All posts by Keith Garner

Geek, Video games

Virtual Reality accident

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I, frankly, am embarrassed by this story, but by publicly sharing, I’m trying to own it and be okay with the whole experience. For many of you, I may be your first Internet/VR cliché…

I have been called an early adopter of technology.  I have an army of devices in the house from WeMo, SmartThings, Amazon’s Echo Dot, and, of course, video game systems.  As a family, we’ve had a PS4 from release date and with news of the PSVR coming out, and VR videos online, if Evan didn’t get a PSVR from Santa this past Christmas he would have exploded.  So, Santa brought the family a PSVR.

Last night I had an hour or so to kill, so I went down to play a few games. After about 45 minutes of tumble, I decided to give Sports Bar VR a try. First I tried the dart game, but since I play a lot of actual darts, its just didn’t work well with the Move controller for me.  So I made my way over to the air hockey table.  It felt pretty good to play, and I started to really get into the game.

I got so into the game, that I sent to lean forward to get some better force on the paddle a habit from playing in real life. Well, part of that habit is also leaning on the table. I was so immersed in the game, I start to lean into a table that didn’t exist, lost balance, and hit the PSVR helmet and my face on the TV console/table.

I got a pretty good gash on my face that took 5 stitches, and a cut on my eyelid that took one, and its turned into a pretty legit black eye today. I also broke the right lens in the PSVR helmet and left a nick on the screen behind it. So in the near term, no VR adventures for me until we get it sent in for repair.

Internet, Omphaloskepsis, photos

100 Happy Days challenge

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For about 4 months or so, I’ve had a browser tab open with the 100 Happy Days Challenge webpage.  I wasn’t looking to do a photo a day again, but the concept of reminding yourself about what makes you happy is one that had been on my mind.  This week the universe/great maker/nature told me its the week to start it.

For those not familiar with the 100 Happy Days Challenge, in brief, the concept is to post a picture once a day of what made you happy that day.  It doesn’t have to be artistic, it shouldn’t be about showing off, its just what made you happy.

I’ve chosen to use the default hashtag of #100HappyDays and my Instagram account as the platform.  Partially to give me an excuse to play with Instagram more.)

Yesterday was day 1.  Follow along for the next 100 days on Instagram!  When I finish, I’ll do another post talking about the experience.

Today we learned Evan needs glasses. He looks damn cute. #100happydays #day1

A photo posted by Keith T. Garner (@ktgeek) on

Geek, General, Omphaloskepsis

In lieu of flowers…

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This week, our network engineer unexpectedly passed away.  It’s been a rough week for all of the IT department as we deal with it.

To inform the rest of the company, Jason, his manager, wrote something for our internal daily newsletter. Anticipating the requests for where to send flowers or other remembrances, Jason wrote something that everyone agrees is exactly what our friend would want and I think deserves to be shared with a larger audience:

Kyle often shunned typical traditions and so after talking amongst his friends and loved ones, in lieu of flowers or donations we think he would have liked it if everyone would generate a strong password and change it regularly for any critical accounts, personal or professional. I know it sounds odd, but he would have smiled at the thought.

Rest in peace, Kyle.  Well played, sir.

Beer, Entertainment, Food

Quick Stowe, VT area recommendations

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A few weeks ago, I spent some time in Stowe, VT for work. I went out a few days early with Sarah for a quick mini-vacation. This morning one of my co-workers sent me e-mail asking for brewery and restaurant recommendations. As long as I typed it up for him, I thought I’d repost it here. (We also stopped at two wineries, but since I wasn’t asked, I didn’t write. That might be a future post.)

Beer

  • The Alchemist Brewery – Stop in for a taster. They only make one beer, Heady Topper, but its currently rated 100% on Beer Advocate and it was damn damn good. I wish I could get it in IL. He might be able to find some around Stowe too, but they can barely keep up with demand and appear to make sure they have some in the home office for tasters.
  • Rock Art Brewery – This is also a good place to stop for a tasting, and you can taste multiple beers here. The big thing to buy while there is a bottle of their wheat beer that has maple syrup in it. They don’t sell it out of VT and its really good. Sadly, they can only sell you one taster. I briefly met the owners and they were cool people. Also, watch the videos on their webpage, they are hysterical. Here’s a shot of my taster:Taster at the Rock Art Brewery
  • We were staying at the Trapp Family Lodge, which has the Trapp Lager Brewery as part of it. Over the time we were there, I had one of each type they make. They were okay, the Dunkel was definitely my favorite.

http://www.vermontbrewers.com/ is an excellent resource too and has a map of like 30+ breweries in vermont. If you think you’ll hit more than 4 breweries in vermont, you should really do the passport program that’s on the site. I wish I had found out about it at the start of my trip rather than the last day.

Restaurants

  • Crop Bistro & Brewery – this will get you a brewery AND a farm to table restaurant. Food and beer were pretty good. It’s fairly low key, and the bar in the dining room is gorgeous. They are known for their fried pickles and, having eaten them, its for good reason.
  • Michael’s on the Hill – farm to table and chef owned. This was our “let’s have a really nice dinner because we have no kids” and it totally delivered. I did the “Gold Menu” and Sarah did the “Platinum Menu” and everything we ate was awesome. My dessert of “House Preserved Strawberry Milk Shake with Chocolate Ganache Donuts” was unbelievable.

If you had to pick only one, and you don’t mind the higher cost, I’d go to Michael’s On The Hill. If we had gone there our first free night, we would have gone back the second night. We’ll definitely be back if we ever make it to the area.

Fatherhood, Omphaloskepsis

And so it begins…

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I was doing some work trying to debug a 7 year old computer that was dying. I was in the process of shuffling hard drives around and 9-year-old Dinah was watching me. I was pointing out various components (RAM, CPU, hard drives, etc) and explaining what they are and how they work at a high level.

I asked her if she had any questions. She thought about it for a bit, and then she asked, “Dad, do you have a social life.”

It was all I could do to not laugh and make her feel bad. Although, later I think she figured out what she said and tried to cover it with “I don’t even know what a social life is.”

Chicago, Cool, Photo of the Day, photos

The Tribune liked my photo (and so can you!)

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The Tribune social media folks have been doing photo challenges/call outs where the winner for the week ends up being their banner on Facebook.  The challenge for March is “green.” I entered the first of my photos that I thought of when thinking about green.

I do not have the Facebooks, but if you do, you can see the image can see the image and like it and stuff. It was also a Photo of the Day back when I was doing that in 2011.

suburban lion