ubercharged.net

Currently I’m running Team Fortress 2 on a MacBook Pro dual booting between Windows and OS X using boot camp. Now I’m on a glorious mission to add Ubuntu into the mix for a triple boot setup.

Its entirely possible that I’ll balls the whole thing up and end up with a MacBrick for a few days till I get it sorted. So if I suddenly go AWOL, and am not playing TF2, and don’t respond to emails, thats why (not that much different to normal really…)

I was kinda happy with the setup I had using Mac OS X for development work and Windows for gaming and pissing around cross platform testing. Anyway, then I got shifted over to a Ruby on Rails project (which is a bit more interesting than the back end Java development work I was doing), and I need to run against Oracle. Which Mac hates. So I need to boot into Ubuntu to get any work done. Man, this stuff shouldn’t be this hard.

Update
It all went quite smoothly in the end. Only lost one business day to getting it all set up (I was expecting way worse). The only gotcha I encountered was resizing the OS X partition to create the Windows and Linux partitions. Diskutil in OS X lets you resize partitions dynamically without splatting the current drive contents, but it doesn’t play so nice when you’ve been using the partition for a while and you’ve already got fragmented data all the way up into the areas that the new partitions will require.

I bought a copy of iDefrag, and ran the off line compaction operation. That cleared it all right up.

From there, the guides on Installing Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro and Triple Boot via BootCamp Ubuntu were invaluable.

After that it was another day or so getting the Ubuntu environment set up for development (installing Ruby, Rails, Oracle, NetBeans etc), and I was good to go with a nice triple boot system.

Another happy christmas down. I’ve still got no idea what is happening in TF2 land after being out of the loop staying at my wife’s parents’ place, so this is another lame “madlep whining about his life” ego post.

I managed to royally screw up my flight schedule. $1000 later, I’m re-booked, and flying the next day. I didn’t even get a flight with Qantas (I’m in their business lounge club), so I’m on Air New Zealand, which means having to slum it through the slow regular check in lines, and wait in the cattle class gate lounge. Yuck. At least Wellington airport has free wireless now, so it’s not too bad.

Speaking of Wellington airport - this is the kind of fun you can have there:

I figure it’s actually safer. Most plane crashes are due to human error, and the pilots have got to be paying more attention in those conditions.

The dumbest thing in airport security in recent times has got to be the ban on liquids once you get past security. My water bottle got confiscated. You can buy water once you get past security - but $4 a bottle? I reckon the beverage companies are lobbying for these regulations, its really nothing to do with terrorism.

Anyway, back to normal life. So I’ll play some TF2, catch up on the gossip, and post some of the rants I’ve been writing up in the off time.

Well, apparently the whole internet shuts down at christmas, so I’m outta here for a week or so (back to the homeland to see the family unit).

In the meantime, hope all the regulars and the randoms reading have a nice xmas and new year. Play some TF2, and try not to die too much.

If you’re still reading this, I don’t really have anything interesting today, but the Control Point guys do have a selection of holiday cheer on their TF2 christmas carol podcast (its worth listening just for the pyro version of jingle bells).

Oh man, this one is hilarious. Apparently Digital Jedi is being targeted by a sophisticated online organised crime gang threatening to send clan stack pics to me if DJedi doesn’t meet their demands.

REV6StingraY`d5: wire me 50 dollars or I will send a clan stacked picture of djedi to ubercharged.net… what will he think about djedi then!
REV6StingraY`d5: meet my demands or this image - http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/2553/djedistackedkg5.jpg will be sent to every news orginazation in the biz

This stuff is priceless.

Its the weekend again, so that means the stackers are out in force messing with YOUR game time.

Luckily the message is getting out, and our army of anti-stackers are doing their bit.

SO. We’ve got a massive Clan Stacked update with a whole bunch of nice shots this week.

First up, Jerry Fuselier (Fuseman) has a 5 deep shot of <CC><

Zen has a 4 deep shot of Turmoil *

Boian “neau” Alexiev has a 3 deep shot of noPantz.

deadlock has a 5 deep shot of [WP]

LavaGod Sacrifice has our second ever 6 deep stack done by [UoY]

Jonah H. has a 3 deep stack of [DAD]

And last, but not least, driver_800 send in another 6 deep shot, with this interesting note:

Here’s one I picked up last night. I pointed out via allchat that they would likely set the record on the “stacking hall of shame,” and they reacted, so maybe your wall is gaining some currency. Anyhoo, they were steamrolling every round in dustbowl in under two minutes. Twitchy and illiterate juveniles.

Nice. Good to know we’re getting a name for ourselves

As always, you can see the full list at the Clan Stacked page.

We’ve had a couple more submissions to the clan stacked archive.

Jerry Fuselier (aka Fuseman) sent through our first 6 deep stack, and another 5 deep stack.

And Jeff Olson dropped in a 5 deep stack. Although he did say

That having been said, this doesn’t happen often, and it’s an awesome server.

Still, a 5 deep stack on a 6 player team is an impressive stack.

Jerry Fuselier sent in a screenshot of a 4 deep stack by [Team Croquette] to add to ubercharged’s Clan Stackers list.

Cheers Jerry

This one is pissing me off more and more. Threads like this one over at the official forums where the stackers try to defend their stack action have pushed me over the edge, and I’m taking matters into my own hands.

So, after my rant the other day against clan stacking, I’ve started collecting screenshots and have put up a permanent page here at ubercharged to document their crimes against humanity.

You can find it under Clan Stack Hall Of Shame - which is permanently linked from the top banner.

If you happen to spot any blatant stacking, send them in to madlep@ubercharged.net and I’ll add them with credit. Happy hunting.

Luke Mckinney saw the post I put up the other day linking to his Team Fortress 2 motivational posters, and liked ubercharged.net enough to do a custom motivational poster for us featuring our own Heavy Drinking Guy (aka Steve).

Cheers Luke, love your work.

Me and a bunch of guys from work have been playing the Team Fortress 2 beta and have been loving it. Sniping, setting people on fire, stabbing people in the back who thought they were our friends, clubbing people who walk slower than us, and then we played some TF2.

We’ve been spending more than a few hours playing each night, and then recapping the evenings play the next day at work over the ritual morning coffee. We talk a lot of crap and have a few laughs about the crazy stuff in this game. So I figured we could post some of the coffee machine conversations online. Maybe someone might find them interesting.

Which is how we got to ubercharged.net - basically a bunch of random ramblings (some of it written sober), about all things related to Team Fortress by professed amateurs.