Checksum Arcanius

Well, the Comcast Guy came and replaced our cable modem. Everything seems to be better now, I am mucho happy. I have yet to se the new modem myself, but my brother reports that it is black (woohoo!). I will ost pictures sometime maybe.

Two weeks and a day until my last final this school year. I’m stiall waiting to hear from the UW.

I saw Uniform at the Seattle International Film Festival today with Dan & co. It wasn’t very good, but I’ve seen worse too. Primer, which I have higher hopes for, is Monday.

Clifton sent me this link, about how to get more women into Linux. My specific interest was different, how to get more women into the TRC… Reading the howto left me feeling a little guilty and a little confused and a little indignant. Guilty because once I made a sexist joke to the two most promising girls on the TRC. I meant to apologize, but I never got around to it, and now I rembmer that I need to again. Confused, because some things seem to contradict. Do we want to treat women like everyone else (as she says to do at one point), or do we want to be extra careful to let them type the commands themselves (as she claims at another point). Finally, indignant because the author cites both at once how we raise males and females differently that leads to discrimination against females. Does this differentiation in raising children not just as strongly (or, these days, even more strongly) “discriminate” against me being a nanny, for example? Of course, this isnt really discrimination, is it, since I don’t really want to be a nanny. But then, what percentage or girls want to be (insert technical field here). Of course it is argued that these preferences come from differential treatment of genders in the first place. But what of that? My parents did not introduceme to the joys of autoworking as a child, and perhaps as a result, I’m not terribly interested in auto working. Does this mean I was discriminated against? If this happened to a girl, would that make her discriminated against?

I actaully wrote all that last night… enjoy!

Day after tomorrow today…

 Bad Comcast

 Good Comcast

Seen above are the same portion of two screen captures from two different games of Counterstrike. The info seen is the output of the function net_graph in the half life engine. As is normal, green means good, and red means bad. In fact, each red mark indicates a lost packet or a period of lost packets. Notice how many red marks there are in the Bad Comcast picture. Of course, that information is very anecdotal and doesn’t really isolate the problem – with just that information, you wouldn’t know if the problem were the counterstrike server, my router, my computer, the wireless link between them, or anything else. So I decided to roll in the big guns: the ping test.

I used the following command in four seperate command prompt windows:
ping -t -w 200 host
where
-t tells ping to ping until I tell it to stop
-w 200 tells ping to stop waiting at 200 ms and
host is either an IP adress or a hostname

Here are the results (grabbed by using control-break and copy/paste):

Ping statistics for 192.168.10.200: a computer on the same subnet, just one switch and two cat 5 cables away
Packets: Sent = 355, Received = 355, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

Ping statistics for 192.168.10.1: this is my router
Packets: Sent = 1239, Received = 1175, Lost = 64 (5% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 49ms, Average = 3ms

Ok, so 5% loss is not ideal and I will try to make that better. I think I could get this to 0% with a little tweaking, but 5% packet loss hardly affects real world performace.

Ping statistics for 192.168.100.1: this is my cable modem
Packets: Sent = 1017, Received = 947, Lost = 70 (6% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 5ms

This is on par with the 5% seen for the router, but the test started later and there are more lost packets, so there are definitely some packets lost between the router and the cable modem… how this is possible escapes me, since they are all of a foot apart with a nice cat5 cable in between. But still, 6% loss is not very noticeable in the real world.

Now it gets interesting:
Ping statistics for 24.18.144.1: this is my router’s default gateway
Packets: Sent = 1230, Received = 864, Lost = 366 (29% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 480ms, Average = 63ms

All of my packets have to go through the default gateway, as this is my only path to the internet. And from here to there and back again (without touching the internet along the way), I loose almost 30% of my packets. This is all after my router, mind you, I have no control over anything at this point.

Now, for the real world test:
Ping statistics for 216.239.57.99: this is google.com
Packets: Sent = 1480, Received = 872, Lost = 608 (41% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 31ms, Maximum = 489ms, Average = 84ms

Once we get out into the wild, nearly half of my packets never find their way home. And this is with no load whatsoever on the system.

“Pour sore misery down on me…” (I’m only happy when it rains)

Internet was down most of the day while the cable modem reset itself over and over, perhaps due to line conditions. Its back now, so yay, but really, comcast, get a life.

Bob, of Colorless Green Ideas came up with the idea of using SSH along with ytalk as a method of secure chatting. We are using the system right now and it works very well. I suggest it to anyone who wants to carry on questionable, anti-government, or otherwise sketchy conversations.

If you are someone who wants to participate, IM me (AIM screenname is RyanMcE), and I can set you up an accoutn on silverfir.net. then all you have to do is download PuTTY, ssh into silverfir.net, and type ychat . I’m Ryan, btw. Type w to find out whos currenlty logged on.

Have fun!

“Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas,” explained Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios. “And the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

Sounds exciting. But I’m more excited for Half Life 2, and assuming Valve doesn’t make another giant misstep like they did with Steam when it was initially released, and assuming they fi the dynamic lighting problems, and assuming that the physics engine is as amazing as it looks, then I see nothing in the way between Half Life two and game of the year in multiple publications.

Its another inredibly beautiful day outside, and I have a huge photo assignment due tomorrow that I ahven’t even taken one photo for. And I have a Diff.Eq. Quiz tomorrow that I haven’t studied for. And of course school and work and I’d like to get a haircut while I’m at it.

Does it ever stop?

“Your application is awaiting a preliminary review, at which time we will determine whether all required documents have arrived, if these documents are current, and if all other required materials are on file.”

That is what I have seen since I submitted my application to the UW over 8 weeks ago. Hmmm…

Tomorrow, life goes back to normal for an entire two days. Then on Wednesday, we’re off to Utah for my brother’s graduation. Then I’m headed to Cali for Steel Conflict, then I’m back home and trying to pull the remnants of my school quarter back together.

For all of how good Far Cry’s AI is, it is still pretty easy to fool. And the inability to fight in water is pretty dumb. Oh, and so are the mysterious appearing-from-nowhere helicopters if you wander out of the “open range” game’s range.

I’m going to try to stay on this earlier schedule I got onto due to being three hours ahead, but I’m already letting it slip – I slept a lot in the plane and airports today, and listened to the ipod most of the day. I was impressed with its battery life today. On the other hand, my laptop’s battery seems to be fried – either that, or windows is acting up and hibernating prematurely (it does fail to give me the warning first for some reason, like somehow it misses the 10% mark and goes straight to the 4% mark.

Thats all for tonight, unless I get crazy and decide to post again.

A week ago, my ping in Counterstrike started sucking like a well-paid whore. It came to a head (pun not unintended) around wednesday, when the cable modem would reset about every five minutes, and pings were between 80 and 3000 milliseconds, when the pakcet made it at all (over 25% packet loss). So I called Comcast and made an appointment. The next few days were smooth sailing. Including earlier today. And since there is a possibility the technician would have charged us money if he found nothing wrong, I cancelled the appointment. Not one minute later, my ping went back through the roof. I am holding my breath in anticipation of the packet loss (which is now starting I notice, taking a look at HLSW), the 2.1k/s downloads, and the complete loss of all internet for a couple of days, just like last time. The scary thing is, it started happening immediately after I cancelled the appointment. I’m serious. I was playing counterstirke before, and no problems. Pings of 30-50, with the occasional spike that everyone experienced. Then I found a phone and cancelled the appointment. Then I played CS again, and my ping was never better than 100 and it averaged 200-300. CS is unplayable like that at the level I play, at least. The timing makes me think conspiratorial thoughts… One has to wonder….

Now on to the next topic, girls. So, last week, on tuesday, I’m sitting in the L-lounge after my tennis class and before my DiffEq class, reading my book because there was a quiz. In comes a girl from my photography class last quarter. I didn’t get to know her very well during the quarter, but we were friendly, so we wave. She comes and sits near me, and we talk until our 10:30 classes. On thursday (the next day of my tennis class) I head into the L-lounge again (since thats what I do) and she’s sitting there. I pull up a chair and the scene repeats itself. Everyone is happy.
So, over the weekend I get to thinking, this girl and I get along, she seems interested (she did, after all, come up to me in the first place, wehn we didn’t even have a class together any more) , and she’s friggen hot. That same weekend, my mom comes and tells me about how good the showing of “Man of La Mancha” is at the Village Theater in Issaquah. So I put 2 and 2 together, and decide that I’ll be a gentleman and give the girl almost a full week’s notice instead of springing the idea on her on the weekend. Sure enough, the next tuesday, she’s there, and we talk. Right before class, I pop the question. We’ve been talking about work through in the rest of the conversation, and she’s working a lot that weekend, so I’m not put off when she tells me she has to check her schedule and will let me know on Thursday. I’m cool with that, I’m pretty flexible, and I figure she’ll probally say yes, since we’re getting along so well. Well, clearly, that is not what happened. I could have handled a No. I wouldn’t have minded. I would have backed off, gone back to friendly conversation, just enjoyed her company if she wasn’t interested in anything more. No. Its a one syllable word. Its easy to say. She probally said it a lot when she was 2. That was 18 years ago. She shouldn’t have forgetten.
But… appreantly she did. On thursday, I was a little nervous, but I figured, a no wouldn’t be so bad. I was ready for it. But instead, she wasn’t there. Poof. Gone. She changed her entire everyday routine just to avoid me. I can handle rejection, but I’m not sure what I should make of this. I don’t think I’m that revolting. Maybe I’m wrong, but I could handle even being told that. But what the hell is this avoidance routine? I think my good friends at Nada Surf said it well in their song “Popular”:

“Three important rules for breaking up
Don’t put off breaking up when you know you want to
Prolonging the situation only makes it worse
Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly
Don’t make a big production
Don’t make up an elaborate story
This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene
If you wanna date other people say so
Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected
Even if you’ve gone together for only a short time,
And haven’t been too serious,
There’s still a feeling of rejection
When someone says she preferres the company of others
To your exclusive company,
But if you’re honest, and direct,
And avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you brake the news,
The boy will respect you for your frankness,
And honestly he’ll apeciate the kind of straight foward manner
In which you told him your decision
Unless he’s a real jerk or a cry baby you will remain friends”

Sure, we weren’t breaking up, but the same rules apply. I don’t know about other guys, but for me this is scripture, the absolue truth. I may feel hurt and rejected, but I’ll get over that. Well, I’ll get over this too, but its harder. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Combine this anecdote with evidence that Dris will soon post in a comment (don’t let me down) and I think we will have proven that women are evil. Hah!