Tocci's Blog - TocciOnline.com http://www.toccionline.com/blog/ Dominic Tocci's blog. A humorous look at the world from Tocci's perspective. Keep tabs on Tocci and enjoy the links, ponderings, and random thoughts. http://www.toccionline.com/images/blog/title.gif Tocci's Blog - TocciOnline.com http://www.toccionline.com/blog/ en-us Copyright 2011 TocciOnline Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:27:29 EDT http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=418 Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:40:47 EDT Home Improvement http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=418 Before I get started, let me just say congratulations to Mandy and Luis on your engagement. I love you, Sis.

This isn't a home improvement blog, but that's been what has consumed me in the past couple of months. Although most of it was not so much "improvement" as it was necessary repair.

melted wires and wirenutsThe most time consuming job has been rewiring our house. The main goal has been to replace all of the aluminum wiring in our house with copper, but along the way, I've found and fixed quite a few overloaded circuits complete with melted wire nuts and charred wiring. I found a box sealed inside a wall where aluminum and copper wires were connected, ungrounded outlets, ungrounded metal faceplates on plastic boxes, lots of exposed wire splicing, and countless other code violations and fire hazards. I've been getting a lot of use out of the attic stairs I installed and garage attic hatch I made.  It's been a lot of time in attic spaces, crawlspaces, and basements, but I'm finally done with everything but one outside light in the backyard and the outside outlet for our pool. I think I can wait for some warmer weather to tackle those, or at least for the snow to melt.

We bought a new kind of insulation that's made from polyester. It's called SafeTouch and it's made by Dow. I installed their R21 product in our attic after the wiring was finished and noticed that it didn't fluff up to fill the joists like it was supposed to. (When insulation is compressed, it doesn't work as well.) I contacted Dow and it turns out that I got a bad batch of the R21, which apparently was new and had a few problems. Dow went above and beyond to fix the issue for us by sending us some of their R19 product to add to our attic and make up for the lost R value. Unfortunately that means more time in the attic and the need to raise the catwalk floor up above the second layer of insulation. (I'm in the middle of that project now.) In the end we'll be better off.

Our garage roof had a slight sag to it so I built something like a purlin wall using a 2x6 horizontally across the rafters and 2x4 posts, notched and anchored to joists and a load bearing wall below. It's solid as a rock and seem to have worked a treat.

Our front porch roof was also sagging due to a sunken footing on one corner. I adjusted, bolstered, and built up the footing with cement making the roof level and fully supported once again. That was the first time I worked with cement but it won't be the last. The front steps need some patching in the spring.

Tocci Ponders: Is Windows 7 eighty-eight versions behind Windows 95? If so, we're in trouble.

I blew out our sprinkler lines with my new compressor just before the freezing temperatures settled in, saving an $80 visit from the sprinkler company. Just 3 more years of skipping those until the compressor pays for itself!

Tocci Ponders: Why do movies and TV shows run credits for production staff? Does anyone in the audience care who did the lighting? When I buy a snickers bar, it doesn't list who picked the peanuts on the wrapper. When I buy a sweater it might say "hand made in India" but it doesn't also say "by Rajiv". Why is it that only people in the entertainment industry get their names in front of the consumer?

In other news, xmas came and went. We cut down our own tree again but this year we went to Lantier Farms and got a blue spruce. The tree was beautiful with a grayish hue to it and the branches held up really well under the weight of the ornaments. The only problem was that it was really prickly. Still, I think I'd get another.

Link overload:

 

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=417 Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:38:04 EDT pool closed, giant zucchini, home improvement http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=417 As far as the end of summer is concerned, for us it's not about Labor Day or the autumnal equinox. It's all about the pool. If the weather cooperates, we're jumping in. However this past Sunday was autumn capitulation day when we abandoned all hope and closed the pool for the winter. Fortunately, fall is my favorite season, so I didn't take it so badly. This year I used a PVC elbow in my jet return so that I didn't have to drain the pool as much to close the lines. I think it worked well. I guess we'll see next May. Great or brown = fail.

giant zucchiniIn a stark contrast to the most dry summer I can remember, we've had a lot of rain lately which has kept me from tending to what's left of our garden. This weekend, we discovered a giant lurking in one of our zucchini plants. I didn't even know the zucchini was still growing, but one the size of a watermelon was happily plumping up under our noses. I picked it, skinned it, dug out the seeds, and Jenny turned it into a ridiculous amount of zucchini bread.

I put down a new kitchen floor in my mother's home the other day. After weighing the options, we went with the new Allure flooring from the Home Depot. It was pretty easy to install but it still took a while due to the prep work and odd cuts involved. My dad helped me the whole time so we were able to finish it in one day. It looks really nice!

I'm now back to working on the electric in my house...

S&*t to do. No time for links this time. :(

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=416 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:51:41 EDT Rubik's Cube http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=416 Rubik's CubeI can finally solve a Rubik's cube! Check that one off my bucket list. I can get the first 2 of 3 layers in place perfectly without using any algorithms, just by understanding how it works. For that last layer I still need to use algorithms to solve it consistently, but hey it gets the job done. Here are a few helpful links if you'd like to learn too. And here's a video of a three-year-old solving it in 114 seconds to make you feel stupid.

Tocci Ponders: Why do people still say "backslash" when giving URLs? It's just a slash. And there's no reason to say "forward slash" either. If anybody really needs clarification as to which direction a slash goes in a URL, they probably have never seen the Internet anyway.

Congratulations to newlyweds Chris and Amanda Dzwilewski! Enjoy the honeymoon in Italy, guys!

This link list consists of a few commercials that I find amusing. It's kind of sad that many commercials these days are more entertaining than the programs they interrupt.

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=415 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:53:06 EDT Cat Story, Finished Super Mario Bros Wii http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=415 The other night I went to bed around 4AM, which is not unusual for me. I brought the cat upstairs and put her on the bed. She likes to sleep on the bed with us but has trouble jumping up there. I grabbed a pair of mesh shorts and a t-shift from the drawer in my nightstand before heading off to brush my teeth. When I got back to bed, the cat was gone. Sometimes she disappears to use the litter box or do whatever cats do, but she usually comes back and starts tapping me from the floor until I pick her up and put her on the bed. After a few minutes I assumed she found a different place to hang out for the night so I went to sleep, closing my nightstand drawer which I had inadvertently left open. I was woken up around 7AM by Jenny who could hear the cat meowing from my side of the bed. "Where is she?", Jenny asked. I had no idea. We looked under the bed, under the nightstand, and behind the bed. No Leia. I called her and we heard her meow again from under the nightstand. I opened the bottom drawer to see if she was stuck behind it. No Leia. Then I opened the top drawer and she popped out like a jack-in-the-box! Apparently she hopped in there from the bed when I was brushing my teeth and was sleeping comfortably in there for a few hours. I didn't notice her when I shut the drawer because the room was dark and her coat camouflages quite well against just about any background in the dark. I guess when she had had enough, obviously she couldn't open the drawer by herself, so she asked for assistance. Poor cat. At least she wasn't hurt at all and didn't seem traumatized in the least, so that's good.

Tocci Ponders: Why is marijuana called weed? I've pulled plenty of crabgrass and clover from my lawn but I have yet to find any purple haze growing out there.

With the help of Eric 1.0, I finally finished the last two boards on Super Mario Bros Wii. That world 9-7 is a motherf&*ker. Basically the plot of the game ends at the end of world 8, but that opens up the bonus world 9. I assumed after you beat all of those levels and collected all of the star coins, you'd get some special little cut scene or something, but that's not how it goes down. Basically you finally beat the last board and a message pops up that says "You have completed everything in New Super Mario Bros Wii". Not very satisfying.

Tocci Ponders: Do the girly magazines in the Harry Potter universe have photos that come to life like the newspapers do? 13 year old wizards have it so good.

UFC this weekend!

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=413 Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:48:03 EDT Blogging to Keep the Blog Alive http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=413 So much to share. I started quite a few projects that I can write about, and I can't in good conscience abandon this eight year old blog. So here goes nothing...

It all started with a buzzing in the walls whenever Jenny would turn on the hair dryer, or when the coffee maker would kick on. I discovered that most of our house has aluminum wiring, which has been known to cause fires. I decided to rewire the house with copper, starting with the two bathrooms upstairs. I have yet to accomplish this goal, but I'm getting there...

attic_stairsFirst, I needed to be able to get up and down into the attic easily. That was a problem, since the only access was through a small hatch in the packed closet in Jenny's office.  So, step one was to install attic stairs. I chose a heavy duty model that required some significant reinforcement of our existing joists, but I got it done.

The next step was to remove the old insulation from the attic space so I wouldn't have to wear full biohazard gear every time I went up there. The old fiberglass insulation in our attic was completely shot. There were sections missing, sections that were compressed or disintegrating, and everything had a thick layer of dust and fiberglass particles on top of it. I took my Israeli military issue gas mask out of storage (I bought it just after 9/11 when I lived just outside Manhattan) and went through three full-body paper suits from Home Depot but I managed to bag it all up. biohazardI must have filled up 30 contractor bags. I vacuumed the remaining dust with the shop vac and a hepa filter and now the attic is ready for rewiring.

Once the insulation was gone, the heat in the attic became an issue pretty quickly. There was an old attic fan up there but it was disconnected before we moved in. The next project was to replace the motor and blades with a new thermostat controlled model. The fan helps with the heat a lot, but it will be better once we put new insulation up there.

The next phase is to remove some of the drywall in the garage that surrounds the electrical panel and make a decision as to the best route to run the new wires. The only thing I know for sure is that I have to get them up to the attic.

Tocci Ponders: Why haven't cats evolved to have digestible hair?

In other news, our garden this year has been very productive. I expanded it by 8 feet this year, making it 24 feet long. Once again I used the grass I displaced to sod parts of the lawn that needed it. We took that big maple tree down last fall so we had a pretty big area that needed some grass, so that worked out well. We've harvested plenty of yellow squash, zucchini, two varieties of cucumbers (some HUGE... see photo), cucumbersbanana peppers, basil, red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, Japanese eggplant, and a ton of tomatoes. I'm still waiting on the bell peppers. I couldn't believe how big red leaf lettuce gets. They were about 3 feet high before they died. No joke.

Fishing season has treated me well so far this year. I think I'm getting the hang of it. So far my biggest fish was over five pounds, caught on a four inch senko. I've also had some good days using frogs and brush hogs.

drivewayAlso, we got a new driveway. Late last year, the electric company sent out some contractors to run new electric lines underground through our development. They used a big drill and started drilling right on our corner. When they went under our driveway, the shale deep underground was displaced and created a speed bump. The contractors attempted to fix the driveway a few times, but it never was quite the same, so eventually they agreed to have it repaved. It looks great now, but we're still not parking on it. They said to wait two weeks, but we've given it an extra week and a half so far since it still feels a bit soft due to all of the heat and humidity lately.

OK now that I'm more or less caught up, hopefully my next entry will not be as daunting and I won't have such an aversion to blogging. Only time will tell.

Link ketchup:

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=412 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:04:53 EDT High Scores! http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=412 high scoresHigh score boards are now enabled in Tocci's games! (Well they've actually been up for about 2 1/2 weeks, but I've been blog-lazy.) For my leaderboard solution, I wanted to find a simple, clean, flexible, and tamper resistant solution to implement.  But we can't always get what we want, so I wrote my own.  I added them to all of my flash games except for Britney Wigged Out, which was made with an earlier version of Flash.

Since putting them up, I've come to the realization that I suck at my games. People are posting some amazing scores with furious dedication. In my Tiger's Transgressions games, for instance, I anticipated there would be multiple people posting perfect scores so I equipped the boards with a "# Times" column to subdivide those power players. But people aren't just posting a perfect score a few times. Try 1000 times. I sh*t you not. It's incredible. Even the back 9, which I thought was nearly impossible to ace, is getting multiple perfect games posted per day.

You can check out the boards in the flash games themselves or on the individual game pages here at toccionline.

Tocci Ponders: Why don't ex-sumo wrestlers ever become hockey goalies? The opposition can't score if the goalie's body blocks the entire goal.

In other news, the amazing weather we've had in New Jersey last week kicked off the fishing season a little early. I've caught two bass and a pickerel so far.

Linkz (spelling it with a "z" means I'm gangsta)

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=411 Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:08:43 EDT The Back Nine http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=411 Tiger's Transgressions: The Back NineI'm pleased to announce the launch of the sequel to Tiger's Transgressions. It's nine more hos of golf entitled Tiger's Transgressions: The Back Nine. The gameplay is pretty much identical to the original, only now the hos are not so easy (pardon the double entendre). Quite a few people were bragging about getting a perfect score of 9 on the front 9, so I had to up the ante on the back 9 with more obstacles, visual impairments, faster hos, and variable speed winds. Good luck!

Incidentally, the backlash has finally started. I found two articles so far complaining about Tiger's Transgressions, claiming it's violent towards women. Oh give me a freakin' break! The faceless and nameless hos are a mere 4 frames of animation. There's more graphic violence in Mario Brothers. It's a funny game, meant to combine golf with Tiger's mistresses to make people laugh. And if you check the comments on atom.com you'll see that virtually all men and women are seeing it that way. Some are calling it the funniest game ever! It's really no surprise that anything that can garner that kind of reaction will surely offend someone out there... but lighten up, people. Tell ya what, if my game incites a rash of people going around driving golfballs at promiscuous women from a hundred yards away, feel free to blame me.

Tocci Ponders: Why does my cat always run immediately after pooping in her litter box? Is the "poop and run" technique really that satisfying?

I've added some TocciOnline subscription options to the homepage and the creations page. You can now learn of new games and animations via twitter, a facebook group, an rss feed, or by receiving e-mail notifications.

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=410 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:32:44 EDT Go Tiger Go http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=410 Tiger's TransgressionsThe Tiger's Transgressions game has been played almost 3 million times so far according to the statistics at atom.com.  And those don't account for the times people hit the "play again" button at the end of the game either. All I can say is (and I'll keep this clean for the kiddies), "holy mo effing s-bomb". People really seem to get a kick out of knocking out adulteresses with golf balls. Even more surprising is that the feedback has been almost entirely positive. I'm not used to that at all. Just as mistresses come out of the wood work for Tiger, the malcontents inevitably appear whenever I make a game or animation. But this time there were only a couple of people who couldn't take a joke. By and large it seems the general public has a sense of humor these days. Sweet.

Timeout: I just accidentally trapped my cat in my file cabinet! I thought I heard a faint meow. I looked around. No sign of Leia. Then a minute later I heard a rustling sound near the file cabinet. No Leia. Then I heard it again and realized she probably wandered inside before I shut it. (She loves small spaces.) Amazingly she was completely out of the way of moving parts when I closed it. I just opened it back up she walked right out, laid down on the carpet, and started purring.

Back to the Tiger game, also impressive to me are the people who are scoring 9s. That's a "ho in one" on all nine hos. I don't know if that's sheer skill or just persistence, but I can tell you it's not easy. (I usually score in the 30s, maybe the 20s if I get lucky.)  One guy with the handle STICKTV posted a screenshot of his perfect game. Another guy named Rod got 9s so consistently that he came up with all kinds of variations on the game to add difficulty, and it got picked up by the atom blog. Looks like we'll need a back 9 with some trickier hos.

Tocci Ponders: In Young MC's "Bust a Move" there are lyrics that go, "Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry. In five days from now he's gonna marry. He's hoping you can make it there if you can 'cause in the ceremony you'll be the best man." [record screech] Now hold on a second. WTF is going on with Larry? You're best friends with his brother, so why would he ask you to be best man at his wedding? Doesn't he have any friends? Why not tap Harry? If I were Harry I'd be pissed. Maybe Harry's not reliable, but then again how reliable can you be if the wedding is in five days and he's still 'hoping' you can make it. It's a little late to change your RSVP. Larry really should really patch things up with his brother and maybe get some decent friends.

Tocci's back 9 links:

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=409 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:04:20 EDT Tiger's Transgressions - Tiger Woods Mistresses Flash Game http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=409 Tiger Tiger Woods y'all! (1:30) (3:40)

My Tiger Woods' mistresses game launched yesterday on atom.com. In Tiger's Transgressions, you're Tiger Woods and your mistresses are coming out of the woodwork. It's up to you to stop them from going to the press using the tool you know best - a driver. Tiger's Transgressions The object of the game is to knock each mistress out with a golf ball in the fewest strokes before she reaches a news van. There are nine ho's of golfing fun. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Jeff Silvestris for his help with the artwork.

Tiger Links:

]]> http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=408 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:05:54 EDT Christmas Decorations, Back to Flash http://www.toccionline.com/blog/?id=408 The Christmas lights are up at the Tocci house. Since it's our first holiday season in our house, we had to formulate a lighting plan.  We started with candles in the windows. Then we hung white icicle lights along the eaves of the front of the house. For a little extra flare we wrapped green lighted garland around the posts near the front door. xmas lightsI'm really pleased with the way it turned out. It wasn't difficult and now that we've done it once and figured it all out, next year will be a breeze.

The next order of business was a Christmas tree, which we attained lumberjack style at a local tree farm. xmas treeBasically you show up and they give you a wagon and saw and send you on your way. We found a beautiful Fraser fir and I took that mother down, tied it to the car's roof, and brought it home. It doesn't get much fresher than that. I love the smell of a pine tree at xmas time.

Photos on flickr.

I've been working on a new song lately about a certain social networking experience. I finished and had it ready for animating when a certain golfer had to go and take over the Yahoo Buzz with his 14 (and counting) mistresses. So I put the animation on hold to make a quick game which absolutely consumed me for the past week. I've delivered it to atom.com for publishing so it should be up soon.

Some fun to tide you over:

 

 

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