Another One Bites The Dust

Sadly, EXP3 died today.

In fact, given its pedigree, it took EXP 1&2 with it. So I got about 48 months out of that dog, which was a Tiger Direct refurb to begin with.

I didn't actually croak. It's still operational. One of its 256MB DIMMs took a shit on itself and the box became unbootable. An fsck with bad RAM finished off the boot disk, so at this point it's just euthanasia.

It's just as well. There are far too many boxes around here anyway. EXP4 sits in a corner waiting for "something" to happen. Plus, I have a nearly 12 year old Windows domain controller that should just die and get it over with (it's so old there's even an NT4 boot partition on it). It barely serves any purpose anymore (local DNS but that's easily replaced by a Linux box).

In fact I'm starting to look at Windows as a Third World operating system these days (not sure what that makes Linux). It is a hopeless, lost cause.

But I digress.

EXP5 continues to shine. It's a very nice box and I've been using it a lot while you folks aren't using it. And sometimes while you are. I installed the HTTP Anti-Virus Proxy (HAVP) on it out of concern for all the crap floating around on the Interwebs. It, in turn, shoves everything through SQUID, which lives on BOT House.

I'm not convinced it's a robust AV solution, being based on ClamAV which is very e-mail centric, but I felt I needed another layer of protection after seeing all the trouble the fools folks back at the Salt Mines have been getting themselves into with their wacky Web browsing habits. So far it seems all I can detect are EICAR files (you will get a warning from your AV on that link, but it's just an AV test file).

There's never a virus around when you need one.

What a bunch of PANSIES!

Seriously, Auto-AutoAdjust isn't THAT bad, people!

Even you hot shots get your feelings hurt when the bots start slamming you (see how it feels, huh?). Don't like it? Then don't get a huge point spread. That, or FIGHT BACK! It's not impossible to beat them. I've seen it done a number of times already and I've even beaten them myself! And I SUCK!

So anyway, I twiddled the kick-in spread to 40% of the high score.

Map Death & Resurrection

I brought back two maps on EXP5 and got rid of one. BOT House & BITCH House remain the same.

Gone: Morpheus

I never did like that map, but I don't know why. I just can't put it into words, but it's always a groaner for me whenever it comes up in the rotation. I used to love hitting Thummy with the Redeemer whenever she camped out in the tower with the sniper rifle. But alas, she's gone and there's nothing but painful memories left.

BACK: Crane

Oh, stop. It's not that bad, especially in low gravity. I like going up on the crane and taking pot shots at everyone down below. It's a nice "Big Sky" map, which was the only redeeming feature of Morpheus.

BACK: Morbias II

I like bouncing up to the Redeemer hole with a rocket launcher and a full load of rockets. You can bounce the rockets off the wall and down into to tunnel below and navigate the Redeemer through the narrow passageways when it pops into existence.

Yes, I'm a camper at heart.

And speaking of rockets & redeemers, one of my favorite things to do on a boring Winter afternoon is fire up Facing Towers and taking redeemers on a spin around the map. They go on forever, or at least until you get bored and blow something up.

Lately I've been exceedingly fond of bouncing rockets into the wall ahead of me and dodging or jumping out of the way when they bounce back to hit the player chasing me. I've always been a rocket bouncer. I'm the guy in Oblivion who camps out in the hallway and lobs rockets into the big arena in the front of the ship. It's very effective if you're a crappy player like me (eleven years and I still suck at this game). And that's me on the roof in Curse II, running around in circles and dropping rockets on everyone below. I've been doing that since 1999 and it never gets old. In fact it really used to annoy my kid when he was a teenager because it was damn near the only map I ever played, cranking the bots up to 32 and setting the high score to 999. It wasn't about winning; it was about dropping rockets. Ahhh, the old days!