Click here to view the embedded video.

Picross puzzles are also known as Nonograms, as well as about 50 other names.

Here are some other Picross games worth a look.

• Picross DS. Great game, with downloadable content. I reviewed this game when it came out.
• Gemsweeper by Lobstersoft, for Windows. As I mentioned in my review, it’s almost too casual. I spoke with the developer about this and it’s related to what I said above, how to get people into the mechanic without confusing them. This game would be perfect for me if the difficulty ramped up a wee bit faster. Lobstersoft also has a number of off-the-beaten path titles that are worth checking out.

Online versions:

• Everybody’s Picross. This has a decent tutorial and contains 30 levels to get a feel for the game.
• Puzzle-nonograms.com. Super basic version with a metric ton of ads. But it’s in HTML and doesn’t require flash.
• Nonogram :: Paint by numbers. Has decent instructions.

Enjoy!

Having once worked on both writing marginal almost-malware-adware, and also writing things that dealt with same, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t some kind of ad-targeting thing that was installed along with an extension or something.

I came across the article Make Firefox Faster by Vacuuming Your Database and it explains a bit about why this file exists, why it grows, and a way to potentially solve issues by opening up the Firefox Error Console and executing this command:

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");

This is hinting to me that browsers are getting way too complicated. I mean, as someone who has developed web applications since NCSA Mosaic was the only browser, it’s been readily apparent how this thing that was designed to show brochures on the nets has grown through a series of hacks to include scripting and a DOM to allow one to write “applications” using the browser.

The browser sucks for this. A lot. HTTP wasn’t designed to do half of what it does, the stuff that makes up a browser is like a crazy house of cards, and I’m going to stop right there and save this rant for another post.

Last week, the Detroit school board announced they are closing 1/4 of Detroit’s schools. The city is broke. Houses that sold for $250k in 2005 are turning over for $10k. The graph shown here is from a year ago on Seeking Alpha:

Detroit has been propped up for years by a variety of social programs, and now it’s defaulting. The city has collapsed. There is virtually no national news reporting on this, as always seems to be the case these days the media is complicit with government and is basically ignoring this major story. They used to blame automakers, but I suppose with GM being run by the government, they can’t really do that. The mayor is giving it a shot, but I can’t fathom a comeback from where they are.

Here’s an amazing set of images on Flickr showing the state of Detroit.

Is this the future of the US as a whole?

The taxes and fees start right away, but many of the provisions of this thing don’t start for years. So tax increase now, and some battered down crap changed for 2-4 years goes into effect later. It’ll be 1/10th of what’s promised, cost more than anticipated, and the taxes and fees will stay and likely go up.

The ONE bank that’s going to get ALL student loans out of this (why’s this in a health care bill again?) will probably do well though.

And seriously, does anyone think that 2,000 pages that rebuilds 15%+ of the US economy, which nobody has read, put together according the whims of a couple hundred Democrats doesn’t represent an oppressive regime? They’re just as bad as the R guys.

Couple that with the Fed nonsense regarding the bailouts and banks, and things are pretty bleak.

WE ARE GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO THE POINT WHERE EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T ILLEGAL IS REQUIRED. Think about that. Think about it in terms of your daily life, and that about what it really means.

Can everyone go read ‘The Road to Serfdom?’ please? Cos we’re living it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The US version:

http://www.google.com/search?q=tiananmen+square

The Chinese version:

http://www.google.cn/search?q=tiananmen+square

Sure, there’s a language bias, since the pages on the Chinese site are assuming you want some form of Chinese as your default language, but I don’t think that explains away the huge difference in results. If you set the preferred results language on the US site to Chinese (Traditional) and Chinese (Simplified) the content of the results is still in line with the English results.

Even when this place was open, it had a certain irony to it.

And here’s to you, Dan! Thanks for all your hard work!

Click here to view the embedded video.

So today I’m cleaning up the iTunes, and lo and behold I come across their early EP, and yes, I like it still and I’m subconsciously making things like this when I screw around with my Korg DS-10 and my guitar. So I guess I really like it.

They have a new single. Here’s a link to the Telefauna Official Website.

The movie Ponyo had some scary parts. Ponyo and the boy Sōsuke basically get married at the end of the movie. Sometimes it has some harsh parts and fantasy violence. It had lots of fantasy stuff about the ocean and that part was sort of violent. And that explains the waves turning into giant fish that Ponyo was running on.

It was weird when Ponyo started out as a tiny goldfish, went to a bigger fish, turned into a human, and then Ponyo started changing back into a human/fish and then at the end she was a tiny gold fish again, and then turned back into a human. Some of it was sort of crazy, like when the giant waves were going up like a water volcano.

Overall, I think it was a good movie. I will watch it again when it comes out on DVD. The scary parts maybe won’t be as scary on the TV compared to the theater screen. It was sort of cute and at the same time really weird.

-Lars

My very favorite firefox extension is firebug. It’s the one I really couldn’t live without. It’d be like trying to mountain climb with only only twenty feet of rope. Painful and unnecessary.

Chrome is the up and comer with excellent performance and seamless google integration. What would it take for me to dump my tried and true mozilla browser for the new kid on the block? At the very minimum a ported or trumped firebug equivalent.

If firebug were a commercial product I imagine there would be much more of a chance for a straight port. I’m sure the revenue generating (directly or indirectly) toolbars will get ported with ease. But firebug? Maybe what’s more likely is a firebug inspired chrome specific extension. If that happens it’ll either fall short or kick firebugs ass.

I’m sure I’m not the only web developer that feels this way. While we may not make up a significant market share in terms of raw numbers it’s because we bit twiddlers are constantly remaking the internet that I think this is an important hurdle for chrome to overcome in it’s quest for world domination relevancy. Like the human body the internet completely regenerates itself every seven years or so, and it’s we web monkeys, not the voodoo super magic of biology that is responsible for this evolution one Console/DOM/Debugger/Cookie/Net panel use at a time.

From a platform development perspective it’s a fairly cut and dry real world test. Will Chrome pass the firebug challenge? Maybe by the time you read this they have already. Maybe not.

First, Alan Cox, the guy that maintained the TTY subsystem of the Linux kernel, apparently got sick of all the whining voices in the community, including a bitch session from Linus Torvalds, and decided to bail. And apparently he’s serious. Good for you, Alan!

Next up, the CentOS project administrator, Lance Davis, has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth, along with the project funds. CentOS, for those not familiar, is an enterprise-class Linux distribution built on Red Hat.

These types of public temper tantrums are entertaining, sure. I mean who doesn’t like a bit of drama? However, they also make me question the wisdom of building a business on something open source like CentOS. Sure, the source code will always be free, but I want to build applications and maintain those, and not have to worry about the progression of the operating system as well.

The Alan Cox thing isn’t a big deal, there is a system in place apparently and there’s a new maintainer who is already maintaining. It looks like there might be a small slowdown while that gets sorted out, but if he’s been acting like a defective as Linus seems to indicate in that email, then perhaps it will result in a speedup.

The CentOS situation is different. The main administrator apparently took off with the cookies, and from the open letter it would appear some things weren’t in order before that. And now he’s going away and they’re talking about the project dying, in public, on the front page of their website. That doesn’t instill confidence.

And speaking of cookies, and this is unrelated to everything else, it looks like federal websites might start using them! Welcome to 1998, guys!

Have a nice day!

Edit: Apparently the CentOS thing has been going on for some time. And apparently it has affected development.

Edit2: Looks like CentOS found their leader:

The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward.

The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions.

We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues.

Still, can you trust the way they’re running things there?

By tinkering with this code, “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data,” Apple wrote the government. “Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result.

Here’s the original Wired article with that text. That was written to the Copyright Office to attempt to counter an Electronic Freedom Foundation request to legalize jailbreaking, or removing application and carrier locks on the phone.

Whenever you want your political way, I guess it’s best to play the fear card. But by that token, Android phones must be a menace, along with all the unlocked WinMo devices. Oh, and ALL of Europe, how’s that work? Do they just have infinitely better security on their cell towers?

You’re being annoying, Apple. Super annoying.

Google’s awesome and everything I’m not for a second going to deny that—though I’m far too attached to Firefox to make the switch to Chrome it seems by all accounts to be a nice piece of software. Why am I too attached to Firefox? Add-ons.

What makes Windows great is the endless applications available for it. A rich tapestry of millions, millions of applications. People love to bash Microsoft at every opportunity, but truth is, they are just as awesome as Google. Sure they can’t make a decent browser to save their life, they’ve released countless applications that were lame, bug ridden and fell by the wayside. That guy who got that Zune tattoo had it removed. They’ve been known to strong arm partners and put the squeeze on their competitors. Regardless, make no mistake, they are awesome. What makes them awesome is as Ballmer famously exclaimed: Developers, developers, developers.

This is also what makes the iPhone awesome. It’s what makes Firefox awesome. It’s what makes Windows awesome. These systems would be fairly sweet without a plethora of third party functionality but it’s this plethora that makes them truly, undeniably, definitively: awesome. Pry them from my dead hands awesome.

Google doesn’t seem to be totally hip to this way of doing things. I’m not saying they won’t be later, but so far, it doesn’t seem like they really ‘get’ it completely yet. Take Google Analytics for example, the insanely popular traffic monitoring tool. They are just now releasing a public beta API for exporting your analytics data. For years that data was trapped and there was no way to interface with the service. Want to write applications for Google Apps using your favorite programming language? No problem, as long as your favorite programming language is Python.

I’m a web developer and have been for sometime now. I think in web. Nonetheless, I don’t see a large market for a browser OS  anytime soon. Niche sure, M$ killer. I don’t think so. Add that to the fact that Google isn’t a super developer friendly company really, and Microsoft is much wiser and easier going then they used to be and you’ve got a bunch of hoopla for fluff.

You want irony? Google Chrome isn’t even available for Linux yet which is to be the base of the new Google Chrome operating system.

And Windows 7? Everyone says it looks, well, awesome.

First video… directed by Traktor, parts of it are over-obvious, but still. The track is also something Liam Howlett threw up when he was hitting bottom creatively, and since I’ve been feeling the same way for the last few years, that lead me back here. When this EP came out it was panned by critics (and myself) and is considered a bit of a sell-out. But now due to my current state of mind the thing seems pretty solid to me. Not sure what any of that means.

Baby’s Got a Temper by The Prodigy

Click here to view the embedded video.

And while most Aphex Twin videos are pretty spectacular (go Chris Cunningham), this is one of my favorites. If you haven’t seen it, it gets a bit of a slow start, give it a chance. Some more commentary on sex sells (and more) while at the same time selling with crazy sex! The late 90s and early naughts were SO meta.

Windowlicker by Aphex Twin

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obviously it’s a slow news month here at sarcasm.com, and I was getting sick of not having an update, so there ya go. I’m going to go back to hitting bottom. See ya.

public partial class SomethingEntities
{
partial void OnContextCreated()
{
this.SavingChanges += new EventHandler(OnSavingChanges);
}

public void OnSavingChanges(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
//Do stuff
}
}

I was trying to do exactly this but was having a problem. The gosh darn thing wouldn’t fucking fire. In fact, none of the constructors on my Entities ObjectContext were firing. My controls were dancing around all over the place selecting and updating data but nay a constructor to be called.

My EntityDataSource looked like this:

<asp:EntityDataSource ID=”DataSource” ConnectionString=”name=SomethingEntities” DefaultContainerName=”SomethingEntities”
EnableDelete=”True” EnableInsert=”True” EnableUpdate=”True” EntitySetName=”EntityName” runat=”server” />

I was using both the ConnectionString and the DefaultContainerName property as initialization parameters to get the DataSource going. Turns out this wasn’t the right thing to do because when configured this way the DataSource never got my Entities ObjectContext to fire its constructors. I got it to work after some head scratching by changing it to:

<asp:EntityDataSource ID=”DataSource” ContextTypeName=”Namespace.SomethingEntities”
EnableDelete=”True” EnableInsert=”True” EnableUpdate=”True” EntitySetName=”EntityName” runat=”server” />

By using the ContextTypeName property instead of the ConnectionString and DefaultContainerName properties everything seemed to work. A constructor on my Entities ObjectContext was called which in turn called OnContextCreated which hooked up my SavingChanges method which now gets called when it should before changes are persisted to the database.

Problem solved.

Cue ahead to 5 minutes later, the system restarts and the BD drive no longer is recognized by the system. DVDs aren’t recognized either. When a disc is placed in the slot, it’s accepted, and then the indicator that it’s reading shows in the upper right, but nothing ever happens.

I’m not the only one it would seem.

Contacting Sony yields the response that since my system is out of warranty I should pay them $149 plus tax for the repair. I’ve sent links to other people experiencing the same problems, and explained that things were perfect up until the update, just like they were with all these other people, and I just get the same response, which is:

We apologize if this has caused you any inconvenience or concern. The information available to our Consumer Services Department does not suggest that this is a problem PlayStation(R) owners are likely to experience. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) strongly supports the quality of its products and backs them with full confidence.

I… guess…? I mean, it says they strongly support the quality of their products, but also that the information does not suggest that this is a problem I’m likely to experience. But… wait… I am experiencing it, no matter what the actual odds of that are, and if you strongly support the quality, why don’t you fucking fix the shit you just fucking broke with your broken ass update, you fucks?

Sony, you’re dead to me. You were already on my shitlist with your arrogance and your proprietary nonsense, but this really pushed you over the edge. If I detect that Sony will make ANY money from a purchase, I’m out of there. That includes Sony Pictures Classics showing up on a movie, that includes a memory card reader that reads your bullshit memory stick format, all of it.

I was thinking of seeing Angels and Demons, I guess I’ll take a pass on that. And I really wanted to see Year One, oh well I’ll live without it.

In terms of raw value I’m of the opinion that both Kill Bill films had more in them to see and to like than the vast majority of well funded studio releases. That in and of itself isn’t exactly saying much considering the vast majority of well funded studio releases are pieces of litter floating by your passenger side window as you fly down the road, but, point being: neither of them felt like you got totally jipped exactly. It wasn’t that you were getting less per se, it was that, in the opinion of this moviegoer, you weren’t getting a complete experience/flick/thing either time you plunked your ten bucks down.

How important completeness is feels like a fuzzy personal matter. I don’t think this is the time or place to broach this particular Pandora’s box but let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s real important—which I believe it is. How are we to feel when Tarantino and company ask us to pay twice for two incomplete experiences. Hey Seth, this is show business, show business. There’s no show without the business. OK. But how fucking far does that go. Commercial art sure, it’s a balance right? But selling two halves of a whole without ever feeling the satisfaction of a complete experience is in my mind: criminally unacceptable. From an artistic perspective. Balance yes, absolutely, but this wasn’t it. In contrast I’m sure the bean counters loved it. Went home and played with themselves under the covers staring at an excel printout with a flashlight loved it.

For punctuation to this story of artistic degradation Tarantino again toe in toe with his money grubbing benefactor (and currently towards the end of a free fall of failure) Harvey Weinstein recently released their new film Inglorious Bastards (one volume this time) at the Cannes film festival. How did it do? My favorite entertainment reporter Anne Thompson named it 10th on her list of Cannes Ten Best Films and it didn’t win no Golden Palm.

This story is probably old hat to most of you but try this on for size: Valve Software is doing almost the exact same thing with Left for Dead except this time the halves aren’t even full size. You’re actually getting two fifty minute segments of kung fu over here and expected to pay full price twice.

Those who know Valve know they like the idea of episodic content. Seems like a good idea right? They tried it with Half Life 2 and it didn’t seem to work out so well in the sense that, well, they never got around to producing the episodic content in a timely manner which was supposed to be the whole point of it really. At least for the time being it looks as though they have given up on the Half Life front as they put their weight behind Left for Dead.

When Valve released Left for Dead Vol. 1 at the full $60 console price no one could deny it was light on content. The multiplayer and AI was so good though it was mostly forgiven. But now, here’s the kicker, they’re releasing the rest of the game, exactly one year later, and though no pricing details have been announced I bet dollars to fucking doughnuts it’s going to be full price again. You know what else they’re thinking of doing? Releasing the original LFD campaigns with the ‘sequel’ so you’ll have it all on one disc. Makes sense right?

No one makes a full release AAA first person shooter in one year. It simply doesn’t happen. The standard even for assembly line sequels from behemoths like Activision is two years. Only sports titles dare to expect you to pay that much dollar per incremental addition and they are only able to get away with that due to the nature of their domains. Bean counters get stiffies thinking about sports franchise revenue spreadsheets I’m sure.

Valve still likes the idea of releasing episodic content. Only caveat is they want you to pay full price for each release. Taking a page from the film industry playbook they are likely to ask you to pay for the same content twice, including the first half of their game on the same disc as the second half. You tell me dear reader, is this reasonable? This is a capitalistic system right? Who is anyone to judge them for trying to make as much scratch as they possibly can? Maybe I’m seeing it all wrong. For the moment from where I’m sitting it looks like a bullshit money grab from a company that isn’t known for pulling bullshit money grabs.

1. Click Start.
2. In the search box, type cmd and press Enter. You’ll get a command window.
3. Type compcln.exe
4. You will be prompted as follows:
   
   
   This operation will make all service packs and other packages permanent on this computer. Upon completion you will not be able to remove any cleaned packages from this system.
   
   
   Would you like to continue? (Y/N):
5. Answer “y” and Windows Component Clean will clean up all that crap.

That’s it. Now your system is a lot like a fresh Vista+SP2 build without all the leftover junk. Enjoy.

Nutting Associates has been defunct since 1973/1976 depending on who you talk to, and I am fairly sure that Bill Nutting passed away in July of 2008 (RIP) so Nolan Bushnell was contacted directly. Nolan was the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, and was half owner of Nutting Associates, producers of Computer Space. He happens to be a cool guy and gave permission himself, who knows how that all works legally, but hey it sounds good. The result is this fine looking CD cover:

8bit Project - Spicy Innovator vs Superior Marionette (2009)

Now that’s a fine looking CD cover. If you’re into the whole 8bit music scene, check it out. It was released in Japan on April 29th, 2009. If you want to obtain it, you can do that on Amazon.co.jp. It’s 8bit, and it’s mono. Enjoy!

http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090430-tows-kfc-coupon-download

“Terms: Free offer good for two pieces of Kentucky Grilled Chicken™ (manager’s choice) and two individual sides and a biscuit at participating KFC restaurants located in the Unites States, while supplies last. Limit one offer per coupon, one coupon per person during offer period. Must be redeemed in person. Blah blah blah blah. You are limited to 4 downloads of coupon. Coupon fraud is punishable by law.”

Okay, so that’s all well and good, but Oprah is also PETA’s Person of the Year for 2008:

http://www.peta.org/feat-personofyear-08.asp

And PETA hates KFC, going so far as to have an entire site made up called Kentucky Fried Cruelty:

http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/

Full disclosure: I can’t stand Oprah.

Question: How long until PETA goes batshit?

http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

Now, when I sleep, the computer sleeps. If I wake from sleep, work for a bit, then sleep again, it refuses to sleep (or restart or shut down) and there are log entries in the system log about the device being removed improperly.

I have a Dell M1330 with the EX720, running Vista Ultimate x64. When it gets hung up I have to do a hard restart, if I try to shut down it hangs on the “Shutting Down…” screen indefinitely. If I disable the cellular card in the BIOS, I can sleep all day, over and over with no problems.

Would love to know if anyone else is experiencing this. It’s a drag because I sleep my machine many times a day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To run Quake Live you have to install either an ActiveX control or in the case of Firefox, you actually download an installer and run it, then hit the site from your browser. This begs the question: Why?

As in, why do this? Since the code and assets are being downloaded and refreshed on a continual basis, why bother with the browser at all? Why not do what a million MMOs and things like Second Life do, just install a basic client and go from there? What they’re doing is not that different from, I dunno, Puzzle Pirates. So why bother with the browser overhead and screen real estate issues that arise from deploying this way?

People were trying this back in 1996 before everyone realized this was a bad idea. Why revive it now?

I’m all for a version of Quake that you download and install, free, and it caches the assets locally, like Second Life or Puzzle Pirates. If you’re going to make me install code, just put it in its own window.

Apple just released 2.2.1 for the iPhone 3G. It’s a 246MB download. It claims to fix some things:

1. Improves the stability of Mobile Safari
2. Fixes an issue where some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in the Camera Roll

Okay, so… what? 246MB software update. Fixes what, two shared libraries? And we need to do a monolithic OS install for that? 246MB worth?

While I’m on this topic, Sony is guilty of this crap as well. My Playstation 3 just got an update (2.6) that was really large (140MB) and here’s what that gave me:

1. Photo Gallery Application – support for the new Photo Gallery application, which gives users a fancier way of organizing and viewing photos stored on the PS3. Sort of. It’s crap, really.
2. Support for DivX 3.11
3. Guest Viewing of the PlayStation Store – provides guest access to PlayStation Store, enabling non-PlayStation®Network members to browse the storefront’s downloadable content, including games, game trailers, and demos, along with more than 4,200 movies and TV shows.

The best part of this update? The Photo Gallery application then needs to be installed separately from the XMB, after you update your PS3’s firmware. “To install the Photo Gallery application, go to the Photo section on the XMB, select Photo Gallery and press the X button.” Seriously, what the hell is it with these guys? I mean, my PS3 seems at times to be a progress indicator machine. Don’t even get me started on Playstation Home.

Meanwhile, a real software company like Microsoft can roll out incremental tiny updates to the Xbox 360 that are 1-3M and are pretty darned fast. The only huge update was when they replaced the entire OS with the new NXE. That was less than 128MB, still smaller than the PS3 update and about HALF the size of the iPhone update, and that replaced the ENTIRE OS with all new functionality.

Come on, step up Apple and Sony. Holy crap already.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/06/joystiq-visits-the-pinball-hall-of-fame/

There was an old video game museum in St. Louis.
It closed a number of years ago, but information has been preserved on my coinop.org website:

http://www.coinop.org/features/coinopmuseum/

There was also a great traveling musuem of older video games called Videotopia, though it looks like they haven’t been doing much since 2003.

http://www.videotopia.com/

I loved The Departed. I dug the way it was written, directed, cut, shot, all of it. Mark Wahlburg was fucking awesome. Just a great film. The writing in particular though was really well done. Dense, funny, fast, William Monahan immediately became one of my favorite working writers. His follow up? Body of Lies, out on Bluray February 17th.

OHYEAHH!!

In thinking about what makes stuff ‘good’ or more accurately why I like or dislike a particular thing I often fall back into that catch all word: interesting. Body of Lies, especially the first two acts, just isn’t all that interesting.

Big Bang Mini on the other hand, the SouthPeak Games published Arkedo Studio developed DS actioner is interesting. No long ‘story’ intro full of next, next, next. No confusing control schemes or long expansive corridors of repeating monotonous patterns. Just a short tutorial on you’re on to blowing stuff up. And it’s fun. I was a fan of the SouthPeak published Ninjatown also on the DS so I’ll be looking forward to seeing more from this crew. Nintendo may have ultimate bragging right for selling bazillions of systems but the fact is their bazillion systems don’t have many good games out to actually play on them. Every time I get my hands on a good game for a Nintendo embossed box I feel like I just caught some sort of magical fairy or something, bright flickering moon beams shooting through interlocking fingers as I peer into clasped hands at my exotic prize.

So what is ‘interesting’? Why does one piece of media or person or moment pull us in and another inspire continual watch checking and mind wandering? I believe that’s out of scope for this particular entry but an interesting question to percolate on anyway.

http://www.ruffiangames.com/

Is comprised of these people:

http://www.ruffiangames.com/profile

Note that a lot of them worked for Realtime Worlds on Crackdown. Note that they have signed with a major international publisher yada yada.

Crackdown 2? Holy crap, please?

It looks like a banner from 1999, but what the heck.

If you really want to support the economy, check out this link:

https://www.economylapelpin.com/

And God bless the United States of America.

The took two weeks to ship my product, then when you contact YallStore for resolution, they are completely unresponsive. All of this is designed to take you past the 30 day return policy. In addition, if you pay with Paypal, you won’t be covered by Paypal’s “protection” policy. Their policy only covers shipping, so I guess they chould ship you a box of dog excrement and as long as they have a shipping record, that’s all that matters.

That’s all. Avoid YallStore.com / Y’allStore, buyer beware, etc.

Darwin’s 200th birthday is February 12, 2009.

We are trying to amass 200,000 members in our Happy Birthday Charles Darwin group on Facebook. Here’s the link:

http://tinyurl.com/ch3lkr

The race is on… We met our first goals of 200 and 2,000 members early.

As of the moment of this post, we are at 8,561 members!

Our daily goal is 10,000 members today, Sunday 2/1/09.

And our larger goal is at least 200,000 members by Darwin’s 200th birthday: Thursday, February 12, 2009.

Can we find 200,000 people that want to wish Darwin a happy 200th birthday?

: : CAN WE REACH 200,000 BY THURSDAY, FEB 12? : :

1. Join this group.

2. Click on “Invite People to Join” from the menu on the right.

3. Select all your friends (this is done one at a time – while there is no “select all” feature in Facebook, it’s pretty easy to quickly click through)

4. Click on “Send invitation”

Happy 200th, Darwin!

Thank you!

http://tinyurl.com/ch3lkr

Let me back up for a moment. When I first saw Crackdown, I was like “Oh look, another GTA III clone.” When I played it, this was obviously not the case. It was much more some kind of super-agent platformer. Sure, it had that sandbox-y thing going on, and it had guns, but there was something very different.

These go in the _good_ column.

This game was so polished, and the rewards were doled out so just right, that I actually sold my initial Xbox 360 because I felt it was ruining my life. I was literally unable to stop myself from playing.

Every time you leveled up an attribute of your character, you gained access to a bit more of the map, but in a completely different way from a game like GTA. Instead of some section of the city suddenly opening up, you instead were a> powerful enough to go to another part of the city without being killed instantly, and b> vertical areas open up when your strength increases. You were always welcome to try going elsewhere in the city, but the bad guys made mince meat of you if you were to weak. It was far more elegant than just having a row of police blocking a bridge for days and days for some bogus reason.

Because of this, it never felt like there was some huge event that you would get to and then turn it off. There was always something just a little bit harder around the corner, another attribute to level up just a little bit more, and another achievement to unlock just around the corner. Very good formula.

Along comes Fable II, and it’s very similar in that manner. It also shares something with Crackdown which I happen to think is really, really good. When you shoot with a gun, your gun skill goes up. If you use a melee weapon, your melee goes up. If you keep doing things that involve strength, your strength ability increases. In other words, they’re both RPG-like action games that don’t turn you into some kind of stats machine. The experience that you earn doing different things are reflected in related abilities automatically.

Meh.

Contrast that with a game like Fallout 3. I really wanted to love Fallout 3. I ended up kind of hating it. The Pip-Boy 3000 drove me nuts after a while. Even though the Fable II interface isn’t great, you didn’t spend half the game with it up on the screen, changing weapons, micro managing health, and putting points into abilities, because they brought certain parts of it up to the top. In a battle, for instance, your d-pad actions change and are shown onscreen. If you’re hurt, things you can heal with are shown there. And more importantly, you were never assigning earned points to categories. I think if Bethesda had automated the experience/skill end of things in Fallout 3, it would have been much more enjoyable.

Crackdown and Fable II are games where you role-play. You’re a special agent, or a hero of olde. You go out into the world, and you do things. You find or buy things, and you do things that take skill to do. And in both games, your character changes to reflect what you’ve done.

Fallout 3 is some kind of throwback meta-game, where you aren’t really role-playing. Instead, you’re playing god to another character by sticking numbers into categories. In Fallout 3 I can go out into the wastes and do nothing but kill people with small guns and gain enough experience doing that to level up my character 3 levels. And when presented with the “level up screen” I can use all those points earned to increase my lockpicking skill. Suddenly my character is really good at lockpicking without ever picking a lock. Why? It doesn’t make sense.

I’m firmly on the side of Crackdown / Fable II on this one.

At the beginning of this post, I also, seemingly randomly, brought up Mass Effect. It wasn’t random. When I first played Mass Effect, with the default options, I was playing the micromanage meta-game. When I started replaying it last week, from scratch, I realized there was an option to auto-assign attributes when leveling up. The game is 500% more fun. It lets you focus on playing the role, instead of constantly having to manually make decisions about where earned experience points are assigned. The more you do something, the better you get at it. Like life.

And yes, I know games aren’t (and shouldn’t be) real life, but I think that the believability and immersion indexes go up dramatically when this type of character evolution happens automatically, based on your actions.

You: A compulsive gambler with an extra book to teach my canine, or just a collector of 25-digit tokens. You fancy yourself in Spartan Armor, but are not part of the exclusive club.

FR: Minimalist360

Let’s meet near the bookstore in Bowerstone and fulfill each other’s dreams!

You can also contact me here. Looking forward to meeting you!

Please? Pretty please? I just need Backflip and I can stop thinking about it.

Since most of my gaming happens on the Xbox 360, I have also racked up a bunch of achievements, as of right now 850/1050 gamerpoints worth. The achievements that I haven’t obtained out of the core 1000 are for anything related to Burning Routes. There is one burning route per model of car, and it involves just hauling it open-throttle style across the map from some point A to another point B, usually set far apart.

There are a few reasons that I haven’t done these. One is that I didn’t do any burning routes as I advanced my license, and now that’s pretty much all I have left. Completing a burning route, driving back to the garage, changing cars, driving to the starting point for that car’s burning route, then repeat for 80 or so cars. Since I’ve completed everything else in the game, I can’t really work it into gameplay, so it’s really tedious.

Another reason is a combination of two things. One, Burning Routes are hard, one crash and you’re liekly not going to do it. Two, there is no restart option.

Imagine that for a minute. You get in a car, do a long race across this gigantic map, and near the very end someone pulls out in an intersection and you crash. Now that you’ve blown it, you have to just sit for a moment until the game registers that you’re no longer interested, or go to the finish line and lose. And then you have to drive all the way back across the map to the starting point of the Burning route and start again. It’s torture.

Some people defend this game design decision by saying that it fits in with the open world philosophy and that anything else would be “jarring” or some other mealy-mouth fanboy crap. However, when an online race starts all players don’t have to go driving to the starting line, instead you’re suddenly warped to the starting line from wherever you are, and no one seems to complain about that.

Anyhow, I think it’s crap, and I’m not the only one.

Crashy Smashy image by JackBlade

Criterion is finally addressing this in one of two downloads available February 6th. One of the updates is the Party Pack, which is paid content and will add some kind of crazy festive party mode.

The other update, the free update, adds the forementioned restart. It also tweaks car handling and some of the game modes so they’re more balanced. For instance, the Stunt Run counter has been tweaked to start off slower and then speed up with each multiplier. Like all change, this will likely upset a large number of people and result in flamewars in many forums.

I might just dust off my copy and finish up those Burning Routes and get my Criterion license now that the game has been fixed.

Anyone is welcome to FR me on the Xbox 360, my gamertag is Minimalist360.

I’ve been playing Lips for the Xbox 360. It’s a Karaoke game that comes bundled with two wireless microphones. The commercials look good, and like a lot of Microsoft ads lately (and that bizarre NXE intro movie that plays when you first update to NXE) are a weird hybrid of American, European, and Asian aesthetic resulting in something that’s slightly surreal feeling. But, I digress.

Here are my first impressions.

Some positives:

1. It’s fun!
2. The microphones are really nice, and wireless. And soon they’ll work with Rockband via a patch.
3. It has more of a range of ways that you can do well (pitch, stability, rhythm, vibrato) unlike a game like Rockband.

Some problems:

1. The pitch indicator is unnecessarily hard to scan
2. The game slows down with custom videos and two players. Keeping time is probably on the list of things a game like this MUST do, but it fails in this circumstance.
3. When someone sends you a challenge, you receive no notification. Instead you have to go to My Lips then select Friends, then look at your list of friends. This is really and truly unacceptable.
4. If you win a challenge after one try, and the other person has made both their attempts, you are forced to sing a second time anyway. You can work around this by starting the song, then immediately selecting quit, but it’s not great.
5. The microphone handling is buggy, I’ve had microphones drop out in mid song (bot not disconnect, as that would trigger an onscreen message) and then start working again in 30 seconds.
6. Only 40 songs come with the game, which would be fine if they had a large variety of downloadable tracks. At this point, the downloadable selection is like a Christmas Music store with a handful of other tunes, approximately 20. Weaksauce.
7. The onscreen introduction of the symbology used int he game is nonexistent. It took me a while to figure out what the 6 medals stood for, and that should have been apparent right away. It’s 2009, we shouldn’t have to look in a manual.
8. No in-game leaderboards. Huh?

I’ve read in forums that some people had problems figuring out the syncing process for the wireless microphones. The game manual has information in it that conflicts with the wireless microphone mini-manual, and neither one is clear. I didn’t experience a problem, but I can definitely see why some people have.

There’s also a Lips website at lips.xbox.com that promises but as of this writing it’s almost all “coming soon.”

I’m keeping the game, because I hope they release some more downloadable tracks in a reasonable timeframe, but I’m not optimistic based on the rate of release so far. If I were giving it a star rating, I’d rate it 250/400 stars.

The entry in question is the “IdeaCom Technology Inc. – Input – IdeaCom HID Touch Screen (PS/2) MOUSE” update. Do NOT install it (unless you have one of those), as you will lose the ability to use your trackpad and/or PS/2 mouse. If you’ve lost said ability, here are the steps to fix.

1. Figure out a way to navigate to \Windows\int\oemXX.inf (XX is different on different systems, mine is oem11.inf). Maybe plug in a USB mouse if you’re not good with the keyboard.
2. The file should have a “Modified” date of December 11, 2008.
3. If yea, delete that file.
4. Open Device Manager, look for HID devices. Open it up, fine the IdeaCom device, and remove it.
5. Reboot. Everything should be back to normal.

Driver rollback and system restore do NOT work. Nice job Microsoft, you started the new year with a giant Zune fiasco, and now this, which I imagine will affect a LOT of people that don’t think about whether they have a touchscreen or not.

So far, I’ve been digging up a lot of crap. My character is fully developed (only missing Backflip for Completionist achievement, send me a message if you can help me because I’m not forking over cash for Pub Games to get the book I need) and my dog is all powered up, so while I’m trying to fix all the weather problems, he’s constantly nagging me to dig.

Fable II

When you get to Knothole Island, it’s all iced over. Everything is blue and cold and everyone talks about how they are freezing and how their fingers might fall off at any moment. You meet a guy identified as the Chieftan, turns out he’s the guy that summoned you to the island. Yada yada yada the weather is all messed up can you help, and then the Chieftain sends you off to find the “Sun totem” which will restore heat. This involves going into a dungeon, then solving a few puzzles to open up the final room where you turn the heat up to 11.

The reason I say 11 is that as soon as I came up from the dungeon, wow, was it hot. It wasn’t even subtly hot, the heat effects were on overdrive. the grass was brown, and I was like holy crap I bet I turned up the heat too far. Sure enough, the next main quest on Knothole Island is to end the drought. And now everyone’s hot and upset that you overdid it the first time around.

I’ll digress for a moment to say that there’s a store in town called the Box of Secrets. It has a whole bunch of gift-wrapped packages sitting on tables. When you walk up to one, you see a vague explanation about what category of item it contains, and information about what items you need to trade for whatever is in the box. When it was icy cold, there were only a few packages, but when you turn the heat up they get another shipment and more (but not all) of the tables have gift-wrapped goodness. Here’s an example of things you need to trade for the packages:

• marriage and how to survive it
• pretty necklace
• puny carrot x2
• table wine x2
• murgo’s big book of trading x2
• crunchy chick x3
• crucible peanuts x2

Anyway, you get the idea. That list isn’t complete, because I don’t want to bore you to tears. Right now I’ll digress even further to list the three achievements worth 100 gamerscore that the Knothole Island DLC adds to the base 1000 Fable II score:

1. The Meteorologist: Bring all of Knothole Island’s weather problems under control, or help another Hero to do so.Fix all of the weather problems on Knothole Island
2. The Collector: Acquire all the mystery items in The Box of Secrets shop, or see another Hero do so.
3. The Bibliophile: Find all the books detailing the history of Knothole Island, or help another Hero to do so.

So, now I’m off to find the Storm totem to fix the drought, but I will bet someone the 800 Microsoft Points the DLC cost that that’s going to result in floods that I have to clean up.

The books that you need are just like silver keys, only they’re books. Your dog will detect them as treasure if he sees them, and they float in space the same way silver keys did. Kind of lame.

Got that Storm totem. Also I have to say I’m going to slap my dog if he doesn’t shut up for a while about the dig spots. Anyhow, with the Storm totem, sure enough it’s raining like mad. And sure enough the island is half under water, which weirdly is the level the ice was at when this all started (I think I see where this is going). Storm Key then opens the Storm Shrine. Did I mention, 26 dig spots so far?

What Knothole Island Has to Offer

The Storm Shrine was definitely an exercise in programming those colored orbs in a bunch of different ways and then just throwing the kitchen sink at you. Orb puzzle, open a door, orb puzzle, open a door and pull a lever, orb puzzle, kill a banshee on your way to fighting one of those trolls with the bad skin / exposed nerves problem. Then you get the Ice Totem, and yep, suspicion was correct, the island is back to the way you found it, all iced over. And then you immediately fight another banshee and then your dog is off finding more digs spots. When you get back to the Chieftan, there’s a whole bunch of disgruntledness and you have to make one of those Famous Fable Choices, this time 10,000 gold or the love of the people of Knothole Island. After all that, you’re awarded with the Meteorologist achievement and the ability to control the weather as needed.

I guess my final verdict is the DLC isn’t really worth the 800 Microsoft Points, at least not to me. It boils down to three quests to complete (all virtually identical), find 10 “silver key” books, and then hunt around for the items you need to get the items from the Box of Secrets store. And 3.5 million dig spots, which adds up to not quite what I had hoped for. The story does have a few moments of humor, but not enough to make up for all that it lacks. I wrote this article while I was playing, and the whole thing took 3 hours.

(Also, pet peeve, I can’t believe that even in the patch they still have the default option when you start playing set to “New Game” when you only use that one time, and you use “Continue” every other time. Seriously.)

I’ve heard some talk about a resurrection shrine on the island to bring your dog back if you selected to kill him off, but I didn’t do that so it’s not relevant for me. But no, I haven’t seen said shrine yet. Oh yeah, and if you have a spare Backflip book, please send me a FR on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Minimalist360.

These are pretty great and look awesome on a coat or even a backpack or messenger bag. They say “I Support The Economy” which is pretty much just hilarious. These were designed by a friend of mine.

Support the Economy – all proceeds go to help the GDP!

    if (isRegistered)
    {
        //not registered
        message.MessageDefinition = MessageDefinitions.Confirmation;
    }
    else
    {
        //registered before (email exists in the database)
        message.MessageDefinition = MessageDefinitions.ConfirmationExistingUser;
    }

Fun times! I wonder why this code is buggy and constantly breaks.

So a few days after the horrific iPhone 3G + iPhone 2.0 + iTunes 7.7 + MobileMe launch day (note to Apple, maybe spread this stuff out a little bit), I get that great pop-up from the Apple Updater, you know the one that downloads iTunes+Quicktime and also comes with the Safari checkbox pre-checked. Sounds like tying, but whatever. So I say sure, update the iTunes.

Afterward, I notice that all of the iTunes related tasks look like this:

So yeah, that’s not really looking very 64 bit, I mean the little *32 means a 32 bit process, so wtf. So I figure that well, perhaps the updater is broken, and it downloaded a 32-bit version and installed it over my 64 bit version from before. So I uninstall, reboot as requested and of course the freaking Bonjour service is still there AND the Apple Mobile Device Support is still running AND the Apple Software Update is still installed. So I uninstall each of those, reboot again, and hey Bonjour is still running. I think Bonjour should be considered a virus, seriously.

So then I heads on over to apple.com and I see:

So I download the 64-bit version, install it, and I get the same exact thing, 6 32-bit processes, not a single 64-bit process. What gives, Apple? Is this 64-bit software? The copy on the download page is confusing, maybe Vista (64-bit) means that it’s a 32-bit version of the software that WORKS on Vista x64? The filename is itunes64setup.exe – that also isn’t totally specific about what is 64-bit.

The whole thing is at least marginally confusing.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940157

Nifflas’ Games

There are a few great platformer-exploration games here.

Someone check her sense of irony.

powercfg -H off

Your hibernation file will immediately be freed and all hibernate options will disappear from power plans. Pretty obvious should be the way to turn that back on:

powercfg -H on

Here’s how to open a command line with administrator privs:

1. Click Start followed by All Programs and then Accessories
2. Oon the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt
3. From the drop down menu, Click on the Run Administrator option

and

free VMs with IE6 IE7 and IE8

Yours Truly,

Minimalist360

The thigh-texture problem (people with ballooning, flashing thighs) and some frame rate problems still exist, but at least the lockups are gone. The game shows Version 1.03 on the title screen now, and philosophically that’s an interesting thing, a version/patch identified on a console game, because it indicates that the slippery slope of PC-style patching for console games is well and good, and is headed more and more in this direction.

In this case 1.03 fixes the lockups. But here’s my question/conspiracy theory…

Were 1.01 and 1.02 released to manufacturing? Some people complaining of lockups went back to the store and exchanged their copy that locks up and got a new copy that didn’t lock up anymore. Maybe 1.01 was the initial release to manufacture (maybe even in error), and 1.02 was the “jesus christ we screwed up let’s manufacture the new ones with this copy but hey don’t throw out the ones you already made as that would cost dollarzzzz?” Then the patch comes out to take _everyone_ to 1.03 is to try to save face?

Cos we already KNOW that the “only on older consoles” thing is a line of crap, as MANY people with really new consoles (including 2 month old elites) had the lockup problem. And we already know Take-Two/Rockstar will lie first when confronted with something.

So I mean, I guess I’m not buying the “horrified” act.

Facebook can’t monetize. Microsoft has a micropayment system (Microsoft Points) already in place. How many Xbox 360 Live users are on Facebook already? Switch on the micropayment system and all of those users have a micropayment wallet ready to spend.

The Zune users are also part of the Microsoft Points universe, but I don’t know how many of them there are. They both tie into the same system.

This could be huge, and I haven’t seen this discussed. Perhaps this is what this strategic investment is about? Or maybe I’m just full of myself.

link to reuter’s article about “new” sins

It’s good to see God as a trailing indicator on these sorts of trends. It also would appear that the Vatican has some offsets to sell, so like Al Gore, they are convincing people they should feel the guilt and buy their way out of it. Oh and they just so happen to have some of the stuff you want to buy.

link to article about vatican offset scheme

Don’t forget your power bill next time you go to the confessional!

I don’t see me no GPS Status button. I contacted Dell tech support a few times over the last few months, and they eventually refer me to Sprint, which is ludicrous since Sprint a> sucks, b> doesn’t have customer support to speak of c> doesn’t support this card. I tried once.

So lo and behold on my final chat session with tech support tonight, the one where I’m planning on getting mad and demanding 40% of my purchase price refunded for false advertising, the man in India types these magic words: “The Dell Mobile Broadband Card Utility (DMBCU) determines the presence of GPS software when the software is installed.” Aha. Aha!! Registry.

So I fire up the process monitor. I run the DMBCU and capture events. I search for GPS and I find on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Novatel Wireless\NextGenCommon a key called GPSHWStatus:

…and it’s set to 0 or not there…

I’m running Vista x64 – this key would be different on 32 bit windows machines, should be the same but without the Wow6432Node\ part. So, on to registry editor:

Indeed, it is there and set to 0. So ah sets it to 1:

And the next time I run the DMBCU, it installs a driver(!) for … the GPS!

and would ya lookie here:

It seems to work. I’m inside and I haven’t checked it out yet, but when I hit that button it finds the GPS on COM6 and starts to search for satellites.

I did all this while the Dell tech support guy was connected to my machine remotely. He tried to pull down the Tools menu to look for the GPS entry, moused over all icons in my tray, and then told me I would have to contact Sprint. [sarcasm]I’m SO glad I allowed the remote connection.[/sarcasm] When I got angry about that, he spent 3 minutes looking up information and then mentioned the bit about the install. I did the rest and then near the end when I said “Did you see that? It installed a driver!” he says to me “Great. Glad we could fix your trouble.” Uh huh.

I hope this helps someone. I have seen many posts on the Dell Community forums about this with no solution.

When I started using the system, I noticed some differences from the other installs. I first noticed when adding the debugging symbols to Visual Studio. When I browse folder, this is what happens:

The User profile folder, which is my case is supposed to be my username, “kk” ( and is on my desktop), instead is empty. When I click on it, I get the error “The folder cannot be used.” If you look at the image, there’s an extra space in there, it’s like the folder name being retrieved by the system is null.

Visual studio recovers from this and I can browse for the folder. Apple’s iTunes, however, fails. I keep my music on an external hard drive, but when I click on “browse…” to point my music folder there, I get the same error as above, but iTunes becomes unusable after I clear the dialog. Which sucks because iTunes also base64 encodes their preferences xml files rather than just writing them out as UTF-16 encoded, but I won’t pick on Apple too much since I am a shareholder. Oh wait, yes I will, what the hell kind of boneheaded decision was that?

In Internet Explorer, you can relocate your folder for cache. Here is what comes up on a properly working system:

And here is what happens on my system:

Note the lack of the User Profile folder in this dialog. So IE wins on the “smartness” of dealing with this issue, but it’s still an issue. On a system where this works properly, you can also browse “up” in certain dialogs to the top, which brings you to that User Profile, I get the same error in that case as well.

Some things I’ve done to try to fix this:

• I tried searching through the Microsoft knowledge base, and I find many articles about “special folders” like Music and Pictures not having the correct icons, but nothing like this.
• I spend about an hour with procmon watching what kind of registry access is made on the system to see if it’s some kind of problem there. That was so painful — when you open a browse dialog there’s a massive flurry of activity and nothing jumps out as a problem.
• I’ve compared permissions, etc, on a working system with this system, identical.
• I decided to create a new account on the machine, all new accounts being created have exactly the same problem.

It’s weird how crippling this is, it’s minor issue but it comes up a lot and it makes it hard to browse for files in general. If anyone has experienced this problem, please share your findings.

Here’s the site:

www.njmcdirect.com

the first thing I notice is that I have to pay an extra fee online, even though I guarantee that this is a cheaper process than me paying in person:

The Convenience Fee is assessed to fund the interconnection between NJMCdirect.com and the Automated Traffic System. The Convenience Fee is based on the penalty and the amount of the traffic ticket, (fee schedule shown below). Consistent with the N.J.S 2B:12-30, the money is deposited in the Administrative Office of the Courts Automated Traffic System Fund.

Penalty Amount : Convenience Fee Applied
$1.00 – $40.00 : $1.00
$41.00 – $87.00 : $2.00
$88.00 – $200.00 : $3.00
>$200.00 : $4.00

By the way, the site doesn’t do anything in Firefox for me. It just hangs and never comes up with the page. In Internet Explorer it’s slow as molasses. But, here’s the best part, the site has _hours_ where they accept payment. Here’s the relevant bit:

Online Payment Hours
Payments can be made on this website during the following hours:

Mon – Thurs
7:30AM – 11:45PM (EST)
Fri
7:30AM – 10:45PM (EST)
Sat
7:30AM – 3:45PM (EST)
Sun
1:00PM – 11:45PM (EST)

Huh? What is there a human on the other end answering to the HTTP requests? Why are Sunday’s hours so short? Potential maintenance issues?

Anyhow, I enter the ticket number as indicate, and for the license plate number, I type in exactly what the ticket says, including the hyphen. I get a generic error, “Invalid license plate number.” Even though it says nothing about the format of a plate “number” (mine has letters, why is this called a number anymore?) I decide to leave out the hyphen. I then get the following error message:

NJMCdirect is unable to locate the ticket information. Please contact the court to resolve this matter, or refer to the back of the traffic ticket for alternate payment options.

I triple checked the information, and it’s all correct. Wheeeeeeeee!

From the developer page:

Now imagine that someone secretly came in and rearranged your your things into random places. Your player is on the sofa today, tomorrow it is in the refrigerator and the next day you find it in your car. Such a situation could easily lead to a nervous breakdown!

Now, let’s get back to discussing computer programs. Imagine a software developer who decided to make the buttons in his program randomly change their positions from time to time. This example seems absurd because obviously it is impossible to use such a program. If you think that there are no such programs in real life, you will be disappointed. You use one of these programs every day.

This program is called the “Start” menu.

Try it, you may like it.

This is from “CellPlay: The 411 for gaming on your cell phone” insert in some damned gaming magazine. I like how they spell this version of the CSI show:

The main Nero Burning ROM program is perfect for what I use burning software for. I can make data CDs and DVDs, dual layer DVDs, and if I have VOBs I can create a Video-DVD. I can save a disk layout, and load it later and burn it. Burning works, supports some nice features like overburning and verification, and that’s about it.

The problem is, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to install just the Nero Burning ROM program. No matter what you do, it installs Nero Scout, which then immediately starts indexing files on your hard drive. It installs a variety of other crap, and you end up with 4-5 loaded processes. That’s if you JUST chooses Nero Burning ROM.

So, NERO is dead to me, in the same way that Real Media is dead to me. (Backgrounder, Real Media had a completely deceptive install program that turned on all kinds of features. It did so by showing you a scroll box with 4 items shown, all unchecked, and then if you scroll down you see 4 “Adware” type programs are checked.) On principal, I will NEVER install any Real product on any platform ever again.

So with all of Nero’s crap, and the fact that they are charging $50 upgrades every 18months or so for not a lot of new stuff, means that I’d like to send that the way of Real.

Does anyone use a CD/DVD burning program that does as I described above? If so, can you comment?

Thanks in advance.

I feel like I went into the future a few years, mainly because of the SSD. Holy WOW is that shit fast.

Booting is fast. Running Word or Excel results in teh applicaiton almost instantly appearing on the screen. Visual Studio 2005, which normally takes about a day and a half to install was finished in 15 minutes. And on and on. And the silence is eerie.

More soon, but holy wowsers I’m in love.

First off, this game should probably be called something like Ten Times Toomuch Telemetry because holy wow is there a lot of information on the screen at one time. Combo counts, multipliers, multipliers of multipliers, clocks counting up and down, and the scores make late-edition pinball scores look low. I’m not religious, but Jesus Christ.

The game has 4 modes, E4 timed, E4 untimed, S4, and R4.

E4 is chains and multipliers on steroids, coupled with an almost anti-shooter game mechanic. You detonate yourself to blow up all kinds of crap on the screen, and the groups of crap release icons which give you something good. The something good depends on the color of part of the crap, and it can be extra time, quicken (speeds up the movement and introduction rate of the crap, not to be confused with the bookkeeping software), bonus, and something else I forget about. Did I mention you should also detonate yourself on the beat of the accompanying music for additional multipliers? Yeah it’s insane, and kinda cool, you have to do a lot of balancing and it’s got a good feel.

S4 is just E4 but to your own tracks – you rip a CD on the 360, then in the game you pick a track and the game does some Amiga demoscene/medtracker looking crap to try to determine the bpm, and then you play to that. It doesn’t really work, especially if your song changes BPM.

My favorite mode is R4: Rhythmic Rolling Revenge Revolution. This is like a complete different game, and it would be like if someone took Warning Forever by Hikoza.T.Ohkubo and threw it in a blender with Mu-cade and rRootage by ABA Games. In other words, quality. I thought I was going to explode when I played this, and I will likely be playing it until I get the level 100 achievement.

So Guitar Hero III and The Orange Box are all lonely because of E4, so I guess that’s $10 well spent, as long as the others don’t get too angry-jealous.

It turns out you can force a FAT32 format with the built in format command line utility. First, if the drive is already formatted with NTFS, give it a volume name. Or, go into disk manager and delete the partition and create a new simple partition, and do not format it. For this example I have a 120GB drive on E:, formatted as NTFS.

format /fs:fat32 /a:32k e:

This will prompt you if you want to proceed with the format, and if the partition is already formatted, it will ask you to type in the volume name to proceed. That’s it, all set. The /a:32k is the cluster size and /fs:fat32 sets the filesystem. For some reason you can’t combine these with the /Q (quick) flag, which would be nice.

You probably either need to have UAE off like I do 90% of the time, or run in an elevated command window.

So I discovered a bug in the Xbox 360 version of Puzzle Quest that allows you to cheat, pretty significantly. Here’s how you do it.

I played until I was level 49, then I quit and I deleted the game from my console. I then downloaded the trial version of the game, which caps your level at 7, until I had enough experience where I would be moved to level 50. Then I hit start, unlocked the full game, and immediately jumped to level 50, receiving the Legendary Hero achievement. The bug is that in the process, I gained 176 skill points that I could apply to my character. (50 – 7) * 4

So I did that and then immediately was able to defeat Lord Bane to get the Master of Death achievement.

Looks like a bug when the next level is figured out when you unlock. The developers should patch this, so if anyone knows how to get this info to the developers, please do so. I’d imagine that this will work for any level change, like 40 to 41, etc., but I haven’t tried it. All you’d need to do is take your level X character, get him close to level x+1, then quit and delete the full game. Download the trial, play to get your experience up to the next level, then unlock the full version of the game.

What I really wish I had a cheat for is the forge godlike item. Anyone have this achievement? Update: I picked up the final achievement (Master Craftsman) this afternoon while on a conference call, and am now 200/200.

Need I say more?

Portal r0xx0rz.

I plug in my 160GB iPod classic to sync. This process now takes upwards of 5 minutes.

I play a few (8) songs the PC, so all sync has to do it perform a few simple tasks like update the playcounts and played dates for the songs, then eject. I plug in the classic, 20 seconds later iTunes says “syncing iPod” and then iTunes becomes totally unresponsive for 45-60 seconds. Then it’s responsive again for 30 seconds, then unresponsive for another 45-60 seconds. This continues for 5-7 minutes. I can connect my old 60GB iPod and an iPod mini, and do the exact same thing in 7 or 8 seconds without iTunes freezing.

The first update to the firmware did nothing to fix this.

I called Apple Care last night, and was on hold for 45 minutes. Then I got to talk to a “genius,” or whatever they’re called on the phone, and he told me he had never heard of this issue (even though it’s all over the interwebs). Then he put me on hold for 15 more minutes, then came back and told me to reboot. (Wheeeeeee!) He put me on hold again while I was rebooting, then disconnected me. I called back and got to hear a recording that told me to call during their normal business hours.

Hi Apple you suck.

(full disclosure, I am an apple shareholder)

This shows you how much space system restore is using:

C:\Users\kk.SINISTAR>vssadmin list shadowstorage
vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{e09c1639-86ee-11d8-a08c-806d6172696f}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{e09c1639-86ee-11d8-a08c-806d6172696f}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 9.593 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 9.807 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 11.178 GB

That’s on an 80GB drive, it’s a lot lot more if you have, say, a 300GB drive. In fact, it defaults to 15% of your disk, I believe. Anyhow, here’s how you change it:

C:\Users\kk.SINISTAR>vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=2GB
vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Successfully resized the shadow copy storage association

And then you can check your work:

C:\Users\kk.SINISTAR>vssadmin list shadowstorage
vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{e09c1639-86ee-11d8-a08c-806d6172696f}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{e09c1639-86ee-11d8-a08c-806d6172696f}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 2 GB

For the size, you can use normal suffixes to set your size, (512MB, 2GB, 1.5GB etc.) If the Allocated Shadow Copy Size is larger than the new size you set Maxiumum, it will wipe out all System Restore information you have, so you’re vulnerable for a small time. It’s probably best to set a restore point immediately after this exercise.

Here’s one way to set a system restore point.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The songwriter and performer, Dennis Madalone, is from New Jersey (of course!) and here’s a short snippet from an interview with the man behind the song:

Q: Do you think this anthem will still be playing in 100 years?

A: I believe that it will be around for longer than that. Just like the old black and white films that people still watch today. I believe our song is a special and rare thing. I know that it has gotten to and comforted many people. It will be around for a long time after I pass away. 100 years or 1000 years from now, it will always be a message from our loved ones. It will surge until it reaches every one on its own. Everyday! Someone clicks on the song and it’s a new thing!

Sorry for the ironica, I am trying not to be so critical these days, but old habits die hard.

My bill had 2 “web minutes” used for $0.40, but I don’t dare call them.

Anyhow…

Yesterday I was waiting for a ride to the Poconos, and I decided to play a couple of games of Track and Field or something on Xbox Live. I fired up the ‘Box, and lo and behold:

I guess since the Beta was available for public consumption a few months ago, they’ve gone through Gamma and Delta versions and have now started playtesting the Epsilon version. They must be pretty close to gold at this point — the release date is what, the 25th of September? That gives you 6 weeks guys, the clock is ticking and you should be making DVDs already.

I’d imagine this is the final version, though maybe they’ll go to Lambda and get us all confused with Half-Life.

Picross DS

Picross DS is a straight-up Picross game. Thank you, Nintendo.
The upsides here are:

• Hand-held Picross goodness
• Many single player levels
• Awesome head-to-head Picross via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
• Puzzle editor
• Share your own puzzles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
• (Supposed) downloadable Picross levels from the previous Nintendo Picross games that Nintendo has offered
• Low low price of $19.99.

The downsides here are:

• The downloadable games are all “coming soon”
• I am not at all happy with the zoom scheme they came up with for the larger puzzles. It’s really hard to keep track of the big picture while you work, at least for me.

So as you can see, the score is 7 to 2 in favor of the upsides. I’m a happy (addicted) camper. It made me stop playing Planet Puzzle League at least. At roughly the same time this game came out, I stumbled across another Picross game.

Lobstersoft’s Gemsweeper

First up, I’d love to include some kind of title screen or game logo here, but their product page doesn’t have one, just this screenshot and a picture of the game’s narrator.

Gemsweeper plays on your Windows PC, so it has a great big screen and doesn’t need any kind of zoom-in mode for larger puzzles. There is a typical casual-games “Quest mode” which, like in most casual games, progresses in difficulty way too slowly. You can play through 5 “temples” of 10 levels each and even though the puzzles get much larger, they aren’t much more difficult.

Pros:

• Solid interface
• Quick in/out play, much faster than most PC casual games
• It’s Picross
• $19.95 – 4 cents cheaper than Picross DS!

Cons:

• Difficulty just isn’t there
• The jokes the Professor/narrator character tells are really lame
• No head-to-head online play feature

Two of the downsides aren’t really downsides as much as taste, so the score is 4 to 1 here in favor of the upsides.

The biggest problem with these two simultaneous Picross games appearing in my life is that I am not getting a lot of work done. If Xbox Live Arcade released one now, I think I’d be paralyzed.

So, if you bore yourself with the last post, you’ll note after the screwup there, they finally promised me really and truly that my credit card was charged to pay my deposit, and that I would have service restored in about an hour.

That was at 6pm.

So I did a little work, tried again at 8pm, still nothing. So I called and put Sprint on speakerphone again for the 20 minute hold, then when I got a person, they told me that what the previous person meant was 4 hours until I’d be turned back on.

So at 11:15pm, still nothing. So I called Sprint back (I’m rapidly approaching the number of calls that get one booted from their customer base, methinks) and this time I’m told tomorrow morning.

So I decide to try the magic words. “Well then, cancel my service.” Boom, whisked over to a really nice guy named Mark. So then Mark:

1. Tells me that my account has been “expired”
2. Informs me that the phone number assigned to my datacard has been released or reassigned
3. Tries to call his help desk, to get it fixed
4. Tells me his help desk is closed, that he will have to “fix it [him]self over the internet”
5. Takes my phone number and tells me he’s going to call me back

An hour goes by, Mark calls me back and says I’m all set. The card is able to connect again. I still can’t log into sprint.com, Mark tells me to try my password in upper case. Still nothing. So I’d imagine that the password is screwed up and I’ll never be able to talk to customer service again. (He tells me to do the lost password thing, I explain to him that it sends a text message with the password which is irretrievable from the data card, he laughs at this.)

I explain to Mark that I’ve called customer service a LOT and that I don’t want to do that anymore cos I don’t want Sprint to fire me as a customer. He laughs and tells me those people are “1/1000 of the 50,000,000 customers” they have (he did his math wrong), that they called in a LOT and that they had free service for months and months, and then he gives me some b.s. assurance that THIS TIME it is a done deal. I say right, but I’m rapidly becoming that customer you describe due to Sprint’s screwups that result in calls and credits to my bill. He laughs at this and says “yeah, I can see that.” Is that a threat? I don’t know anymore, I feel like the laws of the universe don’t apply to this situation.

As Mark and I are wrapping up the call, he says some funny things.

1. I ask “are there any other ways that my service will be screwed up in the next few weeks?” He laughs and says “Oh, [ha ha] there’s a million things that can go wrong [ha ha ha].” That instills confidence.
2. Then he says, and I kid you not, “Thanks for calling Sprint, and I’m glad we could take care of it in one call tonight, now you have a good evening.”

So I am going to have a good evening. Luckily, I have 2-5 internet connections at any given time; I’m always evaluating and recommending new technologies and incorporating them into projects. If you are thinking about using Sprint’s data service and relying upon it in any way, here’s a hearty recommendation AGAINST following that course of action. I know I will never use their service in any kind of project I do that requires an internet connection. HSDPA through Cingular/AT&T is probably better even with the whole latency thing. Yeah, the connection will be slower, but maybe it will stay on for more than 36 hours at a time.

Maybe somehow this will be the last time I need to contact them. ha ha ha

So this time I was able to use my FX720 card for a whole 36 hours. The “Account Retention Specialist” last time credited back the entire cost of the card plus first month service, and told me ABSOLUTELY I would have no problems going forward. Thank you I said.

So I mentioned before that they wanted a $100 deposit from me in exchange for a $400 spending limit. Even though I provided my credit card information on 3 separate occasions, it went MIA and the just billed it to my account. Sprint credited all of that money back, so my balance is something like $51 for some prorated crap and some taxes.

So…

Today my service stops. I switch to non-NDIS mode and it starts telling me I have an invalid username/password. A 35 minute hold period later, I get a customer service representative who tells me that yes, my account has been suspended. I ask “why this time?” She tells me I’m over my spending limit.

Me: “How much do I owe?”

She: “$51.73.”

Me: “Ok, so how much is my spending limit?”

She: “Let’s see, it’s… Hmm, you don’t have a spending limit.”

Me: “So if I have no limit, why is my service suspended.”

She: “I mean your spending limit is $0.”

Me: “Oh, right. That makes sense. Why is that?”

She: “You never paid the $100 deposit.”

Right, I’d only provided my credit card information 3 times previous to various people and had reference numbers (which mean nothing apparently) but here we go again. I give her my card info, she gives me a reference number (why?) and then she tells me that my service will be back on in about 1 hour. I ask her to do whatever the other people did the 3 other times this has happened, and turn it on right away, since this is their screwup yet again, and she says she did her best, sorry.

Amazing. I mean really and truly amazing.

vt 054

Originally uploaded by Kurt Koller

Just spent two weeks on Lake Champlain in Vermont with family and some friends. Good stuff, my mind is totally clear and with the exception of getting a major sunburn on my back one day — playing Puzzle Planet League on the beach and totally losing track of time — I had a great time.

Meanwhile, Sprint disconnected my EVDO service again after they reverted all the account fixes they had done before, and now they’ve credited me for the entire original order price. I’m just worried they’ll terminate me for calling customer service so much, even though it’s been necessary. The weird thing is, when they interrupt your service, you can still use the non-EVDO data connection with no problem.

I was hoping to write a review about how great the Sprint EVDO service was for checking in or doing the inescapable little tasks on my vacation, but alas due to their inept systems and customer service, it has been unusable for the last two weeks. So that’s my review.

I am here. On “poor farm road” in the way north of Vermont. But I have no less than _3_ working internet connections – my T-Mobile Dash is roaming on Cingular giving me EDGE, my Sprint EVDO card isn’t EVDOing but it is supplying a slow connection of some sort, and there’s a random “linksys” wifi signal here. Surprising. That is not my dog.

I thought I was going to write like crazy this last week, but I was mainly tired and groggy and felt like sleeping.

So my Dash is roaming on Cingular. My data is unlimited, and there are no extra fees to use it when roaming unless I’m out of the country, yet whenever I check my mail I get an alert telling me:

Alert

You are currently roaming. Synchronizing may result in additional charges.

I started to look into turning this off in the registry, but I keep getting distracted. Also when I receive an MMS, it alerts me that I have a pending message and then says:

Additional charges may apply while roaming.

New MMS pending

while giving you the option to Download, Postpone, or Reject. Wow, also very annoying. I’m going to pick up on that one tomorrow.

Friday, got the card. Saturday, EV-DO stopped working, the card would only connect 1xRTT, 1 day after activating unit and 1 day before I leave for trip, which is why I chose now to start service.

11:33pm, car is packed, so I think maybe I’ll call Sprint and see if I can straighten this out.

Called 1-800-SPRINT1, entered my phone number. System told me that I owe $508.59 which is more than my $400 spending limit, so they have interrupted my service. Not sure how this is possible – I paid online with a credit card for my initial card purchase, and I have an unlimited data plan. Transferred me to “finance.”

Talked to finance. They asked a bunch of identifying information, then told me no information matches the account, asked me for my password (I never set one up) and then transfered to “customer care.” 15 minute hold.

Talked to “Alex” in Eastern Europe somewhere in customer service. He told me no information matches the account, asked for password (I never set one up) went into robot mode of “I’m sorry, protocol states that if I can’t positively identify you, etc.” Even after explaining what was going on, would not transfer to a supervisor (can’t do that without positive ID either). As I begged him to help, he suddenly blind transferred me to a random customer service number that was closed.

Called 1-800-SPRINT1 again, entered my phone number. System told me that I owe $508.59 which is more than my $400 spending limit, so they have interrupted my service. Transferred me to “finance.”

Talked to Robin. Told her that I felt like a non-entity or that I was losing my mind. She checked my account, it was all someone else. Gave her the ESN from the device, same account. Then I asked if I could give her my info and could she look it up that way. She found some kind of account, but wasn’t sure what to do about it. After telling her the story about how I called into Sprint to unlock my card on Friday, she said it matched her notes, so she fixed my account after consulting with a supervisor.

Then she told me that I owe Sprint $508. Turns out they charged full price for my phone instead of applying the discount that sprint.com was offering. She told me I would have to argue that with Customer Service. After trying to transfer me 3 times, and the system doing really weird things, she game me a phone number to call, 877-661-3933.

Called 877-661-3933. After providing my phone number, she told me that I had to call another number for customer service on my account from now on, 877-541-5705. She told me she had no transfer codes available for that department and I would need to dial direct.

Called 877-541-5705. Got a message that the department was closed until Monday morning.

Called 1-800-SPRINT1 again, entered my phone number. System told me that I owe $508.59 which is more than my $400 spending limit, so they have interrupted my service. Transferred me to “finance.” A woman in finance transferred me to customer care, which told me they were closed.

12:30am. Still no service. Leaving on my trip in the morning.

Sprint just STRAIGHT UP SUCKS. I think about going to sleep, but wow.

12:43am, After stewing for 15 minutes, I called 1-800-SPRINT1 again, entered my phone number. System told me that I owe $508.59 which is more than my $400 spending limit, so they have interrupted my service. Transferred me to “finance.”

Talked to finance. The person this time is looking into the charges.

I’M BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND HOW SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE CALLED SPRINT 35 TIMES IN ONE MONTH.

Transferred to Account Escalations. “Desiree” looks at the account. $175.00 discount on the data card never went on. Plus, even though I entered credit card information on the website, it was never used and so nothing was paid for. Hence the $508.59 balance. Thankfully, she is sane, so she restores my service and notes the account that discount wasn’t applied. She tells me I have to call in tomorrow to get the order credit. So that’s ANOTHER call to Sprint. Maybe I’ll get dismissed by Sprint for excessive customer service calls.

So that’s kind of impressive.

I ordered on Monday. Someone changed my corporate Tax ID along the way, and I was flagged for a deposit. After trying 3 times to have them change it and that not working (India), I let them take a $100 deposit. I ordered on Monday, was told I’d have it by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. Got it today (Friday) so still good.

The out of box experience is miserable. You install the software, plug in the card, and the software tells you it’s “locked” with a “user lock code.” There’s nothing in the documentation about this, so I called the “activation number” that is on page 4 of the manual, figuring it may not be activated. After being on hold for 25 minutes to talk to someone, they had no record of my order in their system.

They asked a bunch of questions like did you order it from Sprint or Nextel? I bought it at sprint.com – I guess Sprint? I find out later no, I ordered through Nextel somehow, and I got to hear all about their “recent merger” (which began in December of 2004 and was “completed” in August of 2005). I learned they are bringing new software online in their offices next month called “Ensemble” and was placed on hold while he talked to the people that are rolling that out or whatever. Then they told me my account was neither with Sprint or Nextel but with a company he had never heard of before.

He put me on hold again, and asked me for my wireless phone number again. I again explained I don’t have it. I also mentioned that I’d log into my online account that was created when I ordered, and get the information there, but according to the email I received, my username is text.nextel.store.orderreceipt.acctmgmt.membernametext which doesn’t seem right.

So I dug out the packing slip and started reading random things to the guy: customer number, order number, address, tracking number, P2K number, and then here’s a barcode with MDN written next to it. Lo and behold, that’s my “mobile device number” and that’s the same as my phone number. He tells me that that’s what he needed at the beginning of the call and if I had provided that we wouldn’t have gone through all of this. I explained that he asked for my “phone number” and when I said “I don’t see that here, could it be called something else?” he told me no, it would be under phone number. From there, I got my “unlock code” which was 1709, which doesn’t correspond to anything.

What’s that rationale on shipping a data device with an unlimited plan in a “user locked” state? And then not mentioning anything about it in the manual or other included papers? Like:

1. FIRST STEP: Install software.
2. SECOND STEP: Plug in device.
3. THIRD STEP: You must CALL Sprint at THIS NUMBER and sit on hold for 20 minutes to get your unlock code.

That would make it clear.

Hopefully I’ll never have to talk to them again as long as I live. My first cell phone was a Sprint PCS phone back when they had just started, and the customer service was so horrible that it took me two weeks to cancel my service. I had to call sales and act like a maniac to finally get to talk to someone, and they disconnected me. So I let them disconnect me. It seems that not a whole lot has changed there. They still have 20+ minute hold times. According to Sprint, I still owe them approximately $350 for that service (which I was unable to cancel) even after they lost a class action over their behavior.

ANYHOW…

I’m excited to use the device. I’m using it now and so far so good. I have to figure out how to use the GPS part of the device, it appears to have added some COM ports to my system (weird) so maybe that’s how it happens. More later.

It looks like the blog popped into existence in April, and everything else appeared last week.

WSLabi state, on their homepage, “If the world must become a safer place, the first part of the recipe is simple: to provide a better rewarding for the security researchers, organising an efficient and transparent marketplace, here to maximise the results of their efforts.” Sounds like they like efficiency and transparency, which is a good start. Also on their ethics page, it says, “We require non-anonymity from buyers and sellers alike. The stakes are just too high at this point in history.” Sounds great!

Moving on to the signup page it says, “ATTENTION! In order to be able to access the full marketplace services you will be asked to fax us your id card and your telephone number.”

Groovy. So let’s see who I am going to be sending my id card to and giving my telephone number. Their WHOIS reads like this:

Registration Private
(480) 624-2599 Phone
(480) 624-2599 Fax
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
wabisabilabi.com@domainsbyproxy.com

Not exactly transparent. Domains By Proxy (a division of GoDaddy) is the private registrar. The IP address of the website is a GoDaddy owned IP address, so the site is hosted by GoDaddy as well.

Domains By Proxy has a tagline, “Your identity is nobody’s business but ours.” I don’t see how this fits in exactly with WabiSabiLabi’s requirement that you positively identify yourself to them in order to participate in their online marketplace. Maybe the stakes are too high? I should send them a copy of my ID? I don’t even know who these people are. There is NO information about who is running the site or the marketplace, just a phone number and mailing address in Switzerland. This aerial view of their address is all I have to go on.

Not impressed. We’ll see how it pans out over time.

Is that guy really hiking with a laptop strapped to the front of his body? Is that safe? Or does OSHA mandate that he stop before using the laptop on this contraption? And even if they do, would anyone really do that? I see people eating and talking on the phone and putting on makeup and even reading the paper while driving, so are they really going to behave with this thing?

I know if I was walking on rough terrain and I was using a laptop on a device like this, at some point in the first 30 minutes I would fall down and hurt everything in sight: me, the laptop, the contraption, and some nearby nature. But maybe 60 people in all of the U S of A need these, right?

Which brings me to the next ad I noticed:

Um, really? A firefighter needs an ultra mobile pc so he can do the paperwork on the possible arson he just risked his life to put out? Shouldn’t this guy get to rest for at least the ride back to the firehouse before doing this crap on an actual pc?

I’m all for efficiency, but wtf?

So what is that? Nothing else in the house seems affected, these are NOT on the same circuit as the dryer (and on super hot days, like today, we don’t even need to turn it on for this to happen). I have to admit, it freaks me out a bit. Our panel is only 100amp, so maybe this is why everyone upgrades to 200amp. But I mean, we were maybe drawing like 5A total when this was happening today.

or

mstsc -v:servername:port  /F -console

Works like a champ, or a charm, or whatever you like to say. Gives you the actual console session, so if you have two sessions left connected and can’t get in your server, this is the workaround. Or if you install PHP and it’s throwing errors in dialog boxes on the console, you can log in this way to see (and dismiss) said dialogs.

Yet, every time that iTunes has an update it installs “iTunes + QuickTime” which, inexplicably, turns the QuickTime preference “Install QuickTime icon in system tray” back on. Why? Just to be annoying? All the other QuickTime settings are saved, just not that one. Accident?

Thanks again, Apple.

So now Apple has decided that they will give up their channel of Mac buyers that need to check web work in “Safari on the Mac” (I know of at least 3 people currently contemplating a Mac purchase specifically for this reason). Thank you, Apple! And I mean that seriously.

However, I know that you THINK it’s more usable to have to resize a window from the bottom right corner only, and move it at the top only, but I disagree with you. So does Windows, the platform that you’ve brought your product to. I don’t find this snobbery and rudeness to be anything like “a glass of ice water to a person in hell.” I find it to be frustrating and irritating and more like shards of glass to a person with soft skin.

Personally, I find it easier to resize from the upper right corner or top edge when I’m up there, and then move the window with the window’s title bar, a few pixels away (not thousands away). But in all of your snobbery, you can’t admit that maybe this other way is better and play nice in your hosted environment?

And you’re going to make me do all kinds of extra mouse moving for no real reason? Or for “usability?”

Thanks, assholes.

Plus, it doesn’t even work. Like at all. It loads up about 1/2 of the Apple homepage before bombing out, and I can’t even type in the address bar. I can click the button that looks like a spider, but that just uses 100% of one of my CPU cores. I’m sure they’ll fix that stuff, but I’ll put a million dollars on them not fixing the usability issues. Cos they know it all.

Edit 6/26: I reinstalled a third time and it works.

I keep my iTunes library on an external USB hard drive, since my media collection is now far too large for my laptop’s built-in hard drive. I have another external hard drive that I use for backups, and another that has stuff on it like software installers, weird games, etc, which I call “Goods.”

I’d like to map these when they plug in to M: for the media, B: for the backup, and G: for the goods.

The first thing I realized in the Windows Disk Manager is that B:, while definitely not in use for a floppy or anything ridiculous, is “odd.” this could be a BIOS issue or whatever else, and I don’t care enough to look into it, but it doesn’t work on my current machine. It puts it into some kind of unusable state where Disk Manager can’t be quit, and Vista eventually hangs and needs to be power cycled. Fine. So I called that one Z: and that works well.

My Goods drive was mapped to G: with no problems whatsoever.

Now, the Goods drive is a 160GB Western Digital Passport II (WDP2). The Backup drive is a 120GB WDP2, and the Media drive is also a 120GB WDP2. These drives are all formatted NTFS.

For some reason, I can assign the Media drive to a mount point, like C:\Mount\M with no problems at all. But, no matter which drive letter I assign to it, it hangs the system like when I was trying to assign the B: drive. I’ve tried M:, N:, I: they all hang disk manager and then put the system in an unstable state ultimately ending in the system needing to be shut down hard.

I tried using the “remount” from a useful USB troubleshooting site, and when I tell it

remount C:\Mount\M M:

it hangs the system in the exact same way. It’s frustrating.

However, now I’m in a really crappy situation. The drive doesn’t get auto-assigned a free letter anymore when it’s plugged in, even if I delete all the mount points in Disk Manager. I’d love to know how to be able to do this. I have a suspicion that if I could somehow figure out the Registry crap associated with this stuff I would be able to figure this all out, but I can’t tell which drive is which in there. I could delete a mount point fairly easily, but that’s not my problem. I guess I need to delete my drive and let this re-build. So I’m going to take a second to do that after I reboot. Hang on…

Ok, so first, I learned that Device Manager can be told to show non-attached devices. How? Oh, would you believe an environment variable? I created a CMD file with this in it:

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
devmgmt.msc

And ran it. Then I selected “View-> Show Hidden Devices” and under “Disk Drives” I was presented with every USB, Firewire, etc disk I had ever attached to my system. I determined which was mine, removed it and replugged the drive, but no go, it still put it at my mount point.

So here’s a fun registry location – “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2″ – that appears to have every mount point, including network shares, that I’ve ever had on my system. My gut feeling is that if I delete all this I’ll just have to remap, but I’m not sure yet. There’s also “HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices” which I also think will be rebuilt.

So, you only live once I though, and so I renamed both these of these keys to _old, and inserted my drive. It showed up as E: (great!) and now I’m going to try to make it M: – still hangs. Maybe I should have rebooted in there… Same problem.

OKay, so THAT didn’t work, and I put all the old registry back in place, but it did give me enough information to manually trash the entry for my M drive and then manually create an entry for it in the MountedDevices. Which works. I could even write a program to do this part of the equation now. But THIS SUCKS that I can’t just use the built-in tools, and I feel like I’m missing something since my method didn’t result in a hang, even though the stuff in Windows and the other guy’s 3rd party thing did hang.

If anyone knows why this would be hanging or has solved this problem, please let me know how you solved it.

Paint.NET

I’m not a graphic designer, but I do have to use Photoshop occasionally for production work. It’s ludicrously expensive. I mean, you get a boatload of stuff if you buy CS3, including Flash if you buy the right version, but it’s really really expensive. Paint.NET is a Photoshop-like program, written in C#/.NET, free, source included, etc.

Foxit PDF Reader

This is faster, and uses less resources than Adobe’s PDF Reader. Free. I’d imagine it supports less “stuff” than the Adobe version, like the forms and all that, but I don’t know. What I do know is that it doesn’t take 30 seconds to load and shows me PDFs.

PDFCreator

PDFCreator is free, and creates PDFs. It acts as a printer driver and has plugins for some applicationss. Has a few weird issues under Vista, but mostly works fine. And it creates PDFs. And doesn’t cost $400 or make you think about which version of Adobe CS3 you are going to have to get to maximize your money dollars. Oh, and it creates PDFs.

Yeah, I know, I’m too old to be doing this. Especially for five and a half hours. But see, my pal Seth Lopez has been raving about it and I am too competitive. So there it is. I finished career mode in easy and medium and picked up 220 of 1000 achievement points on 18 of 50 achievements. (Yes, this type of addictive behavior is the reason I sold my original Xbox 360. (Yes, I had an Xbox 360, sold it, and then bought an Elite. (Yes, I know.))) I can’t play on hard at all though, or at least it’s still too intimidating. And I’m actually sore.

The five and a half hour marathon was made possible by my wife and son, who for father’s day gave me a day to do whatever I wanted to do. Thanks guys.

Let’s see. I loved Forza. It had amazing graphics, felt real as all get-out, was fun to play, and I loved it. When I heard Forza 2 was coming out, I got all excited and thought about getting a force-feedback wheel and the whole nine.

So I bought Forza 2, and it’s all I can do to hire another driver to finish another race. I feel like I’m unlocking things as a part-time job, and I’m not sure where the fun is. Yeah, I know it’s a simulator, and simulation != fun in all cases, but I expected it to be a little bit fun, at least for as many minutes as I spent dollars on the game. (In this case, I did the Best Buy deal via the Xbox Live offer, so it’s $10 less than usual.) But.

I put it in, and was all set to spend like 5 hours driving. The interface looks amazing, the transitions and loading screens are all slick and pretty, but the actual driving feels like not much more than work. Yes, I know it’s a simulation, but I don’t remember Forza feeling like this much work and like zero fun.

Because I have an addictive personality, however, I’ll play it like a sports manager game, and load up new races and match a car against a race and hire a drive in an attempt to at least get some unlocks out of it before I sell it. I wish I had enough money to hire a guy to hire drivers in Forza 2 to earn achievements for me. That way at least I’d be giving someone a real job, as opposing to have to work at this myself for nothing. Maybe I was deluded. Maybe as driving simulators approach reality the driving experience is too real to be a “fun game” anymore (even if there are red lines appearing on the road surface telling me to brake, which never happen in real life (then again, maybe I don’t drive fast enough in real life to see these)).

I haven’t looked at reviews of the game to see if other people feel this way or if I’m just officially old, but Forza 2 makes me feel empty and sick to my stomach like I just binge ate 12 candy bars or something. I give it 2 out of 5 stars cos it sure does look pretty, but I am hoping someone steals it from me so I don’t keep unlocking achievements and feeling emptier and bingey-er.

I’ll Paypal you a dollar if you can help me fix this.

Edit: So here was the secret, or at least I think so. I found this quite by accident. I booted into MacOS via Bootcamp, then restarted again into Vista. All seems OK now. Not sure why – I had rebooted Vista a few times and that didn’t help, so some kind of magic OSX battery initialization thing, maybe.

That เว่ย เจิ่ม เมอ เจอ เมอ เฉ่า, หลี่ เมี่ยน เต้า ตี่ โหยว เสิ่ม เมอ
หว่อ หาว จิ่ว เหมย เที่ยว อู่ เลอ, ซิง ฉี เลี่ยว ชวี่ เที่ยว อู่ ปา
หัวใจเรามาสนุกสนาน วันนี้มีสักวันมาเจอกันหน่อยก็ดี
หัวใจเราเองก็ออกจะหวาน วันนี้คงอีกนานจะอยู่กันไปอย่างนี้

Let’s party,
we like to party,
หัวใจถ้า happy ก็ลองเข้ามา

Let’s party,
we like to party,
หัวใจถ้า lovely ก็ลองเข้ามา

Enjoy to happy party,
we dance in lovely party
We like the happy party,
let’s get in to the dance

ท่าทางก็ดูจะเข้าท่า มาเจอกันเลยถ้าใจกล้า มัวทำเป็นอายไม่ได้น่า
That’s happy party dance

To shut down officially on Windows 2000 or XP:

1. In the Start menu choose Shutdown (or Turn Off Computer on Windows XP)
2. When the Turn Off Computer dialog shows up, press CTRL + SHIFT and hold them down. While holding them down, click cancel on the shutdown dialog. Explorer will quit.
3. After Explorer quits, hit CTRL + SHIFT+ ESC to bring up the task manager
4. In Task Manager, choose File->New Task
5. Type explorer.exe into the box and press enter. All set!

So now I know how to restart Explorer on Windows XP. However, I switched to Vista last year. When you go to Start->Shutdown on Vista, the computer instantly shuts down, giving you no opportunity to do any of the fancy keywork. Any ideas?

Edit 4/29/09: Okay I found the Vista instructions:

1. Hit the Windows key to bring up the start menu
2. Press and hold CTRL + SHIFT.  While holding those keys down, right click on an empty area in the start menu (for instance right above the lock icon) and you’ll see a menu that has “Exit Explorer” and “Properties.”
3. You’re going to want to select “Exit Explorer” in that menu.
4. After Explorer quits, hit CTRL + SHIFT+ ESC to bring up the task manager
5. In task manager, select File -> New Task (Run)
6. Type explorer.exe into the box and press enter. All set!

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Looks great! This is the file I uploaded (not even a good snapshot):

While at the Apple store in Soho, I could practically feel my hair falling out. Had I had more on the wide angle, I could have captured two additional gentlemen lacking locks just to the right of these men, and NOT fallen down the concrete and glass stairs in the attempt.

He definitely gets bunched up less. More open space. Also, is that Rob Corddry sitting on the stairs in the video?

Credits: On the left, “BonelssGirl.swf,” author unknown. On the right, “Objects of my Affection” by Peter Bjorn and John.

IMG_3400, originally uploaded by Frank Lantz and taken by him at his apartment.

I know a lot of people think video games are bad for children, but I guess this photo is proof that I’m not one of them.

11:01:06 PM System

Harriet has joined this session!

11:01:06 PM System

Connected with Harriet

11:01:16 PM Harriet

Hello and welcome to the MSDN Online Concierge, Sirdar. How may I assist you today?

11:02:36 PM Sirdar

hi there

11:02:55 PM Sirdar

I’m in a world of hurt with this ISV/MSDN situation

11:03:18 PM Sirdar

We signed up as an ISV and got the MSDN sub as part of the package

11:03:53 PM Sirdar

Sirdar Bey is no longer with us, and even though the MSDN subscription is attached to MY passport ([new@emailaddress.com]) every time I come in here it puts up sirdar’s information, like my name on this chat here

11:04:13 PM Sirdar

I’ve also changed our shipping / profile addresses about 12 different places

11:04:29 PM Sirdar

the shipping address for the MSDN should be [new shipping address]

11:04:39 PM Harriet

OK, Sirdar, please contact MSDN Fulfillment Center to change all that.

11:04:43 PM Sirdar

which is in ALL the fields for our company profile, etc

11:04:53 PM Sirdar

no one can ever help me

11:04:59 PM Harriet

The MSDN Fulfillment Center is the appropriate group to assist you. The phone number can be found from this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/support/worldwide/

11:05:10 PM Sirdar

microsoft is starting to suck really really bad lately

11:05:26 PM Sirdar

i’ve contacted 3 different centers about this issue on the phone

11:05:39 PM Sirdar

MSDN tells me to call partner becasue of ISV

11:05:45 PM Sirdar

partner tells me to call MSDN

11:05:59 PM Sirdar

I thought I’d try here, now you are telling me again to call MSDN

11:06:04 PM Sirdar

no one wants to help

11:06:54 PM Sirdar

Maybe it’s time to switch development to another platform if you don’t help developers anymore, I can build my solutions on Linux or Macos, doesn’t matter to me, but you’ve always been great with developers until last 2 years

11:07:02 PM Harriet

Is your MSDN subscription from the ISV partner program?

11:07:05 PM Sirdar

yes

11:07:08 PM Sirdar

I call partner, they tell me to contact MSDN

11:07:16 PM Sirdar

I call MSDN, they tell me they can’t help me and to call Partner

11:07:58 PM Sirdar

I thought I’d just try here and maybe someone here could help because i’m usually on hold for 10 mins when I call them only to be told to call other people

11:10:12 PM Harriet

If you want to change the passport, please the instruction in MSDN FAQ will point you to the right direction: How do I change the Microsoft Passport I use to sign in to MSDN Subscriber Downloads?

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx#subdwnld

11:10:20 PM Sirdar

I did that

11:10:27 PM Sirdar

I sign in with [new@emailaddress.com]

11:10:52 PM Sirdar

yet it still shows up when I log in as [old@emailaddress.com] even though I am definintely logged in with [new@emailaddress.com] passport right now

11:10:59 PM Sirdar

we even DELETED [old@emailaddress.com] passport

11:11:08 PM Sirdar

still says that

11:11:19 PM Sirdar

but I just logged in with [new@emailaddress.com] to get here

11:13:42 PM Harriet

Sirdar, I am checking for you. Thanks for your patience.

11:14:05 PM Sirdar

I’m Kurt Koller, logged in right now with [new@emailaddress.com] passport

11:14:14 PM Sirdar

Sirdar hasn’t been with the company for 6 months

11:14:19 PM Sirdar

his passport is deleted

11:14:27 PM Sirdar

and it still shows his account when I log in

11:14:42 PM Sirdar

all I want to do is change shipping address

11:14:48 PM Sirdar

this is absurd kinda, right?

11:17:17 PM Harriet

From my database, that your partner account’s information has been changed. But the MSDN account’s information still belongs to Sirdar.

11:17:50 PM Sirdar

what can I do here? every time I call MSDN they tell me to call partner, then partner tells me to contact MSDN.

11:17:59 PM Sirdar

is there anyone else I can contact?

11:18:17 PM Sirdar

_all_ I want to do is change the shipping address for MSDN subscription

11:18:22 PM Sirdar

since we moved to a new address

11:18:32 PM Sirdar

does it still ship to [old shipping address]?

11:18:38 PM Sirdar

last shipment went there

11:18:58 PM Sirdar

DHL called us and said they wouldn’t forward again after that time

11:19:29 PM Sirdar

i’ve changed the address in every place I can find to [new shipping address]

11:20:43 PM Harriet

Sirdar, since your MSDN shipment is from the partner program, you have to contact the partner regional service center to change your address.

11:21:02 PM Sirdar

awesome because they just tell me to contact MSDN and vice versa

11:21:16 PM Sirdar

I guess it’s time to siwtch to ADC or something

11:21:38 PM Sirdar

cos this is a total headache and it’s only gotten worse over last 2 years

11:21:58 PM Sirdar

I can’t spend half my life trying to change a shipping address

11:22:03 PM Harriet

I am sorry. I wish I could change the address for you. But as an online concierge, I only can point you to the right direction. Sorry for the inconvenience.

11:22:07 PM Sirdar

which is what’s starting to happen

11:22:21 PM Sirdar

please let someone there know that ms just lost a development firm

11:22:29 PM Sirdar

thank you

11:22:48 PM Harriet

You are welcome.

11:22:53 PM Harriet

Is there anything else I can help you?

11:23:09 PM Sirdar

I’m going to blog this converstaion

11:23:15 PM Sirdar

hope that’s ok!

11:23:34 PM Sirdar

i get about 50,000 readers a month

11:23:42 PM Sirdar

developers mostly

11:23:55 PM Sirdar

please let someone know

11:23:56 PM Sirdar

thank you

11:25:53 PM Harriet

I feel sorry about the situation you are having.

11:26:43 PM Harriet

Kurt, is there anything else I can help you?

11:29:54 PM Harriet

Are you still with me?

11:30:22 PM Sirdar

yeah

11:30:42 PM Sirdar

I’m looking into Apple’s ADC program

11:30:49 PM Sirdar

seems pretty comparable

11:31:00 PM Sirdar

maybe I’ll have to switch us to Mac development over the next year

11:32:54 PM Harriet

Kurt, other than changing address, is there anything else I can help you?

11:35:19 PM Sirdar

Should I go with Apple’s ADC program, or should we just maybe switch to an open source shop?

11:35:30 PM Sirdar

Which would you do?

11:36:44 PM Harriet

I would like you to stay with Microsoft.

11:37:13 PM Sirdar

I’d love to do that, but it appears I can’t update my shipping address with your company.

11:37:28 PM Sirdar

I’ve been trying off and on for 6 months.

11:37:53 PM Sirdar

So ADC or just go open source?

11:38:04 PM Sirdar

I guess with open source I don’t need to worry about address changes.

11:38:26 PM Sirdar

Apple, who knows. Their iPod support seems pretty good so far, though.

11:38:51 PM Sirdar

well thanks for all the help!

11:38:55 PM Sirdar

Do you have an iPod?

11:38:59 PM Harriet

Kurt, I really wish I could help you. But as an online concierge agent, I don’t have permission to access customer’s account. The partner’s regional service center is the appropriate group to assist you.

11:39:07 PM Sirdar

They’re pretty well designed, right?

11:39:17 PM Harriet

I don’t have iPod.

11:39:25 PM Sirdar

I haven’t tried the MS thing yet, what’s it called? Soon?

11:39:28 PM Sirdar

Zoot?

11:39:31 PM Sirdar

something like that

11:39:45 PM Harriet

It’s called Zune.

11:39:54 PM Sirdar

Right, do you have one of those?

11:40:11 PM Sirdar

They look good, especially in brown.

11:40:40 PM Harriet

To tell you the truth, i don’t have either.

11:40:56 PM Sirdar

Brown is the color of crap, which is how MS has been treating me as a customer lately. Hahah, that’s funny, right?

11:41:27 PM Sirdar

I made myself laugh out loud!

11:41:37 PM Sirdar

and I was drinking some soda at the time and it went up my noes

11:41:41 PM Sirdar

nose

11:42:00 PM Sirdar

would you buy a Zune or an iPod video?

11:42:05 PM Sirdar

if you were to get one?

11:42:41 PM Harriet

As a Microsoft employee, I will support Zune.

11:43:03 PM Sirdar

yeah I own apple stock and microsoft stock, because I’m not religious

11:43:13 PM Sirdar

I’m running Vista on my laptop, pretty good

11:43:40 PM Sirdar

Acer 8200, good 3d, it’s pretty cool

11:44:01 PM Sirdar

you running vista? does ms treat you well as an employee?

11:44:21 PM Sirdar

stock’s been pretty flat, i’d stay away from the options

11:44:50 PM Harriet

I am still running Windows XP. We will all upgrade to Windows Vista by the end of the December.

11:45:35 PM Sirdar

yeah I was surprised at vista, it’s better than i thought it would be

11:45:58 PM Harriet

Thank you for the comment.

11:46:03 PM Sirdar

are you allowed to close the window there on your end?

11:46:15 PM Sirdar

or do i have to do it?

11:46:21 PM Sirdar

just wondering

11:47:00 PM Harriet

I can close the chat, but I would like to hear any good or bad comment from you.

11:47:19 PM Sirdar

See? You’re really patient and want to help me, but your hands are tied.

11:47:33 PM Sirdar

The peope that CAN help just tell me to call other people who tell me to call the original people.

11:48:15 PM Sirdar

if you were to get a zune, would it be black, white, or brown?

11:48:45 PM Harriet

Kurt, I would like to explain our service for you. This service is designed to assist you in navigating the Self-Help technical support resources available on the Microsoft family of websites, but cannot answer questions about how to resolve specific technical problems. Searching for information can include locating relevant KB articles, white papers and other technical resources.

11:49:21 PM Sirdar

aw, now you’ve turned into a bot

11:49:31 PM Harriet

I would like to help you, but I dont’ have the permission to access your account. I am really sorry about that.

11:49:33 PM Sirdar

Do you need guidance finding the answers you are looking for, or assistance with a non-technical question? Click here to access the MSDN Online Concierge available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except US National Holidays).

11:49:48 PM Harriet

I would choose the white, because white is my favoriate color.

11:49:50 PM Sirdar

I have a non-technical question. i’d like to change my shipping address

11:49:55 PM Sirdar

yeah the white is good

11:50:02 PM Sirdar

I have a white ipod but I want a zune

11:50:27 PM Sirdar

people like the black, but it shows fingerprints

11:51:11 PM Harriet

Yes, but black is a very cool color.

11:51:24 PM Sirdar

wait, white is your favorite color, or favorite of the three? cos I’ve never heard anyone say that about white

11:51:53 PM Sirdar

except like skinheads or something (ha ha just kidding)

11:52:44 PM Sirdar

steve jobs is annoying though

11:52:51 PM Harriet

White is my favoriate color. I will buy white cloth, white shoes, and also white Zune.

11:52:56 PM Sirdar

I don’t know if I could do apple development just for that reason

11:53:09 PM Sirdar

wow, that’s a lot of white

11:53:20 PM Sirdar

if you can pull it off, why not?

11:53:40 PM Sirdar

you’d never see steve jobs in a white turtleneck, only black

11:53:44 PM Sirdar

that guy’s arrogant

11:53:55 PM Sirdar

and most apple owners I meet are arrogant and think they know everything

11:54:08 PM Sirdar

so i’d have a hard time moving to that platform for development

11:54:11 PM Sirdar

you know?

11:54:16 PM Harriet

I wish I could get a chance to see him.

11:54:25 PM Sirdar

but man, he can jack up a stock price, right?

11:54:28 PM Sirdar

yeah

11:54:33 PM Sirdar

i like gates a lot

11:54:49 PM Sirdar

but ballmer, egad

11:54:53 PM Sirdar

he’s a bit of a freak

11:55:11 PM Harriet

Me too. He has been my idol since my high school.

11:55:16 PM Sirdar

you ever see those videos of him running around all sweating chanting “developers developers developers!”?

11:55:24 PM Sirdar

ballmer, not gates

11:55:40 PM Sirdar

what an intense weirdo

11:55:48 PM Harriet

Yes, I think everyone here has watched that vedio.

11:55:53 PM Sirdar

but i’ll take that over jobs’ annoying arrogance and smugness anyday

11:56:02 PM Sirdar

heh it’s pretty over the top that video

11:56:30 PM Sirdar

what about the gates pie in the face?

11:56:35 PM Sirdar

that was a cheap shot imho

11:56:49 PM Sirdar

europeans, feh

11:57:04 PM Sirdar

you’re in the us, right? it implies you are

11:57:11 PM Harriet

Kurt, sorry, i can’t give you more comments on our leaders. I am still in working.

11:57:18 PM Sirdar

oh right

11:57:22 PM Sirdar

duh, sorry

11:57:40 PM Harriet

Kurt, is there anything else I can assist you?

11:57:44 PM Sirdar

but ballmer is a freak, right?

11:57:47 PM Sirdar

oh yeah

11:57:52 PM Sirdar

you could change my shipping address?

11:57:59 PM Sirdar

Do you need guidance finding the answers you are looking for, or assistance with a non-technical question? Click here to access the MSDN Online Concierge available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except US National Holidays).

11:58:06 PM Sirdar

it’s a non-technical question

11:58:15 PM Sirdar

“Can you please change my shipping address?”

11:58:17 PM Sirdar

cos like

11:58:22 PM Sirdar

It needs to be changed

11:58:36 PM Harriet

That’s what I cannot do. Please contact the regional service center.

11:59:11 PM Sirdar

yeah. but they won’t do it. and neither will partner.

11:59:18 PM Sirdar

they just tell me to call each other.

11:59:44 PM Sirdar

i mean if I was independently wealthy, maybe I could do that all day

12:00:05 AM Sirdar

but you know, I’m a working stiff

12:00:23 AM Sirdar

do you have a windows smartphone?

12:00:31 AM Sirdar

i have the t-mobile dash

12:00:34 AM Sirdar

it’s cool

12:00:38 AM Sirdar

I’m a good customer

12:01:06 AM Sirdar

it sucks that no one will help me and I’ll have to go to the smug computer platform and take all my business to them

12:01:16 AM Sirdar

right?

12:01:27 AM Harriet

Kurt, is it a good email address to send you a follow up email? [new@emailaddress.com]

12:01:32 AM Sirdar

yes

12:01:39 AM Sirdar

that’s a great email address for a followup

12:01:55 AM Harriet

What is the address you would like to change?

12:02:00 AM Sirdar

will you follow up with a confirmation that my shipping address has been changed?

12:02:09 AM Sirdar

[old shipping address] is the old address

12:02:14 AM Sirdar

MSDN shipping

12:02:18 AM Sirdar

it should be

12:02:26 AM Sirdar

[new shipping address]

12:03:01 AM Sirdar

it’s set that way everywhere in partner, yet the address in MSDN shipping is still [old shipping address]

12:03:35 AM Harriet

OK, I will escalate to the partner service center and give you a follow-up email later.

12:03:45 AM Sirdar

thank you so much!

12:04:02 AM Sirdar

I appreciate this, maybe you can help where I couldn’t get things done

12:04:07 AM Harriet

It’s my pleasure to assist you.

12:04:11 AM Sirdar

thank you harriet

12:04:24 AM Harriet

I will try my best to help you.

12:04:32 AM Sirdar

have a great night then, i hope I can still be a ms developer, I love their tools

12:04:42 AM Sirdar

VS 2005 is SO much better than xcode

12:04:54 AM Harriet

Thank you so much!

12:04:58 AM Sirdar

I think i’d go nuts if I had to use xcode for more than a day

12:05:01 AM Sirdar

have a great night

12:05:22 AM Harriet

Have a good night too.

12:05:32 AM Harriet

Kurt,thank you for using the MSDN Online Concierge. We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Please feel free to come back again.

Note: Harriet had to battle internally for 3 weeks (I was Cc:ed on various emails), but she was able to do what I was not able to do, which was to change my address on my MSDN subscription. Thank you Harriet!

The 64k demos that spend most of their time in DirectX really do kick some serious ass, and yes it’s cool that procedural tricks mean you can have an FPS in 96k.

I also think that Will Wright seems like a really great and intelligent guy. He created The Sims, which is postmodern genius. SimCity and SimAnt, yeah man. You rock, Will.

Will. Talk to me, brother. I have to say, I think you’ve been hanging out with too many Europeans and maybe hit the scene koolaid too hard or something. Your mom and I told you it’s bad for you. I mean, I watched your presentation of “Spore” at the GDC, and wowsers Will, did you say “procedurally generated” 400,000 times? Or is that just where I lost count?

Spore, while looking incredibly cool, seems like it might be a tad on the jacks-of-all-trade side to be enjoyable. Way too many game types. It seems more like a cool set of sandboxes than a coherent whole. Or maybe something I’d put up on the plasma for that way-cool ambiance/ambience. It’s missing the postmodern genius of the Sims, where everyone and thier mom played because they wanted to make perfect versions of their own lives but ended up depressed when their Mini Me lost their 5th job and couldn’t keep up with the dishes and constantly wet themselves.

I think Spore will ultimately flop. I hope I’m wrong.

[Related: Frank Lantz's "Sporgy"]

At the entrance, there was a booth called Tylenol Ouch, I’m not sure what they were selling there, but they were giving massages and they had these columns with Plexiglas around them filled with Tylenol. The booth was surrounded by a lot of young kids, and it was one of those science fiction becomes reality moments where the dystopic future society with drugs marketed as lifestyle choices and/or candy was suddenly front and center at a technology conference. Also, I guess it’s a-ok now to sell medication to kids using cute characters. Pardon the quality, but here are some pictures taken with my crappy mobile:

Maybe the message is, if you use all of this new technology, you’ll need painkillers. (Ha! I crack myself up!)

I took my 3 year old son to the event. Many of the exhibitors had Hummer H2s (Verizon, Hot97, some random game controller company, et. al.) and Cooper Minis painted up with logos and stuff on them, another booth had 7 or so scooters (of the motorized variety) in various colors, and my son kept telling me that “they have rides here” and tried
to climb inside random vehicles.

The biggest draw seemed to be the Logitech booth. They were giving away these clear round plastic discs with their logo, which had a flashing Logitech green LED in them. There was a line to get these things which was, I kid you not, about 20 minutes long.

Anyway, here’s what’s going to be new and exciting in your digital life:

• HD DVD. They demoed HD DVD on large flat screens. 1080p didn’t look that impressive versus 480p without a comparison, lord knows why they didn’t have a 480p system right next to it. My guess is it doesn’t look that
  much better to most people. Or maybe the problem was display they were hooked to, they were supposed to
  be the bomb or whatever, but they were pretty weak. I don’t know, to me this seems like a pretty incremental increase in quality that the masses will probably never get behind.
• Belkin had a display with the “Belkin Flip for Mac Mini” – it turns out that with this product you can have TWO COMPUTERS SHARING ONE MONITOR. HOLY CRAP! And not even at the same time, it’s just a KVM. But it was targeted at Mac Mini users and it looked like sort of a short Mac Mini so it’ll probably sell. For $80.
• Lots of people hawking iPod accessories. Apparently, your digital life will be filled with semi-disposable electronic fetish items with large add-on aftermarkets.
• GameTap had a DJ that was pretty decent, they were playing some cool music and they had displays hooked up where you could play their catalog of retro games. If you have Mame and MESS it’s sort of moot, but it’ll probably fly. This was probably the best exhibition in my opinion.
• Xavix had some cool stuff. They seem to specialize in what used to be called virtual reality, at least the controllers end of it. They had some golf demos and baseball demos and fishing demos (I cannot bring myself to link to a fishing game demo) with untethered controls–think Nintendo Revolution with custom controllers for
  each game. It was pretty cool.
• Intel had a controller that hooked up to a bicycle. It made it a stationary bike, and had a few pieces that hooked up to the rear wheel and fork, and the demo was riding your bike down a virtual road. Not in the Tour de France or anything, just a random road. I can’t categorize this as exciting, but I guess if you were to take “real life” and replace it with “digital life” this is what you’d be doing.
• The New York Post always seems to have a marginal-looking guy selling subscriptions at the weirdest places, and this was no exception. If you subscribed for a year they’d mail you a $40 gift card to Best Buy or something.
• The Cooper Mini I mentioned earlier was at an exhibitor that does in-auto video, and had a typical 7-inch widescreen display mounted in the center console, and then a 42-inch LCD display in the back, facing toward the back, like out the back window. Not sure that I get this, but okay.

Which brings me to Dance Dance Revolution.

Whenever I see clips of DDR compos, it’s almost always groups of semi-attractive Asian or European tweens/teens/young adults doing cool choreographed moves, or one player doing both sides with his hands and feet, or some other crazy-assed thing like Germans doing DDR on a moving subway. I know that when one sees something from another culture (like say British Comedy TV) one only sees the best of the best and can easily get a distorted view of what it’s actually like (British Comedy TV basically sucks overall, but you wouldn’t know it from Monty Python and The Office). I get that.

However, a typical snapshot-in-time moment was like this red-haired skinny freckled geek with long hair (did I mention it was red?) sporting the geek beard and “dancing” with absolutely no finesse and next to him on the next machine a decently overweight person (couldn’t really tell the gender). It always amazes me when someone seriously overweight can actually move like that.

No I’m not slagging overweight people, as I’d have to be slagging myself, but I can’t move like this person and I am maybe 4 inches taller and 75 pounds lighter than they were. It was impressive. But it wasn’t attractive squads of nubile
youth, either. Hopefully this improved as the day went on.

A huge line had formed at the entrance when they opened, and when I left a few hours later, the line was even more huge, winding up and down the inside of the Javits Center. I considered selling the 4 wristbands that I’d accumulated going in and out of the floor with my son to help pay for parking ($35), but you know, ethics.

So I sold two of them to people that already paid for tickets for $20, the marketing end of that transaction being “skip this huge line that you have to stand in even though you purchased your tickets online” which was snatched up right away.

I had this problem on my old laptop, and then I replaced my laptop, and shortly afterward it began happening here as well. It’s fine at work, but when I’m in a remote location and connected to the network, the thing takes FOREVER when I right click on icons or hit delete on an icon in explorer, go to open a zip file, etc. I troubleshot this for a while and detected network access whenever I did this, it tried to connect back to our domain controller named STARGATE on 10.0.0.1 – so I was under the impression I had some bad shell extension that was trying to access the domain controller for permissions or something.

So I’m working tonight and it’s PAINFUL and I’m like wtf is going on here, so I go through Software\Classes\Applications in the registry, where the shell extensions are, and I find this extension for a program called GSpot, which is a program to tell you what kind of CODECS a multimedia file uses. Anyhow, it’s a program on the W:\ drive, which is mapped to a share on STARGATE and even though I never ever told it to install shell extensions, it went ahead and did that and pointed it to W:\ where I ran the program from. So basically every time I right clicked on an icon, etc, it was going out to the W drive to try to load this shell extension.

Wow, that was painful.

Now my right-clicks are almost INSTANT. I’ve verified that this happens by re-running GSpot – it immediately creates the offending shell extension, without prompting. Thank you GSpot, for making my life hell for months, without ever ASKING me if you could do so.

BTW, GSpot is an EXCELLENT program otherwise. It’s available here, just never run it from anywhere other than your local hard drive.

Newsgroups: alt.captain.sarcastic, alt.food.dennys, alt.stupidity, alt.angst, alt.basement.graveyard, alt.music.nin, alt.music.ween, alt.slack, alt.surrealism

From: kkoller@nyx10.cs.du.edu (captain sarcastic)

Date: 9 Aug 1994 04:07:27 -0400

Local: Tues, Aug 9 1994 4:07 am

Subject: Stabbing Westward at Denny’s

[This is a true story, and is Copyright 1994 Captain Sarcastic]

So, Big Jilm stops by my place and asks me to go with him to get some food
at Denny’s for my birthday (today, Aug. 9) and I say, “sure.” So, we hop
into his car and run over to Denny’s. We order, and eat, and everything
is going swimmingly.

Suddenly, before we get the check but after dessert, we hear a loud crash
of breaking glass, and a waitress saying, “call 911.” Oh, joy. So I
start to look over at the area of the restaurant that the crash came from,
which is in sort of a corner behind a partition. Two people run out from
behind the partition, and leave the restaurant.

Suddenly, I see a hand rise up behind the partition holding a glass full
of water and ice. Then the hand rapidly disappears behind the partition
again, and a large crashing noise follows. Another person then runs out
from behind the partition.

Our waitress is now on the phone calling 911, and the service is even
worse than the normal Denny’s service. Two more people come out from
behind the partition. Actually, one person sort of *threw* the other out
from behind the partition and then jumped on him on another table, making
yet another smashing noise. Oh yeah, the one guy’s eye was bleeding
profusely, and the other guy was sort of half-covered with blood.

“Oh, a fight,” I casually say to Jim.
“Yeah,” he says back.

As they sort of get closer to where we are sitting, we stand up and sort
of move back, figuring it would be a bad idea to get in the way of flying
bodies. Then one guy pulls out a Denny’s butterknife, and begins rapidly
stabbing the other guy up against the front counter area. I mean, we were
close enough where you could hear the knife entering flesh.

“Hey Jim, he’s stabbing that guy,” I casually say to Jim.
“Yeah,” he says back.
“Maybe we should leave now,” I casually say to Jim.
“Yeah,” he says back.

We go outside, and bolt to the car at sort of a brisk pace. There’s a
little white car parked at the end of the parking lot, and the two guys
come out of Denny’s sort of slowly, and limp their way to the car.
They’re both bleeding pretty well, and they get into the same car. Who am
I to understand these things?

“Hey Jim, let’s get the plate number from that car in case someone’s dead
or something,” I casually say to Jim.
“Yeah,” he says back.

Jim then takes off after the car, which had a pretty good head start. We
get close enough after about 2 miles (staying far enough back to avoid
things like gunfire) to read the plate. Delaware has simple six digit
plate numbers, no letters, so it’s easy.

We head back to Denny’s, and there’s a cop there in the lot.

“Hey Jim, let’s pull up next to that cop and tell him the plate number,”
I casually say to Jim.
“Yeah,” he says back.

We pull up next to the cop, and he rolls his window down.

“Hey, are you here for that ruckus that just happened in Denny’s?” I
casually ask the cop.
“Yeah,” he says back.
“Hey, we got the plate number from the car, do you want it?” I casually
ask the cop.
“We can’t really do anything, since we don’t have a victim,” he says back.

I think to myself that yeah, the victim’s in the CAR, dumbass, and we have
the PLATE NUMBER, assmunch, maybe you can go find em or something? I sort
of keep that to myself, though, remembering back to other encounters with
the police where I had that sort of attitude. I love it when you present
a critical piece of evidence to a cop, and he doesn’t even say, “Thanks.”

“Yeah, I thought I saw you guys pass me at the intersection,” says the
cop, casually.
“Yeah,” I say back.
“What was that number? he asks, casually.

I give him the plate number.

“That was a green Chevy Nova, right?” asks the cop, casually.
“No, it was a small white hatchback of some sort,” I say back.
“Oh,” says the cop, casually, and rolls up his window and talks on the
radio for a while.

We go back inside to pay the bill, and there’s spattered blood all over
the front area of the restaurant, and the area where they were sitting
looked like a small bomb had hit it. The guy that was getting stabbed
repeatedly was moving really slowly to the car, and with the amount of
blood that he lost, I would say that he probably ended up dead, especially
since the car was headed not to a hospital, but into an industrial park.
My adrenaline was hardly raised, and neither was Jim’s.

We had a little talk about that, and neither of us could figure out why we
weren’t really even shocked at seeing this stabbing taking place right in
front of us. Weird. Anyway, I gotta go now, cos Jim and I are sitting
around drinking iced tea and playing Doom.

–
Captain Sarcastic <kkoller@nyx10.cs.du.edu> alt.captain.sarcastic is BAD.

Taco Bell $2 Bill Story

On my way home from the second job I’ve taken for the extra holiday ca$h I need, I stop at Taco Bell for a quick bite to eat. In my billfold is a $50 bill and a $2 bill. I figure that with a $2 bill, I can get something to eat and not have to worry about people getting pissed at me for trying to break a large bill.

ME: “Hi, I’d like one seven layer burrito please, to go.”

IT: “Is that it?”

ME: “Yep.”

IT: “That’ll be $1.04, eat here?”

ME: “No, it’s to go.” [I hate effort duplication.]

At this point I open my billfold and hand him the $2 bill. He looks at it kind
of funny and

IT: “Uh, hang on a sec, I’ll be right back.”

He goes to talk to his manager, who is still within earshot. The following
conversation occurs between the two of them.

IT: “Hey, you ever see a $2 bill?”

MG: “No. A what?”

IT: “A $2 bill. This guy just gave it to me.”

MG: “Ask for something else, there’s no such thing as a $2 bill.” [my
emp]

IT: “Yeah, thought so.”

He comes back to me and says

IT: “We don’t take these. Do you have anything else?”

ME: “Just this fifty. You don’t take $2 bills? Why?”

IT: “I don’t know.”

ME: “See here where it says legal tender?”

IT: “Yeah.”

ME: “So, shouldn’t you take it?”

IT: “Well, hang on a sec.”

He goes back to his manager who is watching me like I’m going to shoplift, and

IT: “He says I have to take it.”MG: “Doesn’t he have anything else?”

IT: “Yeah, a fifty. I’ll get it and you can open the safe and get change.”

MG: “I’m not opening the safe with him in here.” [my emp]

IT: “What should I do?”

MG: “Tell him to come back later when he has real money.”

IT: “I can’t tell him that, you tell him.”

MG: “Just tell him.”

IT: “No way, this is weird, I’m going in back.”

The manager approaches me and says

MG: “Sorry, we don’t take big bills this time of night.” [it was 8pm and this particular Taco Bell is in a well lighted indoor mall with 100 other stores.]

ME: “Well, here’s a two.”

MG: “We don’t take those either.”

ME: “Why the hell not?”

MG: “I think you know why.”

ME: “No really, tell me, why?”

MG: “Please leave before I call mall security.”

ME: “Excuse me?“

MG: “Please leave before I call mall security.”

ME: “What the hell for?”

MG: “Please, sir.”

ME: “Uh, go ahead, call them.”

MG: “Would you please just leave?”

ME: “No.”

MG: “Fine, have it your way then.”

ME: “No, that’s Burger King, isn’t it?”

At this point he backs away from me and calls mall security on the phone around the corner. I have two people staring at me from the dining area, and I begin laughing out loud, just for effect. A few minutes later this 45 year oldish guy comes in and says [at the other end of counter, in a whisper]

SG: “Yeah, Mike, what’s up?”

MG: “This guy is trying to give me some [pause] funny money.”

SG: “Really? What?”

MG: “Get this, a two dollar bill.”

SG: “Why would a guy fake a $2 bill?” [incredulous]

MG: “I don’t know? He’s kinda weird. Says the only other thing he has is a
fifty.”

SG: “So, the fifty’s fake?”

MG: “No, the $2 is.”

SG: “Why would he fake a $2 bill?”

MG: “I don’t know. Can you talk to him, and get him out of here?”

SG: “Yeah…”

Security Guard walks over to me and says

SG: “Mike here tells me you have some fake bills you’re trying to use.”

ME: “Uh, no.”

SG: “Lemme see ‘em.”

ME: “Why?”

SG: “Do you want me to get the cops in here?”

At this point I am ready to say, “SURE, PLEASE,” but I want to eat, so
I say

ME: “I’m just trying to buy a burrito and pay for it with this $2 bill.”

I put the bill up near his face, and he flinches like I’m taking a swing at him.
He takes the bill, turns it over a few times in his hands, and says

SG: “Mike, what’s wrong with this bill?”

MG: “It’s fake.”

SG: “It doesn’t look fake to me.”

MG: “But it’s a $2 bill.”

SG: “Yeah?”

MG: “Well, there’s no such thing, is there?”

The security guard and I both look at him like he’s an idiot, and it dawns on
the guy that he has no clue.

My burrito was free and he threw in a small drink and those cinnamon things, too. Makes me want to get a whole stack of $2 bills just to see what happens when I try to buy stuff. If I got the right group of people, I could probably end up in jail. At least you get free food.

END_OF_STORY