Terminally Incoherent

Setup Assistant 0.7 is now available for download. Much of the modifications I made to it were in response to the feedback here. For example, I added application cacheing, so that the third party tools only have to be downloaded once. The growth of this app is sort of dictated by how am I using it. Lately I have been fighting with a lot of infections, which resulted in Anti-Malware tools getting their own tab.

Setup Assistant 0.7

You can probably also see that I added printer related buttons where malware stuff used to be. This was pure usability trick. I noticed that I have been troubleshooting printer issues much more frequently than infections. Previously i had these buttons spread across two tabs, which made un-sticking the printer queue rather cumbersome. In fact the printer queue issues on XP are so prevalent I decided to write a tool to resolve them.

Fix My Printer Tool

I opted for an external tool rather than a built in SetupAssistant feature because… Well, user friendliness. Fix My Printer tool has a single button. Setup Assistant has like a million, and frankly can be intimidating to an end user. In fact, using it without supervision can actually break things. All I really needed was a batch script that would stop the print spooler, delete bunch of files in the spooler directory, and restart it. But I made a neat GUI because I know users get scared any time they see the “black screen” (aka the terminal window) pop up.

But once I had it done, I sort of wanted it in Setup Assistant as well. I didn’t feel like building it into the application itself, because it was simple, self contained and neat as it was. I just needed to put it online somewhere so that SA could download it just like it downloads all the other third party tools. So I got a crazy idea of setting up maciak.org as a little repository for my various small tools, scripts and apps I make on the side. There is not much there yet, but I will add stuff as I go. If you are interested, please go check it out.

Oh, and Quick System Info in Setup Assistant is still broken on some systems. I will figure it out eventually one day.

Here is a question: being a geek, do you often find that your family is at a complete loss when trying to buy you presents? I know mine is. Every single year.

I mean, it’s not like it is hard to figure out what I like don’t you think? I like video games, I like electronic gadgets, I like pen and paper RPG and tabletop battle games. I like SF books, anime, manga and graphic novels. And it’s not like I don’t have a blog which essentially outlines all my likes and dislikes in each of these categories. I’m an open book – I should be easy to buy gifts for. But apparently I’m not. All this stuff I enjoy – all the stuff I live and breathe is so alien and incomprehensible to most of my family members that it is as if we existed in some parallel universes. I usually have to tell everyone exactly what I want to get – an in most cases I don’t even know what to ask for. I mean, if I really want something I usually get it for myself unless it is prohibitively expensive. And if I sort-of want something, and request it specifically, then it is no longer a surprise.

Is that your experience as well? Does your non-geeky close ones actually take the effort to ask around/research good gifts you may like? Or do they take the easier route of having you write down the exact thing you want for them, or resort to gift-card / generic clothing gift ideas. Or are you fortunate enough to be surrounded by like minded folks who will actually get you awesomely geeky gifts without even asking.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I’m actually thankful for having a caring family which would actually bother trying to get me something. I’m just noticing that a lot of people out there find gift shopping for geeks incredibly difficult for some odd reason.

Speaking of gifts, question number two: how much did you spend on Steam Holiday Sale this year? Honestly, I must admit that once I see prices of semi-recent, well reviewed video games drop down to single digits I find it very hard to resist buying them. Just this past few days I have seen all the Overlord games for $3, all the Hitman games for less than $10, all the Fear games and expansions for just as much, Batman: Arkham Asylum for like $8, KoTOR for like a buck… It’s crazy. You see how deeply they cut the prices on some of these games, and you start wandering how do they even make profit on these sales. But I’m sure they do, just judging from how many times I clicked that purchase button myself. I mean, I bought a bunch of games for myself, I got some last minute supplemental gifts for my brother.

We are sort of conditioned to think that a video game is worth about $40-60 regardless of when it was published. In most retail chains, games stay the same price for their entire sales lifetime, and then just disappear once they are no longer relevant. Other items deeply discounted, and dropped into bargain bins – but this almost never happens to software. Which I guess is why Valve holiday sales make all of us go berserk. There is just no other place right now where you could get 15-20 games for the prince of one.

Thank you Valve for making Christmas time awesome every year. I hope you will enjoy my money, cause I’m sure enjoying the games I bought.

It’s that time of the year kids! Lock your doors, nail your windows shut, and cower under the table with your friends and family while the Robot Santa rampages all over your town, leaving no stone unturned. Merry X-mas folks! Also merry whatever other holidays you happen to celebrate around this time of the year.

No real content will appear here today except for this:

LEGO Robot Santa

Yes, that is a Robot Santa made out of LEGOs and it is awesome. No, I did not make it. This guy did.

Enjoy your holidays folks!