Stuff Archives

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday .....

.... how old?

No, not that. Be serious now, I've updated my website, not changed the laws of nature, physics and anything else you can think of. No, I've been tidying up the site and after eight years, I've finally closed the 2015 NASCAR Race Game and can officially declare Owen as the winner knocking me off my perch of winning five competitions.

So let's hear it for Owen and eight grueling years of effort. Slogging away day after day to finally bring home the W. Yay for Owen!!!

Anyone poking around the website will see that a new competition has been created in the Race Game for the 2023 Forumla 1 season. The competition is open to register and is ready to go. More information will be provided as we get nearer to the start of the season. The question that remains is - can Owen go back to back?

Over the holidays, Ken Block died from a snowmobile accident. I've featured one of his videos on this website being the Gymkhana in San Francisco. I've watched a lot of his videos whether it be the gymkhanas or the drag races and have huge respect for his talent. Recently, it's been his daughter that's been driving the Hoonicorn and I hope she continues to do so. So sad for her to lose her father.

Crazy that he died from a snowmobile accident given all the things he's done, but, then again .... I guess some would say it's crazy this idiot broke his neck on a trampoline with all the crazy stuff he used to do. I guess it catches you when you least expect it.

You've got to think Saint Peter's going to be standing there watching Ken drift sideways through the Pearly Gates! RIP Ken.

Sadly had a few nights in hospital the other week. Nothing too serious, but definitely something I'd like to avoid. That said, there were several times I managed to amuse myself. I even made a video of my experience using the shower in my room.

Full HD Video (Right click and save as)

Just got my second jab, so I'm now fully vaccinated. I can no longer get aids which is nice. Might have been better to be protected against covid though.

I don't want anyone to think that just because we've moved from full on player v player (pvp) gaming in Apex that we've become soft. We've remained dedicated to being hardcore gamers bringing the fight to anyone that wants it. We are true Klingons at heart relishing in the battle. Drinking hard and singing songs of our glory. We've moved to Destiny 2, but are still pushing the boundaries of all things manly when it comes to gaming. Only the strong can survive. Only the mighty can join us:

Full HD Video (Right click and save as)

In the midst of all this chaos caused by COVID-19 a bond was formed. No, stronger than a bond. A loyalty, a trust, an understanding .... a unit. Forged as one, a team of geriatric gamers took on the millennial kids of today and triumphed. The old bulls walked down the hill and had their feast of all the heffers. The likes of which have never been seen before. Well maybe once if the know the quote below:

“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team.”

The statistics are terrible, but the tag line if the banner is all that matters. Luke, Paul and I hid our way to victory. My aim was absolutely terrible at the end, but it wasn't helped with the ping spamming to tell me where the target was or the constant cries of “get him Jamie, he's here, get him, get him ...”

I even went as far as to record a clip of the win which, honestly, highlights exactly how bad we are. There was only one person left against the three of us. I have no idea what Paul did, he just seemed to die. Luke was trying to creep in and walked straight at him seeming to face tank his shots. I crept round to get an angle and whiffed every shot in my first mag. I got lucky that I could use my ability to run off then use a battery on gold shields.

Full HD Video (Right click and save as)

Just to prove that my aim isn't completely terrible, here's a couple of other wins - the first one I had and one that happened just after Paul and Luke left. Both of these with random strangers that weren't yelling in my ear.

Full HD Video (Right click and save as)

Full HD Video (Right click and save as)

I had to register a number for my car this weekend. Obviously I went with 42 and I ordered some magnetic numbers to put on my car. The other organization I go with provides numbers. Anyway, my numbers have arrived and I now have the fastest fridge in Walnut Creek.

OK, so I got this message in the picture below, that I jokingly attributed to Russian hackers trying to adjust the vote after I exposed them.

This issue by itself isn't that big of a deal as I have rather a lot of spare disks lying around. Long story, but right now I feel I could back up Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud combined if needed. The problem was that when I booted into the computer it was running crazy slow. The disk that was compromised was the one that this EBR website is running on and that my TV records to. A while back I'd got a message that the C drive was out of space and moved the large stuff off. (The website takes up about 300GB of space because there are some very large video and music files sitting at the back of it).

A quick look showed that the C drive only had 3k of space left. Now there's no way that I'd created another 300GB of files as I don't use that computer. There aren't many directories on the C drive, so I looked at the properties of each of them, added up the disk space use and it came to something like 300-400GB. Problem as the disk drive is 1TB. Where's the other 600GB or so not being reported.

Quick search of the old world wide web and there's a gazillion articles telling you your hard disk is broken, run chkdsk. Or that you've got a virus, buy this software and the world will be a happy place. So I ran chkdsk ... nothing. Booted computer in safe mode and ran virus checker .... nothing. Finally found some website suggesting that it might be Windows Modules Installer service that is used by the system to compress log files.

Well, turns out that the culprit was indeed Bill Gates himself. Apparently this is a known issue that Microsoft haven't bothered to fix. I'm guessing it doesn't affect too many people or they just take their computer to the computer shop to be fixed and get charged a lot of money by someone who just has to do the following:

1. Stop Windows Modules Installer. Goto services (type in services.msc), find it in the list and stop it.
2. Use explorer to goto C:/windows/logs/cbs and either delete or move the files out of that folder (if you feel you might need them ... unlikely)
3. Use explorer to got C:/windows/temp and delete cab* which are the temporary log files that were created and never deleted.

So, here's the thing. When you click on c:/windows/temp for the first time, it asks you if you want to allow access to the directory. Until that point, it appears it's not included the contents of that directory when you look at the properties of c:/windows, hence the total storage taken by the sub directories not equaling the total being shown on the properties of the C drive.

Now, here's the staggering thing. I deleted almost 800GB of cab* temp files. Explorer wouldn't load the directory, so I just used DOS to go there. I did run a directory listing first ... mistake ... there was about 40,000 files in there and that took forever to run. I ended up just typing del cab* and getting rid of everything that way. Seems to have worked and we're back in business!

Alright, so I decided to give the truck a chance to see what it can do to make a change from taking the car out. Thought I'd try a bit of off roading. Now, the fires have closed most places either because of what's going on or the danger of starting a fire. Other places warned of there being too many people at Thanksgiving and that they would turn folks away. So, I searched and found some sites that do off road trails. Now, first thing I'm going to say is that these sites are totally full of misinformation. It's actually crazy how bad the information is. Right, so let's start at the beginning. Figured I'd head south to Monterrey area and stay there. Worst case scenario I could take William to the Acquarium. There were two trails listed. First was designated as easy. Second as moderate. The easy one had a lot of conflicting information including that the trail was on private land. The second one seemed more legit so headed there. Nope - it's private land. Was supposed to be a loop trail from highway 1 up into the mountains and back round again. We started at the northern most part and you can't drive anywhere on it given the gate and warning signs. Then headed to the southern part of it and first found the road Nacimiento-Fergusson Road. This is a fairly normal small road that's paved. There are a few rock falls on it, but nothing to worry about. There was a review that someone had posted of having done the drive in a car. Well, they may have done that part of the drive in a car, but not the trail. The target is the coast ridge road which, as the name suggests, is a trail that runs the ridge of the mountain. We headed north to start with which is where the trail sites say to drive and you can get 5-10 miles up it and then you reach a trail head for hiking. The trail head is blocked with posts to prevent vehicles from going further. Someone had noted this in their review, but I hadn't read that one. Anyway, that's a fun drive into the mountain with great scenery, but you kind of feel annoyed that it's a there and back as opposed to driving a loop. Once back to the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road, decided to try the South Coast Ridge Road (as opposed to North). This works great and the map below shows a loop that works (obviously completing the loop on highway 1. Highlighted is just the off road bit.



Couple of additional notes. There's a bit that looks like it cuts through from the Coast Ridge Road to Plaskett. It does, but it goes through private land and you will hit a gate and have to reverse up and turn around. Interestingly, at time of writing, the white squarish bits inside the green of the forest represent the private land and you can see where you get stopped. It's annoyingly for just a small bit, but I guess they don't want folks driving through.

I wish I'd taken photos as the views are great, albeit that we were in clouds for a lot of it, but we also had some amazing views. The issue was really not knowing where I was going and if we could get out at the other end, it seemed to make sense to just press forward.

I didn't track where we went, but looking at the map, it seems like the North Coast Road goes higher to about 3900 ft at the furthest point you can drive. The South Coast Road seems to go to 3200 feet in places and it looks like you're generally going up and down 500 feet as you drive along. The drive itself isn't that difficult. There's a couple of spots where you need the four wheel drive and ground clearance to get over rocks, but the majority of it is relatively easy going.

Interesting sign as you get onto the road telling you that you need 4WD and a note that AWD is not 4WD. Would be interesting to see someone go up in their car. As I said, you'd actually get up most places, but you'd end up beached in others.