I just got the new addon to Call of Duty, called United Offensive. I just got it running. The gameplay doesn't feel like any change from the original game, just like an add-on should be! It's just an addition of more weapons, more levels. Two cool additions are the use of vehicles (jeep/tanks) and new weapons (flamethrower/deployable machineguns).

I have to post one frustration with this. For some reason, the game is detecting "CD/DVD emulation software" on my computer. I do have CloneCD, and that may be the reason, but this should not affect the game at all. (one piece of software should not interefere with the next; nor should another piece of software care if the first is installed)
So, the game would not start out of the box, because it was unable to read the data from the CD. I eventually went to GameCopyWorld, and got the latest No-CD crack for the game. This fixed the issue. But I have to voice my frustration about such a gay issue right out of the box.

While attempting to fix the problem, I did find out that there are new nForce drivers available. They were posted last week.
I will post more about the game as I play more of it.

So I'm surfing around the net this evening, digging through some URL's, and I come across a blog with some interesting information on it. Apparently, you can do a Google search for "index of /mp3" or "index of /files" and get all sorts of nice directory listings from some poor sap's personal stash.

In case you need a hyperlink to try it, try clicking here for the results of a search for "index of /mp3".

Also, try all sorts of other interesting filetypes... you'll never know what you might find!
"index of /mov" "index of /movies" "index of /mpg" "index of /files" "index of /warez" "index of /isos"

remember: Lets not forget to make use of our friend wget. (man page)

Perl pwnz j00. It is amazing.

As I said before, most automated tasks at work are scripts written in Perl. It is highly important that everyone on the team be proficient in the scripting language. I've been allowed time to grow accustomed to its usage and syntax. I think that today I finally broke into understanding the power of Perl.

It's extremely easy to implement complex routines through the use of CPAN modules. They are essentially extensible libraries for use in a script. They are very easy to add to you system, they are only loaded when you invoke them from within your script, and can do many powerful things.
Things that would take a C/C++ programmer much longer to do. Granted, C/C++ create smaller/quicker binaries, but Perl is easy to maintain and easy to develop a "quick and dirty" fix.

Skaven has been preaching to me to get into Perl, I think I have finally started to truly break ground. I thought I had made some progress before, but it wasn't until this afternoon that it really hit me - with the force of 2 sumo's colliding at full-speed.
Sorry it took so long Skaven, I'm awake now.

So yesterday, SirMackieman (corey) came to stay with me on his way out to Kyocera Wireless in California. In the middle of the day, while I was at work RoadRunner came to shut off the cable connection that was in Skaven's name, then to hook up my cable.
This didn't happen.

Instead, he shut off my cable and told Corey that he didn't have a work-order to turn me back on. So we were up a certain creek without the proverbial paddle.

Poor Corey sat in my apartment without intarweb access until I got home. After quite a while of agonizing and ranting about TimeWarner and what pricks they are, it dawned on me. Corey was on his laptop. He had wireless. "Fire up your 802.11 card, man!"
Boom. There's a neighbor with a Linksys router wide open, zero security, just asking us to use his connection. So we did.

After dinner, we went to BestBuy, Eric fronted some cash to procure a cheap D-Link PCI wifi card for my PC. (i'll hit ya back e)
I popped in the NIC, after some configuration, we are back online. At least, until the neighbor dude wises up (not likely) or TimeWarner gets on the ball and installs my friggin cable modem.
Fittingly, the day before, Eric and I went driving around and he snapped a couple of cool pics of this marquee on an old theater not far from here. It got pwn3d, much as our neighbor has. (and is!)

Mackieman sez: I can't believe I didn't think of that before you got home. I was like, "doh!"

EA Games has released an official World War II mod for Battlefield Vietnam. The maps are from the Pacific Theatre and it also includes a flamethrower. Click here to read up on it.

Grendel sez: Played it, it's cool. The mod is essentially a reworked version of BF1942. The graphics are better, with more foliage, sharper models, and visual effects (explosions, gun-shot, tracers). Havoc and I decided that since EA/Dice weren't getting as many sales on Vietnam as they originally hoped for, they hope this mod will drive up sales. Overall, this is a great mod. If you have BF:Vietnam, check this one out!