Last week, I mentioned that upgrading to Leopard caused considerable slowness on my Quicksilver Mac. I also mentioned that I couldn't even successfully install without removing my third-party SCSI card. As it turns out, the two were related.

I got curious yesterday about the slowness and checked to see what my CPU was doing, wondering if it was processor related or I/O related, and found that my CPU was running at 100% solidly. Well that meant there was something taking up a lot of CPU and I was pretty sure I wasn't running it. Top showed me a process named kernel_task that was using anywhere from 80% to 95% of the cpu, basically whatever I wasn't using elsewhere.

A quick google showed some forum entries from when Tiger was released indicating that the kernel_task process could take up CPU time on some PowerBooks with a bad trackpad driver and that replacing the driver with a third-party utility did the trick. Now these folks were complaining about 16% CPU going to kernel_task and that was nothing like what I was seeing, but it made me think about the fact that I hadn't installed any drivers for my SCSI card and hadn't needed to since 10.1 came out.

I don't really use my SCSI card. It's only there for my back catalog of Zip disks, and I can't remember the last time I put one in. My G3 Wallstreet has SCSI built in, so if I ever want to get rid of the old Zips I can copy them off and stick all the contents on a CD some time. One less SCSI card later, and my Quicksilver is running about as well as it was before the upgrade.

I'm still looking at the new Xeons though. 

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Earlier this week, I heard on Penny-Arcade that MC Frontalot was coming to Minneapolis for his third show on 11-15-2007 at the Triple Rock Social Club. Last time I heard he was coming to town, it was the same day as the show and I already had something going that night. So this time I was damned if I was going to miss it.

I had never heard of his opener on the tour Shäffer the Darklord (STD), but he was great even if he does have an unfortunate stage acronym (his joke, not mine) and his interactions with the crowd and with his partner The Black Box were brilliant.

I've liked MC Fontalot's music on my iPod, but I've got to say that it's much better in person, even my wife liked it once she could watch the band interacting and playing to the crowd. They really made this an interactive show too. The first thing he said when he came out was "We're throwing out the set-list tonight and making this an all-request show. Who's got an MC Frontalot song they want to hear?". The request was made and then "Okay, but you've got to roll at least a three.". She rolled a six and the show started. The one person who rolled a natural 20 was invited to dance on stage but, being nerdcore, elected to choose a second song.

The final song was Nerdcore Rising and was prefaced by the crowd yelling "The time we are having is acceptable!" in unison and the keyboardist prompting us to sing the chorus "Nerdcore could rise up" to start the song.

More photos on flickr

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Hey, just a quick note to everyone who wants to read my blog on google homepage or feedburner or whatever. I got a full content rss feed going this morning at RSS.

Now to get the permalinks working...

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When I stepped out the door this morning to walk to work, I'd swear somehting cold drifed down and fell on my nose. My wife looked at the confused look on my face and said "Yes, it's snowing". So I continued in my task of picking some Nepali Orange peppers for a co-worker (there weren't enough to do anything spectacular this year) and continued on to work.

After I stopped for coffee the snow picked up in earnest and turned into big, fluffy flakes of snowy goodness. I might have to grab my camera when I take off this afternoon.

Oops... It looks like it stopped.

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If you have an 866MHz quicksilver G4 and you're thinking about upgrading to Leopard, I have one word for you: "it's time for a new computer". (Why do you still have a quicksilver anyway?)

I just went through the process of upgrading and it wasn't what I might call smooth. I ended up removing my third-party SCSI card and realizing after the fact that i should have put my old graphics card back in too. That probably would have solved most of my problems. I was hoping that Leopard wasn't silently complaining about the 1.5GB of third-party RAM I installed or the lack of space on my 3 internal hard drives because those things would have been a pain to get over. It took me a file and a chassis nibbler to get one of those HDDs installed.

Don't get me wrong, i like Leopard. it's got great features and hundreds of tiny improvements. Time Machine is quite possibly the most user-friendly disaster recovery tool I have ever used, it's about time Apple implemented a multiple desktop tool, and the new dock is soooo pretty and shiny... But this is the first time since OS X 10.0 came out in 1999 that I have experienced a decrease in performance after an upgrade. Admittedly, except for RAM, my computer is the very definition of the minimum requirements.

So if you've got an older Mac, take the hundred dollars you'd spend on Leopard and put it toward something newer. You'll still get Leopard. I'm thinking it's time for one of the 3GHz dual quad-core Xeons, but that's just me.

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Looks like I've got some catching up to do with my blog. I suppose all those times that I thought "I should blog this" would have been good opportunities for posts.

Let's see... what's happened lately. Well, Minnesota decided to have an "Early Antlerless Deer" hunt this year on October 13 and 14. So I went to my traditional hunting spot in Bemidji with my wife's aunt and unkle. The three of us came out of the weekend with two deer. Two of us did not get any deer. I saw several fast-moving deer-shaped objects and a few deer that were doing an excelent job of hiding behind brush and trees. Unfortunately, none of them were cooperating enough to be shot.

The week after that, I had a meetup with some photographers I met on line through strobist.com. We had several people confirm and four actually show up. Still, it was quite a bit of fun, and we're planning to do it again, just not very quickly. Not that we're not planning to do it soon, just that we're not planning very quickly. Later that afternoon, I decided that we were out of Coke. We still have several cans in the 'fridge left over from this fall's Tai-Chi picnic, but it's that American stuff, made with corn syrup. So at around 17:00, we piled into the Outback and headed north to Thunder Bay. We didn't make it until early Sunday morning. It was late enough when we hit Grand Marais, that it made sense to just stay the night on US soil, since we weren't sure if the Grand Portage border crossing was open 24 hours. It was a safe assumption, but we were tired.

It turns out there was another reason to drive to Canada; iTunes gift cards. The Canadian iTunes store has different music because the record companies think it's a good idea to limit their markets when they produce albums rather than allowing the whole world an opportunity to purchase them. If you are paying for music on the iTunes music store with a US credit card or other form of payment from the US, the only music available to you is from the US version of the iTunes store. But a gift card counts as a form of payment from the country it was purchased (or intended to be purchased) in. That works for the UK and Japan and all other countries as well.

I think that one of the more entertaining parts of the trip to Canada was our interactions with the border patrol:

"What is the purpose of your visit"

"To buy Coca-Cola"

"You can't get Coca-Cola in the States?"

"Yeah, but it's not made with sugar, it's made with corn syrup"

"Oh... Does it taste different?"

"I think so" (Duh)

This coming weekend, I'm making the trip up to Bemidji again for more deer hunting. I've been skunked on the last two trips and I'd really like to get me a deer this year. I'd rather not be one of the 50% of hunters who come home empty handed.

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I was at the grocery store yesterday and ran into this wonderful pair of books in the Complete Idiots Guide series. It seems that they are doing a great job hitting the complete idiot square in the wallet.

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Two sporting items of interest:

I went to a Twins game with my mom on Tuesday. They lost. Not a big surprise, but as my wife pointed out the next morning, It's amazing how many people go to games to see the Twins win. Most of the crowd had cleared out by the end of the seventh inning. What fickle fans we are...

I actually enjoyed the game. They actually had decent beer; Summit was the same price as Budwiser. The Mariners played some pretty good ball, I thought. I still prefer Midway park because you can get much closer to the action. A bad seat there is still better than most of the seats at the Dome.

The second item is that I've re-taken-up cycling. In the last few weeks, I've put on over 100 miles and quite enjoyed most of them. The 90°+ days sucked, but that was also at the beginning of my "season". I think I've gotten better since then. Since the power was out for part of the morning here at the office, I had some time to work up a Google Map on the subject while I was waiting to connect to all of our servers.

I've been taking most of my rides in the early morning since the "hot days". So far I've found very few things that will get me up that early. Hunting and road trips are a couple others. This morning, I might as well have been biking in the mountains for all I could see of the landscape around me. There was a bike path, then a walking path, then nothing. It was quite pretty when I could see it, which wasn't often due to the dew on my glasses.

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I just ran across this article by Scott Granneman from January 2004 about a visit he had to his classroom by an FBI field agent doing community outreach. I never thought computer security would be the subject of a community outreach project, but that doesn't mean I think it's a bad idea. Here are some selected outtakes:

"I have spent a considerable amount in the computer underground and have seen many ways in which clever individuals trick unsuspecting users. I don't think most people have a clue just how bad things are."

"Dave wouldn't name names, but he said several organizations that we would all know have been infiltrated electronically by Eastern Europeans, who then grab customer data. A few days later, the unsuspecting president of the bank gets an email demanding $50,000, or else the media will be told of the break-in. Of course, the break-in is news to the bank. As proof of their exploit, a spreadsheet is attached to the email, with a few hundred rows of client data: bank account numbers, home addreses, balances."

"You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!"

Things to think about.

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After a summer of superhero videogames like Superman and Spiderman and outcry against violent games about criminals, two games really stand out. inFamous from Sucker Punch, which sets up the player to "discover and grow extraordinary powers" while leading a city into either salvation or chaos, and The Darkness from 2kgames which puts the player in the position of darkness incarnate, exacting vengeance on the mob.

I downloaded the demo for The Darkness on PS3 this weekend. I'm surprised I haven't heard more noise from the anti-videogame camp yet. Any game that has a button specifically for devouring the heart of an enemy has to merit their attention.

The textures in the game are a little rough, but I expect that will improve for the full version. I'm guessing that the use of dynamic lighting everywhere is a little expensive in the game engine too, so they might have skimped some places to get that working. There's no way they could do without the dynamic lighting though, since all the lights are destroy-able and that's an intimate part of the game-play. I'm torn between "Why would I want to play a criminal who is basically EVIL?" and "Dang, this is an awesome game!"

The weapons in your arsenal are pretty standard pistols-and-shotgun fare, but the Darkness powers are what make the game shine (pun intended). While I was playing, I was reminded of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones in that the main character's alter-ego is a total bad-ass who lives in shadow. You've got minions, tentacles, and the aforementioned ability to devour hearts (I'm not sure what that gets you, but the game keeps a running tally), you can see in total darkness, act at a distance and basically be a Power of Destruction.

The details of object interaction add some great realism. If you're half around a corner, only one hand can hold a gun out to shoot. There are two reticles, one for your left gun, one for the right. If there's a car in the way of a gate, you can open the gate a little, but then it bounces back off the car. This interaction combined with the Darkness Powers provide an opportunity for unique environmental puzzles that the developers didn't shy away from.

Overall, I'm looking forward to the full release and an opportunity to impale opponents with my tentacles, devour hearts, and feel kinda' dirty.

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