General

Not Dead...Yet

Steve Majewski — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:28:11 GMT

It's been some time since I've posted anything. It's not that I'm dead or terribly busy. I'm just too lazy to take the time to organize my thoughts in a clear and concise way. However, I now have a bit of a backlog of stuff about which to write. Keep an eye out, I'll be back very soon.

When Computerization Goes Bad

Steve Majewski — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:03:11 GMT

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of exercising one of the many awesome rights we US citizens have (this blog is another one); the right to vote. Little did I know that it would consume over 5 hours of my day exercising that right.

I happen to live in one of the wealthiest counties in the country (not because I'm wealthy, but I just happen to live there). My county decided this year to computerize the voting process. That's what people do nowadays, isn't it? I believe it was to aid in the counting process more so than to streamline it, because it made the process brutally slow.

The largest culprit appeared to be a computerized verification system implemented to prevent voter fraud. The system was setup to validate a person's identity and make sure they hadn't already voted. Numerous times throughout the day the system slowed to a crawl or completely failed. This caused delay after delay. The voting regulators claimed the system was tested under load, but I think they forgot to account for the load created by all the other state services that would be going on at the same time.

Another nasty delay was the voting itself. This year was the largest ballot in 100 years in Colorado. Coupled with the largest voter turnout ever, it made for very slow going. The voting machines didn't help much. After voting, I had to confirm my selections on screen. Then a paper receipt was generated and I had to confirm that (so that's two confirmation processes after voting). I knew exactly how I was going to vote going in, and it still took me over 5 minutes to finish. With only 11 out of 12 machines functioning, 5 minutes per person is crazy slow.

To make matters worse, my county switched from assigning voters to specific precincts to having a handful of voting centers. I could go to any voting center, but I guess I picked the one everyone else liked. The voting center didn't appear to be setup much different than my past voting precincts had been. The only difference was that now thousands of people were there instead of hundreds.

It was disheartening to see voters leaving the line after 2-3 hours of waiting. Over 5 hours would seem like nothing in other countries struggling for democracy. I really can't complain, because while it was a frustratingly slow process I still got to vote (though my legs and feet might disagree with me).

Friends of mine living in other counties were able to vote in minutes (some with no wait at all). Oddly enough, those counties hadn't changed their voting process. It just goes to show you that when computerization goes bad it can go very bad. Next time, I'll either vote absentee or early.

Technorati tags: Colorado, Voting

Checking Out the New Stuff

Steve Majewski — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 06:56:49 GMT

I like to try to stay on the cutting edge of technology, but I typically do not jump on alphas or betas. Normally I don't have a box waiting around to be pummeled by software that's more like a bad 80's horror flick about software...and bugs. Anyway, seeing as how I can live if my personal laptop / boat anchor (Toshiba Satellite P15-S479) takes a nose dive, I figured why not hack it up a bit with some beta goodness.

I spent a majority of my Saturday installing the latest Microsoft goodies. It all began late Friday night with upgrading from Media Center 2005 to Vista Ultimate RC 1. Attempt #1 failed, as my laptop power cable is finicky and sometimes won't recognize it is connected after being finagled (that's a technical term). So, about halfway through the process the battery gave up. Attempt #2 went smoothly, though it took somewhere in the realm of 5 hours to finish.

After the OS was up and running, I had to do some digging to get the video drivers installed. I have an NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200, which isn't officially supported by NVIDIA. I used a classic hack to force the NVIDIA beta drivers to recognize my video card and install. Sadly, this card is nowhere near enough to run the glass interface, so I'm stuck with solid borders around my windows and an old school task switcher (oh, the humanity).

Office 2007 went in without a challenge, though it took awhile. I am a bit surprised that Word does not support my blog software when Windows Live Writer does. The interface for all the apps is going to take a little getting used to. I'm slow to adopt change. It was only a few months ago that I started seeing the value of the new start bar in XP (I had been using classic view up to that point).

So far, I'm liking Vista. My 4 year old laptop (2.8GHz P4, 1.2GB RAM, 64MB Video) handles it no worse than it did XP. I get high scores in everything but video, which is fine for how this laptop is used. I've never been one for flashiness (otherwise I'd be using a Mac), so I'm not heartbroken over the lack of glass. The rest of the stuff runs well, though the packaged games (solitaire, freecell, chess, etc) can get a little sluggish in full-screen mode. I'm amazed they didn't package in a Sudoku game, considering how popular it is now.

I have no doubt issues will pop up. At this point I only have a few:

I get an unknown device message every time I login and have no idea what the device is (at some point I'll just tell it to quit bugging me about it). All the major devices (network, video, sound, wireless, SD, USB) appear to be working fine. Nothing shows up as unknown in device manager.
DAEMON Tools is crashing on login. I can't seem to remove it, upgrade it, or stop it from starting on boot. The product site indicates it works in Vista, so I'm guessing I'm getting burned because I didn't uninstall it before upgrading.
Full screen video runs at about 1 frame per 5-10 seconds (it's fine in normal size). Seeing as how I'm using NVIDIA's beta drivers, I can't rightfully blame Microsoft. All I can do it hope it gets fixed, because Toshiba isn't going to support anything Vista related on this laptop.

We shall see what the future holds for my laptop and for the software. BTW, this posting was made using Windows Live Writer Beta.

Update

I was able to figure out why I couldn't run Aero. The desktop software for my Logitech remote was not compatible. When I shut it down, it switches over to Aero just fine. Funny thing was, Windows gave me a little information bubble telling me what was wrong, I just kept ignoring it.

Subtext Links Bug

Steve Majewski — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:53:48 GMT

There is a bug in the current version of Subtext that causes the links to not appear. Luckily my wife found this bug discussing the issue. To sumarize, this is the code you need to run against you Subtext database to get everything cleaned up:

UPDATE subtext_LinkCategories SET CategoryType = 5 WHERE
CategoryType = 0
GO

-- The stored proc change
ALTER PROC
[dbo].[subtext_GetActiveCategoriesWithLinkCollection]
(
    @BlogId int = NULL
)
AS
SELECT subtext_LinkCategories.CategoryID
    , subtext_LinkCategories.Title
    , subtext_LinkCategories.Active
    , subtext_LinkCategories.CategoryType
    , subtext_LinkCategories.[Description]
FROM [dbo].[subtext_LinkCategories]
WHERE   
            subtext_LinkCategories.Active= 1
    AND        (subtext_LinkCategories.BlogId = @BlogId OR @BlogId IS
NULL)
    AND        subtext_LinkCategories.CategoryType = 5
ORDER BY
    subtext_LinkCategories.Title;

SELECT links.LinkID
    , links.Title
    , links.Url
    , links.Rss
    , links.Active
    , links.NewWindow
    , links.CategoryID
    , PostID = ISNULL(links.PostID, -1)
FROM [dbo].[subtext_Links] links
    INNER JOIN [dbo].[subtext_LinkCategories] categories ON
links.CategoryID = categories.CategoryID
WHERE
        links.Active = 1
    AND categories.Active = 1
    AND (categories.BlogId = @BlogId OR @BlogId IS NULL)
    AND links.BlogId = @BlogId
    AND categories.CategoryType = 5
ORDER BY
    links.Title;

Migrated To Subtext

Steve Majewski — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:39:08 GMT

I've decided to finally upgrade my blog software to something that is still being supported. I'm not keen on reinventing the wheel, so I won't bother spending the time to create my own. I looked into several different applications, including Community Server and DasBlog, but none really suited my fancy.

In the end, I decided to go ahead with a spinoff of .Text called Subtext. So far it seems like a polished version of .Text, which works for me because that's what I'm used to. I was able to import everything from my old database with only a few hiccups. Now comes the fun part of updating my old skin, which gives me the opportunity to come up with something new.

Tucson or Bust

Stephen Majewski — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:35:00 GMT

I attended the wedding of a friend from high school this past weekend and learned a few new things:

Tucson in September is hot
Tucson in September is rainy
Hot + Rainy = Humid
My wife’s blood is like Cristal to mosquitoes

The wedding was held at the Wild Horse Ranch in Tucson, which is a beautiful (albeit artificial) oasis smack in the middle of the dessert. It was actually quite nice except for the severe thunderstorm that hit the reception (which was outside) right after we finished the salad course. Sadly, there was no contingency plan for rain, so we had to wait about 2 hours for the tables to be moved inside.

I would’ve liked to have spent more time with my friend, but alas a wedding can be very demanding. I did get a nice replica of a Samurai short sword as a member of the wedding party. Now I need to find something to hack up with it.

Windows Live Mail Bug?

Stephen Majewski — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:14:00 GMT

Check out this image of my Windows Live Mail from the other day. It tickles me that MICROSOFT Windows Live Mail considers a MICROSOFT security bulletin as an unknown sender. The same thing happens with MSDN and MCP emails. On the flip side, Xbox Live and Office Live emails are considered known senders. I guess Live Mail is prejudiced against non-live projects. :-)

Me Hungry. Me Need Food.

Stephen Majewski — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:48:00 GMT

While contemplating the meaning of life and whether or not the platypus is more deserving of global domination rather than the awkwardly built hairless apes known as homo-sapiens, I had the following epiphany: I hate grocery shopping.

For almost two weeks now, my loving wife has been fighting the dog days of Seattle summer helping to train Avanade n00bs the ins and outs of .NET programming. Unlike earlier evolutions of our species, in my household it is not my job to hunt and kill food. Video games allow me to fulfill the instinctive need to hunt, kill, and maim, so I am more than willing to accept that food is now obtained by trading flattened pieces of fabric containing radioactive dyes (or in modern times, by waving around a small piece of plastic that represents stacks of radioactive dyed paper), which results in the arrival of the much desired rations in a timely manner every seven days or so.

The absence of “the provider” has left me in a bit of a conundrum. I find myself powerless to prevent the foodstuffs in my cabinets from depleting to the point of mere components that when mixed together according to an ancient spell scrolled into books and passed down through the ages will generate a pastry product of some kind. It is the working of witches! To me, it’s like trying to figure out that the pointy end of the stick goes into the bear.

My adventures through the refrigerator, not unlike Indiana Jones’ search for the Holy Grail, have led me through many a pitfall and trap. I’m not saying I was chased by a giant boulder, but I am sure I found a life form or two living in the biosphere of a container filled with the remnants of hot and sour soup obtained sometime around Easter. I’m talking about things more than worthy to make a two part episode on the X-Files. And condiments, while tasty when added to processed meats engorged from the hyper-acceleration of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, leave little to be desired in the absence of aforementioned processed meats.

With my supplies rather diminished I now face the daunting task of forging through aisle after aisle of preservative injected, mass-produced products that may or may not resemble edible provisions despite the waxy build up and generous amounts of potassium benzoate. Truthfully, it’s my own need for the hunt that becomes a problem. I am incapable of bringing home the one lamb needed for sustenance until the next hunt. I must horde; prepare for the winter. Hell, I don’t know. Is it my fault Ben & Jerry’s makes such awesome ice cream flavors?

Status Update - Haiku Style

Steve Majewski — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:32:00 GMT

Hand is broken now
Hard to type on the keyboard
Wait until it heals

Oblivion Arena AI Glitch

Stephen Majewski — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:08:00 GMT

First, a little background on how I discovered this glitch. I've been playing a pure mage, which is a custom character class focused on magic skills. The class is built on controlled leveling (if you've played Oblivion or Morrowind, you know what I mean). Therefore, my major skills are those that I am least likely to use, such as blade, blunt, hand-to-hand, marksman, and block. For some strange reason, I also chose destruction magic as a major skill. Because I had also chosen all the other forms of direct combat as major skills my character ended up unable to inflict injury on an opponent without leveling up (outside of using restoration magic to absorb heath, which is pretty weak at low levels). Since I couldn't really deal direct damage without leveling, I needed something else to do the fighting for me; resulting in my character specializing in conjuration magic. My fighting style was simply to summon another creature to fight for me whilst I melted away into the background (using invisibility, of course).

After completing the Mage Guild quest line, I decided to give the Arena quest line a try. I talked to all the right people, got suited up, and walked the tunnel coated with the blood of many a fallen gladiator to my first match. As I stood there behind the gate, I could feel the rush of the colossal crowd of...20 or so people. The announcer said his spiel and the gate began to lower. I immediately summoned my trusty clanfear. The blue team combatant drew in closer and closer, never taking his eyes off me. I cast my invisibility spell and my opponent stopped dead in his tracks, oblivious to the presence of the hideous monster bearing down on him. The clanfear rushed over and began pummeling my opponent. He just stood there and took it. Victory was mine, but I thought surely there was no way this tactic could hold up. Match after match I watched opponent after opponent take hit after hit from my clanfear without once attacking it back; including the reigning Grand-Champion, who fell just like all the rest.

So, was my achievement of Grand-Champion of the Arena a shallow victory? Perhaps. But hey, summoning is my method of fighting. It was one I had been using throughout the Mage Guild quest line. What was I supposed to do? Not go invisible? Summon something then run around the ring dodging attacks like some kind of freak? Why should I have to change my tactics simply because of an AI glitch?