I’ve run out of witty headlines and humorous ways to say we stink. To be honest the Thunder hung in there much longer than most people expected against the 9th ranked 6-4 Houston Rockets. With names like Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady and Ron Artest, defeating the Rockets proved to be too difficult — even though Ming, McGrady and Artest all left the game at different times due to injuries.

The Thunder kept it close in the first and was down by either six or eight at the half — and that’s when things really got out of hand. In the second half the Rocket’s lead grew to double digits and despite a couple of steals and a couple of dunks, the Thunder was no match for the Rockets. Final score, 89-100.

To put it another way, the highlight of the evening was the halftime entertainment: “Simon Says with Steve Max.”

Her question was simple enough: “How do I see the entire list?” With that, the two of us went to work.

The site’s URL made it pretty clear how the query worked. You had the link to the website followed by two variables: town=TOWNNAME and CATEGORY=”X”. “X” changed depending on the category, so obviously by manually changing “X” in the URL you could hit all the different categories. By glancing at the menu it looked like there were about 130 different categories and I really wasn’t in the mood to cut/paste that URL 130 times and copy and paste the results into a big text file.

After trying all the basics (CATEGORY=ALL, CATEGORY=*, CATEGORY=%, etc) and not getting anywhere I opted for a different approach. In about two minutes I whipped out a quick VB script that would hit the URL in question 200 times, incrementing X by one each time. Each time the page loaded it would dump the contents into a text file. It worked, and I had the complete list in about five minutes.

(I should note that there is nothing illegal about this — I did not obtain any information from their web server that they do not freely offer to the public. All I did was automate the process, saving myself 200 mouse clicks.)

The best part of this story however was the ride home with Susan. We compared notes and I was both surprised and impressed by the things she had tried. She too had tried the “CATEGORY=ALL” idea, but from there our paths split. While I took a more technical route, Susan figured out the software the website was running and then Googled for other places running the same software. After finding some she went to those sites and looked at their queries. Some of them had additional parameters, which actually worked on the site we were poking around on. She had a couple of other novel ideas too; none of which panned out, but great ideas nonetheless.

While we talked on the way home, I was reminded of my generation’s hacker craze, spawned by WarGames (1983). Shortly after that movie, kids began running around asking that elusive question: “how do I become a hacker?” So many of us had so many people ask us that question that it became a joke.

Hacking has never been about any specific program or technique. It’s always — ALWAYS — been about just trying to figure out how stuff works. (And sometimes inadvertently breaking it in the process.) Yes, there are bad guys, script kiddies, misguided youths and foreign spies all out there tearing up virtual worlds in the name of “hacking,” but when you really get down to the spirit of hacking, that’s what it was (and should still be) all about — a natural curiosity about how stuff works. And how do you teach that? In short, you don’t. “Teach me to be curious.” Sorry, I can’t.

Anyhoo, congrats to Susan for finding her inner-hacker — we’ll make a nerd out of her yet!

The Thunder looked like a high school team trying to keep up with the Orlando Magic. The announcers begged the crowd to shout “DE-FENSE,” and each time we did the Orlando Magic would walk down the court, reach up and place the ball in the net. When the Thunder would get the ball the Magic would take it away, walk down the court, and gently place the ball into the hoop. Either the Thunder could not hear our cries of “DE-FENSE” or they simply ignored our advice.

By the end of the first quarter the Thunder was down by 20 (17-37) and some people had already begun leaving. By halftime we were down 29 points. Most people might think it would be safe to pull your star player (Dwight Howard) out of the game, but no, he stayed on the court the entire night, rejecting Thunder baskets at will (sometimes knocking them clear into the stands). The final score (Magic 109, Thunder 92) barely conveys how badly we were over powered.

Mason, with cotton candy in hand and a Desmond Mason jersey on his back, didn’t seem to mind much.

The weekend before last, Mason and I repaired dad’s trailer. From sitting outside, the wooden planks had rotted. I briefly considered converting the 8′x16′ trailer’s wooden planks to metal, but the $1,200+ estimate quickly changed my mind. What I would like to do some day is convert the trailer’s wooden planks to those plastic composite ones, but even that would cost $500+. Instead, we opted for a shorter-term (but much more economically feasible) solution — we covered the currently existing wood with sheets of particle board (not MDF, but the big chunks). After Home Depot cut the wood to size for us, we took everything back to Dad’s front yard where Mason stained both sides of each piece of wood before we screwed the sheets into place. Dad paid for the materials and even gave Mason five bucks for his efforts. (Kids work cheap; I highly suggest making a few before beginning any “labor” (no pun intended) intensive projects.)

So last weekend, Mason, dad and I christened the trailer with a trip to Tulsa to pick up a couple of cabinets. One of them was a generic JAMMA cabinet — nothing to get excited about. The other one is missing most of its guts and will end up being a long restore, but the cabinet itself may excite a few readers …

Smile, you’re on my blog for having multiple signs made with such a simple mistake.

The Hawks jumped out to an early lead, leaving the Thunder in the dust at 0-7. The Thunder scored a couple of baskets but the Hawks stayed out in front, leading 5-16 early on in the first. For all of the first quarter and most of the second, it seemed like the Thunder could not find a play that worked. They missed layups, they missed 15-foot jumpers, they missed free throws, they missed alley-oops, they missed three pointers … and yet somehow the score remained close. At one point I remember being down by five and asking the guy next to me, “doesn’t it seem like we should be losing by more than five points?” He agreed.

Late in the second, the Thunder pulled it together. They made a few steals, sunk a few baskets, and unbelievably went into halftime leading by three points. Nobody thought the lead would last, and ultimately it didn’t, but at early in the fourth quarter the Thunder were actually up by seven. Would it be possible for the Thunder to beat the undefeated, number-one ranked Atlanta Hawks?

No, it would not be possible. The Hawks put all their starters back in and taught the Thunder a little lesson called, “welcome to the NBA.” The Hawks scored 31 in the fourth quarter, taking the ball away from the Thunder at will. A late attempt at that age ol’ classic plan “foul-the-shooter” was too little too late for the Thunder. Mason (Desmond, not my son) hit a 3-pointer with 10 seconds left that brought the Thunder within 4, and that’s where the game ended (89-85, Hawks).

Sometimes a game’s end score doesn’t reflect the feeling of the night. While the Thunder only lost by four, the game never really felt that close. Even when we were winning it didn’t feel like we were the better team. For two years I watched the OKC Hornets blow third quarters and try fourth-quarter rallies. The Thunder have a similar but slightly inverted approach of building up third quarter leads and then blowing them in the fourth. The Thunder are going to have to learn how to close out games (and get some good draft picks over the next two or three years) to become contenders.

NBA.com ranks the Thunder 25th out of 30 teams — not bad considering at the beginning of the season, we were ranked dead last.

I’ve read about drilling locks before, I’ve watched people do it before but never actually done it myself. The concept is pretty simple — get a drill and drill directly into the lock. If you go about halfway in you can drill out the lock’s tumblers, which will allow it to turn freely. I decided to give it a try with my new drill, and to my surprise it was as simple as it appeared. I used a medium-sized drill bit and drilled right through the tumblers in about ten seconds. I couldn’t get the lock to turn, so then I switched to a slightly bigger drill bit and drilled right through the back of the lock. The whole process took less than a minute and when I was finished the back of the lock simply fell off.

With the lock gone I was able to open the coin door, which is where I discovered the next problem. The game has no coin mechs. The front of the coin door is there but there’s nothing on the back side. Quarters dropped into the machine were simply falling directly into the coin bucket. For the time being I flipped the jumpers on the board enabling free play. Problem solved.

With that it was on to the monitor. I pulled the front glass up to find another layer of smoked glass. I pulled that up and noticed that the glass looked … blurry. Not only that, but it looked like some of it had rubbed off on to the monitor. Licking my finger, I wiped it across the monitor and a dark layer of “something” came off. A few minutes of Windex later and the monitor looks like new.

You might be thinking, “I can’t believe it took him four years to perform thirty minutes of repairs,” but that’s not quite true. It took me four years to build up enough knowledge to be able to troubleshoot and fix games within thirty minutes.

Jason Scott, director of The BBS Documentary and proprietor of textfiles.com has become an authorized reseller of my book Commodork. Jason is offering autographed copies of Commodork (by me, not him) in a couple of different bundles: one packaged with the BBS Documentary (over six hours of interviews packed onto three double-sided DVDs) for $50, and another package that includes Commodork, the BBS Documentary, and the Dark Domain DVD-Rom (the complete ACiD Artpacks Archive, compiled by the group’s founder RaD Man) for $60 which, if you do not own all three of these items, is one heck of a deal. These would make an awesome Christmas gift for that BBS-loving geek in your life. Go here to order.

In other news, I did a bit of work out in the arcade this past week. In order, I …

… added a test button to my 48-in-1 cabinet. 48-in-1 boards need a test button in order to change the board’s default settings, one of which is the thing’s volume which is turned all the way up to ear-bleeding levels.

… did more work on my MAME cabinet. I never liked the old front end I was using and I replaced it with one that didn’t work at all. This week I installed MALA which is probably the easiest MAME front end I’ve ever installed. I’m still having an issue with getting MAME to run in full screen on my cabinet. It works fine in “Windowed” mode, but hangs when I tell the front end to run it in full screen mode. Funny thing is, I’ve switched out front ends AND MAME versions and I still have the problem. It doesn’t act like a hardware issue but it’s hard to say. I downloaded 10 different MAME releases last night so I’ll run through a couple of them and if that doesn’t work I guess I’ll rebuild the whole darn thing.

… picked up a bunch of stuff, including a 4-way/8-way switchable joystick (for my 48-in-1 cabinet), a couple of Neo Geo MVS PCBs, two games I already had (Samurai Shodown I and II) and one I didn’t (an MVS 16-in-1).

… rearranged the entire arcade. After getting rid of two or three games I’m back down to where I can line my games up around the outside walls instead of having little mini-rows. It feels much more open and I like it much better. I still have three games out in the garage (Commando, Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede) and a spot for at least one of them, which means it’s time to go back through the arcade and find a couple more I can live without.

Last night, Susan, the kids and I went to see Paula, Emily, and several of our other friends play soccer. (MySpace Picture Album) In the last game of the season the girls managed to pick up their second win. I’d like to think it was Morgan’s cheering that put them over the top.

No big plans for this weekend. I have a couple of arcade cabinets to pick up in Tulsa should I get around to it, and Sunday night I’ll be going to my next NBA game. Tonight the 1-3 Thunder take on the currently undefeated 4-0 Utah Jazz, and Sunday we play the currently undefeated 3-0 Atlanta Hawks. That’s great.

With as little as I know about politics, I have the distinct advantage of viewing each presidential election through the eyes of a complete idiot, or at least those of a naïve child. That being said, once Obama received the Democratic nomination I had no doubt that he would win the election. In fact, the election’s results seemed pretty cut and dry to me a long time ago.

A couple of weeks ago, Larry King had Republican Ben Stein and Democrat Charles Barkley (of all people) on his program to discuss the then upcoming election. Ben Stein said that the Republicans had all but conceded the election at that point, and his logic was as follows: white people were expected to split their votes 60/40 between McCain and Obama, while black people were expected to vote 100/0 for Obama. Barkley agreed with Stein and said the biggest key to victory was simply getting black people out to vote.

Again, through my naïve eyes, there was a little bit more to the election, but not much. McCain publicly said things multiple times that made the average person scratch their head. At one point he said he didn’t understand the Internet or use email. Another time he said he didn’t know how exactly how many houses he owned. And then there was the whole Palin thing. I honestly don’t know if Palin got a fair shake or not, and I don’t know her personally, but in the media she came off as an idiot. Let’s face it, McCain is no spring chicken, and I think the thought of putting Palin second-in-command next to a guy that is just a few years younger than Mason’s great grandmother (who uses the Internet and understands e-mail just fine) was a pretty scary thought for a lot of voters. On one hand you have a guy who’s afraid of the Internet and on the other you have a guy who advertised his campaign though virtual billboards in videogames (true story).

The other thing I think pushed people toward Obama was that he had a very simple platform and message, which was essentially, “things suck right now and a vote for me is a vote for change.” I’ll buy that — Obama will be this country’s fifth youngest president of all time (behind Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton and Grant) and based on his race and his campaign I think everyone can see change is in the air. Obama’s message destroyed McCain’s, which was … well, I’m not even sure what McCain’s message was. With gas approaching an average of $4/gallon and rampant home foreclosures, “status quo” was the wrong side of the argument to stand on. Whether all his policies exactly lined up with Dubya’s or not, there were enough similarities for voters to avoid voting for him.

A lot of people are talking about the racial boundaries that our country broke last night. I think I will wait four years before declaring that victory.