drewmckinney.net

Capannina

drew — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:31:36 +0000

This was good shit man. On Union Street at Octavia. The dining room has high ceilings that give the place a spacious feel but I felt the noise level was a bit louder than it should have been. Noise be damned though, this was some good eatin’.

Chianti - they were out of stock of the kind I first ordered but since the wine list is pretty extensive there was no trouble finding another. Seems like a lot of great wines. The bar looked small but fun.

Insalata mista - pretty standard mista. Had walnuts, greens, some sort of soft cheese and a vinaigrette. Very nice and fresh.

Risotto with squid ink and scallops - very damn tasty. The scallops were cooked to perfection and the risotto was nice and black. The garnish sauce was good and was a very nice color, something between a tomato and a tomato truck.

Ravioli with buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto - hot damn! Cheesy, tomatoey, proscituttoey and ravioliey (yes, I have problems). These pockets of cheese and meat slide over your tongue and swan dive gracefully down your throat producing smiles and mmm-ing noises.

Brick-pressed chicken - wow. Didn’t know chicken could be so flavorful. Big chicken too, but tender, like some sort of Hulkinated chicken that has been beaten into delicious submission.

Cow short ribs - so delicious the cow must have been raised on a cloud of butter. This was beaten into delicious submission also. Like eating a piece of cow-flavored chocolate mousse. I don’t know why sandwiches of this stuff aren’t available.

Sicilian style cannoli - nice finish. Not too sweet because of the espresso creme but sweet enough. Went nicely with a tawny port.

Consoles

drew — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:58:54 +0000

My Playstation is the original. So original it was just a Playstation, not a “PS One” or whatever the kids call them now. My Playstation is a second-generation model though. The cd drive was relocated to fix some technical difficulties that the first generation suffered from. Let this be a lesson to never buy the first generation of anything. Regardless, the thing is old. Oh yeah, it’s also “chipped.” See, a buddy and I went in halves for the thing because it was something like three hundred bucks. The games were expensive also and we only had a couple. I got tired of playing Tekken 3 all the time so I took the unit (without first consulting my buddy) to a sketchy alley in Garden Grove and had a guy install a chip to break the copy protection on it. This made it possible to not only play games from other regions (Japan, etc.) but to play copies of games as well. Took the thing home and it wouldn’t boot. Crap. Said buddy was a bit peeved thinking he had just wasted 150 bucks. Took the unit back to sketchy alley and had another chip put in. Tested unit before leaving and all was good. It still runs like a doped-up racehorse and although I never got my original discs back from various buddies I do still have my backups that work perfectly. So I think it would be hard to get rid of this beast if only for the historical value of it, most consoles these days aren’t so easily hacked and extended.

I also have a Nintendo 64. Picked this up for the sole reason of finishing Mario 64, a game that a roommate had and I’d started playing. Picked up Mario Kart along the way and that’s all the games I have for it. I’ve beaten Mario 64 a few times now and I’m not sure if I’ll actually play it anymore. Mario Kart is still fun for me but the real fun of it comes when there are a bunch of drunk people playing together. I rarely have drunk people over at my house these days so I’ll probably never again experience the laughter and good times a real Mario Kart tournament provides. Still, MK is like an old friend to me and I’m not sure I can kick it to the curb just yet.

There’s also the Atari 2600. Took me forever to locate the right kind of RF adapter to be able to plug it in to a modern television. I’ve played this thing maybe twice in the past year. It sits over in the corner like an old grandfather, dusty and waiting to be thrown away with the rats. One of the controllers has a sticky button so it’s kind of useless but the other works just fine. I have plenty of games for it as well:

So you see, there’s sort of a commitment to the Atari even though it will probably not be played again. Just knowing that I have all those game waiting to be played gives me more comfort than actually playing them.

My last console probably shouldn’t be called a console because it’s a handheld. The Nintendo Gameboy Color. Don’t know whatever happened to my original pea-green screen Gameboy but I have this color one now. It’s purple. Shut up, I like purple. Got a few games for it, the best of which are Bionic Commando and Bomber Man. I picked this up years ago because I wanted something to entertain me for the long Greyhound ride I was going to be taking. Nowdays I would of course fly but back then flying was a luxury that only Sultans and televangelists could afford. This thing runs for a shockingly long time on batteries and has a pretty good screen, although that seems to have dimmed a bit over the years. What I like about this guy is all of the third-party peripherals that were made for the little, I dunno, usb-like connector. The most useful add-on is probably the light but even that is sort of janky. I still pack this thing sometimes for traveling but I never use it and it will probably sit in the hall cabinet until the archaeologists dig it up one day.

As far as modern consoles, well, I don’t find them that interesting. Maybe because they’re so expensive and proprietary. The Wii being the exception for me. Man, that thing is friggin awesome. I have been coveting one lately but I think I’ll hold off pulling the trigger for a couple of years because there’s a NES out there somewhere, bundled with The Adventure of Link, and I have a game to finish.

Thanks Netflix

drew — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:58:37 +0000

So I uh, got a little steamed at Netflix for wanting to improve their service by doing away with profiles. I may have sent them some words to that effect. Instead of pointing fingers though the important thing is that profiles are going to stay. Yay us.

Some things I’ve learned

drew — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:50:47 +0000

There’s no real point to this post. I was basically sitting around warming my thumb and had the urge to type a little bit. For the sake of brevity I have not included everything I’ve learned, I sort of went with the very first things off the top of my head.

Things people have taught me:

Things i’ve taught myself:

Things i’ve been taught but never learned:

Leopard Hosts

drew — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:56:26 +0000

So it seems as though OS X, 10.5 aka Leopard, is no longer using netinfo instead of etc/hosts. This makes me happy as I won’t have to dump the contents of etc/hosts using the niload command.

Still, I just got used to using niload and now it’s gone. Grr. Good riddance though.

Old Macs never die, they just quit working

drew — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:29:56 +0000

I think it’s almost time for me to get a new laptop. This ol’ iBook G4 is starting to act like a beaten-up, scarred Gunnery Sargent that’s lost an eye, arm, leg, and ear and just received news that his daughter is marrying a communist poet named Ferdinand.

The beast is slowing down but if it were only that I wouldn’t mind. You don’t put a bullet in Grandpa’s head just because he can’t run around the block with you. There are just other problems when, added as a whole, are really fucking annoying and make it impossible for me to be productive.

For instance, my “j” key. Wow, totally fucking annoying. If a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere over the Atlantic, my fucking j key feels the vibration and automagically makes six or ten or twenty Js appear on the screen. Since the j key is part of the home row you can understand my frustration. I’m only on the third paragraph here and it’s taken me no less than six hours to get where I am because of all the fucking Js that I have to go back and delete.

Oh Boo-Hoo. So I have a wonky j key. Is that any reason to complain? No, but throw in the useless arrow keys and we’re starting to get there. The left arrow requires a true HULK SMASH to realize it has been pressed. Not too bad I guess but the right arrow makes things go down instead of right. The up arrow does nothing and pressing the down arrow does a weird shaky-thing to my screen.

As a mac user, I’ve gotten used to using the “command” key. AKA the “open-apple key” for us old-timers. The one on the left of the keyboard works fine but the one on the right is dead. Sometimes it takes a yoga pose of my hands to get the right key combination.

I’ve only dropped my laptop a dozen times but I don’t see that as any reason for the general crankiness of the machine. Sure, the battery has to be duct-taped into place and the screen will slam down on my hands because the hinge is busted. Yes, one of the USB ports works “a bit” and the left speaker can be scratchy sometimes. It’s true that the optical drive will sometimes spit discs out for no apparent reason and the touchpad is as jumpy as a meth-head going through withdrawal. Are all of these problems caused because of a little bounce into a pool of urine on the concrete floor of an airport? Maybe getting stepped on while I was playing air-guitar had something to do with it? Perhaps getting a shovelful of mulch that one time has clogged up its tubes? If you’re saying “yes” I don’t see a connection.

Any suggestions for your Uncle Drew? I’ve already got my eye on a MacBook so you don’t need to tell me how great it is. I’m curious if there are other machines out there that give the MacBook a run for the money. Most important to me is portability, I don’t go for the laptops that have a fifteen or seventeen inch screen or some shit like that. The smaller the better. I’m not really married to any of my applications so platform isn’t so important to me…I’ll rip out any installation of Losedows anyway. Battery life is a plus but again, not terribly important. Something around four or five hours might be asking for too much but it would be nice. As long as my display can do better than 800×600 I don’t give a crap about the video card because I’m not playing WoW or editing movies or anything like that. I like ports so the more ports the merrier and built-in wireless and bluetooth are an absolute necessity. And I don’t really want to spend more than $1500 bucks. Ping my personal or leave a comment…

Browser dork

drew — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:32:54 +0000

Firefox 3 beta 4 is rawkin. Get it in yer preferred language at the download page.

I’ve wrestled with many browsers on my iBook G4 and this version of Firefox is the best yet. It’s very fast and I can open 15-20 tabs without a slowdown or crash. I may be able to open more tabs but so far I haven’t needed to.

The UI seems very Mac-ish and the address bar seems to have gotten smarter. Two thumbs up in Zorro fashion.

XO

drew — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:18:52 +0000

Yes, I think the album is pretty good. But I’m talking about my new XO laptop that arrived today. It’s tiny! I’m typing this entry on the XO and it’s taking me awhile because I can’t touch-type on the keyboard. It’s frickin’ fun though. This little computer is a blast. I’m looking forward to traveling with it.

The machine is small but a little bit heavier than it looks. The browser seems pretty snappy on my home network (thanks DD-WRT!) and it worked fine at a tmobile access point at Starbucks. I’ve only played with the camera and wordprocessor so far but I’m diggin’ it, Man, I’m diggin’ it. Later today will be testing the mesh networking thingy with a coworker that has a XO also.

Haven’t figured out how to open a new tab in the browser so I’ll post some pictures and links later. For now I’ll just say WHEEEE.

Snake Oil

drew — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:19:55 +0000

I don’t mind saying “I told you so.” These guys - Fuck these guys. Also, all of you people that tried to get me to take your shit, yes, you suck as well. Be suspicious of everything, it’s not that hard.

spambino

drew — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:52:34 +0000

According to Akismet, over 82 thousand spam comments have been caught for me since installing the software on my site. That’s a lot of spam. I’m a small site with a following of one (1), that one being Me, so I can’t imagine what real sites go through to eliminate the spam and promote the ham.

Spam-bashing aside, the following spamment (? has that been used before?? if not, it’s mine. if so, cool yo, I dig yer style) appeared in my queue and it made me laugh:

“Frankly, the way things are right now, I’m not sure I’d want to play myself in my very own movie of the week.”

Hol.ey.Crap. Same here brotha.