modified: 10/28/2009 8:32 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

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A Geekster’s Paradise: Part 1

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:44:25 GMT

Title: A Geekster’s Paradise: Part 1

Body:

You never know when the wormhole is going to hit. One minute you’re just clearing some space in a closet, the next you’re 18 and waiting patiently for an Emerson 16mhz 80286 with 3 megs of ram to finish booting MSDOS 5.0 so you can patiently fiddle with its onboard expanded memory card TSR to open up just the right amount of memory to load Wing Commander with the expanded memory graphics that gave you…a 16x16 pixel 4 frame animation of your pilot’s hand on the fighter’s joystick.

I turned down chicks for that shit man. I turned down keggers for that shit man.

Slowly, Rochelle and I have been getting around to getting rid of crap from our last move, nearly eight years ago. For us, this is progress. Impatient to go get my Eddie on in Guitar Hero: Van Halen, I tore open an old box and heard the ever familiar sound of the DS9 wormhole and fell through.

You see, back when physical games were shipped they came in insanely oversized boxes. You could *always* judge a game’s quality by the weight of its box. That meant it had a thick manual, lots of disks (note to the children reading, not “discs”, “disks”) and probably some goodies inside too like maybe a cloth map if it was a dungeon crawler or ship blueprints if you were playing a space shooter. There’s no other way to say it people, when you opened a AAA title PC game in 1990, the first smell you smelled was paper. Not plastic.

Wing Commander came with blueprints AND a special magazine called “Claw Marks”, after the enemy you fought in the game, the Kilrathi.

Man, the Kilrathi. Blatantly ripped off of Niven’s Kzinti, the denizens of Kilrah were a worthy, epic enemy in the silver age of PC gaming. A warlike Feline race, their ships had a wicked claw motif and the game had a great differentiation of the fighter classes such that you knew you were ok fighting Dralthi class fighters in certain Confederation ships, but if you got caught without a ton of Spiculum IR missles or at least some Dart Dumbfire missiles in a messy Jalthi furball then—By the way there are two types of people reading this right now, the first is nodding and in their own wormhole. The second type are wondering what the fuck I am talking about. This next pic is for the first type.

I opened the Claw Marks and here’s what was inside:

That’s right. The Secret Missions 2 install sheet. You remember, the missions where you got to fly a captured Dralthi. When you got that mission, which is an epic stealth/space furball firefight, you marked your life into two epochs: Before virtual pixilated slightly choppily rendered 16 color incredible epic 1 year old mythos mission, and after virtual pixilated slightly choppily rendered 16 color incredible epic 1 year old mythos mission.

I still remember my first night actually playing Wing Commander. I had bought the game without owning a computer to play it on. Now you see why the manual and blueprints were so important to me. I poured over those blueprints. I studied every single word and hint in the Claw Marks magazine. I was like Luke on the vaporator farm, I had the yearn and the fire. I just needed Uncle Owen to get the hardware to work to LET ME JOIN UP. I knew my Mass Driver cannons from my lasers. I knew my Pilum Friend or Foe missiles from my Javelin heat seekers.

Luckily my friend Rick had his 286 based PC. Unfortunately I was home for the summer from my first year at college, and Rick was doing summer RA duty along with my friend Jason. So after a month of owning this epic title I squared away enough time from the restaurants I was working at to drive down to San Marcos (a three hour trip) for a weekend. Rick unfortunately had to work almost the entire time but he gave Jason and I the key to his room.

There we huddled over a 13 inch .55mm dot pitch CRT monitor. Chain smoking cigarettes and downing Captain Morgan’s or Canadian Hunter cut with Dr. Pepper while we played.

Wing Commander was one of the first games to feature something called a branching plot line. This was a brilliant innovation because it kept you playing even though you might be failing in the game. Wing Commander was basically a space fight simulator that tried to recreate the Star Wars in-cockpit space fight experiences in an entirely new plotline. So it had two paths. A winning path and a losing path. Each one had a unique plotline. If you won enough and lost enough you could see maybe two thirds of both, but to really see everything you had to win everything and lose everything.

This took Jason and I mere minutes to figure out.

A secondary characteristic of the game was that as the game progressed, win or lose you got to fly newer, more advanced models of space fighters.

Thus was born the opportunity for drunken hilarity.

Jason and I decided immediately we would get to experience the entire losing plot by ejecting at the opening of every mission, thereby automatically losing the mission and triggering another losing plotline cut scene. After doing this 15 times and getting awarded a newer, nicer fighter every 5 missions or so we began to drunkenly get excited about how each new fighter was not more advanced in its handling or weapons load out, but in the speed and luxury of its eject mechanism.

As we gleefully pissed the future of the Terran Confederation into the wind we noted how clearly the Rapier’s eject mechanism was ruddy and primitive but far more robust than the Hornet’s. While the top of the line fighters the Raptor and Scimitar offered an unparalleled experience with their high-end comfort and overall view of space once ejected.

We eventually watched the bloody beheadings of our pilots in the Chengdu system. The terrible aftermath of the loss at Hell’s kitchen, and the final losing cinematic that left us a bit unsettled that as proud officers in the Confederation we’d just spent the evening getting progressively more shitfaced while bailing out of humanity’s last opportunity to stop the horrible Kilrathi threat and the genocide and enslavement of mankind.

Sobering up, we poured over the blueprints again, knowing the path of the missions, and spent the entire night playing through the winning path, starting over when we lost, because we’d already seen those missions more or less. Those of you in the know will agree the less said about Brimstone, the better.

I found many other game manuals tonight as well. So this is first of a series. But don’t worry, we’ll make it through it all if it hairlip’s Admiral Tolwyn.

Category: Nostalgia

Published: 10/15/2009 10:44 PM

Modified: 10/15/2009 11:28 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

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Stepto.com, now with Facebook and Twitter Integration

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:11:09 GMT

Title: Stepto.com, now with Facebook and Twitter Integration

Body:

I’m on a bit of a hacking high for a moment so bear with me.

For, well ever since I moved to Seattle more or less, my site has been based off of Windows SharePoint Services using its blog template. On the plus side, it’s extremely easy to set up a database centered blog with dynamic pages and such and things. The downside is that to customize it you have to do all manner of BATSHITINSANE stuff. Recent versions have made things easier and easier and I only expect that to continue with SharePoint 2010.

I’ve never been terribly pleased with the comment ability on the blog. I could have set it up like a lot of blogs, requiring a unique registration, but that would force people to remember yet another password and have yet another silo’d account just to post here. So I allowed anonymous comments on the blog, which has basically been more or less ok. However between pranksters, Internet drama inciters, and most recently, comment spammers, I finally cast about for a real solution.

Enter Disqus.

While it doesn’t directly support SharePoint, Disqus is a drop-in comment technology that allows social media integration with a variety of blog solutions, and wow did that just sound like some moronic web 2.0 buzzword speak.

By dropping in some webparts and haxx0ring the gibson, I was able to fully integrate Disqus’s universal blog code into SharePoint's blog template.

So, this means several things.

First off, all the old comments have been removed and archived. The two comment systems are incompatible. So basically it will now look like no one has ever commented on my blog. That’s not censorship or anything, just a necessary evil to move to the new system.

To now post a comment on the blog, you must have one of the following:

A Disqus account
An OpenID
A Twitter account
A Facebook account

If you don’t have these, the comment system will help you now create one.

There will no longer be any blanket anonymous posts on the blog.

Sure, you can create a new Twitter or Disqus account for being a troublemaker, but I can throttle a lot of that stuff and even ban words or users without having to close the system down or move to moderation only. This solution is so much better than captcha’s or any of that stuff, and you don’t have to remember some unique username or credentials just for my site.

For you privacy people, using Facebook or Twitter means that you must allow Facebook or Twitter to accept connections from Disqus (NOT Stepto.com, I will have no way of viewing or messing with any credentials, another attractive part of being able to integrate the sites like this). Also be warned that using those accounts to post here on Stepto.com will mean that your “username” displayed will be your Facebook name (usually your real name)or Twitter username.

As a bonus, with Twitter and Facebook you will be able to cross post a comment to those sites if you so choose, although that is off by default.

I had to do a lot of kludgy xml editing using trial and error to get it all to work so my next post will be a tutorial on how to integrate Disqus into a Sharepoint blog for the Disqus folks to reference. There’s still some things to do, I’m not sure I like the themes and color schemes of the Disqus stuff so I will be tailoring that more to the site’s theme. But overall I am really pleased.

Anyways, this is all a longwinded way of saying, give the new comment system a spin!

Category: administrivia

Published: 10/15/2009 1:10 PM

Modified: 10/15/2009 1:11 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Where geeks abide…

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:31:50 GMT

Title: Where geeks abide…

Body:

From an internal thread at Microsoft, properly redacted. Read from the bottom up:

From: [Microsoft Employee 3]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store... what's in the box?

Open it & see …

[REDACTED]
From: [Microsoft Employee 2]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:47 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion List]
Subject: RE: Elite at Company Store... what's in the box?

You don’t want to know…
[REDACTED]

From: [Microsoft Employee 1]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 3:42 PM
To: [An Internal Xbox Discussion Alias]
Subject: Elite at Company Store... what's in the box?

What comes bundled with this console? Controllers, cables, games?
Thanks

[REDACTED]

I love where I work.

Category: Xbox

Published: 10/7/2009 10:31 PM

Modified: 10/7/2009 10:32 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

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Living la vida…Local.

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:45:41 GMT

Title: Living la vida…Local.

Body:

Rochelle and I are fortunate enough to live not just in the Pacific Northwest, but also in one of the richest farming areas in the region. Our little town, Duvall, is situated in the Snoqualmie river valley. It struck me, not to long ago, that being able to live in a place so beautiful might have other benefits once I realized how many farms there were around here. The local farms and farmer’s markets are fantastic and we’ve grown used to local fresh vegetables and fruit on the table. As I thought more about it, I realized there was more here than met the eye.

In short, I realized I was being a fucking idiot for buying my steak at Safeway.

About most things I’m a pinko commie liberal. But while I agree that meat is murder, the truth is that it’s tasty, tasty murder.

So we popped for a freezer and switched to all local foods, from fish to meat to everything. We just bought a half a cow from a local farm, and I got several fresh trout and an entire wild caught king salmon (25 pounder!). The freezer?

We’re set.

The white packages are basically my cow, who I named “Tasty” while it was alive. Tasty was a Red Angus who lived his life wandering around the river valley eating what he was meant to eat: grass. It also means he was a normal sized Red Angus and half of him represented about 140 pounds of meat. Having enjoyed some of Tasty, I’m mystified now why people advertise corn-fed meat. I never knew what I was missing. Now I know that all corn does is create a bland, fat-filled cut of beef. One that’s really not in any way good for you unless you only eat 2 ounces of it.

I can’t say enough how much better natural grass-fed beef tastes. The first night Rochelle and I had T-bones. Granted it’s more difficult to cook grass-fed beef because it has practically no fat so it goes from steak to jerky in 30 seconds of overcooking. But the flavor of those steaks was amazing. It’s lean and what fat exists is far healthier Omega 3 laced fat.

Plus, since it wasn’t a gargantua corn cow each T-Bone was about 8-10 ounces in size. To get that in a corn cow you have to have the T-Bone sliced by the micron. These were an inch thick. Enough for a filling meal but not so much that you are really overeating.

Total cost for Tasty? $3.50 a pound, and that included the cow, butchering, aging, wrapping and freezing.

I think everyone’s experienced how much better fresh local fruit and vegetables are over the mass produced big aggro stuff. I had no idea how much better local eggs, meat, and milk is for you, and how much better it tastes.

So if you’re lucky enough to live in a farming area, try investigating some local sources for meat. It tastes better, you support local small farms, and it’s better for you.

Oh and if you live near me and the zombie apocalypse happens, we’re probably the spot you want to apply for admission to. Bring an essential skill or scotch please.

Category: misc

Published: 10/4/2009 1:45 PM

Modified: 10/4/2009 1:45 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

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Recipe File: Fried Green Tomatillo

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:26:13 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Fried Green Tomatillo

Body:

I love making fried or stewed green tomatoes. I grew up with them and have always had a huge love of their tangy, almost artichoke-like flavor. Properly made fried green tomatoes are firm and the batter crunchy; tangy with a hint of salt in the batter.

Rochto and I just recently went local for all our food. We bought a half a cow from a local farm, etc (I'll post on that later). A good friend of ours hooked us up with a huge box of local produce. Squash, herbs, spinach, broccoli, and some of the largest tomatillo I have ever seen. These were medium tomato sized. I've only ever used tomatillo in my restaurant cooking days for making a cream verde enchilada sauce. So I knew that they are extremely sour, the skin tends to be a bit thicker, and that I'd never seen one used in anything but a salsa or sauce. So I thought, I wonder if anyone's tried to fry them?

Come to find out several people had. I combined several recipes then added one special touch at the end that I think really made the dish perfect. This recipe, by the way, works fine for green tomatoes but I would leave off the last step since they are far less tangy and I think don't need a strong sugar flavor to offset it.

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh tomatillo, tennis ball size if you can get them, bigger than a golf ball if not.
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon Garlic Tabasco sauce
2 cups flour
1 shaker Cajun Choice Creole Seasoning
4 tablespoons light oil (for frying)
1 shaker full of Sugar in the Raw

One thing about tomatillo is that they look like small tomatoes in a paper like husk. When you remove the husk they are covered in a very sticky, hard to remove substance. So, you have to get rid of the stems and husks and wash them to remove the sticky. Depending on the size of the tomatillo try and cut them 1/4 inches thick.

In a separate dish combine the milk, egg, lemon, and Tabasco. Drop the slices of tomatillo into the mixture to soak for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a skillet, or if you want you can use a deep fryer. Try to use a neutral oil. In my opinion there’s enough flavor assertion here in all the ingredients that the oil shouldn’t impart any clear influence. An Enova or vegetable oil is fine. Having said that, with what we’re loading up here if you want to use an incredibly thick olive oil go for it if that’s your style.

Dredge each tomatillo slice in the flour until completely covered in dried flour. Set aside. Over the plate of breaded tomatillo shake *heavily* the shaker of Creole seasoning. Flip the slices then shake again. Each side should now be completely reddish colored from the paprika and cayenne in the seasoning.

Now, fry! Be very careful. The first couple I did rendered mushy pretty fast. You want the batter to brown but the slices to retain some bit of firmness. I found deep frying worked better than pan frying. When deep frying do roughly 90-120 seconds depending on the oil and temperature. Pan frying means you have to flip them to get even coverage and that resulted in overcooking without the batter firming up.

Once all the slices are fried place them on paper towels to soak up any excess oil and lightly pat dry.

And now for the last step, the step I think you might want to skip if you are doing regular fried green tomatoes and not tomatillo. The tomatillo are *super* tangy. So a bit of sweet to counteract the spice and salt of the batter is the right move. You have two choices. You can drizzle honey over the slices and run the risk of interfering with the crispiness of the batter, or dust both sides with a brown unrefined sugar like sugar in the raw.

The resultant slices are outstanding. You get the tart, artichoke flavor of the tomatillo, some bite and salt from the creole seasoning, and the delicious sweetness overall from the sugar/honey. I hope this turns out as good for you as it did for us.

Enjoy!

Category: Recipe

Published: 9/30/2009 8:26 PM

Modified: 9/30/2009 8:26 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Recipe File: Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:08:42 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Body:

[EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that Cookingforengineers.com ( a great site btw) has a good recipe for braising Brussels Sprouts without overcooking them.]

The Recipe file was getting a bit dormant and has been kind of meat centric lately so I thought I'd share a recipe for a much maligned dish.

I hated brussels sprouts as a kid, just absolutely hated them. Most people boil them or braise them and, in the process, overcook them. It's the overcooking that makes these delicious little cabbages taste and smell like the toes of an 80 year old homeless man. A shoeless one.

Properly prepared, brussels sprouts have a wonderful, almost nutty flavor that with this recipe, I've really grown to enjoy. So, without further delay:

1 pound fresh raw brussels sprouts

1/4 cup olive oil

sea salt

ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Carefully wash the brussels sprouts, making sure to pick off any lose, wilted, or yellow leaves. Next, carefully chop off the base of the sprouts. The "stalk" so to speak tends to be tough, and since we don't want to overcook these, it's better to trim it off.

Next, take the sprouts and toss them with the olive oil in a bowl, adding salt and pepper, make sure they get covered well. Ideally you want to add a lot of salt, it really brings out the natural flavor of the sprouts. Take the oiled sprouts and arrange them on a baking pan. Bake them at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

After twenty minutes or so, I like to then crank the oven up to broil and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes or so to ever so lightly brown or blacken the outer leaves. You really have to keep an eye on this though so you don't overcook the sprouts. If you start to get a strong sulfury smell, congratulations you're going to be eating hobo toes.

Take the sprouts out and let them cool for five minutes. If everything's done right you should have a crunchy but cooked treat with a mild sweet nutty flavor. They make a great side with steaks, or even just a light meal on their own.

Enjoy!

Published: 2/11/2008 11:52 AM

Modified: 9/27/2009 3:29 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Recipe File: EZPZ Bird Stuffing

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 01:36:18 GMT

Title: Recipe File: EZPZ Bird Stuffing

Body:

I don't usually stuff my birds (that's what she said...wait...what?) but when I do I've come up with a super simple, yet tasty stuffing that adds quite a bit to the flavor but doesn't take forever to make. This takes just seconds and is good for turkey, chicken, or even pheasant or a duck. (Watch out with the duck though because as the fat in the duck renders it creates a stuffing texture like that of the type of food people eat when they have their jaw wired shut)

Ingredients:

1 package New York Style Bagle Crisps (Sea Salt flavor)
1/4 cup dry white cooking wine
1 table spoon italian seasoning
1 garlic clove, crushed or minced fine
1/4 cup water (optional)

You can substitute Melba toast for bagle crisps but I find the bagle crisps have an absolutely outstanding texture once they soak up the fat of the bird. Much better than just regular bread crumbs.

Depending on the bird or how many leftovers you want really guides the volume of the liquids you want to add. When I cook chicken it's almost exclusively Rock Cornish Game Hen because its cheap, easy to cook, and yields an incredibly juicy breast (that's what she said...wait...what?) So these instructions are for stuffing a pheasant or game hen.

For a turkey or duck you want to use substantially more so I would say triple the ingredients, but again watch out with the duck.

Take 10-12 bagle crisps from the package and crush them in a bowl with your hands. Add in the white cooking wine and knead the mixture with your hands until you have a moist mixture that still has "chunks" about it. Drop in the italian seasoning and garlic and mix into the stuffing. If you find things are getting too dry (meaning there still is too much "crunch"), you can add water a bit at a time, but not too much! Stuffing that is too wet going into the bird tends to be too mushy once the roasting is done. Ideally you want something to soak up the tasty bird stock and fat. So we want something very spongy and a little springy to the touch, not pasty and sticky like dough. So you have to walk a fine line with adding moisture and mixing the ingredients. If its too wet, add more bagle crisps.

Now take the cornish hen or pheasant and lay it out on some foil. Next, you gotta stuff that bird! (That's what she said. yeah I think I got it that time) Just pack the fluffy stuffing into the bird. Don't worry about tying the legs, the trick with putting it on foil is to wrap it all around the bird such that the legs come together and are bound by the foil to keep the chest cavity closed)

Now roast the bird as normal.

Cornish hens and most Pheasants serve two or so, so the stuffing is just a nice compliment to go with rice or another side dish.

This recipe is designed for times when you want stuffing but want to make it yourself and not go with some over the top spice rich thing like stove top. Nothing against Stove Top or other brand stuffings, but they are a side unto themselves. Real stuffing takes its flavor and character from the juice of the bird.

Enjoy!

Published: 12/25/2008 5:29 PM

Modified: 9/27/2009 3:27 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Recipe File: Roasted Asparagus

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:05:54 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Roasted Asparagus

Body:

Continuing my effort to document how I cook stuff so I can remember how to make it consistantly here is another recipe I've started doing regularly.

Rochto and I are asparagus fiends. I always did mine the tried and true awesome way of a couple tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper in a saute dish and cook to where it's al dente and a beautiful bright green. Recently I got creative.

Ingredients:

1 pound long stalk green asparagus
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fig or vanilla or lavender infused sweet balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt

Not many people realize that you don't cook the whole asparagus stalk. I mean, you can if you want. But the bud down to the natural breakpoint is the good part. Take each stalk and grasping at the base of the bud's tip, and the other end, bend the stalk till it breaks. So do that for each stalk. If the stalks are super thin (my favorite actually) you can cheat and cut the top third or so off for cooking. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

In a shallow baking dish combine the olive oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar and asparagus. Toss everything so that the asparagus is evenly coated and laying relatively flat in the dish. Toss it in the oven for 12-15 minutes. At the 15 minute mark, take it out and toss the asparagus again to recoat everything, then crank the oven to broil >500 degrees and blast the asparagus for 3-4 minutes. This is going to heat the olive oil to splatter level so be careful when you tend to it. At the end the tips and parts of the stalk should be very lightly blackened. Remove, set aside and let cool.

You end up with a lightly crunchy texture but the exterior has an awesome roasted/salty/tangy/sweet flavor that accentuates the natural flavor of the asparagus. It's become my normal way to make it and it's awesome+1. Enjoy!

Published: 11/28/2008 11:00 PM

Modified: 9/27/2009 3:24 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Recipe File: Baby Spinach Salad and Hot Bacon Dressing

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:16:17 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Baby Spinach Salad and Hot Bacon Dressing

Body:

I made this a while ago and jotted the notes down on my iPhone then forgot about it. Hooray for randomly opening the notes app to make a note of something and seeing it!

This is a very simple recipe that creates a nice side salad, or even a meal if you want to top it with some grilled chicken breast. I prefer to use baby spinach simply because I like the smaller leaves and you don’t have to spend a lot of time washing or pulling the veins off. However the recipe works the same for normal spinach.

Lastly, this recipe uses Garlic Chives instead of normal onion chives for a light garlic flavor without having to manage a more potent garlic bulb or minced garlic.

Ingredients:

1 bag baby spinach, washed and dried
2 slices thick cut bacon (any type, but the thick cut part is important)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons sliced Garlic Chives
3 teaspoons white vinegar
4-5 large mushrooms, sliced
1 large egg
a pinch of sea salt

Hard boil the egg via your preferred method. While it’s boiling, combine the mushrooms and spinach into a large bowl and toss lightly to spread the mushrooms around.

Now the best part! Cook the bacon on medium to low heat in a small frying pan until the bacon is crisp. Make it crispier than you would normally make bacon for use by itself so that the fat renders. This will take longer than normal bacon because we’re using thick cut bacon, but the benefit to using thicker slices is that more fat will render into oil to comprise the base of our dressing. You have to manage the heat here because we don’t want the oil to brown and spatter. It’s time consuming, but important.

Once the bacon is nice and crisp, remove it and dice it up. Then add the bacon back to the oil along with the vinegar, sugar, Garlic Chives, and the pinch of salt. Bring the mixture to a boil/simmer for just a few minutes. While that’s going, slice up that boiled egg crossways into big chunks.

Portion out the spinach to your liking, topping it with diced boiled egg. Lastly, add the dressing to taste while it’s hot. You can alternatively leave the spinach in the big bowl and add the dressing and egg, tossing until the leaves are lightly coated and serve it that way.

You should end up with a nice, sweet/tangy/bacony dressing with just a hint of garlic.

Enjoy!

Category: Recipe

Published: 9/27/2009 3:16 PM

Modified: 9/27/2009 3:21 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Now I really feel like I’m in the Video Game Industry

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:18:51 GMT

Title: Now I really feel like I’m in the Video Game Industry

Body:

From the Halo3: ODST credits:

Published: 9/21/2009 5:18 PM

Modified: 9/21/2009 5:19 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/585/ODSTCredits_2_44C61A4E.png
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/585/ODSTCredits_thumb_44C61A4E.png

Transcript of my PAX talk

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:04:33 GMT

Title: Transcript of my PAX talk

Body:

[EDIT: Full audio is now posted at: http://bit.ly/LQsJj]

Today I had the incredible honor of delivering a talk on enforcement on the Xbox LIVE service to a rather large crowd at PAX. As the hour approached for the talk I got more and more nervous and freaked out, especially when I saw the huge line of people waiting to get in. Rochto asked me why I was so nervous, I’d given keynotes and speeches before to a variety of audiences. “Yes,” I replied, “But these people are here because gaming is their hobby, not because maybe they were sent by their company to learn new things.” Doing a con like PAX is completely different than a technical conference. In addition they had scheduled me in one of the large theaters and there were no big name talks going on at the same time. So I knew I had to bring the A game. Thankfully, apparently I did from the feedback so far.

I typically write out my speeches completely beforehand and memorize them. So the below is pretty much word for word what I said, I added in a couple of crowd reactions where they were prompted. In addition, Major Nelson will have the complete audio plus Q&A from the talk on his show tomorrow in easy to play MP3 format. Todd Bishop of TechFlash caught the opening of the talk on Video, and the transcript continues below.

It was probably my best day of the year. Pretty sure I’m gonna be grinning until xmas. The Q&A with the team went very well and I hope you enjoy the audio portion. I will post here as soon as it is available.

Thank you all for coming. Some administrivia first. This content has been rated T for Teen. Second, Microsoft encourages us to release our talks and blogs under a creative commons license, specifically this is being made available under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

To begin, a reading from the book of enforcement.

And it came to pass that the user did sign up for Xbox LIVE. And it was good. And the service smiled upon the user and did ask, "by what name shalt thou be known?"
But a shadow passed over the user's soul, and they were tempted. And they did indulge this temptation and entered a name unfit for the eyes of others. And the service spake forth, saying "Thy gamertag is not appropriate"
But the service was kind and forgiving and bade the user, "Please try another"
But the user had hardened their heart. and did carefully shroud their name in trickery. And it came to pass that O's became zeroes. The letter T became as a plus sign. Falsely clothed in their new finery, the service was fooled by the user and did bid them welcome with the customary ancient incantation "Poonhunter has signed into Xbox LIVE"
And the user did commit unspeakable acts of evil in their profile. The soul of those who looked upon the gaping maw of the user's Bio field were rent asunder, left as small and twitchy as a beaten purse dog.
Poonhunter did travel to the battlefields of 1943, where they intended to darken the hearts of their brethren. On the highest point of wake island they preached their dark fellowship aloud to their team mates, and poonhunter’s words became as stones.
Verily poonhunter intoned in great detail the false histories of their team mate's lineage. They bore false witness to the tendencies of the very wombs that begat them to lie with all manner of creatures, two legged, four legged, 8 legged, and even the very crops of the earth. And poonhunter did take the last plane on the carrier and then did use that plane to try and knock the team mates from the ship with the plane's wings. And in their dark blasphemy poonhunter proclaimed his team's habits of routinely spilling their seed upon the ground.
And the team did cry out in anguish to the sky "why, why is this douchebag on our team" And more than one among them did file a complaint.
But my children, the service heard.
A light shown in the void, and it blew over the game like a cool breeze and said "time to regulate".
And it came to pass that the service archangels swooped down, and poonhunter's mouth was suddenly silenced. Their words fell as inconsequential as a forgotten gas receipt at the pump. And suddenly the archangels did smite the user with such a force that the shockwave reached the other players, a shockwave that explained itself as simply as it was effective: "Poonhunter has left the game"
And on the other end of that judgment there was a wailing and gnashing of teeth. And the service looked upon the fires of a two week ban and smiled, and it was good.

Can I get an amen.

Ladies and gentlemen my name is Stephen Toulouse and I am the Director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox LIVE. Many of you know me by my Gamertag, Stepto. It's basically what most people call me. In fact I'm only ever called Stephen when I am at home and have done something wrong. I'm kind of like Sting, with my single name affectation. But I'm not near as good looking, and my idea of tantric sex ends up in me being called Stephen at home at lot of the time.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge several people. The first, would be Gabe and Tycho for creating the John Gabriel Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, a theory which puts food on my table.

Perhaps too much food.

The second, are Xbox LIVE's E and Major Nelson, for always finishing their shows with the exhortation to file feedback and play fair.

And last, my talented and dedicated team, who you will meet in just a moment.

This is kind of informal, I’m not going to subject you to a PowerPoint deck. I believe in the adage that power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. And besides here at PAX to tell someone you’re going to subject them to your deck means you’re going to kick their ass in Magic.

I would like to ask at the outset, by applause, how many of you have run into Poonhunter on Xbox Live.

(loud applause)

Oh wow, wow, that’s far far less than I thought. Ok, also by applause how many of you ARE poonhunter on xbox live.

(some applause)

Again, far fewer than I would have expected.

So, what does policy and enforcement mean for Xbox LIVE. Our job is to help provide safe and enjoyable experiences on Xbox LIVE. This mostly involves enforcing the Terms of Use and the Code of Conduct, which are our guiding principles.

My team actually has several different functions. The first primary job is handling all the complaints that come into the service from you, and by "you" I mean the people that didn't clap when I asked if you were Poonhunter. Every day, 365 days a year, we look over the complaint data. And we do that looking for accuracy. For instance, for complaints against Gamertags and profiles, every single complaint is reviewed by hand and we make a determination as to whether or not the content actually violates the terms of use.

Sometimes, that’s easy. Like in the case of obvious dirty words. But sometimes the content is “Ham Doctor” and you have to go figure out what that means. By the way I’d like to pause a moment here and thank Gabe and Tycho for introducing the phrase “ham doctor” to the global lexicon. I would also like to thank the Internet for taking that phrase and running with finding the worst possible meaning for it. Stay classy Internet.

So we actually do have a team of people who sit and basically look over your complaints. While of course some of the sorting of that is automated in our enforcement tool, called Vulcan, so put the known bad stuff up at the top, I want to make sure people understand that we really do look at the complaints, and its not an automated process.

A word about Vulcan. I chose the name Vulcan when I was designing the enforcement tool because Wikipedia notes that Vulcan is the God of both “beneficial and hindering fire”. Plus he had a bitchin’ hammer. Not as cool as Thor’s, but still kind of cool. I did not choose it in any relation to Star Trek. When the Star Trek movie was out I saw it with some friends and came out of the theater checking my mail and I said “Hrmm, Vulcan is offline” and my friend Looked at me surprised and said, “Well, that’s one way to put it.” If you haven’t seen the film I won’t explain it.

So we’ve got a lot of hammers at our disposal in Vulcan. When we need to take action we can force people to change their Gamertags, suspend their ability to communicate with other players, suspend them from the service temporarily or permanently and even ban their consoles from connecting to Xbox LIVE ever again. We have a punishment matrix that guides us for what crimes deserve what punishments, but the thing you might be interested to know is the escalating nature of our system. If you’re a miscreant enough in our system your actions can cause ever increasing punishments until we finally invite you to no longer be our customer.

So what are some of the things that get you permanently banned? Repeat egregious behavior. Things like fraud, piracy. Let’s see I’m missing something. There’s something else…oh yeah. Naked Uno. Actually, naked anything. But come on, naked Xbox LIVE Uno was not meant to be. Naked chutes and ladders, maybe. Naked Risk…I can see it. But no naked Uno. So to be clear, and I know no one here is one of these people, but being naked on the camera on Xbox LIVE is a Permaban offense no matter what the activity.

Ah but how do we detect naked people? Well in addition to complaints we have many people across the world actively policing the service. Playing every day across titles looking for bad behavior. And when they see it, they have the ability to do something about it. It’s not uncommon for me to be gaming with my netbook open next to me with Vulcan loaded on it. So it’s a combination of proactive and reactive policing that we do on a constant basis.

My team also handles policies around contravention for our service. For instance we serve as a resource inside the Xbox group for when people want to think about how a feature or a product can be misused as well as used. Just think of the exciting things Natal can do! We also work with game developers and publishers to think about contravention. For instance we worked with Harmonix to come up with good policies around the Rock Band Network, you know just in case someone wants to write “The Ballad of Naked Uno” and gets a little too graphic.

Now, what’s the experience of people who actually get punished? Well depending on the punishment the console itself will report to you your punishment and duration. And for each punishment we issue, an email is sent to the registered Windows LiveID for the Gamertag with more detailed information. We also maintain a forum on Xbox.com where people can interact directly with my team. Should the person being punished feel we made an error, we can look at the evidence again to make sure.

A word of warning however, and I know that no one in this room has to worry about it, but if you’ve been a miscreant, and filled your profile with really obnoxious stuff, we won’t hesitate to tell the world what you really have if you claim you only had puppies and daisies in there.

I think the most important part of this is actually giving you guys the opportunity to talk to my team so I want to move to the Q&A portion quickly but I want to close with a couple of things.

In addition to policing the rules, we also work to help prevent things that can happen to your account like hijacking. The number one cause of account jacking comes from Phishing. That message you got in your Xbox queue or your email that says “Hey free achievements” or “Free Microsoft points!” you know, the one that asks for your password? Yeah that’s a scam. Please folks spread the word to everyone you know, do not give out your Xbox LIVE password. Scammers and phishers want it to use your Windows LiveID for spam, or to charge points on your credit card. We punish those people, and we work with customers through our support teams to get your account back. But I want to make sure I close with “Never give out your password, file complaints where you see bad behavior, and everyone play nice, have fun, and as Wil Wheaton says, don’t be a dick”

Now I’d like to introduce my team for the Q&A.

Category: PAX09

Published: 9/6/2009 2:04 AM

Modified: 9/6/2009 7:06 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

I’ve got the PAX

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:24:22 GMT

Title: I’ve got the PAX

Body:

The PAX ‘09 schedule has been posted. Here’s the entry for me and my team’s talk on enforcement:

Saturday, 3:00pm - 4:00pm, Unicorn Theatre
Enforcement on Xbox LIVE: Tales From The Din
Enforcement on the Xbox LIVE service isn't just about whacking the bad guys. Join Stephen "Stepto" Toulouse, head of Xbox LIVE Policy and Enforcement, as he walks you through not just the ins and outs of policing the service (along with some fun stories), but also working with game developers to keep ahead of the miscreants when designing their titles, and the gaming community as a whole to understand what gamers want. Stepto and his team will also take your questions about banning, cheating, or anything else you'd like to know about protecting the service.

Presented By Stephen Toulouse

Not only am I completely excited about presenting, I’m incredibly relieved our talk doesn’t coincide with another big name speaker! Our session with have a brief Q&A as well so come by, hear some stories, and meet the team!

Category: PAX09

Published: 8/12/2009 3:24 PM

Modified: 8/12/2009 3:24 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Great Band and the Reorg

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:29:38 GMT

Title: Great Band and the Reorg

Body:

If you have not heard the band A3 (Alabama 3) you should give them a listen. Their music is a mix between techno and blues and country with some gospel thrown in. For those that didn't know, A3 is the band that does the theme song to "The Soprano's".

I've been asked about the reorg recently announced and am proud to say I know very little about it! I'm on vacation! Like everyone else around I too am disappointed in the time it has taken to get the Longhorn project to market, but at the same time it's been a good thing in a way because its sort of highlighted what a strong release Windows XP was.

How does the reorg impact the security teams like the MSRC? It really doesn't. Remember that the MSRC exists outside the product teams and has dedicated representatives on all the teams that work with us directly if there are any security issues. So how the product teams get reorg'd or shuffled doesn't affect the work done both to make the products better through the SDL, and to protect customers.

Published: 9/22/2005 11:29 AM

Modified: 8/10/2009 6:39 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Compensation

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:14:36 GMT

Title: Compensation

Body:

First off, I made an update to the MSRC blog just now regarding a zero-day vulnerability involving Microsoft Word. Go check it out.

Second, I've gotten a lot of email already over the compensation changes at Microsoft and what I thought of them. I wasn't there for the HR town hall meeting (this happens a lot. For any given Microsoft announcement or event it's highly, *highly* unlikely you will find the MSRC there. 9 times out of 10 we're working on something going on security wise, with the goal of protecting customers. In this case, we had a customer report an attack using the Word issue that day, so we were in the situation room.)

But I digress. I'm not going to address all the little specific things that got changed yesterday. Some of them I love, some of them I like and some of them, let's be honest, are rectifying boneheaded cost saving measures that just weren't worth the ire they caused. But here's the important thing: Whether you like everything they announced, like only some of it, or feel it's all bullshit, there's one thing you have to admit: Microsoft is listening to its employees like it listens to its customers, and it's trying to do right by them. Not everyone is going to agree with everything. But as I have watched LisaB canvass the company, holding round tables, being up front about the blogs she reads (HI MINI!), I see someone dedicated to her role and making sure she kicks ass at it. You just can't ask for more than that in an HR director.

Someone on MiniMicrosoft's blog said they would reserve judgement on the changes until "SP1" of the program. I thought that was a funny comment actually and probably pretty accurate. They'll tweak it the program I am sure (for instance a lot of the new Prime discount stuff will probably drive changes as people sign up for some things and not others) so it will only get better.

But the key thing is that people were unhappy, voiced it, and things got changed. And not only did they get changed, it was clear they got changed as a direct result of feedback from the employees. Again, you just can't ask for more than that. Microsoft is still a great place to work, and of course, it's not the only great place to work on the planet.

Published: 5/20/2006 12:14 PM

Modified: 8/10/2009 6:38 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Road Denizens: A Taxonomy

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:03:20 GMT

Title: Road Denizens: A Taxonomy

Body:

I can’t stand the process of flying. I don’t mean specifically the up in the air part. That part’s ok as long as people adhere to the code of conduct. But I have come to abhor airports, the ridiculous security theater, the waiting, the delays, etc.

I very much enjoy road trips though. And while I’ve already packed this summer with more miles than Seattle has collectively experienced degrees of heat (Fahrenheit) I’m finishing off with an extended trip from Seattle to New Orleans and back. Due to my extensive experience on the road, I’ve developed a sort of taxonomy of various types of drivers one finds on the great American series of tubes.

Note that some of these types can indeed be found in the normal course of driving in a city, so the list is not meant to really be anything more than an amusing, and sometimes rage filled, look at who are the people in your Interstate neighborhood.

The Hippo

The Hippo is any type of truck with more than three axles, from dump trucks all the way to semi’s. Other countries designed their highway systems to have a dedicated truck lane, to minimize the dangers of mixing long tall vehicles and short squat cars. Our highway system unfortunately is not as advanced. By themselves Hippo’s are not a hazard, it’s when they congregate in groups both blocking your line of sight to road signs or creating mini traffic jams on inclines. But by themselves, Hippos are harmless and indeed fairly essential to keep our economy moving. I just wish we had a lane for them.

The Angry, Angry Hippo

The angry Hippo however, is a serious danger to everyone on the road. This is a Hippo who is in a hurry. It tries to pass other hippos in the passing lane on dangerous uphill slopes. It swings into the left lane suddenly if it even detects the vehicle ahead of it in the right lane might be moving a mile per hour slower than it is. Angry Hippos are the ones who are riding your bumper because at the moment they can’t get out of the logjam of cars, and thusly Maximum Overdrive tactics are the only way to change the situation. Occasionally, an angry Hippo will develop some weird form of vendetta. That film was not a work of fiction my friends, but a documentary I can attest. Angry Hippos project menace from every single move they make. They are to be feared.

The Rolling Roadblock

This one cracks me up when it’s not filling me with a rage that burns with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. It consists of two cars, one in the left lane and one in the right lane, who have set their cruise control for within .01 mph of each other. Coincidentally someone has stolen their rearview and side mirrors, so that they have no concept of anything behind them. Lastly, the feature of the rolling roadblock is that they have set themselves to the speed limit. Thus creating a two car block that no traffic can pass until the one that is set .01 mph higher than the other eventually creeps a car length ahead. These individuals are completely oblivious that another car is beside them, nor that they are holding up 50 cars behind them. Not paying attention to something behind you on the highway is perhaps a forgivable sin. Not noticing, or not minding, a car keeping almost exact pace with your own for 10 miles right beside you is…creepy.

The Cruiser

This is me. The Cruiser sets their cruise control and rides the road. Anything that might cause an interruption of the cruise control (Hippos, Rolling Roadblocks, etc) results in exaggerated sighing, shaking of the head, perhaps even a throwing up of the arms before disengaging the cruise. All in the hopes the problem ahead is looking in the rearview mirror and is appropriately chastened by your obvious display of frustration regarding their inadequate respect for your comfortable highway cruising speed. The Cruiser might flash their brights as a preemptive matter before having to adjust the cruise, but only angry cruisers will use the horn. Cruisers typically have a GPS and are known to obsess over their projected arrival time.

The Schizo

The Schizo can’t quite make up their mind what speed they want to travel at, or what lane they wish to be in. The Schizo changes lanes randomly and quickly, sometimes in the space of a mile. Likewise the Schizo might travel below highway speed, above highway speed, or at highway speed, all in the space of 60 seconds. The Schizo is of particular irritation to the The Cruiser and the Angry Angry Hippo, as you cannot predict their behavior and one might remain in proximity for many miles due to their sporadic speeding behavior. The Schizo is often distracted by their cell phone or their ipod/stereo. However I have encountered enough of them behaving this way for no reason to denote it as a class of road behavior rather than classify the specific cause of the behavior.

The Speed Demon

The Speed Demon is almost always a late model sports car or luxury vehicle with a prominently mounted $400 dollar radar detector. The speed demon routinely travels at the speed limit+20. By the time you notice a speed demon behind you and you decide to move over for them, they have already passed you on the right hand side. There’s nothing you can really do or feel about The Speed Demon, except the “there but for the grace of god go I” feeling when you come across one 10 miles later, pulled over by a cop.

The Mobile Gated Community

These are your RV’s. They deserve a class separate from Hippos in that they are fully and completely aware that they are driving a massively oversized vehicle for the American highway system and most (but not all of them) appear to feel every so slightly chagrined. Most RV’s travel in the slow lane and to the extent they inadvertently cause a transient rolling roadblock when an Angry Hippo tries to pass them they have the good nature to shrug when you pass them with a kind of “Sorry, whaddya gonna do?” tone. There is a very rare occurrence of the Angry, Angry Mobile Gated Community however to the extent they project menace, well let’s just say there’s a reason the vehicle in the rearview mirror in Duel wasn’t a Winnebago.

Molasses

This is the cop sitting on the side of the road who doesn’t even have his radar turned on that causes all flowing traffic to slow by 10 MPH, even if no one was speeding.

Category: misc

Published: 8/8/2009 9:03 AM

Modified: 8/8/2009 9:03 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

OMG I got a Jesus Phone and it walked on my water

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:33:07 GMT

Title: OMG I got a Jesus Phone and it walked on my water

Body:

I’m not going to bother to explain that title, you’re either going to grok it or not.

Long time readers will know that I have treasured the concept of the smartphone, a phone so ultimately capable at connecting to the intertube supernet web, or providing me with my electronic ether missives, that my dream of an ultimately connected life is only realized by the future we live in, today.

I thought that day had come long ago with the advent of many a Windows Mobile phone or Blackberry. But in the words of Admiral Jarok, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been…”

I began my 2 week long road trip in Seattle with a dead Zune. I love the small form factor Zune. I think it’s a great device. But my Zune 2 ship gift version’s squircle died. You’d think with its primary control interface dead it would race forward, untethered like some out of control freight train, bringing me hitherto unknown levels of music. Alas it dashed itself to death on the cliffs of insanity instead and just sat there like a dumb shit.

In my rush to leave for my trip I shoved in only 2 cd’s in the cd changer of Rochto’s car. The new Dave Matthews Band and Jonathan Coulton’s Live CD.

These were, needless to say, worn through to transparency by the time I got to Colorado. Utilizing my Australian GPS’s capabilities, I was instructed to head “Stroight awn two oighty seffin to fawt cawllens, colorawdo” to the closest “Bist Boiy”

Now, I went in intending to get a simple Zune 8 gig since I had a lot of music loaded onto my new netbook and that was roughly what I would be replacing. But my brother Joscoto got the 3G iPhone and was raving about it. Timid, a little unsure, possibly even feeling naughty, I inquired if they had a black iPhone 3g 8 gig.

Nope, sold out since they were only 99$ They either had the white 3g 8 gig, or a black 16 gig iPhone 3gs.

Gotta have black.

Well, I said, ok let’s get the 3gs. I guess. I mean…I hear it’s ok. But I’m only getting it for the music player.

You have to understand that I have had to endure the praises of the iPhone from every single person I knew. It became so chic that suddenly I didn’t want it solely because the cool kids had it.

Yeah that version of me? That version of me was a FUCKING IDIOT.

The iPhone is the single most polished and perfected Smartphone experience I have had to date. It’s true, other platforms do 10000 more things. But so far the iPhone does the 10 things I rely on perfectly. You can bitch about being beholden to the Apple app store, but so much of it is available for free that’s a silly objection. Yes yes Apple has made mistakes in regards to censoring apps but that’s few and far between compared to how many awesome apps there are.

Music playback is perfect, phone reception is the same or better than my previous phones w/ ATT, and best of all I can get my Microsoft Exchange contacts, email, and calendar just like on any Windows Mobile phone. I especially love having the phone in iPod mode jacked into my car’s stereo and it pauses the song automatically to let me know a sms or phone call has come in.

I’m cursing myself for putting up with various iterations of what I thought a Smartphone should be over the years. Even when I was pleased with the solution I had, a much better one was available via the iPhone. So far I’ve loaded a killer planetarium application that uses motion tracking such that I can point the 3gs at any spot in the sky and it shows me the stars in that spot, a kindle application that loads all kindle books without my having to buy a much less featured Kindle, mapping and GPS applications that work perfectly, and a real web browser that has finally truly given me a mobile friendly view of the net web tuberhighway.

Am I raving? YES I AM. Is it perfect? no of course not., The recent SMS vulnerability proves Apple still doesn’t know fuck all about how to engineer security unless it’s through small market share. But I dare any self respecting geek who loves the future that is today of a fully connected world to play with a 3GS for 2 hours and not concede it is, to date, the best portable form factor multifunction device at its price point.

I love it. I give it 48 stars.

Category: misc

Published: 8/7/2009 8:33 PM

Modified: 8/7/2009 8:54 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Mad Max 4: The Road Worker

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:07:58 GMT

Title: Mad Max 4: The Road Worker

Body:

So, today for my 37th birthday I got dusted by a crop duster. I guess I can cross that off the bucket list.

In order to be at an event in Louisiana in a couple days that I’m not ‘apposed to talk about, I thought I’d finish off my summer of road trips by taking an especially long one to the Big Easy and back to Seattle over 2 weeks. For this trip however I didn’t want to get the Benz serviced since it’s a 5000 mile round trip, so Rochto graciously let me take her VW Tiguan, using the Garmin 260w GPS I got her.

There are only two things you need to know about this GPS. You can program it to say roughly anything you want, and you can make it speak in a female Australian accent. Or, I should say, an American's version of an Australian accent spoken by a computer synthesized female-esque Stephen Hawking/Wargames type voice. Imagine a Seth Effrikin accent mashed with an English one.

Hilarity, with this, must ensue.

Seattle is of course a beautiful place to live. And many places between Seattle and Dallas are beautiful, but my friends I am here to report that the stimulus package is working. Every view between Seattle and Dallas, on every highway interstate or state, is marred by that unique fluorescent crimson rectangle stating boldly: “ROAD WORK AHEAD”.

Traveling at 25mph on one lane of traffic, listening to my GPS intone “Continya stroight awn Intastate nointy fuh threy moils” and watching bizarre figures toil in bright orange hard hats and other garb, it wasn’t hard to imagine myself in some new Mad Max sequel. Especially outside Memphis, Texas. In one of the few stretches of non construction on TX State highway 287 a crop duster appeared just off to my left, dusting. “Oh cool” I thought, until I noticed he was flying, at speed, perpendicular to the highway stretch. At an altitude of about 50 feet.

“ohshitohshitohshit” I said out loud as he appeared to head right for me. He cut his duster right before the highway and flew directly over my car so low it shook with the air passing and was coated in whatever stuff they use on the crops. I could almost hear the pilot say “between them and us, there isn’t enough runway”. “Croikey!” exclaimed my GPS.

And I, just like Mel Gibson, am older. But I haven’t yet been pulled over drunk, screaming racial or anti-Semitic epithets at the cops. So I got that going for me, which is good.

Category: misc

Published: 8/6/2009 4:07 PM

Modified: 8/6/2009 4:08 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Sometimes your OS is like Diogenes, looking for an honest hardware report.

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:49:55 GMT

Title: Sometimes your OS is like Diogenes, looking for an honest hardware report.

Body:

A friend bitched to me, a particularly youthful friend, about how hard it was to create a Windows 7 based USB boot key. He was incensed that you had to use a command line utility to create an NTFS partition that was bootable on the USB drive’s partition. While he was blah blah blahing about how computers would be far better off if Microsoft had never existed because of how hard we make everything, I tuned the email out and took a trip through the wormhole.

The development of Windows 95 really was a watershed moment in computing. For the first time, an operating system was going to work alongside BIOS development to end the ritual of hardware IRQ jumper settings, arcane memory offsets, COM port conflicts and…

Wait. It’s likely some of you young’uns probably have no idea what I am talking about. Ok imagine this, every time you want to use some new application on your Apple Jesus Phone you have to solve a Rubick’s Cube, then thread the eye of a needle blindfolded, followed by drawing a per point accurate Mandelbrot fractal using only a thick tip ink quill pen and a Bounty paper towel.

Now you know what it was like to get a 9600 baud modem working under Windows 3.1.

Except it was harder.

When you bought a new hardware card for your PC, you had to physically modify tiny plastic covers over jumper pins on the card precisely such that no one card would interfere with any other card’s resource settings. Never mind trying to not slice your fingers on the razor sharp interior edges of the computer case.

This was roughly like trying to separate, through mere persuasion only, four extremely hungry fat men from reaching for the same rib on a plate of only four ribs. When two grabbed the same rib, well let’s just say the whole dinner got interrupted. Never mind the other two who mistake your bleeding fingers for ribs.

Thus was born the idea of “Plug and Play” or, as it was known before it had an easily mocked name, “soft jumper setting”.

The idea behind plug and play is that the Operating System, the computer BIOS, and the hardware cards that you installed would never need any more hard configuration than simply plugging the card in. Everything would be handled through software such that conflicts could not occur. If they did, then the OS, BIOS, and hardware card could be set through software to resolve the conflict instead of creating a situation where the entire machine could not start due to resource conflicts.

Windows 95 was the first widely available operating system that supported this type of capability. At the same time, it had to work with existing hardware set solutions. So during its development a lot of testing went into the hardware detection section of the install for the product. Essentially, when you first installed Windows 95 it would go through an investigative phase where it queried various elements of the computer both hardware set and software set and tried to understand what was on the computer so it could either use it, or prompt you for a driver that would allow the OS to use it.

The problem was, some hardware was unprepared for being jabbed in the ass and being asked who the hell they were and what they were doing.

Case in point: a particular Uninterruptable Power Supply used a serial based interface to the computer to link its software monitoring of power status to the UPS battery itself. During setup, Windows 95’s hardware detection of the serial COM port caused the UPS to think the power had been cut. If setup lasted longer than the UPS battery, then the entire setup would fail because the power would die and the computer would unexpectedly switch off.

In another case, detection during the beta had a harsher effect due to buggy hardware. A particular laptop manufacturer used a BIOS that had a unique way of responding to a hardware PnP query. When Windows 95 calmly asked the BIOS “Hi, who are you and what version are you” the BIOS put a gun to its head and replied “YOU’LL NEVER GET ME TO TELL” and would overwrite its firmware strap code with zeros, rendering the entire computer a doorstop. It actually had to be physically repaired by the manufacturer. It’s one of the few documented cases of actual computer suicide that I have ever seen.

Of course, even back then BIOS manufacturers were trying to implement OS type features. Once the FAT32 file system was introduced, in place conversion of FAT16 to FAT32 file systems became possible. BIOS manufacturers had developed “Hardware Hibernation” capability into their products, meaning that by hitting a button on the computer the BIOS, using the OS file system driver, would dump the contents of the RAM to a file on the hard drive to be read on next boot.

Great idea. Unless your BIOS couldn’t read the file system on next boot. They could write using the OS to FAT32, but on next boot couldn’t read the hiberfile. This again rendered the computer essentially a doorstop because you couldn’t point the BIOS bootstrap to anywhere else.

I faded back to the rant email about how its all so very hard today, because of us.

I hit reply and simply said “Get back to me when you have a fat man gnawing on your fingers”

Category: Microsoft

Published: 7/18/2009 8:49 PM

Modified: 7/18/2009 8:49 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Wish You Were Here

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:40:01 GMT

Title: Wish You Were Here

Body:

Well my time in San Francisco ended up being more packed that I thought it would. But tomorrow morning I leave for a coastal drive up highway 101 to Port Orford, Oregon. It’s tough to leave San Francisco though, Here’s my view from where I am writing this.

The GLAAD sponsored panel on homophobia and online communities went very well. We had a great turn out, and big thanks to Electronic Arts for providing a place for the panel. The discussion was great and an online version will be available soon, as soon as I have a link I will post it here.

Tonight I’m wrapping up some blog entries and a pile of work ahead of being back in the office Tuesday.

Category: misc

Published: 7/18/2009 7:40 PM

Modified: 7/18/2009 7:40 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/578/CIMG0347_46DD1FE3.jpg
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Homophobia and Virtual Communities

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:14:35 GMT

Title: Homophobia and Virtual Communities

Body:

It’s an insanely busy summer for reasons I cannot yet reveal. However I’m extremely proud to be participating in a panel this weekend on Homophobia and Virtual Communities live in San Francisco being put on by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Besides getting to visit one of my favorite cities, this is an extremely important topic that I’m privileged to get to talk about alongside some really smart folk. The panel participants, besides me, are:

Flynn DeMarco (Alias: Fruite Brute), Founder of GayGamer.net
Dan Hewitt, Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
Caryl Shaw, Senior Producer in the Maxis Studio (Electronic Arts, Inc.)
Cyn Skyberg, VP of Customer Relations at Linden Lab

Moderator: Justin Cole, Director of Digital & Online Media, GLAAD

The press release discussing the topic can be found here. It takes place July 18th and you can reserve a spot to attend here if you are going to be (or already are) in the area. I hope to tweet LIVE from the panel and look forward to the conversation on how we can enable safer communities online.

I am free part of the time I am in the city, so hit me up if you want to hang out!

Category: Microsoft

Published: 7/14/2009 8:14 PM

Modified: 7/14/2009 8:14 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Rochto’s…excited about the Duran Duran concert tonight.

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:43:08 GMT

Title: Rochto’s…excited about the Duran Duran concert tonight.

Body:

And I thought I was chatty on social media. Turns out she just needed the right topic, clipped from her Facebook:

Rochelle Conway Toulouse What a fabulous weekend! Awesome fireworks displays (yes that's multiple) in our very own Big Rock Ridge!!! Tonight - More awesomeness. Time to be a teenager again. Going to see my ALL TIME FAVORITE BAND EVER - DURAN DURAN!!!! I love you John, Simon, Nick, and Roger!!!!
--
Okay - I can't post about this enough. I'm hitting a nostalgia trip. Got the DD DVD Greatest Hits blaring in the background. I still remember when I first fell in love w/the band. I was 11 and saw the music video "The Reflex" on my best friend's HUGE projection TV - Ah the days of MTV. Yes...I was a late Duranie bloomer. Didn't become a fan until "Seven and the Ragged Tiger"...but it wasn't too soon after that I had the 2 previous albums: “Duran Duran” and “Rio”.
--
Then "Arena"!!! Oh how so many times I would go to the video store to rent "Blue Silver" on VHS (which now, yes, I own on DVD). And staying up until 5:00am to watch the premier video of "Wild Boys" on MTV. Remember Friday Night Video??? Oh the days - I'd stay up late just to see DD host! My bedroom wall was surrounded w/DD posters - I mean ALL walls including the ceiling. Teeny bop magazines and Japanese imports!!!
--
I'm so blessed to have married a fellow Duranie. We were at the same "Big Thing" concert at Arcadia in Dallas when we were 15!!! And I have been so ever blessed to have seen DD perform every year in Seattle since we moved here in 2003. Not to mention the concerts in Dallas!!! I feel 15 all over again!!!
--
Duran Duran - God Bless you for still touring!!! And for picking Seattle this year as one of the few "select" cities. Looking forward to an amazing concert!!!!

Category: Rochto

Published: 7/5/2009 1:43 PM

Modified: 7/5/2009 1:43 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

It’s been an awesome week, no really.

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:24:48 GMT

Title: It’s been an awesome week, no really.

Body:

The number of times people have said to me “Wow, I’d hate to have that job” has skyrocketed a bit in the past couple of days. It’s kind of funny because people used to say the same thing about my old job doing communications and PR for Microsoft security response. No matter how challenging this past week was, believe me it was nothing compared to doing 50 plus press interviews over 48 hours during the Blaster attack.

I’m so incredibly fortunate to do what I do that it never occurred to me to bemoan my fate, believe me. Mainly because some things happened this week besides the recent events that were, in a word, awesome.

Monday mornings I have a 30 minute meeting with my team. We were going over tasks for the week, space for the enforcer team, etc etc when my phone rang. The number was the regular Microsoft switchboard. I’d been helping Major Nelson with the technical details of denial of service attacks on LIVE members and thought it was him, so I picked up the phone.

“Hi, this is Gary Marlon Suson with the Ground Zero Museum in New York.”

I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the desk. For those who don’t know, Gary was the official photographer at the ground zero site immediately after 9/11. For weeks, Gary risked his health alongside the heroes of FDNY during the clean up and recovery process documenting what had happened. You’ve seen many of Gary’s images, as he was the only one allowed to take pictures of the site in the aftermath. When I was in New York on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I visited Gary’s Museum and it’s a powerful memorial.

In 2006 a Microsoft employee visiting the museum donated an Xbox 360, so that after a hard day of leading the tours and basically revisiting that terrible day all over again, the firemen could kick back and relax with some video games. During their leisure time Gary had come across an anti-semitic gamertag and reading about me on the Internet, he decided to call me up.

We took care of the miscreant for him and I expressed my appreciation for the work he had done and the museum. On Friday I received a box and when I opened it this was inside:

This is a beautiful heavy coffee table book of Gary’s images and text as a tribute. He even signed it:

That just about floored me. The book is incredible, and so is the museum. If you’re in New York it’s a must visit. Their website is located here and a direct link to where you can purchase the book is here. It’s well worth the price, a lot of these types of books are crazy expensive and this one is under $50. And as I said, the images and text are powerful. A return package of goodies from my group will go out to the firefighters next week in gratitude for the work they have done.

If that wasn’t cool enough, Friday we also got Seattle Sounders jerseys customized with our gamertags, along with NXE Launch Team custom controllers:

So I can’t complain at all about the tough stuff. I’m so insanely lucky I keep looking up for the meteorite about to hit me.

Category: Misc

Published: 2/28/2009 11:24 AM

Modified: 6/14/2009 8:46 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/531/job1_2_1CBB7BE8.jpg
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A WINNAR IS THEY!

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:11:56 GMT

Title: A WINNAR IS THEY!

Body:

Between e3 and work, I’ve seriously not had much time to game or even answer emails lately. For everyone I’ve not gotten a chance to get back to, sorry. This post might provide some context.

But now on to the winners of my contest! The idea was to come up with the best/worst fake video game title. Here are the WINNARS:

Third place, winning the prize of being fired, is Jake (8Bitjoystick) for his entry:

Wilford Brimley's Legend of the Oat Warrior: Shut up and JAM!

Second place, winning a set of steak knives, is Turtle502 for this entry:

Pi Hero: Digit expansion pack

As previously mentioned I had so many entries I had a three way tie for first place.

For third first place, winning a copy of Wil Wheaton’s “Happiest Days of our Lives”, Chris! For his entry:

Fly Swatter: Broken Wings

For second first place, winning a copy of Wil Wheaton’s “Sunken Treasure”, Adam, for his entry:

50 Cent presents Mario vs. Tony Hawk Urban Snowboarding

And finally, for first place, winning a copy of Jonathan Coulton’s CD/DVD combo “Best. Concert. Ever.”, General Grey, for his entry:

The West Peoria Ornithological Society's Woodlarks III : Revenge of the Dartford Warbler (Hellish Migration Edition)

Congratulations to all the WINNARS! Your prizes will be mailed out on Tuesday, June 16th. Thanks for playing!

Category: Contest

Published: 6/13/2009 2:11 PM

Modified: 6/13/2009 2:11 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Contest Info

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:33:29 GMT

Title: Contest Info

Body:

I’ll be sending out emails tonight notifying the contest winners of their…win—ening. Thanks to the generosity of one Wil Wheaton I have second and third first prizes to award! Second first prize gets a copy of Wil’s new book Sunken Treasure, and third first prize gets a copy of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. (Wil’s not sponsoring the contest to be clear nor does he know I am doing this, he gave me a new copy of Sunken Treasure at e3 and I have an extra of Happiest Days)

Second prize is still steak knives and third prize is you’re fired.

I look forward to posting the results, some seriously funny entries were submitted.

Category: Contest

Published: 6/8/2009 7:33 PM

Modified: 6/8/2009 7:33 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

E3:Day 3

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:05:38 GMT

Title: E3:Day 3

Body:

After the keynotes and partying of the second day, it was time to hit the West Hall.

As I mentioned before the South hall was the home of the Microsoft booth plus many others. The West hall housed Sony, Nintendo, Capcom, and Activision. Strangely, entering it was far more calm and staid then I expected. There was none of the shouty energy of the South Hall, which made for a far better experience demoing my favorite games that I wanted to see.

First off was the Sony booth and the viewing of MAG, God of War 3, and new titles I was super excited about like PAIN: Museum. I was disappointed we couldn't see the new cart racing game and really not happy that The Last Guardian was no where to be seen.

The Nintendo booth though made up for it with a fantastic playable showing of Resident Evil Chronicles and Dead Space: Extraction. Dead Space Extraction is, in my opinion, a HUGE standout title for the Wii. It is amazing and fun. I really cannot wait for it.

We finished our tour of the floor and I retired for our awesome tweetup at the in-and-out burger in Hollywood. After that it was beers and dinner with a friend and early crash time since I had to drive the next day.

Overall this was my first e3. In every way it was fun, crowded, and groundbreaking. There wasn’t any swag, everything was about the playing of the titles.

I can’t wait for next year, everything about this event was amazing.

Category: e32009

Published: 6/6/2009 10:05 PM

Modified: 6/6/2009 10:05 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

E3: Day 2

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:03:06 GMT

Title: E3: Day 2

Body:

Day 2 of E3 I completely and totally lost my shit. But first, the keynotes!

I got up early to catch both the Nintendo and Sony keynotes. Standouts from the Nintendo keynote, as I twittered live, were things like Golden Sun DS, Mario RPG, and Dead Space Extraction. As a Wii owner and DSi owner I was really enthused by those titles. Four player Mario looked neat but I hated the stutter when a player died and the other three had to apparently wait for a half second. Mario Galaxy 2 won’t be out until next year. The only things left that excited me were the new Metroid game and the possibility that the Wii Vitality might give us the ultimate video game experience, a game powered by your heart rate, Wii Crank.

Sony started off a tad slow in my opinion, but when they recovered they really recovered. God of War 3, The Last Guardian, MAG, and PSP Go I think were really really really strong announces. Their overall briefing had a lot more energy than the Nintendo one and their exclusive line up really has me interested, even if I have to wait for 2010 for most of it.

CNET has a great wrap up of the three keynotes. Not surprisingly, I tend to agree with the wrap up. <g>

Keynotes watched, e and PMS Kitty and I went to have lunch to debate the presentations and talk about what has us excited as gamers.

As a side note, I got weird flak during my live twittering our competitors’ keynotes because I work at Xbox and people expected me to somehow be loyal solely to that. Look, I’m a gamer first. I own all three platforms and a DSi. Yes, I work at Xbox to make it the best possible platform, and I think it is clearly the best platform. But this isn’t a zero sum game. I love PAIN, Killzone 2, and Infamous on the PS3. I love World of Goo, Boomblox, Metroid on the Wii. And I’m on record that my DSi is by far my favorite hand held platform evar. Fanboyism isn’t really my thing, because it’s really really limiting.

Then Steven Spielberg walked right by me and I temporarily lost the power of speech.

Wait I’m getting ahead of myself.

So after lunch we hit the crown jewel of the event for my first E3, the thing I was looking forward to the most, that deep fried twinkie/snickers bar combo of dense awesome gaming event goodness, the E3 expo.

Right outside the hall was a full size Ecto 1!!!

Sony did a great job branding the West hall.

The expo is divided into two halls, the South Hall which was mostly our booth plus Harmonix, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., Square Enix, etc etc, and the West hall which had Sony, Nintendo, Activision, Capcom, etc etc.

For our first day, we hit the South Hall. Energy there was way up, with tons of title announcers and demos and lines to see the new hotness. We started off checking out all the titles in the Microsoft booth. For a lot of them we’d of course seen them because, you know, we work there. But pausing slightly at a demonstration of the Sky integration LIVE feature, I looked up from the demo to see, passing less than a foot beside me, Steven Spielberg and a couple of his body guards. As my jaw hit the floor with an audible thud, e saw my reaction and took the opportunity to try and engage me in conversation, “Are you ok?”

“He—that—walked just now—things—movie I like—just now—right by us—he…” I stammered.

Did I diss on fanboyism just a minute ago? I lost, my shit. Steven *fucking* Spielberg walked mere inches from me on the way to our private briefing area to show off Natal. In retrospect, there was thankfully no opportunity for me to engage him in conversation because I would forever made him hate me by saying “THANK YOU FOR CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/JAWS/SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, btw what the hell were you thinking re: Jurassic Park: The Lost World?” Of course in my temporary stroke victim status losing my speech center it would have come out “THANK—CLOSE—JAWS—PRIVATE RYAN—HELL—LOST WORLD?”

My mind totally screwed, we proceeded to check titles out. Standouts are Assassin’s Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Blur, and Shadow Complex for XBLA. AC2 looks incredible on any platform. Splinter Cell Conviction is one hell of an incredible exclusive for the 360. Blur looks to have the same type of longevity as Burnout Paradise. And Shadow Complex is the best looking, most fun XBLA title I have seen to date. It’s like playing a side scroller version of Gears of War 2, it looks that good.

The final night we rocked the Bethesda party in Hollywood. I’ll just say there was drinking and karaoke, and I dedicated Pearl Jam’s Alive to The Lone Wanderer. Our execs showed up too and to say a fun time was had by all is a bit of an understatement

E3 2009 was already probably the coolest thing ever. Day 3 report coming up! (and don’t worry contest folk, you day is coming with special new prizes. I added a first, second and third prize set!)

Category: e32009

Published: 6/4/2009 8:03 PM

Modified: 6/4/2009 8:04 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/572/ecto_2_3B028A82.jpg
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/572/ecto_thumb_3B028A82.jpg
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/572/sony_2_3B028A82.jpg
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/572/sony_thumb_3B028A82.jpg

E3: Day 1

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:04:49 GMT

Title: E3: Day 1

Body:

There’s a certain feeling you get when you enter California. It’s a feeling that’s very difficult to describe, things just seem to go a bit more slowly, you’re able to look around and appreciate things more. There’s a distinct enforced lethargy, not altogether unpleasant, as you find yourself going from 70 to 45 to 20. Then, finally, you stop completely and a goateed man with enough piercings to fashion a nice chainmail shirt from his various rings and loops asks you if you have any fruit.

Yup, at the entrance to California on Interstate 5, there’s a full stop checkpoint to ask you one simple question: “Got any plants or fruit?”

“ASK HIM IF HE HAS THE SAME PROBLEM MICHAEL PALIN DID IN TIME BANDITS” my brain fairly screamed to me as my mouth simply said “Nope.” I counted five lanes of traffic stopped in such a way, each manned, as it were, by a fruit checker. Just a thought to budget broke California, how many times do people say “yes”, and of those times, how often do the plants or fruit have whatever contagion or infestation you are looking for? I’m just sayin’ you might be trying to solve for the 001% case.

Anyways I arrived in LA yesterday. It’s certainly an interesting city and I can’t help but drive around it thinking of Steve Martin’s wonderful LA Story. On 101 heading towards downtown I swear I saw several of the unique houses from that movie perched along some hillsides.

But the big highlight was this morning. I watched with glee as we finally got to spill the details on some really kick ass stuff that it’s been really hard not to scream with about how cool it all is.

I was brought into project Natal several months ago, as with any camera based system there’s always the potential for abuse. My feeling when it was first described to me was a lot along the way of motion games that currently use the vision camera. But once I saw it in action I was astounded. Using controller-less…controls in games isn’t going to be for everyone. But the learning curve to use and enjoy a high end console just got a whole lot lower.

Facebook and Twitter integration are both really well done. And to keep it just a bit removed from your gaming so as to not be too intrusive it’s implementation respects that you might be focused on other things on your console.

We had such a wealth of things to announce today that we actually had too much and had to cut a bunch of stuff. Stuff you might have missed are the new Xbox 360 Games on Demand and a number of performance enhancements to the guide and friends lists that people have given us feedback on.

So far between everyone working to get ready for the briefing and the crush of announcements and press I’ve not had a lot of time to catch up with various folks on their impressions of our announcements. But today was a great kick off.

Tomorrow I’ll be hitting the expo and hopefully blogging from the floor.

Oh and I have not forgotten about those who entered my contest! While the contest entry is now closed, I’ll have some cool stuff to announce about some addition prizes, I got so many good entries.

Category: e32009

Published: 6/1/2009 11:04 PM

Modified: 6/1/2009 11:06 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

TWITTERVERSE! BLOGOSPHERE! FACEBOOKERDOME! MYSPACEAROK! I announce a contest.

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:44:57 GMT

Title: TWITTERVERSE! BLOGOSPHERE! FACEBOOKERDOME! MYSPACEAROK! I announce a contest.

Body:

So I have an extra sealed copy of Jonathan Coulton’s DVD/CD combo of his

OUT

STANDING

2008 San Francisco concert, also known as Best. Concert. Ever.

Jonathan was fully compensated for this copy, it was not a gift, and neither he, nor Kristen Shirts, nor Paul and Storm, nor Andy Bates, nor the pink haired zombie lady featured in the DVD have anything to do with what I am about to propose.

I want to give this tremendous gift a good home. Recently I was inspired by a twitter contest for the crappiest superhero name (my entries? IronMeh and Captain Corporeal). So I propose that you, if you so wish to have a boon, send me via the tuber web inter world trucks, your submission for the worst titled fictional video game ever.

Here’s my example submission:

Comanche Maximum Overpong Commander IV: The Price of Pong

The winner receives the copy of the DVD/CD set. Second place? A set of steak knives*. Third place? You’re fired**. Here are the Rules***.

The winner will be chosen when I arrive at E3 in LA Sunday, 5.31.09

ENTER HERE.

Good luck!

* Yup. You really will win these knives for second place.

** Yup. You’re really fired.****

*** The posting regarding this contest is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This is a private give away run by myself. The rules may include but are not limited to: 18 or older. This contest has no affiliation with the Microsoft Corporation, nor any of the affiliated artists. I (Stepto) will cover shipping of your prize under normal insurance values. You must disclose a valid shipping address to receive your prize, that address will be known only to me. Only submissions using the supplied link with recipient and subject in this post entitled ENTER HERE are valid. Submissions are subject to the Creative Commons license for Stepto.com in that you own the copyright and I am allowed to repost your content with attribution to you non commercially. Hi, how are you? I’ve noticed you’ve read this far. You are awesome and/or a fine print freaky pervert for going to this extent. I find you strangely attractive. You agree to swear under oath that Han Shot first. I agree as a condition of this contest that I am basically giving you something for free if you win and that you should really not be a dick about it if you decide that you don’t like the cover art or something and that all your complaints are really nit picky bullshit that you should take up with Jonathan Coulton but seriously that would totally be a dick move. Lastly I’m not joking about the Han Shot first thing. Or I might be.

**** Not really.

Category: Contest

Published: 5/27/2009 10:44 PM

Modified: 5/28/2009 9:53 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Thoughts on the new Star Trek Movie

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:56:39 GMT

Title: Thoughts on the new Star Trek Movie

Body:

This is spoilery. So if you haven’t seen the movie don’t read this.

I really really loved this movie.

I’m not going to bother to go any further in terms of praising it from a movie or sci fi fan perspective. I wanted to see it twice before I wrote about it because I enjoyed it so much the first time I wanted to go one more time to nit pick it. It’s definitely not Citizen Kane in terms of its big ideas or narrative. But so much of what the film gets right about Trek is just absolutely dead on.

I dislike that to fully get Nero’s backstory you have to read a four issue comic series, Star Trek: Countdown, but that’s pretty much my sole complaint. Everything about the film hits the perfect notes:

Replicating an older film look by using camera/shooting flaws like lens flare or blinding bridge lights. Made it feel like it was rougher, more like the bad sets and cardboard bridge of the old show but without stooping to that level.

Sound cues. From the opening scanner ping noise from the old show, to the torpedo sounds, to the transporter. Everything was updated, but in a way that supported the alternate timeline idea. Comfortable, but new too.

Soundtrack: The film has an outstanding score. Go download it.

Original series nods: Kirk form Iowa, Spock saying fascinating, Pike in a wheelchair, Kirk eating an apple during the Kobayashi Maru test, McCoy’s “I’m a doctor not a …”, Kirk’s lady chasing, Vulcan neck pinch, “I have been, and always shall be your friend” and on and on and on.

Kicking original series canon to the curb: Holy FUCK they destroyed Vulcan and all the people on it. Spock/Uhura romance, Building ships on earth, making the ships far larger and more warlike due to the destruction of the Kelvin, Romulan first contact, and on and on.

I think it’s a wonderful and awesome a reboot as Battlestar Galactica was, without having to go through as many machinations as Galactica did. Everything that was great about original series Trek is here in the movie. While some bemoan the lack of some big social message, I preferred for a reboot the message that at some level these people were fated to be together, and fated to be on that ship.

I can’t wait to see what they do next, and again wish they had gone straight to a two season TV show to let the cast gel some more rather than make us all wait 2 years for another two hour movie.

But what I love most about this film, is watching people come out of it. From the kind of kids who used to beat the crap out of Trek nerds like me in High School, to small kids, to adults who never really got into it. I love hearing the buzz from them as I leave the theater. Trek’s cool again, and without really having to give anything up.

Category: misc

Published: 5/27/2009 1:56 PM

Modified: 5/27/2009 1:56 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Questions about GTAIV new content and the XBL Terms of Use

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:32:26 GMT

Title: Questions about GTAIV new content and the XBL Terms of Use

Body:

I’ve gotten some questions about the new Grand Theft Auto IV content to be released in the future called “The Ballad of Gay Tony” and what it means in regards to the prohibition against expressing relationship preference in Gamertags or profiles.

I’m going to start off by reminding everyone we certainly recognize people want the ability to self identify, and we are working on that capability to try and provide it in a way that’s beneficial and can’t be misused.

Having said that, remember that Marketplace and Game content, etc typically comes with a rating, synopsis, and information that you have to go to the marketplace to seek.

The Code of Conduct policy, inelegant as it is, is specific to user generated text content: Gamertags and profiles. Remember, the CoC *does* allow you to express vocally on the service your relationship preference. People are getting this wrong, and saying all instances of the word “Gay” for instance, are forbidden from all of Xbox LIVE therefore this new DLC represents a violation. That’s not the case. I appreciate the appearance of a disconnect here, but actually there isn’t.

As an aside, there’s other content in GTAIV that likewise would not be allowed in a Gamertag or profile. There are quotes from movies you can obtain on marketplace that are not allowed in Gamertags or profiles. Rated, purchasable content has all sorts of technical rules and restrictions as to what type of accounts can view them (child or regular for instance), location limitations, synopsis and plot summary etc that Gamertags and profiles do not currently have.

Again, in regards to the current policy on relationship preference, we’ve heard loud and clear and are working with a variety of internal and external groups on how we address that for our customers *and* prevent misuse. I hope to be talking more about that soon.

Category: Xbox Policy

Published: 5/27/2009 1:32 PM

Modified: 5/27/2009 1:34 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

A Twitter of Echoes

stepto@stepto.com — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:59:36 GMT

Title: A Twitter of Echoes

Body:

So tonight we had a bit of drama where we live. Our subdivision is a small set of about 40 houses up top of Big Rock Ridge in our farming community of Duvall in Washington state. Tonight we had some type of domestic disturbance that involved a potentially armed disturbed 40 something year old male, a manhunt, a lot of panic, and a resolution that at least means no one in our area was hurt.

What flipped me out was the sheer number of direct Twitter messages I got asking if me and Rochto were ok. I only have like 1800 (TRULY AWESOME) twitter followers but to have 50+ messages of people asking me if everything was ok with us just reminded me of how awesome Twitter is, and really, how good tools on the Internet enable a real sense of community. We're fine, and honestly it was just a few hours of nervousness spent upstairs with the alarm on and looking out the window. We’re privileged in so many ways, our alarm, police force, etc.

Our situation pales in comparison to Darfur, Iraq, etc. Tonight, a couple of white people were momentarily spooked.

But I can't help wondering if that level of interest in interconnected lives isn't the future of curing the larger horrible situations, from the law enforcement angle to the individual looking out the window, to the spreading genocide angle. Food for thought I suppose. I get twitter updates all the time on things I can’t impact at all. But what If we all had the ability to tell everyone who needed to know or could do something, the circumstances.

How long before a tweet says, legitimately, “They’re killing us, please help” Isn’t this the entire point?

Category: misc

Published: 5/17/2009 10:59 PM

Modified: 5/17/2009 10:59 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Stepto.com RSS Feed: New location, Now 100% less busted.

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:08:51 GMT

Title: Stepto.com RSS Feed: New location, Now 100% less busted.

Body:

Somewhere in the server migration I screwed my RSS feed to the point nothing would validate it. Thankfully, none of the services I use for my RSS feed BOTHERED TO TELL ME.

With some ASP.NET fuckery to resolve relative links into absolute links I got the thing to feedburner properly. The new location for the RSS feed is:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/stepto

In addition Kindle users can now access my blog now that the feed is not busted and Amazon released the kindle blog sign up thingie. Just look for Stepto.com sometime in the next 48 hours and it should show up.

Category: administrivia

Published: 5/14/2009 7:08 PM

Modified: 5/14/2009 7:08 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Posts from a Port

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:52:50 GMT

Title: Posts from a Port

Body:

It’s early May, and Rochelle and I are taking a much needed rest at Chevy Chase Beach Cabins in Port Townsend to celebrate her birthday on Wed. I love this place because it puts me in the mood to write, we get long trips on the beach with the dogs, and in general it’s a really good place to recharge. My current view:

I have a few blog entries to finish up and the last of the Operation Poetry stuff that work derailed somewhat the past week. But for now, TO THE BEACH!

Category: Vacation

Published: 5/5/2009 9:52 AM

Modified: 5/14/2009 5:55 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/560/view1_2_493846ED.jpg
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/560/view1_thumb_493846ED.jpg

Operation Poetry: Striation

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:31:42 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Striation

Body:

A principle focus of any college student is, at some point, alcohol. Hence: Striation

Palmers is the bar.
Jason holds court
traversing burgundy to whiskey
Rick samples the menu
If you’ve never smoked it’s hard to hold a cigarette

Sweat’s a tell tale
a bar? A real bar?
My thoughts race to beer, easy
But they’re 21 and I’m 18 and
order a grasshopper, thinking suave, it’s a drink right

Enjoy your toothpaste, Jason says.

You tend to meet your biggest influences in college. For me it was my friends Jason and Rick, and later my friends Steve and Mark. But my first trip to a real bar where I was going to actually fake enough sophistication to order a drink was Palmers. Jason and Rick, having been there many times and being of legal age, ordered with what I saw as flair. I was still trying to pick up smoking and my illegal drinking was confined to beer, which was easy to get and understand. Now the world’s menu of drinks was at my fingertips.

I did indeed, order a grasshopper. Jason indeed, bid me enjoy my toothpaste.

Category: Poetry

Published: 5/7/2009 10:31 PM

Modified: 5/7/2009 10:31 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

An Important Safety Message from Stepto.com

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:41:11 GMT

Title: An Important Safety Message from Stepto.com

Body:

Living out in a close knit farming community that is now 30% Microsoft employees, we have our own email alias for community events. Recently there was a spectacular high speed wreck on one of the back roads near the residential communities. There were no fatalities, and the local Fire Department quote was “No one was hurt. Drunks bounce.”

This reminded me of something and I sent the following response:

As an aside, I can somewhat verify the "drunks bounce" comment. (not through personal experience!)

In college I wrote a paper comparing injury/survival rates in DUI/DWI accidents. The survival/non-injury rate for the drunk driver was over three times that of the victims. Anecdotally, EMT people often surmised that weirdly, a lot of drunks wear their seatbelts (perhaps in some feeble attempt to try and be safe or perhaps to avoid a pull over due to lack of) and sober people in these situations (which usually occur at night) don’t. Secondarily, drunks are oblivious to situational reaction times and tend to be relaxed and pliant with the physical forces against them in an accident, reducing impact and stress injuries.

By no means should this be considered scientific since my sample set was tiny (5 years worth of data in one large county in Texas) but when I read the "Drunks bounce" comment it took me back to those EMT interviews. They all said more or less the same thing. I dearly wish the stats were reversed.

Oh and even if you're popping out the store just for milk at night, please wear your seatbelt.

So re: that last bit, be careful out there. :>

Category: misc

Published: 5/7/2009 9:41 PM

Modified: 5/7/2009 9:41 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Star Trek too, Electric…reboot..aloo?

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:53:12 GMT

Title: Star Trek too, Electric…reboot..aloo?

Body:

Everyone’s doing a “what Star Trek means to me” type post as a result of the movie so if that’s not your thing move along.

I wrote a few months ago in defense of the idea of reboots and adaptations and remakes. The idea was really around the coming Watchmen film and Star Trek. For instance I think it’s highly unlikely that the Land of the Lost remake is going to be any good, while I figured that Star Trek was probably going to be sofa king awesome, as would Watchmen. Geeks in the know are confirming all over that the new Star Trek film (really I do dislike that they just called it “Star Trek” because that’s like Duran Duran having a self titled album in 1980 then having the same title for an album in 1993.) is awesomecake that is not a lie and is in fact served with a massive side of creamy delicious I’ve run out of food metaphors so please remember to spit out the pits.

For the TV shows, long before TNG I’d seen every episode of the original series many times. The first and second movies only cemented my idea that the TOS mythos was my favorite as I was in my pre-teen years. TNG came out at a time where it was clear Trek itself needed a reboot, and TNG is by far a better show. But in some small tiny way it left out a bit from the original series that no matter how it tried it couldn’t capture. That’s not a complaint, it took Trek into new and amazing places. “The Bonding”, “The Inner Light”, “The Best of Both Worlds”, “Chain of Command”, “Frame of Mind”, “I, Borg” -- each of these far surpassed even the best of the original Trek, like “City on the Edge of Forever”. While I was raised on the spirit of adventure TOS had, TNG going from my teens into my college years helped me see where really good writing and acting could take the mythos of Star Trek. To this day TNG remains my favorite. I never got into DS9 or Voyager. They were ok I suppose, but really weren’t Trek. After giving Enterprise a fair shake and even being a strong early advocate for it, I now hate it more than any other Trek property ever done due to its reckless re-writing of canon without including the spirit.

I’ve seen every single Star Trek film except Nemesis on opening day. Even Star Trek V. I like 1 despite it’s unearned attempt at grandeur, and think by far II and IV are the best made films. III is hampered by terrible acting and writing in the second act, the less said about V the better, VI again suffers silly second act pretentions, and the TNG films strive for greatness but in each case are undermined. Generations suffered from a massively silly plot device (the nexus), First Contact nerfed the Borg by making them a hive instead of a collective, and Insurrection actually was so silly it openly made fun of Star Trek’s affectation for beating the fuck out of the Enterprise when it ran out of plot.

I found Insurrection so terrible I didn’t bother to see Nemesis in the theaters, despite the fact I think the Enterprise E is the coolest Enterprise ever made. It wants so bad to be Star Trek II , from the “shadow of a past mistake” villain to Data’s Spock-like sacrifice that I want to punch it repeatedly in the neck on live reality TV while screaming “You’ll never be Kahn, you’ll never be Kahn, I’ll kill you before I will let you be Kahn.” Thankfully no one else seems to like it.

So now that I’ve ‘get offa mai lawned’ myself I should say I’ve always had high confidence that the new film was going to be a true to the original spirit Trek. I’m seeing the film this Saturday because I’m currently on vacation at a place where it’s not playing anywhere.

But now, I’m left with a huge concern knowing that it will be a fun experience. What are they going to do now? Consign such a great reboot to movies only? There’s no way they will keep an ensemble cast like that locked into every 2 year movie schedules for very long. Why wasn’t there a plan to segue into a 2 season TV show followed by another film followed by another 2 seasons and a final movie to wrap it up? Do we really expect this set of actors to, like the original crew, play these people into their 70’s?

Then again perhaps that’s what killed Trek for me. Maybe they are laying down the idea that other actors can play these people, and like Bond or Batman or countless other franchises, different flavors are just that.

I’m still looking forward to it, and from what I’ve seen, the new Enterprise looks to knock the E out of my rank. I think there’s probably no better time to be a trekkie (screw that “trekker” silliness) because you get to either discover the great stories via the new movie, or enjoy a reboot that, like every Windows reboot, you hope takes you in a new direction.

Category: Star Trek

Published: 5/6/2009 10:53 PM

Modified: 5/6/2009 10:53 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: Last Few Moments

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:45:07 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Last Few Moments

Body:

As I struggled to even figure out if I had a voice as they say in the poetry world, I often vacillated between abstract and the more concrete as some of the examples I’ve posted have shown. This is another one like Moment One: Last Few Moments

Old Mr. Aqaba shuffles by,
hat in hand, asking for Celia.
He thinks it's 1950
He's going to propose tonight.

A friend at school worked a local assisted living hospital in the Hill Country. He told me the story of a new patient who had arrived and spent his entire time asking where someone named Celia was before finally passing away in his sleep a week or two after arriving. When his family came for his effects they explained he’d been that way for a while, Celia was his wife who had passed away. This bothered me for some time and I ended up adding in the part about instead of looking for her because he didn’t know she was gone, that he was in a happier time in his last few days.

Category: Poetry

Published: 5/6/2009 8:45 PM

Modified: 5/6/2009 8:45 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Avalon’ing Rubberbands at the Stars

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:35:43 GMT

Title: Avalon’ing Rubberbands at the Stars

Body:

It’s weird how we don’t always get to choose the music we’ve actually heard the most in our lives sometimes. And I’m not talking about the soundtrack to Neil Diamond’s version of The Jazz Singer that your mom listened to over and over again when you were a kid just having to endure the car ride to school and back. Ok maybe that one’s just me.

I’m more talking about songs or albums during a time period in your life that you might have been subjected to daily, even hourly, and how most of the music we’ve heard most in our lives might not even be our favorite.

When I was 15, I began working in the restaurant business. I learned pretty quickly that out up front with the customers you were at the mercy of the ambient music. Cooking on the line you got to more or less have a say in what you heard, but my job was split between the two, cooking and wait staff. Keep in mind this was before cable music or satellite music. Most places would pop in a CD and have it go all. shift. long. (all night long, all night)*

My stepfather Ted used this ability as a way to both listen to his favorite music as well as a way to introduce people to great tunes. In his place you could come across Bruce Springsteen, Glen Tilbrook solo, maybe a Poco album. For a while there, his secret weapon was the Paul McCartney unplugged CD he had. Did I mention this was an old style red brick Italian restaurant? So he had to ninja all this in between Dean Martin, Sinatra, and the 8 billion versions of “Mona Lisa” it seemed like there were. (there’s really just the one, but like waterboarding, the torture was new every time). After the last customer was served and closing time was underway, it was time to step back for whatever new disc had hit Ted’s hands. Maybe some Mick Jagger solo, or Jimmy Buffett, or Guy Clark. It’s no wonder that since Amore closed last, the other restaurants staff would hang out there for a drink once they were done at their own spots.

The most hours I spent working were at The Cisco Grill, which was a Southwestern type restaurant analogous to a Chili’s I suppose. There are two albums I have probably heard more waking hours of my life than anything I could ever choose to have listened to due to the fact they made excellent ambient music for the younger clientele of the place. (To be clear, I’m not complaining. In fact for a lot of reasons I’m grateful for these two albums. They made a lot of tough work shifts a lot easier.)

The two albums are “Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars” by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, and “Avalon” by Roxy Music. The former, because the restaurants I was working at were local to the band and I actually waited on them a few times. The latter, well I have no idea other than it was good ambient for a restaurant, but I still love it. There were other albums in rotation for sure, but I tended to tune them out.

These two albums are actually outstanding in so many ways. (You may hate these two albums with the white hot intensity of a thousand Pat Benatars. That’s not exactly the point of this post but if you feel the need to tell me how much they actually suck I look forward to your blog entry on the subject.) But imagine you’re stuck bussing tables, seating people, refilling ice tea, doing random cleaning jobs during your shift, but you get to become familiar with a couple of albums like that. To this day I hear tracks off of them and think about the fact I probably heard each album twice a day, 6 days a week, for a year.

I think of all the horrible albums I might have had stuck in my head (I’m *still* looking at you, Jazz Singer) and am grateful that those two are in there.

*Congrats my Lionel Richie friends, let’s dance on the ceiling till we’re easy like Sunday morning.**

**Welcome fifth element fans who only know that line from Chris Tucker singing it in the movie. Actually. If that’s the only way you know it, you’re not welcome.***

***Welcome those of you who didn’t get my last two comments and downloaded and/or googled some Lionel Richie. You’re once, twice, three times a lady my friends.

Category: Music

Published: 5/6/2009 3:35 PM

Modified: 5/6/2009 3:35 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Gamerscore resetting occurring today

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:52:29 GMT

Title: Gamerscore resetting occurring today

Body:

I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been heads down on some work stuff. Today my team is issuing Gamerscore resets due to some people cheating up achievements in Gears of War 2. We’re going to be hitting the most egregious offenders first while we investigate the full set of people who have done it. More information on Gamerscore Resets can be found here.

Now, we do this on a periodic basis and I always get asked the same questions because I know a lot of people like to boost, etc. We tend to issue resets for a very clear set of actions that users take to get achievements without even playing the game. So those of you boosters, if you’re not glitching or doing other things in violation of the Terms of Use, don’t worry. Also to be clear, this isn’t any type of bug or issue caused by Gears of War 2, it’s just people cheating their profiles to toggle a specific achievement they didn’t actually earn.

Remember, the best way to avoid a Gamerscore reset is…earn your achievements!

Category: Xbox Policy

Published: 4/28/2009 12:52 PM

Modified: 4/28/2009 12:52 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

If you’re a geek, and you’re not reading Raymond Chen, I think you should.

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:33:36 GMT

Title: If you’re a geek, and you’re not reading Raymond Chen, I think you should.

Body:

Raymond’s been at Microsoft since before there was a [Time event] to [Time demarcation]. His blog is an endless awesome examination both of Microsoft code lore, Microsoft speak lore, Microsoft, code, speak and …lore. I feel very fortunate to know him (in the Microsoft culture-email-sense meaning we talk from time to time in email. Actually it occurs to me I don’t know him at all personally. Well crap now I feel kind of like an asshole, I should totally go buy him lunch or something.)

Where was I…oh. This post in particular is a good intro as to why Raymond’s blog is informative but also interesting no matter if you know the code or not.

His blog is worth your valuable time.

Category: Microsoft

Published: 4/24/2009 12:33 AM

Modified: 4/24/2009 12:52 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: Reflection of Faith

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:39:40 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Reflection of Faith

Body:

The time period I was writing all these things was from late 1990 up to 1993, this is one of the earlier ones: Reflection of Faith

A creator of days sits behind an old desk,
sipping his tea, intent and collected.
Driven by power he plans and designs
events of a focused and purposeful whim.

Then after a time his tools change their aspect,
the elements of age slowly gain control.
And as the things he once guided now destroy
he’ll sigh and return to the certainty of his tea.

This one is really about writing itself. As I began to explore creative writing in general I tended to find that the longer I wrote a story, the more I fucked it up. Which is why for such a long time I preferred poetry or vignettes. My big problem was that I would start out with a good idea perhaps, and then over write the concept to a point where I would either need 100,000 more words to make it work, or just scrap it.

Pre-emptive snark: no it’s not me drinking tea there. The idea was that of trying to embody the problem almost from the point of what one might imagine a god or a painter or an engineer (or anyone trying to build or create something) reaching a point where the tools cause more damage than actually create. For some reason that image took root in my mind as an old guy sitting behind a desk drinking tea.

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/22/2009 8:39 PM

Modified: 4/22/2009 8:39 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

OMG Lego Rock Band

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:04:32 GMT

Title: OMG Lego Rock Band

Body:

I’m not sure how well they are going to mesh these two concepts, but I will be interested to find out. TT games, LEGO, and Harmonix are going to be releasing Lego Rock Band this holiday. I absolutely love the LEGO games to date, and my addiction to Rock Band is well documented.

What I love about the LEGO games is the humor and the puzzle aspects. They take a relatively known property and apply a really fun and unique gameplay dynamic to it, if you’ve not played them they are fun for all ages and extremely well done. Of course what I love about Rock Band is the ability to, I believe Yahtzee put it, nebbishly pretend to play all my favorite music on plastic instruments. So again, I’m not sure how well those two things combine, but it’s certainly a bold idea.

Category: Rock Band

Published: 4/21/2009 1:04 PM

Modified: 4/21/2009 1:04 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

A little consumer terrorism is healthy, and even needed, from time to time.

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:12:48 GMT

Title: A little consumer terrorism is healthy, and even needed, from time to time.

Body:

I think the statute of limitations has probably run out by now, if what I am about to write here actually describes the commission of a crime.

For long as I can remember, a certain major retailer of home electronics has been the bane of my existence for customer service, such that I might, maybe, possibly, go there once a year. If I have to. And I’m drunk and forget that I hate them. Or maybe brain damaged. Or have EOD.

I didn’t start out hating them mind you. It took years of this place wearing me down. a water torture of long checkout lines, inept “sales” people, and dirty tricks like never having the thing on sale from the Sunday flyer, but oh hey we have tons of the next model up for 25% more!

One day I snapped.

In the early fall of 1999 the hot device to have was the new Palm V. I’d been jonesing for one that entire summer and after bonus day at Microsoft I drove to one of the locations of this retailer to pick up a ton of DVD’s and a new Palm V. I only had my lunch hour to accomplish the task so I quickly scooped up the DVD’s I wanted, and made a beeline to the personal electronics counter. There amongst the other PDA’s, digital cameras, and assorted gadgetry like WebTV, was my prize sitting behind display glass.

It was perfect! So slim. So sleek! It’s little yellow price tag clearly on display. I had already ordered a cell modem for it. I was going to have mobile Internet! Not that WAP crap, but a real browser! Cue a montage dream sequence set to “Everybody’s Talking at Me” with me and the Palm V laughing at a picnic, playing minigolf, running hand in hand through a field.

The kid who worked the desk was off showing WebTV to a cute girl off to the side so I set my DVD’s on the counter to wait. The store wasn’t crowded. Minutes ticked by while the kid continued to tell the girl about WebTV’s features and I began to get impatient. Another store person walked by just at that moment and I flagged them down.

“Hi,” I said, “I just need to get these DVD’s and a Palm V, I have my card right here and I’m ready to go.”

The worker apologized, but they weren’t authorized to open that display case. They moved on while I stood there. Time continued to pass and now I was starting to butt up against my need to get back to work. The kid who was supposed to be working the area was still chatting up the girl about WebTV. I knew a lot about WebTV at the time. I knew its feature list took, maybe, a minute to explain, let alone 15.

Another worker walked by. I tried my spiel again. Stack of DVD’s, credit card in hand, wants to buy expensive item. No go, not authorized to open that display case. Apparently that display case was the J. Edgar Hoover safe of the place. Or perhaps the Hellraiser box for all I know, Jesus wept.

Finally the lord of the display finishes and comes over. At this point I’m really pressed for time so I basically rattle out “HIJUSTNEEDAPALMVANDTHESEDVD’S PLEASEKTHX”.

Kid looked at me, looked at the Palm. To my disbelief, he actually snorted and said, “Yeah good luck buddy we’ve been sold out of these for like two weeks.”

I looked down at the Palm in the case. There’s no “Out of stock” sign or even the little rain check tickets they normally put next to out of stock items. I’d just wasted 20 minutes when I could have bought the DVD’s and returned later. And motherfucker, did he actually snort at me?

“Ok.” I said, being calm about it, “that’s a shame because I was all set to buy all these DVD’s too, but because there’s no indication here you are out of stock and no one would help me I’m just not going to be buying anything today because you’ve wasted my time.” Ha! I thought, take THAT. Fuck you, stripey bag!

“I don’t care,” the kid replied, “but you have to go put those back where you found them,” he gestured to the DVD’s.

There’s a moment, thankfully rarely reached, where you actually are propelled straight from annoyance, passing by anger, rage, homicidal rage, scorched earth rage, to perfect divine retribution. I realized in a flash this kid was probably in charge of the DVD section too.

“Of course!” I replied, and took the stack of DVD’s. I rounded the corner and proceeded to put them all back in the wrong places. Then I looked at my watch and thought, screw work. Why stop there?

I made it all of the way through drama and most of the way through comedy before they caught me. I should probably also mention this was on a Tuesday, new DVD release day. I had completely scrambled drama and comedy, not just scrambling the alphabetical order but also the genre. The kid spotted me and I was caught sorting Ghostbusters and Contact together under Drama, “Z” by him and his manager.

The manager took it all in for a second and asked me what I thought I was doing. I calmly explained the entire situation as described above. The kid took one look at me and said “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life.”

Well of course he was going to say that, I thought, but the manager looked at the amount of work he was going to have to pay someone to do to fix this, looked at me and said “I’m going to have to ask you to leave this store and never come back sir, or I will call the police.”

I held up my hands and said, “No problem, I totally understand. But do me a favor. I bet there’s a security camera on that display case. I’m going to leave, but I suggest you pull the tape and watch it real quick. If you see me talking to him, and you will, you’ll know from his one statement just now that everything I said was true. You’ll see how long I waited too, and maybe you’ll do something about the customer service here.”

I turned around and left. For sure they didn’t sell practically any DVD’s that day. I know that every large business has bad customer service moments, and that’s one of the reasons I’m not naming the store here. Certainly people have had reason to complain against Microsoft and specifically Xbox too. But while what I did was petulant and certainly juvenile, great merciful fuck it felt good to do.

Category: misc

Published: 4/20/2009 8:12 PM

Modified: 4/20/2009 8:12 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: Room

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:37:48 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Room

Body:

This is more of a vignette than a poem, but then again one could argue none of the stuff I’ve been posting is poetry. This one’s called Room.

Bright light shines through the dirty broken window, illuminating the lonely clouds of dust that drift in the room. The shabby unmade bed rests in the corner, a shadow of the proud oak structure the owner had bought in London. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a chair lying on its side in the center of the floor. On one dirt-smudged wall hangs a painting of a beautiful young lady, whose eyes seem to dance the canvas. A breeze blowing through the window gently pushes the open door closed.

The room is alone.

There’s no long winded thing I was observing when I wrote this. :> I find most of the creative writing I did back then lends itself towards individual ideas or moments in time, and with this I was trying to force myself into creating a completely fictional scene without trying to abstract it at all. It works in a way because just reading it I want to know more, and just typing it out I wanted to add to it. But it’s unsatisfying.

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/20/2009 6:37 PM

Modified: 4/20/2009 6:37 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: Convocation with a German Shepherd

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 05:30:14 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Convocation with a German Shepherd

Body:

This is one of my few actually published poems. Like Rampant Blue, this poem won out in a competition to be published in volume XXVIII of Persona in spring, 1992. Persona was the English literary poetry tome for my college, Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University San Marcos.) I remember, as a side note, that people used to make fun of me for going there, despite former President Lyndon Baines Johnson graduating there (and also, more importantly, Red Dawn star Powers Booth.) At the time I attended, it was the only school in Texas that offered a graduate English program in Creative Writing.

A longer work: Convocation with a German Shepherd

On a fall night I set aside smoke
bored, watching the flowers drink the dew.

By early lamplights it was easy to see
his patient face set aside in waiting.

Pluming breath with eyes inside Morpheus;
closed jaws of little fame to ivory love.

Slowly he followed me, gazing inside and
scenting my life against his concrete.

Like a meek, I paused alone in gazed chill,
seeking his magnificence through my shifting eyes.

Then at last, he found some unsheltered master,
shape faded into the dark of the trees around him.

It’s only now that I remember a kind of beauty
in common things that eat as myself.

and sit watching at night.

In college, I was stupid drunk one night at a party off campus. Being young and an idiot I tried to drive the four miles home back to campus, but my car wouldn’t start. I sat outside and sobered up, thankful for once for my crappy car. After a couple of hours I eventually got my car started and drove back to my dorm. It was something like four in the morning when I returned and I had to drive to the remote parking lot to park.

Remote parking was, at the time, some spot bordered by three farms. It was quiet, and isolated and really really far from anything remotely resembling a dorm. Needless so say practically none of the women at my college would park there for fear of assault. I got out of the car. The entire parking area was lit up by orange streetlights, me and my car were the only things in sight.

It was misty and cold. Contemplating the fact I was going to have to walk roughly a half mile to my dorm room, I leaned against the car and lit up a cigarette. I did one of those flashy flip-the-Zippo, light-your-smoke-snap-the-lid-shut moves that you do when you are 19 or so and you think your entire life is being looked at somewhere by someone with a camera. Glancing around the silent landscaping of the area, I then saw the dog.

About a hundred feet away, sitting in the brush of the tree lined border to the lot, was a German Shepherd. He had no leash and was just sitting, looking across the parking area. His eyes reflected the halogen lights and for some reason he looked right at me. I was a huge fan of Neil Gaiman at the time hence the Morpheus line (forever ruined thanks to the Matrix I suppose.) I stood there just smoking and watching him and he watched me. This went on for 30 seconds or so, and he heard some noise behind him and faded back into the darkness of the trees.

I finished my smoke, thinking about the things you think about I guess when you’re trying to avoid something you have to do (in my case walking a long distance home) and yet I’d seen something very simple and reflective. So I came back to my room and wrote this.

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/18/2009 10:30 PM

Modified: 4/19/2009 12:16 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

That one time, during the Windows 98 launch, when all the pigs got sick.

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:45:44 GMT

Title: That one time, during the Windows 98 launch, when all the pigs got sick.

Body:

From May through August, 1998, I was in Bismarck, North Dakota. It’s not a bad place to be for a summer if you’re normally from Texas, don’t really need the Internet, don’t mind tornados just, you know, over there, and don’t mind being in the same location as a virulent pig flu. All during a major Microsoft operating system launch.

One might casually wonder what, in the fuck, I was doing in Bismarck in the middle of an OS launch.

You see, before outsourcing product support overseas was fashionable, a lot of tech companies actually outsourced their support to companies in less expensive parts of the US. Enter a company called Sykes. Sykes was a major launch partner for the Windows 98 launch, I assume because they were inexpensive and had a large pool of phone agents.

Most of the accounts handled by Sykes weren’t necessarily technical. And the vast majority of the workforce were spouses of the local farmers or their children coming out of high school. So my team was sent in to train 300 people on how to support Windows 98. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

The location consisted of two very large office buildings out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of open farmland. Don’t believe me? Here’s the Google Satellite view, even today:

We literally had to drive a few miles outside of Bismarck to get there. Meaning if you already thought Bismarck was remote, Sykes’ office was…remotier. On my second day there I had a crowd of my students standing outside the front door of the site. I asked what was up and one of them pointed. About two miles away was a gigantic tornado, slowly chewing up farmland. I had the presence of mind not to do what I would have done in Dallas, namely scream and run inside to the center of the building. They didn’t seem concerned so we watch it for a little while, as a crowd might watch the circus unpack their tents. I wish David Lynch could have filmed it.

The people were nice however and the training progressed, albeit slowly. One day over a quarter of my class didn’t show up. It was odd but I didn’t think much of it. The next day, only a quarter showed up. I looked at all the empty seats wondering if I’d missed some Bismarck/Sykes specific tornado festival or something. One of the remaining students piped up: “Pigs are sick.”

The words didn’t register at all for me and my brain resolved it into “Mytzlplyk” and I smiled and nodded because hey who doesn’t like Superman comics? The student seemed to sense a disconnect and further offered: “There’s a pig flu. All the farmers are trying to contain it. So most people are back there until it passes.”

There’s a fine line between consuming information you never, ever expected to be given, and laughing out loud like a complete loon. I managed to toe the line but not cross it. So for a two week course, anywhere from 2/3’s to 3/4’s of my class was tending to sick pigs for several days. It was during the network troubleshooting section too, so obviously everything was going to be just fine. In talking to Sykes about it, one of the arrangements they had with the local community was to allow for situations like this.

Summer in Bismarck was remarkably pleasant and days were spent teaching and writing portions of the Windows 98 resource kit, while nights were spent in furious Starcaft battles with the rest of my team. Windows 98 launched on June 25th. Around June 26th, the pigs got sick again. The call wait time jumped up and sure enough my phone rang with a query from the other support sites as to why so many of our agents were offline.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Mytzlplyk.”

Category: Microsoft

Published: 4/17/2009 3:45 PM

Modified: 4/17/2009 3:45 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/552/sykes_3_1F547D8D.png

Operation Poetry: Moment One

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:00:32 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Moment One

Body:

Another brief one: Moment One.

No one told him
it was ok to doubt
as he stood carefully
on the curb,

sped by inaction.

This is another one of those “spotted something interesting” ones. I remember this guy in a business suit somewhere in the downtown city square of San Marcos, looking pensive. The cross walk sign changed to walk and he just stood there, looking as if he almost didn’t believe the sign said walk now. I always wondered what was up with that guy that day.

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/17/2009 10:00 AM

Modified: 4/17/2009 10:00 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: What use is having a blog if you cant embarrass yourself.

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:27:41 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: What use is having a blog if you cant embarrass yourself.

Body:

I feel stupid for not knowing that April was national poetry month. In my college days I was infatuated with the medium, and tried my hand at several poetic ideas. I fooled around with turns of phrase and meter, but never rhyme. For some reason rhyme just never appealed to me.

I kept all of my poems, and just recently dug them up.

So, just to prepare you, I will be posting my doggerel jottings through the end of the month under the blog title “operation poetry” so that you can avoid them if you wish.

That’s right, let me be clear to all you people who already view my blog as an exercise in public embarrassment: I’m going to publish the poems I wrote in college here for the next few days. I’ll present the poem first, then a few notes on why I wrote it and what I was thinking. I expect the comments section might show some…ridicule. I am ok with that. [EDIT: which doesn't mean I won't delete them if I feel like it. :>]

I’ll start it off with something called Rampant Blue.

There is only cold in respected night
Until that bright daughter rises slowly
bleeding her color across the black-
glittered satin without truly transmitting the light
The only man that matters then is the one most
questioned by the young.

Rampant Blue rules for a daylight and in his realm he is enormous
Deep and flat he’s stroked across by a glimpse
and no more of his warm fabulous land;
and try as one might the kingdom of the cloth
With its holes of that same shining, never seen place
cannot be seen until his rampant hue retires.

Which he does at the daughter’s whim.

I’ve found most of my writing in college revolved around everyday things seen in poetic ways. For almost every poem I have here (and don’t worry, it’s not many) I can fall through the wormhole to the very moment I wrote it and what I was thinking. In this case, I was fascinated by the sky one day.

In San Marcos, Texas where I went to school, you get a lot of bright blue sky, hence the line about “the one most questioned by the young.” But it was that hook of kids asking “why is the sky blue” that I thought of the phrase “Rampant Blue”. In a bit of gender bending, the daughter was meant to be the sun, and the cloth was the idea of the atmosphere being a canvas ranging from the bright blue of a solid color to a glittered satin at night. I just thought the idea of a poem about something so simple as the blue sky could be rich with some type of world or hierarchy. And that the sky during daylight would rule a rampant conformity of the color blue that would have to retire before you could see the diversity of the night sky.

I like this work a lot because it sets up an almost “king’s court” amongst the elements of night, sun, and sky.

Anyways, of all the jottings I did, I only have a dozen or so I think are worth the Internet ridicule of my friends to endure, so I thought it would be fun to post them for discussion.

Tomorrow I’ll post a much shorter piece called “Portfolio.”

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/15/2009 12:27 AM

Modified: 4/16/2009 9:50 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Operation Poetry: Portfolio

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:24:15 GMT

Title: Operation Poetry: Portfolio

Body:

This one’s short and simple: Portfolio

cigarette smoke, cold
drifting Hyperion past
phosphorous fields

a transient thing
alive just out of reach
attracted by blue

cascades of red

and Memories of Green

I wrote this kind of on a whim in 1992. I had a large Packard Bell monitor I was really proud of because it was a 15 inch with a .28mm dot pitch. No one reading this under the age of 25 has any idea what I am referring to or why that was a big deal in 1992.

Get

offa

mai

lawn.

I was listening to Vangelis’ “Memories of Green” and watching cigarette smoke drift into the face of the monitor and bounce off it. The colors simply referred to the RGB scheme of each pixel on CRT VGA monitors at the time, and the fact the tubes had phosphorous in them. I called it Portfolio because I was trying to put all my writing into Microsoft Word for Windows 1.0 at the time.

Category: Poetry

Published: 4/15/2009 9:24 PM

Modified: 4/15/2009 9:24 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Proper planning for the Zombie Apocalypse

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:27:39 GMT

Title: Proper planning for the Zombie Apocalypse

Body:

While tongue in cheek, this article reminded me of the proper planning for the coming zombie apocalypse. It illuminated a flaw in my planning that I didn’t have two unique plans for Night of the Living Dead (i.e. Slow) zombies vs 28 Days Later (i.e. Fast) zombies.

On the flip side, making a new plan is always fun. Let’s see, my neighborhood has the water tower so we’d want to secure that first…

Category: zombies

Published: 4/15/2009 12:27 PM

Modified: 4/15/2009 12:27 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Through a something, adverbly.

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:05:29 GMT

Title: Through a something, adverbly.

Body:

Saturday marked fifteen years at Microsoft for me. I signed on as a contractor and started on April 11th, 1994. I was later offered and accepted a full time Microsoft position on January 30th, 1995.

The entirety of my adult life has been spent working at the company. I’ve never known any other type of corporate existence or job, and I can only dimly remember what it was like to not have a nine to five type of job like the ones I had before Microsoft. When I began at the company I never dreamed I would be here this long, but in fairness that was more because I felt so grateful to have the job that I was scared they would figure out I wasn’t worthy and would let me go.

It’s at this point in these types of retrospectives that people tend to announce something dramatic, usually as a result of recent soul searching involving a milestone such like this. This blog post in that regard is no different.

So.

Fifteen years is a long time to be affiliated with anything that isn’t blood related or that you don’t sleep with. After a lot of thinking and reflecting on where I am in my life, I am hereby announcing that I am going to leave this blog post and go downstairs to get a beer. Be right back.

That’s much better. Sitting down to write about the past always goes better with a good beer, I find. And if you can keep writing long enough and drink enough beer, you can get so shitfaced that you can go back and change the past. Although your resulting documentation of that effort will be riddled with typos and calling old girlfriends “that heartless bitch” followed by wondering what she’s doing right now and trying to find her on facebook.

I digress.

Fifteen years. At one place. I’m 36. At this pace, in six or so more years I will have spent half my life at Microsoft! I remember when Bob launched. I remember the Stac lawsuit that resulted in MSDOS 6.2, 6.21, and 6.22 and forced me to remember the file names for dblspace.sys AND drvspace.sys. I remember when “The Microsoft Network” being bundled with Windows 95 was going to result in the complete monopolization of all online service access by Microsoft. When people feared that Microsoft Money OEM pre-installs were going to crush Intuit’s Quicken and drive Intuit into bankruptcy. How Freelancer was going the be the best game EVAR. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SUCK SO BAD FREELANCER?

I remember finding out inadvertently from a head marketing guy over dinner at a Windows 95 preview program customer visit just how much we paid for the rights to the Stone’s “Start me up” for the Windows 95 launch campaign. I also remember that being our last decent ad campaign. Trust me, a lot of us long timers are still trying to get over the dinosaur office ads and “the Wow starts now!” The herbs, they are bitter. When will we have our sweet treat to cleanse us?

I remember a lot of shipping parties and a lot of great, good, and not so great products and technologies. But mostly I remember when our team hacked an Arthur Actimate doll to interact with The Life of Brian VHS tape instead of the one it came with. That was awesome.

So it’s fifteen years later. I’m thinking about that young kid waking up at 7am (!) for his first experience at a corporate type job. I had given up a fairly decent job with the Hall Family restaurants for a contract position at Microsoft that had no guarantee of being a career.

I’m wondering what I would say to him if I could meet him now. I’m guessing he’d say “Holy shit I got fat! And bald! but it looks like I can afford good beer, finally”

I wouldn’t trade the fifteen years for anything. And I’m not the kind of person who would say “and here’s to another 15",” because you never know. But I will say I am enormously lucky to have seen the things I’ve seen at the company, and am incredibly lucky and fortunate to do what I do there now and work in the video game industry, my first love.

Plus, I really can afford the good beer now, so it would be a real disappointment to my 21 year old self to let that go.

Category: Microsoft

Published: 4/13/2009 8:05 PM

Modified: 4/13/2009 8:05 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Why I’m blocking the Digg bar

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:40:42 GMT

Title: Why I’m blocking the Digg bar

Body:

I just implemented some simple JavaScript on the main page and on the posts feed to block the new Digg framing bar. If you’re not familiar with the Digg bar and what it does, Search Engine Land did a great write up of it here.

It’s nothing personal against Digg, I like the site a lot and visit it twice a day to harvest cool stuff. But I’m old enough to remember the bad old days of framing on the web from the 90’s, where sites would nest other people’s content deep within their own branding and ads. It got so out of hand sites would nest even the sites using frames, wrecking design and usability. Thankfully the world took a step back from that because it was just a horrible user experience and was so comically overdone.

That’s the danger of the Digg bar. Now, I like the Digg bar from an aesthetic perspective. It’s unobtrusive and seems to offer some functionality that, if I were a hardcore Digg user, I might want. But as a content owner they are masking URL’s and tying the Digg brand to people’s content, and I cannot support that. With the Digg bar, you don’t know exactly where you are on the web, which could also be used for malicious purposes. If they want to implement the functionality, it should be an installable add-on for browsers that the user chooses to have, instead of universally without a choice framing all content on the web through their prism.

Of course, it’s not like I get dugg a lot, I don’t practically at all. And I certainly support Digg in general with a simple add-in I have to allow for quick Digg’ing of my posts. But the choice should be in my hands as a content owner, and thusly I’ve configured my server to block Digg from framing my site.

Category: administrivia

Published: 4/11/2009 12:40 PM

Modified: 4/11/2009 12:40 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

I twittered this, but also meant to blog it. What’s the it? Hilarity.

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:16:00 GMT

Title: I twittered this, but also meant to blog it. What’s the it? Hilarity.

Body:

I’ve posted the rest of my Omegle experiment here. All the conversations are unscripted, and with a total stranger. They’re also all captured from the very first line as well. With the exception of one where the person typed in their name, they are completely unedited. One shot, one take if you will.

Now that 4chan and some other places have discovered Omegle it’s not near as fun. But for the couple of nights it lasted, for what it’s worth, it did put a smile on my face.

Category: misc

Published: 4/9/2009 7:16 PM

Modified: 4/9/2009 7:18 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

In which Omegle provides hours of entertainment

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:52:58 GMT

Title: In which Omegle provides hours of entertainment

Body:

Omegle is interesting. It’s a chat window that matches you with another person on the site and neither one of you knows who the other is.

At first I thought I had figured out the primary use of the service:

But gradually I began to sense people were using it for important matters, such as my Omegle conversation with what is clearly a qualified physician:

Or my once in a lifetime opportunity to chat with a live Nigerian 419 scammer:

It wasn’t long before the topic turned back to sex however (this one is a bit long, click to embiggen):

Or for me to indulge in some experimentation:

But in the end I couldn’t help myself and revealed my true Loki-esque nature:

I kinda feel bad for that last guy. Because you know he was all “oh, of all the fucking luck I finally get a chick and I insult her accidently.”

Category: misc

Published: 4/7/2009 7:52 PM

Modified: 4/7/2009 8:07 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

This kinda shit only happens to me, methinks

stepto@stepto.com — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 06:35:37 GMT

Title: This kinda shit only happens to me, methinks

Body:

So today was the first day of Emerald City Comic Con. I had an absolute blast, the con was great, the expo was great, the panels were great, etc etc.

But something happened at the end that turned into a relative geek nightmare for me. Steel yourselves.

Near the end of the event I was pretty tired out from walking the expo and convention center, and was ready for a beer and hanging out with my various friends in town or otherwise. Right as the expo was winding down I decided to go out to the main hall and txt some people. Reactions mixed from “I have plans” to “txt me in a few minutes” to “be there in a bit”, nothing further was really established. This would turn out to be a fatal flaw, but I was still wrapped in Jack’s warm fuzzy cloak of technology.

My phone chirped that its battery was dying. Annoyed, I posted a tweet about it, but figured I still had some time on it. I then headed down to my car in the garage to drop off my backpack. I missed a call while I was down there, and when I came out of the garage and returned it the phone just died. It was fully charged at noon when I got to ECCC so I stared at it in disbelief. It was so dead it booted to the Windows Mobile “Sorry, I’m dead” screen and shut back off, I suppose to point out that it was dead. It’d never died that fast on me before, it’s an AT&T Fuze and has usually been really really good about battery life. The weight of what was happening actually hit me so hard that I went through the five stages of grief. I was off the grid.

I wandered around for about 20 minutes looking for people I had messaged earlier and realized it was probably pretty futile given the size of the convention center, the downtown area, and there’s like 10,000 people there coming in and out. Ah, I thought, I’ll just borrow someone’s cell around here, make a call and meet up with one of my friends and get to the others from there.

Except all my friends contact information is no longer in my god damned brain. It’s in my phone, which won’t boot. I have no charger, car or otherwise on me. Borrowing someone else’s phone, who would I call? Ghostbusters? They would laugh at me. I had no ectoplasmic emergency.

Wait! How many people had my model phone around? I just needed their battery for a second. I began a feverish search only to be confronted, at every turn, by the mocking and elitist glow of the jesus phone. Enraged I railed against a phone god who would allow his only begotten son to be so callous and…have that high a market penetration.

It wasn’t too far past expo closing time. I stood around in a kind of stupefied disbelief that my phone had even died, much less that I was so reliant upon it. I was reduced to wandering around hoping to find people in blind luck, or…what? I realized the Microsoft campus was about 20 minutes away, if I hurried I could hook my phone up at the office where I have a charger, make some calls to finalize plans for a meet up then rush back to downtown. Highway 520 was essentially closed westbound, but from campus I could maybe cut over to I-90. Yeah, the whole situation sucked, but with 40 or so minutes out of my schedule it wasn’t a total wash.

Cursing my lack of a car charger all the way, I blazed to Millennium. I made it in great time, probably enough to pop in, make some calls to establish a meeting point, then pop back out.

Except I left my fucking badge at home.

I stood there at the entrance, denied. Knowing only at the moment I reached into my pocket, that my badge was at home in my smartcard reader. The red light of the door lock didn’t have to taunt me, my feeling of utter geek impotence was more than any impenetrable barrier could inflict upon me. The curses I said in that time and in that place were varied and magical. I might have, inadvertently, summoned a dark and spiteful retribution upon an innocent, simply through mere proximity and the force of my wielding of the acidic tongue.

My choices were thus: run back to downtown and hope to run into the people I was looking for, or press on to my house, another 20 minutes away, and try my same plan I was going to do from work. I held out little hope. I’d now gone dark for about 30 minutes. In such a span of time people in this day and age, make other plans.

Nearly a half hour later I arrived home to find out that indeed, most folk had figured either I was dead or they would run into me later accidentally, and had made other plans that a now additional 50 minute trip, in bad humor, would only insert me in bad form to the revelry.

I did however drink a nice bit of beer and read the new TPB of Star Trek: Countdown that has me more excited for the new Star Trek movie than I thought I could be. Call me old and geeky, but the night turned out just fine. Can’t wait for Day 2 tomorrow.

When I bring my fucking phone charger.

Category: misc

Published: 4/4/2009 11:35 PM

Modified: 4/4/2009 11:49 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Mom’s COOKING with the SPANKING SPOON!

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:56:21 GMT

Title: Mom’s COOKING with the SPANKING SPOON!

Body:

I wrote earlier of my mom’s 60th birthday, and my brothers (Toulouto and Joscoto) all being in one place.

Try to picture three 30+ would be comedians, inadvertently showing off for their mom simply because we can’t help it. We look something like this:

Yeah, I’m the one got hit with the bald stick. But think about how much I save on haircuts and shampoo! It adds up!

Of all three of us growing up, my youngest brother Jeff (pictured left) unfortunately attracted the most attention from my mother in the form of corporal punishment, due to a natural tendency he had to misbehave. My mother’s chosen instrument for said punishment was a simple wooden stirring spoon. But whereas a beating myself or Scott might have incurred would leave a mere one or two spoon marks on our ass, Jeff was well known for welts on his ankles, calves, thighs and several redder ones on his ass. Scott and I would retire, sniffling to our rooms, while our mother returned to whatever thing she was doing for us (usually trying to cook dinner) that our misbehavior had interrupted. Jeff, in infinite repose, would be alternatively zen from exhaustion or wailing from pain, and my mother would need a nap from having to chase him down.

When faced with a beating Jeff became a spider monkey. The boy could climb anything to avoid getting spanked with the spanking spoon, twisting and dodging and weaving with each swat. Sometimes for hours.

Mom got very nimble though over time. Eventually watching her and Jeff navigate bunk beds at high speed became a sort of sublime acrobatic ballet that Scott and I would be compelled to regard with nothing less than the Stephen Spielberg patented Slack-jawed Look of Wonder (tm):

So intricate, so speedy was the movement that it never occurred to Scott or I to function as some form of Cosbyian goalies, knocking Jeff back into play or otherwise trying to influence the outcome. I’d never seen anything like it since, until I saw some of the digitally enhanced kung fu sequences in The Matrix.

As they became more used to the frequency of the dance, and the terrain, Jeff became able to voice points of negotiation. Perhaps dear women, if I come down you might only swat me twice with the spanking spoon?

My mother, increasingly frustrated at the one child who would not go quietly into that good night, always negotiated up. Dear boy, we start at eight at this point when I catch you. It only goes up from here.

The very instrument of his correction attained for Jeff a certain mental mythos beyond its original culinary function. To Jeff, that wooden spoon had but one single purpose: the infliction of pain after intense exercise. One day he was bawling his eyes out in the den, inconsolable. Neither Scott nor I could determine why he was so upset. We checked with Mom who was making dinner in the kitchen and confirmed there had been no misbehavior, no beating. It was after a few minutes of our gentle queries that he wailed the source of his discontent: “Mom’s COOKING, with the SPANKING SPOON”

To Scott and I, it was always a spoon first. But to Jeff, it had become a manifestation. As if the stewed tomatoes tonight were going to be especially painful. She’d escalated the conflict beyond his means to affect the outcome.

It’s no wonder he was so upset, it must have presented him an unsolvable problem: How long can you run from your own sustenance?

Category: family

Published: 4/2/2009 9:56 AM

Modified: 4/2/2009 12:52 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/541/story_4_2292B6DE.png
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http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/541/surprise_thumb_29B269E0.jpg

In Which “A Christmas Story” Quotes…aw FUCK IT, STARS WIN!

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:12:57 GMT

Title: In Which “A Christmas Story” Quotes…aw FUCK IT, STARS WIN!

Body:

Picture, thousand words, etc.

Category: hockey

Published: 3/31/2009 10:12 PM

Modified: 3/31/2009 10:13 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/540/stars2_2_02329A35.png
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Square Manhole Covers: The Interview Process at Microsoft

stepto@stepto.com — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:40:08 GMT

Title: Square Manhole Covers: The Interview Process at Microsoft

Body:

I’ve had the fortune, I won’t disclose whether it’s been good or bad, to be on both sides of the Microsoft Interview process many times over the past 15 years. My most recent hiring in the face of layoffs at the company and the tough economic times gave me an insight into both how things have changed and how they remain very much the same.

Interviews are a simple conversation. The goal is to try and gauge a persons skill set against the role you have open and the tasks you expect that role to achieve.

That’s not always the case at Microsoft. You see, at Microsoft if you’re not careful it can get drilled into you from your very first interview training session (called, deceptively, “Interviewing at Microsoft”) that you are evaluating the candidate as a Microsoft employee first, and for the role second. Much is sometimes made of the concept of “imagine where you see the candidate in five years”. In the technology world, and especially at Microsoft, five years might as well be 20. So the five year concept has the equivalent usefulness of saying “imagine the candidate can fly, how fast do you think they can go?” as a barometer of their use for the job you need done today. Thankfully that attitude is far less frequent now than in the past.

I began working for Microsoft as a contractor in April of 1994. Back then the sole mission once you got in as a contractor was to obtain a full time position or “go blue”, which referenced the color of a Microsoft employee’s badge as opposed to your own, typically grey, contractor badge. It’s a mark of the little turns of phrase affectations that Microsoft still prizes to this day that instead of saying to your parents “I have an interview tomorrow for a permanent position with the company!” you might say “I’ve got my go blue interview tomorrow!” This would invariably cause your parents to look at you as if you had just used pig latin to tell them they were the feet beneath your knees. Sure, they figured out the words, but…what?

There were two levels of Microsoft interview back in those days. The first was the one that’s most commonly known: the all-day interview. This consists of five one-hour interviews with an optional sixth “as appropriate”. That structure is still mostly in place today, and I’ll discuss it in a moment. The second type of interview is either interviewing a person for a contractor role or interviewing a contractor for an FTE (Full Time Equivalent/Employee) position. That type is usually two hours or three hours consisting of a personnel section and a technical section. Much was made of the gravity and importance of passing the contractor to FTE interview, because you rarely got a second chance. Once Microsoft had decided you weren’t FTE material, you typically finished out your contract.

I had my “go blue” interview in November of 1994 to move from contractor to FTE, and failed spectacularly. I was so worked up and nervous over the formal nature of the interview that they could have asked “What’s your first name Stephen?” and I would have had to check my driver’s license to answer. And even then I probably would have mangled the pronunciation: “My first name is Stapheen. Stuphane? Steenaph?”

The technical questions weren’t hard, in fact I went back to my cube and all the answers came to me in a flood. It was my first real interview for something I really really wanted and I blew it. I didn’t even get asked a brain teaser, a Microsoft interview staple so pervasive in our process that people made money writing books just listing the answers. A popular one was “Why are manhole covers round?” The correct answer, I know now, is why is that relevant to supporting an operating system? But at the time figuring out the brain teaser was often considered to be the make or break item if they were on the fence about you. Thankfully I was given a second chance in December and was hired full time in January of 1995. After that I became one of the people who got to do interviews.

The vast bulk of my interview experience came when we were staffing up our short lived product support site in Tucson, Arizona. The site was opened for time zone coverage in between the Windows 95 and Windows 98 launches. It was short lived because with Windows 95’s launch we discovered outsourcing. However we needed to get 300 technical support people hired in a short span of time, 60 days or so. Nothing against Tucson, but it wasn’t known in the mid 90’s as having a massive pool of technical people. Our interview hit rate was roughly one hire for every seven or so interviews. I very quickly became immersed in how to conduct an interview and what’s useful and what isn’t.

The first thing that is important when you are interviewing someone is to ask questions that tell you things, and pay attention to the reactions. I don’t just mean listen to the candidate answers, I mean pay attention to their mindset and be empathetic about what they are going through. I found myself settling into a routine question pattern, and one of my go to questions was “how do you handle stress?” I started to learn my lesson when an interviewee sipped his water while getting it mostly on his lap, and shaking and sweating finally cried out “Well, LIKE SHIT I guess.” I felt terrible for not noticing his nervousness. Other memorable answers I got during that process that informed me I was not asking questions that would really tell me anything were:

Me: “Tell me about your last role or current job?”

Candidate: “Well I’m not sure it’s really applicable but I’m currently a topless dancer at Curves”

***

Me: “What would you say is your greatest success?”

Candidate: “My marriage of five years”

Me: “Oh, congratulations. Now, what would you say has been your greatest challenge?”

Candidate: “My marriage of five years”

Although sometimes I found my questions told me quite a bit all at once:

Me: “Tell me where you see yourself in five years?”

Candidate: “You mean in a fantasy world?”

***

Me: “What about this job do you find interests you?”

Candidate: “It’s technical support right?”

Me: “Yes.”

Candidate: “Well I had to check, since the way you asked it…I mean it’s not like anyone wants to do technical support. I’m here ‘cause you pay more than AOL.”

Over the course of several hundred interviews I figured out pretty quickly I didn’t like being the interviewer any more than being the Interviewee.

My first experience with the six hour process was when I interviewed for the Microsoft Security Response Center in the fall of 2002. I about /facepalmed over what I had gotten myself into when I saw who I was interviewing with. It was a who’s who of Microsoft computer security luminaries. Steve Lipner. Scott Culp. Michael fucking Howard. To a remote employee like me these guys were heavyweights. And I was about to fly up to Seattle to convince them over a day that I could work alongside them. I’d already done my research and studying just as a matter of when my server got hacked. But still.

Steve Lipner was going to be gone during my interview day so my first interview was with him by phone. We walked through a couple of security topics of the day (Steve Gibson’s rampant paranoia about raw sockets being the undoing of the entire Internet within 3 months of Windows XP’s release, the Code Red and Nimda attacks, etc). I felt pretty good at how I did. But the hard part of the six hour process is not doing good in any particular interview, it’s all about doing well on top of consecutive ones.

I arrived in Seattle and my first interview was with Scott Culp. His first question was around how, if I was an air traffic controller on 9/11, I would handle the situation knowing what we know now. That was a million times better than “why are manhole covers round” because it forced me to apply quite a few different problem solving ideas relating to security into a sort of no win situation. I struggled mightily with the scenario but forced myself to get up and whiteboard out the problem with Scott and it ended up completely erasing my nervousness. After that I interviewed with Iain Mulholland, who at the time worked for Scott. He asked me how I would redo our current vulnerability ratings. We talked it out and I said well, I guess we need to add a fourth rating. He smiled and asked what we should call it. I said “Well, I wouldn’t call it something hackneyed like ’important’ or something silly like that”

The next day, Microsoft announced it was adding a fourth rating, “Important” to the vulnerability ratings. It had all been researched and approved before I ever landed, so I stepped right into it there.

Michael Howard welcomed me into his office piled high with copies of his book “Writing Secure Code”, which I had read. I sat there feeling pretty small surrounded by his patents on his wall and what seemed like eight computers. He walked me through a text book stack smash and had me “spot the vuln” in some code samples (ahhh strncpy() thank goodness I knew how hard you were to get right). After 15 minutes he set me down in front of a list of what appeared to be security bulletins. “These are Red Hat bulletins for their security updates” he explained, “Our Microsoft bulletins are numbered sequentially by year. Decipher for me the naming convention for Red Hat.” He turned back to his machine to do email while I stewed over the pattern.

After ten minutes I figured it out.

“There’s no pattern I can see. They’re intentionally obfuscated”

He laughed. “Yeah I think so too, I’m trying to get as many brains on it as possible before I call them out on it.”

I spent lunch in front of a small bowl of soup trying to figure out if I was doing good or bad. These interviews were challenging for sure, but they had little to do with the standard single question/single answer format I was so steeped in. I couldn't say I was getting stuff right, but I could say that I was satisfied with how I tried.

The afternoon held much the same experience. Thoughtful scenarios that had no single right answer, and that the interviewers themselves didn’t have a bias one way or the other to the solution. I was rocked far more by this difference of maturity in the process than put off by it. It ended up forming many of my modern views of interviewing. Put people at ease, and put them in a mental place so you can find out what and how they think.

An aside for those of you who know George Stathakopoulos, longtime director of security engineering for Microsoft. He was my “as appropriate” interview. At Microsoft you tend to know you did ok on the interviews if you get the final one. I learned what not to do in an “as appropriate” from George. He welcomed me into his office with questions of my sanity at wanting a job in security, but that don’t worry everyone loved me I got the job, hey let’s play with this new tablet PC. I spent the next two weeks in horrible suspense wondering if he meant it about getting the job, while the formal offer worked its way slowly through HR. I named the resulting ulcer George.

After the MSRC I was once again on the other side of the interview table for incoming candidates. I’m glad over the years that Microsoft has gotten away from the concept of frontloading the interview experience with so much arrogance about even interviewing. And that some of the gimmicks of old like generic brain teasers and reliance on challenging the candidate with stress seem to be gone.

So when I had to conduct a series of interviews recently for my position, one that in this climate resulted in many, many, many dozens of completely qualified candidates due to the recent layoffs and current economy, it caused me to reflect over looking at our process in awe way back in 1994. And each person I talk to in an interview I always open up with putting them at as much ease as I can, because I really want to know what they think and how, not how well they deal with a bullshit interview process.

Progress.

Category: Microsoft

Published: 3/28/2009 3:40 PM

Modified: 3/28/2009 3:54 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

My side of the mountain. errr. uh. Story.

stepto@stepto.com — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:05:04 GMT

Title: My side of the mountain. errr. uh. Story.

Body:

The Dallas Stars will probably always be my favorite hockey team, even in the down seasons. And we’re definitely in the down seasons. From Wil Wheaton on tonight’s game against the Kings:

The Kings and Stars played a game tonight that could best be described thusly:

INT. Hockey Arena.

TURCO

No goals for you! You come back, ONE YEAR!

QUICK

NO YOU CAN NOT HAZ GOALZ. NOT YOURS!

This is totally accurate. This game was a total goalie battle. After a scoreless OT period it of course devolves into a shootout. I’m not a goalie battle fan so I use the word devolves.

Kopitar nails a goal but we rally. Williams lines up, I’m all ooooo the gimp wants to play hockey!

WTF Turco is apparently made of sticky tack and the puck slides along with him into the net. There’s a review, which to be honest I can’t really argue with, it is what it is, and Kings win.

And so we come to this, and now this:

The Kings are playing good hockey, the Stars? Sigh. At least I get to create new curses out of it. I agree though, it is more enjoyable to have a kind of fun ad hoc rivalry. Kings and Stars battle again on the 31st. So tune in to mine and Wil’s twitter for the ultimate battle royale…twitter…thing.

Category: hockey

Published: 3/27/2009 12:05 AM

Modified: 3/27/2009 12:05 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/538/doh_2_454F40E0.png
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Oddly enough, “Bird” was never the word.

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:58:06 GMT

Title: Oddly enough, “Bird” was never the word.

Body:

I’ve written before about my time in Microsoft Product Support Services. Back in the early 90’s Microsoft product support was based in three key places: Bellevue Wa, Las Colinas Tx, and Charlotte NC. All of the support work was done by Microsoft employees or contractors, there wasn’t any outsourcing.

Upon graduation from your Fundamentals of Support Training (FST) you were assigned an Aspect phone and two computers. One was your work computer which used our Customer Information and Tracking System to tie itself to the Aspect phone, and the second was called a “breakme” where you tried to reproduce customer issues.

I started off supporting Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, and the various flavors of MS-DOS that were still supported. Later they added Windows for Workgroups 3.11 into that mix after I had my network training.

During busy times your little light on your Aspect phone would shine red meaning there were more than 10 calls holding, and you spent 7 hours a day making your call time and helping customers.

If all of this sounds terribly dry it is because it was. You spent the day waiting for the rush of calls as Charlotte handed off to Dallas when their site hit closing time, to handing our calls off to the Bellevue site.

It should come as no surprise that enterprising geeks in such a situation would find ways to…challenge themselves. Such was born: the word of the day.

Written on the whiteboard of one of our cabal each morning was a word. Each person in on the game had to work the word into a conversation with a customer. The word usually had nothing to do with technology or our products. Since it was a cubicle environment and we all sat around each other it was easy to tap the cube wall to have another engineer hear you work the word in. The challenge was not getting caught by the tier 2 people who were assigned to blind listen in on your calls for quality assurance.

Here are some examples of ones I remember:

“Well sir, think of himem.sys as the lamppost that illuminates all the upper memory so your computer can see it.”

“TSR’s (Terminate and Stay Resident) are like goats. Enough of them together eat up all the memory like it was grass.”

“Think of DOS as a basement, and Windows is the house that sits on it.”

Eventually this became too easy and we had to move to Phrase of the Day:

“Well I would describe QEMM as like a herd of buffalo, trampling everything in sight.”

“What we’re going to do now is reset your graphics settings to the default for troubleshooting. It’s going to make your desktop look like shag carpet for a bit but it’s only temporary.”

What we’re going to do now is play a little bob for apples to see if we can find the program causing the problem.

It was all fun and games until we got shut down when one engineer was blind call coached and chose a particularly poor way to work in “Hot Crossed Buns”.

Category: Microsoft

Published: 3/25/2009 1:58 PM

Modified: 3/25/2009 2:24 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

I’M A LITTLE FREAKED OUT

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:33:37 GMT

Title: I’M A LITTLE FREAKED OUT

Body:

The Seattle grunge movement is a big part of my music experience, from Soundgarden to Alice in Chains to Nirvana to Mother Love Bone, etc. For some reason my favorite has always been Pearl Jam. Their debut album, Ten, was an important moment for me and that album got me through a lot of good times and bad. Today it was released on Rock Band and I’ve been playing it all day but I finally got the nerve to sing my favorite song of theirs, about a boy who killed himself in front of his class in Richardson, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. I remember the kid when it happened, it reverberated throughout the bizarrely close knit Dallas high school community and I had just graduated. Since I went to a Richardson Independent School District High School called Lake Highlands, my mom wanted to know if I knew the kid.

So it was with some surprise that on my first try I gold starred it, missing only one segment as a “strong.”

Guess all those years of singing that song in the car or in the shower paid off. And again as I have said before, it’s another reason I really love Rock Band. As I twittered earlier, it is not lost on me the irony of reliving my naive early 20's angsty-ness by playing Pearl Jam with plastic toy instruments in my mid 30's. But... FUN FUN FUN! This is why I think games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour and Lips etc etc etc all represent a new way to experience your favorite music.

Also note my superpower in effect. My Rock Band guy looks like me.

Category: Rock Band

Published: 3/24/2009 7:33 PM

Modified: 3/24/2009 7:34 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/536/RBpj2_2_147B9055.jpg
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I invent a new word: Suckernacity

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:19:50 GMT

Title: I invent a new word: Suckernacity

Body:

Suckernacity: noun [suh-ker-nas-i-tee]

the quality or property of being suckernacious
increasing the volume and tone of sincerity of a viewpoint or narrative that both you and the audience know is clearly false

We’ve all seen examples of individuals or entities with tremendous suckernacity. Bill Clinton’s angry “I did not have sex with that woman” denial. Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” tagline. [insert Major League Baseball Player Here]’s staunch denials in front of congress that they can’t even spell steroids much less use them. These are the obvious examples. People who don’t just state something you know is untrue, they practically double down on it when you call them on the BS.

I’ve written about the morass of horribleness that is Satellite Radio’s commercial offerings. But recently they have taken suckernacity to a new level: The commercial pretending to be part of the show you are listening to.

The commercial goes something like this. You’ll be listening to one of the satellite channels that actually has commercials. In between the Viagra tabs and trucker insurance commercials a voice will break in that sounds like a DJ. But the most interesting part is that it doesn’t sound like a produced FM top 3 station DJ. It sounds like AM band awkward 3AM Sunday morning “hits of Polka” type DJ. The speech is halting and has a weird emphasis on certain words:

Hey everyone. Back to the show in a second. But first… have you guys heard about this? It’s a computer program that's making newcomers to the internet rich. Apparently… you can sell items like iPod accessories, even Plasma TV’s from your home. Best part is, you don’t even have to see the stuff you’re selling…They have a number to call for a free CD…[sound of papers shuffling and rustling] hang on a second [more paper shuffling] I have the number right here… uhh oh yeah it’s uhh… [NUMBER REDACTED]. Sounds like your computer does all the work, while you… just basically… collect the money! That number again is…uhh let’s see, [NUMBER REDACTED].

My favorite part, besides the obvious fake attempt at tone and cadence, is the papers shuffling in the background like he’s forgotten the number HE’S PAID TO COMMUNICATE TO YOU. That’s the part that takes it from wink wink we know we’re not part of the show, to pure suckernacity for me. Like they’re saying we know we’re not part of the show, you know we’re not part of the show, but maybe one more thing might fool you.

Category: misc

Published: 3/19/2009 2:19 PM

Modified: 3/19/2009 2:19 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Rorschach's Travel Journal

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:52:00 GMT

Title: Rorschach's Travel Journal

Body:

March 10th, 2009, 6:00 A.M.

Frost came overnight. The suburban neighborhood sleeps like fat bloated corpse. A fat bloated corpse covered in an inch of ice, sleeping. Traveling today. Hate airports. Hate crowds. If the day ends with me shoving a package of peanuts down someone’s face while beating them to death with a skymall magazine…well. There’ve been worse days.

Seat warmer in vehicle makes my butt itch. Conspiracy? Should investigate.

March 10th, 2009, 6:50 A.M.

Traffic heavy on way to airport. People all thinking they have somewhere important to go. None of them know the truth. Should remember to take Daniel’s Owl ship next time. A woman in a red car pauses to let a car full of men merge. Whore.

March 10th, 2009, 7:50 A.M.

Parking at airport difficult. Had to make my own space. Porsche owner wont mind. Airports are the best place to see the worst of humanity. Long line at security. Toothpaste in zip lock bags. (Side note, new regulations increasing sales of zip lock bags a conspiracy? Must investigate). Shoes being taken off. No sir that jacket has to go through. A woman argues with guard over whether two laptops have to go in two separate bins. Holding up everyone. Somewhere Bin Laden is smiling. Next time he won’t use airplanes. Just have someone blow up in the middle of the security line.

March 10th, 2009, 8:50 A.M.

Row 14. Emergency exit row. Flight attendant yammering on about responsibility. Makes each of us answer if we accept helping to save people in order to sit here. I can see them now. Plane on fire, flames eating away as the soot covered faces plead up at me standing in the open doorway. “Save us!” they’ll cry, and I’ll whisper, “no.” Tell flight attendant yes though to keep extra leg room.

March 10th, 2009, 8:55 A.M.

Child behind me kicking seat. Keeps kicking seat. Now screaming. Other passengers trying to ignore but difficult. Will wait for cabin dim on takeoff to kill him.

March 10th, 2009, 10:00 A.M.

Flight attendant gives man rest of soda can when he requests it. Whore.

March 10th, 2009, 10:05 A.M.

Hour two of child kicking and screaming. Escaped my first attempt to silence him by tipping cup of hot coffee on man next to him, blocking me. Irony punches me in the throat like a champion throat puncher. He’s not trapped in here with us. We’re trapped in here with him.

March 10th, 2009, 2:00 P.M.

Flight uneventful. Flight attendant makes nice when man refuses to turn off laptop during descent. I briefly consider splitting his head with it, but she convinces him to turn it off and put it away. Whore.

March 10th, 2009, 2:20 A.M.

Plane filled with chattering people as we taxi. Kid still kicking my seat. Don’t know how much longer I can last. Look out the window and see the city. It’s been sleeting. It lays there wide awake like fat bloated corpse. Covered in sleet. Like it knows. Like it senses me.

Rorschach’s in town. I’ll never back down from the truth of it, but for now I must go to Baggage Claim 6a. Hrm. Now flight attendant says 8a.

Now says 8a is for connections, 6a for normal. But if bag isn’t at 6a, go to 8a. If not at 8a contact service desk since some bags didn’t make flight in time.

Here I come city.

Category: misc

Published: 3/10/2009 2:52 PM

Modified: 3/10/2009 2:56 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Sometimes you shouldn’t do what the Dungeon Master says.

stepto@stepto.com — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:06:58 GMT

Title: Sometimes you shouldn’t do what the Dungeon Master says.

Body:

I got into Dungeons and Dragons around age 11.

In my elementary school there were three types of kids. The school itself was completely surrounded by residential housing developments. At the near outer ring of the School’s district there was one street’s worth of townhomes, and at the far edge, a vast apartment complex known as Amerada apartments. So in my school you had the top social level which was kids who lived in houses, the bottom rung of the social ladder was kids who lived in apartments. You see, the parents in houses didn’t typically let their kids play over at the chancre causing cess pit of the Amerada apartments, what with their single mothers and poorer families outdoor BBQ’ing puppies while smoking crack and feeding raw sewage to their pet rats. As a kid over at a friends house, the query “can I go play at [insert kid’s name]’s” was almost immediately met from the mom with a quick “Where does he live?” The irony is that none of these neighborhoods was particularly rich or particularly poor. It was just an artifact of southern social strata.

Straddling the middle of these two zones geographically, was Timberleaf Townhomes. After my dad left, we had to move from our house by the school to Timberleaf. Since the decision matrix for the stepford mombots was “IF HOUSE=0 SET PLAY=0” I fell into the general pool of the lower social rung, and a lot of friends sort of drifted away. That was ok though, because I met my friend Antonio, who introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. This is already going to be a bit of a long story so I will forgo trying to explain what discovering Dungeons and Dragons was like. For a good description of what it meant to discover Dungeons and Dragons at such an early age, see this or this.

Dungeons and Dragons had always had a dark allure for me as a kid, mainly because of Mazes and Monsters, and the impact that it had on mothers across the United States that D&D promoted obsession, occult activities, and yummy caramel coated satanism.

Through Antonio I was able to secretly buy my first guidebooks and compendiums, and over the next year he became the DM of our group because he could draw the most kick ass dungeons on graph paper and his adventures always featured some incredibly detailed back story for the inevitable dragon at the end. Also he had all the dice, some of which were the expensive perfectly clear green dice, which we would often role play as gems or treasure. His collection wasn’t just cool, it was boss. He wasn’t just *a* Dungeon Master, he was *the* Dungeon Master.

One night we were having a sleepover at Antonio’s house. His mom had gone to run some errands and help with a local social meeting since my mom was a couple houses over anyway. Once she’d left, Antonio ran to the kitchen and came out with eggs.

“Let’s egg some cars!” he said.

Now, it had just gotten dark, and I’d never egged a car in my life. In fact, as I pondered what, exactly, “egging a car” would entail, I was pretty sure it would be a frowned upon activity. But I was hesitant to expose my ignorance for several reasons. The first was that I didn’t want to look like a moron to my friend. The second was Antonio, being my DM, had forced a rather strict play timeout on my favorite wizard because I had him crafting a pretty kick ass spell that technically would force a rewrite of several of Antonio’s adventures. This meant that while I could still roll with my ranger, I was going to be at least three weeks without Morphan Warlock, The Wise. I know. Bitchin’ name huh?

Point being, I wanted both the wizard and my kick ass summon dragon spell (you can probably see from that why Antonio forced my character out of play for so long to develop it) sooner than three weeks. But how to broach the subject? I mean, what kid says “naw, I don’t want to do this fun mischievous sounding thing without some form of compensation.”

My pensive brow and shifting eyes gave me away pretty quickly and he sighed and said he’d think about Morphan Warlock, The Wise some more according to our play rules but we had limited time to egg cars before his mom came home. I agreed gratefully, I would be the best car egger ever in support of my DM. Especially if it meant Morphan Warlock, The Wise could summon a dragon to buy us some time while Antonio told us how Neaphus the Red was particularly hateful to wizards due to a highly detailed yet unfortunate incident when he was a hatchling.

We ran out into the night.

Timberleaf drive cut across a curving road called Forest Springs. It was perfect for what I would soon discover “egging cars” meant. At first I thought it just meant we were going to throw eggs at parked cars, of which there were many along Forest Springs. We picked a spot in between two cars on the end of the curve. Cars headed into the curve would have little chance to see us even after the egging if we booked it. Once Antonio picked the spot I knew suddenly that this was going to be more fun simply because we were going to hit moving cars. It’s hard to describe just how perfect it was…wait…I suddenly just realized…ah yes, Google Streetview:

Now, right by that storm gutter were parked two cars, both of them pickup trucks. We weren’t interested in hitting anything heading towards us like the white car in the picture, only the other lane since our escape route was off to the left of the picture. There was no escape to the right as you can see with the wall there. on the other side of the wall, right where the white car is, there is an alley entrance at the power pole.

It was extremely dark with only one streetlight. Antonio handed me two eggs and we crouched. I asked him how much a mess the eggs would make on impact, mostly because I was wearing some expensive OP shorts I pestered my poor overworked mother to get solely because they had a thigh pocket with a cool zipper that was perfect for storing a Big League Chew package. In addition to having to explain why I had any egg on me at all, I could possibly be killed for being careless with something I swore I would take care of because it was more expensive than my normal clothes. Antonio laughed, mentioned it was too far. We wont get any on us, remember just throw and run.

The night was pretty quiet and I was just starting to get a little bored when a small hatchback pulled up to the intersection. Antonio tensed, I kept an eye on the car while staying crouched. The hatchback sat forever at the stop sign, we could see there were a few people in the car but it was way too dark to tell more. The car finally moved forward.

In the space of three seconds the following things happened: Antonio popped up and Nolan Ryan’d two eggs into the car *SPLATHUNK-SPLATHUNK* and was gone so fast there was cartoon bullet sound and a puff of smoke. I stood up leisurely and, never having done this before, tennis ball lobbed my eggs in an arc as the now egg-splattered car drove under them. Mine hit the pavement as the car screeched to a halt. *SPLAT* (painful pause) *SPLAT* I took off after Antonio.

I never looked back and just hauled ass up Timberleaf sticking to the tree lined landscaping. Four slots up I ducked into a hedge for a situation check. Antonio chose a parallel route across the street. We both knew the length of the street put a long run at a disadvantage against a car, better to just duck into the hedge lines and hope they wouldn’t try checking them. After a few minutes of panicky breathing and no sign of pursuit I risked exposure to join Antonio across the street and we hedge shuffled our way back to his place.

After much high fiving and breathless recounting of our incredible prowess and criminal acumen, we decided we had to do it again. Being complete fucking idiots, we reasoned that our location was so perfect and had resulted in our successful escape so awesomely that we should commit the same crime from the same spot, mere minutes later.

Back behind the two pickup trucks we went, eggs in hand. This time I was determined to nail the car. I realized my flaw in merely tossing the eggs, you had to fastball them. I didn’t want to miss the next opportunity but suddenly in all the excitement, I had to pee. I told Antonio to stand off to the side because I was going to move in between the two pickups and just turn around and pee into the sewer grate. He moved off to my right out of my sight to keep an eye out for another car.

I had just begun peeing when I heard a tire screech to my right and a loud and very much frightening sounding “HEY STOP!” Suddenly Antonio ran right past me back into our escape route and up Timberleaf. Dumbfounded, I stood there still peeing while two of the largest African American gentlemen I had ever seen ran past me in chase without even seeing me. At that point I think the lizard portion of my brain and my sphincter had a quick conference because suddenly I didn’t have to pee anymore and I slowly zipped up and sank down into a crouch between the two cars. I could still hear the two guys chasing Antonio up the street and figured the only way I was going to get away was simply and casually walking along the wall and up the alley opposite our escape route as if I had nothing to do with anything at all.

I stood up and exited my position between the two parked cars looking left as I turned right.

It never once occurred to me that the two guys would not have left their car alone and running without it being watched. I walked smack into a skinny girl who grabbed me and shouted the words that to this day my testicles have not fully descended from:

“I GOT ONE!”

With what seemed like incredible quickness one of Antonio’s pursuers returned, grabbed me by the front of my shirt, and hoisted me up into the air and against the wall. From my new, more enlightened vantage point I could easily see the flaw in our cunning plan. The egg-splattered hatchback had simply waited back against the curve of the road out of our sight, and while we looked for cars coming the other way, had snuck up behind us.

It didn’t take long before Antonio got caught and next thing you know two very scared 12 year olds were being held by two very powerful and angry men, with the girl off to the side. She was apparently the owner of the car. We proceeded to get vocally, in the most direct and clear cut manner possible: the history of the girl’s bad day, the effect of eggs on car paint, how that car was her pride and joy, how painful losing limbs can be, how long lasting the damage from being repeatedly punched in the groin can be to our inadequate and underdeveloped male parts, and how if they ever, ever caught us egging cars again we were going to experience pain that would cause us to question the wisdom of our forefathers in bothering to produce such a stupid genetic line that had resulted in such sad offspring as ourselves.

We were dropped to the ground, terrified and otherwise completely unharmed. The three hopped into the hatchback and drove off. Antonio had a hard time finding me at first because, already naturally pale, my fright reflexes had desperately tried to render me so white as to be completely invisible. We lay there for what seemed like weeks with our hearts jack hammering.

Finally Antonio piped up, quietly. “Morphan Warlock can come back right now if you tell my mom we just cooked some eggs for dinner.”

“It’s Morphan Warlock, The Wise.” I croaked, “And you got a deal.”

Category: childhood

Published: 3/5/2009 12:06 PM

Modified: 3/7/2009 12:25 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Attachments: http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/533/place_3_355FAC97.png

I’m on Major Nelson’s show again

stepto@stepto.com — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:02:50 GMT

Title: I’m on Major Nelson’s show again

Body:

We discuss the policy issues regarding sexual orientation and what we’re doing about it, as well as some challenges, and the ever popular “Bleeped out” segment.

Category: Major Nelson

Published: 3/1/2009 9:02 PM

Modified: 3/1/2009 9:02 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Xbox Live policies and Gamertags

Wed, 14 May 2008 22:47:53 GMT

Title: Xbox Live policies and Gamertags

Body:

[EDIT Feb 25, 2009: Welcome! Please feel free to read the below post regarding Xbox LIVE policies and gamertags. However, a lot has been going on since May internally in the Xbox group about how we can provide the ability to express relationship preference without people misusing it to insult people or otherwise cause offense. So please know we hear the community's feedback. Without further ado I send you back to your regularly scheduled reading of my post from 9 months ago. <g>]

[EDIT May 2008: I've gotten a surprising amount of email today accusing me or Microsoft of being homophobic. Allow me to clear that up real quickly.

The rights of Gay, Lesbian, or Transgendered individuals is a civil rights issue. I support the right of these individuals to marry and have those marriages recognized the same as anyone elses, equally. (not civil unions, which insults me as much as "seperate but equal" does as a racial strategy, but marriage as it exists for heterosexual couples)

I support their right to adopt under the exact same criteria heterosexual couples enjoy. I support legislation that protects their rights in the workplace and in society and am very proud that the Microsoft corporation is a leader in this area. I could say a lot more, but the very notion that I am a homophobe or that Microsoft is somehow homophobic is just taking the matter too far. Hopefully these public declarations will put that matter to rest.]

I've gotten some questions today regarding a recent name change my team issued against the gamertag "TheGayerGamer". As I have mentioned before, the community brings content that may potentially violate the terms of use to our attention via the complaint system.

For text and profile complaints we actually review every complaint against the Code of Conduct and Terms of Use to determine whether the complaint is accurate. We DO NOT take action based off the number of complaints, or how often people complain in a given day. All complaints we get into the system against a Gamertag or content are reduced to one so that our agents merely review the content against the terms of use. Whether it's one complaint or 20, we will look at it the same way. That's the metric we use and that we have publicly communicated that we use.

And the Terms of Use clearly disallow content of a sexual nature:

"[a member may not] Create a Gamertag or use text in other profile fields that may offend other members. This includes comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate any of the following: profane words/phrases, sexually explicit language, sexual innuendo, hate speech (including but not limited to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs/controlled substances, or illegal activities.

Emphasis mine.

We recieved a complaint on the Gamertag and determined that it did indeed contain sexual innuendo. Now granted, there could be an argument that the text is not pejorative to homosexuality and should therefore be allowed. But there is no context to explain that. Gamertags are visible to everyone and it would be hard for me to defend to a parent of a young child who saw it that the name did not contain content of a sexual nature.

We view these situations objectively during our review under the terms of use. To answer the question another way, yes "TheStraighterGamer" or "TheHeterosexualgamer" would have gotten the same treatment and would have been found to be in violation and forced to be changed. We've actually done that to tags like that before.

Racism, hate speech, bigotry, homophobia, all these things have no place on Xbox Live and are in violation of our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct. My team works hard reviewing the complaints every single day and taking action on them where appropriate. We also work very hard to be present in our LIVE community actively playing and looking for bad behavior so we can take action when we see it (for some proof of this you can check the Xbox Forums each morning for people complaining about their suspensions and that they were only 'kidding around'!) The good news is that I have said before complaints as a % of our total users still remains a tiny tiny fraction. But be sure if you see bad behavior to let us know via the complaint system!

I just wanted to provide some transparency into the reasoning we put into the process. Hope that helps!

Published: 5/14/2008 3:22 PM

Modified: 2/25/2009 1:10 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Happy 60th Birthday, Momto

stepto@stepto.com — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:56:58 GMT

Title: Happy 60th Birthday, Momto

Body:

My Mom’s awesome. Ok ok, I know, everyone’s mom is awesome except that mom in the news lately who’s using fertility treatments to shoot kids out of her hoo-ha faster than a hoo-ha does things quickly. I keep trying to tell people she’s breeding an army, one that can move in sunlight and cover great distance at speed.

But I digress.

For her 60th birthday Momto only wanted one thing, for me and my two brothers, along with our better halves, to converge in one place with her to celebrate. Figuring Momto’s wish was really just to spend time with all of us together uninterrupted, we developed an elaborate plan to…spend the better part of the day with her and to cook her a fancy five course meal with all the trimmings. CRAZY HUH? I should add, we went a bit further, buying her a new shiny Toshiba laptop running Windows 7 to replace her five year old VIA based Windows XP machine, along with a swank carrying case Jeff and Scott picked out. Oh…

A word about naming conventions. Stepto originally came about as a name when the Microsoft Amazing Technicolor Account Creator mashed “Stephen” with “Toulouse” inside of 8 letters and decided “Stepto” would be my Microsoft alias. After it became my nickname, my family started adopting the convention. My middle brother, who's full name is Jonathan Scott, is Joscoto. My wife Rochelle, is Rochto. My mom of course is Momto. But in the end, the outlier is the cleverest bit: My youngest brother Jeff, who, when confronted with this perverse Internet bastardization of our family name requested that he be: Toulouto.

I will forever hate him, for being that recursively clever.

Aaaaaaanyhoo.

I’ve relocated from our ancestral home in the ancient sandstone fortresses of Dallas to Seattle, and Joscoto has relocated to Estes Park, Colorado.

I pause to note the trend that our new locations offer 100% more snow and 25% less peak summer temperature. Toulouto, probably because he knew he should pay a price for choosing a recursive nickname, stayed in Dallas. In each place they met their respective better halves. For Toulouto, Laura. For Joscoto, Kellen. While neither have married, thus forcing the issue, I’ve often chuckled at Laurto and Kellto as nicknames. Such it was that since Momto was in Dallas along with her boyfriend David; myself and Rochto, Joscoto and Kellto (hee hee) endured the black heart pumping thick cords of dark and oily pudding that is our national air transit system. And normally, I like pudding.

Rochelle and I were in for a lightning trip. Between work and her school, we could afford exactly 18 hours of conscious time in Dallas. We landed at 5:45 Dallas time on Tuesday night (Rochto’s mom picked us up, affording her time to spend with her). By 7:30am Thursday, we were in the air to Seattle. With time short, we had several things to accomplish.

I had already prepped the new laptop with Momto’s essential applications like iTunes, Office, and um…Mahjong. Our first night was a mission to get Crawfish since Rochto and I arrived so late. And so it was that, surrounded by pints of Shiner Bock and piles of Etoufee, fried tails, and boiled crawfish, we eased back into our family dynamic. You can go home again, despite the famous quote. It just involves a table, family you get along with, and a nice dollop of ~~social lubricant~~ Alcohol.

I miss being with my mom and my brothers. I didn’t really realize it until we were back together. My younger brothers are masters at humor, they really are. Often times they riff on something and I manage to tie into it and I always feel like I’m just keeping up. Leslie Nielsen has been quoted as saying something to the effect that he never understands why people find him funny, he says his lines with deadly seriousness. It’s rare that me and my brothers crack each other up. Far more often, it’s the case that we’re talking and riffing off each other and we stop to realize everyone around us is laughing. I’m glad we had that dinner the night I arrived, We’d never been all together in front of our long suffering significant others. I think it helped prepare them. And it helped me amp my A game for jokes.

The morning of my mom’s birthday started out with a trip to Highland Park Cafeteria for an early lunch with my Aunt Lea and Uncle Paul, my Maternal Grandmother (Grandma) and Momto’s step-mother Gene (Gene). By early I mean 11am (9am our time) and in a place where the normal clientele thought 11am represented a late lunch. Rochto had injured her knee severely before the trip and was walking with a cane and she was Tyson Gay compared to everyone else in the line. But there’s only so many jokes I can make about being a fat man in a Luby’s at the age of 36 when Grandma is well into her 80’s and, though well under five foot, would kick my ass.

We endured bad southern cafeteria food (what did they do to the salmon? I’m from Seattle I know, but Salmon isn’t supposed to look like ET’s foot) and surprised my mom with her new laptop. My Aunt Lea quite literally squealed at Windows 7, especially it’s new version of solitaire. No really. Someone should tell the marketing folk, Win7 is a huge hit with the nearing 60 set. I was just happy Momto loved the laptop and was excited over a new machine.

Momto up until this point had been in the dark about the day’s plans. Toulouto had leaked out a carefully laid plan through various relatives where he actually got Momto to believe we had paid extra to rent out the local Chuck E. Cheese ballroom for $150. We whisked her over to David’s place and began the real celebration.

The menu was fairly simple:

Caprese Salad with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil

Clam Soup

Seared Ahi Tuni and Seared Filet Mignon

Braised Beef Shortribs

Crème Brulee

The drink? Tons of wine, and loads of Shiner Black and the 100th anniversary brew. Oh yeah and Maker’s. Pictures were taken, stories were told. Many of which I will write here shortly, but what cracked me up were the women and how quickly they snapped to our humor and how we all interact. My favorite moment was the exchange we had over my being the executor of Momto’s will.

Momto: “I want you all to have the house, and you can sell it and split it”

Stepto: “Mom we’re not selling the house, we’ll keep it”

Momto: “Who’s going to stay in it?”

Toulouto: “We’ll turn it into a homeless shelter”

Momto (shocked) “what about the rest of the will, if you are going to ignore it?”

Joscoto: “Like what?”

Momto: “My beanie baby collection, where is that going?”

Kellen: “Easy, to the Indonesian child laborers that made them!”

Yeah. I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

The entire event as judged by Momto was a success. Many great memories and stories were rehashed that I was going to put in this post but we’re way over limit.

Happy birthday Mom. Rochelle and I miss you. Oh yeah and I guess I miss my brothers too. Sorta I guess.

Category: family

Published: 2/24/2009 9:56 PM

Modified: 2/24/2009 10:10 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Aaaaaand We’re Back

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:00:18 GMT

Title: Aaaaaand We’re Back

Body:

It’s been an absolutely infuriating 24 hours. Everything was going just fine with the server build and I was more or less done adding new features like embedded video, etc when I got the stupid idea to install the infrastructure update for SharePoint. Next thing I know my site is wiped out and not even R&R’s of SharePoint and IIS could resolve it.

Since I’d spent the past five days learning quite a bit about what I was doing, I figured the best thing to do would be to pave the machine, clean install everything from scratch using what I’d tripped over in the previous days to create a much cleaner mistake free box.

So here we are.

I’m planning on using Windows Live Writer as my new blog authoring tool of choice as it let’s me do some cool things via plugins that I never could do before.

Content calendar for the rest of the week is going to revolve around my trip to Dallas last week for Momto’s 60th birthday. Being around my brothers certainly brought up a lot of great stories and memories that I’ll put together here.

Now for some much needed Xbox play tonight as well.

Moving forward I’m evaluating some other changes to the site to clean it up and streamline it a bit. However, I do believe I will be backing up first.

Category: administrivia

Published: 2/24/2009 3:00 PM

Modified: 2/24/2009 3:00 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

I Always Wondered What Drove the Colonel to Madness

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:42:25 GMT

Title: I Always Wondered What Drove the Colonel to Madness

Body:

Now we know. Now we know.

Funny

Published: 2/24/2009 2:39 PM

Modified: 2/24/2009 2:49 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

Zero Delta Blog Migration Complete

stepto@stepto.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:53:21 GMT

Title: Zero Delta Blog Migration Complete

Body:

Well, I suppose I shouldn't say zero delta.

For the past 4 years Stepto.com has been running Windows Server 2003 on an single core AMD64 "Clawhammer" based platform with 2 gigs of RAM. Along the way, its Sharepoint instance was upgraded, but it's more or less been the same software platform. It's time to retire the old hardware platform and upgrade to the new hotness, which is what I have been doing for the past week or so.

I scored a nice deal on a new Dell Studio Hybrid. It's an Intel Core Duo 2 platform, and CPU power wise represents a pretty significant power upgrade over the old platform. I also got 4 gigs of RAM for it. Oh yeah it's also tiny.

I can hold the new hotness in my palm. It's roughly the size of three DVD cases stacked together. *TINY*. Truly we live in the golden age of technology, before the fall of the empire. Look at that pic, you can fit three or four of the Dell Studio Hybrids in the same space as the current SFF server. Wow.

So we're now migrated over to the new server running Windows Server 2008 x64, Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 x64, and all the other associated x64 hotness. I've also moved from using just the built in blog posting client to using Word 2007 which should result in a bit better readable font. I might move to Live Writer or another tool if it makes posting inline video and other things easier. The IRC server is down for just a bit while I put up a new one that requires some configuration.

Last but not least, I'll be finishing up my evaluation of new blog templates over the next few weeks for the site. Look for news on that shortly.

Published: 2/24/2009 1:54 PM

Modified: 2/24/2009 1:54 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Created By: stepto@stepto.com

An evening with the Young Dubliners

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:04:52 GMT

Title: An evening with the Young Dubliners

Body:

In roughly the year 2000 or so Rochto and I attended a Jethro Tull show at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. I'm reminded of this tonight by a member of the opening band at that show, The Young Dubliners. During the break I hit the restroom and came out to run right into the entire band, smoking and hanging out. I shook hands with them and told them how much they rocked the set.

It's a moment that stood out to me because instead of shaking my hand and returning to their conversation they wanted to know the songs I liked and how they played. They stopped everything just to chat with some guy hitting the bathroom between sets who really enjoyed their set.

There's no better way to be introduced to a band than by them taking the time to know their fans.

We've loved their music ever since. Shortly thereafter we managed by luck to catch them at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, where the band hoisted a BAR up on the stage and grabbed members of the audience up to sit and enjoy a pint of black while they played. Granted it was Murphy's but hey they're the experts.

Tonight they came to Seattle's new Snoqualmie Casino with the Gin Blossoms. It was a given that we would be there since we have not seen them in forever and they put on such a fantastic show. I would have had a much longer show with cuts from many of their albums but in the end they were opening, so we got a great set from their new album. In between sets we caught up with them:

And again since Rochto is a drummer:

and of course, we're fans.

We got invited to their Ireland trip in the fall, while I handed out business cards and insisted they needed to be in Rock Band. The set was simply outstanding and full of all the energy and music we fell in love with almost a decade ago.

If you want to know their tunes I suggest this and this and this. These guys are worth your hard earned dollars.

Part of the reason I love these guys is not only do they put on an outstanding set, they come out later just to chat with their fans and are such totally amazing guys. Not to mention I would love to play their stuff in Rock Band.

Great show guys. Can't wait to see you next.

Published: 2/15/2009 11:32 PM

Modified: 2/16/2009 12:04 AM

Modified By: Stepto

How to handle a large amount of daily email.

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:39:43 GMT

Title: How to handle a large amount of daily email.

Body:

I always wondered how people deal with a massive amount of email. The past two years for me have seen a huge leap in the volume of email I get daily. At work, it's not such a big deal to get 500 or so email messages in a day, because not all of them are to you specifically, and not all require a reply. Many can be reviewed as rollups every couple of days.

Personal email however is a lot different.

I now get a lot of email at my stepto.com address. From people asking me about security stuff to normal geek correspondence to Xbox stuff to other stuff. I was shocked a month ago to realize in the previous six weeks since I had cleaned out my inbox I had roughly 6000 items in my personal inbox, 3100 unread. On top of me twittering like a crack addled twitch monkey on speed, blogging like someone with diarrhea of the blog...hole...and just regular email correspondence, it occurred to me I wasn't replying to like 75% of what people were sending me. doh.

Unlike work email, the majority of these emails to my personal address deserve or expect a response. It's been bothering the hell out of me how to deal with it so I came up with some tips that should you ever find yourself in the wonderful position of having so many people want to talk to you that you cannot answer it all sometimes, this might help.

So here are my tips for handling large amounts of email:

#1. Accept that you'll occasionally get a level of volume that you simply cannot read/reply to it all.

As a geek this was a hard point for me to reach, and I'm thankful that this situation tends to come in waves and isn't constant. With the email culture at Microsoft, not replying to email that needs a reply is considered actually impolite. But between work and personal, I'm hitting that volume level occasionally, and was surprised at how low the daily bar was before you realize that all that email stacking up just compounds the problem. But at some level you gotta bend like a reed in the wind when it comes down to cook dinner or wade through 60 more missives just because you would feel bad someone you have never met sent you something and you just don't want to come off like a dick.

The lesson here is eventually you'll come off that way unintentionally or you will die of starvation/insanity from never taking a break from email.

So if you have sent me something and I didn't reply, I'm really really sorry. Please don't think it was because it was uninteresting or I don't care.

How to cope with this? I've begun making sure when I do occasionally hit the level where I can't get to it all, I make the time to pick a few at random and reply to them, so at least some people can get a reply to their question or comment.

#2. Beware the tyranny of the inbox.

Part of the reason I got into the 3100 unread mess in such a short span of time was that I was basically having everything go to my inbox then I would manually sort it from there into "reply to", "records", "family" type folders. So my inbox wasn't helping me prioritize at all, it was just a stream of incoming messages. But because it was my inbox it's where I spent all my time.

Instead, create a series of subfolders to help prioritize and spend most of your time there using aggressive filtering.

Which reminds me:

#3. Filter aggressively.

The reality is that personal email, like work, has priority levels. Email from someone asking me particulars about how we do enforcement on Xbox LIVE is going to be a lower priority than an email from my brother helping to plan my Mom's 60th birthday celebration. Especially since the former is already available on my blog or existing podcasts. Create groups if your email client supports it and use rules to route mail from groups automagically into sub folders. I created a folder called "Primary Senders" that has mail sorted from family and friends out of my inbox into that. I further subsort by whether I'm cc'd or on the To: line, and sort by domains and senders to filter newsletters, monthly meeting stuff, etc into their own spots. So I spend most of my "reply time" in Primary Senders or into the folder I use for when people report bad folks on Xbox to me. And I monitor Inbox for different things.

#4. Portability.

I'm very thankful I can get email on my phone. My wife, not so much. But me, yes because it means I'm not chained to a monitor. Get your email into the cloud. It makes all the difference in the world. I find I can catch up on a lot of discussion list and digest stuff waiting in line at the cafeteria or in a cab or even offline on a plane trip. You certainly have to know when to put it away, and I'm still struggling with that part. But at least I don't dread sitting down in front of my machine because the blue number next to the folder is four digits and those four digits tick upward distilling guilt units into my brain.

To those sending me email:

I do indeed try to read every email, even if it's just in the preview pane.

You probably sent me something very cool or very witty or otherwise awesome. Please know that I probably read it and lol'd or was otherwise appreciative and thought "wow remember to email them back" then never did for lack of time. Again I apologize.

Often times you might resend it wondering if I'm actually reading my email, and upon receipt I felt guilt and said "wow, remember to email them back" then never did for lack of time.

I'm really honestly very sorry about that. But I've come to grips with the reality that my daily volume sometimes hits the level that between work and personal email, 30 seconds on 1 reply each day for both would rack up to about 2.5 or 3 hours a day simply trying to reply to everything. And that's on medium level volume days. So if you sent me something and it was something you really feel is important or cool or you worked hard on writing up for me please know that it's not you, it's me. And I really don't want to get to the point where I setup some type of auto responder, especially when people are reporting miscreants to me or ask me to join a game because some people are being dicks in it, etc.

Hopefully these tips will come in handy for other people, and I certainly don't mean to complain or have people think I don't want them to be able to email me. It's just the law of large numbers has collided with a finite amount of time much like goat butts up against hedge, and horns become...entangled.

Published: 2/13/2009 12:34 PM

Modified: 2/13/2009 1:02 PM

Modified By: Stepto

About all those Windows 7 editions.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:10:43 GMT

Title: About all those Windows 7 editions.

Body:

I read with great amusement the outrage and wailing about the number of Windows 7 SKU's. People have such short memories.

The Windows 7 SKU’s are actually a good leap forward. Let’s all remember where we were the day Vista launched:

Windows XP Home
Windows XP Pro
Windows XP Pro 64 bit Edition for Itanium
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition 2003
Windows XP Home N

Windows XP Professional N
Windows XP Starter Edition

And of course that doesn’t even get into sp1/2/3/embedded, etc lunacy.

Compared to XP Vista was a step forward. Windows 7 just tries to take it one notch down to focus on two primary retail SKUs (Home and Pro, jury’s out on retail Ultimate I think).

It’s also important to note that customers by the vast majority aren’t confused by this. They get Windows. They don’t think too much about it because right now so few people as an overall measure of the user base use media center or remote domain login and the rest are enterprise customers who are paid the big bucks to know what they are buying.

So as much as we think it’s silly (and believe me, I do) the data on this is clear: no one but the press and the 2% of the population that are technorati actually invest any emotion about how we SKU Windows. :>

Published: 2/5/2009 9:06 AM

Modified: 2/5/2009 1:44 PM

Modified By: Stepto

A Geek/Movie Exercise.

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:46:09 GMT

Title: A Geek/Movie Exercise.

Body:

Thanks to a big fat check from Uncle Sam, which actually came in the form of electronic bits blinking into being and increasing the number of zeros behind the first digit of my checking account, I got a new TV. Hooray for e-filing and wire transfers.

When we moved up here we had a nice 50 inch Sony rear projection monitor I got in 2000, but sadly it did not have component input. So in 2004 we got a Toshiba 52" DLP. It was one of the color wheel ones and unfortunately I could see the rainbow effect. In addition it only did 720p. But it was much nicer than the Sony so I'd basically adjusted to it over the past 5 years. The problem however with DLP's is that unless they are a new LED one, you have to replace the Bulb to the tune of $250. So getting a new TV for the Rock Band room seemed like a nice way to celebrate paying off a lot of our debt recently.

So we got the Samsung LN52A650, and since it boasted 1080p, advanced image processing and 120hz anti-judder I did what I do any time I get a new TV for that room and used it as an excuse to re-watch a bunch of my favorite movies. So I fired up the PS3 so I could mix Blu-ray and upscaled DVD's and bathed in the film stuff.

Aside from the fact the TV's picture is ASTOUNDING sauce drizzled over a powdered FANTASTIC deep fried AWESOME cake, I sort of found myself noodling over the movies I was sampling. Mostly I was thinking about what made them appeal to me but then I got into the fun mental exercise of perusing my collection and trying to come up with movies I thought expressed geekdom pretty well. And by that I don't mean Star Wars or Star Trek or The Matrix. I was more thinking of if I was trying to explain to someone what the essence of being a geek is all about, what movies would I pick to do so. As culled through some films I thought it might be fun to write about it so here we are. I should also note that I'm writing this while putting off other posts I'm in the middle of but figure at this point posting "The 10 best Xmas movies" would tag me as obnoxiously early.

#1: The Abyss Extended Edition

A lot of people have never seen this edition of the film. The cut that hit the theaters was severely butchered by the studio and the ending made no sense whatsoever. But if you're trying to hit the high points of geekdom, this has everything you need. A varied cast of interesting people. Aliens. An exotic location. This movie also has an extremely strong female lead in the character of Lindsey, who undergoes a sequence in the film that to this day there's just no way I would have the courage to go through. She’s by far my favorite person in the story because not only is she smart, capable, she ends up being the only person who is essentially right the whole time. But the film I think embodies that part of every geek's wish to be in an exotic fantastic location, and interact with an alien intelligence. It's got cool military stuff in it, geek ingenuity, and a set of out-of-the ordinary characters. The extended cut adds a lot of interaction between Lindsey and Bud, who are two of my favorite characters in all of sci fi. It also adds quite a bit to the ending to provide an explanation.

#2: Jurassic Park

Forget the wining of the kids, and the saturation of Spielberg's trademark "Slack-jawed look of wonder (TM)", this film has dinosaurs. Cool ones. But more importantly there's a moment in this film that I think every geek has inside them, even if it's not specifically about dinosaurs. It's the moment when Dr. Grant sees the confirmation of what was before just a theory: groups of dinosaurs moving in herds. Even more so than seeing the Apatosaurus just a second before, this moment is important. It represents the confirmation of a scientific theory or a belief held dear. For many geeks that could be proof of extraterrestrial life or what killed the dinosaurs or how life began on Earth. But that moment when he says "They're moving in herds. They do move in herds." with tears in his eyes, is something that every geek I think reacts too in some way. Plus the movie has dinosaurs did I mention that? Seriously. Dinosaurs. I can put up with a lot of pap dialogue for cool Dinosaurs.

#3: The Last Temptation of Christ

CURVE BALL. Most geeks I know aren't overtly religious. That doesn't mean they are all atheists by any means, but they tend to have a more pragmatic take. It's one of the reasons I love this movie, because it takes basic assumptions about the role and life of Christ and pokes at them like a hacker would. Tinkering, breaking, and reforming the idea of a deity into something more worth worshipping. The Christ in this film is not, as I was taught from my Southern Baptist upbringing, divine from birth. In fact he's not divine until the moment he dies. Christ as played here by Willem Dafoe is conflicted. He doesn't know if it is God that provides his abilities, or Satan. He doesn't know for sure he's the son of God. He would give anything to just be a normal person. The movie opens with him making, as a carpenter surely would in those times, crosses for crucifixions. Judas isn't some jealous betrayer, but Christ's best friend who is tasked by Jesus to betray him or God's plan cannot come to fruition. While on the cross, in the moment God looks away, the Devil tempts Christ with the life of a human. Nor more torment or pain, a family. A normal job. A normal life. What makes Christ divine, what makes his sacrifice worth worship, is when he denies that temptation and from the cross, bleeding and dying, triumphantly shouts "father, it is accomplished". Again this isn't to make a point about what is or isn't real about religion, or what people believe. It's that I think geeks in general are far more inquisitive about such things and more open to examining them from another angle. Or deconstructing them and rebuilding them to make more sense. I look at this movie like I might look at someone rebuilding a BBQ grill into a computer case.

#4: Wargames

Probably self explanatory. Every geek wants to be the smart kid who manipulates the system. Also, it's conflict is centered around video games! 25 years later this film is still better than Hackers or The Net or a variety of other computer oriented films. Second only to Sneakers for mixing plausible realism with fiction.

#5: Spaceballs

There are a lot of better comedies that are a parody of something geeks hold dear (Galaxy Quest for instance), but Star Wars, at least for the next decade or so, is still going to be the glue that holds a lot of geeks together. At least until the young ones grow up in a world where they always, duh, knew Vader was Luke's father. The in-jokes here are funny because they are true: the extra long opening ship shot. Silly puns like pizza the hut. It's almost as if geeks themselves made this movie which is why I like it. It points to the self deprecating humor that seems present in all the geeks I know.

Sure there's a lot of others I could have chosen. Alien/Aliens was especially hard to not include, as was Blade Runner or Serenity. I even examined some flicks like Juno, or some John Hughes 80’s flicks. But my thought process was a little different than just saying what movies I love as a geek as opposed to viewing some titles that reflected geek nature. I wanted to limit it to five as well. A fun exercise, as it were. But there’s lots of facets of geek personality to cover, from politics to money to parenting, etc.

And as an aside 120hz anti-judder is nice when it's implemented on a low setting. It makes even old movies look like you are watching them on stage and I find the effect quite life-like and pleasant. If you have the means and are in the market for a new TV, Newegg has the Samsung LN52A650 for $1999.99.

Published: 2/4/2009 12:42 PM

Modified: 2/4/2009 12:51 PM

Modified By: Stepto

In which Rock Band 2 engages Transwarp drive on a heading of awesome

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:20:23 GMT

Title: In which Rock Band 2 engages Transwarp drive on a heading of awesome

Body:

So I've had this for a while now and have been meaning to write about it after my Twitter teasing a few weeks ago.

Anybody who knows me knows I have an unhealthy obsession with Rock Band.

As in, I like my rock banded, not heroed. As such I have spent an insane amount of money on the DLC, as well as guitars, drum sets etc. But no one could have told me, with a straight face, that what my band Subject to Change was missing was stage presence.

You people are smart. You see where this is going.

We now have the official Rock Band STAGE KIT!

Yes that's right. We have a light show and fog machine.

And it cranks the awesome into the nexus phase, indistinguishable from total awesome.

I never thought something so frivolous would become so essential. To try and show you, I have captured authentic grainy Internet video.

Behold!

Couple points, the lights are actually very bright, and the video was in a dark room on a crappy camera so if it looks even partly awesome, you must have this. That's Rochto rockin' the Ion kit.

We've not done the fog machine part for one reason, our Rock Band room (formally known as the "Home Theater Room") is 12x12 and the idea of a full fog in there reminds me of any FPS made in 1999 when volumetric fog effects became the rage and everything was in foggyvision.

If you've ever dreamed of getting an ION, or have over 200 total Rock Band songs you simply must have this.

All non light show rocking is now, by definition, not rocking.

Published: 1/28/2009 8:15 PM

Modified: 1/28/2009 8:24 PM

Modified By: Stepto

In which I work a Stan Winston joke involving [CENSORED] in Major Nelson's show.

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:58:09 GMT

Title: In which I work a Stan Winston joke involving [CENSORED] in Major Nelson's show.

Body:

I'm on Major Nelson's podcast this week talking enforcement. Don't miss it, because I hear this awesome person named Felicia Day is on the show also. There's also lots of bleeps.

Published: 1/25/2009 4:55 PM

Modified: 1/25/2009 4:58 PM

Modified By: Stepto

In which a long simmering feud bursts out into the open, like a baby alien.

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:47:52 GMT

Title: In which a long simmering feud bursts out into the open, like a baby alien.

Body:

Chris Hardwick, Nerdist, managed to get Doc Brown's open letter to Marty McFly. I'd always been subtly aware of the suppressed rage between these two characters but didn't know other people had the actual correspondance.

Marty's reply is probably less known but I have reproduced here for posterity. Warning, these two guys have needed to have this falling out for quite awhile so the language is definitely NSFW:

Doc-

Really? We're going to go there? Cause I have some points that, you know, I feel you should take into consideration. Thanks to your needing to steal from terrorists to test out your well thought out scientific theories I NEARLY HAD TO BECOME MY OWN FUCKING FATHER ASSWIPE.

Oh sure, I know you could say I didnt HAVE to. But up until I had to confront his BONER after he was HUMPING A TREE LIMB while WATCHING MY MOM UNDRESS I'd never really considered how stupid and fucked up your self absorbed time travel process had become. Believe me, right about the moment my mother's incestuous TONGUE was in my MOUTH just so I could ENSURE MY OWN BIRTH I was sincerely looking forward to watching you get shot again. Oh I'm sorry, did I suddenly reveal why YOU GOT SHOT AGAIN?

And by the way, I love how a guy with hair like Bozo the Bleached Albino Clown and a penchant for flailing limbs and bug eyed grabbing-people-by-the-shoulders gets to make short people jokes. Hey genius next time you want to fuck up my psyche while going through some convoluted scheme to live in the wild west and fuck some prairie woman after thoroughly fucking up my entire LIFE, how's about you just go to the wild west in your machine and experience THE POWER OF LOVE ON YOUR OWN.

Do. you. have. any. idea. how long it will take for me to erase that alternate future where my mom has a massive tit job out of my mind? Never mind the fact that without you Biff was just an annoyance LET ALONE A MULTI TIME DIMENSIONAL MENACE.

I'll never forgive you for fooling me into wearing that multicolored village people cowboy outfit.

Eat an ass dipped hoverboard,

Marty.

Published: 1/23/2009 9:41 AM

Modified: 1/23/2009 9:49 AM

Modified By: Stepto

Today's the greatest. Time to get to work.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:53:21 GMT

Title: Today's the greatest. Time to get to work.

Body:

There's so many things to write about today. There's so many ideas or moments or points to reflect upon.

For instance, I do not believe like a lot of people that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney are bad people, or have evil intent.

Like most people who discover themselves out of their league, they merely became single minded of purpose. They circled their mental wagons around ideas that seemed sound, but ignored history, and reality. I don't especially believe we can rightly call their administration "the worst ever." Such a determination will take time, decades, to fully rate the ramifications. I do believe their administration took actions that were unamerican, and unconstitutional. The men themselves weren't unamerican, but they were (and still are) blinded by that most dangerous of virtues: moral certainty. Their actions thus, have been damaging to our country as well as to our heritage and reputation.

But such things are quickly undone. I read as I write this from my Twitter feed, that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual has just ordered an immediate and full suspension of all pending Bush administration regulations. And I see on the newly redesigned White House web site that they have dramatically expanded Civil Rights agendas with a focus as well on the LGBT community. In a way, without the mistakes and bad policies we would not have had this morning, this day. But see how easy it is to undo it? See how good it feels to be proud and not afraid?

I'd booked today off shortly after the election. I knew I really wanted the time to experience it and reflect upon it. When Rochto and I discovered that the Paramount Theatre in downtown Seattle was having a free celebration and putting coverage of the Inauguration on the big screen, we scrapped our plans of a breakfast feast and beer and mimosas to join thousands of people to watch the historic moment.

And so it was my sorry ass got up at 5:30am to get down there. We ran a bit later than the 7am opening doors, and the line wrapped around Pine and Pike st, almost a half mile. For a brief moment we wondered if we should abort and run back home, we were afraid the theatre would fill up. But we parked and risked it. It did indeed fill up but thankfully we got seats. The theatre was extremely dark because the projection was a bit weak on the screen, but the pics show.

The crowd was absolutely electric. People were hugging and smiling. Strangers were making way for people to reach seats.

Rochelle turned to me and said "I think this is the first one of these I have ever sat down and watched."

"You picked a good one" I replied.

The coverage was already on the screen and the requisite boos when Bush was shown or Cheney had an almost jovial feel to them. There was coffee and breakfast foods and I noted with some amusement, mimosas and alcohol too for celebrating. The first time we clearly saw the President-elect as he was exiting the White house all action stopped and a thunderous standing ovation occured. I've been in that theatre a million times. I don't think I've ever heard anything like it.

Just as the oath was about to be administered the coverage we were watching noted, irrespective of the oath, Barack Obama officially was already President of the United States. The laughter and cheers were muted at that, because I think all of us needed the oath. We needed so badly to hear the words. We weren't going to accept it until it was too late to take back, too real to be some fevered dream.

As the oath began I noted with extreme amusement the strict constitutional textualist Chief Justice John Roberts get the oath of office (Laid out in the Constitution) wrong. There was a hard edged grace in the President's letting him correct it before they continued. You could almost sense the unspoken thought, "This is one of many reasons why I voted against your confirmation John"

There was pregnant silence during those words that only 43 had spoken before. When that "So help me God" came out, the roar from the crowd put the earlier ovation to shame. People were applauding, crying, laughing. Hey don't take my word for it.

I can't imagine any better place to have been besides perhaps Washington D.C. itself, to have shared that experience with so many.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Barack Obama is no superhuman. He will stumble. He will make mistakes, and he will disappoint us sometimes. But his call to us is what is important. He said today:

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

If he fails, we failed. If we fail, he'll fail. And with that, we get to work.

Published: 1/20/2009 4:46 PM

Modified: 1/21/2009 7:12 PM

Modified By: Stepto

In Memoriam: Saturday Morning TV

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:53:00 GMT

Title: In Memoriam: Saturday Morning TV

Body:

I stumbled upon a Youtube video of the original Pac-man Saturday morning cartoon the other day and fell right through the god damn worm hole again.

It's way too bright in this store. It smells of the strange alien smell of expensive new things. Christmas morning, your mom opens a box and a ring's inside or dad opens a box with a new shirt and all you can think is that it doesn't smell anything like a Kenner Star Wars playset. It smells adult. Things beyond the ken of a child.

This place is thick with it. It also smells of too many important adults bustling about. I'm eight. My mother has taken me to Stirling's Jewelry near Northwest Highway and Central Expressway in Dallas. I have 15 dollars. I am going to put a television on lay-away. Until I would later buy my first car, this stands out as the single most important financial moment in my life. I'm too uncomfortably dressed for such an outing on a weekend, one of MY days.

Stirling's was, technically, a jewelry store. But at this moment in the fall of 1980 it's morphed a bit to compete with the local malls. Suddenly, almost overnight, the store carried a variety of different items. Smartly, they branched out from fine jewelry to cheap home electronics. Including one Emerson eight inch portable black and white TV, with a silver and black case and handle. The price was $79.99.

Stirling's was one of those hold-overs from times gone past where you made a request of the salesmen (no women here unless it was the ring section) and they gave you a ticket. You paid the cashier according to the ticket and only then did you join a line that resulted, eventually, in your exchanging your receipt for the item you purchased, having just been run up by one of the warehouse guys. The only items out were display models. Everything was boxed up in the back room. I envisioned a warehouse populated by top men. Crates upon crates of treasure and mystery somewhere in the back.

A lot of moms jerk their kid's arms when the kid is gobsmacked by something, and the mom is on a schedule. I stood there under the insanely bright overhead lights at the mixture of jewels, gold, silver; things I cared not for but were so overwhelming. I really just didn't care about any of it, but it was all so beautiful. My feet were planted as if there were roots in my amazement. My mother waited for a moment and said, "we have to go to the other part of the store."

What? OH GOD! YES! TV! Dear christ on a crutch nailed to a cross of popsicle sticks, I had nearly forgotten why I was there! The magic of lay-away. Suddenly I was so proud to be there in my black Toughskins jeans and Osh Kosh shirt my mom had put me in for this serious financial arrangement.

You see, everything had been explained to me. This was serious business. My father had carefully laid out fifteen one dollar bills then sternly called my name to make sure I was looking straight into his eyes. He hunched, almost, to ensure I was at eye level and told me of the importance of what I was about to embark upon. It was a mission of capitalism you see. His warning, as he said, was ensuring I get a receipt.

It all began weeks before, with what I firmly believe was the impatience of my parents. And, in order to understand that, we have to understand Saturday morning TV.

To be clear, Saturday morning TV didn't totally involve cartoons. If one was bright, and of a certain acumen, you could arise early and catch the Three Stooges, Flash Gordan, Green hornet. Such rich and mature adventures. The young mind boggled at what was once serious entertainment, but was now offered for any age prior to 8am. It's almost like they knew that no adult would be up, so best to take this time to serve up the richest and deepest of 30's and 40's film serials. I sat in a time worn deep-orange-carpet living room, with the gigantic 20 inch color TV rendering to me the black and white grainy serials of four or five decades ago, as fresh and new and as engaging to me as Captain Caveman.

The volume low, hunched close to the device as to not awaken my parents or my still very young brothers, I sat there in rapture. An oversized bowl in my lap held what Sugar Pops I had not clumsily spilled all around the kitchen counter. I can remember how large the box was, how deep the bowl was, and how a child's tsunami of whole milk poured across my treasure was the source of all that was important. And yeah, it was whole milk people. None of that white, thin-as-water fat-free "Milk" they give kids today.

I'll leave for another time my obsessive mining of cereal boxes for prizes. Deep treasures hidden within food that the rest of the world must to this day regard as a sick joke; the very prospect of hiding something made of cheap plastic (that small children would covet but ultimately discard) within food that would feed a village for a week.

Oblivious, I proceeded to enjoy the full morning's energy rush before anyone knew I was awake. Today adults stumble out of bed and apportion caffeine and sugar in far greater measures. I, was ahead of my time. It was around the morning hour past the New Adventures of Batman, past Tarzan and The Lone Ranger, somewhere about the Bugs and Tweetie show or perhaps the Scooby Doo Dynamutt hour, that my sugar fueled energy could hold no further restraint and my cackles would cause my parents to inevitably emerge from their slumber. I envision being regarded with disdain and some small amount of restrained violence, except I was nothing but eyeballs adhered to the screen.

I remember these moments. My solitude dimly interrupted by my mother's patient exhortations regarding the mess I had made in the kitchen and my father's unblinking disregard of the pap I was consuming on TV without fail every week. That was ok, because the later pre-noon shows almost always were Krofft Superstars or Shazam or Ark II. You know, the deep stuff.

And I haven't even gotten to the commercials! In the late 70's/early 80's Kenner practically owned Saturday morning commercials. Star Wars toys, to which I have already written an ode to my unhealthy obsession, were always showcased on Saturday morning TV. But not just Star Wars toys, you could also catch awesome commercials for the occasional Shogun Warrior, or Justice League figures. It was like getting even more entertainment in between the cartoons. These weren't commercials, they were me getting to watch kids play with toys I would soon at some point be playing with.

My parents never really understood how awesome Saturday morning was. Or perhaps they did. Their solution to gain perhaps just a bit more sleep was to allow me to buy my own TV. Over the course of that summer I made weekly trips to Stirling's, dutifully supplying an additional three dollars for chore work each week until I had at long last reached the end of the $79.99 price and the box on the shelf with the red "Lay Away" sticker was mine. An Emerson 8inch black and white TV. My mom sprung for a nice little table for it to sit on.

Such was my love of Saturday morning TV that for an entire summer I went without Star Wars figures. Without my allotment of candy allowed to be purchased during store trips. Not until later when my DM made me take a wizard out of play for weeks to develop a particular summon dragon spell would I feel such a sense of sacrifice to attain a goal.

I loved that TV, and used it dutifully until that day in 1984 when got an Atari 800 which could do color. And each Saturday morning I woke up. I'd hit the power on the TV and went to the bathroom while the set warmed up. Instead of being hunched in front of the color radiation king in the living room next to my parents room I was much farther down the hall. My sugar intake somewhat delayed by the convenience of not having to really leave my room. Still later it would allow me my own unshared cartoon pipeline as my brothers got old enough to discover cartoons too.

Saturday morning TV is long since gone, a victim of over marketing and severely declining quality. Kids today are saving for Nintendo DS's. This isn't a bad thing, and in a way I'm kind of proud that people of my generation have such a universal and singular experience that ties us together.

But I do miss a huge sloppy bowl of sugar pops (Or Count Chocula, or Booberry, etc) and an entire morning of TV programming dedicated to exactly what I was interested in, all on a little black and white screen I worked an entire summer for.

Published: 1/19/2009 2:35 PM

Modified: 1/19/2009 3:01 PM

Modified By: Stepto

I'm whizzin' with the door open. And I love it!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:07:15 GMT

Title: I'm whizzin' with the door open. And I love it!

Body:

More accurately I'm blogging from my new HTC Touch, the AT&T Fuze.

Previous Winmobile phone Browsers didn't handle my site well but this one appears to work fine.

Now to find a good Twitter app.

Published: 1/15/2009 6:00 PM

Modified: 1/15/2009 6:07 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Recipe File: Roja Cheese Enchiladas

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:05:28 GMT

Title: Recipe File: Roja Cheese Enchiladas

Body:

This was an especially difficult recipe for me. My culinary training was in Southwestern grilled food, Italian, and BBQ. I say "training" because I was a line cook for restaurants that made all those types, and quite well I might add. But ever since I left the restaurant business and started cooking solely for myself and Rochto's enjoyment I've always been terrified to cook Tex Mex dishes.

This is mainly because they are my favorite. To this day the first thing I order at a mexican restaurant are the cheese enchiladas. They are the baseline for which I usually end up judging all other dishes, provided the enchiladas are good enough to warrant a second visit.

The best cheese enchiladas I have ever had reside at Herbert's Taco Hut in San Marcos, Texas. They were perfect. The cheese had the absolute precise amount of diced onion. The texture was a mixture of cheesy and creamy. The red sauce was distilled straight from the nipples of the chili enchilada sauce gods.

So when Rochelle brought home a bunch of stuff from the store and said "Let's have enchiladas, I have a craving." I panicked.

You see, I can't just make enchiladas. Like most of my all time favorite foods, I have to have my own way of doing it. And I've had too many horrible horrible enchiladas in my life (like when people just stuff flour tortillas with cheese and picante and bake it. *shudder*) that I knew if I was going to make enchiladas it was going to be a recipe I would want to keep and use. AND I was going to insist on making my own red sauce from scratch.

So, much to Rochelle's consternation, since she just wanted something simple and NOW, I hit the Interhighway Superweb Tubes. I usually do this for my first try at a recipe, I find two or three that I like online then merge them or mix and match. I did so here, and 2 hours later Rochelle proclaimed the results to be outstanding.

I however was not satisfied completely, but at least I was not disappointed (I found there was too much salt in the final result). Couple nights later Rochelle brought home all new ingredients and I made some major modifications and the results, were awesome.

So without further ado, Roja Cheese Enchiladas with home made sauce.

Ingredients:

Roja Enchilada Sauce

1 Can all natural Low Sodium Chicken broth (Or 2 cups if you wish to make your own)

4 Tbs Chili Powder

1 tsp. Ground Cumin

2 tsp. Crushed Garlic (not garlic salt, not garlic powder, crushed garlic)

1 tsp. Sea Salt

1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. Sugar

6 Tbs. cold water

3 Tbs. flour

Why low sodium chicken broth? Well this was a happy accident. The first batch I made used regular chicken broth and I found it way too salty. Rochelle brought the wrong kind home, but I thought it would be perfect and plunged ahead. I was more right than I knew. Since low sodium chicken broth brings out far more of the wonderful chicken flavor in the broth, I highly recommend using it instead, since we will add a touch of salt throughout the recipe.

On medium heat, combine the garlic and chicken broth in a pot, stirring to distribute the garlic particles around. Add in the chili powder, cumin, sea salt, cinnamon, and sugar while whisking the mixture vigorously. Increase heat to a boil and cook for three to four minutes, whisking all the while. Reduce heat and let simmer for three minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, combine the flour and water in a seperate bowl, making sure to add the flour in a tablespoon at a time and stir so there are no lumps. Once the mixture is complete three minutes should have passed for our simmer. Turn the heat up and slowly pour the flour mixture into the sauce, whisking like a madman to avoid lumps. This is every important, because if you get lumps at this stage it doesn't ruin the sauce exactly but doesn't really help thicken it, and you get chunks of cooked flour in your sauce which is never pleasent.

Turn the heat down now back to medium and, slowly stirring, let cook for another three minutes. Turn the heat to the lowest possible setting and let sit. The roja sauce is done for now.

Cheese Enchiladas:

1/3 cup grapeseed oil (Canola can be used in a pinch)

3/4 pound grated mixed cheese (Chedder/Jack)

1/3 cup chopped sweet yellow onion

Enchilada Sauce (see previous section)

8 Corn Tortillas

1 jar Queso sauce (or you can make your own)

Heat the grapeseed oil in a pan to medium heat. I like grapeseed oil because it's light, healthy, has a relatively high smoke point, and imparts a barely detectable nutty flavor to the tortillas. Canola (or better yet, Enova) can be used in a pinch without impacting the flavor really at all.

Stack the tortillas in 4 groups of two. Using tongs, grab one stack of two and place in the oil for 20 seconds, then flip it for 20 seconds more then set aside.

Here's how we make the enchiladas. The heating in the oil renders the tortillas nice and soft. If you overcook it no worries, just toss them and start over, or keep frying to make tasty chips. Ok now, seperate the tortillas oil side up. Gently spoon some enchilada sauce all over the tortilla. Then grab a handful of cheese and lay it slightly off center lengthways. Sprinkle some onion, and spoon just a touch of the queso sauce in the center.

Now for the rolling! Take the longest-from-the-cheese edge of the tortilla and pull it up and over, then tuck it under the cheese. Your tucking action should move the cheese more towards the center, then just roll the rest of the way until its done. Cap each end with your fingers and lift it into a baking dish. Repeat for the other tortilla. It takes practice, but after a bit you become a pro at it.

Now repeat: lightly cook the tortillas, spread sauce, add cheese, onion, and a touch of queso sauce, tuck and roll and back to the next one.

Once all eight tortillas are nestled in the dish, you should have some shredded cheese left over, some queso sauce, and a lot of enchilada sauce. Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas. Gently spoon the rest of the queso sauce if you want on top of the sauce, then sprinkle the rest of the cheese. BE CAREFUL with the queso sauce. Most queso sauce is very salty. This is how I overdid my first batch I think, along with the high sodium broth. Feel free to skip putting any more on. It's mostly a preference thing.

Now, with good enchiladas, heat is the key. We gotta get those suckers HOT. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the enchiladas uncovered for 20 minutes. By the time you are done the sauce should be deep brown at the edges and bubbling, and the enchiladas should have flattened out from the melting of the cheese and weight of the sauce on top.

Take out of the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, then serve with traditional rice and beans on the side.

Enjoy!

Published: 1/11/2009 11:22 AM

Modified: 1/11/2009 1:12 PM

Modified By: Stepto

pssssst. Don't tell anyone.

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:22:05 GMT

Title: pssssst. Don't tell anyone.

Body:

I'm hiring.

Published: 1/9/2009 11:21 AM

Modified: 1/9/2009 11:22 AM

Modified By: Stepto

This is a tool gone horribly wrong. Save your family, save yourselves.

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:17:23 GMT

Title: This is a tool gone horribly wrong. Save your family, save yourselves.

Body:

I downloaded Songsmith with the intent to record a Jonathan Coulton tune in a horrible format as a tribute.

Few people have the actual results of that experiment.

However my next stab at wresting the beating soul of the tool to a forge that might bring forth a shining blade such that kings might be chosen proved...successful?

So I sang, into my iMac's mic, and that is my voice unaltered in pitch and tempo. The beast, the very dark heart of some mechanical satan, did the rest.

Published: 1/8/2009 8:12 PM

Modified: 1/8/2009 8:17 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Mamma Mia, a worm hole, and the circles of hell.

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:30:30 GMT

Title: Mamma Mia, a worm hole, and the circles of hell.

Body:

A lot of recent writers have spoken of the worm hole. For us geeks, the phrase is used to describe a moment in time where a focal point in your adult life opens a gigantic window into an unassuming passed moment of your childhood, where time didn't really exist. A place where that exact temporal blip stretches infinitely around you, and you were oblivious to its import all at the same time. It's a better analogy than most people think. Once you go through it, it takes some time to understand fully what has happened.

It's 2009 (!). I just got done jamming out to Rock Band 2 after some prep work for my first day back to work from the winter holiday. I head back to my office to check on email.

Downstairs, a dark siren call climbs upwards. I've been trying to avoid this since I first saw the poster signs 50 feet high in Times Square in 2006. Mamma Mia. A musical based on Abba music. I knew when I first heard of it a movie was inevitable.

DO NOT HUM. *DO* *NOT* *HUM* *DANCING* *QUEEN*

My mind imposes a steel lock on my jaw. I will not indulge, I will NOT reveal the depth of my knowledge of Abba's music, my early exposure to it. But I have to go downstairs to cook. Resigned to my fate, I trudge down to roast a cut of salmon for the night's meal, while a joyful and cackling-with-glee Rochto "re-introduces" me to these songs. These songs I have known all my life.

Take a Chance on Me, I'm exposed to, as if it's new.

Knowing me, Knowing you.

Waterloo, for fuck's sake.

I season the fish and put it in the oven, crack open a beer, and resign myself to the inevitable. I'm going to be listening to this, and even asking for certain songs to be played, for a good bit of the evening. I wonder, perhaps in desperation, when it was that I grew past the music of my parents---and suddenly, blindingly, it's 1981.

There's a silver unispeaker tape recorder/player hand-me-down from my paternal grandfather in front of me. There are two cassette tapes sealed in Sears plastic. I have my bone handled lock blade pocket knife, the one my mother flipped out when my father gave it to me for christmas. And I am about to discover my own taste in music.

I could fairly say my family household growing up was a musical household. My father was a devout Southern Baptist, with a rich voice and a talent for instruments such as the accordian and piano. The overall bent in the household with my father's stern guidance was gospel or southern country gospel. I grew up humming Micky Gillis, the Statler Brothers, The Oak Ridge Boys. I knew southern religious music like the back of my hand. Forbidden was the dark side of country for me, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash. Hell even Jerry Reed was borderline for me to be allowed to listen to.

My mother was a little more contemporary. While my father was away the house was filled with Streisand. Abba. Bee Gees. The most innocent of the 70's disco and pop scene.

Christ, by the time Xanadu came out I could have sung every song unheard, so exposed was I to the proto-80's pop that my mother called her relaxing music. (As a side note my mother was also passionately into Gershwin which I got exposed to at an early age, as were both my parents into classical.) That music to this day is weirdly like comfort food. Where nostalgia grabs me by the shirtfront and jerks me back to 9 years old like it did tonight.

That tape deck was heavy in my hands. Think of it as the pre-cursor to the tape based Walkman. It was the type where all the buttons were at the bottom, tape cartridge in the middle, and the speaker was on the top. Now this was a device of the 70's. It was the type of player where you had to press play *and* record simultaneously to get it to record. It was one of those where the "Stop" button was critical to actually keeping your tapes in working order. The black cassette loader popped up when you pressed eject. No stopping the tape then a motorized lifting of the mechanism here, people. Eject was a mechanical switch where, even if the tape was playing, the tape loader violently jerked it from the cradle and *ejected* it. If you weren't careful, it might as well have been labeled eviscerate. More than one Alvin and the Chipmunks tape had been unspooled due to the impatient NOW of the eject button.

I think everyone has a musical awakening. A moment when the entire world suddely opens up like a locked portcullis into a castle filled with treasure and mystery. A place where you cannot go back once you enter, and where the consequences of entering are far far worth the entry. For me, it's the summer of 1981, and a momentary abundance of allowance.

I'm at Skyview elementary school. Just before the end of that school year, what was for me third grade, my class was allowed to bring in anything we wanted from home on vinyl to listen to for music class. I can't remember what I brought, I suspect Gershwin because we had so few LP's, but one girl brought in Queen's "The Game" and her song she played was "Another one Bites the Dust." For the first time in my life I was transfixed by music. I was locked, watching a turntable needle roll out for me music that roiled my concept of beat and lyrics. The bass of Queen! That drum beat and Freddie Mercury's amazing voice.

I had studiously saved my allowance for several weeks in preperation for the coming onslaught of new Empire Strikes Back toys that Kenner was going to release for the movie. But that summer weekday on a trip to Sears I begged my mom to let me use my twelve whole dollars on cassette tapes, for the first time. Wisely, my mother figured that music was better than plastic toys and aquiesced. I feverishly picked two. Queen's The Game and the soundtrack to Raiders of the Lost Ark. She had to spot me a dollar but I came home with two highly treasured items. I listened to them all day in my room. I was completely mesmorized and adrift in what I had discovered. I remember being deliriously happy.

All highs have a crash. My father returned home that night and was furious. I had no idea the fight my parents had, perched in my bed with a book and headphones listening to my new music. No idea that is until my father calmly came into my bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and turned off the tape deck. He informed me gravely that we needed to pray.

Now in my house when a parent said you needed to pray that meant someone had died or was very sick. I remember having to pray when my aunt's pregnancy turned touch and go for a bit, or when my grandfather had to have surgery.

This must be serious.

My father clasped my hand then proceeded to pray fervently, out loud, to Jesus Christ not to let my enternal soul be damned to hell forever because I had purchased the devil's music. He said he knew it was too late but that he hoped that I would learn from this mistake and dedicate my life to undoing this horrible, fatal, sin of buying a Rock and Roll tape.

Keep in mind there was no preamble here, just launch right into a prayer about how I was going to hell for sure and could the good lord please see fit to maybe overlook this transgression. By the time he was done praying I was in tears. He left the room without saying anything else.

I don't know if I got any sleep that night but I remember the staying awake in torment part. I had no idea I had done anything wrong, no clue as to why Jesus would be so against something I found joy in for the first time. After a while though, I remember thinking that perhaps my father was an idiot. After all, music wasn't in the ten commandments. Certain types of music didn't seem to be delineated in Sunday School like other behaviors. This was shocking to me to even consider. My dad! An idiot! I mean, who damns someone to hell over tapes? It was an awakening on many levels for me all in one moment.

Damned to hell. For all eternity! For Queen! Fine, I decided. If that's the penalty I'll argue it on the back end as to the stupidity. Unknowingly, I was already forming a judgement based on my father's behavior that he would do nothing but bolster for 20 more years.

You often don't control when you are jerked back from the worm hole. With a bit of a start I suddenly saw Rochelle scrolling through the tracks on the Mamma Mia DVD and Voulez Vous popped up.

"Voulez Vous! Play that one." I said.

"You don't know this, it's not what you think it is." she replied.

"Yes it is," I sang the chorus, "Look I know these songs better than you do." She shrugged and laughed and played it. And it was awesome.

The kitsch washed over me like fire. I'm in hell, just not the one my father envisioned. Another one bites the dust.

Published: 1/4/2009 8:16 PM

Modified: 1/4/2009 11:42 PM

Modified By: Stepto

10 movies you can quote thanks only to 80's cable repeats

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:45:34 GMT

Title: 10 movies you can quote thanks only to 80's cable repeats

Body:

Gather 'round children and I will tell you a tale. A tale of days gone by and of movies that at any other time in history would have been forgotten. This tale is of a device that magically reanimated mediocre, even bad films, such that everyone in my age group knows of these films and can even quote them.

What is this dark force, this twisted Istari that brings the trivial instead of wisdom?

Mid-80's cable television. (cue bolt of lightning/crash of thunder)

You see, back before the world wide super tubeway net 2.0 service pack 4, before digital satellite and digital cable, before anyone making less than 200k a year had a cell phone, there were 57 channels. Usually divided between "A" cable and "B" cable. "A" cable contained all the stuff you wanted, like local channels, news channels, and movie channels. "B" cable contained public access, and C-SPAN. And for your 57 channels you were charged more or less what you are today for 500+ channels. And because of that you tended to watch whatever was on because paying for TV was still very new, so people felt compelled to watch it, even the crap because hey...already paid for it right?

The problem was HBO and Showtime and the various movie channels didn't really have a huge library of movies to show. So they tended to take what they did have and play it in heavy rotation, such that a particular movie might get shown 80 or 90 times a month. Combine this with the idle time of School breaks for children in that era and you end up with this, the top ten bad/mediocre movies that I've seen more times than Citizen Kane.

#1: Mannequin

As if this film's support of the neutering of Jefferson Starship into the insufferable "Starship" wasn't bad enough, it starred sexy hot young Kim Cattrall, which meant in my teenage years I was basically going to watch the entire movie for that alone. For some reason, I assume for stay-at-home housewives, this romantic "comedy" almost always played in the morning hours before 1pm. Which ensured I would idly end up watching it while eating some form of breakfast type meal.

A story about an egyptian goddess of some sort forever condemned to be a department store mannequin until she finds true love, this film is so gut wrenchingly bad I live in constant fear of developing intestinal cancer at some point due to my youthful repeated exposure to it.

#2: Police Academy 2

This movie featured a man eating cereal his cat had just pooped in. Later, he eats a half eaten thrown away chocolate bar that has ants on it. After that do I really need to go into how crass and juvenile the rest of the plot was? Why did I watch it? 50% because it was on, and 50% for Colleen Camp as officer Kirkland. This is another film I fear future cancer from youthful exposure. This time it's brain cancer.

#3: Turk 182!

Ahhh back to another Kim Cattrall classic. This was a perfectly mediocre film, the story of a rebellious young graffitti artist who uses a "Kilroy was here" type persona to fight back against a city hall who unfairly denied benefits to his firefighter brother who was injured on the job. He finds clever and ever more expensive-to-clean ways to put "Turk 182" on various city landmarks. The movie makes no sense in the end as the city, desperate to find who the heck this Turk 182 person is, misses the fact he's spraypainting his brother's Firefighting helmet number, 182. This isn't a movie I'm ashamed to have seen a million times, but it's one of those films that would have faded forever into obscurity without endless replays on cable.

#4: Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold

Hold on folks, I'm going to fold space in order to explain this to you. Most people think this is a cheap rip off of Indiana Jones, and they are right except that it's a remake of movies and stories featuring Allan Quartermain going back to 1919. And all the film versions have as their source H. Rider Haggard's 1885 story "King Solomon's Mines." Lucas himself has cited the stories of Allan Quartermain as influences on Indiana Jones. So you have a cheap rip off that's actually a remake of the very thing that inspired the thing being ripped off. This particular film is worth the price of admission for both a young Sharon Stone as well as a barbarian axe-wielding James Earl Jones as unintentional comic relief.

#5: Red Dawn

Now save your flame mail. I'm not here to say Red Dawn was a boatload of cheap 80's bratpack starring Reagan-esque propaganda. I'm here to tell you that the greatest scene in any movie EVER is Powers Booth's glum defeatist shot down pilot character, Col. Andy Tanner. Just chew, *chew*, on this exchange:

Col. Andy Tanner: ...The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that's why they're here. That's why they won't use nukes anymore; and we won't either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing's pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.

Darryl Bates: What started it?

Col. Andy Tanner: I don't know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they're gonna fight.

Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?

Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forget what it was like.

Jed Eckert: ...Well, who *is* on our side?

Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.

Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.

Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.

[he throws whiskey on the fire; it ignites violently, suggesting a nuclear explosion]

If you grew up in a world without early 80's Reagan sword rattling, or The Day After, Amerika, or Red Dawn, you missed out on some classic us vs. them fear mongering. You think the current government is good at fear mongering? Kids in the early to mid eighties worried about nuclear war before they went to bed.

#6: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

This is the masterpiece that inspired a generation to immediately refer to any sequel with the ":Electric Boogaloo" moniker. It's a story of how breakin' through stereo types and breakin' in general helps save a community center from the evil company that wants to turn it into a strip mall. This movie also taught anyone with a modicum of muscle control how to do "The Robot," a tactic that I intend to use during the coming zombie apocolypse to fool them into thinking my brains are circuit boards and thus escape.

#7: Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

The first Nightmare on Elm Street holds up ok as a horror film. It's got crazy over the top blood effects, a decent hook, and the requisite amounts of female nudity/skimpy clothing. The second one, which Wes Craven actually refused to work on, is ultimate campy stupid crap. Although it does contain my favorite Freddy line, "We've got work to do you and me, you've got the body...and I've got the brains" where then Freddy peels back his skull to expose his brain. Most of the worst of the Freddy quotes that people like to quote actually come from this movie. Even though most people agree it's really not very good. Personally it gave me nightmares and the entire Freddy aspect in this movie seemed to me to be the most evil, while still managing to be really campy and silly.

#8: Hellraiser

I confess right now I've never been all that impressed with Clive Barker's horror. Hell, the tagline for Hellraiser was "Sadomasochists from beyond the grave!" That doesn't sound like it's destined for the front part of the rental store. But any movie that can inspire almost an entire generation to quote "Jesus Wept" in the same tortured/sensual tone as the movie has got to be ok in my book. It also forever conditioned me to be creeped out by chattering teeth.

#9: Brewsters Millions

This simple morality tale is one of the few examples where a relatively mediocre movie actually benefitted from the exposure and one of the few on the list I can watch today and enjoy and get a good feeling from. The story of Monty Brewster as played by Richard Pryor and his attempt to spend 30 million dollars without attaining a single asset in order to inherit 300 million dollars is both serious and silly. From his minor league team's exhibition game against the New York Yankees to his running as "None of the Above" for mayor, this is a showcase example of how truly gifted Richard Pryor was and how deft he was with picking a safe script (The Toy, Superman 3) for every concert movie he did that made the white folk laugh nervously (All of them). I watch this movie and just really really miss his comedy.

#10: Night of the Comet

Comet passes by Earth, anyone outside turns to dust. Anyone partially outside becomes a cannibal zombie. Anyone in a cave or metal container survives. Ironically, this is the same comet that, when it passed by 65 million years ago, did the same thing to the dinosaurs. I used to watch this movie and think, has anyone ever made a dinosaur zombie movie? because *that* would be fucking awesome. Instead, we get treated to a bizarre sequence in the middle of the movie where the two lead girls in the film get bored and go on a shopping spree to a Cyndee Lauper tune. It's bad folks. It's real bad.

There's so many more movies I could have put in the list. The Manhattan Project. Howard the Duck. Explorers. Buckaroo Bonzai. D.A.R.Y.L. But I'd be here all night. I think that was a unique time period because very little else competed for our time in those days. Today you have a hundred fold increase in the exposure something can get, but with that comes the darwinian process of not bothering with anything that is even marginally entertaining because there is so much better stuff out there. So I think mid 80's cable stands out as a place where the audience felt more compelled to watch crap, and the crap became more pervasive.

And I wouldn't change that for the world.

Published: 12/30/2008 6:36 PM

Modified: 12/30/2008 8:42 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Snowpockyclypse 1988

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 05:07:27 GMT

Title: Snowpockyclypse 1988

Body:

I started this post in the snow we had in January of 2008. Seems like a good time to finish it.

As mentioned previously I am a child of Texas. A Texan, as it were. And most of that time was spent in Dallas. Now, Dallas is not known as a winter city. My entire life I probably saw all of 9 inches of snow total accumulated in 30 some years. But from 1987 to 1988 we briefly moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. Little Rock is also not known as a winter city. But January 6th through the 7th of 1988, Little Rock got 13 or so inches of snow dumped on it. And it stayed there. For two weeks. Because Little Rock is an extremely hilly city, this shut down the city, including school, for that time.

We lived on a little street called, I shit you not, Stonehenge Place. Because, you know, prehistoric English monuments are typically honored in the central southern United States. Had I seen the movie just a bit earlier than I did, I would have reveled in living where the demons dwell, where the Banshee live and they do live well. Anyways we lived specifically at 1512 Stonehenge Place. It's my curse to remember places I have lived. Wait. If I can remember that, I bet the genitals of the Olympian Gods that Google lets me spy on it. A HA!

Ok so that is the modern day view of the house we lived in. Wow. It hasn't changed at all. Now, in this view up the road you can see the slope.

And here's the view down the slope.

As an aside, what's really creepy about this is that I can go spy on the house of the piano teacher I had at the time that I had a massive teenage male too-much-time-in-the-bathroom-alone crush on.

But I digress.

Imagine you're from Texas, never seen a lot of snow, and you have a slope like that. You walk outside to play in the snow because, hell all you know is from throwing muddy snowballs in the half inch snows of Dallas. But the entire WORLD is white. There's snow on the ground beyond the dreams of avarice. You dig in, ready to build snow forts and snow trebuchets and snow tanks and snow A-10 Avengers...but suddenly you look up from your dreams to notice all the kids in the neighborhood are carrying these weird things slowly up the slope. Like big boards with blades on them. We stepped out that glorious cold day on the 7th of January 20 years ago, myself and Joscoto and Toulouto, and felt like we were witnessing new alien tools we had barely the ability to understand. Suddenly a sled was an advanced technology indistinguishable from magic.

We'd known all these kids for six months now, but we suddenly lost the ability to address them, so stunned were we with our unfamiliarity of their magical pylons of snowdom. Their monoliths of potentially icy fun wisdom.

"what..." we stammered. "where..." we fumbled. Patrick, from across the street, pointed up the slope and said simply, with a clarity that sliced through our cave man ignorance, "Sledding."

There were three normal board sleds. The classic "rosebud" type sleds from Citizen Kane. One of them had a bent blade and was known as "Crazy Train" because you couldn't steer it at all and the entire street was lined with cars that could not be moved for the snow and ice. So effectively there were two sleds. For the first couple of days the normal two sleds saw heavy heavy usage. The runs were simple, up the street, and taking turns, down the street. The slope was such that looking back I think it's a fair estimate to say we reached an easy 15-20 mph down that hill.

I want to remind everyone at this point that the snow remained there for two weeks. And with the slightly-above-freezing days and below-freezing-nights, by day three it had become a thick sheen of pure ice. Of course by that time we were a bit bored with the straight up and straight down aspect of the sledding.

This is when we started to eye Crazy Train.

A normal sled has one person riding down, flat on their stomach. A bar stretches perpendicular to the body at the front of the sled that you can move on a central pivot either toward you or back to you in either direction. This affects roughly the alignment of the sled blades for the purpose of steering. The two sleds we normally used were submissive and obedient in this regard. As well as a sled could, they did what they were told.

Crazy Train was about as obedient as a homophobe who found out they were going to be on the wrong side of a glory hole.

For starters the bent blade was bent inward. This effectively meant no amount of control was going to moderate the shaking, bucking, violently reluctant ride down. Oh, you could try, if you were feeling lucky. But the end result of trying to move the steering bar usually resulted in the sled going the opposite direction you intended and, just to fuck with you, folding space at the same time to align you just right with the nearest car.

Day four and five of the snow saw a lot of riding of Crazy Train.

By day six we discovered a new form of sport. Take the two normal sleds, pile three kids apiece on them all belly down and on top of each other, and linked together arm in arm across the sleds. On the way down, do your damndest to make the other sled crash into a car a la some type of wrestling belt-match of DOOOOOOOOM.

By day eight we were doing the same thing, but one of the sleds was Crazy Train.

By day nine we were constructing elaborate crash brakes out of snow at the bottom of the hill. Such that people who crashed through them earned accolades and people who stopped short of them earned jeers.

On day ten, once again we played our most dangerous game. A new sled was introduced by one of the kids who evidently had idiot parents: the Trike sled. It was a tricycle, but instead of wheels it had ski blades. I am not making this up.

It was, quite essentially, the most James Bond looking thing we could have possibly imagined for the purpose of sledding. It was good looking, seemed founded on sound principles, and you could sit upright. And, so it seemed to us, you could actually control your fate with handlebars.

I should stop at this point and mention that we were reaching the end of the ice over. The thirteen or so inches of snow had, in 10 days, become more or less two inches of frictionantium. A material completely devoid of any sort of friction. Up until now, the blades of the sleds had managed to counter frictionantium's natural capabilities such that some level of slowing, as it were, was achievable. However the Tri-sled had normal snow ski type blades. As we discovered, they were not so much blades as accelerants.

The problem, in the end, wasn't speed. It was control. With metal groove blades, you can carve your destiny as it happens. With flat blade surfaces, you are tied to the whim of the precise orientation you begin at, and that orientation is a harsh, harsh mistress.

Joscoto was the first to try it. I remember well the words: "I'll try it."

Again I remind you the slope down was still completely covered in ice, and lined with cars.

Scott dutifully mounted the Tri-sled. Not a single one of us had any idea of what was about to happen. To us, this was Chuck Yager introducing a new era of sledding. A golden age of sleek speed and handlebar controlled super-power technological advantage.

Unbeknownst to us he started off about 10 degrees off center from the line of the slope. With a one, two, three he was off. Immediately from the top we were impressed with the speed. Clearly he was way ahead of the normal acceleration curve we'd all been accustomed to. As he started ever so slightly to veer off to the left we saw him bringing into play his advanced steering skills that had been such a crucial factor in the Crazy Train downhill battles. Yet even with the front trike blade bent visibly all the way to the right, his drift leftward became fast, and severe. The ice was rocky ground, and the blade's seed could find no purchase there. We had no way of knowing that our treasured snow had become a greased pipeline to injury.

We heard the impact pretty clearly when he hit the first car around 50 feet down the hill. The force from the impact caused him to go into a flat spin in the exact opposite direction, still at high speed. Wincing and peeping through our hands we witnessed the second impact to the far right. But this time because he was spinning so fast from the first impact instead of bouncing again left, in a rapage of physics, he hit at just the right spin velocity and speed to throw him ass forwards into the next car on the right, which began a new flat spin at high speed to the left.

Have you ever seen those videos of cars in ice sliding into each other that just goes on forever, long past your ability to even be amused by it? This was like that.

At long last, far short of our snow barriers due to car strikes, Scott came to a stop. There was a moment of silence from the top of the hill. "Next!" Patrick triumphantly cried before any of us could think to say it.

Right after that, for the better, the snow and ice melted. Leaving behind wiser children, some dents in some cars, and a trike sled that for the love of fucking god I hope never got used again.

Published: 12/20/2008 9:02 PM

Modified: 12/27/2008 2:53 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Oh the (virtual) places you'll go!

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:38:16 GMT

Title: Oh the (virtual) places you'll go!

Body:

I was wandering through the Fallout3 version of post apocolyptic Washington DC when I spotted what I strongly believe to be a small section of architecture lifted from Oblivion. The area I was looking at was taken almost directly from a section of Cyrodiil. It was very small and subtle, and since Bethesda made both virtual world games it makes perfect sense that they would try and reuse some assets.

But in noticing it I was struck by all the useless virtual architecture and virtual geography I have in my head.

Am I ever really going to need again the knowledge I have of Vvardenfell? Or High Rock? How about Vice City or Liberty City? I scoured Pacific City for orbs and rooftop races. Will I really need the ability to know the fastest way to traverse The Volk island to reach Los Muertos? As I started thinking about it I got more worried.

What about all the various levels I have memorized from the Quake, Doom, and Duke Nukem games? Or the special geographic layouts integral to being good at RTS games like Command and Conquer in all its various forms, Age of Empires and its sequels, and Starcraft? My god it goes even further.

I remember almost all the level layouts for Ultima Underworld. Wait it's even worse than that, I can even recall dungeon layouts from my D&D days. Ship layouts from Star Frontiers. The path to the keys IN ADVENTURE FOR CHRISTS SAKE.

My generation probably has more brainpower dedicated to storing locations that do not physically exist than any other right now. An army of explorers and travelers whose gigantic virtual world Talosian brains would rule even more supremely would that there was some applicable use for the knowledge.

Now I'm depressed. If anyone needs me I'll be at D3D: E1L5 mocking Levelord's "You're not supposed to be here"

Published: 12/27/2008 2:33 PM

Modified: 12/27/2008 2:38 PM

Modified By: Stepto

Child's Play 2008

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 06:46:03 GMT

Title: Child's Play 2008

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Sometimes I'm amazed at my geek luck.

From a comic book nerd and video game freak I often spin around in circles at what I get to do each day. It was my great fortune to attend this years Penny Arcade Child's Play Dinner week before last. For those who get a chance to attend, this is a formal dress dinner and auction. It benefits children's charities and is a who's who of video game and geekdom participants. I felt completely out of my league as I traversed the auction room. Are those the Harmonix guys? Was that Gabe and Tycho? Holy Christ did Wil Wheaton just shake my hand?

I snapped a couple of low light photos with my crappy Nikon, couple of the auction:

Another:

one of the dinner:

It was a great event and Wil actually caught up with me later in the evening to chat since his "Don't be a Dick" speech had such an impact on me. The next day he dropped by my office after his Major Nelson interview and I got to walk him through how we police the system and do bans as well as drop him by the company store.

Overall it was a great event and if you can manage the trip or tickets to do it, it's pretty much a no brainer as to the level of fun you will have with awesome people.

Published: 12/20/2008 10:38 PM

Modified: 12/20/2008 10:46 PM

Modified By: Stepto