Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

It’s official, I just had the best meeting I’ve ever had today.

I received an email from a project manager yesterday afternoon informing me of a meeting at 9:30AM this morning… I cringed at the thought and reluctantly hit the “Accept” button on my trusty BlackBerry.

9:15AM - My BlackBerry reminded me of the meeting. Once again, I cringed

9:30AM - I arrive at the meeting… no one is in the room except the PM. Weird, everyone must be late. It’s just myself and the project manager? Nope… we have a quorum! Apparently, she only invited the main tech contact for this project and yours truly. The main tech contact is out this morning due to working late last night so it’s up to us to get through the meeting agenda.

9:39AM - I’m back at my PC already. She asked me a few questions about the time line for my part of the project and accepted my answers as the truth. She questioned one answer with a legitimate concern and just trusted that I know my job on the rest of them. PERFECT!

Score 100/100 - Flawless!

If all meetings were like this, life would be SO good in corporate America. But no… most PM’s have to argue with you for no apparent reason. Most of them somehow feel that they know your job better than you do. And let’s not forget about the arbitrary deadlines that people like to make up and impose on their employees.

Anyway, bravo to the PM that I just got done meeting with! Bravo! What a meeting! Short, focused, and not overly distracting from my day. Now the time line is adjusted and we’re on target.

After my recent FreeBSD experience, I came to the realization that a large part of my web experience depends on Flash. Not having a decent Flash player in BSD was a big turn off to the OS as a viable desktop environment. Oh sure, you can use the Linux binary emulator to run a Linux version of Firefox and Flash under the BSD kernel. That’s definitely neat, but just not practical. And what about other platforms that can’t emulate Linux or Windows? Are they just out in the cold? Well, not exactly. There are FOSS alternatives, like Gnash and others. Anybody who has tried to use these things knows they aren’t exactly a joyride. No offense to these guys, they’re doing the best they can with what they have to work with from Adobe, which is basically nothing. Reverse engineering something as complex as Flash can’t be easy. Hats off to the Gnash team and others for trying to help.

With this being said, i’ve come up with what I believe to be compelling reasons for Adobe to open up the doors to Flash for the rest of the world to truly embrace it. Now, when I say “open up the doors to Flash”, I do not mean give up the source code. That’s really not practical. No, what i’d like to see is for Adobe to open up the format for everyone to use. I understand that they can’t very well open up the full source code to the Flash player without giving up on some trade secrets, but would opening up the file format kill them?

Technological Reasons

• It’s old enough. The money has been made, adoption is at it’s peak. Give it away and allow it to spread it’s wings even further. Keep it proprietary and watch as people being to migrate away from it. (More on this later)
• A large majority of the web sites out there depend on Flash content, yet the player isn’t supported on all platforms. Support for some of those platforms is pretty pitiful. I know there’s not a lot of demand for commercial UNIX versions, I get it, but still…
• The FOSS developers would most likely provide support on all of the platforms. Leading in from my last point… hey Adobe, if you want Flash on all platforms, then give it to people who love their platforms enough to put it there.
• Alternative technologies (like Silverlight) will not stand a chance against a format that is applicable to all users with all browsers. The market is speaking out and buying alternative platforms and hardware. People are experimenting with their machines again.
• Applications will start to use Flash as a format for other things, not just web applications. Creativity will set in eventually and the Flash format will soar to new heights. Just imagine the amazing widget engine that could be built using Flash/ActionScript instead of HTML/CSS/JavaScript!
• SVG didn’t do so hot in the web world. (Makes for a great icon though!) It was misunderstood and poorly implemented in most cases. We’re sorry that didn’t go so well, but Flash is already seated. Just open up the format and solidify it’s position as a first rate content format.

Business Reasons

• The current Flash money making model is to sell environments to build high quality Flash content. Opening the format will open the door for competition in this arena, thus giving alternatives to those who don’t like the current Flash editor. This may be considering a negative by some, as Adobe will have to try harder to build the best Flash editor money can buy. In the end, competition will only drive these companies harder and the consumer will be the winner.
• Be the company that gave Flash to the world, similar to what Sun is trying to do with Java. Build products that use Flash and sell those, don’t hog the Flash format. Don’t be the company that drove us away from Flash. Remember, today’s computer geek is tomorrow’s IT lead.
• It’s cheaper to release a format specification and a reference player than it is to release a player for all platforms. Make the Windows/Mac player if you’d like, and let the FOSS guys handle the rest if you choose not to. Hey, here’s an idea… how about an open source version of the Linux player that can be extended more than the normal player. Maybe some alternate graphics engine support, similar to the current generation’s alternative sound engine support. (Which was a great move from Adobe). I’m sure Apple would like to get their hands on the MacOSX player to build a highly optimized version. I’m sure the Linux guys would love to as well.

Ethical Reasons

• People will sing the praises of the company that makes and supports open formats. Flash will become “a standard”. Not just a “we use it because they’re isn’t anything better out there right now”
• It’s a really nice thing to do. We’d really appreciate it. (Do I have to beg here?)

In closing… Adobe, please open up Flash. Take the lead here, give the Flash format to the world and let us build some amazing applications with it! Don’t make us invent something better. It can happen. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at how much Flash market share has already been lost to CSS.

Recently, i’ve noticed people starting to complain about the dumbest things at their office. For example, most people complain about restricted internet access. I’ve heard people actually complaining about not being able to run P2P applications and such. Are you kidding me? No really. You’re kidding, right?

Here’s the thing. We should be going to work for one reason and one reason only… to get the job done. Whatever tools you NEED to do your job, you should have. Notice I emphasize the word “need”.

• Web Surfing. Checking your Hotmail/Gmail/Ymail most likely doesn’t benefit you at work and it does bring in viruses by the truckload. I’d have to say you don’t need this at work. And all of those joke sites you like so much, go home and do that stuff. Get over it and WORK. Do you remember what it was like BEFORE we were connected to the internet? I’d venture to say that most people did their job quite well back then. Having full web access is ludicrous. Most people probably shouldn’t have it all.
• Instant Messenger. This is a funny one because it is useful when used correctly, but more often than not, it’s abused. First things first… DO NOT USE IM IN A MEETING. Second thing, IM is for quick questions and such, it’s not a way to see if i’m working or have a super extended conversation. If my status is away, I may have just marked it that way so that people wouldn’t bother me over things while i’m trying to WORK. Don’t take that as “you’re away so you must not be working”! If you need something… CALL ME. Let’s talk like people who respect each other would, not like a bunch of 12 year olds with unlimited SMS. Any form of communication that has emoticons and lots of lol can’t be that good.
• Email. This is sort of in line with the IM thing. Why is it that people will email you things that they wouldn’t say to you in person? If you want to talk to me about something, come to me and face me. Let’s talk it out. Show me that you have enough respect for me to come and speak to me like an adult would. Hiding behind email is just silly. And it doesn’t make it any better when you CC everyone in the group and try to gang up.

So remember, you’re at work. It’s not supposed to be “a fun and supportive environment for you to truly reach your potential as an individual”. It’s a place to earn a paycheck and prove you’re not a dead weight on society in general. Go to work, do a good job no matter what you do. Just because you’re not the boss doesn’t mean your job is any less valid. Just do good work and be proud of what you do. Piss on everybody else.

Oh, and stop thinking that you’re too good for that job. You’re not. Do your job. If you want a better job, learn how to advance. I got laid off once and was mowing grass, working odd jobs, and selling car audio for barely over minimum wage. It took me almost two years to get back into my preferred line of work. But hey, it paid the bills and kept me off of the backs of others. More people should do the same. Is it your fault that you got laid off from that job? Maybe, but who cares… GET A NEW JOB and get off of my tax dollars. I’m tired of feeding your kids.

Based on the recommendation of a friend, I went out and purchased Battlefield : 2142. Yet another work of art… no pun intended.

As usual with EA games, something doesn’t work right out of the box, this time it was the registration utility. Oh sure, I only had to re-enter my serial number, but it was just a sign of the bad programming to come. That registration routine had a glitch in it that caused my serial number to get turned to garbage… it was one of those “hold the delete key for 30 seconds and then type in the right code” errors. No big deal… just a Testament of things to come.

On to the game! First, let’s see if there’s a patch… it’s been out for a while, surely there’s a patch. Ah ha, the 1.25 patch. 300MB?!?!?!?? For a patch? Oh well, I must get tons of new content with the patch. (Or maybe not)

Finally! Patch loaded and i’m in! Ready to game! Okay, pop in the clan tag and the player name and we’re rolling. Wait a second… no spaces in the names? Bummer. Another sign of the horror that awaited me.

Alright, first stop, options. Keymaps - Check. Video - Check. Audo - Wait a sec… the voice command won’t let me select a secondary sound card for voice input / output. Weird… TeamSpeak does, Ventrillo does… BF2142’s voice engine doesn’t. Bummer. True bummer. Well, i’m not reconfiguring my PC for one game, so, voice support off… moving on. Having done some DirectSound programming way back in the day, I don’t remember it being that difficult to enumerate the sound card list and display a choice to the user as opposed to just lighting up the default. I suppose that extra 20 lines of code was too much to ask. I’m sure it falls into the “Nobody will use this” category. Yeah, except all of the people with a Sound Blaster and an onboard sound card. Or a USB headset… which appears as a virtual sound card. Or a bluetooth headset, which also appears as a virtual sound card. But nobody has those, so we’ll just move on.

Okay, finally… let’s play! We’ll start with single player as i’ve never played this game before and a good bot match will get me used to the game engine. That way i’ll have at least played the game before I go out and get my few weeks of spankings as a new player online. Here we go! Single player, select maps, and start the game! Woot! After an excruciating optimization thing, the level loaded and now I can’t get in to the game. It shows the “kit” screen, I pick my kit and hit “Select Spawnpoints”. Nothing. That must just be a tab or something, even though it looks like a button. So, i’ll just click on some spawn points! Nope, nothing happening here either. Oh wait, I need to join a squad… Okay! Click the squad tab, here’s three… I click join. Good. Now i’m in a squad. I click the “continue” button (which looks exactly like the “select waypoints”, which isn’t a button.)

Game up! I’m in… no wait… i’m not. I can’t spawn. A few seconds go by and now the squad screen shows up. Okay, let’s see, let’s click all over the place and see what happens. Nothing. Nothing happens. I get a clicking noise as a conformation that i’ve done something, but no responses on anything except for leave squad, create squad, and join squad. I create a new squad with me in it, hit the manage squad button, and that interface doesn’t seem to work either. I must be crazy… it must be me… right?

I bust out the mighty Google and start running queries. Sure enough, others are having the same problem. Single player is broken in this 1.25 patch. Most people’s response in the help forums is something along the lines of “But why do you care? Single player sucks!”. Gee, that’s helpful. So now I have two options, I upgrade to the new “beta” 1.40 patch, or downgrade via uninstall/reinstall. This is just sick. I’ve also seen reports that the 1.40 beta patch has the same issue. So much for the QA process.

I fiddled around with the multi player and decided I didn’t want to bother. The spawn works in the multi player, but I die so fast it’s not even funny. I can’t get the good weapons b/c they have to be “unlocked”. Which can be difficult for those who have no clue how to play the game.

So, thank you again EA for a “pleasurable” game experience.

I’d also like to take this moment to say thanks to EA for not doing any further updates on SSX Tricky so I could play it on my Xbox 360. Oh sure, SSX 3 works… but SSX 3 SUCKED compared to Tricky. What I wanted was more tracks and some new riders for Tricky, what EA gave me was something less impressive than Tricky… and now it’s the only thing that will play on the Xbox 360. Thanks EA! This is almost as good as the C&C : Red Alert 2 thing… no updates for XP to fix any compatibility problems, but you’re sure as hell repackage it and re-sell it… bugs and all. What a crock!

So now I’m on my way to return BF2142… another disappointment from EA. I think i’ll just pre-order Enemy Territory : Quake Wars instead.

I have just one word for my fellow aquarium owners who rely on their thermometers and heaters… don’t. Everyone talks about how bad aquarium heaters are, what they don’t tell you is that the thermometers aren’t exactly the most precise pieces of equipment either.

Lemme lay down the time line here of what happened to us the other day. A problem that has been causing me problems since day 1 in my tank and I never knew it due to fault equipment.

04/30/07 - Fishtank 1.0
We started the tank setup. Added water, dropped in the thermometer. Put in the heater and started running it. Over the next few days, we managed to stabilize tank temperature at 76 degrees by setting the heater to 83. Kinda odd that it is that much off, but hey, even the guy who sold us the thing said they weren’t that accurate. And the heater was down in the sump, not in the tank. So whatever. At this point in time, I don’t know any better but the thermometer readout is good so we decide to just go with it!

06/30/07 - Panic mode
I wake up and go to feed the fish and notice that the tank temperature is down over ten degrees… it’s 65 in there! PANIC! Something is very wrong. It’s the heater or the thermometer. So, I toss the thermometer in a bucket of cold water, temp readout drops to 50 degrees. Then on to a bucket of hot water, temp readout starts rising. Thermometer is working so I pull it out and shove it back in the tank. It must be the heater! Toss the heater in a bucket of cold water and crank it up. It kicks on but takes forever to get the water warm. Hmmmm… yup. Must be the heater. (I’m totally not thinking here and not realizing that heaters don’t work well in STILL water. Oops.) Off we go to our favorite LFS… no heaters in stock. Okay, plan B, Petco… The only acceptable choices are a 300w AGA heater made by Hydor or a 200w Visi-Therm Stealth. Well, the Visi-Therm gets higher ratings most of the time and all, but seeing as I have a dead one at home… forget that. AGA/Hydor it is! We get home and drop this thing into the sump… we set it at 67, trying to be conservative and not shock the fish again. It kicks on for about 30 seconds and then shuts off so I bump it up to 68. Again, 30 seconds. I pull the heater out and slam it into a bucket of cold water. It stays on for several minutes before it kicks off. At this point, I should really have a clue as to what’s really broken here but it’s just not registering. I’m in too much of a panic about which pieces of livestock i’m about to lose!

07/01/07 - Problem solved!
Temperature still not rising. No matter what I do, I can’t get the temp over 67 and kicking the A/C on in the house drops it back to 66. How weird. Just then, the still water paradigm hits me and we notice the water level in the wet/dry is WAY too high compared to normal. Oddly enough, the skimmer hasn’t erupted salt water like it normally does, but that’s a story for another day. After some serious amounts of checking, turns out the filter medium was too dirty. We recently switched from the super porous spongy stuff to the thin felt-like stuff. Gets ALOT more out of the water, but nobody told us that you have to clean that stuff once a week and sometimes even more! Oops. We pull that out and clean it, water levels return to normal and the temp in the tank goes up 1 degree within a few minutes. That must have been it. Not wanting to shock the fish, I set the heater back down to 68 and wait a while. Heater keeps cutting off. Probably b/c it’s too tall for our sump. Knowing now that it probably wasn’t the original heater but the filtration material… I replace the new heater with the old one.

07/02/07 (Early morning) - Maybe that wasn’t it. Part 1
It’s midnight, i’m still up. Temp still won’t go up. The heater is now at 72. By 2AM, i’m done. I reinsert the new heater and go to bed. The girlfriend wakes up in the morning, sees the temp still low and bumps it to 75. I wake up, see the higher heat but still nothing on the thermometer and throw in the towel. It must be this new heater not getting the right amount of flow. Next thing you know, the skimmer is out, the filter material is gone, chemi-pure is out… we’re at max flow… nothing. Still nothing. Same old 67 degrees in the tank and the heater is on 80.

07/02/07 (Evening) - New sump… that’ll fix it!
For quite some time, i’ve been wanting a bigger sump. The wet/dry is fun and all, but I want a better skimmer and some more room to work. And I don’t use the bio-balls anyway, so the wet/dry is nothing but a fancy airation chamber with tight proportions and a huge potential for overflow. I’d also like to have some more water in the system. 50g is fine and all but 60g would be even better! So at around 5pm, the swap begins. By 8pm, the new sump is in, heater in place, and operation is restored. Just to help out, I used the powerhead from the old skimmer to push water over the heater and keep things moving in the sump… but I still have the same problem. Can’t make the water heat up any more than 68, yet i’m sweating when i’m around the tank and it’s humid as hell. Then it hits me… It’s the thermometer. It’s always been the thermometer. It was the thermometer on day one. Back to the early picture, the tank was never 76, even though that thermometer showed it. My 150w visi-therm heater was set to 83 and if I had to guess, the temp was somewhere in the low 80’s. It explains a lot. I’ve had really bad problems with algae, even before my T5HO lighting setup. Oh sure, all tanks have algae, but not this bad. The tank has been a petri dish for algae.

I slapped another heater in there… New Heater : 83F, Old Heater : 66F. The fact that I haven’t lost livestock at this point is AMAZING. Now I begin the slow process of backing the temp down slowly so I don’t shock them.

07/03/07 - Another Thermometer?
While at the fish store, I picked up another heater for when I do water changes. Sure enough, it’s within 1 degree of the other new heater, and at least 10 degrees away from the old one. Tank temp is now 81F.

07/04/07 - Happy Fish
Tank temp is now 79F and i’ll continue to lower it slowly until I get to 76F. My fish are very actively swimming now, the Coral Beauty isn’t attacking the smaller fish anymore, and everyone is eating like mad. I fed both of the anemones today and they’re all puffed up and happy. I’ve been adding a touch of Garlic to their food lately so the fish colors and bright and vibrant. Everything looks great!

The moral of this story is that you need two heaters and two thermometers. Also, heaters stick so use an external temperature probe and an aqua controller so the heater doesn’t stick in the “on” position and boil your fish.

* Thanks to Jungle Rob for his speech bubble idea and the template drawing.

Okay, the whole “Draft Spec” is getting ridiculous. Now they’re saying 2008 to 2009 for the official spec release of 802.11n. Just a heads up guys… smarter consumers just aren’t buying it. We’re not going to buy your “draft” 802.11n gear just to temporarily get some faster speeds. Buying now will inevitably lead us into having to buy new gear when the next “draft” or the final release of the spec comes out. The more intelligent consumer has already run their cables in their walls and doesn’t mind plugging in for some real speed. I personally use 802.11g Wi-Fi to surf and such, but when it’s time to stream HD video or do some heavy data moving, i’m all about that gigabit copper connection in the wall. Oh sure, maybe it’s a bit overkill for what I do with it… but I never wonder if it’s the network… Never.

And the other thing… how many YEARS does it take to create a specification? I realize that this is some complicated stuff… i’m not doubting that or trying to downplay the complexity of Wi-Fi. But I have a feeling that there are now a lot of players involved and the spec is really getting held up more by political problems, rather than actual technical issues. This always happens. In the early days of a technology, it’s just a few smart guys in a room who build something neat and make a product out of it. Once it catches on, the big business gets involved and then the consumer sits and waits while everyone argues about what color the new logo is going to be.

So, let’s just hope that this spec makes the grade. Every review i’ve read for the original 802.11n Draft spec has been dismal at best. I have to be honest, I haven’t been impressed with wireless gear since the days of the early Cisco/Aironet 802.11b products. I’ll probably never have kids because of the waves those things put out, but man did they have some range! Then again, that was commercial grade wireless. I have yet to be impressed with consumer grade wireless. The signal is always poor, the antennae are always crap, and the features are always lacking. “Good enough for most people” is about the best I can hope for with consumer grade.

Good luck 802.11n! I wish you well and hope you’ll bring me some decent speeds… but after the recent announcement of yet another draft and yet another delay, my hopes aren’t exactly high. But hey, there’s a new logo out! That’s important when marketing a technology! Get the logo done!

One final note on this one… Nice trick here guys. Very nice. Two drafts and a final spec = 3 lines of products… that means there is potential for people to buy their gear THREE TIMES! Woo hoo! Good for you! You’ve figured out how to sell nearly identical hardware three times!

In a previous posting. I cited the past history of Nintendo and their unwillingness to allow violent games to be published on their systems in the US. They’re “protecting” us.

DailyTech published an article today that shows how Nintendo AND Sony have both decided not to allow the new Rockstar title to be published on their consoles. I bet Rockstar is PISSED because of all of the times they’ve given Sony the edge on previous titles.

I hate to say it (again), but it looks like the X360 is the only console vendor right now that wants us to buy games, even if they’re 100% for adults only. I can’t believe Sony and Nintendo would be this shortsighted with their consoles. But hey, I don’t have to buy them either.

Here is a link to the article on DailyTech.

(in protest of the name being changed from “Revolution” to “wii”, the word “we” will be incorrectly spelled “wii” throughout this article)

So, if I hear one more thing about the “amazing power” of the Wii, I think i’m going to vomit. I’ve had many gaming consoles over the years, dating all the way back to the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Colecovision… I have pretty much owned all of the major ones and several of the obscure ones. I just don’t get the fascination of Wii. It’s a Gamecube with a trick controller! Sure sure, it has more horsepower than the GC, but not a ton.

The other thing.. have wii forgotten about Nintendo? Have wii forgotten about the days of the NES? When vendors were strong armed into selling more Nintendo. Does anyone remember that when Nintendo was in power, you had to agree to certain “conditions” to stock Nintendo products? Here’s a good one… you had to stock MORE Nintendo than any other competing product in order to stock Nintendo. If were a Sega shop, you had to make sure to have more Nintendo products on display at ALL times, otherwise Nintendo would pull your card. So basically, they got in early and got the big titles, then proceeded to break every rule of fair competition. Granted, they’re not the only ones… most companies have done it at one time or another. But still… practices like this should be discouraged by voting with our dollars and not buying things from people with horribly crappy business practices.

The other thing… violent video games. Sure sure… wii need parental controls in video games. Educated parents can disable all violent games in modern consoles like the X360. Of course, most parents don’t ever bother to look at all of those ratings and such that get shoved down my throat. So, I applaud Nintendo for their efforts in stopping excessive violence in video games, but hey, i’m an adult and I WANT MY EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE!!!! Don’t take away my right to be an adult.

So yeah, let’s not forget what the gaming world was like under Nintendo’s reign. Think twice and vote with your dollars. Rent games, get demos, don’t just buy everything b/c it looks hot on the TV commercial. Demand that game producers provide those demos and PROVE that their games are good by letting you play them. Shop smart people… these companies will OWN us (again) if wii don’t start shopping smart.

And really people… it’s a controller with a motion sensor in it. Come on now…

(The Intellidick.com blog will now return to the normal way of spelling we.)

So, we got all excited, bought some more live rock and a second Hydor Koralia pump… we pulled the fish out along with all of the rock, moved the return into the center of the tank, and then split the live rock into two sections. We re-inserted the coral beauty and he acclimated to living on one side of the tank. We re-inserted the Royal Gramma on the other side of the tank… and he acclimated to living on the same side of the tank as the beauty does… so now I have two giant mountains of live rock, and both fish living on one side.

The moral of this story is, you can lead a fish to water… but you can’t make them live on opposite sides of the tank.

Okay people… get a domain name with some style to it. <yourname>.com is silly. Don’t get that one. (And don’t get the .net/.org/.info/.us/.wtf variant either.) Get something with some style to it. How about something with humor?

Take this domain for example… Intellidick. Still love it. What does it mean? Nothing. Nothing at all. It started out as a joke gift from a friend, but I just think it’s funny so I keep it. It makes me smile when people ask me what my web site is and I tell them.
UnixWarHammer.com, although I don’t really use it anymore… I still love it. (That’s why I bought it!)

Some other classics from friends and other various sites i’ve seen.

Dopplercow, Wickedtiki, SquishyPickle, NuclearElephant… *chuckle*. NuclearElephant gets me every time.

Anyway, enjoy yourself people. It’s funny. Laugh at it.