Turning 25

I don’t know what there is to say. I’m older. I got some awesome stuff. I went on a treasure hunt. Enjoy some pictures from the event . I’ll have more info on a few of these items when I get a chance.

Kerry got me a huge BBQ, this thing rocks like you wouldn’t believe!

The sign reads “Beware: Poker Players and Loose Women Are Known to Frequent This establishment” (From Keith)

USB Controlled Missle Launcher. Hell Yes. (From Meghan).

My parents got me a new desk chair, but sent me on a treasure hunt to find it first.

Drupal DKP Module

The Drupal DKP module will allow you to pull data from an existing eqdkp installation and display DKP stats directly in your Drupal setup. Currently this version is very beta, and there are no options. Your EQDKP installation needs to be in the same database as Drupal, and needs to have ‘eqdkp_’ in front of all table names. You can see it in action on guilds website.

Pulls DKP information from an existing EQDKP installation and displays it in Drupal.

Details

Drupal DKP integrates with EQDKP by giving you the following functionality:

• Display current standings
• Display loot distribution
• Display raid history
• Display individual member history (loot, raids etc)

Dependencies

The loot linking relies on functions from the drupal_armory module, which is located at http://losmuertos.houseofbob.net.

Installation

1. Download the module archive and expand it (you’ve likely already done this).
2. Put the ‘dkp’ folder in your modules directory. Since the /modules/ folder is typically reserved for Drupal core modules, as of version 5.x you should create a sites/all/modules/ directory and put uploaded modules there.
3. Go to administer > site building > modules. Check the ‘Enabled’ box next to the module and then click the ‘Save Configuration’ button at the bottom.
4. Go to administer > users > access control and make sure you set the permissions up, otherwise nobody else will be able to view the page.
5. Go to administer > site building > menus and create add a menu item (typically in your primary links). The name and description are arbitrary, but the path needs to be ‘dkp’.

Configuration

There are currently no configuration options available.

Known Issues

• The wow_armory plugin has many known bugs and is officially unsuported. You may find that item names (typically ones with symbols in the name) will not link properly. This is a bug of wow_armory, and there is nothing I can do. The workaround is to enter the item ID in EQDKP instead of the name.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do if my eqdkp tables start with something other than ‘eqdkp_’.

You’ll need to go through the dkp.module file and replace every instance of ‘eqdkp_’ with whatever your tables start with. I hard coded the table names because I built this module for personal use, I never planned for it to be release to the public.

What do I do if my eqdkp database is not in the same location as my drupal database.

Because I built this module for personal use, I never planned for this. Without making significant changes to the code, its just not possible.

Anything else?

That about does it – enjoy!

Of Bicycles and Mercedes’

So today, my girlfriend and I hop on our bicycles to go for a nice ride in todays beautiful weather. We rode around exploring the trails that Folsom has to offer and eventually passed through Livermore Community Park. We pause for a little bit because My b-day is coming up and Kerry was point it out as a possible location to have it. After that, we head back down the road.

We get probably a third of a mile down the road and a lady in a brand new white Mercedes SUV (ML-something). Flags us down and says we hit her car in the parking lot of the park we just left. Since she’s parked in the middle of the road now, I told her to drive down to the next street and we’ll take a look at this dent she claims we put in her car.

Map of storyline. Point A is the park, point B is where we exchanged information.

Below is a picture of the dent. It sucks, but it was really small and all I had with me was the cell phone camera.

The lady said she had a picture (or video, it wasn’t really clear) of us denting her car, which she refused to show us. So we refused to give her our information. She was adiment and said repeatedly that she was a police officer and it would be easier if we just gave her our information. After we continued to refuse she called her office in Sacramento (I wasn’t sure if she was PD or CHP). I heard her tell a quick story that we hit her car, quickly ran away and were now refusing to give our information. She asked to be patched through to Folsom, and after she got off the phone she said an officer would be there in a bit to take our information (first question… is that legal? more later).

After a while of waiting, she got on the phone with what seemed like a few people, but she was speaking softly so I don’t know who she called, or what she said. She came back to us and said that the officer would be another 30 minutes and that she was going to go back to her family in the park and we would need to wait for the officer or give her our info now. I decided to f waiting, and gave her my first name and phone number only so that we could be on our way.

Once Kerry and I got back home, I printed the picture and we headed over toFolsom PD to make a report for our records, and possible a harassment report since this off-duty officer (I think she even called herself a Sargent but I could be wrong) seemed to be threatening us with her police status. When we got to the Police Department they told us we cannot file a report since the incident was on private property. I expressed that it was a Folsom city community park, but still… I could not file a report.

So we went back home and I dialed up CHP to see if I could do anything there. I was told they couldn’t really do anything and I believe I got patched to the Folsom PD office and gave them the story and they said the same thing again, that there was no report I could file since it was out of their jurisdiction, that I would have to settle it all privately through insurance. I further explained that the lady who owned the Mercedes had said she was an officer and she had called to have an officer come out to take our information and the lady on the phone said she didn’t have any call like that come in. And if they had, there would have been nothing the officer could have done.

So that leaves me to now. I have her name and phone number but I’m not planning on doing anything more than I have. She has my information so if she wants to have something done about it she can call me. Mostly I just wanted to get it off my chest.

But I wanted to see if anybody here had any other advice, other things so I know I’ve done my due diligence. I’d rather not have it go through any insurance nor do I want to have this end up becoming some “hit-and-run” because we left the parking lot (we certainly didn’t “speed” away on our bicycles though), but I’m also not going to hand her a couple hundred bucks cash to fix a dent that we didn’t cause. The only thing close to the right height is the handlebars of the bike, and they are completely wrapped in rubber. The lady wouldn’t pull her car away from the curb far enough for us to put the bike next to it to see if it was even the right height either.

Sorry if its a bit long winded, but a lot happened in the period of only about an hour.

Downtown Disney (Disney Day 6)

[fa:p:a=72157600098702718,id=466109927,j=l,s=s,l=i]Our last day in the parks, since we had already visited all four parks, we decided to go back to Epcot and finish up the last few countries, as well as re-do a few of our favorite rides. Keith and I did “Mission: Space” again, and all of us did “Living with the Land” again, this time with some better camera equipment.

After visiting all the areas we hadn’t been to before, we took a shuttle to Downtown Disney where we spent some time browsing the shops, and trying to stay warm. It got windy and quite cold (low 40s plus wind chill). We ended up eating at the Rain Forest Café, but it took so long, and coupled with a few last minute things we decided to do, we almost didn’t make it back to our hotel shuttle in time.

It was a comedy of errors. First, we must have just missed the shuttle back to Epcot, and settled on taking the Magic Kingdom shuttle instead which was our major mistake. Magic Kingdom is the furthest park from Downtown Disney, and it took most of the time we had to spare to get there, and unknown to us, dropped us off on the other side of a lake from where our bus would have been. So instead of trying to rush to our bus, we hopped on the monorail back to Epcot which would have been awesome … except that it circles Epcot before stopping at a station where we can get off. We ran the last bit from the Monorail station to our bus, which was luckily waiting there an extra 5 minutes and we made it to our hotel without having to spend money on a cab.

Disney MGM (Disney Day 5)

[fa:p:a=disney-mgm-disney-day-5,p=3,id=469349713,j=l,s=s,l=i]It’s amazing what 10 hours of sleep and some well chosen anti-histamine drugs can do for a cold. I felt really quite good this morning. MGM is like Disney’s version of Universal Studios. This was the first day that I had ALL my camera equipment with me, so I snapped a ton of pictures, I’m not sure if all of them are worth publishing, so you may not see all of them.

We even got some special treatment at MGM. This year at Disney World is “The Year of a Million Dreams”. And they granted us a dream. In the form of a “Dream Fast Pass” Which was a badge that gave us a Fast Pass for 6 of the rides at MGM. Granted, we didn’t need it so much at this particular park, but we still used it a few times, and enjoyed having won something just simply by walking around.

Keith and I rode on the Tower of Terror, which seemed a little more cheap than the one in Anaheim, however we found out later that the ride is completely random, including lighting … the stuff that leads up to it, and the number of falls and whatnot, so it could have just been a bum random setup (I don’t know if “cheap” is the right word. The ride had more story than the California Adventure version, but the actual rising and falling of the ride was far less intense. Kyle and I agreed that the ride must be 3+ stories shorter than the California Adventure version – Keith).

We also rode on the Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller coaster. This was awesome. It’s one of those rides that launches you from the ground using linear synchronous motors, and is sort of like Space Mountain, as it takes place in the dark. But the best part is that there is timed Aerosmith music being pumped into your seat [SWEEEEEEEET EMOOOOTION – Keith], with a sub woofer under you bum, and two speakers near your head. We rode that one basically twice in a row within about 40 min, thanks to our Dream Fast pass, and a regular fast pass.

We also went and saw their stunt show, which involves a bunch of well choreographed car action in some highly modified little cars; including one car that is built completely backwards so it can be jumped safely in reverse.

“Clean Your Desk (no i am not drunk)”

Last night I went over to my good friends Chris and Michelle’s new place to show them the wedding video I made for them, and while I was there my cell phone battery died when I finally got home to plug it in I had two voicemails, and some presents on my desk from my extended roomate family

This is a picture of my desk, with the teddy bear and pair of notes (click for large picture):

My detective skills tells me the first one is from Becca and Cody, the second is from Jenn. They were both folded in half, so there are two sides (and thus two pictures) of each.

By the slurred words on my voicemail, and the mild ramblings of these notes, I apparently missed a good time last night . If I can come up with a good way to record my voicemail I’ll upload it.

Well, I had today off, so I caught up on some sleep and went ahead and cleaned up my desk, so for Becca (because I’m sure she started it ) here is my now clean desk!

Grills and Headlights

Below are before and after pics of my new Grillcraft MX Series Grill. Sorry for the moderatly bad pictures. lighting inside the garage sucks, but I wanted to get it done before Kerry came over. Click for a large view.

Overall, it isn’t a very difficult modification to do, the worst part was that in the kits, some idiot at Grillcraft changed the nuts from the u-shaped clip-on type that you see for a lot of body panels that you can put over a hole and it stays in place, to one of these flat nuts that required me to hold the nut in place while getting it attached. This may not sound like it was a big deal, until you realize the nuts end up INSIDE the grill, where you cannot possibly hold it with your hand.

Anyway, I rate it as a two beer job and with the exception of the bad nut experience and a slight misalignment (my fault) on the bottom right grill I am very happy with it.

[fa:p:a=car-parts-and-pieces,id=503493699,j=l,s=s,l=p]I also ran across an exceptional deal on a set of halo projector headlights (like what you see in BMW’s) for the tC. Left is a picture of the headlights (again, click for full view). I expect I’ll see those sometime next week and when I install them, I’ll look at fixing the one skewed grill and probalby buy the U-clips from an auto store to actually secure all the bolts on the grills.

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EDIT: WAY better pictures are available now in my tC gallery: http://www.indemnity83.com/album/friends/my-cars/2005-tC/

Slight Confusion on the Donner Album

I think there was some slight confusion about the album(s) for the Donner trip. Because I seperated the trip into days, the “Newest Album” on the right was only showing pictures from Sunday.

I’ve gone ahead and told the site to not show the individual days as part of the “Newest Album”, so for the time being (until I upload a new album) the Newest Album will take you to the overall Donner album, where you can pick which day you want to look at.

Sorry for the Confusion.

Delays

I didn’t have many chances to hop on the computer to post any updates. Tyco kept us all rather busy most of the time. I’m currently sitting in Dulles, which once again doesn’t have any free internet so I’m writing to you in notepad and when I get home I’ll post this and fix the timestamp.

Unfortunately my flight home from here has been delayed two hours. There was some nasty weather recently here on the east coast that screwed up flights over the weekend, and I think an airport like this takes a while to recover. So I’m just sitting here listening to “Death Cab for Cutie” and people watching.

Saturday I went out to a couple of the manufacturing plants related to the Amp Netconnect division of Tyco. First was their cable manufacturing plant, where they literally start from a copper rod and un-mixed PVC to create CAT 5, 5e, 6, 6A and 7 cable in all sorts of configurations. Including the new shielded CAT 6 which I expect the consumer market will see in a year or two. Shielded, as well as 6A are both capable of carrying the 10 GBit / second transfer rates that seem almost ridiculous over copper. We also visited their stamping and molding facility that makes all plastic and metal pieces like RJ-45 jacks and plugs. It was all pretty cool to see, even if it was a little rushed. We had some drinks back at the hotel and a mini trade show, and dinner also at the hotel. I of course had the fillet, although I was a little disappointed that it was only about a 4oz cut.

Sunday was a long day. Breakfast was at 6:30, which if you take into account the time change was 3:30 am in California. We spent the morning in what was basically a marketing and demo seminar. I would like to point out I had sat through about 4 hours of seminar around the time you woke up. Did I mention I got up at 3:30? Remember the bad weather I described earlier? It effected us in Winston-Salem NC as well, and we were to be playing golf in the afternoon. As we drove out to the course we went through an absolute down poor and I was pretty well convinced I wasn’t going to be playing golf. We got to Tanglewood (yeah, that’s right, I played at Tanglewood) and sat in their clubhouse for a little while and eventually it cleared up. We played a full 18 holes in what turned out to be a really nice round of golf. I ended up playing in the rough most of the time. My drives were just plain off. So I was a pathetic 45-ish over par.

Today we went out to Wake Forest University to get a demonstration of a integration system that ties together disparate systems (that’s disparate not desperate). I’ll save you the boring talk, it was cool but I think I’ll have a hard time finding a client who can make good use of it.

And that brings us basically up to now, where I’m sitting in the airport, listening to Death Cab for Cutie and people watching (although I just spent the last few min writing this). So I’ll leave you with that long post and go check on my flight again. Wish me luck.

To Amy & Jessica

I figured since I told you go here to get the pictures from over the weekend I should help you to find them.

Just click on the mild mannered picture of Jessica and Kellen below to see the gallery.

And if you aren’t Amy or Jessica, you can still enjoy lots of cute puppy pictures in this gallery too.