May 04 2008

The World is Just Awesome, part whatever: Bacon Candy

Category: Tech, Uncategorized — mav @ 9:27 pm

There’s something special about a trainwreck. And I don’t mean some bastardized reality-show definition of the word, I mean when somebody’s spent a lot of money – or better, a lot of time – only to find out their work was a colossal fuckup. So several months back when I saw a post on MeFi talking about bacon lollipops, I had to at least look.

(I know, I should have had this posted a month ago. but I’m also lazy.)

I’m a big fat guy. If you ask a guy if he likes bacon, odds are good he’ll say yes. But ask a fat guy if he likes bacon, and he will always say yes – if he doesn’t he’s lying. So bacon in any context is intriguing. Plus the potential for trainwreck is extraordinarily high. Like Campbell’s french onion soup huge. Ultraviolet huge. All these things together meant I had to spend money testing this shit out.

So I headed over to lollyphile, where they make specialty lollipops. Currently, they only have two flavors: absinthe and maple-bacon. After reading their description (“The salty chunks of bacon make a delicious and unique counterpoint to the subtle sweetness of the maple…”) I had to try some. They don’t come cheap: I opted for the 4-suckers box. $2.50 a sucker. Eh, fuck it, I figured; it’s only money.

I kept an eye on the site, and after being featured on MeFi and passed around the Net, their supply sold out pretty damn quick. I was glad I got my order in when I did.


A few days later, in my mailbox appeared a cardboard box, occupied by four maple-bacon lollipops. I wanted to wait a few days before trying anything that epic. Finally the moment came one weekend day, when I was sitting around watching a movie, so I opened one of the carefully-wrapped lollipops and tasted it.

My first taste was rather underwhelming. But as the lolly melted, I started to really get into the simple, light flavor of the maple. However, after you get a few minutes into one of these motherbitches, you start to run into these wonderful salty, smoky bacon bits, and biting down on one of them along with the smooth maple flavor is a really compelling experience. The bacon pieces taste amazingly good; how much of this is actuality and how much of this is the really compelling description that Lollyphile wrote regarding the quality of their ingredients remains to be seen.

Likely the first thing you notice, other than the actual eating of the product, is that the texture varies pretty dramatically between lollipops, depending on the size and quantity of bacon pieces that ended up in each one. This is probably the single most intriguing thing about the whole experience; there’s absolutely nothing at all mass-produced about these suckers. The size varies pretty dramatically too; some are thin, some thicker. If you’ve got an obsessive-compulsive streak like me, you’ll find yourself pulling all of them out of the box and trying to come up with some sort of ranking system that combines both the thickness, amount of bacon and size of pieces so that you can set aside the one that best meets the criteria for the ideal specimen so you can eat that one last.

Yeah, I’m aware that I have problems.


The second thing you notice is the ingredients list printed on each sucker: sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, bacon, cream of tartar. That’s pretty damn straightforward. While you’re noticing things you’ll also notice that these things have an expiration date; yes, it’s cooked, unrefrigerated bacon, and it has an expiration date. While I haven’t seen an official reference, you’ll probably have somewhere around a month to eat your maple-bacon lollipops before you have to worry about whatever evil unrefrigerated bacon diseases that exist.

So, having eaten my way through a few of these things, I can say this without reservation: these things are fucking wicked rad. They’re kinda pricey; so much so that a box of 12 of them costs more than buying a whole box of Tootsie Pops at Costco. But they’re unique enough that when the chance came to order more, I ordered a box of 12, and am currently enjoying another one right now.

Apr 30 2008

New Tech Item of the fucking Decade (or more!)

Category: Uncategorized — mav @ 9:28 pm

See here (simpler), here (more complete) Edit: Even better link

The really short version: Back in the 70s, a really smart guy theorized that there were four basic electronic components: resistors, capacitors, inductors, and another thingy called a memristor, a device that stores the previous value put into it. The math proved that this gadget should exist, but nobody knew how to make one.

Until the early 90s, when some other really smart dudes at HP figured it out.

Today their article was published in the latest issue of Nature, describing the memristors they were able to construct. They’re made of titanium oxide, and they’re 15 nanometers wide. (Hint: That’s really small.)

The simplest of all possibilities for these things is that they could make a solid-state, long term storage device that stores data when it’s powered down (like a hard drive) but has very fast access (like RAM.) Think about that for a second. Try and visualize the concepts behind creating a program with one single data store. No limitations on what you can store in memory. No worrying about updating what’s being written to disk. No memory requirement printed on the side of the box.

This is very likely the revolution of our time. No joke. If they can make these things work in mass production it will cause a dramatic change in the way operating systems work. Computing will never be the same ever again. It could be sanely argued that it will be the most fundamental change to computing since the invention of the transistor.

If any of the two or three or so of you who actually read this have access to a college library, see if you can get the article in question from Nature. I would really, really love to read it. The name of the article is “Electronics: The fourth element,” by James M. Tour & Tao He, Nature, vol. 453, num. 7191.

Apr 28 2008

My curious luck

Category: Events, Personal — mav @ 8:27 pm

It’s been a while since I updated but today’s events were so outrageous as to require in-depth description beyond what my twitter feed could possibly describe.

Today was the big day that Ryan and I, being the first two to hurriedly jump on the bandwagon, got to go to the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here (or {here}) server 2008 launch event. These events are usually a bunch of silly BS followed up with a minimal amount of free shit. It’s a good excuse to get our employer to pay us for a day of work when instead all we really did was go somewhere and listen to somebody talk up the training material for Server 2008.

(Admittedly, this guy was way funnier than the training material, but we’ll get to that.)

Ryan was feeling pretty shitty (he had his wisdom teeth out last Friday, and that’s a real bitch) so I drove. We took the STi equipped with my new Internet tires (not nearly as noisy, or as bumpy, but it’s the STi, so it’s not like a comfort ride) to Boise. We got to the Boise Centre without event. We went into the building, Ryan went to the reg desk and I went to the can. When I finally got to the reg desk, Ryan said something about us being in the right place because my name was all over. I curiously mumbled “Huh?” and then realized my name was literally all over – on every computer and a few other places, signs that said “The winner of today’s sweepstakes is [mav!]”

Short version: I won an Xbox 360 Elite and some other shit. I don’t know what the games are because when I walked up to the desk & filled out the form I didn’t even know games were on the table. They said it’d be mailed to me but didn’t bother to tell me how long that would take. Hard to complain, really. I don’t know whether I’m gonna keep it or sell it. Anybody interested? Let me know.

We also got a neato Microsoft lunchbox containing snacks – really damn good ones. Contents of mine: one bottle fruit juice, grape; one bottle water; one Hershey bar with almonds; one granola bar; one muffin, cream cheese; one apple; one orange. It was really neato. They also gave us a software package containing a bunch of development shit I couldn’t care less about, a trial version of Server 2008, and a full fuckin’ version of Vista Ultimate. No kidding.

Plus we got to see Hyper-V and watch our presentation guy make some really, really obvious mistakes.

All in all, I’d say it was a damned good day.

Mar 31 2008

I really like April Fool’s Day on the Internet.

Category: Events — mav @ 11:01 pm

The net always seems to have a damn good sense of how to do “cheeky and fun” on the 1st of April. Today’s highlights:

  • Youtube (and uk.youtube.com) – all the featured video links take you somewhere you’ve probably already been
  • Slashdot always posts the most shocking news stories today. For a second there I thought that story about Rambus winning their patent litigation was fake, but unfortunately it was real. Hopefully it’ll get funny later.
  • Wowhead looks curiously like something else.
  • Thinkgeek is “selling” caffeinated cereal and Youtube-enabled tasers. I’m thinking about ordering the Betamax-to-HDDVD transfer machine. Sounds useful.
  • Woot is wooting off, but something seems curious.
  • Gmail introduces new feature allowing you to custom-date email. Create your own alibi. That’s useful.
  • April Fool’s Day on the Web (warning: lots of dupes, they don’t seem to be tracking well) and This SA Forums thread appear to be tracking some of the highlights.

Mar 30 2008

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a camera on the shuttle fuel tank.

Category: Events — mav @ 9:37 pm

Even though technology like this has existed for a really long time, watching video of the shuttle achieving orbit seems fucking surreal to me.

Further updates on the equally surreal Macbook situation later.

Mar 27 2008

MBP repair, day 4: They’re like some kind of mutant superhero zombie… uh, yeah. Right.

Category: Tech — mav @ 5:58 pm

I went to check the repair status for my Macbook and, fuck, it’s already done! Damn, they’re really fucking fast. Like lightning. It’s gonna be back before I know it.

I figured, after the big revelation last night on the media center, that I’d throw Vista back on it and see what happens. So that’s what I’m doin’.

And that’s about it.

Mar 26 2008

MBP repair, day 3: Situation normal, all fucked up

Category: Events — mav @ 11:03 pm

My Mac, for what it’s worth, has already been repaired, and will likely be heading back to me soon. So far, the repair is exactly what I had expected it would be. No surprises whatsoever, which is exactly what one wants in a repair.

Other things, though, aren’t so hot. Stream-of-consciousness entry follows below.

Chappy stopped by last night. He was in town briefly, brought a 6-pack of Corona and we finished ‘em all off in an hour plus. We should have gotten more beer. It’s always really fun to talk to him and now I really want to visit Austin again. After DFW I really don’t think I’m up to living in a big city, but it would be really fun to visit Austin for a few days.

When he was here we were talking about Netflix and watch now. I had previously set up my media center PC to run Vista Ultimate, solely for the fact that I wanted to use Media Center and its plugins and they’re virtually all Vista-only now. Fuckers. So anyway, I tried to install and watch a movie in Play Now. No go. It reports some sort of video driver error. Well, all my hardware’s old enough Vista supports it without drivers, save my video card, so I had already downloaded and installed the latest nVidia driver less than a week ago. So it’s not the driver out of date. I fucked around with it a bit last night but after four beers in rapid succession I was a bit loopy, figured I had fucked it up.

Talked to RD about it at work today and he figured it was a DRM thing. I had my system plugged directly into my TV via DVI, no HDMI or component, so I figured that wasn’t it, but I came home and tried playing movies at 800×600. Well, at that res it would at least play one frame, but then it would stop and flash like a spastic monkey – which was basically what it was doing last night, so no go.

I thought about trying it on my gaming rig but due to my own stupidity the updates on that box are totally hosed. No chance of getting Media Player 11 on it, so I figured fuck it, I don’t have a whole lot invested in my current HTPC install, let’s put XPMC 2005 back on it and see what happens.

The rest of this entry will be called “Why I’m Completely Ready To Fucking Give Up Computing Forever and Go Live in a Tiny Cabin in the Fucking Forest and Fucking Write Manifestos All Shit-Eating Day Long.”

I install it (after hassling with my stupid optical drive, wherein during the first gui install phase I got so pissed off at the damn thing I fucking hauled off & punched it, causing the system to bluescreen. Miraculously, both it and my hand survived unscathed. Note to self: No more NEC optical drives. Not even at gunpoint. They sound like a cross between a bench grinder and a rabid wolf and don’t work for shit.)

Once I finally got the OS installed, I put on the latest nVidia drivers, and discovered my fucking audio card still isn’t working. Well poop. Regardless, I tried to install & run Netflix movie player. Which meant I had to install Media Player 11. Which meant I had to pass WGA. Which meant my fresh, virgin, untested install had to be activated.

Once again, my brain is smashed up against the infinite stupidity of requiring activation TO GET FUCKING UPDATES.

I’m using MSDN media provided as a work perk. Every OS gets 10 activations. After that? Jig’s up, bought the farm, go fuck yourself. So just to TEST this fucking thing burns up one of those, even though I don’t know if it’s going to work and if I’ll have to hose the whole fucking thing and start over.

Now, let’s be realistic. Microsoft has said on several occasions that almost every version (exempting only OEM and volume-license) of Windows has a limited number of activations, no matter where you got it. You can only activate it a certain number of times. The only difference between here and retail is that I know what the magic number is, instead of MS keeping it a big fucking secret from you, and I’m not out 299 bucks when they decide your Vista Ultimate has had enough activations and you get to buy it again.

Still, it really seems like I’m getting ripped off somehow. I’m giving up one of my precious ten chances to get this OS installed and working (EVER!) before I even know if I have a fair shot at making it work.

So.

I activate it (which, since I haven’t run out of activations, goes smoothly) and try to install WMP 11. It tells me to go fuck myself, XPMC 2005 needs update rollup 1. “Well screw you, smart guy, because I downloaded that from MSDN! Ha ha!” I say out loud, while flipping off the “Fuck you” screen. Who needs pride when updates are at stake. So I pop in the UR2 disc, and run it.

It then rather unceremoniously reports to me that I have to have some .net framework shit installed before it can run, and I need to run Windows Update to get them.

Well, if I run Windows Update, it’ll make me install all of those mystery updates PLUS Update Rollup 2, so you just downloded it twice, asshole.

I’d swear that alert screen is flipping me off.

So I run Windows Update. This is always a multi-step, fantastically annoying process.

Last week Apple took a bunch of flak for installing Safari as an update item for Windows iTunes users. Microsoft has been doing that same shit for YEARS and nobody ever called them on it.

First run: Windows Update gets updated. Then the browser reloads and goes into limbo, and eventually bails out and tells me fuck you, I can’t run windows update, no I don’t know why, here’s some sand, please pound it up your ass. No, your EULA does not include the use of a mallet, go find your own fucking mallet, butthole.

Second run: Windows Update hangs and hangs and hangs and hangs. Eventually I shut it down and reboot.

Third run: Windows Update runs, advises me I need to update Windows Update again, and I have to install the WGA checker. It runs and does all those things.
.
Then, after all fucking that, it finally runs and actually gets actual security updates.

Everybody wonders why Microsoft thinks security is a joke. Microsoft is the only company I know that requires you to go through an activation AND another check to make sure your software is legit before you can actually install the security updates you need to make your computer safe. VMware costs $10,000+ and it doesn’t even remotely make you go through that much hassle to get updates. So fuck you, Ballmer, you bald-headed fuckjob.

So after all the updates are done, I go back to Netflix. I run the video player. It asks me to install WMP 11. Which in turn asks me to validate that my Windows is genuine. Third time in 30 minutes. There must be some goddamn fast pirates out there. Which in turn gives me the “You need Update Rollup 2″ message again. So I run it, and guess what, Windows fucking Update didn’t install the Dot Net fucking Framework.

This is good software. You do what it tells you to do, and it doesn’t work. Gotta keep the user guessin, keep him on his toes. The second you start doing what you should be? Poof. Fuckin’ element of surprise is gone.

So I manually go out and get the .net framework which is probably what I should have done from the fucking start. I grab the latest version, install it and reboot. I then try to run Update Rollup 2, which tells me to get fucked, I don’t have .net framework 1.1 and 1.1 SP1.

At that point I grabbed my Fubar and spent the next twenty minutes turning my media center system into a fine powder.

Well, not really. I went out and manually installed .net framework 1.1 and .net framework 1.1 sp1, because apparently .net framework whateverthelatestfuckingversionis doesn’t include previous versions, and apparently Microsoft doesn’t offer a version of .net framework 1.1 that automatically includes sp1. Both of those things are utterly ridiculous, but I can totally believe Microsoft thought them up.

After installing the .net framework bullshit and going back to Netflix’s video on demand page – as well as verifying once more that my software really is legal, I promise – I was finally able to run the thing that downloaded more stuff and eventually, finally, after being far too patient I was able to install Media Player 11. Then I reloaded the page and….

… video driver error.

So I started dicking around with drivers, and discovered that after my Revolution 5.1 experiment I hadn’t re-enabled the audio device on the system board. I knew things were eerily quiet. So I enabled the audio card and reinstalled the driver.

And the movies started playing.

So who’s the idiot here? The guy who forgot his sound card disabled, or the myriad of errors I got, none of which reported ANYTHING about this being an audio problem?

Fucking computers. If they’d make the goddamn things play on a PS3, I think at this point I’d just get one of those.

Really, I’m mostly just trying to avoid thinking or writing about work. It’s really scaring me a lot lately. I can’t seem to get around the fact that I’m basically one issue away from being outed as the fuckup that I really am, and getting walked because of it. I gotta stop now, before I start freaking out.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll espouse at length about what really, really blows asshole about using Linux as a desktop. There are many things, most of them stupid. And none of them my fault (or so I can tell.)

Mar 24 2008

MBP repair, day 1: Supportaphobia

Category: Events — mav @ 9:26 pm

I’ve been doing tech support for a while now. For a large company, three years, three months and four days (give or take a few hours.) Professionally, since August ‘94 or so. It’s been a goddamn long time. It’s hard for me to deal with support. All I can really think about is all the shit I see that goes wrong. And that’s a whole lot of goddamn shit.

So that fact, coupled with my inherent ability to procrastinate (took the silver in ‘98) it took me something like six months to call in my broken optical drive. Happened back around the release of Leopard, the damn thing stopped burning CDs. It would throw out a power calibration error no matter what media I used.

So after stalling for something like 4 months I finally used my trip to DFW to drop it by the Apple Store, but they couldn’t repair it on site. I had intended to call it in as soon as I got back but now that didn’t happen, did it?

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that Saturday morning, I finally broke down and called Apple support, talked to some rather indifferent guy whose name I’ve forgotten, but at least he was competent enough to listen to me and set me up for a mail-in repair.

Today I got the box which, predictably, I have to ship back DHL (fuck, fuck fuck fuck shitting fuck. Might as well just ship it back via giant cannon, fuck I hate DHL…) So I nuked and paved and packed it up and tomorrow my Macbook will be leaving for Apple’s repair center in Houston. Hopefully it will be back by next week. I can only hope.

Even the box was classy. It came with precut lengths of packing tape and full-color printed instructions on how to use their universal mailing foamy thingamajig. Terrifying there are people out there who can’t figure it out.
mac in box

In the meantime: I’ll be using Linux. Trying to see how practical it is to use it as a desktop. I’ve never really done that before, outside of small bites; my Linux systems have always been supplementary/server systems. We’ll see how this goes. I’ll be happy if I can just figure out how to install the codecs necessary to play Xvid AVIs on Ubuntu 8.04 beta.

Mar 18 2008

I don’t know what I want to do (work)

Category: Personal — mav @ 10:21 pm

but I sure as fuck know what I want to do (play.)

Tarmac is so fucking overrated. It’s all about screaming down muddy tracks at terrifying speeds, pushing that edge between control and chaos just a little further. Poke that bear, guys, if only for the millions of poor bastards like me that desperately wish they could be holding the stick.

Mar 10 2008

so get this

Category: Events — mav @ 10:32 pm

They finally cast both leading roles in the Max Payne movie.

Max will be played by Mark Wahlberg.
Mona Sax will be played by Mila Kunis.

I fucking hate Hollywood. I want the writers’ strike back.

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