We got ourselves another noob today, some fellow from one of ours sister companies. Visiting until Friday, doing some research into some project or another. Nothing too major, but because he is who he is, and he’s working on what he’s working on, the powers that be thought it’d be a great idea to do whatever was needed to allow him to bring his company laptop with him, so he’d have something to work on.

Well, he did. He was just about to come on up, whens someone decided to ask him – one last time (making it a total of three times since he arrived on property) if he had any cameras, or camera phones. Well, no – but he did have a webcam in his company laptop.

A webcam is, of course, a camera. Cameras, as previously stated, are not allowed. So, it follows that webcams are not allowed. More to the point, when I went through the song and dance Monday with security to get this guys laptop in, one of their stipulations was that it not have a webcam, so it’s not a matter of him not being able to equate “webcam” with “camera” – it was quite clearly called attention to.

His explanation was innocent enough: They all have them at his office, no one thinks about it. It just is there, and he didn’t consider it until he was asked (for the third time) about cameras. So, I guess he’s just a bit slow.

He did, however, try to sell me some bullshit about it being “near impossible to buy laptops without them now”, and that’s why their IT department just buys them with. He said it’d be a problem if he had to come back for longer, but maybe they could find something that would work. I told him it shouldn’t be a problem, since none of our Dells have them – and that the majority of Dells business class laptops only offered them as an option, so it’d be very easy to order one without.

I’m really starting to question our current practice of hiring in the lowest bidder for these short-term jobs. It just doesn’t seem to be working out in our favor.

Ax? Really? Is that a word we actually want to use? It looks wrong, too short and, well, kind of silly.

I’m sorry, people, but I refuse to go along with this insanity.

Dunny Turns 30

Nadia got me an awesome cake, a nice new blue dress shirt shirt, a great watch, a pac-man t-shirt and a cool laptop bag. Lots of great loot from my great and wonderful girl.

Awesome Cake is Awesome

We had lunch together at [Insert Name of Restaurant Here], nice little Japanese place with great food, and later that night we had dinner with my folks at Tommy Bahamas, followed by watching The Vampires Apprentice – a surprisingly good movie.

The following morning we went to GameWorks with Rosenberg and Coldiron, and stayed there pretty much the whole day playing games, drinking beer, and harassing Sonic. We followed that up with a trip to The Yard House, for more beer, some shots, and good eats. Then we hit Borders, did some wandering and coffee drinking, and headed back home.

All told, it was a darn good birthday.

Superman: Secret Origins - Now with 95% more Smallville!

Superman, arguably, helped define both the modern comic book, and the modern superhero. He is also one of the most famous of the comic characters, and the most well known superheroes. His back story – in general – is pretty much known by everyone: Last(ish) survivor of the distant planet Krypton, he fights for truth, justice and the American way!

In other words, he’s an optimistic boyscout, embodying all that is good and right, mixing a child-like sense of trust and optimism with the powers of a god. Really, it’s no wonder he’s so damn popular.

Which makes the recently released Superman: Secret Origins a real bummer of a book.

I’ve only recently begun to delve into the deep, murky waters of Superman comic books. I’m kept mostly with the larger collected trades, things like Kingdom Come, All Star Superman, Superman/Batman, Emperor Joker, Last Son, and Birthright. All of these have been good (with the exception of Superman/Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves, which was total crap), and have given me a new respect for the character.

Kingdom Come is still a great book, one of my all time favorites, and does a great job of showing how Supes can function in a darker world, and yet he himself must be kept lighter in tone than those around him. It’s the best book detailing “where things end up” I’ve ever read.

Superman/Batman goes a bit further, and shows how Supes should interact with other heroes, namely the Dark Knight – Batman. It gives the sense that Superman and Batman really are two sides of the same coin, a true dynamic duo, each complimenting each other perfectly. The internal monologues in this series are wonderful insights into the mind of the Man of Steel; and more importantly, the mind of Bruce Wayne – the one person perfectly suited to really evaluate Clark on his own terms and merits, and give us a real view of what Superman is, and stands for.

All Star Superman does a great job of showing how Supes should function in his city, around his supporting cast, and on his own. It details the random, crazy stories that would only work with the Heir to the House of El. Superman is something beyond normal, beyond this world, and his stories should be the same – over the top, outrageous and, yet deep down, full of heart and hope.

Finally, Birthright is the perfect summary of how he came to be the Big Blue Boyscout, the reasoning behind why he is what he is, and where Superman came from. The fact that this story also presented the introduction of Superman to the city of Metropolis in a very realistic way – full of fear and distrust of the unknown and alien – really hits home, and makes far more sense than the world just opening up and welcoming our protector from afar.

It’s with those books in mind that I read Secret Origins, and in almost every way I find it lacking. To start, the artwork is flat and homely. Everyone looks a little too young, and a little too fat. Clark is, maybe, 12 or 13 – yet, he’s also in High School? It’s odd, and confusing, and detracts from the story.

The story is also, well, flat. This Clark is a bit of a brat, at times both rebelling against his parents (the Kents), and whinging over not being able to be like others. Once he finds out he’s not of this Earth, well – he loses his shit, throwing a tantrum and generally being a douche.

It also barrows heavily from Smallville, while also making unnecessary changes. He first learns about his heat-vision while becoming aroused, starting a school fire; he first flys when rescuing Lana from a tornado; his best friend is Pete Ross. Even his parents bare a striking resemblance to a certain boy from Hazard County, and an older Lana Lang from the movies.

What isn’t borrowed is rushed. This is the first issue, and already we’ve had powers discovered, bemoaned, cried over, a tantrum, the introduction of complications, the suit and kryptonite. In all, a very busy 48 hours for Mr. Kent.

I suppose this might have been fine, except this story was already told in Birthright, and told so much better than it’s being told here. Granted, it’s got four more issues to pull a decent story out of its ass, but I’m not at all expecting it to do so.

We’ll see how things go, but for now this is one book that’s been retconned out of my personal canon.

Gabe Newell, Director of Game Development - Valve Software

Hi, how are you? I’m fine. The weather is finally cooling off, which is nice – won’t have to run the AC as often, which in these harsh economic times means I might be able to save a bit of cash.

But, enough small talk – this isn’t a social call. No, I’m actually writing you (or pretending to write to you via my blog) in order to register a formal complaint on the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on the XBox 360.

This product is, sadly, buggy and not at all worth the seven dollars you are charging for it. Oh, I’ve read the sob story that Microsoft forced you into charging for the content, that you wanted it to be free but Microsoft made you charge for it… And that’s fine, that’s understandable, I suppose. They want you to charge for it, well… charge for it. But a whole seven bucks? For a level that takes less than half an hour to complete, and is full of bugs? I’d expect this from Bethesda, but not you. You made Portal, one of my favorite games of all time, and the Half-Life series of games, which are astounding.

And you also made… This. This pile of crap.

I’m sorry to be harsh, but that’s what it is: A pile of crap, a box of turds costing seven dollars.

The level is rife with clipping issues – many walls and trucks and containers can just be walked through as if they weren’t there. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue – except one kind of needs barriers to act as barriers when one is attempting to find some sort of shelter from an incoming zombie horde.

Or, perhaps, this was an intentional thing, created to ratchet the difficulty of the game up a few notches? I should hope not- that’s what the difficultly setting is for. No, it’s just crappy level design and even worse QA.

There are also several building whose interiors appear to exist on other planes – peering into the door ways from outside gives one a grand view of the entire map, but entering them places on in a dark, dank closet. It’s a neat riff on the whole Portal thing, to be sure – but I don’t think it quite fits with the L4D experience. I also think it might be just plain buggy.

Then, there’s the end game.
Turn on the generator, I’m told.
What generator, I wonder? There’s nothing that looks remotely like a generator anywhere near the rest of the end-game barricades and turret. It was only through wandering around – and back tracking – that I was able to find the damn thing. What happened to the hints from the other levels that gently nudge one in the right direction?

I can see why this was free on the PC – it’s not really worth much. It should have been the same cost on the 360, or – because Big Bad Microsoft is being such a bully – no more than two bucks.

Honestly, had I the chance to do it all over again, I’d much rather have spent the cash on that neat Superman/Batman cartoon than this. I probably would have gotten far more enjoyment from it. And that makes me sad, because I normally enjoy Valve games. This, however, has made me reconsider my purchase of Left 4 Dead 2. I’m forced to wonder if this quickly tossed off bit of DLC is an indication of the level of quality the quickly tossed off sequel is going to be. Unless the reviews are stellar, I’m probably going to wait until I can pick up a used copy and a cheaper price.

Well, thanks for letting me vent – and for normally making quality games. Just stop pushing out over-priced, buggy DLC.

It was not easy to setup – Or so I’m told. That was taken care of by my predecessor, who I’m starting to realize had very little true understanding of what he did at any given point in time – and has not been easy to manage since that time.

The web based interface is, frankly, crap. There is very little that one can actually do via the web, which makes sense considering the desktop tool used to cost over $250 per seat to use. Recently, this tool has been made free, so someone must have realized that SharePoint is useless without it.

Of course, the SharePoint Designer 2007 tool is also a bloated pile of crap – matching the rest of SharePoint – with confusing menus, hard to understand tooltips, and generally zero usability.

Server side, again, more problems: We’ve got log files over 13GB in size, with no indication of what they contain, how they got there, or how they can be cleaned without breaking anything. There’s nothing I can find in the included documentation, and their support site is useless on the matter. We’ve a total of 25GB of log files ALONE, which is kind of gimping up our server.

Hopefully the training I’ll get next month will help. Somehow, I doubt it…

There is something deeply wrong when the populace would rather censor words than actions – and even more disturbing are those who will not admit that guns are designed for killing, plain and simple.

As I said last week, I want to post at least one thing each day – I’m hoping this counts as my one thing for the day. It’s not an actual entry, I’ll admit that upfront. It’s more an appetizer, a menu of the entries that will be posted this week.

First up, tomorrow I’ll be posting my thoughts on the brand new Nintendo DSi. After giving one to Nadia for her birthday, I had to get one for myself. Was it worth it? Is it worth replacing a DS Phat/Lite with one of these? Find out my thoughts tomorrow!

Wednesday, a rant on the scourge of the English language- How “you know” has seemingly replaced “um” in most peoples spoken vocabulary.

Thursday, I’ll drop my thoughts on the Fallout 3 expansion “Broken Steel” – does the new “ending” fit the game better, and is the new content worth the ten bucks?

And, finally, Friday will be a nice review of the new Star Trek movie. I’ll be seeing the movie – along with Nadia, Rosenberg, Tabby and (maybe) Bighead and my Dad – so I’ll include a wide array of viewpoints on the movie. Everyone from the die-hard Trekkie to new-comers will be represented in this no-holds barred discussion on what is my most anticipated movie of the summer.

So, stick around this week – as you can see, there’s loads of stuff worth reading headed your way.

For work, I tend to buy Twinings Earl Grey, the 25 count in bags. Yes, yes, I know bags are blasphemous, but I don’t really have the time to deal with loose-leaf at work. Plus, being stuck using a microwave to heat my water really limits my options.

I did try the English Breakfast today, and it has almost no flavor. Not very impressed. I’ve got no idea what I did wrong, either – I heated the water for the same amount of time (just to the start of the boil), I let it steep for a full five minutes, and yet when all was done all I could taste was the sugar I’d added. I don’t add a lot of sugar, but that’s all the flavor it had.

At home I prefer to use loose leaf, and switch between Earl Grey, a rather nice black-tea blend I’ve been picking up at the international market here (not sure of the name), and some yerba mata I from Teavana. I make it by the mug, generally, using my trusty electric kettle. I hope to move up to ceramic kettle at some point, but only if I know I’ll be having more than one cup of tea at a time.

I usually put in two lumps of sugar (I actually prefer honey to sugar, but it’s not always on hand), although I’ll toss a third one in occasionally. I like to keep my tea right on the edge of sweet and bitter – I find the mixture to be refreshing. I rarely use milk though – I don’t buy it very often, and when I do it tends to sour before I remember I have it.

As I write this, I’m struck by what a large impact tea has had on this country, a country that doesn’t really enjoy drinking it at all. One of the major events preceding the American Revolutionary War, the Boston Tea Party, would not have happened at all if it weren’t for both taxes and tea, two things most Americans don’t actually like.

I wonder if those guerrillas had targeted some other tasty beverage (or taxed food item), if we might not be the coffee drinkers we, as a nation, tend to be today. Imagine, if you will, a country free of StarBucks, a country were beat-poets hold their competitive poetry sessions in tea-houses, a land where the morning stimulant of choice takes just a bit longer to brew correctly.

Perhaps then I could go to a restaurant, order tea without having to preface it with the word “hot”, and be delivered something that is actually drinkable. Then again, I’m sure we’d have invented and “perfected” the art of instant tea, mangling it even more than we do today.

I guess I’ll just stick with things how they are.

Friday night we got some teriyaki and watched several episodes of Doctor Who (season four, three episodes)… We’re about half way through the season now, and I think Nadia is really enjoying it. It’s fun going back and re-watching some of the episodes, seeing how the various bits actually played into the overall arc of the season.

Saturday was Valentines day, and we celebrated it by sharing gifts. I got Nadia a teddy-bear (Mr. Bear is almost as tall as her), and she got me a really groovy bracelet with “Carpe Dementia” inscribed on one side, and “Rainbows and Unicorns, Love Nadia” on the other. So awesome. <3

We went to dinner at Tommy Bahamas, , a nice little restaurant at the edge of town. The food was amazing.

Sunday we exchanged seven-month gifts (mix CD for her, Indonesian language lessons for me), packed up the car and headed out to Primm for the remainder of the weekend. The drive was fun, if uneventful. Nadia munched on a Twinkie, I slurpped down a Monster Java drink (mocha flavor, yummy), we listened to some music and just talked… Good times.

Then we got to the hotel. Oy.

Turns out that they don’t do check in until 3PM – a fact that was pointed out to us by a rather surly worker. So, rather than wait around the hotel, we went to the outlet mall to kill three and a half hours.

We did some browsing – well, Nadia did some browsing, I mostly found places to sit and play my PSP. Sometimes I like to shop, sometimes not so much. I still had a great time (finally beat a few levels on n+ that had been troubling me), and Nadia had fun, so it was all good.

We had lunch at a noodle place, the food was okay. One of the items was moving, kinda of reminded me of gagh, although I didn’t say that… It tasted okay. The sauce was kinda yucky, but the food itself was pretty good.

Once we were done there, we went back to the hotel – and were confronted by the LONGEST LINE EVER. I mean, really – this line stretched half way across the casino. It was HUGE! Worst of all, some people were complaining about waiting for over an hour.

Now, it was 3:30pm – half an hour after we were told that check-in started, and people were (obviously) waiting since at least 2:30, probably sometime prior to that… Meaning we were told the absolute wrong time for check in. Worse, we too had to stand in line for an hour to check in.

An hour.

In Primm.

When we finally got to the counter, and found out the room Nadia had asked for (one king instead of two queens) wasn’t available, I blew. Calmly, but I still blew. Mostly I demanded to speak to a manager. Amazingly, a room with a king in non-smoking was suddenly, magically available! All without having to trouble a manager for anything! Huzzah!

We checked in, and crashed for a bit.

Then we hit the roller coaster. I nearly cried, it was so nerve wracking. I normally love coasters, but something about this one just made me not like it at all. Nadia loved it though, so it was worth it just to see her happy.

I got soaked on the log flume too. >_<

We hit the arcade for a little bit, then the buffet. Not much variety, but what they did have was pretty good. Then we hit the room to change (so I could ditch my wet clothes) and went back down to the arcade… Then the bar, then to bed.

Monday we got up, got cleaned up, and were gonna hit Baker, but it was rainy and my wipers weren’t working correctly… So we went home.

A great weekend, all told…