I have been (and will continue to be) really busy over the next couple of weeks. I’ve got three software development projects queued up, all needing to be done “yesterday”. Well, actually, only one needed to be done “yesterday”…the others are due slightly after that.

So, it might be hard for me to keep the blog updated in a timely manner. Have no fear, we’re still here–and I’ll try and get Ev to write here more often.

Update: So much for slow posting! I’ve already posted up three things today (May 1st). I gotta get back to work!

Well the current hoo-haa one the island is the budgetary problems. You see, the goverment never signed off on a 2006 budget. Or a 2005 budget, for that matter. What that means is they are using the 2004 budget, then taking out huge ($700M) loans to cover the difference. (Yea, I don’t quite understand it either.)

So the current gov is trying to get the reps to sign off on another loan (or, god forbid, sign off on the 2006 budget). Well, the reps don’t want to do it. So, the government has “run out of money” and can’t afford to run services starting–ta-da–this coming Monday (May 1st).

Rumor has it that all public offices will be closed down (including schools) and that 250,000+ (!!!) government workers won’t get paid. Oh, and let’s not forget that includes non-payment of the million plus people who get medicine filled every month by the government.

I’m not quite sure if it’s a good or a bad thing! After all, the goverment down here is extremely bloated compared to the States. Maybe it would be a wakeup call. In the end, both sides are probably bluffing. The governor will have a hard (impossible) time laying off a majority of the islands workforce and shutting down everything, and the reps can’t keep hoping that money will suddenly fall out of the sky.

So, for now, people are ill-informed and worried. Lines at gas stations and stores are long (so I’ve heard), because people are afraid that the truck drivers will go on strike too (as a sign of solidarity). Time to re-fill the bunker and lock the gates!
Here’s hoping that you’ll still hear from me after next week. If you don’t, then just assume that the island turned into Haiti 2 and we’re all in rafts making our way to Florida.

This is more fun than a hurricane!

Update:

Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood U.S. streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.

Those activists in the States better be careful, or a couple million Puerto Ricans might come up and take those jobs. After all, the ‘Ricans all already legal.

Most (all, so far) of my Comment spam is coming from the “.pl” domain. So, I’ve decided to blacklist anything that has “.pl” in the text. (I was sick of adding a bunch of different drug names to my spam list.)

So, for you Real Humans leaving comments, make sure not to have “.pl” anywhere in your comment, or it will be thrown into the ether never to be seen again. Something like “Please kill me” will still make it, but if you do “Hello.Please kill me” or “boobs.pl” your comment will get zapped.

Once I get a good spam plug-in installed (most of them crap out for one reason or another) I’ll remove this restriction.

Project scientists at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley have asked The Planetary Society to enlist its members to help test the Stardust @home system before it “goes public” in May with the actual data from the mission.

The test will take place on Friday and Saturday, April 28-29. The assignment requires a few minutes, a web browser, and a desire to play a crucial role in an exciting space science project. Your reward? The knowledge that you helped make this ground-breaking experiment possible.

To participate, here’s what you will do:

1) On Friday, April 28, at 7 p.m. (in your local time zone), or, on Saturday, April 29, at 11 a.m., logon HERE.

2) Click on the “Train” link on the left side of the page, where you will learn how to use the “virtual microscope” the team has developed to detect tracks left by interstellar dust particles.

3) At the end of the training session, which lasts but a few minutes, you will be asked to show what you learned by reviewing several test movies.

4) After that – you’re set to go! Register by entering your name and e-mail address, and run through as many sample movies as you have time for. You will also be able to download your special Stardust @home tester certificate.

Remember! Even if you don’t complete the process, your participation is still valuable. By training and testing your skills identifying particle tracks, you will be putting a load on the Stardust @home system. That’s precisely what we want.

If you do continue, and review more than 50 movies, you will be able to download a unique certificate of accomplishment.

Your participation in this load-capacity test will help the team prepare for the thousands of users who will participate once the Stardust @home system goes public.

IMPORTANT: The site for this test will only be active during the 40-hour testing period.

Upon completion, you will also be registered so that when the Stardust @home system “goes public” in May, you will be able to sign right in and participate with real data immediately.

You can learn all about Stardust @home HERE.

In between reading crazy news sites yesterday, I was looking for video games to play. I’m a big fan of retro gaming, mainly because I think most of the current games just suck. Too hard to play. Too much time. Too violent. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I really don’t want to spend hours and hours learning how to play one game. That’s probably why I’m a big fan of games like Tetris and Warioware.

So I went on a search for emulators. For those of you new to this, an emulator is a program that runs on your PC. It emulates (simulates) another computer and/or game system. For example, you can download one that runs old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games (that’s what I was doing last night). There’s nothing quite like re-living 1989! Anyhow, they are a great way to play games that you haven’t been able to in ages (or play games you were never able to afford/get in the first place). Right now I’m gonna take a look at a Nintendo 64 emulator that’s supposed to be pretty cool.

From a legal standpoint: Many of the older games are in the public domain, but a lot aren’t. It’s a sometimes gray area. The usual rule of thumb is that you should own the game to play it. For example, I own a Nintendo 64 and a bunch of games. I’d be playing it now, but it’s in storage in Chicago.

Because of the legal gray (or not so gray) area, a lot of the “ROM” sites are illegal. That means you have to be careful if you are looking for stuff. A lot of sites pop to porn, browser hijacks, etc. Be careful out there! One of the more reliable sites I’ve found is Emulator Zone. They have links (and reviews) to tons of emulators. (Note that they do NOT have the game ROMs. You have to find those elsewhere.)

Also, don’t bother messing with any of the current hardware (ex. a PSP or an XBOX). Most PCs aren’t powerful enough to emulate those machines. Plus, they are currently available, so play the real thing, okay? Save the emulators for the stuff that you just can’t get your hands on anymore (ex. my favorite: an Atari 800XL emulator).

My love of these older games is one of the big reasons I’m excited about the upcoming Nintendo Revolution game system. It’s the only “next generation” system that I want. I could care less about the XBOX360 or the PS3–just what we need–more kicking/skateboarding/shooting/sports/racing games. Ho-Hum. The Revolution is cool because it will have a bunch of emulators built in, so you can download and play a bunch of old games (the entire Nintendo collection). Here’s hoping that this comes true–and that the old games are cheap/free. We’ll see.

There are a lot of gamers out there who think Nintendo is dead (a la Sega). I sure hope not. Why? Because they make games that I actually want to play! Frankly, if you’ve seen one first person shooter you’ve seen them all (yea, better graphics, yadda-yadda-yadda). My beautiful Sony PSP is gathering dust while the clunky Nintendo DS is played every day. Why? Because there are fun games on the DS! Hopefully Nintendo will continue to release innovative stuff like Nintendogs, Electroplankton, Brain Age, etc.

While doing endless internet surfing last night, I came across an interesting new game from Mad Minute Games. It’s called Take Command – 2nd Manassas. Yes, it’s a Civil War war game simulator. I’ve been playing the demo version (a 200 MB download) and it’s quite fun. The demo includes two battle tutorials and really gets you into the game. I don’t normally play war simulators, but this one is pretty cool. The sounds and the music are great and the maps are huge. I guess the developers did a good job, since I feel bad when the soldiers die! I keep saving the game every five minutes, because I don’t want to slaughter “my men”. If you are even moderately interested in such a game, take a look at the demo. The full version is available for download (or CD) for $40 from Paradox Interactive (the publisher).

What interests me most about this title is that the company was started by (and still is) two guys who decided to write their own War3D video game engine. With the bazillion dollar budgets of most game shops, it’s really refreshing to see a couple of people put together a really kick-ass product. They first started out by creating Take Command – 1861 – Bull Run, which was published by The History Channel & Activision Value for only $20! Unfortunately it’s out of print (but it won a bunch of awards). If anyone finds a copy sitting on a Best Buy shelf somewhere, please pick up a copy for me.

Well, I’m hanging out with Ev tonight at the Observatory. She’s working the evening shift (4 PM to midnight) today and I decided to stick around. I’d just be surfing the internet at home anyway, so I might as well do it here.

Right now (9 PM AST) Ev is up on the platform checking to make sure that no one is up there. They always have to check before doing any radar transmissions, otherwise they could fry people with the microwaves. Once she is done with that, she drives around the dish to make sure there’s no one there either (sometimes people jog around the dish, since there is a well paved road that circles it).

It’s been pretty quiet this evening. Not many people around, though a number of scientists just arrived for the 9 PM radar work. I think they are imaging one of the asteriods that’s supposed to hit us–whoops!–forget I said that. Everything is fine! Return to your homes! There’s nothing to see here!

Peachy (the light colored dog) was in pretty bad shape on Friday, since the vet needed to drain puss (or something) out of his balls. He was in a lot of pain, panting a lot. Luckily the vet gave him a shot that knocked him out so he could sleep. We were really worried for a while, though he’s doing much better now. There’s nothing funnier/sadder than seeing a dog coming out of anesthesia. Poor peachy was walking around like a drunk, with his balls all inflamed. Ouch! Shiloh, on the other hand, didn’t have any problems at all. All the dogs are doing much better today, though momma dog still have problems with her ears.

The cats are also doing fine. We didn’t see the kittens yesterday and were getting worried, but they came out today and look fine. Misty Too is a bit more brave, meaning that s/he will come within 10 feet of a person, but poor Gizmo will have nothing to do with people. I’ve been feeding the momma cat and standing there, so the kittens can see that. Hopefully it will make them a bit more brave. But not too brave! Whenever Peachy or Shiloh sees a cat they go crazy, and I’m sure that they would attack if given the chance. That’s our next big project–getting the dogs used to the cats. (Momma cat is fearless. She will follow me right up to the dogs. I get a little worried sometimes that she might get close without one of us around to hold back the dogs.)

Sorry I don’t have more interesting things to report, but with the cost of gas these days we try to limit our driving as best we can. Though it does look like gas is cheaper down here than in the States! It’s right now at 70 cents a liter, which equates to about 2.63 a gallon. So, I guess it’s not too horrible. (Though on our first trips it was around 40 cents a liter…$1.50).

Today both the main site and the pic gallery were getting their comments spammed. For now, I’ve required registration on the photogallery, so that should stop that crap. The main site still doesn’t require registration, but any posts with a URL in them will be held for moderation. I’m working on something that will keep it easy for real people to add comments (without registering–the last thing I want is for you to remember another damn password) but keep robots/morons out.

Update: I’ve had to blacklist a number of words in the comments fields. This is being done to help stop the spamming. On the bright side, I don’t think that people reading this blog will be trying to sell me illegal medications.

Update: I’m also putting in a “human checker” in the comments section. In order to post a comment you have to answer a simple math problem. Hopefully that’s easier than tryng to type in those weird/distorted letters you see on some sites. I find those very annoying. Update to Update: I pulled this off for now. It is screwing up my comments counts. I’ll try another way.

I’ve uploaded some new pet photos (the new cats, and the dogs) into the gallery. Look under Puerto Rico > Pets.

I ran across a pretty handy one-page chart of beef cuts today. It shows the area (ex. Loin) and the most common cuts (ex. Top Loin Steak). Pretty handy chart to help you learn the different cuts by sight.

Found at the Cattlemen’s site, of course: Beef Cuts (there’s also a version in Spanish)

(The link will pop to a PDF. It’s kinda big [4 MB]…dunno why, since it’s only a page. But it’s got lots of pictures. Pictures of raw meat! Mmmmm.)

Update: The Spanish version looks VERY useful for me. Now I know what they are actually talking about in the stores down here! (Also, for unknown reasons, the file is much smaller.)