29 Sep 2007
by ryanin Beer, Spot the Sarcasm, Vice
10. Drive. Not to advocate something illegal, but it is damn hard to drive while drunk. Motor vehicles require surprising amounts of coordination to keep either between the lines or even on the pavement. If you can avoid doing it, avoid doing it.
9. Type. This post brought to you by automatic spell-checking and the hunt-and-peck method.
8. Not sing. What is about being drunk that just makes you want to belt out that song that everyone but you hates? Loudly. Because, you know what, everyone else is wrong. Aerosmith rocks.
7. Code. I can barely type, now you want me to string together words, variables, and algorithms. Fuck that.
6. Care. I just couldn’t care less about $TOPIC.
5. Not Care. God, that is so damned tragic; I’m not one to get emotional, but that makes me hurt.
4. Play games. I suspect this has much to do with why you can’t drive: hand-eye coordination. Seriously, Guitar Hero on whiskey.. I have a new respect for Keith Richards.
3. Read. You know how boring books can be late at night? Yeah, now you’re half-way to asleep; good luck finishing that brilliant tome.
2. Writing. Well, ok, to be fair, I actually write better when drunk. It’s just that I can’t share it with anyone. In the morning, what I thought was a massive success is likely to be more Scott Adams than Douglas Adams.
1. Not use the phone. What is it about alcohol, of whatever variety you choose to imbibe, that makes us want to grab a phone and call someone. This isn’t just drunk-dialing-for-ass, this is general use of telephone technology in any form. My theory? So, I’m in this awesome place that gives me alcohol to the point of not being able to do anything else on this list; you should be here, too! And if your being here gets me some, all the better.
This list brought to you be New Holland Brewing’s Lucid, Knob Creek Whiskey, and a wedding reception with a keg. Cheers.
23 Sep 2007
by ryanin Technology, Vice
Well, 2 months and then some. After buying the new computer, I was all gung ho to be a Vista-guy. I’m no fanboy, but I do like Windows (yeah yeah). It’s familiar, it’s easy to use, and I have tons of software from work that conveniently ports to my home machine.
So, what’s Vista like after a couple months? Frustrating. Congratulations Microsoft, you made the following sentence pass my lips: "If I could sell these machines and come up with the cash, I’d buy a Mac." Vista is essentially the answer to "how do we prevent idiots from installing crapware on their computers and then blaming us?". It assumes that you are a) computer illiterate, b) in possession of a video card powerful enough to render scenes from Lord of The Rings from source and c) willing to put up with incredible amounts of confirmation dialog boxes.
Now, I am not a sysadmin by any stretch. I cannot (yet) pwn your box, forge email headers, or (apparently) get Ubuntu running in a virtual machine (dammit). However, I can build my own machines, hack a registry here and there, and configure damn near anything given the right documentation. So, what was the first thing that I did to "customize" my Vista install? That’s right, I nulled the fucking UAC "feature". Yes, I am actually trying to defrag my hard drive; that should not require confirmation. Yes, I am trying to adjust the font size on my monitor; why the hell is that an admin-level change?
UAC is, for anyone who remotely uses a computer either incredibly frustrating or downright insipid. So, the major feature for security on Vista? For me, gone.
Next comes networking. Aside from the claim of easy setup, it’s anything but. No one, and I mean no one, can read or write from any shared folder on my machine. As the current powerhouse in the, uhm, house, my machine is the goto box for encoding video. Unfortunately, everything has to be fetched from the machine as I’m unable to get the config to allow anyone to see the damn box, much less write to it. I suppose that’s a security feature.
Aside from that, DirectX 10 sucks the big one. J– bought me Bioshock for my birthday. After cranking down every video setting in the game (for a brand new computer with a GeForce 8600 GT, Windows score of 5.9 of 6), the game still had issues in certain areas. Then, after some digging, it turns out that the game performs better on DirectX9 and DirectX10. ‘scuse me, but what the hell?
And, the last complaint, iTunes. This likely has blame to spread around to both Apple and Microsoft, but someone needs to step up and fix this issue. I like videos on my iPod. That means I have add and annotate quite a few files in iTunes. Under XP, this was simple: add video, right-click on it, set properties. In Vista, it goes like this: add video, wait, right-click on it, wait a very long time, enter properties, wait even longer still, repeat. To change the title on one sit-com length video takes (without exageration) at least 90 seconds. For a DVD of episodes, this means it takes 8-10 minutes to change the episode titles. It’s enough to stop organizing them.
That said, at least iTunes is stable on Vista, which is a vast improvement over my XP box.
So, I’m not impressed with Vista. For $10 billion in development, I expected way more. If upgrading to XP wasn’t such a pain in the ass, this machine would be an XP box. Thank god Virtual PC still works (although unsupported). At least I can have a dev environment.
01 Aug 2007
by ryanin General, Uhm... yeah, Vice
I ordered a hard drive enclosure (this one) from TigerDirect on a recommendation I saw on a tech site. It’s rediculously cheap, has USB and Firewire. It doesn’t look the best, but for $30 I’m not going to complain.
I hadn’t ordered from TigerDirect in a couple years, at least since before we moved. When I placed the order, I had to correct my address information to my present address. Like an idiot, I managed to update my billing address, so the charge went through, but forgot the shipping address.
So now, in my email, I have two messages from TigerDirect; an invoice saying the package is going to my old apartment, and and order confirmation saying the package is coming to my house. I called customer service immediately after placing the order and had them correct my shipping address, but it’s a little disconcerting to have an invoice stating otherwise.
Huge points to TigerDirect for the customer service on the phone and email. Big deductions for not allowing me to update my geographical information via their site. When you click the “My Account” link on their page, this is what you get:
No place to update your contact information, other than your email address. Oh well.
Hopefully it gets here.
01 Jun 2007
by ryanin Entertainment, Vice
It’s official; the coming season will be the last for BSG. Via the LA Times and SciFi Channel itself, season 4 will end the story arc of one of the best shows on television. Producers Ronald Moore and David Eick said via the press release:
And while we know our fans will be saddened to know the end is coming, they should brace themselves for a wild ride getting there: We’re going out with a bang.
Woot. Unlike some other shows, Moore and Eick are taking the show out on the highest note they can sustain. I just hope it doesn’t get too out there (yeah yeah, it’s scifi) as with the season finale from this past season.
I, for one, can’t wait for this fourth and final season to get started.
30 May 2007
by ryanin News, Technology, Vice
Google announced today (GigaOM story) an extension of Google Reader that allows you to read up to 2000 of your feeds offline or in a mixed connection environment. As a beta, the synch feature is manual, but open to development obviously. They also described this functionality as “[o]ne of the most frequently requested features for Google’s web applications”. Note that that request is for Google apps in general, not just Reader.
This is big news and a validation of the Apollo philosophy. While some have objected to the “airplane mode” of web applications, I personally believe there’s a huge market for people who work in spotty connectivity environments (like SE Michigan) and this is a very welcome effort from Google. It will be very interesting to see this space grow as more people wake up to the features and functionality that people are asking for.
Update: Even Dare Obasanjo thinks is cool. “Welcome to the future.”
16 Apr 2007
by ryanin News, Vice
Get your petty cash out and butter up the significant others because we’re going out on the town. The semi-annual TPC Board Advisory/excuse to drink with Dr. Sandy is on this week Friday. You don’t have to be a board member to attend (although you will have to drink with board members) to come out. We’re starting at Sazarac Lounge and maybe a trip to Cambridge House; who knows.
So polish off your weekly cartoons, write that movie review, by the kids a DVD. Just get your butt out to Sazarac at 6:30 this Friday. No photos will be taken. Well, maybe one if we get John to do that thing.
13 Apr 2007
by ryanin Politics, Signs of the Horsemen, Vice
Thank God at least one television network has the balls to broadcast this stuff. Can you imagine any talking head on the Big 3 even thinking about the gun control issue in this way.
History is so old.
Link (with NSFW language)
03 Apr 2007
by ryanin Pets, Vice
Come on, how can you not vote for a face like that?
Vote here.
01 Mar 2007
by ryanin Gaming, Technology, Vice
I asked once, I’m asking again. After blackballing Kotaku, making Slashdot, Gizmodo, and half the tech blogs in North America, Sony relented and let Kotaku back into the fold. Oh, and basically confirmed the rumor that Kotaku had reported on.
This is the latest in a series of missteps by Sony. First, Sony Entertainment President Jack Tretton issued a “bounty” on any PS3s in the wild to the tune of $1200 per unit. Penny Arcade responded with a $13,200 per hour comic. Then, based on a disastrous presentation at E3 (actual sentence pairing: “Based on actual Japanese history. So here’s this Giant Enemy Crab.”), entrepreneurial webbies have remixed the speech into, well, stuff like this.
Since we now know that Sony execs actually can read, and tend to read people that write about them, you’d think they’d have been given a clue when vids like this show up on YouTube. Alas, it is not to be so.
I’ve sworn off Sony products. I’ve owned a Vaio, a DVD player, a PlayStation, and a camera. PlayStation was solid. The Vaio had it’s issues at the end; I sold it after getting too frustrated rebuilding it every 2 months. The camera we bought for our vacation crapped out within six months of purchase. The DVD player, after one year of use, would skip at exactly 1:12 into any movie. I refuse to spend $600 on a gaming console.
How many more people like me are they creating every day? Makes you wonder how long they have.
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