Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

EverQuest… What`s next?

Random Thoughts

I was going to originally post this in the EverQuest category, but that was really for my ideas for fixing EQ… seeing as I no longer play EQ, its a dead category but will remain as is… and this, this is just comedy.

Over on the message boards for Monkly-Business, someone asked, “Now that Omens of War is out, what do you think the next expansion will be?”

Seeing as the next expansion will come after World of Warcraft’s release, and there are a number of games on the horizon, as well as free content patches for City of Heroes, the following was my reply:

EverQuest: The Twenty Other Zones of Faydwer That You Just Never Happened to Notice During the Last Five Years of Playing.

Featuring zones like: Middle Faydark, Dagnor’s Other Cauldron, The Hidden Lair of Meldrath, The land of LXnmoptgWWjyr, The Brownie City, Randomly Generated Dungeon Zone with Poor Pathing and Randomly Placed Mobs 27, and at least three new Estates none of which will be restful!

With this expansion they will introduce new items contain the new NO LOOT tag – you can view the stats and take screenshots and have the items load to Lucy, but you can’t pick it up and equip it! These items are intended for all the people who like to make Magelo profiles for their non-existant characters by picking items that they’ve never seen for themselves and try to pass themselves off as uber!

Also in this expansion, we will be introducing female giants! Ever wonder where all the giants come from seeing as they are all male? Well, rather than fix class balance, we’ve decided to make a whole set of Lore including new zones, spells for mobs that you’ll never get, and new models (since we STILL aren’t going to do new player models no matter how much you beg) all about the story of the where the female giants have been for the past 6 years! All because we know you care!

And lets not forget that we will be introducing a new class! Following both the arcane and physical arts this player can nuke as well as a wizard, heal like a cleric, tank like a warrior, and dps like a rogue.. from ANY ANGLE! This new class, called the Tankmage is bound to turn grouping and raiding on its ear! Class balance? WE GIVE UP!!

So many yesterdays gone by.

Random Thoughts

In some ways, it still doesn’t seem real. I’m sure that those directly affected by the tragedy of 9/11 would disagree, but to someone who wasn’t, it’s still just hard to believe that it happened.

I remember that day well… I had just woken up. Jodi was gone to work. I settled in to do my usual job hunting since I was unemployed at the time. Flipping on the TV, it was on CNN… I had been watching some silly report on jobs the night before when I finally drifted off to sleep. The anchor cut in on the news and said they were going live to where a plane appeared to have crashed into the side of the World Trade Center in New York.

Immediately they pointed out that this wasn’t the first such event… once upon a time, a plane had hit the Empire States Building. Of course, that was a small bi-plane I believe, and this was a passenger jet.

I watched, eyes wide open, in shock and a little horror as the events of the day played out… a second plane hit the other tower. Then the Pentagon got hit. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania. Then the towers fell…

Three years of yesterdays have passed since then, and still the event weighs so heavily on the United States. I think I finally understand how my parents, and their parents before them, felt about Pearl Harbor. Only, in a way, they got satisfaction. The US retaliated against Japan, we bombed them, and then with the first and last use of Atomic weapons in combat we took them out of the war. Today, there is no country to bomb, there are no people to bomb. The World Trade Center was a terrorist attack carried out by people who fight for an ideal, not for a flag. And how do you fight an ideal?

We’ve attacked them as best we could… removing a regime that supported them, the Taliban… but we haven’t stopped them, they still take and execute prisoners. Japan was stopped because we showed them that the losses to themselves would be too great to pursue their course… but Al Queda… they are all willing to die for their ideal, so even 99% losses isn’t enough to stop them. Fighting terrorism is like punching water, it shifts and moves but you never damage the water. And deep inside, down in the places where only my fear of death lives, its now joined by a fear of a war that will not end. A war against people without a country, without a flag, without borders or a homeland… a war against an ideal.

I extend my deepest sympathies to all of those who lost someone in the 9/11 tragedy, and to all of those who have lost someone in the following three years of trying to find and fight the ideals of terrorism.

And lastly, I extend my sympathies to the administration that has had to deal with a situation unlike any that has come before them. They’ve done about as good a job as can be expected, despite what those who oppose them would have you believe.

Dragon*Con

Random Thoughts

Yesterday I got back from 4 days at Dragon*Con.

If you don’t know what it is, go here. Short version, its a convension for Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comics, Horror… Books, Film, Games, etc… Everything.

I had fun as usual. I managed to go through a few panels and seminar things on gaming, writing, publishing, short films, and more… Plus I got to see tons of people in various costumes, and meet people from all over who have some of the same interests that I do.

We snapped a few pictures and those are up in the Pictorials section. Not alot, but.. well, check it out and see the reason.

Next year I’ll be more prepared.

The Mysteries of Mathematics

Random Thoughts

Now, I know that not every person in the world is good with math. I am good friends with people who aren’t. However, it stands to reason, that if your job encompasses some level of mathematics, that at least with that aspect you would be fairly decent with.

Enter Client X.

Client X asked me to design a report for him. This report involved a bunch of totalling and summarizing that he is going to use to support sales. This man is also responsible for setting all the standards for sales, and the price breaks, markups, and discounts. In his job he does a lot of number crunching, and he’s held this job, and others like it, for twenty years.

On this report, he wanted to see not only the base price and company standard markup, but several levels of markups and discounts, so he could easily see profit margins and work with his customers to get them the best deal to secure business without hurting his own company. A 5% discount, and markups of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. When I wrote this report, I used standard math principles: to get, for example, a 10% increase on a price you multiple the original amount by 1.10. This is a derived number, as follows:

X + (X * 10%)
10% is equal to 10/100 which reduces to 1/10 which is 0.10
X + (X * 0.10)
pull the X out
X * (1 + 0.10)
or
X * 1.10

This man argued with me, stating that multiplying by 1.10 was exactly the same as dividing by 0.90. He even tried to explain it with math… something like “dividing by the reciprocal is the same as multiplication”. Of course, 9/10 is not the reciprocal of 1/10, but that didn’t stop him. We went around and around until he finally brought in his boss who agreed that dividing by 0.90 was the same, and instructed me to use that method since it was their company standard. So I did.

A couple of weeks later, Client X calls to explain to me that my report is all wrong. “Our sales people are having to fudge the numbers to make them work,” he says. “The markups and discounts aren’t coming out right,” he continues. I wonder why that is? Client X now starts telling me my math must be wrong, he goes over how to do a 10% markup by dividing by 0.90, and I confirm that’s what the report is doing. “But then why are the numbers wrong?” he asks, puzzled. “Hmm, well, on your 10% numbers, are you off by about 1% or $1 every hundred?” “Yeah,” he says, “how did you know?”

How did I know?

100 * 1.10 = 110

100 / 0.90 = 111.111111111111…

I wonder…

Let me tell ya, there is just nothing sweeter than having someone force you to do something wrong only to be able to throw it in their faces later.

I`m smarter than you!

Random Thoughts

Before continuing, and before you get offended, lets specify exactly who “you” is before I explain why I’m smarter.

I’m redesigning the layout for this page using CSS and DIVs to accomplish what tables do. Why? Because if you do it with DIVs and CSS instead of tables, later on you can move objects around your page using the CSS instead of redoing the entire godawful thing.

So, I want to have my page, which has 2 columns (the articles and the menu) to appear as though its on a white “stripe” down the page. I ran into a snag while doing it, and I searched all over the internet trying to find a solution to it only to find a large amount of people offering incorrect solutions and/or people saying it couldn’t be done. If you, the reader, fall into the group of someone who either provided an incorrect solution or told someone what I did could not be done, it is YOU who I am smarter than.

Now.. what did I do?

See, the snag I ran into was this… it looks simple. You just make a DIV with a white background position it absolutely, then put the content in it positioned relatively. Easy, right? No.

This is the snag. When you position the articles relative to the white box, when you try to position the menu, it positions relative to the articles, not the box. (Relative position means its relative to the last non-auto positioned object.) Since the articles are of variable length, I can’t use negative positioning to do it relative to the articles.

So, you say, the articles are always longer than the menu, just position the menu absolute and leave a margin on the side so it “appears” to be in the white. No.

Do me a favor, on the menu, click on Fiction, look at the page, then come back here.

Done?

Okay, see how it looked good? It didn’t when I did what you were just saying (and what almost every post out on the net suggested). See, Fiction one day may be longer than the menu, but for now the list of fiction on the site is not. So, when I did the suggested method, it resulted in the menu exceeding the length of white.

Surely, you say, there must be other solutions? Why not put the menu in a white DIV too and position them both? Well, you see, if you do the articles and the menu totally separate, you lose the ability to do a white “stripe”, as one will invariably be longer than the other.

Well, you now say (and many of you did, out on those help forums), why not use one of the many tricks to just place a white block that extends the full length of the page? That doesn’t work either. See, some browsers don’t (and according to the standard, shouldn’t) support a property of height: 100%. At least not how you might imagine. Sure, it goes to the bottom of the browser… but when you scroll down, the white has stopped.

Okay, you say, you give up, I’ve tried all your solutions and they all fail. But the page looks right, so, how did I do it?

The articles are in a div that has a white background, so that there will be white extended as far as the content goes. And the menu is positioned absolutely so that it appears in the white stripe. But wait, did I say that didn’t work? Yes, I did. By itself, this method does NOT work. However, before all the other DIVs on the page, there is one called whiteblock. This DIV has the same absolute position of the article content div, but it has a specified length of 1400px, which just so happens to be just larger than my menu. So when the content of articles isn’t longer than the menu, the whiteblock shows down to the length of the menu (its drawn first, so is logically on the bottom, only showing when nothing else is on top of it).

In theory, my menu won’t change too often, and when it does, I need only adjust the height of whiteblock to maintain the look of the site.

Voila. To all the people who said it couldn’t be done, or provided incorrect or incomplete answers… I’m smarter than you!

People suck.

Random Thoughts

That’s is one phrase that I probably overuse. I’m just fond of saying that “people suck”. And every now and then, I consider stopping saying it, because maybe, just maybe, people don’t suck… and then I’m reminded that by and large, people do indeed suck.

Today I got a call from my credit card company. It seems that there was an unusual convenience check written against my account. Now, I use convenience checks all the time… see, I have this one credit card that has a 3.9% rate on transfers, with no fee, but it has a 16.9% rate for purchases… weird, I know, but I’ve learned to live with it. So, I buy stuff with other cards, and then transfer them over to the “better” card, basically giving myself 60 days to pay with no charge instead of 30.

Anyway, this one account however, I’ve never used a convenience check for, hence the reason they called. A $1000 check had been written to a “Tiffany Lane”, and signed by Jodi, my fiancee, who’s name is also on the credit card account. Well, Jodi never even sees the checks before I rip them up, so I was certain it wasn’t her. And of course, we don’t know any Tiffany Lane.

So, the process begins. They are going to close my account and issue me a new one. They will send me an affidavit to indicate which charges are not mine, and they will remove them from my account and start trying to get their money from the other direction.

When I got home today, I pulled out all my paperwork (which I’ve neatly filed ever since a previous landlord tried to double hit me with penalties I had already paid). Sure enough, I checked and this month’s statement should have reached me about a week or so ago. Some filthy scum-sucking piece of human waste stole my credit card statement out of the mail and was trying to use the convenience checks the credit card company happily provides.

Now I have to wait seven to ten days to get my new account, then go about redoing all my automatic transactions and stuff. Pain in my ass.

People suck.

Sorry for the delay…

Random Thoughts

… mostly, I just haven’t felt like writing. Also, however, every time I would look at this page, I would see that the article on visiting my mother’s grave was at the bottom, and that anything I posted would shuffle it off the main page, and so I hestitated…

Back to our regularly schedule meandering…

It should be illegal…

Random Thoughts

So, a year ago, I bought a new computer. Rather than spend the effort building one, and the fact that I can’t really beat the prices of the pre-fab machines anymore unless I spend 3 months piecing it together, I went to Best Buy, saw a good price on a good system and bought it. They offered my a bunch of crap, to which I said no, just the system and the rebates, good-bye. Paid with my credit card, took it home, set it up, and mailed off my rebates. I was happy.

In January, I got my credit card statement, on it was a charge for $21.95 for Microsoft Online Services. Now, it being Christmas time and also floating a couple of charges for work on my card, I just nodded, said okay and filed the statement away.

I’m horrible about my credit cards. If I scan the charges and nothing leaps out at me like “Harold’s House of Fur Covered Fishing Poles” or something, I just nod and file it away after I write the check.

So, its June, and I’m looking at this month’s statement, and there is that Microsoft Online Services again. Only this time, I know I didn’t buy anything from them. I open up my budget program, ironically Microsoft Money, and sort the charges in my credit card statements. Sure enough, from January to June, 6 charges of $21.95.

I get on the net, find the phone number and call up MSN. They ask me my phone number, gave him all three, home and two cells… not on file. Name, gave him both mine and Jodi’s… not on file. Address… not on file. Seven email addresses… not on file. So I say, “Look, its billing my card, why I don’t I just give you the credit card number?” “Umm… sure,” he says, “that will work.”

I give him the number and… presto! Account found. Only, the name on it is “Best Buy Promotion”, the phone number is the number to the store, and the email address is listed as “notprovided@store.com”. But my credit card number and expiration date are correct, and they’ve billed me $131.70 for an account that I NEVER signed into.

I ask him, “How exactly do you justify billing me for an account I never activated?” He tells me that it was activated at the store on the date of purchase. “But, look at the account information, it looks fake. Don’t you guys audit these promotions?” No, he says. “What about account activity? It was activated, and then never used, not once.” There is this pause, a completely silent pause… I’ve worked in call centers, this is the silence of being put on mute while he asks someone else how he should respond.

“Sir, it is not our business to dictate to our users how they do or do not use our service. If they choose to activate it and hold the account as a backup for another provider, never logging in because their primary provider never fails, that is their choice. It is not our place to deactivate accounts in good standing for inactivity.”

I’m dumbfounded. But I ask for a refund. “Sure,” he says, “just let me, okay, its done, it should appear on your next statement as a credit, is there anything else I can do for your today?”

“No.”

“Have a great day and thank you for using MSN!”

And then he hung up before I could yell, “BUT I NEVER USED MSN!!”

Oh well…

So, to you out there, I say this… beware. MSN wants your money, and they love it best when you pay them to provide you with nothing. Watch your credit card statements closely, and when you purchase from Best Buy, even when you say no, they might just sign you up anyway.

Where have I been?

Random Thoughts

I’m sure the three or four of you out there who occasionally hit my site might have been wondering where I’ve gone as its been almost a month since I last posted.

Well, things in the business world have been a little crazy. While I can’t speak in specifics, a client of ours (us being the company I work for, ITCS) is giving us the boot.

Normally, you give a consulting company the boot when A) you can’t afford them or they are no longer cost effective, B) they are done and you have no work for them, or C) they suck and are doing horrible work.

They have alot that needs to be done. We do excellent work. And we cost less than a third what their internal IT department does for the same projects. So why are we getting the boot?

Politics.

Its really frustrating to do a job, do it well, exceed expectations, and come in under budget, and then be forced out by people who do bad incomplete work, always fall short, and typically exceed the budget by 200%.

But sometimes, a curse is a blessing in disguise.

Seeing our majority source of income prepare to kick us to the curb, my boss decided that it was time to focus on bringing one of our products to market. Oh, we’ve been selling it up till now, but its lacked a polish that only happens when you decide to show the world and not just your captive clients.

With that, I bring you the ITCS WebClock.

While this product has been in development for over 5 years (it began as a Microsoft Access application), for the past year and a half, I’ve been working on additions and changes. And in the last month, I completely overhauled the entire look and feel of it, and have started production on a dozen new functions and features.

Its sweet. And it feels good.

A Year and a Day

Random Thoughts

Its hard to believe that its been a year.

Sometimes its like I blinked, like the year skipped by so quickly as not to notice. Other times, its like every day itself was a year on its own, moving in slow motion.

I can still close my eyes sometimes and she’s there. Helping me clean up after another bloody nose. Looking disappointed when I failed English. My graduation day, both times. The day she went into the hospital for a routine surgery.

Some days, its feels like its been forever. I can’t picture what she looked like. I can’t remember how she smelled.

For a year my life has been that… crystal clear nonsense. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Tops and bottoms. Peaks and valleys… with little in between. I wonder if this is what manic depressives, or schitzophrenics, feel like. Out of control, with absolute certainty, on a frantic scattered path, to a destination I’ve been to a thousand times never. I feel like my insides are on the outside, so I pick them up and put them back in, only realized that I’m now turned inside out. Its like my soul is fractured, broken, and the pieces don’t fit back together anymore.

I want it to get easier… or maybe harder, so hard that I actually snap, because maybe if I’m more broken medical science can fix me.

They say, time heals all wounds. They also say, it takes as long as it takes. What if it takes forever?

On Saturday, a year and a day from the moment she slipped loose this mortal coil, I knelt at the place we laid her body to rest.

My mother and I used to talk. We’d sit in the kitchen and she’d tell me about her day, her week, her garden, something she was wanting to cook, or sew, or some place she wanted to go. And I would tell her of my day, my week, my job, my fiancee, car troubles, movies I’d seen, and everything else. She’d tell me about any problems she was having, and I would listen and offer words where I could. And I would tell her my problems, and she would listen and offer words where she could.

When she left us, I feared I would never hear her again. But there at her resting place I heard her. I told her my worries, and I heard her replies. And while I know its just emotion mixed with memory of all the things she used to say, somehow I couldn’t hear them until just then, until I was there.

I hear you.

Linda Faye Lockley Pace - Rest In Peace