*grumble grumble* Mondays

Mondays are the worst. You’ve just gotten into the cycle of getting relaxing sleep when you have to break it just so you can go to work and make money so you have a nice bed to sleep in. Personally, I’m just glad coffee was discovered. Otherwise I’d be fired and homeless… my fuse is pretty short in the mornings, especially before I’ve had my wake-up juice.

Anyway, the weekend was typical. Friday started with early morning wake-up (around 10am ;)) which was followed by a trip over to my parents house so i could do laundry. We still don’t have a washer and dryer due to unexpected expenses last weekend as well as employment issues with my housemate. So, leeching off the parents will continue 😛 We decided to do a fun project, Skittles Vodka. I did some shopping for groceries and skittles. We were close to cannibalism, i think. While i was out, i got some mason jars as well as some precious vodka. Sean and I then watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture and sorted out skittles. Once the skittles were sorted, we added them to the mason jars and then topped them off with vodka. The process takes about a day, so we put them up and began to wait. That night i ended up going to a friends’ place, enjoyed many delicious beverages, and partook in multiple casinos games of beer-pong.

Saturday was pretty much a day of sleeping in, reading books, and playing Eve. We also checked on our skittles booze. It was pretty neat looking. All the skittles had dissolved and the sugar syrup had separated and formed a foamy layer on top of the infused vodka. The green flavor is my favorite at the moment.

Sunday was more of the same, getting wonderful sleep, making awesome breakfast, discovering that the water kettle had self-destructed. Good Times. Good thing Sean had an extra kettle, otherwise how would we get our tea!? We watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (KHAAAAAAAN!!) and prepared delicious stew. Then instead of eating said stew we went to my parent’s house and ate dinner there. omnomnomnoms!

And now it’s Monday. The worst day of the week. I can’t wait till this week is over.. I have vacation all next week 😀

Maximum the Hormone

Over the weekend i was introduced to this band. I’ve been listening to them in my car pretty much non-stop now. I just wish that iTunes wasn’t filled with fail and had actually copied my songs over to my server like it’s supposed to (according to the “Keep Organized” and “Copy Files to Library” options i have enabled). But no, they’re not there, i’ll have to move them when i get home. Then tomorrow i should be able to enjoy more Maximum the Hormone while at work. Justice will have to do for now.

On a different note, someone replied to a comment i left on the xkcd blag. Feels good to see that someone liked what i had to say 😀

Warranties FTL!

Yesterday, i got up at a time when, regularly, i should still be sleeping to take my car to the dealership to get some work done on it. It was supposed to be a mix of regular maintenance and some other fixin’s. Well, I get up there around 9am (after an hour drive), talk to the guy, he says it will be a few hours to do the analysis and that he’d give me a call when he knows anything. Sean and I then go to Ryan’s place to visit and kill time. We talk about video games, music, how other people are stupid, and then decide our stomachs are rumbling and head to Denny’s for some well deserved breakfast.

After sitting there, drinking lots of coffee, and discussing what our corporation should do in Eve, we decided to go to the Mall. I hadn’t been to the mall in ages, so it was confirmation to me that the place really wasn’t that great. After going into the stores we thought might have cool stuff, we went over to Kristina’s place to hang out. We play some Mario Cart for the Wii and then decide to get some lunch. MMMM, Arby’s. As we pull into the parking lot my phone rings. It’s Mike from the BMW dealer. The news is grave. He tells me the things that are broken, and then gives me the total. Then after a small pause he informs me that none of that is covered under my extended warranty. 0_o WHA!?! I had gotten the warranty when i bought the car from a Chrysler dealer. I guess they cover things in Chrysler cars, and if your car happens to have extra things that Chrysler’s don’t, they’re not going to cover them.. BAH! So i decide to only get fixed what i absolutely need, which ran me about 450 dollars.

So my moral of the story is, warranties are like insurance, and insurance never covers anything when you need it to. BAH! i say, BAH!

Websense, I despise YOU

The place of my employment uses Websense to make sure all its’ worker bees stay on track and don’t look at naughty pictures while they are working. Understandable, let me assure you. I’m in no way saying I should be able to look at adult material while at work. What I am saying, is that I should be able to properly research and understand the topics about which I’m trying to learn.

As anyone who programs will tell you, Google is probably the best thing since sliced bread. Many of your issues can be resolved by searching for what you’re trying to accomplish, in most cases someone has probably already done it and written up a nice forum post about how they’ve succeeded where you’re obviously filled with fail. Guess what? Half those sites, which are filled with golden goodness, are blocked by Websense. I know we could probably just have exclusion lists or something set up for those of us with special needs, but we don’t have the rights to do anything like that. We’d have to get approval from 100 different people to get us the stuff we need. I understand that there are spies everywhere trying to steal the secrets of your mothers pancake recipe. (OK, seriously, i do understand.) But come on, let me get to forums. Please? With sugar on top?

Buckets of Popcorn

It was a lazy day, it was amazing grace, it was a half-a-dozen claymores daisy-chained.

Sometimes Aesop Rock lyrics are like audio cocaine. Not really sure why, but when i hear that line my brain melts a little. I don’t think that me being at work bored out of my mind helps much. Today is Thursday (my Friday) and i really don’t feel like doing anything. I’ve run my reports, i’m updating what i need to, everything else is running fine, and Zach’s working on our interface atm. I’ll probably start working on the Gatekeepers site in a bit, currently there’s not much to look at, it’s all back-end stuff. I’ve just hit that motivational blackhole, where it takes extreme amounts of willpower to do anything but surf the intarwebs.

I can’t believe they’re bailing out the big 3.. i wonder how this will impact our pocket books. I’m still adjusting to living on my own, having to pay bills and all that fun stuff.

Well, break time.

New monitor

I got up at an ungodly hour this morning.. 4am..

I’d never done any shopping on Black Friday. And i don’t think i ever will again. The consumer hordes were out in mass this morning. We (Zach, Lakira, Brian(Bryan?), Frank, and I) decided to go to Wal-Mart first, just because we knew it was open. We could barely fit in the store. It reminded me of a bee hive, but instead of bees it was consumers, all ready to spend 3 hours in line to buy 25 vacuums or 5 televisions because they were inexpensive. Lakira was going to try and buy some pants, but we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to try and get some pants for 50% off (or whatever the discount was). We then went to Office Depot, where we got in line just as the store opened. I was able to get a ticket for a deal they had on a 22″ Acer monitor; I got it purely on impulse. I’m glad i did get the monitor, even before the 50 dollar mail in rebate it’s very affordable (180 dollars). So, i’m here typing this viewing it on a sexy new monitor. I can’t wait to play Eve on it 😀

The rest of the morning was spent going to various stores just looking at deals and amusing ourselves at how people behave on little to no sleep, and the pressure to get things NOW! It also makes me think of how we as a people get into such states. Are we just consumer cattle for the corporations? It’s totally what it seemed like today. People moving together like cattle in a corral, being fed propaganda that they need to buy things because they’re cheaper than any other time of the year. I mean, i’m not above them, hell, i bought a monitor on impulse. I’d been thinking about getting a new one, and i got the chance to get a deal. So, why not, right? On the other side though, i didn’t go and buy 15 cordless mice, and a basket full of memory cards.

I guess that’s what they call Capitalism. Anyway, I’m off to go play some video games and drool at my sexy new resolution.

Browser Comparison

At work, we’re pretty much restricted to using Internet Explorer 6. I’m a rebel and use Firefox anyway.

There are lots of free alternatives to Internet Explorer on the internet. But why use them? What advantages do they have over what comes default on most machines people buy? Lets break it down into three categories; Security, Expandibility, and Usability. I’m going to cover Internet Explorer and my personal favorite alternative, Firefox.

Security
Number of Vulnerabilities
Internet Explorer 6
– 25+ vulnerabilities

Internet Explorer 7
– 24 vulnerabilities

Firefox 3.0.4
– 1 vulnerability

General Security Policies
Internet Explorer 6
– No integrated popup blocking
– Cookie Acceptance configurability

Internet Explorer 7
– Basic popup blocking integration
– Cookie Acceptance configurability

Firefox 3.0.4
– Configurable popup blocking
– Cookie Acceptance configurability

Expandibility
Internet Explorer 6
– No Integrated Addon support
Internet Explorer 7
– Simple Addon Support
Firefox 3.0.4
– Integrated Addon Search and Installation/Upgrade Support

Usability
Internet Explorer 6
– No RSS Support
– Doesn’t display pages according to the W3C Standard

Internet Explorer 7
– Good RSS Support
– Doesn’t display pages according to the W3C Standard

Firefox 3.0.4
– Good RSS Support
– Displays pages according to the W3C Standard

So after all these little tidbits, I ask myself, why are we using the oldest and most vulnerable browser out of the lot? If anything, we should probably be upgrading to IE7, since you know free open-source projects are never as good as things you have to shell out hard earned money for.

Contemplate this: Even if you don’t have a general dislike of Microsoft, and are willing to give them your cash, why would you go and use something that’s not as secure as something else? Just because you paid for it? (Yes, Internet Explorer is not free, it’s bundled with your Windows License). Firefox on the other hand is free, available for multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac, Unix, etc etc), and it’s Open-Source.

References:
W3C
Wikipedia
SecurityFocus

Oracle.. why? just why?

So today we had to install the oracle client on a few machines at work. Man, what a pain that was. It took almost an hour to get the thing setup. I don’t understand why it should take that long to install a client that lets you connect to another database type. I’ve used mySQL a lot in the past, and i’ve never had to wait that long to be able to have a program use it to connect. Other gripes i have about Oracle, is that when you go to their website to download a newer version of their client, there are half a dozen choices. I feel that’s way too many. mySQL for example only has a handful of choices, but, with each download link it explains what that particular client is for. With oracle, it’s not like that. It’s just called Client 11.1.1.11 or 10.8.23.4.. I understand it probably has something to do with different server versions, but still, why not have a client that can work with multiple versions of your database server? Are they really that different?

I think i’m done ranting for a bit. Hopefully tonight I’ll get some work done on our next project.

XNA FTW 🙂

Left 4 Dead

I’d seen ads for Left 4 Dead a while ago and figured it was just another Zombie game. Then a friend at work recommended the demo. I went and got it the last day the demo was available. After an hour or so of downloading, Sean and I were deep inside a subway station fighting for our lives! Just from the two or three levels you were able to play on the demo i was hooked! So I went and bought the game yesterday, after i got off work. I spent the rest of the evening fighting my way through hordes of zombies with 3 other people online. I have to say, it’s the most fun i’ve had in a co-op game before. The AI director really adds to the whole feeling of intensity by changing where the zombies come from and where things drop. So far i’ve only played through the first 4 levels ending with the final battle on the rooftop of a hospital where we kept dying. That’s when I called it a night, since it was creeping in on midnight.

The game really excels at scaring the crap out of you. You can hear the zombies as they gather in a room close by, but you don’t know which one. You look for them and you can’t seem to find them. Then all of a sudden they burst through a door or wall or the ceiling and swarm you! I’d highly recommend the game to anyone! [LGNBM]Krandor is my steam tag. Add me up! 🙂