Wild Wild Web

by | Sep 17, 2005 | Culture

Man, the internet is a crazy friggin place. Last night I was reading on Digg, my new favorite site by the way, that something insane was happening over at Methlabs with PeerGuardian. Apparently, the guy responsible for handling Methlabs and Blocklist.org’s donations, in a bid for power, took control over the web servers, forums and financial accounts of the team. The official PG homepage, the forums and any information coming from BlockList is now said to be compromised. The development team has moved what they could salvage to the SourceForge site that PG was downloaded from and put up a press release about it.

” The majority of the Methlabs.org administration and development team have been forced out of their website following a series of threats and incidents. The member of the group that had been trusted to handle the finances and servers slowly managed to take over each individual part of the website’s assets, eventually claiming control over the entire group and locking out the majority of staff.

The organisation’s founders, Tim Leonard and Ken McKelland, as well as the majority of the organisation’s staff and developers (including the main developer of the PeerGuardian2 application, Cory Nelson and the staff members responsible for auditing the PeerGuardian Blocklists) have all been forcibly removed from the servers that were funded from donations given to the organisation by happy users, and from text advertising placed on the websites forum and project pages. “

That’s nuts. Goes to show you, you should never let a single person control all of YOUR hard work. At this point, no one knows what to think about this and everyone is urged not to download from Methlabs and NOT to update your blocklists. I’m glad I heard about this, I was just about to.

Someone dies soon

by | Sep 15, 2005 | Aggravation, Web

So, I sit down for a few rounds of BF2 last night and I’m barely able to finish 1 map. I’m lagging so bad that the game is unplayble. I’ve seen and heard the horror stories from the people this happened to when the game was released, but as of two weeks ago I was playing perfectly. Low pings, great frame rate, everything. Now I’ve moved and everything has gone to hell. 2 blocks shouldn’t make that much difference. The cable modem is the same, my computer hasn’t changed, bf2 sat untouched. I don’t get it.

I’ve checked everything too. My system specs were perfect before hand, nothings changed. I’ve updated drivers, checked connections, run speed tests the whole deal.

The average speed test says I’m getting abouy 4.5M down and 250k up, well within cable modem norms. Yet, randomly, a web page will time out or, my main problem, bf2 will hang for sometimes up to 10 seconds.

Gx, one of my fellow Crew members pointed out that sometimes there’s a super shitty NOC outside Dallas that causes him problems similar to what I’m having. He suggested running a quick tracert to our server (which happens to be IN Dallas) durring peak hours tonight. I’m going to give that a try tonight.

What I really can’t understand is the “burst” effect. Its like I’m driving a really fast car… through stop and go traffic lights. I get great speed in short bursts, but when I go to “take it on the highway” and use that sustained/constant speed, it chokes. Something an expensive car and cable modem shouldn’t do.

I’m this close to jumping up the chain to tier 3 tech support and really chewing someone out. Aaaaarrrrrggg.

All I want to do is play the stupid game. Nothing else. Its all I ask of my internet.

Astros Game

by | Sep 14, 2005 | Personal

I haven’t mentioned it this week but Chris has been in Houston visiting his friend Doug. I phrase it like that because I’m getting the impression that Doug and his wife dislike me and that I’m some sort of 3rd wheel friend. You know what, I’m sorry, I’ve only known Chris since he was 10, sorry I’m getting in the way of your vacation time, but I’d like to hang out with him for more than 1 evening.

I digress. I did have fun last night. The Astros lost 4-2 but it was a good game. We had great seats, 3rd base side field boxes, 1st level. Very nice. Lauren’s mom works for NASA so we got a discount, half price I think. I’m glad I went. It was interesting to note that theres a conviently placed Citco sign out in left field. It almost felt like home.

I had been to MinuteMaid park before, but with really crappy seats. This was far more enjoyable.

I dunno, maybe I’m drawing too many conclusions about last night. I hadn’t eaten all day and my blood sugar was really low. Maybe I was just irritable. They were nice enough to give me a ride to the park since my office was on the way. And Doug’s wife is a RedSox fan, so there’s points right there. I was hoping that they’d be the type of people that Lauren and I could be friends with long after Chris went back home, but if they don’t like us there’s nothing I can do to force that. Oh well.

Hope Chris is having fun at least.

Huh?

by | Sep 9, 2005 | Aggravation

I just realized that my entire Katrina post didn’t show up. I blame w.bloggar for not saving it properly. That blows. It took me an hour to write that stupid thing. Arrg.