Split-Screen Coop Mode

I did not get as much time as I would have liked to play video games this Thanksgiving break. I spent a lot of time skiing and while video games can be fun, skiing is much more fun. About the only spare time I had was yesterday afternoon when the family was done skiing and everyone but my oldest son and I was tied up with other activities.

We had some good father-son-bonding time and so I pulled out Star Wars Battlefront for the PS4. Some of the missions have three different modes to choose from: Solo, Coop, and Split-Screen Coop. While I have 2 PS4's, the 2nd one is in a different part of the house right now and so I didn't want to play coop mode. While we would be playing together, we would be far enough away that it really wouldn't count as father-son-bonding time. So we opted for split-screen coop. I took the top half of the screen while he took the bottom and held our own wave after wave of bad guys. It was a lot of fun.

We spent a couple of hours playing together and my son did much better than I did. At the end of each game, it would give statistics. We were pretty even except when it came to kills. I would get about 45 per game while he would get 75. Naturally I will have to concede that he is the better player but what is important is that the both of us had a lot of fun playing together.

When we were done, we headed to Target and picked up a 2nd copy of the game. Now when I am in California, I can play coop mode with him in Utah. I just need to bring one of my PS4's out there for when I am on my sailboat during the week. That will happen after Christmas.

Thanksgiving Travel

I have had the luxury of being able to stay home this Thanksgiving and not having to travel to visit family. In fact, I didn't even go to work this week and instead worked from home. It has been rather nice. Others have not been so fortunate. When I do travel I have a number of sources that I use to help with my weather predictions.

If I am flying somewhere, my preference is to look up the weather forecast on my iPhone. There is a nice weather app that links into Yahoo's weather. While the predictions are not always 100% correct, they generally do a good job of telling me if it will rain or snow and the temperature range will be for the next several days.

If I am driving, my preference is the National Weather Service website. I find it to be much more accurate than any other forecasts available. Furthermore you can zoom in on specific areas that you will be driving and get detailed forecasts for each part of your trip. This is helpful when making long road trips. While it may be sunny in the Bay Area, I want to know if I will have to fight bad weather over Lake Tahoe, around Elko, or as I enter Salt Lake.

Those are my sources of truth. Perhaps there are better places but I have yet to find them and I do look.

I'm Glad I Play Video Games

Today is Thanksgiving and so it is only appropriate that I express thanks for my video game playing skills. It is rare that anyone should be thankful for such a trivial thing. However this morning I was headed up for the usual Thanksgiving tradition of skiing while the turkey cooks when that skill was tested in real life. The mountain received six inches of new snow last night and so the road was very slick. We came up over a rise and there was a deer in the middle of the road. I hit the brakes before anyone else in the car even saw the radiator destroying obstacle. The anti-lock brakes did their thing and we stopped amazingly fast given the road conditions. The deer continued across the road unharmed as we drove away equally safe.

I once asked if there was a benefit to playing video games. Yes there is: your reaction time decreases. When a deer jumps out in front of you, it takes less time to hit the brakes than someone that doesn't play video games.

Spoiling Kids is Grandma's Job

Yesterday my wife called me from work and asked me to use my industry discount and pick up some console video games for a lady she works with. Naturally my wife wanted me to provide a recommendation or two. So the first question I asked is the age of the kid receiving the video game. He is seven years old. What do you get a seven year old kid? When my nieces and nephews come over, I have only one or two games I let them play. Most of them are older than that though.

When my wife came home from work, I asked her about the situation with a young person getting such an expensive video game console. I had to laugh when my wife told me that it is a gift from the child's Grandmother. Furthermore the Mom, with whom my wife works, is not happy about the gift. The kid originally asked for an iPad and when Mom said, "No," the kid amended the Christmas wish to a PlayStation 4. Grandma obliged.

Fortunately all of my kids are older and so I would have no problem if my or my wife's parents picked up an iPad or latest generation video game console for them. In fact I am wondering how I can get adopted and become this other lady's grandson.

For those of you looking for a recommendation on what video game to get a seven year old, I have no idea. There are a few games that I only know about because my company makes them. However I don't think that is very fair and so I will remain silent. If you can think of an appropriate game, please feel free to comment.

So Many Games, So Little Time

I am working from my home in Utah this week as it is the Thanksgiving week and I figured I would abstain from adding to the chaos in the airports this time of the year. With all of my recent travel it feels kind of strange to be home for such an extended period of time. Normally I don't play video games at home but as I find myself with a lot more time here I have turned on my consoles every now and then. It is a great way to stay awake when I am tired.

I only have a PS3 on my boat in California while I have both a PS3 and a PS4 at home. That has opened up a number of games for me this week. Here are some of the games I will be playing this week:

1. Star Wars Battlefront - I preordered a copy and it arrived while I was in Japan last week. Since I have been home I have gone through several training missions. If you are a fan of the Star Wars movies, then you will love this game.

2. The Order: 1886 - I was given a copy of this game when it came out yet have never found the time to play it. I understand that it should only take 4 to 6 hours to complete and look forward to finally being able to dedicate that much time to it.

3. The Uncharted Collection - I have all three Uncharted games for the PlayStation 3 but only ever played the first game. My sons have played both the 2nd and 3rd games and said they are awesome. I enjoyed Tomb Raider a lot and look forward to a very similar game. I want to get all 3 Uncharted games completed before Uncharted 4 comes out next year so I am ready for it.

Now for the standard disclaimer: I have connections in the video game industry that allow me to get really cheap copies of all these games. In fact I may even work for one of the companies that creates the games mentioned in this post.

Waking Up Early

Every time I think I have this jet-lag thing figured out, I prove that I don't. I got home from Japan Friday evening and immediately went to bed. I woke up at 4:30 am and started the day as I couldn't fall back asleep. That gave me time to go through all of my accumulated e-mail and postal mail before the family got up and we went skiing.

I stayed up as late as I could on Saturday evening yet found myself asleep at 8:30pm. I thought I would sleep through the night but was up at 1:30am, unable to do anything more than force my eyes closed. I got out of bed at 3:30am and did a few quiet projects around the house.

Last night I stayed up and made it to 10:30 before I fell asleep. Then I was up this morning at 4:30 ready to go. The nice thing about being up so early is that I was able to get an early start on the day. I finished watching a YouTube video from a recent ham-radio conference. Then I read my e-mail from the weekend. When my wife woke up to get ready for work, I talked to her. I really felt like I got an early start on the day and appreciated what seemed like extra hours in the day.

Unfortunately it is only 5:30pm and I am ready for bed. My wife got tickets to go see a high-school play this evening in support of our niece. I hope I actually get to watch it and I don't end up taking a nap. Stupid jet-lag.

Video Game Review: Tomb Raider

The guys at work love to recommend new games for me to play and so when I finished "The Walking Dead: Season One," they were quick to recommend a new one. One of them even brought in his PS3 copy of "Tomb Raider" and let me borrow it for a few weeks. So I guess that is my first disclaimer about this review, I didn't purchase the game, I just borrowed it. That being said, I did enjoy it enough that I probably would have purchased the game if I had known it was going to be so fun.

Early versions of the Tomb Raider video game used a disproportional physical representation of Laura Croft, the protagonist. The 2013 version of the game treats her with much more respect.

I jumped into the game on a Monday evening while staying on my sailboat in the San Francisco Bay and found it difficult to find a stopping point for the evening. It is not that they don't exist, I just could have easily kept playing all night long. Considering I have to get up at 4am on Mondays to catch a flight to the Bay Area, that says a lot about the game as I was incredibly tired. I then faced a similar dilemma the next two nights I played. It really is that good of a game. The thing I appreciated most is the variety of game play. Sometimes you are looking for things, other times you are battling bad guys, then you get to move to a different part of the game. It all blends together well and I never felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. Tomb Raider is not the first Square Enix game that I have played. I completed Thief earlier this year and found that game to be a lot of fun, but now feel Tomb Raider is much better.  It took me about 20 hours to complete the game.

Tomb Raider has an ESRB rating of M for mature because of violence and strong language. I would recommend the game to young adults looking for an action-adventure game that is well done. Oh and my final disclaimer is that I work for a large video game company that might be associated with one or more of the products listed in this review.

Using a Smartphone for Calls

Saturday afternoon I boarded my flight from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and patiently took my seat. About 10 minutes before our scheduled departure the pilot came on and informed us there was a slight problem with the plane's computer and that he was going to try to reboot it. For some reason, I pictured him typing CTL-ALT-DEL. Twenty minutes and a few announcements later, we were informed that the computer was not responding and that it needed to be replaced. The process would take 45 minutes. My layover in Los Angeles was only 45 minutes to begin with and we were already 10 minutes into that. I was going to miss my flight to Tokyo.

Missing my flight was not an option. I was scheduled to arrive at 10:30pm Sunday evening and I was hosting a conference at 8:30 am the following morning. Any delay would seriously jeopardize my attendance at my own event. An event that I had spent the previous 6 months planning. I immediately got on the phone with Delta using a special number given to their platinum-level customers. My mobile number identified me and there was no need to enter my frequent flyer number. I thought that was a nifty feature. Soon I was connected with a real person who immediately knew why I was calling. He told me to get off the plane and run to another flight headed to San Francisco. While I ran, he rebooked me on a different itinerary using another carrier for the leg from San Francisco to Tokyo.

I ended up sprinting through the Salt Lake airport and immediately boarded my new flight. Then I landed and sprinted through the San Francisco airport to the international terminal. I got a new boarding pass with my seat assignment and had the luxury of experiencing TSA security for the second time that day. Yes, that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm. For those that don't know me, I hate going through airport security as I do it twice a week, whether I want to or not. I sprinted to the gate and boarded the flight to Tokyo. Yes, I was stuck in a middle seat for the 10-hour flight but I was going to make my conference. In fact, I landed only a few minutes later than my originally scheduled flight.

Yes, Delta has a smartphone app that I could have used to help with my travel. However it wouldn't have booked me on a different carrier. Unfortunately my unique situation required human intervention. At those times, it is nice that a smartphone can also be used as a phone. After all, that is why I carry it.

Video Game Review: The Walking Dead, Season 2

It is Monday morning here in Japan even though the time for this entry is posted as Sunday. That is what happens when you cross the international date line. Another thing that generally happens is that you get to spend a lot of time on a plane as I did last night. That gave me time to finish up Telltale Games' The Walking Dead, Season 2 on my PlayStation Vita. I know I wrote that I wasn't going to continue with the game series but when I found I had a copy for my hand-held console, I thought I would give it a try.

The game plays like an interactive movie and the experience I had on the Vita was a bit different than on the PS3. Both versions have a tendency to pause unexpectedly but it happened a lot more on my Vita. Sometimes it was distracting and game-play suffered. It was also very difficult to tell how to interact with the characters. The Vita has a touchscreen and so sometimes you would use that while other times you would use the controller buttons. I missed several choices because I was pushing buttons instead of touching the screen or visa versa. It was somewhat frustrating.

The game continued where Season 1 left off and it was like catching up with old friends. I was told I wouldn't like Season 2 as much as Season 1 but they didn't take into account that part of the story takes place at a ski resort. I love ski resorts and so that part of the story resonated with me. As can be expected with a game that mimics a television series where they hope to continue the following year, the game ends with a cliff-hanger and it has me wanting to play Season 3. Unfortunately I will have to wait until 2016 as it is not expected until then.

The Walking Dead, Season 2 has an ESRB rating of M for Mature because of strong language. I would not recommend this game for children or even teenagers because of this.

A Use for Square Root

Earlier this week I volunteered to come up with an algorithm to spread test data across a number of days. We ran a test for about an hour and then were left with trying to make the data look like it came in over a series of days instead of all on the same day. "Well that's easy," I thought, "just subtract a random number of days from the entry date." It turns out, that wasn't going to work because we needed to show a change in the amount of traffic. Statistically, the random number would provide an equal number of entries for each day. I quickly adjusted my algorithm by using the square root of a random number. I then subtract the integer part of the square root from the existing date.

So how does that work? It is actually quite simple. If you generate random numbers from 1 to 35 and only use the integer of their square roots you get the following:

• sqrt(0)  to sqrt(0)  = 0 with  1 chance
• sqrt(1)  to sqrt(3)  = 1 with  3 chances
• sqrt(4)  to sqrt(8)  = 2 with  5 chances
• sqrt(9)  to sqrt(15) = 3 with  7 chances
• sqrt(16) to sqrt(24) = 4 with  9 chances
• sqrt(25) to sqrt(35) = 5 with 11 chances

As you can see there is a higher chance the random number will generate a 5 than a 1. I created the following SQL statement for a MySQL database:

UPDATE my_table 
  SET date_coumn = (ADDDATE(date_column, 
      INTERVAL -1 * FLOOR(SQRT(ROUND(RAN() * 35))) day )); 

We ran the UPDATE statement and it behaved exactly as we expected. There were more entries that appeared 5 days previously than the previous day. Other than using the Pathagorean Theorem to calculate the length of a diagonal line, this is the first time I have ever had a valid use for the square root function. I guess I can't wear my One-more-day-that-I-didn't-use-Algebra shirt.

Catching Up With Friends

One thing about spending time in the Bay Area and working in high-tech is that it is pretty easy to run into old work acquaintances. This morning I got a text from the former CEO of a company I used to work for. He wanted to get my opinion on a new project he is working on and so we met this afternoon for 30 minutes. It was good to catch up.

Last week, I was riding from my office back to my boat when I passed someone walking that I recognized. Amazingly we worked together at a company in New Jersey, yet here we were in California. Naturally I stopped and talked to him and it was good to catch up. Coincidentally, this friend worked with me at the same company that shared the CEO I met with today.

There are a number of old coworkers from my days at Oracle that reside in the Bay Area and I will often get together with them to catch up. After today I am glad that I make sure never to burn any bridges with those I have worked with in the past. You never know when you will run into them again. When you do, you want it to be a happy reunion and not an uncomfortable one.