So I have a Linksys WRT54G which acts as my wireless access point for the home and as the router for 4 wired connections in my home (used by the PS3, arcade machine, AVR, and HTPC). It has two distinct problems that have led me to decide to part with it. First, it is really slow in handshaking with DHCP connections. It takes anywhere from 5 seconds to a minute for my laptop to obtain an IP address when I turn it on, and that's too much. It seems like everywhere else I go the negotiation of DHCP's dark secrets is more or less instantaneous.

Second, the WRT54G has a known problem with bittorrent, namely that it retains all connection data for 5 days. If you run a bittorrent client on a connected machine for about a day or so, the WRT54G starts having issues with a lack of available memory and behaves erratically. Since my arcade machine is often engaged in bittorrentation, I find myself having to cycle the power on the WAP about once a day. And that... blows.

SO, what are the kids buying these days? What's good? I need something with good port forwarding support, reasonable security, preferably at least 4 switched ethernet jacks, and bitchin' flame decals. Advice?

That's right, as I was driving to Farmington on NM 550 just south of Cuba, there was a maroon Honda Accord behind me!

Oh, and a silver Ford GT was also present.

OK, so our assessment of our first doubles match was way off. The old guys weren't our opponents; we played two B-division Navajo guys who worked us over 15-21, 15-21. I think that on a good day we probably could have beat them, but we couldn't seem to get our game together. However, it turns out that they actually ran a double-elimination bracket, so we got to play more games. Our second doubles match was against a couple of students from UNM who were green and we managed to beat them 21-11, 21-16. This put us into the consolation match for third place in the bracket. By the time this match came around, it was so late in the day that they decided to just do a single game to 31 rather than a best of three games to 21. Our opponents were a couple of older gentlemen who were really tired and we were able to win 31-10. So this means we took third place in B/C Doubles. However, at the awards banquet, they decided to split the bracket such that the winners side was referred to as "B Doubles" and the loser's bracket was referred to as "C Doubles," and they declared us 1st place in C Doubles. Yay

In singles land, my first game of the day was against a man who had just turned 80. My hat is off to this guy for still entering tournaments at his age, and he's still got a good shot, but he lacks the mobility to get to the ball. If I had played a position game with the intent to dominate, it wouldn't have been much fun, so we played an exhibition game where I was intentionally hitting to him with most of my shots. And they gave him an 8 point handicap in each game. Final score was 21-17, 21-18, which impresses me. I wasn't giving him points as charity, I just wasn't ever hitting it away from him. So he is fully able to return my shots and hit it in a way that I can't get to it. I hope I'm that spry when I'm 80.

This put me into the finals, where I expected to find a B-division behemoth. However, it turns out that only one person signed up for B singles, and that was Dick—my doubles partner. He won his side of the bracket and we ended up as opponents in the finals. The championship game never actually took place, as we were both totally beat from our 5 matches, so we agreed to play a singles match back at Los Alamos and phone in the result at a later date. But one of us is first in B/C singles and one of us is second. They split this bracket into B and C as well, which means that technically I'm either first or second in B singles, but... not really.

My prizes at the banquet included a tape measure and a tow strap. I traded the tow strap with Leeroy for a set of ratcheting tie-downs. All of the prizes were hardware store swag. The banquet was awesome; the guys who put on the tournament made ribs, brisket, and all manner of barbecue stuff. I stuffed myself, then drove the 3 hours home, arriving at 12:15am. It was a long day, but a great experience. I slept for over nine hours.

Have arrived in Farmington, which is actually very pleasant. Somehow I had this image of dust and tumbleweeds. My hotel room looks out over the Animas river and the weather is fantastic. Dick and I both had singles games scheduled for 6:15pm, and we were both here on time. But it turned out that both of our opponents were coming from Albuquerque and were students at UNM. One of them had a class that got out at 2:30pm, so they were expected to be late (and were). I didn't end up playing until almost 8pm.

The thing about playing competitively in a tournament that is different than just playing casually at the YMCA after work is that it feels like there's more riding on the game, and pressure to at least try to win... so I tend to come out with full cannons and really flatten the ball when I ought to be playing more of a position game. So after running up a score of 8-0 against my opponent with most ace serves, I managed to totally blow out my elbow, which is what happens when I hit the ball too hard. I also really tired myself out and I was huffing it, which I shouldn't have been after just a third of one game. It was OK, though, because I managed to play a good slow lob game after that and my opponent was a little weak in the left corner against high arcing shots. Final scores for the match was 21-12, 21-10, so I won. Yay!

Now, coming into this tournament, I thought that maybe my curse of bad tournament outcomes was going to continue because they had, at the last minute, combined the B and C bracket, meaning that I would be mixed in with B players who would totally dominate me. But I got lucky in the first round and got a kid who was definitely a less experienced player than myself. Then, I looked at the bracket and discovered that my next opponent had a bye in the first round. This would have been a disadvantage for me if we had played tonight, as he would have been fresh... but our game isn't until tomorrow. Also, as I just found out, the guy is 80 and largely immobile. So... if I can manage to pull that one off, I'll be in the finals for B/C singles. But there I fully expect to find a B player who is 8'6" tall, weighs 300 pounds, and occasionally pops the ball on particularly vigorous shots.

Anyway, first up tomorrow is Dick and I's doubles match, which I think we can win. I didn't see our opponents play today but they looked rather... old. I just have to keep my adrenaline under control and not play a power game, seeing as I'm probably looking at a minimum of four matches (of 2-3 games each) tomorrow—I'll need to conserve my strength.

I finally wrapped up the last of my deliverables for fiscal year 2007 this past week, which is a huge relief. There were just a couple things left to do but I had basically run out of time and it has been a stressful couple of weeks. Anyway that's all over, the papers are submitted, the hardware works, etc. Now I can look forward and focus on the proposals that got funding for FY08, which includes some pretty great stuff. For one thing, the lab is funding me to go geek it up at Toorcon 9, immediately followed by a week and a half at the IEEE conference in Honolulu. Aw yeah.

But in the immediate future, I'm off to dusty Farmington, NM, where I'm competing in my third ever handball tournament. At the first tournament I went to (ABQ, last fall), I was pretty new at the game and played very poorly as a result. The second tournament (Durango, this summer) I had just returned from climbing Rainier and found my body to be physically useless, so I lost every game I played there. This time, I'm feeling good and I have no excuses not to kick butt. Except, perhaps, the fact that I'm still not really all that good. So if I get an unlucky draw I could still come up empty... but I'm hoping to at least win a game or two. This whole single-elimination business is sorta rough on new people.

Finished up the paint and wall graphics on the arcade room this weekend; it looks something like this now:

Also ripped out the last of the heinous chandeliers in the living room and replaced it with some cable lighting. Unfortunately, it turns out that the combination of low voltage magnetic dimmer, magnetic transformer, and the MR16 fixtures I got makes for a very... buzzing experience. The filaments themselves buzz when they are being dimmed due to inrush currents from the PWM-esque power signal coming from the dimmer. Haven't figured out to solve this yet; apparently you can just put a choke on the power line and that'll solve it, though there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the internet regarding this. Anyway, for now I have lights that buzz when they're at any brightness other than zero. Great.

On my morning commute today I passed 30,000 miles on the Tacoma. I celebrated the occasion by compromising safety and taking pictures of the dash while driving at speed.

First it was assumed to be, as its predecessors had all been, a Sony exclusive. Then, it was announced as being available for the Xbox 360 as well. Then it was available for all platforms. Then, horrifyingly, it was just Xbox 360 and possibly Wii. Apparently Namco Bandai's latest website update puts PS3 back on the menu for Beautiful Katamari. Will they ever stop playing with me this way?

I'm concerned, as I am with all cross-platform games that include the Wii, that the game won't take advantage of HD. It is listed as 720p, which seems somewhat ridiculous, since the game's style lends itself to a far lower than average polygon count. I'd assume, not knowing the slightest bit of what I'm talking about, that this would make 1080p reasonably easy on the graphics hardware. . So why limit yourself, Bandai? I just hope that cross-platform issues due to inclusion of the Wii aren't dumbing down the graphics on this title.

And, as with all non-PS3-exclusives, I suspect that this game won't take advantage of the Blu-ray Disc to add ridiculous amounts of content. Though, to be fair, I think game developers haven't really gone down that road yet even for games that are PS3 exclusive. Warhawk, the only game I've actually purchased on BD for the PS3, comes in at a whopping 850MB, leaving the BD approxiamtely 98.3% empty. I guess Lair put a ton of texture data on their disc, but the game was such a disaster that it hardly matters.

Update: Just to prove my point, Bandai has now removed PS3 and Wii from the list of targets for Beautiful Katamari, so we're back to the wholly unholy position of an Xbox 360 exclusive. How sad is that? Why have you forsaken me, Bandai?

I always assumed that all license plates used the same typeface. Turns out it varies from state to state. Bob pointed out to me today that there is only one state that uses a Roman typeface on its plates, and that's... drum roll... Virginia.

Here is a website that lets you generate custom license plate images for all 50 states plus the Provinces du Canadia. If Puerto Rico gets made into a state, I hope they use Comic Sans.

Having been to both of these places, I can definitively answer this question for you. It's Honolulu.

Unfortunately, it's looking like I'll have the opportunity to go to one or the other but not both at the end of October. The Kazakhstan maintenance trip conflicts with the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium conference. I'm going to have to go with Hawai'i on this one, which is a bummer because I really enjoyed my time in Aktau last time. But, alas, the maintenance trips to Aktau are a recurring thing; the opportunity to take Glenn Knoll's short course on detector physics at IEEE is not necessarily available forever. Plus, the papers I'm on for this conference represent the most interesting thing I'm currently working on and the segment of my work which I think has the most potential to grow into a career-basis project. That, and I'm rather taken by the idea of snorkeling.

Stole this picture from Christina's blog. She went to pick Mike up from the airport last week, he was returning from Vienna via Atlanta. The flight landed three hours late. The flight wasn't canceled or delayed... they were just...

...flyin' around.

The contrast enhancement is my doing; but otherwise I swear this isn't a photoshop job.

Update: The more I look at this screen shot, the weirder I think it is. Have you noticed that the first three columns are left-justified, followed by a right-justified column, and then three centered columns? Why does Chicago have a hyphen after it? And what's with all the numbers after the notes in the last column? And even though the clock at the bottom of the screen reads 7:36, flights due in almost an hour earlier (and not marked ARRIVED) are listed as ON TIME. Buh? Maybe that's what "ON TIME 1" means, "note: not really."

After climbing Mount Rainier, I spent an extra day in Seattle and Dan took me to an indoor karting place called K1 Speed. I had been karting a few times before, mostly at places that also featured mini-golf or some sort of midway. K1 Speed was a venue devoted entirely to karting and it was a totally different experience. The most obvious difference was that the karts were actually fast and, by association, fun to drive.

I was relating my experience at K1 Speed to Nate, and he told me that a similar place existed in Albuquerque, ABQ Karting. Last night, Nina and I went over and gave ABQ Karting a whirl. So here is my first impression comparison of the two outfits, having done exactly three races at each venue.

The Karts
K1 Speed's karts are electric, whereas ABQ Karting's karts are internal combustion. This makes K1 Speed's karts a bit quieter and less smelly, but these were really not major concerns (ABQ Karting's facility is very well ventilated, so exhaust fumigation was never a problem). K1 Speed's karts have one huge advantage over ABQ Karting's, however, and that is torque. The K1 Speed karts have some serious punch to them, particularly at low speeds, whereas I felt like ABQ Kartings karts take forever to come up to speed. This performance difference made the ideal driving line completely different, because you have to do everything in your power not to drop speed, even if it means taking a much longer line around a curve. As for top speed, I think the two karts are about the same. The ABQ Karting karts take longer to get up to speed, but the track also features a much longer straight, so in the end my top speed an the two tracks felt comparable. Turning radius, braking, and drift performance was about the same on both karts. Overall, I found the K1 Speed karts slightly more fun to drive because of their better acceleration.

The Tracks
The K1 Speed track is pretty short; my best lap time on the track was about 18 seconds. The ABQ Karting track is much longer, with my best time being 28 seconds (granted some of this is due to the slower-accelerating karts, but not much). The variety of turns on the K1 Speed track is better, with turns varying from a 180-degree hairpin to a gentle high-speed curve after the straight away. I've been told that they change the track layout at K1 Speed occasionally and, as you can see here, the tracks are different at each of the K1 Speed facilities. ABQ Karting, on the other hand, has a constant track layout (shown here). ABQ Karting's turn selection varies a bit, but not as much as K1 Speeds. I felt like the course was a bit less challenging.

The Facilities
K1 Speed has a really finished appearance. The decor in the lobby is fancy, the employees wear uniforms, they have a website that they have clearly dumped some money into, etc. ABQ Karting is definitely more of a budget affair. The lobby is sparse, there is no flair out on the track, and the employees wear whatever they want. Both outfits offer an arcade out in the lobby, but in this respect ABQ Karting is actually slightly superior with a greater selection of arcade cabinets as well as pool and air hockey. Both outfits provide you with a printout of race statistics after each race, though K1 Speed's presentation is better. They offer a color printout with a graph showing race position vs. lap, lap times, career stats, etc. ABQ Karting's black and white printout offers only tabular lap time data and tabular data for the best of the day, week, and month. K1 Speed goes one step further, making your race information available on their website along with comparisons of your career averages against other racers. ABQ Karting has free water but no concessions. K1 Speed has an elaborate concessions stand but nothing is free.

The Damage
Both K1 Speed and ABQ Karting cost a fortune. K1 Speed wanted $5 for a mandatory membership, followed by $20 a race. Races were fixed at 14 laps, or about 4.2 minutes of racing. Race packs were available which offered a slight discount on races if you buy them in groups of 3 or more. ABQ Karting offers a $20 optional annual membership, and races are $15 for members or $20 for non-members. Assuming you race 4 times in a year, the membership is a win. Races are guaranteed to be at least 8 minutes long, and if there aren't people waiting in line to race, they'll let you race longer. They also offer race packs for a discount. Furthermore, the have daily specials (students get half-off all races on Wednesdays, etc.). Assuming my average lap times at both venues and a membership at each, the cost per unit breaks down as follows:

K1 Speed: ~$4.76 per minute or $1.42 per lap.
ABQ Karting: ~$1.88 per minute or ~$0.86 per lap.

Clearly, one of these two options is more economical. Add to this the fact that racing off-peak hours means that your races tend to run long at ABQ Karting, whereas K1 Speeds race lengths are set in stone, and the disparity is only extended.

The Conclusion
In the end, K1 Speed offers a slightly better service on almost every count, but you just don't get very much of it for your money. Combined with the fact that the nearest one is some 500 miles away from me, I'll obviously be spending my (meager) karting budget at ABQ Karting. However, even if they were both located next door to my house, I'd probably spend more time at ABQ Karting. The only thing that really matters is how much fun it is to race, and even despite the slightly lower-performance karts at ABQ Karting, the fun level was pretty much equivalent. And since you get twice as much for your money, it's worth it in my humble opinion.

PS: Dan, if you ever come back to NM, I want a rematch. Now that I suck...less.