wolfwings

...as some know I tend to bend social norms up to the actual limits of the rules, and have and will continue to use the technique of begging forgiveness instead of asking permission when my research says it won't cost anyone anything, but is more likely to let me succeed in what I want to do.

Case in point: I've organized and run the chaotic frenzy of a group of truly extra, extra, stupid-large pizza's that I bring to the dealer's den, just for the dealers to eat at their leisure while they close up shop.

This year I'll likely be adding an order of Ceaser salad on top of it, and trying to get the word out to the dealers ahead of time. Dealers/artists? I can't promise the hotel won't stop me cold, but the pizza'll get ordered and brought to the Fairmont at least. If anyone reading this is an actual pizza-delivery worker and doesn't mind assisting with subterfuge by pulling on your jacket and hat and helping carry the pie's in, I'd appreciate it!

Anyways... main reason for this post: I'll have a room at the Fairmont to check in on the 21st, checking out on the 25th. So four nights. I'll be in the area very early on the 21st, since I'm leaving from SoCal late in the evening on the 20th for an overnight leisure-drive up there.

As I've heard there's no free shuttle to/from the airport for this hotel, please feel free to call or text me if you need/want a lift! I'll have my 2007 Toyota Yaris, which can hold quite a bit of stuff comfortably. This offer is primarily for artists, fursuiters, or others with a bunch-o-cargo they want to be careful with to/from the airport or other major transportation hub in the area.

Only warning: My car lacks a split-folding rear seat, so it's either 3 passengers and a bit of dedicated cargo space, or 1 passenger and a *LOT* of dedicated cargo space.

Contact Information including phone numbers and all that.

...since I'm running a web server without Apache anywhere to be seen, pure NGinx, I didn't have the htpasswd utility available from the Apache distribution.

The htpasswd utility from Apache is quite bloated with extra features and complexity as well, far beyond that is usually needed for simply adding a new BasicAuth entry to a .htpasswd file or similair. So... I read the docs, wrote my own specifically for use with NGinx's BasicAuth module.

htpasswd.tar.bz2

Download, unpack, make, ./htpasswd for usage. It's less than a thousand bytes, punt it around. Hell, it's short enough to be a Data URI, though none of the browsers out there allow downloads from Data URI's that I've tested.

...but every, single, god-damn time I try to install Ubuntu under VMWare Server... everything from square one of the installer to the final VM, no matter what I do, runs like ass.

I mean it, it feels like I'm trying to play Quake 3 over a satellite link, navigating the menu's on the Ubuntu install CD, Server or Desktop. Text-mode or not.

And even SSHing into the minimal box, typing has random pauses, pressing tab for auto-complete just flat hangs for ten or more seconds... it just makes no sense. Processes just hang and freeze with no warning, just sitting there spinning their wheels, then the VM decides to do more again...

This is regardless of if VMWare tools, Open-VM-Tools, or no VM tools are installed. Regardless of if it's 32-bit or 64-bit, LSILogic, BusLogic, or IDE hard drives, or anything else. What is Ubuntu doing to the kernel and everything else to make it run this poorly?

And CentOS I've just never been patient enough to sit through their freakin' DVD or full set of CD images just to get the VM installed... seriously, their packaging system is borked when it can't even understand the concept of 'just give me a minimal install CD' as a core concept. Hello? This isn't the Slackware days when we need to sneakernet everything to a friend's house... why do we need to download a couple of gigabytes just to install your OS? What is this, MicroSoft?

Then I compare everything to Gentoo's kernels, where things just scream along, my clock doesn't fall out of sync, the installer is under half a gig for the main install, and there's no cruft from the get-go... it just... baffles me. There's basically no chance Gentoo can ever get into Corp datacenter environments, but gah...

And yes, this is a kinda random rant. Still... gah!

( Cut for those that don't care to be able to skip over things. )

Current Mood: geeky

He's dead on about how fucked up Primer is to trace out.

Man... I'm so glad I bought Torchlight instead of Borderlands. Spyro-cutesy rampaging dungeon crawl that works great even under Wine and has no issues is a lot better than the game-resetting, config-killing noise I'm hearing about from those that went the other way with their cash.

...car is payed for until the end of the year (though I'll lob one more payment in before FC).

...rent is payed for until the end of the year.

...phone is payed for the month.

...and I finally swung by and went through the process to set up a seperate checking account with my bank that has no links at all to my other accounts. So... yay, paypal account get now too! *joins the 21st century with proper firewalls and protections in place*

...it's got a LOT of WoWisms, but mostly of the sort I admit are a good idea: Stick to the accepted majority-UI conventions when possible, so people can understand the interface faster. So... ? and ! over people's heads, etc.

But OMG... no more wondering what you want to play, and having to go 'Aw... but I really wanted to do XYZ!' It's... not Ultima Online-esque truly free-form, but damn if it's not close. The level up progression and power-changing mechanic should have a much more intuitive in-game display of what you'll get when, IMHO, but that's spit-and-polish stuff not game-mechanics stuff.

So far I've played about ten toons through the training levels of all sorts, and three or four up to the mid-teen's, and one all the way to 25th where you first get your 'Arch Nemesis' stuff unlocked. I've realized that if you're an alt-a-holic, this is NOT the time to get into the game. While the individual story-lines are much easier to get into as you run through the missions, there simply isn't that much there yet. And since there's almost no way to level up except from the mission-reward experience, you'll end up seeing the same set of missions if you level up multiple characters right now.

Overall, the game is very pretty, and they kept one of CoX's best features: Re-scaled in-game resolution versus UI resolution. So I can run at 1920x1200, but the game is only rendering at 960x600 for the 3D stuff so all the text is crisp, sharp, and clear, but the in-game stuff runs smooth as silk even on my laptop.

So what's my plan? Enjoying the free month, likely going to get this character up into the 30's before I run out of time... but not gonna subscribe. Not yet at least. There's just too many glitches and bugs to content with yet, from the patcher itself crashing and not wanting to load half the time (including throwing really WIERD javascript errors from it's HTML components, since I'm running Windows XP 64-bit) to other issues like the game always crashing when I log out. Yes, every time. So... I'll give it a couple months, if it's still alive I'll poke my head back in then, give it another whirl. For now? Still a CoXr.

...stop storing the login cookie code in the user record. It prevents folks from logging in from more than one browser at a time. Cell phones are often more than capable now (especially with Opera Mobile) of being able to load your website too. It's annoying to have to constantly re-login whenever I switch from mobile device (phone) to mobile device (laptop) and influences where I spend my money.

...I could either post a black screen (what I had set up when it went around) or instead I'll post this:

Simulated image of my laptop booting up, though without the Windows login screen popping up centered exactly in that 'dim patch' the image has for a moment.

Yes, I have that as my boot-screen, and login, and desktop wallpaper on my laptop now. <3 the poor wingless gryphon!

Just sending out a feeler so I know how many are interested and can plan things. Very sorry for totally dropping the ball on September entirely, between MFM and suddenly a boat-load of overtime at work it just entirely slipped my mind!

And yes, I asked if we could be there on the 31st, but that's the one and only day of the month they don't want us there, but they couldn't explain why. As Disney helps sponsor that day for them, I'll chalk it up to the mouse's usual aversion to costumers being worked into the contract somewhere. Or just them being cautious for a first-year, second-event group coming over.

Buying a set of winter snow/ice tires for my Yaris for the first time.

First year on brand-new TripleTred's I managed to bend a rim without damaging the tire due to ice on a roundabout, and dodging someone else spinning out on the highway resulted in my astro-turfing a couple hundred feet sideways down slushy median on the local interstate loop that thankfully has no center barrier or cable-netting. So no damage from that.

Second year I managed to end up off-roading a couple times trying to stop... lacking traction, and having to duck into the muck on the side of the road to drag myself to a stand-still in time. Once I clipped a curb in the process, but it was the direction I was facing so the car just climbed up dutifully without damage.

So first year I was surprised by ice on bridges and roundabouts. Second year I just midjudged, though that was with mostly worn out TripleTreds at the time. This year? Extra-skinny extra-high-load/PSI Bridgestone Blizzak's on seperate 14" rims versus the stock 15" rims my car came with. Short of drop-shipping custom tires from Europe these are the best winter-only tires available stateside. Sure, it's gonna ride rough as hell compared to the TripleTreds, but at least it'll stick to the damn roads during winter.

Anyways... off to work.

Whenever I see multiple friends suddenly bitch at once about this time of year about the price of glasses (why does everyone get glasses just after Labor Day? *shrug*) I realize I've missed telling someone else something: Glasses are a rip-off on the magnitude of thousands of percent. Yes, for every dollar you spend nine or more can end up being profit for the vendor.

How'd you like to be able to afford to get a bi-yearly eye exam, and regularly buy three to five pairs of glasses a year, and still pay less than $200 a year? Sure, won't work for some ultra-extreme cases, but here's how for the majority:

Wal-Mart charges $50 for an eye exam at locations so equipped. If you just need a basic exam, they're perfect. That's between $50 and $100/year. Make sure to ask for your "PD Number" which usually isn't filled out on the prescription sheet unless you remind them. It's how far apart your eyeballs are.
GlassyEyes is the central blog that links to all major internet eyeware vendors that don't ass-rape you. $8 for a pair of prescription glasses? Ding, look here. There's plenty more up to around $60/pair for hingeless memory-titanium ones w/ ultra-ultra-light lenses and sillyness like that.
Order from one of those sub-sites, no wierd voodoo, no insurance claims, just pay about what you would for a couple pizza's, and wait anywhere from a week to a couple months. Yes, months in some cases for some of the on-line vendors. One sub-vendor that comes and goes due to their long shipping delays but incredibly low prices is Zenni Optical. They're the one I've personally bought stuff for others from, and most of my friends have personally ended up using them with great success, but their shipping times vary across the full gammut from 2 weeks to the full 2 months. They DO eventually ship though!

So who can't do this? Those that need a new pair of glasses in the next 24-48 hours. That's pretty much it. If you can be patient, you can order a half-dozen pairs ranging from cheap $8 ones to keep as spares in the glove-boxes and night-stands of your life and for going swimming in (yes, you can get a pair of solid-plastic corrosion-proof prescription eyeglasses w/ tinting just for poolside/beachside use, huzzah, now we're talking civilized living!) and still have one or two pairs of really nice day-use glasses.

Everyone else is doing it, might as well lob my hat in too! *cackles*

ConFurence - 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003
CaliFur - 2004
Mephit FurMeet - 2001, 2008, 2009
Further Confusion - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
Camp Feral - 2001
BayCon - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
Rocket City FurMeet - 2007, 2008, 2009
OklaCon - 2007

Con I was Staff at.
Con I was a Lead at.

Saturday:

Oh gods, the chaos! After posting my first third of my con report while waiting for my cell-phone to recharge in the internet lounge, I started scurrying around the con. That covered my morning from breakfast until around 9am, a bit after that found out the fursuit parade would start at 11am so I headed up, got everything together and clomped down to the appropriate place.

To whoever it was that brought a couple fans in while we waited to get organized: Thank you! The more I suit again, the more I realize how much modern (as in, in the last five years or so) improvements have things orders of magnitude more comfortable/tolerable. Anyways, stomped along with that, ended up marching in front of NeoPanTyger for a good chunk of it so I had some music to jam to. Moshing along through live became a bit of a theme for Lumi most of the con, actually. =^.^=

After the parade, I stole the chance to be short and lay down during the photo's, and I managed to get a pretty good pose for as randomly as I dove to the carpet. So yeah, on most of the photo's of the fursuit-parade-pile at the end, I'm the one in the lower-left sprawled out. Ran into SoLion in the headless lounge afterwards, just sucked in some cold air before de-suiting for a bit, as I needed to hit up the dealer's den, and wanted to stop by the gaming room on Saturday. After my brief trip through the dealer's den buying art Hung out at the gaming room on Saturday. Had a relatively fixed budget for spending on commissions, stuck to it neatly.

Picked up some art from Unclean on FA, who made a really positive-idea/ideal picture a'while back that I love but I didn't recognize it was them when I saw the nifty fluffy-avian art I picked up. The pictures don't appear to be on their FA, so I can't link to them sadly, but they're nifty! Also bought a commission from them, of WolfWings of course. =^.^=

After that and relaxing in the gaming room for a few hours out of, and in suit throughout the day, including learning I can finger-spin a staff fairly well in my paws, I heard some very nice beats... and went to investigate, as they were not coming from the main ballroom venue.

I'll admit, I've learned lately I'm rather particular, SL-03 I appreciate on a more technical and performance basis, but it's almost never music I can just get down and jam to. It's not even that I need high speed, the original Caramelldansen is perfectly good for me. They were playing music with a beat, stuff I knew the words to and had burned into my skull over the years, dancing in my car and walking around at work just humming it. Stuff I can jam to.

*scurry*run*partial*run*DANCE*

Then I found out it was a request-only format. So I tromped my ass out to my car in fursuit, grabbed my mini-CD-R's, scurried to my laptop in the LAN room, and dumped things like DJ Hixxy's remix of Set You Free chopped roughly to where I linked there, and Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson. At that point, I just lost myself into the beat, and apparently gave my newly-repaired feet a world-class stress-test, keeping up with 170bpm music at full tempo, crosslegging it in some wierd mish-mash of cross-leg tapdancing, tribal, and old-fashioned 'move your feet!' type dancing I'm prone to.

Another song or two of that, yes, I was wasted, but I just kept moshing along as best I could, right up until they had to finally shut down. It was packed in there. They're not kidding, small conference room that can seat maybe 40-50 if you truly sardine them in, had easilly 30 suiters dancing in there.

Sunday:

This day I knew would be abbreviated for me, as I was heading over to

tisket_wolf's place since she couldn't make it to MFM this year due to work scheduling. One thing of note was I chatted with the gals that make these sock-based feet and found out A) they're affordable as all snot, B) just socks, and C) everyone else has been all, "Can I paypal you after the con/after my next paycheck/etc?" so she hadn't actually had anyone pay her for a set yet. Well... there goes the last of my commission money! *FWUMP* Traded basic contact info, mostly just pointed the pair of them at WolfWings.us

Hopefully they'll track me down? I'm patient, either way they seemed jazzed planning out how to do the feet. WolfWings feet, just something to romp around in at cons and what-not in lieu of Lumi's uber-feet, since obviously these held up really well since she was running around all con in them.

So... Closing Ceremonies. Big spooky announcement, rah, yeah, that's that. Was literally waiting for that, started packing, and driving... short drive (for me) later, I was at Tisket's place around 2am her time. Me, her, and her roomie chatted a bit, then all fwumped out, me stealing couch and shovin' Tisket back at her own bed she'd generously offered to give up for me to sleep on. She needed the proper rest far more, after the day at work she'd had on her last shift.

No pictures, sadly, just now found new AA batteries for my camera so I can take pictures today (Saturday) while I run around like a loon.

Thursday:

Got here around 9am after stopping at Cracker Barrel, took a nap until around 2pm, walked around for a'while. Ended up pulling on Lumi as a partial to run around for a couple hours, test-driving my new feet. They worked awfully well, I could scurry and scamper pretty easilly with how solidly they seemed to be locked in place. The angle-cut I put on the soles to let them 'skip' over obstacles made a world of difference from the 'planed wood block' style sole they had before, any little lip and they'd snag and catch before. Now I could scurry fast enough up or down the spiral staircase I have to lean into the turn, and feel safe doing so.

Desuited, hung out a'while in the gaming room that day since little else was open, spotted Jace briefly.

Friday:

Mmm... many people complain about the breakfast the in-hotel restraunt serves, I find it utterly delicious. It's heavy without being dripping in grease, which is exactly what I need in the mornings.

After that, brushed out the suit, clambered in around 11:30 to get my fursuit badge for Lumi. Nearly ended up de-heading in public because I got caught in the hallway right outside of Reg while on my way to get a fursuit badge.

The problem was that I got caught in the crowd of people when they did "Last Call" rights for Furp over the con radios, about 2 feet from one of said con radios; I barely made it to the headless lounge and ended up having to yank one of the napkins out from under one of the water coolers as a handkerchief until the tears stopped.

My scurrying at high tilt to the headless lounge started to tear one of the shoes free in my feet apparently, as while I was walking up the spiral staircase suddenly I nearly faceplanted. Felt like I tripped, and took a'while to figure out... oh, my shoe pulled free. Okay... 'Eff that. Ended up tromping down to the dealers den and poking any and all folks that had any clue who might be able to repair the feet.

Lionel ended up converting Lumi's feet from shoes inside to sandals since neither of us could figure out any adhesive which had a lumikelluke's chance in hell of sticking to the gum-arabic soles of the Vans shoes they were made around without taking days to cure, and I was lucky enough to have brought three pairs of sandals (Wal-MArt had a sale, $3/pair for their $7 sandals I find comfy anyways) so... wacky-conversion later, the feet are about 200-300 grams in weight now.

Compared to my original feet, these are light as a feather. So... a remembrance for Furp and bit of chaos for me turned into a side-ways upgrade for Lumi's feet. They survived musical-chairs in the fursuit games including being wrestled about when I ran in and stole the last chair like a loon, and dancing for a'while as well and just running around for a few hours.

After that, ran around and got into the fursuit games, bumped in Kaiya at some point during this and finally had a chance to actually say 'hello' and chat for five or ten minutes, apparently she spotted my car and recognized the name on the license plate. Yay for having a distinctive and easily identifiable car? =^.^=

After suiting back up, thinking I had another 45 minutes before Isfacat's show, I went to rejoin the fursuit games since it looked like they were setting up beach-ball volleyball. Happened to walk down the stairs and through the elevator lobby area to there, and heard Isfa's voice... turned... ack! Show was already going on. So... ended up sitting through a chunk of his show in fullsuit, which was honestly a fun show for the part I caught. But sadly, poor air circulation meant I'd need to switch to partial-mode, so I scurried out to go do that, dressing up in my business-coat over the partial since the Meet-the-GoH was soon by then.

Ended up going to the GoH-meet in partial, gray sports-coat with a gryphon over one chest side, white slacks, beige RCFM shirt, worked pretty well honestly. Wasn't hot at all, was able to snag some bits of cheese on skewers through the head and relax and enjoy the company before I headed back and de-suited to give the head and hands and feet a chance to air out as well, came back to the Meet-the-GoH party with the same outfit but no fursuit bits, enjoyed the non-alcoholic punch then and actually talking.

Meandered around the hotel for several more hours, spotting people, Duncan is officlally the marathon-suiter of this year, and at some point I expect Duncan to float away with all the balloons they have tied on and around their fursuit. Giving Duncan a hug is half hug, half squeezing through the forest of balloons to get close enough to do so. =^.^=

Anyways... need to go grab breakfast now, and enjoy Saturday. Seeya later, folks!

Current Mood: flirty

( Meme forest ahead! )

This is an official query to any and all dealers as a staff member of an outdoor convention, Wild Nights, akin to Camp Feral or Oklacon. Especially if you've been to any of the above listed events in the past.

We're considering having an official dealers den and/or artist's alley, and wanted to know your thoughts as a dealer; I'm asking since I know quite a few dealers on my friends list. :-) Several of these may sound stupid, but they were asked by other staffers so I'm forwarding the questions, even though that I'm quite sure will have 100% a specific type of answer. Bear in mind this is in mid-to-late April in Oklahoma near Tulsa, weather is very temperate and mild historically, edging on the cooler side still.

Would any of you want a dealers den/artist's alley at all at a primarilly outdoor con?
Would it be acceptable to do this in a semi-permanent open-side tent?
Would it be acceptable to do this in a permanent but still open-sided structure?
Would it be acceptable to do this in a fully enclosed, but not climate-controlled building?
Would you rather it be dedicated event space for the entire weekend, or a one-shot event of 2-3 hours, with around an hour or setup before-hand and after-wards?

If it's a dedicated one-shot event:

Would you mind if we had other events going on during the dealers den event? I.E. Pred/Prey, or something like that?
Would you mind if we had other events going on during the setup OR teardown time, but not both?
Would you mind if we had other events going on during BOTH setup AND teardown?
Would you rather setup, or teardown butt up against a meal period? (Wild Nights includes fresh-cooked food for all meals.)

Just got Pandora working in my car, via a $15 adapter-cable (hoo-ee 2.5mm to 3.5mm stuff is hard to find!) from Best Buy.

It's like satellite radio, except I can say 'Fuck that!' and just skip a song, instead of having to change the whole station. And no ads, ever. =^.^=

I've been working on building an SSH client, focussing on only supporting SSH 2.0, and ignoring all unneeded features and backwards-compatability options so this will fundamentally be a Java ME MIDP 2.0/CIDP 1.1 SSH 2.0-only client; no port forwarding, no X11 forwarding, no strange keyboard or terminal mappings just multiple shells on Linux servers running recent distro's.

Anyways, I've gotten to the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange part, and I hunted for hours to find a good implementation of the math that didn't gobble up scads of memory and run way too slow for use in Java on my BlackBerry. It was a deep-recursive function, that buried itself as many layers deep as the numbers it was working with were wide.

But... there was a saving grace here, I unwound the function-calls, and verified that it was actually a linear test. It just had to start at the MSB of one operand, and run down the line to the LSB performing a core loop with one optional branch. Huzzah, bit-wise operands can convert this to a loop!

Well... I built and tested the recursive function against this new version, woo, it worked. Then I realized this may be a bit of code that others would find useful. So... posting it here for now in case anyone else needs/wants it. It's fully C99-compliant, and I'll update this post when I make a Java version, since the built-in function for this isn't available in Java ME as far as I can find.

( C99 code inside, math-heavy. )

About FurCon...

Minor utility-dump...

Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

Linux thoughts... somewhat stream of consciousness here, forgive me.

And the best part, to me?

(no subject)

And all the rest of my yearly expenses are now sorted...

Champions Online...

Small gripe/note to web developers...

About that wallpaper meme...

Fursuiting at Zona Rosa on Saturday October 24th, noon onwards!

Never bought this before... but this year it seems warranted.

Call it advertisement, spam, or whatever... but stop paying a fortune for glasses!

Con Meme

MFM Con Report, Sat/Sun

Mid-MFM Con Report... Thurs/Friday.

100 Truths!

Attention Furry Artists and Dealers! Question as a con-staff for a growing outdoor con:

XM/Sirius, your days are numbered.

Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange...

Style Credit

Profile