Atmospheric Musings

So I decided a few days ago that having a main home computer with technology from 4 or 5 years ago was no longer an acceptible situation. I ponied up the dough and got a whole new system. Now this thing is pretty snazzy. Core 2 Quad. Dual ATI HD 4850 video cards. 4gb DDR3 RAM. 750GB SATA HD. Fancy case with a window and flashing lights. And all that’s really kick ass. I’ll be able to rock Starcraft 2 the day it comes out. That makes me happy. But for me the coolest thing about the whole system is something I didn’t even know I was getting. The motherboard has Linux. No shit. The Asus P5E3 Deluxe board actually has a distro of Linux on it that lets you launch a web browser or Skype almost before you even hit POST. And today, on Day 1 of the new computer, I actually used it because I was trying to sort out Asus’s byzantine BIOS update. I don’t think it’ll be useful for everyone, but how many times have you demolished your system and not had a spare around to get on the web and try and sort out your recovery options. Really a great feature and a testament to just how cheap storage has become, when you can include an OS on the mobo. Kudos to Asus!

watching the olympics.. online and on tv.. the coverage is amazing, but I have to ask.. HOW THE GODDAMNED FUCK IS AIR RIFLE A MOTHERFUCKING EVENT IN THE OLYMPICS!?!?!? If that made it, why did they pull baseball? Hell, why ISN’T paintball? Fuck, why not make PING PONG A FUCKING EVENT!?!?!? Oh..shit… nm….

It’s official! The kid is going to be a boy and we got the coveted parker.babyphotoblog.com aha! There can be only one!

Well, I reloaded the iPhone app and it appears to work. Yay moblogging! Enjoy a test pic of my messy livingroom. I’m sure Claw’s going to love seeing it on the internets.

Just a quick note that I’ve bumped our Wordpress install to the latest version. It adds more usability features and more importantly, should interface with the new iPhone app. Except that the last part isn’t working on my phone yet. Still trying to sort out those bugs. Anyway, enjoy the new theme and the upgraded software. Woohoo!

It pisses me off when someone who should know better, doesn’t.

It’s infuriating to have taken the time to try to explain a concept, only to have the idiot in question decide, “You already know better and have it under control, so I’m not going to even try to understand it.”

“Take a look at this report…[link]“

“Okay, I’ve got it.”

“Shouldn’t the numbers in Section B be higher?”

“Higher than what?”

“[copy/paste from the chart] Those numbers.”

“Those are the same numbers.”

“Shouldn’t they be higher though?”

“Higher than what?”

“What?”

“What is it that you’re trying to do with these numbers?”

“Well I’m running comparative percentages on…”

“Are you doing your math right?  You should be running these [point] against this [point], not that [point].”

“Oh.”

“That’s what you meant by ‘These numbers should be higher?’ all this time?!”

“Well, yeah, um thanks for uh, clarifying… that… [leave]“

“*le sigh*”

“…if I try to yank/wiggle/tug/press/slide every last apparently movable piece on this device.”

When the secretary responsible for swapping out the daily backup drive is out sick, all the “backup secretary” knows is that she needs to bring in “Thur” tape, push a button, and change “Wed” for “Thur” and she’s done.

Problem is, she assumes it will pop out instantly, and it doesn’t.  No, don’t ask the guy sitting right there, go ask someone “higher up” instead.

The higher-up-guy proceeds to come just short of disconnecting the drive or fetching pliers and a screwdriver to force the drive out of its housing, before I suggest waiting, or perhaps checking to see if maybe there’s some software on the server that gives the current status of the drive.  Maybe something like “Preparing to unmount drive” or simply “Disconnecting…” or “STOP POKING ME YOU MONGOL” or the like.

I’m afraid to take a vacation; who knows what carnage I will return to find?

If you like your job, you calmly voice your concern, then patiently let your boss fuck up, then gently explain why they fucked up and how much it cost them.  Here’s an example scenario:

“Should we set a quota limit for the weekend?”

“Yeah, the client said about 400.  So set it for 600.”

“600? Really? If they only want 400 then…”

(interrupt) “Well what does ‘about 400′ really mean?”

“Well, I’d say plus or minus 10 on the liberal side…”

“Nah, set it for 600.  If we go over, then we go over.”

Well, it turns out that they shut our traffic off at 411.  Our system was not set to shut off in that range and continued to try to send traffic.  All of that traffic was denied, and wasted for this project, as we can’t reuse that traffic when they eventually open the project up for the remaining group of 1,000.

Running the numbers based on previous traffic samples, we lost out on about $600 worth of revenue from that wasted sample.

Now if they had just not fucked up so many times before, $600 wouldn’t be such a big deal.  There is hope however; they are allowing me to rebuild the site and rework the model to support both ethics and profits.

It’s just a matter of time, and patience.

“Did we get a list of the changes that were made based on our list of observations?”

“Yes, here’s the email…”

“I don’t see a list here.”

“It says right there, ‘We addressed half of the items on the list.’ It’s right there.”

“No, that’s not a list. Did we get a list?”

“It says RIGHT THERE, they did half of them. Can’t you read that?!?”

“Yes, right there, it says they did half. It does not give a listing of which half they did.”

“No but it says they did half!! Why are you trying to make things difficult!!”

“Difficult? Based on this email, the answer to my question is simply: ‘No, they did not send us a list.’ Simple.”

“But they TOLD us they did HALF!”

“Yes, and they did not send us a list. Thanks!”

I’ve decided to blog my frustrations here, unless any objections arise.

I’ll start with today.  I got to see an exec “in action” so to speak.  He actually said, “I’ll take that call, and stick around, maybe you’ll learn something.”  First mistake.

Long story short, the user had a considerable concern and was totally put at ease and assured that his assumptions were incorrect.  Too bad it was utter bullshit.

The primary problem was the overconfidence on the part of the exec, which caused him to believe that he understood what the user was asking without actually having to listen to what the user was saying, let alone think for two seconds.  This, coupled with the need to “show Jim how it’s done” resulted in a simply disgraceful customer service event.

I keep repeating to myself, “one day they’ll learn, one day they’ll listen…”  I think that I think that, (not a rambling typo, an interesting turn of phrase), and I hope that I’m right.

Wow, double posting on inordinate on the same day. Must be a miracle. Anyway, after a year or so of the Webmail link being useless, it now has a function. I finally got around to setting up Roundcube, which is an AJAX based IMAP client. It can theoretically connect to any IMAP server, but if you have an account on inordinate.net, you can just set that as the server and log in to your mail account. Speaking of mail accounts, I’m trying out the Ubuntu server default install which uses Dovecot for mail receipt and IMAP support and Postfix for SMTP services. We’ll give it a shot. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with Ubuntu server so far. It’s been relatively easy to migrate over to from FreeBSD and installing the optional Gnome GUI environment makes local maintenance and installation much easier, since I can update with a few mouse clicks instead of having to update the Ports directory manually and then update my individual ports (ala FreeBSD). We’ll see how the uptime goes once everything’s configed and running smoothly. FreeBSD did have legendary uptimes… it pretty much only went down when the power did… just like my wife! OOOOHHH!!!

I figure if I’m paying for this goddamned domain I should be putting some work into it. I have nothing of relevance to post, though. Well, maybe a thought:

Voters in Los Angeles are fucking stupid. They voted for a 9% phone tax (a reduction from the rather illegal 10% phone tax imposed on them last year) when they could have voted against the phone tax and paid 0%. This is why it was better when only the educated voted. Now we have morons fucking up the system because they can’t even figure out what the hell they’re voting for.

Oh… in a flashback to a previous post of mine from years ago - Canceling Verizon DSL this time was much simpler (if you don’t count yet another 30 minute wait.) When asked why I was canceling my service I simply replied, “I decline to comment.” With no other recourse and no angle to hit me with a sales pitch I was off the phone 1 minute later with my service canceled. Now I have a 10 meg cable connection for $5 less than the 1.5 meg DSL connection I had. That’s what I call sex.

So in my last post I was all proud that ratings were on for the Photo Gallery, but it turns out they were only usable by people who had accounts… all 4 or so of us. Weak sauce. The problem’s been remedied and everyone should now have global access to ratings across the board. Woohoo!

I’ve enabled ratings on the Inordinate Photo Gallery! Have fun going in there and marking up the highs and lows of photographic mis-adventures.

Well, it’s been about 6 months since I’ve posted. I’m sure no one really reads this blog, but I can’t seem to let it go.

Here’s an interesting blogging topic for you. It’s so hard to keep track of the existence all your friends’/associates’ blogs. Some, like myself, run personal WordPress installs, others use social networking sites (MySpace, Friendster, Web Fives, etc). Then there’s the big ones: Live Journal, Blogger, Blogspot, MSN Spaces. There’s tons more I’m not mentioning, but the problem is that if I want to know that my friends are blogging, I have to scour around, unless they’re constantly announcing that they have a running blog somewhere.

I realize that RSS can be used to handle the site disparity once you’ve tracked down the locations of everyone’s blog, but what’s a good way to even know they exist in the first place? Let’s say I reconnect with an old friend on MySpace or an old colleague on LinkedIn, and he’s got a killer blog somewhere else. Now unless he links to it on the social networking site, I might never know it exists. Is it impolite to say, “Hey, are you blogging?” Is there a level of familiarity associated with that? As in, I might ask a friend, but feel awkward bringing it up with a business associate.

I’m not asking for uniformity in blog sites, blogging styles or blogging software. But a uniform “calling card” would be nice. A simple iconic link that’s universal and links to their blog; similar to the orange RSS buttons everyone’s using these days. Anyway, just some thoughts, and a little something to break my blogging drought here.

Well, now that my co-workers all know, I’m going to spread the joy out to everyone who reads el Blogo. As of Wednesday, November 22, I will no longer be working for Liquid Entertainment. I applied to work at another game company, it worked out and starting the first week of December, I’ll be working there. The company’s down in Irvine, so as you can tell, that’s a hell of a commute. To that end, Claw and I will still be up in Glendale until our lease is up at the end of January and then will be moving down to the OC. Not quite sure where yet. Anyway, that’s the deal, I’ll still be local, just local in a different direction. That’s about it, so.. uh.. peace out.

EDIT:
On a related note, the week between Thanksgiving and December I am without work, so if anyone wants to engage in leisurely activities, contact me.

Depserate Housewives has started to garner a few reviews and there’s been a fucking huge spread. Some reviewers seem to be taking into account the target audience, while others are disappointed that it has fewer frags than Quake 4. Anyway, here’s a selection of reviews:

PC Gamer - 85%
“A cleverly designed tongue-in-cheek conversion of the show for the main-stream-friendly price tag of $19.99.”

IGN - 82%
“It is easy to jump into, has some interesting plot points that will draw fans of the show in, and has high production values in several key spots that ensures they won’t be turned off, like by poor voice actors or graphics glitches.”

Entertainment Weekly - 75%
“With heavy representation from four basic soap-opera food groups (murder, sex, jealousy, and amnesia), the game is a pleasant surprise for those of us who were expecting something more, well, Wisteria Lame.”

GameZone - 72%
“It’s lacking in customization options, but there’s still a good deal of content to partake in. The episode-style campaign is an absolute pleasure and will no doubt please fans of the show.”

GamePro - 65%
“The fact that it’s practically Sims 2 with Desperate Housewives textures, voice acting, and character likeness, hardly makes it appealing. The super-simple controls, drama-filled thematic scenes, and $19.99 price point may appeal to the casual gamer, but hardcore gamers should stray far away.”

WHAM! Gaming - 45%
“The game does fill up the day, even if the experience isn’t very satisfying. And at least you’re not watching the show.”

GameDaily - 40%
“This game has got it all: a contrived plot, bad voice acting, terrible dialogue, and loads of technical bugs. And let’s not forget about the slew of obvious advertisements, which gives the impression that this should have been a “free-to-play” sponsored game, especially since it downloads real product coupons to your computer as you play.”

Ahoy! In the spirit of the season, I’m passing along a little Halloween cheer. My friend and former co-worker has been celebrating the 13 Days of Halloween in artistic style. Check out his series of one-a-day Halloween horror speed paintings at deviantART. He’s painted most of these in under an hour and they’re better than I could do in a week. Great stuff.