Here is the obligatory π day question: how many digits of π do you have memorized? And if your answer is more than 5, I have a follow up question: why? No seriously, why? There are so many other things you could memorize instead. Things you could actually use in your daily life such as the stats of D&D monsters, video game trivia, internet memes or, I don’t know, Quenya vocab words. Practical things. There is really no reason to memorize a hundred digits of π because there is never situation where you would need more than 4 or 5 and were without means to look up the remaining ones. In fact, if you use that much precision it would be recommended to look it up, rather than rely on your memory.

Obligatory pi day cartoon.

The proper answer to the question “What is the 25th digit of π” is “I don’t know, but I can look it up”. That is a scientific approach. Remembering a million digits of π is not even geeky. It’s just… Silly. I think the amount of respect you get for remembering digits π tops out around 5 or 6 and then starts falling sharply. It’s like: “you know way to many digits of π sir, I don’t know if we can be friends”. I don’t know if I can actually trust anyone who can sit there and memorize numbers like this. I mean, I hardly even have time to think about memorizing stuff – my brain works overtime as it is. If you can memorize so many pi digits you either don’t have that much going on upstairs (so you can spend time memorizing instead of thinking about things) or you just have a very good memory. Both possibilities disturb me.

On the other hand, calculating π is cool because it actually does something productive. It pushes the limits of what we can do with technology. The discipline is all about creating efficient algorithms. That’s something I can get behind. Everyone can memorize bunch of numbers given enough time and effort – rote memorization is a dumb busy work though. Not everyone can write an algorithm that will calculate 27 trillion digits of π within 130 days using a desktop PC. That’s the current record btw – 27 trillion.

Another interesting upgrade is the quantum entanglement communicator in the conference room. It is essentially a high bandwidth Ansible that allows for instantaneous point-to-point communication with Cerberus command from any point in the galaxy. It transmits life size holographic image and audio stream which is actually quite impressive. In most universes Ansibles are kinda crappy. In Le Guin’s Ekumen universe they can only send/receive text. The device installed on Normady is much, much more powerful.

In fact, existence of such device in the universe makes one wonder why most civilizations build their communication network Mass Relays instead of these awesome Ansibles. In fact, you can even ask the ship AI about it. This conversation pretty much goes like this:

Click to embiggen.

EDI basically hand waves this away (which is actually pretty impressive seeing how it has no hands) and gives you some bullshit about point-to-point communication. It is quite obvious that no one at BioWare reads this blog. If they did, they would know that I already came up with a clever idea for galaxy wide internet based around Ansibles. In case you are to lazy to read that article let me re-iterate it here:

1. Establish point to point Ansible connections to bunch of your neighbors
2. Plug all this Ansibles into a router
3. Connect the router to the planetary internet
4. Set it up to route outbound off-world requests to appropriate Ansibles
5. If you get an inbound packet that should go to a different world route it out using an appropriate ansible

It would take some coordination, but if everyone would do this, Mass Effect universe would have instantaneous packet switched internet that covers the whole galaxy. The best part is that all you really need to do this, is good old 20th century TCP/IP networking. And yes, they would probably still be using IPv4. Isn’t it funny that all modern OS’s and modern hardware support IPv6 but no one actually uses it for anything?

So yeah… BioWare – read my post, and please take it into consideration when making Mass Effect 3. I’m expecting a galaxy wide internet, or a good explanation why it is not there. The fact that your Ansibles are point-to-point doesn’t mean shit.

• Reddit
• Digg
• Slashdot
• Boingboing

Do you visit any of them? Or all of them? Personally, I spend most of my time on Reddit because it tends to have the best signal to noise ratio without actually employing all powerful editors that hand pick best submissions. Of course there is a downside to this. On some days the front page of Reddit looks like this:

Yes, I posted a FUUUU joke. Se me

Then again sometimes Reddit is incredibly awesome. For example, some time ago I submitted a theoretical question involving special relativity and use of ansibles to the science subreddit and actually got some serious and thoughtful responses. The question received 17 upvotes and 6 downvotes but still generated a rather interesting theoretical discussion in the comments. The only other place on the interwebs where I could ask such a question and actually get replies is… Well, here. So that’s why I like Reddit. Like minded folks and good content.

I also visit Slashdot and Boingboing from time to time as well. Especially on the days when Reddit turns into 4chan meme recycling mill. I hardly ever go to Digg though… Which is probably a side effect of hinging out at Reddit so much. How about you guys? Where do you spend your time? Feel free to pimp out your favorite geek news and trivia sources in the comments.

Btw, as a rule I do not subscribe to RSS feed from any of these sites. I subscribe to blogs and online comic strips but not news aggregators. I access those the old fashioned way by going to the website and/or clicking refresh. Why? Because these sites have astonishing output rates. I tried subscribing to them once, and I could never keep up with their pace. After just a few days I would have 1000+ unread articles in each of the feeds (half of them probably dupes). Whenever I managed to clear one of these piles, new articles would start piling up within hours. It just doesn’t work.

As much as we may deny this, the video games that we have played in our formative years have affected us in some ways. No, they didn’t make us into violent killers – that’s silly. But just like literature, TV and cinema they have made their mark. They allowed us to experience something new and unique and imprinted themselves upon our memory. I can honestly say that I no longer remember 90% of the games that I have played as a kid but there are few that still stand fresh in my mind. I remember them quite fondly, and reminisce about playing them every once in a while. This is what I want to talk about today.

What video games have really made an impact on you when you were a kid? Which games have you played over and over again? What game completely blew you away?

I remember several such games. One of them must probably be Another World by Delphine Software. At the time it had a revolutionary game play mechanics and game engine (it was one of the first video games in history that used real-time rendered polygons instead of sprites). What really blew me away was the unique story of a red haired scientist who accidentally finds himself in a strange parallel dimension. A story which was conveyed to the player with picture and sound alone (no actual words are spoken in the game). I have spent countless hours trying to beat that game, which in retrospect is quite impressive seeing how short it really was. You can actually see it in its entirety below.

Amiga Longplay [098] Another World by cubex55

I also loved Another World’s spiritual successor Flashback which featured similar game play but a different (equally compelling) SF universe and interesting story. Here is a sample of gameplay (I’m not going to post a speed run here because the game is much longer than Another World).

Flashback: The Quest for Identity, Level 1 (1/2) by djoldgames

Both these games were cinematic, action packed and incredibly difficult. So I used every cheat-code I could find to actually beat them. Both also had better stories than many modern games, and that is saying something considering neither one had voice acting, dialog trees and etc…

My first introduction to the RPG genre was Ishar – The Legend of the Fortress and I completely lost my shit for it. It was an massive, open ended world populated by orcs, monsters, villages where you could recruit party members, dungeons full of loot and NPC’s that would sometimes join you. Seriously, it was pretty much a sandbox game before sandbox was even a gaming concept. It had beautiful watercolor backgrounds, interesting character designs and a cool fantasy world seeped in mystery. Here is a short game play video:

Ishar – The Legend of the Fortress by madzionyu

The funniest part was that my copy was all in French. It was a pirate copy of a pirate copy that got to me via friend of a friend’s brother or something like that. But I didn’t care – I played it for hours on end anyway. I don’t believe I actually learned any French because of it – it was more of a trial and error type thing. I’d press buttons and dialog options at random to figure out what they do. Sadly, the language barrier made parts of the game inaccessible to me. For example, most hints given by NPC’s were incomprehensible. The game also had a complex alchemy system (you could make potions out of ingredients) but most of the in game instructions on how to do it were in French so I missed out. Since I could not really figure out what was the main quest I have never beat it – but I spent days just wandering around, getting lost, finding interesting recruitable NPC’s and dying in spectacular ways. It was a blast.

Another game that I will probably remember till I die was Syndicate by Bullfrog. Being quite an interesting mix between a RPG and RTS game, it had you controlling up to 4 cyber-enhanced agents on various missions that ranged from assassination and sabotage or recruiting new members for your organization. What really made me fall in love with it was the fact that the game featured realistic “living” cities. In some of the missions you would have to make your way through busy streets full of pedestrians. You could get hit by a passing car or hijack it and drive it to your destination. It had working train/tram lines that you could use and buildings you could enter (though there was usually nothing interesting inside). It was mind blowing at the time.

Here is a short vid:

Amiga 500: Syndicate by qettyz

Heimdall 2 was another one of my favorites. It mixed action, adventure and RPG elements with a really good story. The game introduced me to the Norse mythology which turned out to be a long term fascination of mine. I also remember that it had interesting magic system based on rune stones. Each rune had some magical properties but be useless on its own. You had to put several of them together in order to make spells. So for example a fire bolt spell would require a fire rune and another rune that would be related to magical projectiles. There were dozens of combinations and discovering them was part of the fun. One summer I made myself a whole set of these runic stones out of those flat washed out pebbles you can find on the beach.

Amiga – Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds by mingo870

A lot of people start their point-and-click adventure gaming carer with one of the Lucas Arts SCUMM games like The Secret of the Monkey Island. I started with Simon the Sorcerer which was not only incredibly funny but also massive. Unlike most adventure games that kept you confined to a small area until you figured out a puzzle, most of the world in Simon was open to you from the get go. The game was just as much about exploration as it was about puzzles. If you got stuck somewhere you just went roaming around. Eventually you would find new items and you would go “oh, I wonder if I can use it in the XYZ location”.

Simon the Sorcerer part 1/14 by russell19831983

I have played the original game without voice acting – hearing Simon’s voice actually ruins my nostalgia here because this is definitely not how he sounded in my head. Fun fact: I replayed this game as an adult and realized that it was way funnier than I remembered it. I assume that about a half (if not more) of the jokes flew over my head due to my limited grasp of English and inability to pick up on many of the innuendos, pop culture references and wink-wink-nude-nudge moments.

Oh, and before I forget, Moonstone – a game that me and my brother used to play a lot due to it’s competitive nature and incredible amount of gore it featured.

Amiga Misc [006] Moonstone – Best Parts by cubex55

My brother actually made the set of dice featured in the game – as in chiseled the dice out of wood and painted on the symbols. We used to always take that set on long trips in addition to playing cards.

How about you? Which games affected you the most when you were a kid? Which games you still remember with astonishing clarity? Post them in the comments. If you can find cool youtube vids like the ones above, that would be even better!

So tell me, which one do you use and why?

Personally, I have been a loyal Subversion user for years. It works well, it does what it is supposed to do and it is possibly one of the most popular systems out there. It also helps that both Google Code and SourceForge use it. Not only that, but it also has one of the best UI implementations I have seen so far. Tortoise SVN is really, really good and makes managing repositories a cinch. Whenever I do any programming on Linux (which is often) I actually miss having Tortoise on my system – that’s how friendly and well designed it is. I have yet to see a version control UI that I would like better.

That said, everyone keeps telling me that Git is the Shit and that I need to try it. All the cool kids are using it, and I may loose lots of street creed and possibly even my geek license if I’m not at least familiar with it. So I finally broke down and tried it and I must say that I like it. I haven’t really used many of it’s unique distributed features (like forking or merging) but I can see why people are so excited about it. Now, if I could only find a Tortoise like UI for it, I would be in heaven.

I never really used Mercurial or Bazaar so I can’t really say how good they are – I included them in the poll though because they are quite popular out there. I also included the very obscure SourceJammer because I had to use it once. It was actually quite nice – we were working on a Java project and were using a Java based source control. It was very easy to work with (the UI was quite well designed) but installing and configuring it was a nightmare. It required you to have just the right verison of Tomcat and a dozen dependencies (some of which were version dependent as well).

How about you? What version control systems have you used? Which one is your favorite? Which one you hate with a fiery passion? Let me know in the comments.

The reasoning behind this is simple: users are idiots. Whenever I do any sort of support calls or troubleshooting with my users I spend most of the time trying to extract information out of them. What kind of computer do they have (standard answer: a laptop), how fast it is, how much memory there is, what is their IP address, subnet and default gateway, what DNS server they are using, the applications they have installed, the services they are currently running and etc… No one ever knows these details of the top of their head, and explaining to them how to check these details is time consuming. I mean, if you never had to explain to someone what a pingoogle is, then you probably haven’t done much network troubleshooting over the phone (for the record, that is what a luser will type if you don’t say SPACE between ping and google.com).

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just offload all that diagnostic bullshit onto a piece of software that would extract bunch of important system information and display it on the screen so that the user could read it to me, or paste it into email. Or better yet, have the app periodically submit all this information to an online form somewhere so that I would have an ongoing record of the users machine and changes that were made to it. Yes, it would be great. I’d just need to write such a thing – and I could customize it specifically to my needs.

I already know how to send HTTPS POST requests with C# so I just needed to figure out how to extract the hardware information from the bowels of the users machine. After doing some research I found out that all I need is to learn how to talk to WMI.

In case you didn’t know WMI is a little magical gnome that lives inside your computer case, and communicates using (of all things) SQL. You can send that little guy an SQL like query and he will hop over to the CPU, lift the heat sink and read the clock speed off the device for you. Speak to him however you will need to add a System.Management reference to your project:

Add the System.Management reference

Once it is done, you need to familiarize yourself with Mr. ManagementObjectSearcher who is the dude that goes and pokes the gnome with the stick, hands him SQL queries and retrieves the results back for you. You initialize him with an SQL query like so:

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = 
   new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_Processor");

No, seriously, that’s how it works. The name of the “tables” and attributes you can use in your queries can be found in the WMI documentation on MSDN. For example, if you want to find out information about the CPU you want to query the Win32_Processor class. If you read the docs you will find out that it has few dozen attributes such as Name which returns a string containing a human readable description of the CPU or MaxClockSpeed which returns maximum clock speed in Hz as an unsigned 32 bit integer.

Once you initialize your searcher object with an appropriate query, you will need to retrieve the results. Let me show you how to do this below:

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = 
   new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT 
                                   maxclockspeed, 
                                   datawidth, 
                                   name, 
                                   manufacturer 
                                FROM 
                                   Win32_Processor");
 
ManagementObjectCollection objCol = searcher.Get();

The Get method of our searcher object rerurns a ManagementObjectCollection instance populated with our results. In theory all the WMI queries can return multiple “data rows” (for example, if you have multiple CPU’s you will get a ManagementObject associated with each of them), and so the answers get bundled into a collection. In practice however we usually just get a single answer so the whole collection thing is a bit unnecessary – and unwieldy to work with. The least verbose method of extracting our data I can think of is to plug it into a foreach loop like this:

foreach (ManagementObject mgtObject in objCol)
{
     Console.Write(mgtObject["maxclockspeed"].ToString()+ Environment.NewLine);
     Console.Write(mgtObject["datawidth"].ToString()+ Environment.NewLine);
     Console.Write(mgtObject["name"].ToString()+ Environment.NewLine);
     Console.Write(mgtObject["manufacturer"].ToString() + Environment.NewLine);              
}

Since 90% of the time we only expect to see a single object inside the collection this is fairly quick, single iteration loop. You can actually test whether or not your collection has more than a single item by inspecting it’s Count attribute.

Word of warning though – WMI is a bit slow, or so I’ve been told. Now, the slowness is not really noticeable – my prototype app for example was making around 10 WMI queries at startup without noticeable delay. But it is arguably the slower ways to extract this type of information. I have seen many examples of much more optimized code on StackOverflow but frankly I didn’t really. Premature optimization is often a one way ticket to maintenance hell. WMI queries as described above have been fast enough for me, and I don’t really feel like looking for alternatives at the moment – especially since all the data I want can be obtained using the same exact pattern.

To make a long story short, an acquittance asked me to solve their “bizzzzzzzzzare” computer issue the other day. And yes I was told that the problem is so bizarre they needed several extra Z’s for emphasis. I guess it was a trade in – bunch of Z’s for the second R. Sounds like a pretty decent deal to me.

The problem at hand was succinctly summarized to me as “Gmail don’t work”. Not the internet, not the browser – just Gmail, and only on that one computer which happened to be an old, decrepit dell machine. I decided to investigate, so I had the person log into her Gmail for me to see what happens. The page loaded fine, albeit slow – but I attributed it to the general slowness of the machine. So… I guess it’s fixed? Can I go home now?

“Watch this!” she exclaimed while clicking on the first unread email. The mouse turned into a hourglass, and IE started loading something very slowly. Several seconds passed, and nothing changed. So my friend decided to click on it harder and then even harder afterward. When that didn’t work, she decided to change strategy and click on it really fast – as if she was trying to communicate with the computer using morse code. Eventually IE said “fuck it” and displayed the famous “(Not Responding)” message in the toolbar.

“See? Every time I go into Gmail it crashes!” she said triumphantly, clearly pleased with this demonstration. Of course IE did not crash – it simply stopped responding because you just clicked on it like a million times. You have to understand that when you have a computer that was made at the begging of the bronze age, you can’t expect it to have instant response time. So I asked her to wait a bit, and about a minute and a half later, IE popped back to life, displaying the email she requested. Still, the response time was slow, even for an old computer. What’s more intriguing, other websites loaded much faster.

I installed Chrome on her system and ran a quick test. Gmail performance was blazing fast compared to IE. Unfortunately, my friend preferred that I fix IE instead of trying to force alternative browsers upon her. So I sat down and started digging. Pretty quickly I narrowed down the performance to the Phishing toolbar provided by her copy of Norton 360. I disabled the Phishing protection, restarted IE and Gmail started working normally. I enabled it, and Gmail would take a whole minute to load an email.

Norton 360 is a piece of crap, but since she just renewed the license for another year uninstalling it was not a viable option. So I recommended simply keeping the Phishing protection disabled from now on, which would work if Symantec did not go out of their way to make their software super intrusive. As soon as I disabled the feature, Norton but a huge red X in the task bar. Then, every few minutes it would display a popup message that warned the user she was not protected, taunting her with a large, alluring “Fix Protection Now” button. I looked through all the available options, looked online and even read the help files searching for a way to disable this message. Turns out there is no way to do this. You either run with the phishing filter on, or you have to deal with annoying nag messages popping up all the time.

I tried to explain this to my friend, but she did not listen to me. Lusers never do – it’s their defense mechanism. You see, if a computer illiterate people would even accidentally learn something about computer or technology in general, it could make them lose their street cred. So whenever one of us tries to explain something to them, they just switch off. Their eyes glaze over, and they nod politely – but they are not really there. Their mind is adrift somewhere else. So the conversation went something like this.

Me: So I just ignore these messages for now and don’t click “Fix” when it complains about the Phishing filter
Her: Ok. Got it.
Norton 360: WARNING! WARNING! YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED! CLICK HERE TO FIX!
Her: *quickly clicks on the fix button*
Me: facepalm.jpg

It was fairly clear that this solution would not work. So I started to dig around. I opened IE, pulled up the Manage Add-onns panel and found the entry for Norton Anti-Phishing toolbar (which was for some reason called “Norton Confidential” in the list). I noticed that it was linked to a file called CoIEPlg.dll. On her system it was located in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symanted Shared\coShared\Browser\2.6\

So I decided to do something silly – I renamed that file and then re-enabled the phishing protection via the Norton 360 settings menu. Strangely enough, the nag message went away and the icon in the task bar turned green. I verified that Norton did not quietly restore the file while I was not looking and I tested IE. Surprisingly it launched without a hitch, simply ignoring the missing file completely. It also did not have any issue with Gmail this time around. I rebooted the machine few times to make sure it won’t restore the DLL at boot time. It did not. Amazingly, this ugly hack worked… Which I guess just goes to show that Norton is a piece of shit product. If it was worth the money people spend on it, it should have prevented me from doing this. It should have also had an option to disable Phishing filter without incurring the wrath of the Annoying Nag Bar Monster.

Oh, and don’t tell me I made her computer less secure this way. I did not. When I arrived, the toolbar was hidden in IE which prevented any substantial Phishing warnings from being displayed. She was not using it at all – merely doing her best to ignore it. So yes, this fix theoretically broke Norton, but fixed her Gmail. I installed a full version of Malwarebytes on that box which probably does more for protection than the whole memory hugging, bloated Norton 360 suite.

TLDR: I broke my friends POS Norton 360 installation to fix her Gmail. Also, why the fuck am I still doing free tech support? Someone stop me next time.

This is why I use LaTex for most of the formal document writing needs. Actually that’s half the reason. The other half is that LaTex formatted documents just look so damn good. They stand out, in a good way – they are crisp, and professional looking. It has a powerful engine for generating complex mathematical formulas that far surpass what is offered by MS office out of the box, it is much better at managing figures, tables of contents and bibliographies, and unlike most word processing tools maintains separation between display and content. It’s an incredibly powerful system, but also a very complex one. Using latex is very much like programming – you learn the syntax first, then you find out about useful packages that do things for you, then you learn how to redefine and overload basic functions, later you find out about style files and eventually you can create your own. It’s a learning process.

Of course some people just don’t like to learn, and this is why we have Lyx – an editor that gives you a lot of the nice features of LaTex without any of the hassle. Every time I post something even remotely Tex related, someone invariably brings it up. So I decided I might as well try it and see what the fuss is all about.

Lyx combines the visual approach of WYSIWYG with a a more structured and pragmatic organization of content. In essence they try to convey markup by using various visual indicators. The website claims it is a WYSIWYM editor (which stands for What You See Is What Your Mom Said or something like that). The point is that it works better than a regular word processor. Not to mention that it also gives you access to the powerful LaTex typesetting engine and math formula functions. So you can totally just launch it, type in bunch of garbage, hit a button and get a pretty, nicely formatted PDF.

I could probably describe the user interface here but that would probably add another 1k words to this post. So I will cheat and just show you a picture and since 1 pic == 1k words the content should not suffer that much. Here is how Lyx looks (alliteration was literally unintentional):

Meet Lyx - LaTex Editor For Lazy People

I have used this toy to author a few documents and I must admit it is not half bad. You type in words, press some buttons and things happen. Unlike a WYSIWYG garbage-tron Lyx won’t just let you press enter a million times in lieu of proper vertical white space management. If you want to have vertical separation you need to break up your text into paragraphs, sections or insert special vertical space markers (as shown above). The environment gives you access to most of the popular commands you can pick from the drop down menus. It also ships with bunch of style templates you can load up and use. I don’t think you can directly import packages into your documents, but I guess the point of this tool is to keep things simple and easy.

What’s a bit peculiar is that Lyx seems to be on the fence on whether or not to use the LaTex nomenclature and function names. They try to avoid using the raw Tex commands verbatim, but they do show up here and there. So if you are a stranger to the Tex way of doing things, Lyx will probably be quite confusing at first. In fact, if you are looking for an easy way to start learning Tex, Lyx is probably the last thing you want to use. It hides enough to prevent you from learning anything useful, but not enough to avoid confusion. So essentially it is not really a drop in WYSIWYG replacement but rather a tool for people who kinda-sorta know their way around Tex but just want to type up a quick document without worrying about and/or being distracted by colorful markup everywhere.

In fact, I’d actually consider using it for that very purpose – it would be a perfect tool to type up a quick letter, memo or maybe even a short manual for some crappy code that I just vomited upon the internet. Unfortunately, Lyx continues the age old tradition of Open Source LaTex related products by not including an inline spell check function. In other words, no red squiggly lines under misspelled words. Some people may view this as a minor nuisance, but for me this is a deal breaker.

Let me put it this way: what would you use a Tex like tool for? I would use it for writing papers. Letters, memos, articles, homeworks – whatever. All these things require proper spelling and grammar. Not including an inline spell checking function is a rather odd choice. I understand that some people do not like that feature, but many do and offering it as an option would be a very logical choice. Especially since every other word processing tool has it. Hell, most LaTex IDE tools like TexMaker or TexnicCenter have it. Not only that, but the inline spell checking feature is also present in every modern web browser.

Yes a web browser. Do you know what web browsers are for? Most people use them for posting “u guise r fags LOL!!1″ type comments on youtube. There is really no need to have an inline spell check in a browser, but we have it because it is a nice feature. It helps! Not including it in Lyx is… Well, odd.

It seems that the developers are on the fence about the feature. On one hand, users have been begging for it to be implemented at least since 2007 if not earlier. On the other hand, half the devs seems to hate the very idea of inline spellcheck, while the other half does not care either way. It seems that they are have been willing to include it in the future releases since 2007 if someone implements it, but they are not going to waste time working on it themselves. I’d jump in and help out, but frankly I don’t actually care enough.

It turns out that I was wrong. It appears that inline spellchecking was very recently implemented by Abdelrazak Younes. So if all goes well this feature will be available in Lyx 2.0. Big thanks to Brunda for pointing it out in the comments.

While I would consider using this tool, I’m really better off using TexMaker or something similar that includes inline spell check feature for now. Once 2.0 is released though, I think we will have a quite formidable alternative to both WYSIWYG editors and straight LaTex IDE’s.

On this fine Monday morning I decided that we should all sit around and complain. And so, I made this thread where we tell out best IT stories that feature annoying lusers who are to stupid to live. I’ll start it off, and you can join in at any time in the comments.

Wireless is Down

One nice summer day I was sitting at work, and productively banging my head against my desk hoping that this will maybe kill some brain cells, and allow me to relate to my users better. I assume it was summer, but frankly I don’t remember because I spent most of my days inside a cubicle, far away from windows and other sources of light. It could have been winter – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I got a call, and had to answer it.

The company I worked for employed a lot of people who worked away from the main office. Some people telecommuted from their home offices, while others would travel and work from wherever. The guy on the other side of the line was just that type of the user, and he had a problem connecting to the internet. Of course since he was away from the office, the issue was more likely related to his ISP than us, but we were the first line of support for these folks. In situations like these, we were simply supposed to make sure that this is not a PEBKAC issue or a hardware failure. So we would troubleshoot whatever we could on the client side – check their settings, see if the hardware works, etc. If this was not a hardware/software/configuration issue we would just advise them to call the ISP.

But, a lot of networking issues can be magically solved by power cycling your router and gateway appliance. So I routinely would do this exercise with our employees. In best case scenario it resolved the issue and saved them lots of time they would otherwise spend waiting on hold with their ISP. In worst case, they already have performed the first troubleshooting step the ISP support would try.

Sometimes however you got a user who did not know what a router or modem was. They basically did not concern themselves with such issues, and tasked their spouse or son with network setup and/or talking to the ISP. So it was not uncommon for me to have to describe the device to them – you know, a little box with blinking lights and some cables sticking out of it. Some people had it set up in the living room by their media center. Some had it in their basement where the main phone box was. Some had to search for it a little bit. The guy on the other side of the line, had absolutely no clue.

In fact, he was confident that there is no blinkenlights box in his apartment. So I decided to hand him over to his ISP. I asked who handled his internet connection. He responded:

“I thought you were”

In fact, he informed me that he was planning to call us and complain about the signal strength. You see, few weeks ago he had a strong signal and could access the internet in any room. But at some point the signal dropped, and he was able to work only from the kitchen. Then the signal dropped entirely. Surely, this is no way to run a business.

Did I mention this guy was located somewhere in Texas while our office was in Jersey? Somehow he got it into his head that we magically beamed “the internet” to him, across half of the nation. It took me almost half an hour to explain to him that we don’t actually do that, and that he was probably leaching off his neighbors internet all this time. I told him that he should look into some inexpensive broadband internet plan – suggesting calling his Cable company to see if they offer it. The company may even foot the bill for him. When I was hanging up, I had the impression that he did not believe me at all. Turns out he called my supervisor right after our talk who basically told him the same thing. He never mentioned it again.

Spring Cleanup

Once upon a time, I was sitting in my cube contemplating whether I should commit suicide or just get some ice cream. If you have never worked in IT you probably won’t know, but these two things go hand in hand. When you work with users, you face the most extreme manifestations of human stupidity every day. It is frightening, and incredibly depressing. When faced with such unspeakable horror, most people reach for alcohol or drugs, but we IT folks are way past that point. You can only abuse these substances so much, until you build up almost complete immunity. Also, it is a bit difficult to be condescending and rude to the users when you are too drunk and stoned to even move. And since that is a crucial part of the job, we are left only with the two alternatives listed above.

I personally was leaning toward ice cream, but then a wild luser appeared and ruined my day. The creature that entered by cubicle was carrying a poorly maintained laptop that sported various cracks, grease stains and brown smears of unknown origin. Apparently the device stopped booting, which was not surprising considering it’s poor condition. I quizzed him on some of the standard troubleshooting questions on my checklist like:

Did you sit on it? Did you drop it into the toilet? Were you using it in the shower? You know, standard stuff. If I had a penny for every time someone at the company forgot that the laptops are not waterproof I would have like… Five pennies.

Turns out that the luser didn’t do any of that. The laptop just stopped booting on him, and he didn’t do anything to cause it. He didn’t install any software, he didn’t even touch it. It’s funny but when something breaks every fucking lusers will swear up and down that he was not even in the same room when it happened. I mean, it’s not like I will blame them for doing it just like I wouldn’t blame a mentally challenged person for accidentally saying something inappropriate. They just don’t know any better. But knowing how you broke the computer will help me fix it – so making up an alibi on the spot is counter productive. In fact, it is also stupid because I will find out what you did sooner or later.

The filthy computer was throwing up the NTLDR missing error when I booted it up. So I launched Knoppix and started poking around only to discover that the error was right. NTLDR file was not there. Neither was boot.ini, pagefile.sys and all the other garbage that resides in the root of the system drive. I asked the luser about it, and he scratched his head and said:

“Actually, I wanted to ask you about that stuff. I found all these useless files on my C: drive, and I figured that they were just taking up space so I deleted them.”

Apparently my friend read on the interwebs that you can reclaim hard drive space by deleting your temp files. The article showed him how to make windows display hidden system files and he went on a cleaning spree. Apparently he deleted pretty much every hidden file and folder he could find that was not in use. Then he used the machine for the rest of the evening, and powered it down for the night.

It didn’t even cross his mind that deleting bunch of hidden fucking system files could be in any way, shape or form related to his NTLDR Missing error message.

Needless to say, I skipped ice cream that day and committed ritual suicide in the employee bathroom. Twice.

Your turn kids. Post funny IT stories – they don’t have to be job related. Feel free to make fun of clueless friends relatives as well.

First off, what is your favorite team? I don’t know if this is how everyone plays games like this, but I tend to find a group of characters that work, and then stick with them throughout the game often neglecting others. For example, in Mass Effect I would always take Liara and Tali. In KoTOR2 I walked around with all female Jedi harem consisting of Visas, Handmainden and Kreia. This has some downsides – the neglected characters tend to be ill equipped, and I usually don’t develop strong relationships with them. When I need to take them along with me, they tend to slow me down. Still, I always seem to have a preferred team that I use as much as I’m able to.

My go-to team: Morrigan, Leliana, Wynne

In Dragon Age my go-to team was this:

Morrigan – used as the main offensive mage. I specked her to use dps (primal magic) and crowd control spells (like sleep, force field and paralysis). I actually wanted to get her into blood magic, but I don’t think you can unlock it when you play as a non-mage. I found her shape-shifting spell line to be quite useless and I never invested in it. Instead I spent the points on primal, spirit and entropy lines.

Wynne – was my main healer buff/counter buff specialist. I basically spent most of the points on creation spells, and spirit healer line. She had few crowd control spells as well. I remember giving her Petrify, Paralysis Glyph and etc.. Also she was tasked with casting Spell Bloom on Morrigan when her mana fell below 50%.

Leliana – was my Rogue tasked with pick-pocketing, and opening chests. Since I already had 2 ranged specialists (Morrigan and Wynne) I re-specked Leliana to be dual wielding weapon specialist. I invested in that and in the rogue skills that would give her better dps abilities. Later I made her either an assassin though I considered having her be a ranger to summon a living meat shield in tough battles.

My main character was a tank with a shield specialization. I decked him out with the best one-handed weapon I could find, best armor and etc. Later I invested in the Champion and Berserker specializations to make him even more formidable. Once I got him into Berserking I changed Wynne’s tactics to cast heroics on him all the time, to offset the stamina drain.

This worked extremely well for me, and I would actually get upset when the game would force me to take a specific character along with me. When I had to, I would simply swap out Leliana for whoever needed to be in the party at a given time. Unfortunately this meant I wouldn’t be able to open locked chests, but it was better than fighting without an offensive mage or a healer.

What was your dream team?

Question number two is to give me your top 5 favorite spells/skills in the game. Here are mine:

1. Force Field – initially I got this spell because I wanted to gain access to Crushing Prison and mostly neglected it. It seemed limited. Making a character invulnerable for a short period was cool, but it essentially froze that character in place, making him useless until the field expired. Halfway through the game though I noticed you can cast it on enemies as well as allies and started experimenting. I quickly discovered that it is possibly the best crowd control spell in the game. It lasts longer than any other paralysis/freeze type spell and has almost no cool-down time. I could easily cast it on enemy mages and keep them in stasis almost indefinitely. And by that I mean that if the field dropped I could almost immediately re-cast it on the same target. Unlike other paralysis/stasis type spells, it is actually impossible to resist Force Field making it a sure thing. That’s not all though.

   Casting it on someone affected by Crushing Prison would create a massive shock wave that could easily wipe out large clusters of lightly armored missile troops. Not to mention that casting it on a taunting ally would temporarily nullify almost all the damage output the enemy could actually dish out as they would fruitlessly slam themselves against the field.

   IMHO it is probably the most flexible spell in the whole game.

2. Cone of Cold – the only spell from the Cold line that guarantees to freeze a target offering it no chance to resist. Furthermore, it will freeze anything – including the High Dragon, Brood Mother and the Archdemon. Combine this with very short cool down time, and you have an incredibly potent spell. Works wonders in doorways and narrow corridors where you can shoot it off from behind your tanks and freeze everything in front of them.
3. Fireball – it’s an instant classic. Deals a lot of damage, has big area of effect and it not only sets enemies on fire, but also knocks them down. Perfect spell for dispatching clusters of low level mooks. I personally like to combine it with grease spell. For one, it will slow down the movement of your targets allowing you to aim the Fireball better. Once it hits, it will give you additional DoT effect. By the time the affected enemies get up, and run out of the burning area they are bound to receive some additional damage. I successfully cleared out whole rooms full of enemies this way.
4. Cleansing Aura – this one is a must have. It removes injuries from all characters in range for free. Once you obtain this spell, you can stop hoarding your injury kits. In fact, you might as well just sell them all. You will never have to use one again.
5. Sleep – is my favorite opening spell. While it can be resisted by ranked characters, it has a huge area of effect and lasts quite a while. I usually cast it on missile troops at the beginning of a battle and most of the time it keeps them out of my hair long enough for me to take care of any close combat troops on the field. I sometimes follow it up with waking nightmare. Since sleeping targets can’t resist it, it usually causes infighting to break out amongst the enemies.

How about you? What are your favorite spells? What is your usual opening move? Let me know in the comments.