Year: 2008

Membership Cards on my Cell Phone

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I’ve never been a fan of fat wallets. I like something slim, that I don’t even notice in my back pocket. My wallet has almost always been one of those 2-panel deals, where one side is a clear window for my drivers license and the other side is for my few debit cards, library card, membership cards, and whatever else. I don’t keep receipts, pictures or cash in my wallet just because I don’t like the thickness all that stuff creates.

Every once in awhile I go through it and throw out the membership cards that I don’t use that much, to keep the bulk down. The unfortunate side effect of this is not having certain membership cards when I need them. Like earlier this year when I bought 3 used games for Emily’s birthday at Gamestop, my Gamestop card would have given me a free game. Luckily the Gamestop guy was nice enough to let me use his own card that time. I hate the very idea that I have to carry a card with me to get discounts like that. Like at Albertsons, I can save $10 – $20 per trip by having my card with me. Why can’t they just make it that cheap for everyone so my keychain isn’t loaded down with membership cards?

I finally decided to try something that I read about in a blog earlier this year. I scanned all of my barcoded membership cards into the computer, edited them into a nice looking 320 x 240 JPG, and put them in my cell phone. Now when they ask for my card, I can have them scan my cell phone screen. Here’s what they look like on my cell phone.


I pixelated portions of the barcodes on these images, in hopes of keeping you stalkers from giving me reward points at Fred Meyer. The scanners are able to scan these cards just as well as they can scan a laminated card. Now all I have to deal with is the weird looks people give me when I hand them a phone to scan instead of a card. So far I haven’t been turned away by a rogue employee enforcing a new “no cell phone membership cards” policy, but I’m sure that’ll happen if I give it enough time.

I put all the card images in a folder on my phone called “Wallet Cards” so it’s easy to quickly pull them up while I’m waiting in line. Another thing I’ve always done to enhance my thin wallet lifestyle is keep pictures of my kids in the cell phone too. So if I feel inclined to show off pictures of my kids (or myself, posing with MC Frontalot) I can pull them up on my cell phone instead of digging through a giant wallet for them.

I think this is something that could work on almost any phone. I’m not sure how well a scanner could pick up on one of those tiny screen cell phones, but it’s worth a try. You probably don’t even need to be as fancy as me about it – just snap a picture of your barcode with the phone’s camera and that would probably work just as well.

Google Reader & Esquire

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http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17081126155022016204 is my page of shared blog entries. I read blogs all day, so that’s the stuff I deem worthy of sharing with other people. Some of it I share for the sole purpose of showing to my kids when they get home from school, but it’s mostly just cool/funny stuff. Does anyone else here have any shared blog pages? I’m always interested in new stuff to read, so post your shared page or your favorite blog links in the comments here.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve had the innards of the October 2008 Esquire e-ink display sitting on my desk, blinking at me. Yesterday I got sick enough of the blinking to just try and destroy the display. Instead of doing something sensible, like putting it up on a shelf where I can’t see it. Here are the results:

OMG 7 Years Since 9/11 7 Years Ago!

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I rarely watch TV, but I turned it on today at 6:30am and flipped through several news stations and it seemed like they were all talking about 9/11. Do they do this every single year? Really, what’s the significance of 7 years? 1 year, I can understand. 5 and 10 years, sure. But 7? Do they really talk about an event that old instead of news every year? It’s not like there’s any new news about it.

Programming on my TRS-80

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Last year when I visited my parents I was getting something out of the attic’s walk-in closet and I noticed some writing on the wall. I cleared a few things out of the way and snapped that picture. It appears to be notes from a database program I was writing on my TRS-80 Color Computer to track my grades. Or maybe someone else’s grades. Apparently it was way too much effort for me to go to the other room and get a piece of paper, so I just wrote on the wall with permanent marker.

The I, Y and S are variables in the program. I is initials, Y is year and S is semester. Since it was ’87 it was either my Freshman year in high school or 8th grade. Wait, 4 semesters? Maybe I’m wrong about that one. No idea what FML means. I have no idea why I would want to track my grades with the computer, though. Maybe I was just looking for an easier project to tackle after my database of the entire phone book was such a failure. (I didn’t understand that 64k of memory wouldn’t hold the entire phone book, even if I had unlimited storage on my cassette drive.)

For a couple of years, this walk-in closet was my computer headquarters. I think I moved my stuff in there to get away from my brother who shared the attic room with me. HQ included the TRS-80, a car stereo with cassette deck, a CB radio, phone and television. I fit a lot into a closet. Best of all, it was located over the kitchen which meant I could stay up late harassing people on the CB and my parents couldn’t hear me.

tr0n is 0wned

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Yesterday I twittered about 0wning tr0n and jenn asked me to elaborate. So here it is, proof that I 0wned tr0n:

This happened in the arcade around the corner from the 2600 meeting. What, what’d you think I meant? I know, not an impressive score but it’s still the high score. I failed to 0wn Galaga last night. I also failed to attend 2600 since there was a $10 cover charge to get in and I wasn’t willing to pay it. Would have sucked if nobody showed up and I was stuck in there watching a crappy band play all night.

Penny Arcade Expo 2008 Aftermath

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The kids and I drove to Idaho and spent a week there. We went to a theme park called Silverwood and Payton rode his first rollercoaster. Emily rode her first rollercoaster that went upsidedown. I rode my first rollercoasters since about 2000 or 2001. I need to do that more often, preferably during times of the year where lines to ride them aren’t as long. Payton said he’ll never ride another one, but I don’t believe him. I got a great picture of him and I looking terrified, but I haven’t scanned it into my photo album yet.

A few days later we went to see a movie. The Rocker. The night before, Mr. Spessa and I collected 20 – 30 moths from their porch light and spent a lot of time getting them all into 2 mason jars. We sat in the back row, right under the projection booth, and set them free. It wasn’t quite as chaotic as we’d hoped, but there were a steady stream of giant moths on the screen throughout the movie. They were blurry moths and I was hoping for crisp, clear, black moths on the screen. I guess the window is just too close to the projector. And the billion candlepower light in the projector shines right through the moths. I’m not saying it sucked, but it wasn’t as epic as I was hoping for.

About 1/4 of the way through the movie, the projectionist opened up the projection booth window and captured the moths that were just sitting on the window. So we got to see a giant hand on the screen for a few seconds, then the blurry moths disappeared. Some new moths appeared on the window later during the movie and moths occasionally flew around in front of the screen. Next time we hope to capture twice the number of moths. And also, capture them right before the movie instead of 24 hours before the movie, so they’re more active.

After a week in Idaho, we drove to Seattle to attend PAX 2008. It’s the first time we’ve ever attended it. The kids really enjoyed just hanging out in the wireless lounge and having hundreds of DS users to chat with and play games with. Had their pictures taken with lots of video game characters, many which we didn’t even recognize. Payton was playing the newest Destroy All Humans game for awhile and suddenly the alien from the game comes up behind him and taps him on the shoulder. That was great.

Payton with the Destroy All Humans alienKids and a Halo guy
Kids with the Beautiful Katamari princeMe and MC Frontalot

I met MC Frontalot and got my picture taken with him. That was awesome. Jonathan Coulton was there too but the line to talk to him was too long for me to want to stand in it. Wil Wheaton was at a booth too, and so was that red haired girl from Dr. Horrible and The Guild. We bought pointless t-shirts and picked up tons of free swag.

I brought PLA Flyers with me, hoping to leave them on a table somewhere for people to take. But I couldn’t find any tables, so I just started handing them out to people as I passed them, saying “Free cactus” to them. (It was the flyer with the free cactus coupon on it.) Then the kids started passing them out to people and Payton was handing them to vendors and characters. He even waited in line for 15 minutes, just to hand MC Frontalot a flyer. The next day we passed the Jonathan Coulton table and I noticed a stack of PLA flyers sitting in the center of the table, right next to his other giveaway stuff. I told Payton and he says, “I know, I gave them to him.” So I guess he left a bunch with him and they just left it on the table for the rest of the weekend.

After a day of going up to video game characters and asking if we can have pictures with them, I said to Payton, “Wouldn’t it be funny to just go up to a normal guy and act like he’s a celebrity and ask to have your picture taken with him?” Less than a minute later, Payton runs up to a random guy and tells him he’s a huge fan and it was great to meet him. I bet it was the most bizarre thing that happened to him that weekend. He was nice enough to let us take a picture:

Payton with some celebrity guy

We also visited Archie Mcphee’s again since the Spessas had never been there. Spessa ended up buying about 50 super balls for us to throw around the expo. We (Mr. Spessa and I) ended up taking them to a balcony on the 4th floor and dropping them all down into the lobby at once, as Spessa stayed below to watch. It was great. They were bouncing everywhere and hitting people. And then people started picking them up and continued to bounce them. We went to the lobby and started throwing them everywhere and surprisingly no convention center staff came over and told us to cut it out. No, we didn’t take pictures of the balls falling so you just have to use your imagination.

We left Seattle Sunday afternoon and arrived back in Albany around 9:30pm.

Sirius Part 2

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Last night Spessa somehow inspired me to install Sirius in my car. I mounted it in the glove box and wired the power into the radio power so that it comes on automatically when I start the car. So I never even have to open the glove box unless I want to switch stations. (Speaking of glove compartments, has anyone ever actually kept gloves in their glove compartment? Isn’t there an updated name for a glove compartment?) I mounted the antenna stealthily in the dash. It’s cool having it in the car but now I miss having it in my room. I’m going to have to buy a home kit soon, hopefully cheap on Ebay. Spessa is going to give me her Sirius remote that she never uses so I can change stations without leaning into the glove box and swerving off the road. It’s an especially hard maneuver when I’m text messaging and holding a latte at the same time.

Sirius in the car

Today the kids and I went to the pool for about 3.5 hours. They’re only open for 4 hours on Saturday which is stupid. All the pools in Oregon suck like that. But yeah, it was fun. I hung out in the pool for about half of it and read for the other half.

I’m really starting to like Twitter now. Maybe not to update myself so much, but it’s cool to keep tabs on everyone I know. And it actually seemed really useful at Defcon. I couldn’t get Twitter to IM me when new updates came in, so I ended up finding a completely new IM program. It’s called Digsby and supports all the major IM services, email updates, Myspace updates, Facebook updates and Twitter updates. The only thing it doesn’t do is IRC, but I’m hoping they’ll come around with that soon. I’ve been using Pidgin for most of this year, but it looks like I’ll be sticking with Digsby for awhile.

(7:15:52) brad_the_carter: make a twitter account
(7:16:00) murd0c: my boyfriend is trying to get me on that
(7:16:13) brad_the_carter: well now that RBCP is telling you to, you HAVE to!
(7:19:25) murd0c: YEAH
(7:20:04) brad_the_carter: you can tell him he was the influence if you want
(7:25:40) murd0c: FINE
(7:25:42) murd0c: i’m registered
(7:25:45) murd0c: as ‘notmurd0c’
(7:25:48) brad_the_carter: wow!
(7:25:54) brad_the_carter: you’re a pushover
(7:26:35) brad_the_carter: make sure to update it every hour every day

Defcon 2008 Aftermath

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I went to Defcon this weekend. I left for the airport Friday morning and hung out there for a few hours. I stopped at an ATM to take out $300 for the weekend and the machine only gives me $280! I always thought it was stupid to count the money because ATM machines never make mistakes like that, right? But yeah, it kept $20 of mine. It was a U.S. Bank ATM so I called them and they told me to call PayPal since that’s the card I was using. PayPal emailed me a chargeback form, so hopefully that works. I’m not counting too much on getting my $20 back though.

defcon badgeI sat to the most talkative girl ever on the plane (really, she just went on and on and on to me.) and got into town just in time for rush-hour traffic. Arrived at the hotel and bumped into el jefe about 5 minutes later. Had drinks for awhile, then set off to find RijilV and Co. He was awesome enough to somehow get me a free badge so I didn’t even have to wait in line or pay.

We ate at Peppermill, I gambled $5.00 because Spessa ordered me to. I also have to share my winnings with her, which comes out to $0.00 each. We walked all over Vegas for an hour or two and then went back to the hotel.

On Saturday I woke up around 10am and walked to 7-Eleven for breakfast. I tried Dennys first, but there was a line out the door, so I settled for Hostess cupcakes and milk. I ended up trading 2 PLA t-shirts for other shirts that were being sold in the vendor area, which has always been my way of saving a few bucks at Defcon. Set out PLA stickers, media DVDs and business cards on an empty table. I also got the guy at Sticker Nation, who had a bunch of buttons on his table, to take a bunch of PLA buttons and sell those too. I think I gave him about 30 PLA buttons. Thanks, Sticker Nation guy!

At some point during the day, I was walking alone and someone passed me and yelled, “PLA!” Then someone walking behind me yelled back at him, “Cactus cactus!” As I rounded the corner into another hall, I looked back at him and told him there was no cactus here. He ended up telling me that he found the PLA when he heard it mentioned in a Nerdcore song. It was, of course, Trevelyn’s song called Blackhat Life where he mentions PLA Radio. This guy wondered what PLA Radio was, so he Googled it and seems to know a lot about us now. So thanks, Trevelyn, for bringing even more hapless people to the PLA.

Met hevnsnt from i-hacked.com and a bunch of other people in their Skybox. Went with RijilV & Co. to the Star Trek ride which was a lot of fun, even though I’m not much of a Star Trek fan. Was a really great ride, though, and I can’t believe they’re going to tear it all down after this summer.

Ended back up at the i-hacked.com Skybox a few more times and watched their live podcast. Hevnsnt gave me a cool badge with “RBCP” laser-etched into it which gave me a few free drinks. Drifted between the i-hacked party and the 303 party for several hours and met a ton of people that I hadn’t seen in years or that I’d never met in person before. One of those people was Skydog from Phreaknic who luckily didn’t punch me in the face for my phone stunt at the last Phreaknic I attended. He told me all about how he was on the floor, under their PBX system, trying to figure out how we’d messed up their phone service. He said I’m allowed back, but I have to be punished publicly, or something like that. I met Grey Frequency too! I didn’t even know she went to Defcon so that was unexpected.

I woke up pretty early on Sunday but didn’t feel tired for some reason. So I showered and got ready to wander around the hotel. But midway through shaving, I suddenly felt really sick and wanted to pass out and/or puke. I barely made it out the bathroom and fell back to the floor to sleep for a couple more hours. I think it’s been about 5 years since I was hung over. I got up later and went to Denny’s for breakfast. Felt a lot better after that. Attended a lot of talks throughout the rest of the day, mostly just so I could rest.

Rode a Limo back to the airport in the evening – between 7 of us it was $10 each. Pretty uneventful flight home. It’s always funny to see a billion hackers walking all over the airport, waiting for flights home. Got into Portland at 11:30pm and then home at 1:30am. And that was my weekend. Here’s a few pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbcp/sets/72157606674289675/

Defcon 2008

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I’m going to Defcon tomorrow. If you’d like to contact me this weekend, you might try emailing MOBILE at notla.com, which will text my cell phone. You can also leave me a voice message at 541-550-2930. And Twitter will be texting me nonstop all weekend – I’ll probably think about even updating it myself occasionally. See you there!

How not to steal cable TV

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In 1992 I moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and found a cheap apartment a couple blocks from the beach. I had 4 roommates and they were young guys, just like me, and always seemed to be getting into some kind of trouble and there was always crazy drama happening. Like when one guy got pulled over for speeding and ended up getting arrested for some reason, so we all pooled in our money to bail him out, only to find out that he actually had a different name than we knew and he’d been using some other guy’s drivers license to live under. Or the time one guy burst into my room in the middle of the night to show me that he’d stolen the fortune telling machine from Subway and needed me to help him get all the quarters out of it.

Somehow we ended up with a TV in our living room. I forget where it came from – probably from someone’s trash since it was one of those giant wooden console TVs. We were sitting around the living room and trying to tune in shows, but having very little luck. We briefly talked about splitting the cost of cable, but that didn’t do anything for our need of television right now. $5.00 each was probably out of our budget ranges anyway. So that conversation turned into ways that we could steal cable.

Our apartment didn’t even seem to have any cable wires running into our building. But the building across the street did. We found a few people who we guessed had active cable in their apartments, so we started making plans. My idea was to hook up a splitter to their cable line and run a new wire underground up to our building. We would have to go buy a splitter and a bunch of coax, which would cost maybe $20 or $30.

But my roommates weren’t as patient as me. They wanted to watch cable TV tonight. So instead of being stealthy about it, they walked over to this other building and started ripping down their coax cable from the wall. They yanked on it until the cable came loose and we had the end that plugged into the TV. Then they pulled it from the other direction and I believe they ripped some of it from the telephone pole. In the end, we had just barely enough cable to reach over to our building, into the window and hook it up to our TV.

We had to pull the TV right up to the window and there was no slack at all left on the cable. In fact, outside the cable was at a very tight angle from the ground to our 2nd story window, probably obstructing people from walking by on the sidewalk. I can just envision a guy on a bike not seeing it and getting clotheslined. There was no connection on the end of the cable since we’d apparently ripped it off while pulling the wire off the side of the building, so I used my wire cutters to lengthen the leads and get them hooked up to the TV.

So we turned it on and it worked great! After the 1 minute warmup period that giant wooden consoles take to turn on, we were sitting around and happily enjoying Doogie Howser, M.D. or whatever the hell people watched in 1992.

After a few hours, somebody begins knocking on our door. Guess who it was. Yeah, it’s the guy we stole cable from. Literally, stole cable from. Stealing in the sense that we actually deprived him of cable TV because we took it from him. Not only did we end up stealing his cable, but when they yanked his cable off the side of his apartment building and pulled on it until it came out of the wall, it actually pulled his TV off the shelf and it fell to the floor. There was no mention of his TV being broken, but he wasn’t a happy man. We apologized to him and handed his mangled cable TV wire back to him. I don’t remember much of the actual exchange between us and our angry neighbor that night, but I do remember that it ended with him giving us a very weak, “Well, uh, don’t do it again!”

I guess we got our fix of cable that we needed, because we didn’t buy or steal any more cable for the rest of the summer.

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