The changing definition of a late night out

I was out late last night. Until 9 PM. It's funny how the meaning of a late night out changes.

When I was in college, I and everyone else in my dorm always seemed in danger of becoming nocturnal. Now thanks to working a regular job, and being a little older (the ripe old age of 27!), I rarely stay out that late. When I do, I need some recovery time the next day.

Last night I met some friends for happy hour and grabbed dinner afterwards at The Parthenon (Gyro! Fry!). I felt like I had a pretty good night out, when I looked at the clock on my car as I left the parking garage downtown. I noticed it was only a little after 8:30.

While I'm on the subject of sleep schedules, where did my ability to sleep in go? I want it back. This morning I woke up at 6 AM. Why do I wake up earlier on weekends when I don't have my alarm clock set? Why?

Bill Maher, the Prez, and the Oscars

Bill Maher: "I think it's a shame the president's performance was too late for this year's Oscars, because usually when you play a retarded guy, you win."

This while talking about the video showing Dubya had quite a bit of warning about how bad things were going to be when Katrina hit.

Real Time with Bill Maher is the main reason I keep HBO. Watching CNN, FOX, MSNBC, just pisses me off, because they spend too much time on issues that aren't important. Why don't they have real discussion? I'm thankful I have Real Time, NOW, NPR's Morning Edition, and Salon.com.

Nobody says it like Pitchfork

Pitchfork: "Matisyahu (née Matthew Miller) is a guy from White Plains, N.Y. who smoked weed and followed Phish and played in those drum circles everyone hates." Their review is hilarious.

Matisyahu seems to be getting quite a bit of exposure. Once I stopped laughing after reading the Pitchfork review, I started thinking of Cartman from Southpark in the "Die Hippie, Die" episode.

Cartman: "Ma'am, I need to clear out your giggling stoners and your drum-circle hippies right now, or soon they're going to attract something much worse"
Old Lady: "What's that?"
Cartman: "The college know-it-all hippies"

\m/

Pitchfork review found by way of Salon.com's Audiofile.

Hosting a Tiger Woods 2006 game through a firewall

My parents gave me Tiger Woods 2006 golf for my birthday. It's quite fun, and reminds me of the old days playing Links 386 on our first PC.

Tiger Woods 06 supports playing over the Internet. Ben and I were going to play, but before I could host a game I had to figure out what ports to open up in my firewall. The first bit of information that I found was on Electronic Art's support site here. It didn't work, but I wasn't too surprised.

Tiger Woods has two Internet game modes, one using their game matching lobby, and the other Direct/LAN game. My guess is their instructions are for the gaming lobby, not the LAN game. So how did I find out which ports to open up? I had to look at my firewall/router logs to see what ports Ben was trying to connect on.

Here's what I did:

1. Find out your friend's IP. On Windows XP, the running IPCONFIG from the command prompt should list the IP address. If you're behind a router, you can go to IP Chicken to list your public IP address.
2. Look for the IP in your router's access log. On my router it has a message like: "Connection attempt to dst:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:12345 was blocked", where 12345 is the port number it was trying to connect on.
3. Open up the ports to port forward to the internal IP address of the computer you're playing on. On my router, I forwarded the ports:
   
   
   
   • 2302-2308 TCP and UDP
   • 13505 TCP and UDP
     
   • 20803-20809 TCP and UDP
     

As far as the outcome of the game, Ben beat me, but it was close, so I'll have to practice up for a rematch.

Red Meat on Creationism

This week's Red Meat is great. I need to remember to check it out more often.

My 27th Birthday

Yesterday was my 27th birthday. It was a great day of friends, foosball, and sinful food. I started off with Greenbush Bakery donuts for work. After work I met friends at Buffalo Wild Wings, played foosball at The Pub, had ice cream, then closed it out with Pizza De Roma. And I didn't even need Tums at the end of the night!

Have a look at the birthday pictures.

Dear Cold

Dear Cold,

It's that time. Time to tell you that you've overstayed your welcome. It's understandable that some sniffles will come to visit this time of year. I accept that. However, it is time for you to go. One day of staying in and refighting World War II with The History Channel is fine, sometimes even fun, but I'm reaching the cabin fever point. You're like the leftovers in the back of my refrigerator (I really should toss those) that are starting to smell. I've got things to do, and you're just slowing me down, so it's time for you to get out of my life.