The Nibbana Family

When I was 10 years old I had two enormous posters hung over my bed. One was a red Ferrari Testerossa, the other a white Lamborghini Countach. I would stare at those posters and endlessly daydream about one day getting behind the wheel of the real thing. As luck would have it, that dream has come to life. I discovered a rental agency outside of New York City called Gotham Dream Cars that rents everything from Ferraris and Lamborghinis to the Mercedes McClaren SLR and Bentley. My buddy James was coming into town and we decided to each rent a Lamborghini, he a Gellardo and I chose the Murcielago.

When “Lambo Day” was finally upon us, I was just as nervous as I was excited. How often do you have the opportunity to drive a car that costs as much as your house? I settled into the seat of the Murcielago and familiarized myself with the interior. Formula 1 style tiptronic transmission: check. 580hp V12 engine: check. Enormous 14″ wide tires: check. Updated will and testament: check. After signing my life away I was handed the keys. It was time to cut this monster loose!

Seeing a bright orange Murcielago on the open road is enough to turn heads. Seeing a bright orange Murcielago next to a bright yellow Gellardo is enough to break necks and cause whiplash! These things are attention getters, no doubt. We hadn’t driven more than a mile from our starting point and already I had a feel for what it would be like to be a naked supermodel walking down a busy street. Not familiar with the area, we accidentally took a wrong turn into a residential neighborhood and people were literally coming out of their homes with cameras and kids to get a peek. Everyone was gawking!

We made our way up the Pallisades Parkway to a public park called Bear Mountain. Here we found lots of curved, open roads where we could have a little fun and play a little cat-and-mouse. Once confident I simply put my foot down, watched the revs climb and blipped my way through the gears. Intoxicated is the only way to describe what I was feeling and to be honest, I couldn’t tell you how fast I was going, nor do I care. I simply enjoyed the sweet melody of the V12 at 8000rpm as I down shifted and the computer controlled transmission rev-matched the gears before re-engaging the clutch. Who needs a radio when you have a symphony right behind your head?

Truth be told, the day ended way too fast and it was over before we knew it. Caught up in all the excitement I didn’t realize until afterwords that we had hardly gotten any video or photos. Oh well, that just means we’ll have to do it again!

And “A Christmas Story (You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!)”…

It’s been two weeks since my birthday, and I have been silently frustrated about it since. Birthday’s are a sore subject with me. Who actually enjoys getting older after 30? It’s also hard to digest the fact as you get older you receive less recognition on your birthday. Fewer friends and family seem to even acknowledge them with each passing year. Once you have children, the center of attention on holidays and birthdays becomes focused upon them (as it should). But a culmination of events has resulted in my utter despisal of my birthday.

This last birthday was especially frustrating. I asked for one gift, tires for Kelsi’s car, because her tires are nearly bald and we haven’t had the money to replace them. Kelsi objected to this idea because it wasn’t really a gift for me. What she failed to realize is that a gift that helped her in turn helped me, as we share income and bank accounts and new tires would have eased the burden of having to figure out how to pay for them. I knew I was asking for an expensive gift beyond the scope of normal birthday presents, but I figured other family members with birthdays had also recently asked for tires and they got them. Since people didn’t agree with my idea, nothing was done, and my birthday came and went without acknowledgement.

For the past several weeks I have been quietly reflecting on my Birthday and trying to decide how to change my celebration in the future so I won’t be dissappointed. Finally, the other evening an idea came to me that was long overdue. Why do I depend on others to enjoy my birthday? Why am I hoping others will do something for me? After all, it’s my day, so why shouldn’t I celebrate it and do something for myself? So, hence forth, I have decided my birthday will be a day I will do something special for myself. And I have already decided what I will do next year.

Next year for my birthday I am going to take The Dream Car Tour. The Dream Car Tour is an opportunity to drive six different vehicles from among a stunning collection of the world’s greatest automobiles, including the Ferrari F430, F430 Spider, and 360 Spider, the Lamborghini Gallardo, Gallardo Spyder, Murcielago and Murcielago Roadster, the luxurious Bentley Continental GTC, the stunning Aston Martin DB9, the monster Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG, and the brand new Ferrari-powered 400hp Maserati GranTurismo.

For once I’m actually looking forward to my next birthday. Hopefully I won’t be a birthday Grinch after next year.

I seldomly play computer games. When I do, I get very drawn in and play really hard, quickly begin feeling guilty for ‘wasting time’ on mindless entertainment, and then quit playing just as fast. As a very logical person and computer programming hobbyist, I am also always looking for ways to beat the game by finding areas to exploit to my advantage. Back in the 90′s while playing Final Fantasy VII, I found a sequence for earning money within the game by depressing keys in a certain order. I rigged up some duct tape on my controller to hold the keys in place and 8 hours later I was rich!

A couple of months ago I became obsessed with MyBrute. The benefit of MyBrute for someone like me is that it only allows three fights per day. This equates to about five minutes of game play per day, which is perfect for preventing me from becoming obsessed with the game and puts me at ease that my competitors are given the same limitation and can’t get ahead. Still, I’m always looking for an advantage. I began looking at ways to create my own bot, or an automated script which would automatically login, go to the arena, select an opponent, fight, and then repeat the process. I wrote a PHP script using the Snoopy class which succesfully completed most of these tasks. Unfortunately, it stalled when it encountered the fight stage because the creators of MyBrute utilize Flash and require a button keypress within the Flash object. Snoopy and cURL are unable of replicating keypresses in an object such as Flash. Perhaps the creators of MyBrute anticipated this, and subsequently my bot attempt was thwarted.

More recently I became obsessed with a game on Facebook called Farmville. Farmville is a cute little game that allows you to build a farm, harvest crops, manage livestock and grow trees. As a player gains experience and money from harvesting they level up and can buy new and exciting items for their farm. It didn’t take long to figure out how to quickly level and earn money and ribbons but as the games progresses leveling becomes exponentially harder and more time consuming. There had to be an easier way! That’s when I thought about using a mouse and keypress replicator that would record my keystrokes and automate the process for me. I found an application called Axife Mouse Recorder which does exactly what I was looking for. All I had to do was record myself planting, harvesting and plowing some crops and automate the recorder to do it for me while I am away. Now I can level in my sleep.

The obvious question that may come from some of you is, “Aren’t you taking away from the fun of the game?”. My answer is no, at least not for me. Different people derive different forms of pleasure from playing a game. While you may be excited and content playing a game in a more traditional fashion, I get the most excitement from figuring out how to beat a game and finding ways to exploit opportunities to my benefit. Games are a form of entertainment after all, and I believe each person should feel free to play in the way they find most enjoyable.

Here are two.

Help!