the NovaLAN blog

Day 17 - 21

2010-08-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

These last few days went flying by so fast! After we left Portland, we headed up the coast to Rockland and ended up staying there for a few days. In that time, we drove up to Bar Harbor. On the way, you have to cross the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which was constructed recently. It has the tallest bridge observatory in the world, and is the only one in the western hemisphere.

Just a walk from the bridge is Fort Knox, which was named after the first Secretary of War, as was the famous Fort Knox in Kentucky. It is located along the Penobscot River, across from Bucksport.

After the visit, we made our way to Bar Harbor and stopped at a local Lobster shack.

Day 15 - 17

2010-08-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

Day 15, 16, and 17 were all long travel days. We really did not do much... I mean seriously, on days like these, we just sit in the RV, listening to music, mapping out our course, finding rest stops, eating, remapping the course, playing games, watching movies, finding more rest stops, etc.

On Day 15, we made it from Milwaukee, through Chicago, and over to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where we spent the night in the WalMart parking lot.

On Day 16, we drove through, believe it or not, 9 states: we started in Indiana, drove through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and ended in New Hampshire. During one of the pit-stops, a trucker randomly befriended us and gave us some watermelons!

On Day 17, we drove up to Portland, Maine while I was asleep. We are now just hanging out here for the day. I got to really see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time today!

Here are some photos I took in Portland

The Atlantic Ocean

A view from our RV

Day 10 - 15

2010-08-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I would just like to say that I am sorry that I stopped posting on here for about a week... We got up to the Jablonski's place on the night of Day 10 (Wednesday, July 28th) and stayed there until the morning of Day 15 (Monday, August 2nd), and during that time I was really tired, excited, and just plain lazy!

The following is an account of what we did in the past few days...

Amendment to Day 10:
I forgot to mention that we went to the Texas Roadhouse with Dave, Jake, and Jessica. It was a fair meal in a pleasant atmosphere and a great night of conversation and fun.
And just to make it clear, Dave and Alisa are the parents, and Jake (18), Nick (16), and Jessica (14) are their kids.
My parent's also checked into the Comfort Inn in Milwaukee. This information will be necessary for what happened in Day 11.

Day 11:
For the most part, in the mornings we would just get up, eat, play video games, and talk a lot. In this evening, Jake, Nick, Alex, and I went swimming at the hotel at which my parents were staying while our parents went hottubbing. We left for the cinemas and saw The Sorcerer's Apprentice (it was pretty good, but somewhat predictable and non-climactic - 6/10). On the way back to the hotel, Alisa called Jake and Nick and requested that they bring Gatorade for Dave when they returned home, so we detoured over to Walgreen's. On the way over, we had one of the funnest times during the entire stay. We cranked up the stereo and the car was filled with Techno and Rap music, and we were all "dancing" to the music, as much as one might while sitting strapped to a seat (honest it was more like arm-waving and wiggling). The climax of the night was when a song aired on the radio and Nick hopped out of the car (in Walgreen's parking lot) and proceeded to act out some crazy awesome moves. Epic.

When Alex and I got back, we found out that our parents had a problem with the hotel. While we were gone, a little league team from EauClaire, Wisconsin created a disturbance in the pool area. The chaperons were drinking alcohol (problem 1) in glass bottles (problem 2) and responded negatively (problem 3) to the request of the other patrons in the pool area. They then proceeded to address isolated individuals who had requested them to stop drinking (i.e. my dad) with taunts and verbal jabs (problem 4), which continued even into the next morning (problem 5). The manager was finally available for contact, and when address of the situation, completely lost his spine as if it were made of jello. He became a wimpy little person who would not enforce hotel policy (problem 6). We immediately contacted the Comfort Inn corporate office and the Better Business Bureau to let them know of the preceding events. The state liquor board, local newspaper, and little league team will also be contacted. After this event, we changed hotels, and my parents stayed in the Hampton Inn for the remainder of the visit.

Day 12:

I am pretty sure this was the day that Alex, Jake, and I went to The Quarry, a retired mining quarry that filled in with water, and one can now swim in it. It was fun. We got some sun and swimming, which totally made my day.

Day 13:
Saturday, Alisa took us on a drive-through tour of the city of Milwaukee.

Day 14:
It was today that we went to the Wisconsin Dells, a couple hours north of the Jablonski's abode. Sadly, Jake's work conflicted with these plans, so he was unable to enjoy it was us. At the Dells, there are a bunch of theme parks, one of which, Mount Olympus, we went to. It was sooo fun! There were four wooden roller coasters, one of which, Hades, had a tunnel that goes completely beneath and across the parking lot, then comes out the other side for a short while, and back under the parking lot! There were also many go-kart tracks (not bumper cars... lets just say I learned that the hard way) which were pretty fun. But the Water Park is where you find me. There are two wave pools: a normal, continuous undulation pool, and the Poseidon; every couple minutes, this pool creates a 9-foot wave. It is absolutely sick! Nick and I were in this pool probably half of our stay just body surfing. We could transverse approximately half (probably a little more) of the accessible pool on a single wave! When we were all finally too tired to do anything more, we headed out. All of us fell asleep in their Excursion on the way home. The hot tub at the new hotel was a very relaxing end to the day.

Day 15:
Monday morning, we left :(
We had an amazing time with the Jablonski's. It was really amazing that even after 12 years of not seeing or contacting each other, our friendships from 6 years old proved valid :D I cannot wait to see you guys again, and thanks for hosting us!

Day 10

2010-07-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

Woohoo!!! We made it!!! We actually got to the Jablonski's place!!! After getting the RV all fixed up and a great night's rest at the Best Western Canterbury Inn in Coralville, Iowa, we hopped back on the highway. After a missed exit, we arrived here and are very much so enjoying the first night of our visit. We haven't seen the Jablonski family in about 12 years, since we were living in Camelot up in north Spokane. I cannot really think of anything else that happened today because I am too excited and sleepy :P so I will post other information and photos tomorrow!

Day 9

2010-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted that we were going to try to be in Milwaukee tomorrow night, but today we were making great timing and were on track to get there sometime this evening... that is, until our cab air conditioner completely shut off and the bearings in the alternator started to go bad. Mind you, this is a fix-or-repair-daily that we're driving... Anyway, right now we are stuck in Coralville, Iowa, which is near Iowa City. We did though find a silver lining to this, because there is a really awesome hotel here: the Best Western is medieval themed and has an amazing restaurant called the House of Lords in the basement. The whole feel of this place is really nice, and I highly recommend it to anyone who needs to stop in this area.

As for the schedule, we are probably 4-5 hours away from Milwaukee, and then another distance and time to the Jablonski's place.

Today wasn't completely un-fun. Alex got to play with my camera a bit...

Day 8

2010-07-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Today is the eighth day of our road trip, and we are staying at my great aunt Mary's house here in Wichita, Kansas. We had a lot of fun just hanging out today, got to talk a lot. But we also had to take Scott to the airport because today was his trip home. It was a lot of fun having him with us and we are going to miss him a lot.

This is a photo of the four of us with my dad's aunt Mary and cousin Carla.

Sharon, Charles, Carla, Mary, Alex, Nick (me)

I also got to try out Gelato for the first time at Mead's Corner, a local coffee shop. The Italian spin on ice cream was absolutely delicious!!

Mead's Corner [map] [website]

We also found out recently that we will not be going to Tennessee tomorrow to visit Uncle Carl and his family due to a scheduling error... Our road trip was pushed ahead by 2 weeks, and in the chaos and confusion of packing between the vacation and road trip, we forgot to let them know, so naturally conflicting plans ensued. Now we will be going on to the next part of the trip. Tomorrow morning we will be headed directly up to Wisconsin to visit the Jablonski family. We should be there Wednesday evening. Tomorrow will be a "travel day" so it will probably be boring and uneventful. But at least we will be out of the Kansan humidity!

Day 7

2010-07-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

First off, I was not able to post Day 7 last night because I could not find WiFi, and I was a little sick after I ate. Other than that, yesterday was totally awesome! The Nagely Family Reunion went well and I did get photos of everyone.

After the reunion, we headed south to Wichita to visit my Great Aunt Marry and cousin Carla on my dad's side of the family. I will post those photos on today's post later tonight.

Day 6

2010-07-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

So here we are in Salina, Kansas. It is humid, hot, windy, has tons of bugs, and this place is flat. I mean flat. I really didn't understand what flat meant until I got here. The sad part is that I don't even have any photos to post from today! I really don't enjoy this place all that much, but it is totally worth visiting when I have an entire family showing up for a reunion that goes back to my great great great grandfather... or something like that. All I know is I am hanging out with my 3rd and 4th cousins right now. Tomorrow at the reunion I will take lots of photos to post on here, and hopefully I will get everyone's names to caption the photos.

I just want to post some type of graphic, so here is a map of Kansas with Salina marked out.

p.s. there is something nice about Kansas... the clouds and lightning here are really cool looking :)

Day 5

2010-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

The fifth day, like many others, started off with me waking up to the movements of the RV as dad pulled it out of the camp before any of us were up. We ended up arriving at the campgrounds after the office was closed, and left before they were open. When we finally stopped to have breakfast, we were in a small town in Wyoming called Rawlins. The breakfast was decent enough.

While there, we visited the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum, an old state penitentiary.

From Rawlins, I was forced to drive to Laramie, WY. Then dad took over and we went south into Colorado.

We just kept pushing on past Denver and found ourselves in stop-and-go traffic in Fort Collins, so we took a break. Alex got her Starbucks while Dad and Scott checked out a Culver's.

Apparently this place is like a Dairy Queen on steroids. The "butterbergers" threw me off, so I didn't go in, thinking that it would be serving a "burger" of southern style, deep-fried, and battered butter, but with buns and cheese.

Now we are in another KOA in Strasburg, Colorado. I think we really like these KOA's. They all have nice amenities, like electricity, water, WiFi, pools, etc.

Day 4

2010-07-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

Wow. It is already the fourth day of our trip! As I type, I am on my bunk in our RV at a KOA Kampground in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Earlier today we left Yellowstone and went through the Grand Teton National Park.

We had a good drive, and I got a couple more awesome panoramas.

A short while after I made these panoramas, I found an old settlement. It proved to be a neat place to take a couple photographs.

Day 3

2010-07-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

Day three started off nicely because I got tons of sleep. I probably awakened around 0930-1030hrs. This day we specifically intended to visit the Old Faithful geyser. After all, who goes to Yellowstone National Park and doesn't see it? While we were there, my grandparents and cousins were watching us on the live geyser webcam [link]. It was really funny because we got to see other families standing in the same place waving at the camera and calling their loved ones, letting them know that they are live on the internet!

After watching Old Faithful erupt on its ever-so-predictable 90 minute schedule, we proceeded to visit all of the other geysers. The loop was long and well worth the walk.

Old Faithful erupting on July 21st 2010

The Chromatic Pool

Trees that are too close to a geyser

After leaving the geysers area, we got some ice cream and headed back to the campsite. Along the way, I took this photo. It is one of the most beautiful panoramas I have made yet.

Yellostone Lake at dusk

Day 2

2010-07-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

The second day of our tour was somewhat interesting in that I was awakened by the motion of our RV pulling out of the "Wal-Mart RV Camp." When I was finally completely aware and awake, we were traveling through the rest of the Montanna part of the trip. There isn't much to say because not much happened.

When we finally arrived at Yellowstone, it was around dusk and the wildlife were exteremely active. We got a lot of amazing photos (which I will post when I get some wifi. If you can't tell already, I am blogging from my phone :p ). We finally got to the RV campsite late and ate dinner around 2300hrs. That's pretty much the summary of day 2.

Day 1

2010-07-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

Well! We are officially on the move!! Yesterday we spent all day cleaning and finishing up packing the house while the movers packed everything into the epic-sized semi. We hit the road in the overstuffed recreational vehicle around 2000hrs after visiting our grandparents one last time. Later that night at 0300hrs mountain time, we stopped by a KOA in Missoula, Montana. Since the grounds were full, one of the guys in charge let us access the showers and then we stayed at the Wally World RV camp. There is a cry ordinance in Missoula that is suppose to prevent that from happening, but when we got there, at least 40 other RVs were already there, taking over the parking lot! We got a surprisingly good night :)

Maine!

2010-07-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has finally come! I am moving to Maine! As for NovaLAN, it will now be headquarted in Presque Isle because that is where I will be living, but it will keep its connections with the Spokane area. One new goal of NovaLAN is now to host cross-continent LAN parties! It will be a small challenge and probably prove to be more fun that anything!

news.novalan.org

2010-04-05T18:21:00.000-07:00

If you have visited the news.novalan.org mainpage recently, you will notice that a lot of the content has been removed. This is because I am trying to change the purpose of that site to a backup site that is always live just in case my privately hosted site goes down.

On the other hand, you will also notice that there is some new content, including the new "Qik Live Streams" on the first page. Those are live video streams that you can watch any time that I use the Qik app on my iPhone. Yeah. They're live.

Anyway, I hope to get all this insane techno-crap figured out soon. My little "white box server" [aka custom build, totally ripping off the "white label" idea from DJs and sticking it on my computer] has recently been running Ubuntu 9.10 as a server, then Fedora 12 w/Amahi as a Digital Content server, and now Windows XP Pro as a media conversion workstation, NAS/SMB file share server, FTP server, and other such miscellaneous duties.

Hmmm...

2010-04-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

Remember how I said that there will probably be a LAN party around Spring Break, then it was changed to early April, then Grid47/BarnLAN dropped support for it due to other circumstances, and I said NovaLAN would still host it, but at a small site? Well I am changing it again, and I have a weird reason as to why I am doing so...

Between my last post (sometime in January) and now I have learned that I will be moving to northern Maine. This information is relevant because that means that there will be no more LAN parties hosted in part or full by NovaLAN in Spokane, Washington. All my spare time has been dedicated to cleaning up my current abode, packing, and selling everything that I do not planning on taking on the 3000 mile adventure. Oh, and did I mention that I have less that four months to do so? That's right, I will be leaving the Pacific Northwest at the end of July.

Now that everyone has been informed of the recent events, I would like to also start a little rumor about a "big huge LAN party going down sometime this summer" as kind of a going away party for all my awesome techie friends :)

Long Time, No Post

2010-01-26T00:44:00.000-08:00

Hey Gamers! Yeah it's been awhile since the last time I updated the NovaLAN gaming community on upcoming events. Basically we are planning out the next LAN party right now. We have tentatively set the date of BarnLAN III to the first weekend after Spring Break. This will ensure that everyone is available and no one has any finals. I will create a poll soon asking what games you want to see at the party this time, and we will definitely get dedicated servers running.

A little extra info: My personal server here at theCave (yes I just named the NovaLAN HQ a generic over-user cliche) is down and I am working on getting it up to speed. hopefully I will have that CoD4 server available 24/7 soon :)

Last but not least, a little poke-fun-at-microsoft humor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyas7BrbUFY

BarnLAN II - Internet Update

2009-11-19T13:35:00.000-08:00

May I have everyone's attention: BarnLAN II will have internet access! We have contacted Comcast and they are going to supply internet to the grange for the day. This will incur some costs, but I am sure that will be covered between the gaming community and the BarnLAN administrators. I will have more info soon on how much this will actually cost.

BarnLAN II - Sponsors

2009-11-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

Hey all. It has been a busy couple of weeks for us while we are performing a balancing act of getting everything set up for BarnLAN II and maintaining our A+ scores (I wish) in our classes. I have some great news though! IN WIN has announced that they will be sponsoring BarnLAN II!

Laptops in Class Poll

2009-10-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu 9.10 IS HERE! TODAY!!!

2009-10-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

Guys! Ubuntu 9.10 has been released today! Go get it!

Ubuntu website

direct torrent links:

ubuntu-9.10-alternate-amd64.iso.torrent

ubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso.torrent

ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

ubuntu-9.10-server-amd64.iso.torrent

ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso.torrent

for those who have never used Ubuntu or Linux:

Ubuntu is a completely free, fully fledged desktop and server Operating System. It now has a tool called Wubi that allows you to install it on your computer "inside" your Windows environment as if it is another program. If you ever decide to get rid of it, you go into the "Add/Remove Programs" (XP) or "Programs and Features" (Seven) to uninstall it and all changes made will be undone. It is a simple, almost fool-proof way to demo or even completely run Linux without needing to know much technical information about it! Give it a try, just pop in the Ubuntu Desktop i386 disk in Windows and install it!

Xfire

2009-10-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

As many people know, Xfire is a very popular platform on which gamers can communicate, especially considering is amazing integration of in-game functions like chat. For a long time I did not have Xfire because "I just had too many other instant messengers." But recently I picked up on it again, especially considering that I now only use Google Talk and Skype. Xfire is truly amazing. I think that we all will benefit from using it.

I have created an Xfire community for NovaLAN. It can be found here. If you have an Xfire and are interested in playing alongside NovaLAN, join!

Keytar Nation by Chris WiFi

2009-10-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was looking through a bunch of my old NovaLAN files and I came across some music that Christopher Fairfax made a couple years ago under the artist name Chris WiFi. The two songs he gave me were off his song-titled whitelabel album Keytar Nation. There is also a mini-mix of the song Keytar Nation.

Album:

Keytar Nation by Chris WiFi

Songs:

01 Keytar Narion 2:10 7.4MB

02 Lairwave 2:12 5.5MB

03 Kaytar Nation [Elite Mix] 2:10 7.4MB - this is really an unfinished remix... only the intro was ever completed

BarnLAN II - New Logo

2009-10-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

BarnLAN creator Chris Fairfax has recently announced and released the new BarnLAN II logo.

Post your thoughts in the comments!

Peer 2 Peer vs. Direct Copy

2009-10-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well I was testing which would be faster to copy 276MB file between computers today. Direct copying from one computer to another over my wireless network took about 5 minutes at about 1MBps download speed that change randomly when windows felt like doing so. Next I tested the Peer 2 Peer (p2p) copying it only took 4 minutes with one server hosting the torrent and one client downloading the torrent on my network. I got speeds up to 1.1MBps and speed would drop a little when I was using the network heavy, which is normal to see. I can decrease my download time by adding two to three more server hosting the same torrent file which would increase the places the torrent can download pieces from. So in the future more testing of this theory of p2p being faster than direct copying over a local network. Tell me what you think or if you have any ideas or thoughts on this. Love to hear from people.

Windows 7 - MSDN AA MD5 Hashes

2009-10-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been having a problem with my Windows 7 ISOs and installations. Windows 7 will not install properly to my system. I have tried all of the "check your memory for corruption" as well as the "burn the ISO at a very slow rate" routines, but with no success. Typically I install Windows 7 from my thumb drive anyway because its probably 5x to 10x faster than by DVD. Also, I use the MSDN (Academic Alliance) images.

Just recently I checked the MD5 checksum of the image I was using to install Windows 7 and found that it did not match the MD5 checksum of the newly downloaded image direct from Microsoft's MSDN servers. Here are the MD5 checksums of the new images as well as the original image file names for reference.

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_X15-65805.iso
5aea8b512c2211e3f2c5c6e84698aaec

Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
en_windows_7_professional_x86_dvd_x15-65804.iso
d8f675aaeb48057452666b0cd686d7f5

Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 64-bit
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x64_dvd_347803.iso
98341af35655137966e382c4feaa282d

Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 32-bit
en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x86_dvd_349010.iso
8867c13330f56a93944bcd46dcd73590

Windows 7 Beta 32-bit
en_windows_7_beta_dvd_x86_x15-29073.iso
f9dce6ebd0a63930b44d8ae802b63825

I really hope that this information will help anyone with a Windows 7 installation error. This should probably only be used in the case of an MSDN image installation though because I have not checked the RTM/OEM or retail images to see if any are the same.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Mods

2009-10-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been very interested in setting up a modded server for CoD4, and I am looking to find a very nice one for the upcoming LAN Party. I stumbled across this today, the Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare.

BarnLAN II Updates - Schedule, Games, and Tourneys

2009-10-10T02:04:00.000-07:00

An update to the BarnLAN Party coming up this November

The date has been confirmed as November 21st, 2009, from 12 noon to 12 midnight.

The game list is as follows:

First Person Shooter:

Team Fortress 2

Call of Duty MW, WaW, MW2*

Nox

Borderlands [4 man teams]

*Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may have a delayed release date that is after the LAN Party. According to most sites, the November 24th release date only applies to Europe and the November 10th date is still good for the USA. Also, the Infinity Ward website still says November 10th :)

Real Time Strategy:

Starcraft

Company of Heroes

Console:

Rock Band

Please also note that as of this moment the entry fee is only $5. This promotional period will be over soon, and the early entry fee will be $10. Day of entry fee is $15.
Update: There is now the option of group registration. When registering a group of 4 friends at once, the group will receive a 25% discount, costing only $30.

The venue of the BarnLAN II is still being discussed, but we think we have found a good place. I will let everyone know as soon as it is official... or even unofficial ;)

What are you waiting for? Go sign up and prepare for the best LAN party ever!
http://links.novalan.org/barnlan

BarnLAN II announced

2009-10-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 7th, administrator and founder of BarnLAN Chris Fairfax announced that they will be hosting their second LAN Party, deemed BarnLAN II, in late November. The plans have not yet been finalized, as BarnLAN officials want to get input and coordination from the administrators Nate Dunlap and Nick Johnson of affiliate parties Grid47 and NovaLAN, respectively. This news was released after some speculation as to when, or even if, they were planning on having one again this year. More community updates and flierswill be available to help spread the word soon.