treshenry.net

Goodbye Grandpa Slim

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:20:46 +0000

Goodbye Grandpa Slim

What I Need To Do

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:03:36 +0000

TODO LIST

Just my quick list of site updates I need to do:

Update the layout: lighter look & feel and wider and/or flexible width.
Fix the twitter integration so it’s not just push.
Change the nav mechanism, the according is gross.

Foolproof Romance Engine

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:32:09 +0000

That Fresh Spark

A lot of folks ask Jake and I how we keep our relationship fresh after all these years. “What’s your secret?” they ask. Well, I think it’s time we share our secret.

Ridiculously silly and cute pet names.

Now you too can add that special spark to an otherwise dull and lifeless marriage by clicking the button below. Do it now and take your relationship to the next level.

Think of how touched your significant other/spouse would be if you addressed them as:

Nethack

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:30:27 +0000

Nethack Tournament

And here’s about how I’m doing:

Bubbles Votes!

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:58:51 +0000

Bubbles Votes

Just a cute video for you:

Grace Gets New Brakes

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:17:31 +0000

Grace’s New Brakes

I apologize to all for not blogging sooner about my new (old) car: Grace Gay Gears. It’s been a busy few weeks.

Background

Grace is a ‘92 Accord with 160k+ miles, a rebuilt title, and a leak in the trunk. She was broken in to just before I bought her which left some residual damage and for some reason she smelled like a taxi cab until Jake took some potent lavender smelling cleaner to her insides. She also get’s great gas mileage, has a smooth ride, and is super cheap on insurance. Oh, and speaking of cheap, let’s just say that I paid for her in cash. :)

It’s probably also worth mentioning that I bought her from Rosy Perez. I have her business card to prove it.

Repairs

I’ve actually had to do surprising little to Grace so far because for all of her faults she is in surprisingly great shape (just like me)! I had to do some minor repairs due to the pre-purchase break-in like replacing the passenger door handle and putting in a new stereo. I decided to splurge a little on the audio and put in a nice deck with a USB plug in the glove box, a 150 watt/channel amp (see pic below) and some nice Infinity speakers. I’m thinking about getting a sub at some point just so I can be that guy.

Anyway, one thing I knew I needed to do asap was the brakes so I picked up pads and shoes at the super awesome mega-huge Schucks on 99 (I luv that place) and Dad and I rocked that shit on a sunny Sunday. Behold:

Sarah Palin

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:25:48 +0000

Ladies And Gentlemen, Sarah Palin

Duma Key

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:42:31 +0000

Duma Key

Duma Key is not a short book. I say this because I usually avoid not-short books. I’m one of those high retention slow readers that is good at slogging through technical material and not so great at reading for pleasure. Big books intimidate me.

If I saw Duma Key on the shelf at a book store I probably wouldn’t have even picked it up knowing that if I did and I read a bit and enjoyed it and bought it that later, seeing this giant book on the night stand, I would crumble under the weight of insurmountable inertia. On the Kindle, however, I was able to read a chapter or so, get hooked, then buy it without ever realizing how girthy it actually is.

Dear Kindle: thank you.

This is one of Stephen King’s best novels, and given his absurdly large body of work, that’s saying something. It is, at its heart, a compelling transformation story of a man severely wounded in a construction accident and his slow road to recovery. But to stop there would be like saying Watership Down is a story about rabbits. I’m not going to spoil anything but I will say that fans of classic King horror will not go wanting. I even made my mom read it and she loved it! She finished it in less than a week.

I wish I could read that fast.

Contact Info

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:39:47 +0000

Contact Info

For those that don’t know I am no longer using MSNIM because of all the spam messages I was getting. I now use AIM exclusively and I only allow messages from my contact list. So if you want to IM me send a request over to tresishxc.

Also, of course, you can follow me on twitter. My user name is ohnoimdead.

PEACE!

Thanks California

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:25:26 +0000

Mawwidge

Ok, before we go in to the details here let me start by saying that this was essentially the paperwork part of the process. The “real” wedding will happen on the beach in Hawaii next year and then some time after that we will have a big party/reception here in Seattle (spreading the events out makes the cost a little more bearable). So to all our friends and family that weren’t in Sacramento with us: we appreciate your love and support and there will be more opportunities to celebrate with us. Now on with the story.

Last week Jake, my mom and dad, and I drove down to Reno where we spent a few days (visiting friends – hi Yvonne! – and gambling) before driving to Sacramento to get married. Sacramento is mostly a total ghetto dive but it was very welcoming to us and we had a fantastic time for the one night we were there.

After checking in at our hotel we went emergency clothes shopping (so much for getting married in shorts) and then we sucked down a couple of drinks at the hotel bar before getting dressed and heading over to the county clerk’s office for our appointment with fate.

We arrived at the county clerk’s office a little early and we had to wait for a few minutes before being seen. While we waited a lesbian couple was just finishing up and everyone in the lobby applauded for them — it was beautiful.

As a side note: if you look closely at the sign in sheet below you will see that I tried to sign in as “Party A” but, as you can also see, Jake snatched the pen out of my hand and signed in the Party A column instead. I think he said something like, “No baby, I’m party A.” There’s really no arguing that.

Later, on the drive back, we had the idea that it would be funny to throw two parties: one for all the Party A’s recently married in Cali and one for all the Party B’s.

Also I’m sure it will get old at some point but right now I think it’s hysterically funny to call Jake the Party of the First Part.

After a few minutes of waiting we got admitted to the administrators desk to do the paperwork which was really nothing more than signing a couple of documents and swearing the information presented was correct. We didn’t have to slog through mounds of paperwork because my wonderful Party A filled out most of the paperwork online a couple of weeks ahead of time.

You can’t really see the desk clearly but there is all this information there about pregnancy, genetic disease screening and the like. Jake said something like, “you know, we’ve been trying to get pregnant for ages and it’s just not working,” when the admin pointed out the information and said she was required to provide it.

After the t’s were crossed and the i’s dotted we had to wait a little longer for the clerk to take us to the chapel, perform the ceremony and solemnize the marriage.

Karen Lomack was our clerk and she was COMPLETELY AWESOME! She did a beautiful job with the ceremony and she was amazingly kind and gracious. The ceremony was sweet, to the point, and not too intense. That didn’t diminish the fact though that there was a subtle, but definite, feeling of history-making in the room. I’m sure the Sacramento County Clerk has probably wed thousands of same-sex couples since the California Supreme Court ruling but it still felt historic in that room.

And then, of course, the witnesses had to sign.

Then we had the dorky, but kinda cute, idea to twitter our I do’s.

After the ceremony we had to go back to the lobby to wait for the rest of the printed material which included an extremely hysterical pamphlet entitled Your Future Together which had all kinds of illustrations from the 80’s (judging by the hair on the figures) that looked like they have been photocopied about ten thousand times.

Back in the lobby the next couple to get married after us were doing the paperwork part. They were in the lobby with us earlier joking and laughing. They applauded for us after the ceremony.

Finally we finished at the clerk’s office and headed out to Tres Hermanas a wonderful Mexican restaurant for food and drinks. Mom found the restaurant online and it was fantastic with hella strong drinks. We got so lit that later, back at the hotel, we jumped the fence to the pool (which they closed and locked even though they told us they wouldn’t) and swam for a few minutes before the hotel manager kicked us out.

In general it was wonderful and we had a great time. There were no protestors, no crazy conservatives screaming at us, no drama. The sky didn’t fall in, there were no earthquakes, the rivers didn’t run with blood. We, as a loving and committed couple, were given the same rights and privileges as any other couple in California and that was that. Now if we can just get our marriage recognized in the great state of Washington.

Soon.

Amazon Kindle

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:06:26 +0000

A Stimulated Kindle

OK, so I decided to spend a portion of my economic stimulus (I just love saying that) payment stimulating (there I go again) the economy by buying an Amazon Kindle. I played with one that our good friends purchased recently and they gave it such a glowing review I had to have one:

The first book I bought on it was Snow Crash (of course) and I also bought The Drunkard’s Walk which is amazingly good and kept me up until 2:00 AM this morning. Actually I’m sure I hit the 80% conversion path with that one because I saw the book on my recommendations list, then I downloaded the free sample (took like 10 seconds), read that in about 30 minutes and loved it so much I bought the book (took < 1 minute to deliver). Amazon FTW.

The device does have some minor annoyances one can (and should) expect from a first run device. The forward/back buttons on the side are annoyingly easy to hit on accident, it’s a little on the slow side just overall (not downloads mind you, but like searching, loading a book, going through menus, typing an annotation, etc.) but in general I am REALLY enjoying it. The digital paper display is AMAZING and just so easy on the eyes. I’ll do another review in a couple of months and we’ll see if I’m still in love with it then.

Oh, and the weird little digital navigation indicator on the right side of the screen is amazingly compelling. It looks like frosted glass with a little mirror sticker stuck to it but the mirror sticker moves all around and even stretches. It’s the most mechanical looking digital thing I’ve ever seen.

Creature Creator Released

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:55:20 +0000

Creature Creator!!!

The Spore Creature Created has been released in limited form as a free download. Here’s my first creature:

Get more details on Bosworthamos by clicking the link. CAN’T WAIT FOR THE FULL GAME!!!!!

(P.S. I created Bosworthamos on my Macbook Pro. The Creature Creator ran beautifully!)

Edit:

Created another little precious angel just now and then realized you can not only take pictures but you can also take movies and animated avatars!

Another Edit:

I bought the full version of the Creature Creator (because I couldn’t just wait for the game) and it has SO many more parts. I made this:

I Feel SOOOO Stimulated

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:31:17 +0000

Thank You Crazy Government

I am feeling so stimulated right now.

My Dope Fonts

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:17:19 +0000

My Dope Fonts

Don’t be jelis.

Pipsqueak 2

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:49:33 +0000

The New Toy

Asus EEE

SUPER CUTE!

I upgraded it to a gig of ram and pimped out the Xandros distro it ships with. It’s the absolute perfect machine for sitting on the couch and surfing, you know, whatever. For $350 you really can’t go wrong.

OMG BEHOLDER ATTACK

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:30:24 +0000

Close Call at Cafe Umbria

I was at Cafe Umbria today and just as I was about to enjoy my gelato + espresso (super omg delicious btw)…

A BEHOLDER ATTACKED!

Pretty cool promo for the upcoming 4th Edition D&D. My coffee was free because I not only knew the name of the creature (an Eye of the Beholder, duh!) but I also knew its hit dice. This fact makes Jake roll his eyes — and rightfully so.

Duke Of URL

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:34:39 +0000

Duke Of URL

A Bookmarklet

Ok, here’s a handy little tool that I created recently for testing URL parameters in the query. I guess you call these things ‘bookmarklets’ but it’s essentially just a bunch of javascript that you can put in a bookmark and then execute whenever you like (on any page).

This particular bookmarklet parses and decodes all of the query parameters and provides a simple (and rather ugly) little UI to modify those parameters or add new ones. After you have hacked the params all to hell and back you can click a button to encode them all and see what happens.

To use Duke Of URL

Save this bookmarklet to your bookmarks.
On any page with query parameters, click the Duke of URL bookmark.
A list of name value pairs for query params will appear at the top of the page along with buttons to add new params or encode the params and reload the page.

Duke of URL

Let me know if it works for you and/or if you find it useful. I found it EXTREMELY handy for testing complex query params and that’s why I created it. Sure there’s a bunch of tools out there that will do something similar but this is small, simple and fast. Duke Of URL has been tested on the latest FF, IE and Safari but let me know if you find any bugs.

XBox Media Center

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:09:12 +0000

XBMC is CLUTCH

Last week I hacked an Xbox with the help of my friend John. It’s actually funny because several weeks earlier I had given John my old Xbox because he wanted to try and hack it and, well, I had no use for the damn thing (which was collecting dust in the basement) so I just gave it to him. Then when I saw how FUCKING AWESOME it was after his beat-down I decided I had to do the same so I bought an old Xbox from my friend Devin for $40 (which I still owe him) and tried it myself.

Screenshots

Pain and Suffering

Let me just say straight out that modding an Xbox is a really long and involved process and definitely not for the faint-of-heart. It took me three days total and involved taking apart lots of hardware, running lots of really sketchy software and crossing lots of fingers (oh and pulling lots of hair when things blew up). BUT! In the end I ended up with the coolest gadget EVAR. It is currently the most used device in our house.

I wouldn’t even try to include all of the steps here to do this yourself. There are numerous websites out there with all sorts of information on the subject. I decided to go the soft-mod route instead of actually replacing any chips in my Xbox. The primary reason for this was impatience. I just didn’t want to wait a couple of weeks for a mod chip. Of course if I had actually swapped out the chip it would have been a whole lot easier but what’s done is done. STOP JUDGING ME!

Not only did I do all the soft mod stuff but I also went through the rather interesting process of upgrading the hard drive in the Xbox. The original Xbox shipped with an 8gig HD which is enough to store lots of saved game files but not much else. Fortunately there is a hack to upgrade that shit, which I did. That alone was a several hour process involving taking apart a PC to set it up for imaging the new drive.

All in all it was a painful process but the end result is amazing. This is by far the coolest media center I have played with. It supports most everything right out of the box. It can talk to shares of any kind on your network to discover media (including finding iTunes shares), it will play every conceivable media type, you can trick it out with all kinds of plugins and scripts and, well, it’s just awesome. Oh and it also supports 1080i so all of this stuff is in breathtaking resolution. I had to scale those sample images above down from 1920×1080 to 800×450 to fit them on the site.

Screw $300 for an Apple TV. This baby does it all and cost me < $100. And it’s cool. The chicks dig it. srsly.

Making Kimchi

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:18:23 +0000

How I Made Kimchi

I am not a chef. I can’t take a random set of interesting ingredients and turn them in to something delicious. In the kitchen I am something of a menace. BUT! I am a geek and thus there are a few things I have learned to make because I think they are interesting (and tasty).

With the help of my Korean friend Soyoung I now know how to make that staple of Korean food: kimchi.

Ingredients

I used the following ingredients:

A whole head of Napa cabbage
Shrimp sauce (don’t look at this too closely or you will get grossed out)
Crushed red pepper (from a Korean grocery)
Sea salt (large crystals)
Carrot
Garlic
Sugar (confectioners, it was all I had)

You can use all kinds of other stuff in kimchi but this is like the basic variety. Most people also include scallions but I forget to get them.

Also notice the Hello Kitty toaster in the background. It makes toast with Hello Kitty on it.

Halving

First I thoroughly rinsed the cabbage making sure to pull the leaves apart some to rinse all of the inside parts. After that I cut the cabbage in half. (I didn’t dry the cabbage because the water helps with the next step.)

I don’t know why but I think Napa cabbage is really beautiful.

Salting

I put the cabbage halves in a large bowl and then poured on top of it one metric fuck-ton of sea salt. I worked the salt way down into the cabbage pulling it lightly apart as necessary to get the salt all up in there.

Wait

After salting the cabbage I just waited. I think overall I let the cabbage sit for about 2 hours. I just kept an eye on it and every now and then picked up some of the leaves to see how wilted it was. Once it was substantially wilted I rinsed the cabbage thoroughly again to get all of the excess salt off.

The Sauce

To make the sauce I mixed pepper, shrimp sauce, sugar, garlic and some soy sauce. Then, using my hands, i got that sauce all over that cabbage. That cabbage didn’t know what hit it. It was like a mack truck of sauce.

Finished

After the saucing it was pretty much ready to jar. Unfortunately I only had one mason jar so some of it went in to all kinds of random containers. I gave some to my folks and hoarded the rest.

We ate it for probably about three weeks. After that it started getting kind of sour. I’ve recently learned that when the kimchi goes sour you make soup and pancakes out of it. Topic for another page?

MVC in .NET

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:16:43 +0000

MVC in .NET

Scott Guthrie posted on his blog last month (October 2007) that his team is working on an MVC architecture for .NET. Since then my nipples have been hard as diamonds.

For those that don’t know the delicious joys of MVC I’ll give a really brief overview: MVC stands for “model-view-controller” which is a way of describing an architectural pattern for building software applications. The basic premise is that software applications built with this pattern are broken into three functional areas that strictly define a separation of concerns between parts of an application. This is similar to a standard 3-tier architecture (presentation layer, business logic, data access layer) except that the presentation layer is broken out in to views, which define only how information is presented to the user, and controllers, which define the interaction between those views and the data that drives the application (models). For more detailed information check out the entry on Wikipedia .

Why This Fills Me With Joy

Back in mid 2006 I heard about this new web development platform from a friend called Ruby on Rails. At that time I had only a passing knowledge of MVC and had never really seen it in practice. I started reading up on MVC and the RoR platform, got some books, downloaded the framework, and fell in love. I could write an entire book on why MVC is a beautiful thing but let’s just say that overall it makes writing, testing and maintaining the kinds of software applications that I build much easier, better and funner.

By November of 2006 I started my own RoR consulting company Square Peg Consulting and started building RoR applications professionally. I have not, however, completely abandoned .NET as there are still many things I love about that platform. Then two things were announced that made me actually excited about .NET again. 1) Microsoft announced that the source code for the .NET framework would be release under the Microsoft For Reference Only license and 2) Scott announced that there will be first class support for MVC built in to ASP.NET.

The ASP.NET implementation of MVC is going to be awesome. There is a video of a presentation Scott Guthrie made at the ALT.NET conf over at Scott Hanselman’s Blog that, while poorly recorded, gives more than enough information to get incredibly excited.

In short: I can’t fucking wait.

Update

ScottGu just posted a new, more detailed, blog post on MVC in .NET here