My First Con

I think I will consider my birthday this year to have officially started on the morning of Friday, March 4th, when my sister-in-law Kim (who lives in China, where at the time it was indeed March 5th--12:18 AM to be precise) wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall. 

Earlier in the week, Dave Kellett, the comic artist behind Sheldon and Drive, had posted to his feeds that he was going to be at Emerald City ComiCon this weekend.  I had half-seriously thought about going on Saturday, but then Elizabeth scheduled my birthday party Saturday afternoon and evening, and I had already made morning plans, so I had decided not to go.

Until, that is, free lunch Friday.  Every other Friday, which is the day after payday at work, my team goes out for a free lunch.  Free, that is, to everyone but the person whose turn it is to pick the restaurant.  On this particular Friday, it was Josh's turn, and we went to Jimmy Mac's in Renton.  Jimmy Mac's has amazing bread, among other things.

Somehow or other it came out that one of my co-workers, Andrew, was planning on leaving for ComiCon in the afternoon, whereat he would attend "The Hour of Awesomeness with Wil Wheaton" and get a photo with him as well.  Wouldn't it be great, he suggested, if I (who look uncannily like Wil Wheaton) would come along and get a photo with my slightly shorter doppelganger?  Josh, who is ever the instigator, and also a fan of Dave Kellett, decided to throw his support behind the plan.

Entirely aside from our visigial similarities, I have come to appreciate Wil Wheaton.  His championship of the gamer geek ethos, his antics, his blog, and his contributions to The Guild and The Big Bang Theory have made me a fan.

I was therefore easily persuaded, but there were some logistical details to work out.  In the car on the way back to work, I gave Elizabeth a call.  Yes of course she totally wanted to come, and she would check with her mom about taking Shoshana while we were there.  She would bring the camera and the shirt I had made last Halloween [reference].  Thankfully my work schedule is flexible enough that I can usually leave 5 hours earlier than planned on a whim.

At 2:00 PM we left for the convention.  I had never been to a "con" as they say, and so I had a few preconceived ideas, but in general didn't know what to expect.  The first thing we did after meeting up with Andrew's girlfriend, buying tickets, and entering the convention hall, was head for Dave Kellett's booth.

Dave had kindly provided his fans with a map showing his "impossible to miss" location on the show floor.  It was indeed easy to find, and Mr. Kellett was perfectly personable and helpful.  Liz and I bought the first Sheldon book, and Josh bought the fourth (since, I believe, he has the first three).  He drew Flaco (the lizard) in our book, and Arthur (the duck) in Josh's book.

After that, we wondered the floor for a bit.  We each entered a drawing entitling us to a free superhero pin--I picked Wolverine.  There were a couple other artists I recognized, but none I was interested in interacting with at that point, so after making a lazy circuit, we headed back out and found the place where Wil Wheaton's Awesome Hour was to take place.

We were about half an hour early, but still the center section was occupied pretty far back.  We settled into a row of seats in a side section near one of the microphones they had set up for questions.  In short, the Hour was indeed awesome.  Wil Wheaton, in his entertaining style, told stories about video games, growing up, his family, and life.  The last fifteen minutes or so were dedicated to questions.  A few people asked him to answer "as Evil Wil Wheaton", which, he did (though usually in brief, as he was on the spot, and I imagine it's difficult for him to get into an "evil" mindset amidst thousands of adoring fans.


One kid (about 10 years old) asked what "he" would do if Sheldon Cooper showed up.  He said he would get right in his face, just to make sure he had made his bed in "his house" (referring to a comment that Evil Wil Wheaton had made on BBT, that he was living rent free in Sheldon's head.)  I was sitting at the end of the isle about three feet away from the kid, wearing my replica of Wil Wheaton's recursive shirt.  I was quite tempted to surprise the kid by getting in his face on my knees as Evil Wil Wheaton, but he had already started to walk away.

When he had left the stage, I decided it would be fun to get some pictures of me behind the podium, so I did.  As I stepped down, a rather gruff looking heavyset man addressed me, asking whether I still keep in touch with the actors from Stand By Me.  I had never actually heard of Stand By Me, so I was at first a bit dumbfounded.  "No," I said, "but then, I'm not Wil Wheaton."  It took him a few seconds to register what I had said, and afterwards, I'm not entirely sure he believed me.  I had, after all, just alighted from the very stage he had occupied for the last hour, and he had quite possibly just made his way to this spot upon the conclusion of Wil's remarks.

After the Awesome Hour, we all headed to Wil Wheaton's "line".  On the way, I learned about Stand By Me.  Upon arriving, I was told that they had been chanting my name.  Indeed.  We got in line, and learned that, unlike most of the other celebrities, Wil did not charge for autographs and photos.  Nice.  The program had led us to believe that it would be something like $70.  While in line, there were a trio of guys behind us who were wondering who "that redhead over there" was.  Seriously:  they didn't know who Felicia Day was!  Apparently, they hadn't seen anything of Wil Wheaton since his role in Stand By Me, the DVD case of which they had brought for him to sign.  "What else has he been in?" they asked.  We blinked.

We then patiently explained to them about The Guild, and also threw in a little bit about his appearances in The Big Bang Theory.  Oh, yeah, and Star Trek:  The Next Generation.

A couple of groups in front of us were a trio of female superheroes.  One of whom, dressed as Wonder Woman, held a crocheted doll that reminded me of a Little Big Planet character.  I asked her what it was, and she showed it to me.  She had made Wil Wheaton a doll of his character Fawkes from The Guild, complete with kilt and Axis of Anarchy shirt.  It was adorable; it was incredible.  She was a bit self-conscious about the hair.  I told her it was awesome, and he would love it.  He totally did. I'm pretty sure it made his day.

When we got to the front, Andrew went first, and told him all about how he became an engineer, in part, because of Star Trek.  "Hello," I said, approaching. "I'm Evil Wil Wheaton, and I'm here to sign your breast."  (Perhaps that comment warrants some context.)

"Where did you get my shirt?" he exclaimed.  I replied that I had made it, and that it was superior to his because it glowed in the dark.  He retorted that HIS was superior in that he had worn it.  I conceded, but pointed out that that could be fixed.  I asked him, however, if there was a pen appropriate to sign the shirt, which there was.  I took it off (I was wearing a shirt underneath), and he autographed it, signing each of the shirts in the recursion.

Wil Wheaton demonstrates the signed shirt.

We asked Wil what he thought I should do when people confused me for him.  He said I ought to play along with it, and keep making things up that were so wild and crazy that eventually they would figure out I wasn't the real him.  Everyone was all for it, except of course, that I'm a terrible liar. 

After that, Liz and I got a quick picture with him (which was on Andrew's camera, so I don't have access to it yet), and we were off.  Andrew wanted to catch the end of Jonathan Frakes' panel, so we headed back to the hall.  While he met up with his girlfriend, Elizabeth, Josh and I sat in the back to watch.

When it was over, we were mulling around what to do next, and how long to stay, when a short and petite woman asked me whether I remembered a charity race from a few years back.  "Not really," I said, "I'm not Wil Wheaton."  She was taken aback for a moment, but then exclaimed at how much I look like him.  The shirt doesn't help matters, I conceded.  She wanted to take a picture with me, so I obliged.  I offered to kneel down to be closer to her height, but she said that she hated when people did that.

As the photo was being taken, another girl walked up and started taking my picture when she had left.  I asked her if she wanted a picture with me instead of just of me, to which she eagerly assented.  After that picture, a little kid wanted a photo with me.  I didn't have the heart to mislead him, so I told him who I wasn't, but did he still want a picture.  He did, and I obliged.

As we were finishing, the girl from before came back.  She shyly said she was sorry to bother me again, but she had forgotten to ask for my autograph.  Flabbergasted, I realized what I had done.  Taking pictures was one thing, but I didn't think I could forge his autograph in good conscience (or very well, without practice, and my only reference on my own chest upside-down in dim lighting).

"I'm not Wil Wheaton, I just look like him.  No really.  If you want me to sign your book," I offered, " I can still do it as Evil Wil Wheaton."  Confused, sad puppy eyes.  I felt like I had tainted her world.  She recovered quickly, though, and I scrawled my doppelganger identity, and asked if I could take a picture of her with my very first autograph.  She obliged:

My very first autograph.

Darkness, Evil, and Burning

The other night I was on the computer, doing Linux-y things, while watching a star trek episode (I'm so geeky sometimes that it hurts), when the power went out. Actually, come to think of it, I wasn't seated at the computer; I had gotten up to remove a load of laundry from the dryer, and was just exiting the bathroom (where the washer and dryer are located) when the power suddenly died. "What did you do now?" Casey (heretofore known on this blog as RFH¹--but I'm trying to be nice) immediately blamed me. Apparently he thought that I had caused the circuit to blow by turning off the bathroom light. Meanwhile I had come to the slightly different hypothesis: that having so much electronic equipment on in the apartment (TV, speaker system, several computers) had tripped the breaker. I stepped over to the breaker panel and opened it up. It was dark, so I whipped out my trusty cell phone and attempted to discern which switch had flipped. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the low light conditions, so there was about 5 seconds of staring at the panel before Casey piped up again "You don't know how to do it. If I was doing it, it would already be fixed by now." "Oh, really?" I said, finally concluding that there were no switches flipped, and did LCD TVs really suck that much power? And wouldn't any sane electrician wire the lights on a separate circuit than the outlets? "Maybe the whole complex is out of power." Once it was suggested its obviousness immediately sank in. It was dark outside: too dark for it to be just our apartment. Too dark, in fact, for it to be just our building. Our smoke detector was beeping, but so were many others within earshot--from other apartments. Thankfully (in this situation) ours wasn't one of the louder ones. The power came back on in a few minutes, and I fired up the two computers that I had been using before the outage. I had been installing Gentoo Linux on one of the hard drives of a computer that I have named "thebeast" (every computer needs a name; OEMComputer and localhost just aren't sufficient in a network situation--nor are they any fun). I named it that because:

1. The number on its inventory tracking sticker is E280666.
2. When I bought it (at the surplus store) it had an exceptionally loud SCSI hard drive inside. The drive was only hooked up to the power supply--the motherboard doesn't support SCSI--so it's only purpose was to "roar".
3. This computer is destined to be a chimera: it will have four different operating systems: Gentoo Linux, Gentoo/FreeBSD, FreeBSD, and Windows 2000 (I've been thinking about sticking Solaris on it over the Gentoo/FreeBSD partition once it becomes GPL'd.)

The power went off again after a few minutes, just as I had finished booting up the two computers that I was using. This time it stayed off. Casey has a candle fetish (his word, not mine), which on occasions such as this comes in handy. We had the apartment at adequate lighting in no time. He then attempted to get on the Internet from his laptop by connecting the wireless router and the cable modem to a UPS. It probably would have worked had it been just our apartment, but the apartment's cable hub was also out of power, so there was no way he was getting on. It was about midnight. Went outside to confer with the residents and firemen about the extent of the problem (no one had any idea--I don't even know why the fire truck was at our apartment complex). The firemen looked around and then left. There wasn't much interesting going on at midnight in an apartment complex parking lot, so we went back to the apartment. At this point was when I realized that I was very hungry. The problem with being very hungry in a power outage is that your options are limited. You can't open up the refrigerator and stare, because the power is out. In fact, you have to use a candle to see what's in the refrigerator. You can't cook anything because there is no gas in the apartment (unless you want to use the barbecue, but not at midnight with work in the morning: it takes too long to set up, and do I really want to cook and eat meat at this hour? I ended up making myself a cold bean and cheese burrito After eating, I remembered that I had an LED lantern somewhere. I grabbed a candle and went to my room closet, emerging with said lantern. The problem was, it wasn't working. Had the batteries been drained? I had never used it, but that didn't stop my trunk flashlight from draining its battery: apparently the flashlight had been knocked on accidentally. But the lantern had not drained its batteries. I knew this when upon removing them, I noticed that a piece of plastic had been installed covering the electrical contact spring on the one battery (out of three) with the plus side up (or down, in this case, as the battery cover is on the bottom of the lantern). My attempt to remove the plastic piece resulted in the spring coming off, which was no good at all. The spring had been attached by two prongs protruding out of the back of the compartment. In order to reattach the spring to them, I had to use my pliers to hold the spring firmly against one prong so that it would snap in, then rotate the spring so that the leading wire would thread through the opposite prong. By candlelight. Funny thing about this candle: as I leaned forward in order that the light of the candle would shine on what I was doing and also be thence reflected towards my eye (one eye was all I could manage) I noticed a crackling sound. I looked up. "That's a strange sound for a candle." I thought, but I didn't hear it again, and I assumed there was an impurity in the wick. I leaned back over to resume my work and the candle crackled again. Come to think of it, it was more of a sizzle than a crackle. The kind of sizzle you hear when human hair is being singed. No, I did not burn my hair off. Nothing so dramatic. I adjusted my distance from the candle, fixed the lantern, and then went to bed. I'm not sure when the power went back on, because when it did, it apparently tripped the breaker for the bedroom outlets, and there is no built-in lighting, so when Casey flipped the breaker switch at 5:00AM, the lights in my room turned on. That was not fun.

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¹"Roommate From Hell"

Poindexter

Today was a fun Monday. I dropped my car off at the Honda service dept. this morning to get the outlet⁰ fixed (it has never worked). Anyway, they have a shuttle service, so they dropped me off at work (about 5 minutes away). I called in when I was ready to be picked up after work, and they said the driver would leave in five minutes. Over an hour later, and several phone calls, they finally called me a taxi, which didn't show up for another 20 minutes. I felt kinda sorry for the driver. He seemed a bit new to (1) the English language, (2) the operation of an automobile, specifically as it pertains to staying in a lane, (3) the local geography and (4) corporate accounts, in which a third-party business and not the passenger pays the fare (which was eventually returned to me, but only afer I got back from BSF). I was late to BSF, but I caught most of the talk, and I was able to pick up next week's lesson.

And I have a headache.

*Sigh*

I fear that I'm a nerd. Well, I know that I'm a nerd, and I'm actually proud of many of my nerdy qualities, but I'm referring to the negative aspects of nerdiness. Specifically, tonight at BSF I heard an expression to describe my experience lately: "spiritual pocket-protector poindexter." It resonated with me because it's something that I've seen in my myself: the inability to relate to others on a social level, paired with the pathetic attempt to compensate by showing off all my vastly 'interesting' knowledge and expertise. I don't think I'm showing off, but I get the feeling that's how a lot of people perceive my attempts to relate. In return, I get pity gestures, but no real attempt at a meaningful rapport.

It feels like I'm that kid who tries to act like a grown-up, and bosses all the other kids around (*ahem* you know who you were ;-D */ahem*), only in the spiritual sense. What am I supposed to do though? Stunt my own growth so as to fit in? I've already learned that lesson, thankyouverymuch. Not that I presume think I'm some spiritual colossus among dwarves: I've seen true spiritual maturity in certain individuals, and it pains me to think that I'm somehow unable to commune in a meaningful way with my peers except in islands and glimpses.

This last conference felt, in some ways¹, like getting a big box in the mail, only to find after hours of rummaging that it only contains packing peanuts. In this case, I'm happy to say that at least I came away with two sticky boards.²

Yes, it was a bit depressing. No, I am not depressed.

One nice thing about that and the one after it weekend was that I got to spend some time having fun with kids. I also got to see Dr. Al and apostle Paul.

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⁰ You can't call them cigarette lighters anymore, because they don't have one in it unless you get one installed. It's just a power outlet.
¹ Certainly not in all ways, though.
² You had to be there.

My Forking Blog

It has come to my attention that not everyone who is interested in my personal life is that in to computers, or can for that matter understand half the terms I use when I try to convey such concepts.

So, I've decided to fork my blog!

You may have noticed the nifty new bar with three links in it located above the posts and sidebar. On it, you will find three links, one to burndive (this blog), which will remain my primary blogging outlet, and one to notmeeither, which I still don't intend to use for blogging (just leaving xanga comments), but it looked pretty silly to put a navigation bar up with just two links on it, so I included that one as well.

The design isn't final. I would like to change the color, but that would involve hosting the images for the rounded corners somewhere in that new color. I might do something akin to what Caleb has.

Update: I have changed the design more to my liking. It's still in flux.

The middle link is tuxbox, which is what I've decided to call my new computer,⁰ and also the blog about that computer. For those of you who may not be familiar with some of this, "tux" refers to the Linux mascot which is a penguin (and therefore looks like he is wearing a tuxedo). "Box" is a way in which hackers refer to computers. So, tuxbox == Linux computer. Plus, it fits with my current blog title in that it is the concatonation of two monosyllabic words.

So why does my new computer warrant its own blog? Simply put, I don't want to bore most of you, and you shouldn't have to put up with a bunch of technical jargon that you don't understand. This way, if you want to read it, you can, and if you don't, you won't. I intend to make tinkering around with this computer a hobby, and it will also help me in my career because it will hone my Linux expertise (think of me as just like a mechanic with a hot rod in his garage).

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⁰ Don't look at me like that! It isn't that strange. Every computer on a network has a name. Seriously. Yours is probably called "oemcomputer" or maybe even "hp2341235." Having a simple name makes it easier to access over the network, which I intend to do frequently.

I See Penguins

Okay, okay, you've all been clamoring for a post. I give. So here goes.

I am going to build a computer. I've wanted to do this for quite some time, but lately, it's all been coming together, and I've gathered enough momentum to see it through. The first event on the chain was my acquisition of a monitor. Slickdeals had a 17" flat screen CRT for $30 after rebates and I bit. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with the monitor at the time, but I figured I could always find a good use for it. It's a pretty good monitor⁰, and I've thought of a use for it.

This all fits into my larger scheme of building a Linux¹ box that provides all the good functionality of a TiVo, but without the annoying parts (like the ads, the fact that they disabled the 30-second skip and don't delete commercials, and the fact that your recorded shows are stuck on your TiVo, and you can't really do anything useful with them). I don't just want a TiVo replacement or a Media Center PC. I want a server. I want to play with utilize Linux (because it will help me in my career/hobby), which brings me to the next event on the chain.

I spoke with my sister Sazzly on the phone the other day and I mentioned that I was considering building a Linux box. I remembered that her roommate had one, and I asked what distro she was running. I use Red Hat at work, but really I didn't know that much about what the different distrobutions had to offer, or for that matter how to go about setting up a system. I know and use a lot of the every-day commands, but I don't know the ins and outs of administrating a Linux system. She said her roommate ran Gentoo², and then mentioned that it was really easy to install programs "because there's this one command that you type followed by the name of the program, and it installs automagically [paraphrase]." So naturally I had to do some research. Among other distro sites, I went to gentoo.org and looked around a bit. Apparently, Gentoo is the ultimate roll-your-own distro. And get this: when you install a program, you do it by downloading the source code and compiling it yourself! Oh, sure, this is possible on every Linux distro, and sure, you don't have to do it this way: you can also install from binaries, but the minute I read this, my jaw hit the floor and I began to salavate. Okay, not literally, but I was instantly hooked. This, you see, my young grashopper, is the path to ultimate optimization and customization.

Processors can only be as efficient as the compiler that built the programs they're running tell them to be (this isn't 100% true, but bear with me), so if I bought a 64-bit processor and ran programs compiled for a 32-bit perocessor, it would still work, (because the 64-bit processor is backwards compatible) but aside from a few optimizations built into the processor, there wouldn't be nearly as much of a jump in performance as if the program were compiled for a 64-bit system.

It gets even better than that. Suppose you had a Pentium 4, in fact, you probably do have a Pentium 4 if you bought your computer in the last couple of years. Most of the software that you run on your computer does not take advantage of all the bells and whistles that come with the P4 processor. This is because not everyone has one, and when you distribute your program in binary form, you don't want to tell everyone without a particular processor that they can't use your software unless they upgrade your system, so you go with the lowest common denominator, which is x86 (Remember those 386 machines? Running DOS? Yeah, I didn't think so. That's how old this technology is.), or you stipulate a set of system requirements for a more recent processor (The Pentium II is common nowadays), but you can't use the latest hardware enhancements, because you want your product to be useable for "most people" on their current system.

You see, this is even better than having my operating system and most of my programs compiled for my "generation" of processors. They will be optimized to take advantage of features and optimizations unique to my specific processor (and even system configuration).

Then he got an idea!
An aweful idea!
THE GEEK
GOT A WONDERFUL, AWEFUL IDEA!

"I know just what I'll do!" The Geek laughed in his throat.
And he made a quick download, and boot disc he wrote.
And he chuckled and chuckled, "What a great Geeky trick!
With this chip and this board, my system'll be slick!"


My plan, naturally, is to buy an AMD64 processor and build a system, piece by piece, around it. I'll need a motherboard, video card, memory, and a case, as well as all the other usual stuff. I also plan on getting a TV tuner and running MythTV. My goal is to configure it to run MythTV on my projector as a second monitor, while using my CRT as a primary monitor. That's why the keyboard I got is wireless, with an integrated pointing device (ideally suited for sitting on a couch, not at a desk). This is all subject to change, but I've already ordered a keyboard, so I'm pretty much committed.

Lately I've been running lots of Open Source software on my laptop (Firefox, Gaim, Azurus, Vim, OOo, GIMP), and it's partially because of this that I've had enough faith in the quality of Linux to do this.

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⁰ I recently paid a visit to my company's surplus outlet, of which I was previously unaware. If anyone wants a used 15" - 19" CRT (non-flat) for about $10, let me know. The flat-screens are $50. Actually, it's open to the public, but as an employee I get a discount.
¹ If you're wondering what Linux is, it's an operating system. "Umm..., what exactly is that?" you were probably going to ask. Windows XP is an operating system. You may have heard of OSX, which is an operating system that runs on Macs. Linux is just another way to run a computer. If you don't know all about it, it's because you're probably not geeky enough.
² In case you're wondering what it looks like (or rather, a few of the ways it can look), here are some screen shots.

Weird Nerd Loser Die!

Here are some quizzes I took. I'm looking forward to their upcoming "Nerd Type" quiz, as well as what appears to be a Meyers-Briggs temperament sorter, though in the latter case this has more to do with the proliferation of "all the ISPQFCs."⁰
I'm more weird than Krud, if you can imagine that.

Since someone asked (and for a while I appeard to be begging), yes, it is possible to post comment without an account¹. You click on the "# comments" link at the bottom (if this is the main page), then on "Post a comment." If you don't have an account, post as Anonymous (some people chose to sign their names at the bottom of their comments).

I am pleased to report that Steph is slowly caving in to the pressure, so keep it up, all of you.

I'm planning on flying to eastern Canada at the end of next month, eh? Well, not flying there, but flying near there and then driving the rest of the way³.

⁰ I'm pretty sure this doesn't stand for 'Internet Service Provider - Quality Food Centers'.

¹ The lack of this feature is why I don't like Xanga. How will he ever find out that in Firefox, Netscape 4, Netscape 7, and Opera, his page has no right margin (but it does in MSIE) if I can't tell him?

² Hey, look at that! A footnote that isn't referenced anywhere.

³ I think the airports are all frozen over. That, or the control towers melted.