So on a whim, I decided to sit down at my PC and do some real work on it… you know, clean out old unused files, run the Windows Update (the very same updates I yell at people for not running, yet constantly fail to do so myself) and, in a moment of sheer stupidity, update to the latest version of Windows, “7″.
Yep, that was mistake number one.  My computer, while not exactly what one would call “ancient”, was certainly not streamline.  Intel P4 (3.2Ghz with hyperthreading) and 2GB ram, feeding a 512MB video card… yep, this is where your eyes glaze over, right?  Don’t worry, techie talk is done for a few.  Anyway, the machine was certainly capable of running Windows 7… or so I thought.
12% into the Windows install, the freezing would start.  Not just a stall, but a compete system freeze.  Bluescreens everywhere (so many bluescreens that the wall behind my chair was starting to glow from the haze off the monitor), and a lot of language that is not fit for print.
Who would have thought that a motherboard that was way beyond it’s prime would pick that very moment to decide that it was, essentially, cooked.  The real pissoff, was that it decided that not only did it not want to install Windows 7, it was sick of even having Windows XP on it.  That’s right, my PC developed a personality that was most definitely Anti-Microsoft and prejudiced against Windows.  Damn computers.
So came the shopping.  That’s right, I spent money that I do not have, and Tami and I went in search of an NCIX that would actually be open on a Sunday (trust me, this is not an easy task).  This was after exhausting all other avenues first (did you know that you can buy everything needed to build a computer from Best Buy, EXCEPT for a MoBo and Processor?  Seriously, WTF BestBuy???).  Our journey of enlightenment took us all the way to the new (and rather awesome) NCIX in Coquitlam (insert plug here).  We managed to walk away with $600 with of components for only $404 (bundles and hidden sales), and I was well on my way towards a new toy.  Again, or so I thought.
Let me be the first to warn you, even when you back up absolutely everything on your computer… every single file, every single folder, every single setting… you always miss something.
Glazed over eyes moment again?  Yep, apparently it is.  AMD 6 core processor, 8GB RAM, pushing a 768MB Video Card.  So yeah, it is a slight update on my prior system.  Video is OMGCLEAR, and the system is so fast compared to the original.  There are, of course, a few things that are taking some getting used to… not too keen on the Windows 7 Security thing, and stuff that was made simple by XP has now been made complicated by 7… all for the sake of “oh, you don’t really need to do that, because the average user didn’t need it… so we disabled it”.  But I had the same issues with XP when I first switched to it from Windows 2000, so whatever, right?  Consider it growing pains.
And how is this for typical?  Finally managed to get the computer to a state I was content with… and pzzt pow *flash*.  Blew the power supply.  It would appear that the power supply I had been using decided it missed it’s component friends, and committed suicide.  Alrighty then, we have lots of computer parts around the house, I’ll just liberate a power supply from one of the “spare” computers.  No problem, good to go.  Yeahno.  Half way through my game of Civilizations, I started to smell… something.  Within seconds, the now-familiar pzzt pow *flash* happens, yet this time the flash manages to actually light up the wall behind the computer.  First thought: Damnit, that was the last spare power supply.  Second thought: tell me I did not just melt something on the motherboard, please tell me I didn’t, cause that had one Hell of a power kickback.  Amazingly, the system survived 2 full blowouts in a period of 3 days, and is now running with a “Fatal1ty” 650 watt power supply.  Yep, apparently the system pulls so much power that it was going through 450 watt supplies faster than this house goes through caffeine… well, maybe not that fast.

In other news, things are going well on the home-front.  Tami is still going strong with Village Gamer, and we are actually slowly working towards rolling out version 2 of the site, turning it into a more mature, well-rounded, and Nationwide website dedicated to all things Canadian Industry.  While her “outside job” takes so much time away from her passion right now, she keeps on pushing through each day to make sure that the stories are up on the site before she leaves for “the other job”.  Though events in Vancouver have tapered off a little for the Winter, she still tries to get to every one she can, just so that the rest of the Country can see just how awesome Vancouver really is (assuming you can look past the traffic, the construction, the wall-to-wall people…).  We make it to almost every VFS Game Design Presentation night, we are regulars to SIGGRAPH Vancouver events (on a side-note, SIGGRAPH 2011 is here in Vancouver as well, so the World is going to be watching our city again), we have recently attended such events as the preview for Nintendo’s newest Pokemon title (see Village Gamer for that), the preview event for the Nintendo 3DS (again, check Village Gamer), Global Game Jam (yep, it’s on VG too)… you know what?  Just hit up Village Gamer and find out what we’ve been up to in the Vancouver scene.  Good stuff is coming, like the Canadian Video Game Awards and Canadian Game Conference (both in May), SIGGRAPH 2011 in August… and of course, Tami and I will be there.

On a more personal side, we had layoffs at work again.  This time, 8 people were let go, due to “staff cuts”.  Managed to survive this round as well, but it’s never good to see happen, even if it’s not to you.  It seems like people want their companies to do more with less… they comment that our store will be getting busier and busier, yet they cut the staff down at the same time.  It doesn’t really make sense to me, but then again, I’m just the shipper and not management.  Like many decisions in the work force, what looks good on paper may not always look quite as good when put into practice, but usually it’s too late to go back and change things so everyone has to simply make due.  The best I can do is take it one day at a time and hope that this is just a “growing pain” in the company, and not a signal of what’s still to come.

At any rate, I may as well get this posted, or I’ll find something to delay the process again… and before I know it, 6 months will have gone by (my poor neglected blog that pretty much no one reads anyway…).  Hope everyone is doing well, and congratulations to Matt and Rachel on the birth of a healthy baby girl (their first child).  Be sure to check back for my next update… hopefully before the World ends, per Mayan Calendar (maybe my update schedule is what plays a part in the end of mankind).

So, I’ve been heavily neglecting this place lately, it would seem.  The software was out of date, the plugins were out of date, the content (obviously) was extremely out of date.  Yet the motivation to sit down and make a post (no idea what I would write) wasn’t all that… motivational.  Go figure that I would want to do something, until it actually came time to sit down and do it… when the motivation would basically vanish into thin air without any trace left behind, other than the fact that I vaguely remembered once having some motivation.
So we survived the Olympics here in the Lower Mainland.  I had actually written a post about it (several, in fact), but failed to finish them.  I think I might just follow up this post with what I had actually started to write, and just confuse the Hell out of the people who actually do manage to read this place.  How many of you are there, anyway?  Four?  But back on topic, yes we survived the Olympics, and are in the process of the Paralympics right now.  Tami, Amy and I headed downtown on the last Saturday before the Olympics closing ceremonies to catch some of the excitement and see a few of the “houses”.  While I was extremely impressed with the event as a whole, I was less than impressed with many of the Provincial Houses.  One would think that, in a world-wide event, a province would take the time to actually highlight the best parts of what they have to offer, yet many of them were nothing more than a open floor, or a bar, or an exclusive restaurant.  Sorry, I was more interested in seeing why I would want to visit your province… guess there’s nothing of interest there after all.  At any rate, things are done.  Once again, Vancouver was in the eyes of the World, and overall it was successful.
Heard some news that put me into a bit of shock the other day.  I guess overall, it hasn’t exactly been the best of weeks for some of my co-workers.  I won’t go into detail on any of it, as it’s not my place to do so… just want to remind everyone to take a few minutes to be thankful for the loved ones they have in their life… friends, family… things can change in a moment, and it’s not always planned or expected.  Though realistically, one planning for tragedy would be rather morbid.
At any rate, I think it’s time to just get this posted (with the half-post I did a few weeks ago) and head off to watch 24.  I’ll probably post again when I’m over on the Island, as it can get real boring over there… but for now, I suppose this is sufficient.
On one final, nearly missed thought… the site is now “Facebook Connect” enabled.  That means that by connecting this site to your Facebook, you will only have to login once to be a member of both sites.  Cool, huh?  You can see it in action over at Village Gamer as well, if you want to check the legitimacy of it prior to testing it out here.
And now, my ancient-and-not-finished-post… you should be able to tell just from the first sentence exactly how old the write-up actually is… but whatever.  Enjoy anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

A little over 3 months ago, the Kia started acting… strange.  It was due for some mechanical work (or so said the reminder card that showed up in the mail), and the 4 wheel drive was now more of a 3 wheel drive.  So off Tami and I went to the local Kia dealer, just to see what they had… we barely made it out of the “truck” when one of the salesmen(women) was on us asking if we were planning on trading it in.
After some discussion, property transferage (the Sportage had accumulated quite the supply of equipment stored in the back over the years, it would appear) and a quick goodbye, we loaded up Tami’s brand new Kia Sorrento and drove off the lot.  Only to return 15 minutes later because *someone* (read:me) forgot the magnet on the back of the Sportage.  So, off we drove, again.
We haven’t really taken it on any road trips yet, and haven’t checked out the 4×4 on it (I think Tami is afraid to), but I see some good adventures coming this summer… with lots of extra room in the truck (yes, this time is has an actual truck chassis), there’s space for supplies, and even Mike as well.  The furthest road trip we’ve gone on was a trip to the Island to see Mom and Dad (most of that trip was ferry-based), and a drive to Port Alberni on a grave-hunt (Tami is working real hard on her family genealogy, and discovered that one of her relatives is buried up there somewhere… we found the cemetery, but could not find him… guess there may be another trip in the future).

Village Gamer (Tami being the head person) recently started up a monthly event called VINO… it’s like a gathering of the geeks for Vancouver.  *smirk*  Industry professionals from all branches come together for an evening of discussion, eating, drinking, and all around a good time.  With December’s event (the second one) coming up fast*** (I hear rumours of DJ music or Rock Band, but that’s still in the works), I think VINO is well on it’s way to being a great monthly event.

While I’m discussing Village Gamer, it seems that Tami is finally being recognized as a major Canadian News Site for the industry… a few weeks ago, she received a press copy of Dragon Age Origins (which I am sure Tami will tell you is one of her favorite games right now).  I think this is indication of great things for Village Gamer… all the hard work that Tami is putting into the site and it’s content might finally be starting to come back.

All in all, it’s been an interesting few months around the household, and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings… I imagine February will involve a lot of time spent NOT in Vancouver, so maybe February will be the time to finish the garage…?

*** NOTE: this has been written over the past few weeks while at work, to keep from damaging my desk with my forehead… so some events have already come and passed.  Might help if I remembered to send my txt files home before logging the work computer off for the night, but when you’re struggling just to keep up, stuff like that is the last thing on your mind.

So, on a whim (well, not so much, as I had been eyeing them up since the first generation was released), Tami and I headed into Abbotsford to visit James Kavin at the Rogers store (at Sevenoaks Mall, great service) and see about getting the new iPhone 3Gs.  After much discussion with the service representative about various methods to have the phone added to my account, we figured out a way to make it work well for both myself and Mike (who will soon be inheriting a new-ish HTC Touch Diamond).

Opening the box and turning it on for the first time, I was somewhat surprised by the speed.  Mind you, I have not had an older-gen iPhone to compare it to, but having come from a Motorola RAZR3, then to a Blackberry Pearl 8100, then to an HTC Touch Diamond, the 3GS was (to borrow from Rogers motto) Rocket fast.  Thus far, on initial testing the only problems I have encountered have been (and I will try to go into some detail as to why they are problems to me):

• Applications do not seem to like running in the background.  What I mean here is, when you have an Instant Messenger program running, and you go back to your home screen… well, it logs you out.  Many of them now support Push, and will send you an SMS when you receive a message while “offline”, but I personally like just being able to cycle between programs without them actually closing.  Background processes in Windows Mobile was one of its obvious selling features for me.  Especially since I tend to log into SSH from my phone to manage our servers, and having it log me back out each time I look at a different screen gets a bit tedious.
• Only being able to obtain LEGAL apps for the iPhone through the iTunes store.  That’s great, but you know, sometimes I want to help support those “basement coders” just as much as the people who sit in an office developing all day.  You will notice that I highlighted the Legal part there.  Yes I know that there are ways to bypass iTunes when installing Apps… so there is no need for anyone to comment reply this post with a walkthrough on jailbreaking, or on cracked apps… it’s not something we support here, and I am pretty sure if you walk into any Rogers/AT&T store and ask them about jailbreaking your iPhone, you’ll end up getting a 15 minute lecture on why they don’t allow it on their service.  Let’s not even begin to get into the specifics on what sort of risks you face with bricking your phone by going through that route.
• The inability to “browse” the phone files, like you can with Windows Mobile.  I understand that Apple is protecting their product, and trying to keep the average user from turning their shiny new phone into a Frisbee or a paper weight, but sometimes I like to be able to simply click on a file from an explorer window, and select “delete” without having to go through a resource-heavy program like iTunes.
• Syncing is a bit of a headache.  If you happen to make an iTunes App purchase from your phone, you will need to first “transfer your purchases” from your phone to your iTunes… even if the purchases where made on the same account.  If you fail to do this, the purchased App won’t be on your phone after you sync with iTunes.  I would think that a better design would have allowed for iTunes to store your App purchase history on their servers so that it just knew what was already purchased from your phone.  Or maybe to have the iTunes only sync newer content in both directions, so that nothing actually vanished from either end.  Wishful thinking I suppose.I am sure there are problems that I can come up with over the phone (I have not yet noticed the often-reported overheating issue yet,  but working in an office with A/C and not putting the GPS to much use thus far is likely one of the main reasons why), but I hear food cooking and all thoughts just sort of go out the window at that point.

Some of the definite selling points for the phone are:

• The screen is large.  With the screen taking up 90% of the front of the phone, it makes it very easy to both navigate and read sites.  I found on the HTC that, while the screen was a decent size, a lot of sites required several zoom selections and a lot of scrolling in order to read even the most basic of sites.  iPhone is a winner here.
• The camera takes phenomenal pictures.  With a 3MP builtin camera, the pictures that I’ve taken are right up to par with the standard $100+ digital cameras you would find on the market.  I admit, it’s no SLR camera by any means, but when you need a camera fast, it’s a good way to go.  And now that they have brought about digital video recording as well, any superiority that the HTC had in this area has been lost.  Good move on Apple’s part.
• The GPS is awesome.  Being a typical male *cough*, asking for directions isn’t exactly my forte… and the HTC tended to take as long as 5 minutes to locate GPS satellites before it could tell me where I was.  Usually by that point, I would have either been mugged, or found a coffee shop to ask how to get back to “the good part of town”.  The GPS on the 3GS, for one reason or another that currently escapes me, takes seconds… the longest I have had to wait so far was just under a minute… and this was while in my office at work (yeah, I get bored in there sometimes and need a reminder that yes, I am still at work).  While it only comes with Google Maps integrated (I would have liked to see some sort of Tom-Tom-like interface that could tell me that I need to turn left at the next corner, instead of assuming I know how to read a map), the gyrometer that the 3Gs now uses allows for “on the fly” map rotation, allowing me to always know which way is actually North, based on the direction I am facing.
• A very large portion of iPhone apps are actually developed right here in Canada.  While this may not exactly be an iPhone or an Apple perk, it’s most certainly one for Canada.  Kudos to Canadian App coders!
• Many of the Apps are actually reasonably priced.  Yes, you do have to sometimes pay for the programs you want… but with the literally thousands and thousands of Apps available on iTunes, it wouldn’t be too hard to find exactly what you are looking for.  Sure, there are a few out there that are… well, I guess I could say unreasonably priced, but you encounter that anywhere you go.  I can justify the higher prices on some Apps by simply pointing out that you’re probably still saving money over buying new hardware that does the exact same thing… and only that thing.  So overall, you’re likely still ahead.  And if not, just be determined and keep hunting for a cheaper version.

Overall I am thus far very impressed with the investment.  While it is of course open to improvement (as any piece of hardware would be), it’s certainly a very sleek and smooth-working piece of equipment.  I would avoid just calling it a phone, as it’s become very obvious that we have since moved away from the basic cell phones that were strictly for calls, and the new “mini computers” that we get now.  Apple is well on their way towards dominating the cell market with this release, and I can’t wait to see what they can come up with next to top it.  Expect to hear more from me on this phone as things progress and I discover new and exciting ways to break an iPhone. 

Out of my own curiousity, what do you (the readers) consider to be a “must have” application for the phone, assuming you have one.  Don’t have one?  What would be a definite required application you would want on one if you did?

I recall saying once that I was not much of a blogger.  I think what I actually meant to say was that while I may be a bit of a blogger, I was (and am) by no means a consistant blogger.

Tami and I went to see the new Tom Hanks movie the other night… Angels And Demons.  Now, while a lot of people are claiming this to be a sequal to The Da Vinci Code, the book (and the timeline) actually takes place beforehand.  I still haven’t quite figured out if the movie is, though.  They reference a few times his (Professor Landon) past dealings with the Church… now, whether this is hinting at the events of Da Vinci, or just some random past event, I can not say.  The movie as a whole though, I felt was very well done, if not somewhat rushed.  Not rushed in the sense of missing out on the plotline altogether, but just… rushed.  They movied quickly from one point to the next, leaving little time to actually digest what had just happened.  There were a few points in the movie that actually seemed blurred… while they are dealing with one point, a second and third get thrown out there as well, almost as an afterthought.  It all tied together nicely by the end of the movie though, and even left you guessing just a little as to who the “bad guy(s)” really are.  You think you have it all figured out (thinking that it’s some weak plotline just to make sales), then wham, big twist at the end and you’re left thinking “Oh my gawds, how did I miss that???”.  It even has you going over the movie again in your head, with the realizations that you did actually miss those little hints and clues that lead to the final outcome… as a single hint, it’s meaningless… but once you put them all together, it’s like the Fort Knox of secrets playing out.
I am curious as to how the Church is going to react to the movie.  Its not like it’s Anti-Christian or Anti-Vatican… there’s even a nice little piece at the end where Landon (Hanks) realizes that things aren’t really all that bad in Vatican City.  the movie definately does say a lot about the (alleged) secrets of the Vatican vaults, leaving one to wonder (yet again) just how much might really be hidden by the Church.

Anyhow, on to the personal part of my bi-annual post.  You know, the part that usually signifies the fact that I’ve been working on a post for around a week, and just never actually got around to posting it (this is, of course, one of those cases).  To put it simply, I feel like crap.  Have for about a week now, off and on.  I blame John at work.  Why?  He was sick, and I see him at work once in a while… therefore I have decided to make the connection between him bringing the plague to work, and myself now feeling “bleh”.  My blog, my right. 
These 4:30 AM morning are starting to wear thin… I know there are some people who like the idea of starting real early, and getting off work in the early afternoon as a tradeoff… I’ve never been a morning person, so this new schedule is REALLY starting to get to me.  Not to mention that I notice myself snapping at people more at work.  It’s not their fault that I’m not a “people person”, so I should probably be spending more time appologizing to them for my temper… but I noticed today that by snapping once, I actually managed to get something to happen the way I had planned it, as opposed to how the salesman decided to make it at the last second.  I think I just miss spending time outside, and less time locked down in a little office… even if it is one with windows.

At any rate, I have a real packed day tomorrow, so I should probably get this posted and head for a shower and bed.  Hope that my 2 or 3 readers are doing well, and managing to avoid the bug going around.  Take care of yourselves, and see you all again in a few months… you know, when I get around to posting again.