Is WOW all there is?

I guess I would have to admit that when I first heard about World of Warcraft a few years ago, I was rather excited about the company that made some of my favorite lan and single player games was going to make a MMORPG or me to play, and I will admit that I had thought about being in on the release. I had just started into the real world of work and decided that I probably shouldn't sell my soul, and get absorbed in the whole playing of games while I was working on establishing my career and getting married, so it was few years later when I fist toyed with the idea of playing.

My brother (younger) played all the time, and when he moved in I figured it wouldn't be too bad, as I would have someone to play with at least, (really more of a solo player normally) so I made the leap and bought the game. I will admit that for about the first month it was fine and good to get a quest, kill a beast, return for prize, rinse, repeat. Now sure there are other things that could be fun, you can fish, or make clothes or leather, make guns, or poison. But ultimately what I think is supposed to be the charm (simple set of rules to success) really came to be a drag.

How many quests did you go on that you arrived and had to wait for the "Boss" to respawn, and group with a few people so you all didn't have to wait for him to respawn? For me it was nearly every quest, and maybe it was my fault for joining a "new" server, but ultimately the experience was not fun. Still I soldiered on and played all the way up to level 40 before I just decided that I had too much left to accomplish in life to play an open ended, monotonous waste of life. Needless to say, I suspended my account.

Several months pass and My brother still plays nearly every day, and my wife (for reason's unknown to me) decides that she wants to give this World of Warcraft a try. I reactivate my account, and purchase the Burning Crusade, (thankfully the brother unit had the disks, as the download would have taken forever) and started the updates. God bless the woman, but she got frustrated before the updates where even done and doesn't want to play at all leaving me with $50 out of my pocket playing a game that well, doesn't really do it for me.

I really am just more of a Console person, mmm Wii Sports .


Hopefully world of Starcraft will come out and be nearly as cool as the original Starcraft.


Ha ha Zergling rush bitches.



Tags: WOW, Starcraft, Wii, Convictus

Portable iTunes on a Stick

--Updated--
9/14/07

I have had partial success on this. Results here.

/--Update--

So I was reading the Lifehacker post about a soldier that was going to be deployed to iRaq (sic) and wanted to take iTunes with him. Actually I am kind of surprised that a solution for this has not come already given the recent explosion of storage devices and the rapid growth of their capacity.

At work I have been using some Memorex storage devices that have the U3 technology that I was less than excited about at first. U3 when you plug in your drive creates a virtual cd drive and then auto plays what looks like a flash application that runs in the tray and gives you several options to view files or run apps. They have several customized applications that you can purchase and they land in your installed application menu, this menu is only present when you plug in the drive and leaves when you leave.

Applications for this include Firefox and some readers but nothing exciting. If they could get apple on board with this, I really think that they could have a goldmine from people that roam with their music, but cannot install apps like iTunes. The largest technological hurdle, is that iTunes like most applications probably makes use of the windows registry (windows centric especially since the military doesn't have time for any smarmy "I only use mac's" crap). In vista there is an elegant solution for the least privileged user scenario with the profile base extended registry(see link). This would let the app on startup put in place any reg settings needed (copied from the portable drive) and everything would be set.

I don't see this working for XP or 2kpro, but I bet that we see some 64gig iTunes portable library devices for Vista....

Hey does the time stamp on this post count for documentation for my Patent application?

To try this I am going to try and create a setup program for U3 and follow this guide for making portable applications

Damn you Hardware Revision

So for a Friday with the boss out on vacation, I figured it was a good day to prep for my busy Presidents day weekend project. I will be replacing all of the switches in one part of the building and installing some cable management to wrangle the rats nest in my network closet. I finished configuring the switches and while putting on the rack ears it dawns on me, one of the Cisco 2970 switches is different, and not just a little. One of the switches is nearly 2x's as thick as the others; so different that there is no way that the rack ears, that work on all of the other switches, will work.

Crap.

Boss is out so I have to ask a Director to approve a Purchase Request for this piece without getting a quote on it first. I am trying to get a quote, but its Friday and even CDW tries to leave early on Friday. In fact my account manager is out all day and his sales staff is being slow to answer the phone, and it is 4:30 local time..

Crap they are on the East Coast I think so now I am praying some poor soul is still sitting at their desk to help me. Why is this important? I don't know, but damn it those 4 switches were all bought at the same time, how the hell did they get an odd one? Worse yet, why are the ears not in the box?

The Long Road

For the last few months I have been examining and scheming with my Manager about the future, and when you sketch out your long term plans it seems so reasonable and doable, but man when you look down the road at all the work you just agreed to do sometimes it makes me just want to put my head down on my desk and cry.

I am starting all of this off with a license audit, port documentation, and switch upgrade. Not too hard right?

No.

Damn Microsoft has to to and make my life challenging with licensing. So far I get with SQL you license per processor for unlimited use or you purchase CALs (Client Access Licenses), sort of makes sense, but didn't I buy the software why isn't access built into the purchase price? Now if I want to use it for anything I have to pay you for every person that accesses SQL? That seems a little out there, but ok cost of doing business I guess. Up next Desktop Licensing, pretty straight forward, I need a license for every physical machine. Got it, what about virtual machines? Ok I need a licesnse for every one of those that I run. Wow (Caveat being that you could run in a testing environment with an MSDN subscription or run the as demo's that expire every 30days). Not too bad mostly makes sense.

Move to servers, I have to buy the os for the server, but say I use it as a File Server how does that work? I have to buy CALs for each client that accesses it for a File Server. OK, what about if the print server also lives on that server? Do I have to buy a CAL for each access of the File Server and one for each access of the Print Server? I would if I had the print server on a different machine right? Does that mean that consolidated would have to have 2 CALs for every client? It seemed so easy at first, but doesn't scale well for the complex scenarios. What abut a Print Server/File Server/ AV Server? What about if that sever also hosts a Intranet site?

I am not trying to muddy the waters, but does having a piece of software running on a server that utilizes a website how do you license that? Isn't the burden on the software developer to keep track of how many people are accessing the software, so I know how many CALs I need? Are CALs concurrent licenses or do I have to have one for each client?

Any how I find it annoying that they employ such complicated licensing that I have to call someone to tell me if I am following the rules.

For as cool as Google Talk could be.. Where are the phones?

You know for all the Skype phones that are pouring into the market, why aren't there more phones for say Google Talk? If you look at their site under accesories all you get is some $250 wireless usb headset. Not exactly what I am after. If they had a (in the range of) $100 handset I would be inclined to buy several and give them to family and friends. You figure, that has got to be cheaper than burning through cellphone plan minutes, I could probably even drop a tier on my plan safely if calls to family where VOIP. Both of our parents have high speed internet,wireless coverage and Gmail accounts because of my efforts. I think it is time to leverage that and reap the benefits of that labor, and the piss poor set of options is not going to cut the mustard.

Listen, I am not a developer, and I don't want to have to roll my own but damn it Google fan boys make me the Jabber phone that I am looking for or I will be forced to wield my soldering iron and total lack of useful knowledge to build my own. Results may not be pretty that is all I am saying. Simple display, you could use the Y-port to simplify the 802.11 part, there has to be some embedded Linux general purpose hardware that you could slap an lcd onto, and plug in a Y-port to, add a linux jabber client and some dialing logic and bam. Google talk phone.

Tags: Google Talk VOIP Convictus

Google Trademark

I was walking to lunch today and overheard someone using the Google as a verb and started thinking about Xerox and what happened when they believed they might loose their trademark for Xerox once everyone was using it as a verb. Right now it seems a little innocuous as when most people say that "Googled" something it means that they used Google to look for something as opposed to a generic search term.

Hold on Google, and pray someone doesn't jump you for returnable results or easy to remember stripped down fast loading accurate searches anytime soon or you may well be facing a similar situation.

For a run down on the history of what I am talking about look Here or Here

Life as a Temp... a Vinette

It's 5:50am on a Saturday and the alarm is going off. The room in black and cold. I finished my drug test and background check yesterday on my lunch break to get this dispatch. By the time i start moving and grab my lunch bag there are only 45 minutes to get to the job site.

Out the door the sky in gray and the clouds are rolling like creme in coffee. The evenings cool has left the windows covered in dew and rain. In side the car food scraps litter the console, passenger seat and floor; the cabin smells of too many drive thru dinners, lunches, and breakfasts. The car now over 100,000 miles starts hard and warms slowly. Idling roughly as it warms the smell of decaying food scraps rises and I promise myself again to clean the car out tonight. Finally the windows are clear enough to see, and in first the again clutch wines and hops out onto the street, makes a right and heads towards the freeway and on towards the job. Only 35 minutes until 8am and check-in

On the freeway, traffic is light and the still warming car growls to 60 and grumbles as it accelerates to 75. Towards the job site following a printed map from Google, praying the directions are accurate. After several wrong turns and missed turns, the car comes shuddering to a halt with 10 minutes until the start of the project. I sit in the smelly, roughly idling car like the other temps waiting for the site manager to arrive. Many are smoking, most are drinking coffee, and some are reading certification books or fantasy novels.

At 8:05 on the clock that is likely too fast, workers emerge from their trucks or cars and seated out of the rain hiding places and congregate near the entrance to the building.