The Truth Hurts
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I rarely post publicly about stuff like this.
It really bothers me when people have a beef about something and then tack onto someone else’s event to make a statement. Trying to leverage their thunder for their own.
The Olympics have absolutely nothing to do with the Tibet/China issue. So leave the Olympics out of it.
There are athletes that have trained their whole lives, often hours a day for the dream of competing in the Olympics.
Protesters of some other non-Olympic related issue have no right to dick that up for them.
One has nothing to do with the other. I *might* understand if there are security issues for the athletes, like in the 80s when the Olympics were in Moscow, but no politician should decide if or when these athletes should compete. If I recall even back then the move was mostly political and not really a security issue.
So to you protestors, even if your cause is just, you’ve lost my respect and attention.
Leave the Olympics out of it.
Written by datapoohbah on April 8th, 2008 with no comments.
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I get this way too often…
I used to blame X1… But I’ve stopped using that in favor of Windows Search and Xnobi…
Xnobi is nice but it’s jacked up my Outlook a couple times. It can be slow and doesn’t handled mail ‘on behalf’ of someone very well. It is thoroughly confused by email from RT.
But back to the issue at hand.
I quit outlook (alt-f4) or choose exit or choose the close box. All legitimate ways to end the application. It appears to quit gracefully. Yet when I launch it the next time, I get this and the disk activity brings my machine to a crawl.
(yes I’ve verified that there is no Outlook.exe process before launching)
I generally undock my XP based laptop, put it to sleep and move it from work to home and back. About every 3rd or fourth day it will hang. I expect that. When I have time I’ll actually shut it down, but start-up from Zero is very painful because of all the server/services running on it (mySQL, MS SQL, etc, etc.).
This morning I closed all my apps and ’shut er’ down. At work, same crap when outlook restarted.
This really needs to be fixed. It reminds me of the Visual Source Safe 6.0, which routinely corrupted the database.
I never understood why MS had a tool to fix the database/files after the corruption but couldn’t just fix the bug that jacked up the files in the first place.
Perhaps there’s a mailbox maintenance tool I can run manually, that would make this whole process even better.
As another frame of reference, this happens on my other laptop too, only with Vista SP1… If it hibernates, the file will be jacked up when it wakes up.
Written by datapoohbah on April 8th, 2008 with no comments.
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After looking around this seemed to be the only Turbo controller that I could find for the PS3.
Why would you want this? What’s wrong with the 6 Axis?
Two reasons.
- Six Axis controllers are $50, they seem to last about 3-4 months if you use them hard as I do. The analog sticks go to hell, become less responsive and it becomes almost impossible to use the L3-R3 buttons underneath them.
- Some games really benefit from turbo, think Call of Duty, where your single shot weapons are now full auto’s.
The instructions for this thing were weak as most cheap over seas electronics are. But it is straight forward enough. The feel of the control is somewhat crappy. It’s a low end unit. The turbo functions work as advertised, but the analog sticks are crap. It often gets confused if you’re trying to move and run (using the left analog stick but also pushing it down to activate the L3 button, while looking around (using the right analog stick). You might do a 180, you might end up looking at the sky. Results are unpredictable.
It feels like the analog sticks are accelerated and non-linear. This blows when you need to make small critical adjustments (like sniping).
It has a switch with 3 settings for the analog stick movement, but none are good, medium is jacked up, fast is too fast, and slow is too slow. Even working with in game adjustments I couldn’t find a setting that was even close the the accuracy and quality of the Six-Axis.
Game controls are certainly subjective. The ergos are OK, it’s the mechanics of this thing that are jacked up.
It also burns a USB port because you have to use their dongle. Since the PS3 has built in bluetooth why hasn’t anyone reverse engineered how to make replacement controller that just uses that? Why do I need another dongle?
It also eats batteries. It burned through fully charged AA’s in 9 hours not the 400 hours indicated in the manual.
So if you are looking at this, you might want to pass.
Written by datapoohbah on April 4th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Commentary and Gadgets and Games and The Truth Hurts.
To work at Super America, where do you work? Apparently GameStop.
My mission yesterday was simple. Stop by a Game Stop and pick up a new ‘Turbo’ controller for the PS3. This controller has a special ‘button’ that gives gives you 3 taps instead of one when you press a particular button. (think of how useful this might be with a first person shooter and single shot weapons).
Now, it’s simple enough, I’ve talked to a few folks online and 3 people confirmed they picked up these controllers at Gamestop. So yesterday during lunch I stopped in to pick one up.
Oh my, not so easy.
First all their good PS3 stuff is locked up, this includes basic things like controllers. It was clear to me that they didn’t have what I needed. They only had two controllers on display, the normal 6-Axis and some other MadCatz funky thing that wasn’t even wireless.
My mistake was asking.
There were two people working, one of them seemed quite frantic, the other well let’s just say customer service isn’t her thing.
I asked her if they had any other controllers for the Ps3. I was looking for a specific turbo controller. Specifically this one:
the conversation went about like this:
“She looked at me like I was from another planet and wandered over to where I had just looked (in the secured PS3 Peripherials case”
She said: ‘Turbo?’.
Me: Yes, Turbo, you push a button once and the controller magically pushes the button for you 3x or more.
Her: Hrm, never hear of such a thing, opens case and gets MadCatz controller. “This should do it she proclaims’.
Me: Uh, no this doesn’t have any ‘turbo’ features.
Her: Total look of confusion… What’s it called again?
Me: Wireless Turbo Controller for PS3, I think it’s a Hori brand but I’m told the ones you guys sell aren’t branded.
Her: Pounds away at computer, and asks other associate.
Him: We have other controllers in that drawer.
Her: Opens drawer and pulls out some 3rd party controller with ‘Rumble Features’ and hands it to me. “Here ya go”.
Me: Looks at controller, this isn’t it either.
Her: The computer says we have them, but I don’t know where they are. Looks at other associate. Who is on the phone with someone saying he did the console counts this morning and everything was fine, but now all of a sudden (1.5 hours later) two PS2’s have gone missing. He looks really nervous.
Me: It’s not the end of the world, if you don’t have it that’s fine, I need to get back to work.
Her: The computer says we have 2, let me call another store.
Me: (thinking WTF? what will another store do for you?) I wander around the store for 15 more minutes. She just seems lost. She looks high and low, the goes into ‘ignore me mode’ finally I ask her. So what’s the deal.
Her: I don’t know, the other store wasn’t helpful, I can’t find them.
Me: The computer says you have them and you simply can’t find them?
Her: Yep. You might want to stop back later.
OK, so magically they will unhide themselves after ‘later?’
I ordered one online, which is what I should have done in the first place. I am thankful though that she’s there and not somewhere else that actually requires customer service and knowledge about the products they sell.
Coincidentally, neither Target, nor Walmart had them either, even though Walmart Online shows that they carry them.
Written by datapoohbah on April 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Commentary and Rant and The Truth Hurts.
I received a post card/mailing from CDW today. A co-op advertisement for SONICWALL and WebSense.
It shows the obligatory IT Manager with head in hands.
The text:
IRONY:
The folks who stand to lose the most from a security breach are the same ones who hesitate to fund a solution.
We currently use both of these products. Sonicwall email security (formerly MailFrontier) works pretty well. Websense? Well, it *mostly* works. For a 6.x product it’s still missing a number of features. The add however hits home.
Written by datapoohbah on March 31st, 2008 with no comments.
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This started for me somewhere around Firefox 2.0.0.10 ish and it’s really annoying.
When Firefox is first launched, the initial window is fine. I have my bookmarks toolbar:
Any new window I create (and I do use multiple windows regardless of tabbed browsing), the bookmarks toolbar goes blank…
It doesn’t seem related to any plugins that I’m aware of. I’ve tried disabling most. I can’t imagine that it’s an actual bookmark in this folder but it could be.
Has anyone else seen this?
Edit/Update: This appears to be directly caused by or related to the use of Automated QA’s Test Complete Add/On:
Disabling this puppy and my problems go away.
Written by datapoohbah on March 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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