So I finally got back on my GTA game, first time since September really, and finished off the last two missions that open up Tierra Robado. Now I have a whole new area to explore without the SWAT teams coming after me for territory violations.
I had been attacking TORENO’S LAST FLIGHT with the wrong approach, stopping every time I saw the chopper and trying to shoot it down. The approach that finally worked was getting ahead of the chopper and shooting it as it approached me. I have my doubts as to the accuracy of these virtual weapons — I don’t think I was shooting at it any more accurately from the front than from the rear. But it’s done, in any case.
YAY-KA-BOOM-BOOM was almost pitifully simple. Kill all the guards you can see before you drive the car into the crack lab, then fewer of them will be around to shoot at your car and potentially blow you up before you get it parked in there. Escaping was no big deal either, just jump the ramp over the freight containers and you’re good to go.
I guess I’m taking this more seriously so that when we get a WII, GTA will be in the past, and I won’t have those unfinished missions hanging over my head.
If I could just figure out how to pass the BURN AND LAP portion of Driving School, I’d be a much happier camper.
I bought a copy of Cryptonomicon. As an IT professional working in the security field, it seemed to fall right into place as the next book to read. It was originally recommended by Mike Terry, who seems to be a big Neal Stephenson fan. I was liking the book, but having limited time to read it now that I’m no longer commuting by train, I picked up the AudioBook of it.
Now I’m simultaneously gratified and annoyed. Sure, I can listen to it during my commute, and that works out well, especially with the Prius’ integrated audio and navigation system. When I get a call from my wife during the commute, the bluetooth-integrated system intercepts the call, PAUSES the CD while I take the call, and then resumes when I hang up. But I’m finding there are things I don’t like about audiobooks, especially for large books such as Cryptonomicon. Namely, the abridgements. I had left off reading the book shortly after a particularly satisfying brawl scene in a sushi bar, which had elements of comedy and adventure that I found fulfilling. This entire scene is left out of the audiobook and only referred to vaguely when describing the other character as having been met in a bar fight.
Having a Prius seems to be affecting my thought processes concerning energy conservation.
This past weekend (Memorial Day weekend) I did a fair amount of yard work. Mowing, weeding, trimming, weedwacking and “cultivating,” for lack of a better term (installing iron trellises for our three productive yet unweidly rosebushes and our two baby climbing vines). My upper forearms are sore from repeated attempts at starting the weedwacker, because the gas inside it had become stale. My lower back is sore from all of the combined efforts of carrying, bending, and pulling.
I got to thinking about whether it would be easier and more efficient to use electric tools. One of my neighbors has an electric mower. I just can’t visualize lugging an extension cord around the entire yard while mowing or weedwacking. I also can’t imagine that these electric tools have the same horsepower as their ozone-depleting, smog-emitting, carbon-eating equivalents. Is there such a thing as a 6HP electric mower that will kick the ass of giant two-foot clumps of grass that I’ve neglected?
Then, I came home with a flat last night. The Prius was kind enough to tell me about it on the dashboard indicator. The light looks something like this: (_!_) — which is one of the symbols used to indicate an ASS in chat for old-school net junkies like myself. As in, “Look, ASS, I’m not going to go much further unless you put some air in your tires.” I pulled into a gas station in stafford, and it was completely flat. Odd. I filled it to 33, the recommended pressure, and the indicator didn’t go away.
I drove the rest of the way home, it still looked fine, then I went hunting for my portable compressor/inflator, which seems to have disappeared. Ran down to Wally World to pick up a new one for $30, and it’s CORDLESS. Meaning, you can either run it off the 12V DC power supply in the vehicle (it used to be called a cigarette lighter port, but now that smoking is less cool, vehicles are no longer built standard with ashtrays — you have to pay EXTRA for the “Smoker’s Package”) or you can charge it in your garage and use it cordlessly, which will come in REALLY handy for vacations when I have to blow up all of the pool toys on day 0.
In my security-related roles at various past jobs, I have often found the need to view open connections to a server. Sometimes I suspect a compromise, sometimes I’m troubleshooting a network issue. I had always used netstat to show me those open connections. Well, no more. I discovered iptstate (iptables state top), quite by accident, when pruning a distribution for size. From the man page:
iptstate displays information held in the IP Tables state table in real-time in a top-like format. Output can be sorted by any field, or any field reversed. Users can choose to have the output only print once and exit, rather than the top-like system. Refresh rate is configurable, IPs can be resolved to names, output can be formatted, the display can be filtered, and color coding are among some of the many features.
