Month: January 2007

City of Heroes – an almost numbers free MMO

I’m a gamer. Perhaps you’ve picked up on that if you know me in real life, have read my meaningless posts for long, or been in some of the forums where I post. When people ask me what games I play, my answer for well over two years has been City of Heroes (and along with it, City of Villains, although I’m not much for playing the bad guy). I like the super-hero theme, I have a lot of folks I know in game now that I enjoy teaming with, I find that I can have fun playing solo or teamed, I don’t feel obligated to join 120-person raids (something folks in World of Warcraft, and I believe Everquest, know all too well), and I can sit and play with my kids since it isn’t a bloody and excessively violent game. If you aren’t a City of Heroes/Villains player and you’ve made it before, you’ll probably want to skip the rest, as it only applies to folks playing those games.

Continue reading “City of Heroes – an almost numbers free MMO”

On the iPhone

Let’s pretend for a minute that Apple successfully defends the iPhone name from Cisco’s claim of ownership. Instead, focus on the features and benefits of the phone. apple-iphone-specs-narrow.jpg With a 2 year contract, the iPhone basic runs $499, which gets you a 4 gig iPod+phone combo. For $599, you get an 8 gig iPod+phone combo. Of course, that’s not all the features of the phone:

Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that’s frickin’ thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. Apple quotes 5 hours of battery life for talk or video, with a full 16 hours in music mode — no word on standby time yet.

What I’m wondering on this, though, is why get a phone with all those features if it is going to cost that much? I’ll admit that I’m probably not the target demographic for this whiz-bang gadget. I like to get single task gadgets for the most part – I want a phone that is just a phone, a camera that is just a camera, and an MP3 player that is just an MP3 player. For a geeky, dorky, gadget-whore like me, that probably sounds bizarre, but I want functionality at reasonable prices. What happens if next year you want to carry around more music? What if you decide you really want a 6 megapixel camera? Sure, you can choose to carry around those in addition to the iPhone, but why would you given what you’ve spent on the multi-function phone?

Continue reading “On the iPhone”

Death by too-much-water

Trying to win a Nintendo Wii for her children, Jennifer Strange dies from water-intoxication.

28-year-old Jennifer Strange of Rancho Cardova, CA was found dead inside her home on Friday afternoon after competing in a radio station-sponsored competition which pitted hopefuls against one another for the prize of Nintendo’s latest and greatest. Instead of competing on the playing fields of Wii sports or the Japanese streets of Red Steel, however, contestants gathered inside the studios of Sacramento’s KDND The End to see who could drink the most water without urinating. The ridiculously-titled “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest had entrants imbibe eight ounces of water every fifteen minutes for 90 minutes, after which they were given larger portions until a winner emerged. Ms. Strange — who did not win — left the studio in tears, and she was last heard from by her employers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento complaining of a terrible headache. Autopsy results released yesterday showed signs of water intoxication, wherein the body’s electrolyte levels are dangerously unbalanced due to a rapid intake of the seemingly harmless liquid.

No jokes from me – that’s pretty tragic. I’d never even heard of water intoxication until I heard this story on the radio this morning.

[tags]Woman dies trying to win Nintendo Wii, Death from drinking too much water?[/tags]

The Chronicles of George

I realize there are not many techies left who haven’t read The Chronicles of George, but if you happen to be one of those techies, get over there and read some. This site is a collection of support desk tickets recorded by the hapless site subject, George, as received by one of the techies who had to work them. A lot of identifying information has been removed, but the value of the tickets remains intact with what is left.

Here are some sample tickets – George’s ticket entries are in bold, while the site’s maintainer’s comments are standard text.

[Unknown user] is getting explannation mark on her anti norton virus service

We begin with a lovely example of how George’s tickets usually are. Note the strange spacing, the awful grammar, and general weirdness. However, I can’t fault him terribly over-much, since there are some days I wish we really did have an anti-Norton virus.

[Unknown user] called and said [other user] is havening problems printing ,he says the firing is saying canceled printings.

One of the printers is acting weird. George is typing weird. Note the use of the word “havening”. This is a word that George uses often–hey, at least he’s consistent. I believe “firing” refers to the Fiery printer controllers we have at work, but who the hell knows?

she is getting error message that say undliveriable messages,her hole area cannot send externail emails

Oh, man. This one gets my vote for “Best George Ticket of All Time”. My hole area can’t send e-mails either, but I don’t consider that a problem. Perhaps I’m just different.

My older brother introduced me to The Chronicles of George many, many years ago. I periodically revisit the site just to get some laughs again. The site maintainer also points out that George was born and raised in Houston, TX and is a native English speaker, so you can’t blame this on a foreign language to English issue. Trust me – if you’ve ever worked in tech support, you can appreciate the troubles involved in working these tickets, and will probably get quite a few laughs from them.

[tags]Chronicles of George, The joys of tech support[/tags]

Messed up theme

I’m not quite sure why the site is showing up with a lot of theme settings missing. I’m trying to clean up the display and get it working correctly. I can’t remember changing anything to throw things off, but it appears that I have done something, so I have to track it down.

UPDATE: Fixed it.  And in the process got some ideas of some changes I want to implement.  Look for a few minor tweaks in the near future as I have time to work.

Things to do with a CD when you are bored

I’ll have to leave most of the cool pictures on the original site. Here’s just a teaser image out of several really neat pictures.

tesla-coil-cd.jpg

This trick really requires more than just a CD – you need a microwave and a Tesla coil as well. (via Neatorama)

[tags]CDs and Tesla coils look great together, Another visually appealing use for those AOL discs[/tags]

Early contender for parent of the year?

Sometimes, you just find people who have an almost supernatural talent for parenting. I’m thinking these folks are on the other end of that spectrum.

A 12-year-old girl’s account on her MySpace.com page led to her father and stepmother’s arrests yesterday on child abuse charges, Maryland State Police said.

The girl, who lives in Florida, wrote on the Internet site that the couple had given her cocaine and marijuana several times while she was visiting them over the holidays at their home in Kent County, according to police.

. . .

They were charged with two counts of child abuse and one count of contributing to delinquent conditions of a minor child. He was being held yesterday on $10,000 bond and his wife on $3,000 bond.

Unfortunately, current laws do not appear to allow charging people with additional counts of stupid, nor adding fines for idiocy. Hopefully this young girl doesn’t have her life screwed up because of this.

[tags]Early parent of the year voting, Parents share coke/week with daughter[/tags]

Google and the power of satellite photography

In case you ever wonder just how well we can see from space back onto the planet, check out the Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth to get an idea. It probably won’t be long before these images are even clearer and the subjects possibly identifiable.

Lest you get too excited at the thought of viewing old satellite photos of naked people though, perhaps you should see a sample of just how clear these aren’t currently:

google-toplesssunbathing.jpg

[tags]Naked people via Google Earth, Satellite photos of t3h naked chixx0rz[/tags]