Tag: everything

Putting Your Stamp On It

Random Thoughts

I have in the past worked with and from time to time still do work with people who absolutely must put their own stamp or spin on everything.

Let me give you an example. We are designing a database and a process for managing and populating the tables. I sit down with the other developers, we hash out what we need, then we lay out the database. Next, we have a meeting with the project manager to show the design, flesh out the process and begin documentation. Table A, Table B and Table C are source tables for Process 1 that populates Table D. Process 2 takes Table D, Table E, Table F and Table G and produce Table H. Table H is displayed to users. Process 3, initiated by users, takes user input and an entry from Table H and inserts into Table C, which is as indicated prior a source for the first process. Essentially, this design maintains an inventory, matches it with traffic data, then provides the user with a list of available space and equipment usage. The user then picks a unit for making new assignments to and that is stored to be fed into the inventory to keep it up to date.

Simple.

So, the project manager runs off and comes back with a document that states: Table A and Table B are used by Process 1 to Populate Table D; Table C, D, E and F are used by Process 2 to create Table G and Table H; G and H are used with user input to update Table C. The design team gets this document, disagrees, rewrites it to match the original discussion and submits it back to the manager. The manager runs off again and comes back with another document that matches neither the original discussion or the document he first did. This time the user interface is feeding Tables C, F and H, and Process 1 is using every table except G. Totally wrong. So we go around again. And again. And again.

We waste hours and hours, and the manager keeps saying, “Let me see if I understand…” and then always explains it wrong because, clearly, he does not understand.

Eventually we come to a point where someone on design gets mad and says, “Trust us, if it doesn’t work the way WE say it, we can redesign it later.” And of course, we aren’t wrong, it works and we don’t have to come back to it.

I’ve got no solution, nor really much else to say. This is just something that frustrates me as a worker that I’ve added to the list of things I will never do if I’m ever manager. That is all.

Why I Dislike Oprah

Random Thoughts

Most of my life I have been a skeptic and a pessimist. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

This is why I dislike Oprah.

I’ve gotten into a bit of a tiff with a friend of mine because I mistakenly used the word “hate” while talking about Oprah, and I appearantly wasn’t clear that my dislike has nothing to do with Oprah Winfrey personally but only with the brand Oprah that she has created. Much the same way I have a dislike for Microsoft, or any large brand.

If you read up on Oprah, she has done some wonderful things with her life, her show, her magazines, her charities… she’s made a few mistakes along the way, most famously is James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces where she and her people didn’t bother to do the minimal background work that thesmokinggun.com did that proved his book was a pile of lies. But, overall, she does good, and that’s why when she suggests or recommends something I give it attention and look into it for myself.

Sounds like I don’t dislike her, right? Let me continue…

Where I start to get uncomfortable is the cult like following that she has engendered and nurtured. There are literally millions of people who will take her at her word and do what she says without thinking for themselves. She says a charity is worth giving to and suddenly that charity gets record donations. She’s probably not wrong, but I am worried by the blind faith that people have… almost the same problem I have with many organized religions. Follow, don’t question.

Is it really her fault? Can she stop people from just doing what she says? No, not really… people like knowing that other people know better, following a strong leader is easier than trying to lead themselves. But what I dislike is that Oprah, as a brand, seeks to gain by maintaining this blind following, and not once have I ever heard her openly state that people should do research on these ideas, books and charities themselves before acting. It would be bad for business to give people advice and in the same breath tell than that you could be wrong and they should really figure it out for themselves.

Most recently, Oprah has funded the building of a school. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Building the school is clearly a good thing, but to prove a point, I discussed the school with some coworkers, and while all of them said it was good, not one of them could tell me why Oprah felt the school needed to be built beyond “because they needed a school for women.” No one could tell me why that school, why there, why now… all that was lost in the Oprah publicity of the school being built and how great it was.

Along with that, I find I am put off by the fact that she puts her name in the forefront of everything, on everything. I watched one of the TV specials about something she was doing, it may have even been the school, but I completely lost interest because in the ten minutes I watched, Oprah was always center frame, even when she was talking to someone who, in the context of the special, should have been more important than her. With Oprah, it seems that the subject is never “Here is something worth knowing about…” its always “I’m Oprah, and behind me is something worth knowing about…” There is a distinction there that I think is very important.

In this argument with my friend, she brought up other brands (Microsoft, Nike, etc) latching on to the idea that it must be brands that I “hated”, not Oprah. But the truth is, I bring the same skepticism to those brands. I never buy software because its Microsoft, I buy it because I need the functions that it does and from my research it fills my needs. Microsoft Office is a great example, I love the product, but only because I’ve gone down the road of using other software. I’ve installed Star Office and used other email readers, and in the end, after trying dozens of other products, it turns out that Microsoft Office is the one that does everything I need in the best way possible for me. And Nike, well, I’m a skinflint when it comes to shoes and refuse to spend more than $30 for any pair. I’m rough on shoes, and spending $100 for a pair is like throwing money out the window. Again, I’ve done the footwork, pardon the pun, and realized that buying Ocean Pacific sneakers for $19.99 was a much better fit for my lifestyle.

In a way however, these companies are more honest than Oprah, because they are trying to directly sell you on their products… Oprah, on the other hand, is often trying to sell you other people’s work, their books, their deeds, their charities. And while you can look into Oprah’s eyes and see if she is sincere, she has put a layer between you and the product, potentially hiding from you if the original purveyor was sincere, and you have to trust that she has done all the proper background work, which she has shown on occasion that she (or her staff) has not.

So what am I trying to get at with this blog? In the end I suppose the core of it is that I am adverse to any person or group that encourages, actively or passively, people to stop thinking for themselves.

Pattern Recognition

Reviews

Every once in a while, a book comes along that really matters. You read it and it gets down into your soul, affects your core beliefs and really, truly changes you. I just finished reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, and let me tell you… this is not that book.

Normally, I don’t post spoilers, but I can’t talk about this book without them. So, if you want to read more and don’t mind a little (or a lot) of spoiling, read on.

Read more

Sneaking Seventy: The Beginning

Gaming

I am sure it has been done before, but I don’t care. I’ve rolled up a new character in the World of Warcraft, he is a rogue, and he shall not fight, and he shall only do quests that can be completed without killing. My goal is to explore, everywhere and everything, hence the title: Sneaking Seventy.

So far, I’ve explored Stormwind, Elwynn Forest and some of Westfall… and then I went to Dun Morogh. The ability of monsters to see me and kill me is astounding… I definately need some money and some gear. I’ll post screenshots later.

WriMo Results

Random Thoughts

November is a horrible month. At least it usually is for me. The holiday and other family stuff, Christmas preparations, and my job aligned against me to foul my plans.

Mostly it was the job. Thanks to the traditional December code freeze (which they introduced for Y2K and just haven’t bothered to remove), everything has to get done before then. Rush, rush, rush. Blah.

Anyway… I managed to write about 2,000 words. Maybe 3,000. Far short of the 50,000 word goal of the contest. Better luck next year.

The Hidden Effects of RMT

Gaming

It started (this time) with Lum, and then spread to Psychochild and from there to Grouchy Gnome, Moorgard, Cael, and Nick over at My 2 Copper: Real Money Transactions.

For now, let’s leave out discussions of my feelings on RMT’s effects on games, let’s leave out discussions of game design, let’s leave out the possible reasons people do it (lack of time, boredom, etc.). Instead, I’m going to talk about the hidden effects of RMT, specifically one that no one talks about.

I have two friends, well, I have more than two friends, jeez, I’m not a recluse, but for this discussion it only pertains to two of my friends. One of them is like me, we play the games for the games themselves, if something takes twenty hours it takes twenty hours. The other one buys gold. Basically, the second friend is usually a late adopter of games, or he’s distracted by other new games and “falls behind”, so he buys gold to catch up. He also does so once he reaches the “end game” because he doesn’t like farming. To sum up, one of my friends RMTs call him Brad, and the other doesn’t call him Mike.

The three of us are sitting in a bar talking over a table of beers. Mike and I are laughing and telling stories. Quests that went wrong, encounters that went down the shitter, PvP where we were handed our asses, funny monster pathing stories, and basically everything under the sun that comes from playing the game the boring traditional way, most of it involving failures of spectacular effort on our part. “This one time, I was out pulling in Mistmoore and I didn’t realize I’d agro’d a second mob from up top. So the group is fighting along some extra pulls from the front when the entire freakin’ Castle comes charging out! Holy Christ! There were like three hundred mobs and it was total chaos, so I grab agro on most of them and start running in a big damn circle…” Hilarity ensues. Brad nods, listens and laughs. He even has a story or two of his own, but Mike and I completely dominate the story telling and largely because most of our stories come from all the game that Brad skipped because with his bought gold he didn’t need to play it, or the uber items he scored with his bought gold made the encounters so easy the only story he could tell is how he sliced through everything like a hot knife through warm butter and he almost died when that mob ten levels higher than him showed up and he almost ran out of hitpoints on the three minute run for the zone line.

Now, of course this isn’t true in all cases. Once we finally all get up to raid level in games, the field levels a bit, because you usually can’t RMT past “end game” content unless you are buying characters, which Brad doesn’t do.

Why do I care? Brad comes to me one day and says, “Man, you guys always have great stories to tell. I wish I had those.”

There you have it… RMT ruins the time you spend with your friends drinking beers and talking about the game. And really, you have a job to get ahead in life, aren’t our games and hobbies intended to be done for the memories? Of course, that can go both ways… if I RMT’d too, Brad and I might be talking about all the high level content we were killing while Mike sat there with his little stories of low level quests, loser. So, in the end, my conclusion is… RMT or not, it doesn’t really matter, but make sure that you and your friends are all on similar pages so that no one gets left out.

Casino Royale

Reviews

This past weekend, I finally found a little free time to get to the theater and see a film. The wife and I picked the new James Bond film Casino Royale.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the legacy of Bond and the history of this particular story… I’ll just cut to the chase. Its a good movie.

First off, just forget everything you know about James Bond, because except for a few inside jokes that is what they are doing. This is Bond just starting out, having previously done some other work for the British (its hinted at that he is former SAS) and is now working for MI6, something he might not be ready for. The ultra-sexy swagger is gone, but he exhibits a predilection for married women because they are “less complicated”. The slapstick from earlier films is also absent. No Bond girls named Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder, Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, or Christmas Jones, whose names always seemed to be picked for single line jokes, most of which could be seen coming a mile away. Q is gone, so no theatrics with gadgets going wrong as he shows James his new toys. In fact, the toys are gone as well.

The movie isn’t perfect… there are moments when it gets slow, but the action scenes are damn good and left me itching to see more Bond in the future.

And about the new man himself… Daniel Craig might be blond haired and blue eyed, but he makes the role his own, and he has a look about him that really makes you believe he could be a spy: rugged good looks that clean up well in a tuxedo, but rough enough to be a street thug if its needed. The wife gives him the thumbs up.

So, the end result is a film worth seeing. If you haven’t, do so.

Autumn or Fall

Random Thoughts

Depending on the situation or the frame of mind I am in, I flip-flop on whether I prefer Autumn or Fall as the name of the season that comes between Summer and Winter.

Fall is… well… depressing, but often time so apt. Right now at work it definately feels like Fall. All the projects are coming due, we (the place I’m contracting at) are being bought by another company and heads will roll, and everything just seems like it is approaching an end.

Autumn is how I want to feel. Change is in the air, and change always leads to possibilities.

Despite all this pondering, the new TV season is revving up and is nearly in full swing. Lots to see, some of it is good, some not so good. And some of it I don’t expect to last, but I hope some of it does. I’ll give a rundown on the shows I’m watching and what I think later, for now I’m just happy not to be on anymore conference calls.

2006: Day 3 – An Age in a Day

Dragon*Con

I could write about the panels I wasted my morning on. Well, wasted isn’t really the right word… the swordfighting display was cool, as were the various writing panels, but the free form discussion of game modding was kinda lame. I mean, how many different ways can someone ask, “But what if it doesn’t work?” and the guests respond with a new form of “Then you fix it.” I showed some friends the undead siege art. But I’m not going to spend much time on that, because frankly, I want to live in the Age of Conan.

Funcom is here and they have a booth for their upcoming game, but today they did a full blown demo using the current beta client and servers (they actually used their live data thanks to the Hilton providing the internet access). All my worries for this game have been pushed aside, and if Vanguard still wants my business they better show me something cooler than this.

The first thing we are shown is the character creation. Have you played City of Heroes? Their costumes are cool, but the body and face creator in AoC is freakin’ amazing. You can give yourself scars or a broken nose, you can be all sorts of skinny or fat, its just awesome.

Then we see combat. Auto-attack doesn’t exist. For range attack with a bow, you draw the bow, then it smoothly transitions into an aiming system, pick your target and fire. We only saw bow, but I’d guess it works the same with everything ranged, perhaps spells. We didn’t see spells. But we saw close melee combat. Your character has six sides… front, left front, right front, left rear, right rear, rear. If you swing through a side and someone is in it, you can hit them. So yes, you can do a wide arc swing and hit multiple targets. Hitting someone is a series of key presses which determine the kind of swing and the location of the strike… almost like one of those console fighting games, but without the mad slamming of keys to make super-ultra-mega-death-combos. There are combos though, as you learn more fighting moves you can use them. But the absolute best part of combat is that you actually interact with each other. When you swing at them, you swing at them, not just in the same swinging motion you always make. You slash at legs and torsos and heads. And finishing moves can actually involve grabbing the opponent, running them through and then letting the body slip to the ground. It makes for much more visceral experience. And there is mounted combat. You can ride past someone and slash at them as you go. You can trample people. And the horse leans when it runs, just like real horses.
Then there are the towns. Player towns. Run by guilds. And you have to defend them from NPCs who rise up to fight you. Towns are strickly PvE, but for PvP they have tower keeps, and you can siege them, with real siege gear, that you have built. You actually can build, arm, aim and fire a trebuchet with a rolling flaming shot that slams through the approaching forces or the enemy keep walls. Since guild towns are PvE, they are instanced, which means the landscape doesn’t get cluttered. Tower keeps being PvP are limited in number, contested.

Basically everything about the game looks great. So far, it is the game I will buy a new computer for.

I saw a preview of Neverwinter Nights 2 also. It was pretty good. It beats Conan only in that it has DM tools so you can make your own modules and there is no monthly fee. Conan wins at everything else.

There was, of course, much hanging out, costume watching, and drinking.

Sometimes it is Worth the Splurge

Random Thoughts

The wife and I finished painting the kitchen yesterday, mostly because he had to. The cabinets are next, and they have to be done before Saturday. Why? Because Saturday is when the appliances get delivered.

We bought a fridge a few weeks ago. Found a good deal on one at Fry’s. Yesterday, we went to go check out hhgregg since they had some sort of super summer tent sale going on. Everything was still too expensive. But, Sears had a dishwasher that we liked for a good price so we decided to hit Town Center Mall and go ahead and buy it. While we were there, as usual in any store these days, we walked around looking at the ranges. Mainly, for anything that is stainless steel (the appliance scheme we have chosen) prices start around $500 for crappy basic gas ranges and go up to… well, if you so desire you can spend $8,000 or more on a new range. Anyway, we are looking around and see this really nice range. Basically, its just about everything we want. Gas, range with the flat cooktop, oven that is conventional and convection, etc… but it retails for $1,499, and that’s the price it was the last time we were at Sears. This time though, they have the floor model on sale for $1,099, four hundred dollars off. We talk it over, we discuss the budget and we decide to go ahead and buy it.

Wait, it gets better.

So we get the sales woman, Renee, to ring up our stuff, range and dishwasher. We are chatting with her about the house, it turns out she purchased a fixer-upper house a number of years ago and is still fixing it up. Then she rings up the range and it comes up $587. The wife blurts out, “Do we get it at that price? Like at Kroger?” “This isn’t Kroger,” Renee says. She voids it and scans it again. $587. She selects the item and pulls up the details to make sure it matches. It does. Then she goes to find a manager. When she comes back, Renee smiles and says, “Looks like you get it at that price.” Awesome!

We walked out of Sears with a $1,499 range for $587. That’s just more than 60% off. I still can’t believe it even though I have the receipt right here.

It is kinda funny with this house. We’ve got a major bad news/good news vibe going. My car breaks down, we get the house. I get flat tires, the inspection goes well. I burn the crap out of my foot on my father’s porch (I was barefoot, the sun had been shining on the wood for about 6 hours, I’m an idiot), and we get a new appliance for 60% off. Also this Saturday the cable is getting installed, and I’m trying to cheat… since I’m a new Comcast customer, they want me to pay $99 for internet installation, which I don’t need since I can do it myself, however if I were an existing cable TV customer self installation of internet is free. So, I’m getting cable TV done Saturday, then I’m going to call and add internet to my account with self installation to avoid the $99 charge. If my karmic balance holds, I wonder where the retribution will come…