Pixel Pushing Monkey

I think part of this tale could be considered ironic. Although in the strictest sense, the word "irony" is often misused to characterize what could purely be coincidental and unfortunate. Even more confusing is the association of irony, "dramatic irony" in particular, as a common device of literary tragedy.

A high school English teacher I once had, made it a point to have a 40-minute class dedicated to the differentiation of the common usage of irony as we know, versus the literary device & meaning of the word. Perhaps it was only fitting, that this particularly bright & dedicated teacher was fired at the end of the semester, due to many student issued complaints about her moodiness; ironic indeed.

Either way, I'm not sure if these particular events in my life qualifies as irony, or maybe coincidence, and for those of us who has more faith in the unseen, perhaps we could call it fate.

As I've mentioned before, a surgery scheduled around Christmas was what started me off on World of Warcraft two years ago. That surgery, was a combination of chance, timing, and my own choice. I could've had the surgery earlier, or later, but the only time slot that seemed to make sense, was to throw it into the middle of the Christmas season.

However, it also is not the first time I've had surgery during the festive seasons. My first surgery (and only other surgery in my life) was also performed around the same time. It was a case of appendicitis that started rearing its head around the 27th or 28th, and eventually grown into body-spasm inducing pain as it ruptured.

Not to delve into the complicated living arrangements that was my youth, but I was staying with my aunt at the time. None of us realized how dire my illness was at the time. Needless to say, I didn't have much to say about the timing of this procedure. Even less had I to say about the series of mis-steps that eventually led to the surgery room. Besides the extremely delayed diagnosis, we had also made the mistake of not calling an ambulance, opting instead to drive into the emergency room on our own. As a result, I was treated alongside patients with slight fevers and cold, instead of proper treatment for a life-threatening infection that is now spreading through my body. Of course, that mistake was not ours alone, also as much as the hospital workers who simply stashed me into the back of the line.

It was a nurse that was about to go off-duty that noticed me. She had examined me earlier and determined that I probably had appendicitis, and urged the others to get me into a room as soon as possible. Of course, the ball was dropped, and I was sitting in the waiting room for a solid three hours or so before I was finally admitted by her personally. Had she not seen me on her way out of the door, I probably wouldn't have survived at all.

That is the closest I came to facing death, a fact confirmed by my surgeon days after the surgery. "You were only about another hour or so away from an irreversible infection, you know? Once the infection penetrates the diaphram and reaches your lung, that would've been it," he would later on relay to me with a proud smile on his face. Another life saved, but it never had to be that close if it wasn't for the incompetency of the hospital to begin with.

However, those hours spent in the waiting room wasn't wasted. I was very well aware of my own mortality, as the pain grew and festered. It was a pain that wouldn't give way even to the multitude of pain medication and morphine I had later on. Although the drugs did create a psychological disassociation with the pain, I would be laughing and joking as they're taking my x-ray, while I can barely move around and stand up due to the pain & muscle spasm. The combination of pain, realization of my fragility, perhaps to a point of how little control I had over the current situation, forced me to re-evaluate my life at that young age.

That event alone, would indeed reshape my life down a direction that I never before considered. In hindsight, it was perhaps childish of me, in both the world I had created for myself up to that point, as well as the epiphany I had from that point on. None of that realization seems significant now that I'm in my later 20's, or perhaps they're so ingrained into who I've became, that it no longer seem to carry any significance.

It's been two years since my last Christmas procedure, just as it's been two years since I first picked up World of Warcraft. As I celebrate this Christmas, a dear friend that I've met through World of Warcraft, and then in real life as well (we have almost weekly gatherings at her place), is having a surgery of her own.

The short and happy story, is that she's safe and sound, with a good amount of weight removed (quite literally). For me though, this special sort of coincidence carries more meaning than just a friend getting over a surgery, but the timing of it, the connection that's established through both the events in my own life and how I came to meet this person, all makes it seem as if a larger force is at work.

The life threatening operation I had when I was 14, the procedure I had two years ago (almost to the exact date to which my friend entered the hospital), picking up World of Warcraft to pass time while I recovered from surgery... All eventually led to me being a supporting character of some sort in her life, as she is getting her own special Christmas surgery.

I don't know if this can be categorized as irony, but I had long ago, forgotten the exclusive definition insisted upon by that endearing, if not moody, English teacher.

This has always been one of my favorite annual tradition, when Wired recounts exactly what great promises were made to us, the consumers, and just didn't quite deliver. Have fun, read it here:

Vaporware '06: Return of the King

Already, a couple of serious security flaws has been discovered in Vista, a month before its official consumer release (enterprise users can get their hands on Vista right now). Read more about it at Wired:

Vista Security Flaws Uncovered

That, in combination with how hackers already found a way to fool Vista into a permanent 30-day trial. Does not bode well for Microsoft's PR. Of course, all operating system has its share of security flaws, MacOS X has plenty as well. Just that Microsoft is always under more scrutiny than anyone else. It's the price you pay for being a dominant, yet also hated company at the same time.

With the expansion around the corner, Blizzard saw this as an opportunity to implement a lot of changes which are long overdue. The scripting language engine behind the user interface has been updated to the newest version of LUA, and a lot of UI functionality has been modified. Some of the changes are more or less just for maintenance, some of the changes impacts gameplay greatly.

For example, a very popular addon, Decursive, no longer works. Which doesn't bother me a bit, not because I don't often play a class that needs to cleanse/decurse; but there was a long standing tradition for hardcore raiders to not rely too heavily on addons that make choices for you. Decursive was one of those addon that clearly would deteriorate a player's ability to play the "right way" if used too often. I never used it even when I played my Priest, running through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. In fact, I much appreciate the fact that Blizzard finally made a strong stance on how people should have to learn certain skills to advance in the game, rather than relying on addons that will perform the duty for them.

What really grinds my gear, in a Peter Griffin-like fashion, is that the patch has been out for almost a month now, and there still isn't a single reliable and flexible actionbar addon.

The previous "king of actionbar" addon has to be Discord ActionBars. Which is all but defunct given the release of WoW 2.0. The author of Discord decided to create a completely different addon architecture that can modify the entire UI in-game. I've tried the beta version of this for a bit on The Burning Crusade test realms, but the interface is so complex and obtuse, that I couldn't find my way around it. Discord ActionBar was no simple matter to configure & customize, requiring dedicating at least 20 minutes of my life to it every time. Discord UI Builder was even worse, and not even close to being complete.

There are other very simple bar mods that just aren't flexible enough for me. They can clean up the actionbar a bit, compact some of the elements, but they don't allow you to build everything from the ground up. Then there are mods like Bongos and Trinity Bars, which gives you extremely high amount of flexibility in contructing your actionbars from the ground up, but both has some very annoying, and potentially game breaking bugs. Here are the problems with each as of the writing of this post:

Trinity Bars
Much prettier than Bongos, has multiple bar arrangements in different shapes (circles, semi-circles, columns, vertical & horizontal), and allows a few different types of button textures. A little harder to configure than Bongos, but looks much, much better.

On other hand, buggy as hell. Keybindings not saving between game sessions, stances not swapping correctly. All sorts of other problems.

Bongos
Ugly, ugly ugly, but functional. Configuration is easier than Trinity Bars, but doesn't allow for bars over 12 buttons. Only one glaring bug in sight, it seems to lose stances after a while... for no apparent reason.

That, ladies & gentlemen, are really the only two available choices we have with the "new WoW". There are a few other odds & ends out there, but none of them are as flexible as either of the two mentioned here. It's a sad state of things, and maybe they'll eventually get all the bugs & kinks fixed... or maybe Bongos will get prettier.

I have no qualms about getting rid of addons that plays the game for us, instead of helping us play. However, missing critical mods that provides better "basic" functionality to the game, such as just being able to arrange buttons how I want them, and have them look pretty, is extremely frustrating. Makes me not want to pick up the game for a while. Just hope that everything gets fixed before the expansion hits the shelves.

I first started playing World of Warcraft two years ago, when I had a surgery scheduled right before Christmas. Given my work schedule at the time, the only sensible way to get a surgery done was to mix it into the Christmas/New Years season and lump it into my vacation to give myself adequate time for recovery.

Knowing that I wouldn't have very much physical activity for a while, I decided to give World of Warcraft a try. WoW had already been released for several months, and garnered many good reviews. I haven't been a steady gamer for quite a while, although I dabbled in various MMORPG for a bit (anything from the pre-alpha, beta of Ultimate Online, to a few months in EverQuest amongst other various MMO's that came and went), I've never found any of them to be a satisfying experience. I liked Blizzard's games from before, and WoW was getting enough good press to garner my interest.

To my surprise, WoW was not only a great MMORPG, but it was a great "game" by any standard. Up to that point, MMO's has always played second fiddle to your regular PC games. Yes, they have a huge community that may suck you in, but generally the grahpics and gameplay was sub-standard compared to what you would get from a single player experience. WoW was really the first MMO to bring it altogether, great interesting play on a single-player level alongside of the massive world and community. Before you know it, I was sucked into the game, deeply entranched in its social atmosphere, spending hours a night leveling and running new instances and challenges.

I think the biggest misconception about a game like this to the outsiders, is that a game is just a "game". There are many often heard, cliched complaints about people who are dedicated to WoW. For example, people who wanted you to do something else instead of playing the game may say something like, "Why don't you just save the game?" To these people, it isn't obvious that WoW is more than just a game. As with all MMO's, a huge part of the attraction is the social atmosphere that is established over this virtual environment. Having a game-based objective helps bringing people together via providing them with a common interest. However it is the social interactions and obligations that makes the game as important to people who are playing it, as much as their other, non-game space related social obligations.

In the two years I've been in WoW, I've gone through the transitions of being a casual player, to a hardcore raider, then toned back down to a semi-hardcore casual player. Through the journey I've met a lot of people from all different facets of life. There are your high school and college students who are so addicted to the game to the edge of dropping out of school (which I highly recommend against). There are the working class folks like me. Then there are the independently wealthy folks that doesn't have to worry about other things in life except to play WoW (I wish I was one of these folks). What's even more surprising, especially for a person from my perspective of a single, working professional, is that for many people WoW is a family activity rather than an individualistic endeavor. I've ran across more than a couple of gamers whose spouse, children, some even grandparents that all played WoW as a part of their daily social interaction.

What is also interesting, is that the older, more mature the gamer is behind the character, the more likely that WoW carries more meaning than just being a game. It is easy for some of the younger kids to dismiss WoW as "just a game" and the social community they work within, whether a pick-up group or a guild, are just means to the next great loot. The older the gamer is, the more cognizant they are of social ramifications of the community they are involved with.

To those uninitiated, it may seem ludicrous to treat the friends that I've made in a "game" to those whom I've made in real life. The reality is that our social behavior is changing rapidly by an entire generation at a time. Just as kids who make friends via MySpace, communicate to each other by IM and text messages, WoW is no less a social atsmophere within the context of a game as MySpace is a social atmosphere within the context of Web 2.0. I think this behavior is also proven through Second Life, which is a virtual environment without a hint of the game-induced, goal-driven context; unless the goal is of the individual who wishes to participate in such a virtual environment on their own accord.

It also makes me wonder, what if World of Warcraft fails us one day, either by not living up to our expectation (The Burning Crusader expansion is just around the corner, and we'll see how the critical mass respond to it), or just shutting down operation in transition to another game (perhaps, World of Starcraft one day?). What will be the next destination for our mass social gathering?

Some people know, but most probably don't... My current place of employment is Presto Services Inc., which in conjuncture with HP, makes a device that allows people who don't have a computer to have access to email that "prints". It differs from previous offering of similar type in the industry, in that it doesn't attempt to make another device that's just similar to a miniature computer. I don't want to go into too much here, but it's been getting enough reviews in the press, so you can go read about it in the expanded post.

USA Today's article on Presto

Walt Mossberg's review on Wall Street Journal
(sorry, subscription required for this one)

Presto on CBS's Early Show

Presto on CBS's local San Diego station

San Jose Mercury News

A very detailed out of the box experience via Gear Diary

I swear I've been dreaming about getting these shoes since I was like.. 8 years old or something. No power lace yet, but at least we're... hrm... half-way there?

Via my favorite gadget blog.. Engadget:

Smart sole, adjustment shoe.. etc...

On my morning commute, I tend to drive through a lot of areas with relatively wealthy residents, right into the heart of the Silicon Valley. Once in a while, it amazes me that how trivial it was to see a Porsche, Corvette, NSX, Lamborgini, Ferarri on the freeway. As a child growing up in the Midwest (for what little time period it was), those were cars of dreams, magazines, for the most part fictitious entities that few lucky people in the world would ever own.

Yet here, they are the common vehicles of the wealthy young or old alike. What's most ironic though, is finding a middle-aged man with silver mane, proudly and triumphantly driving down the freeway in his exotic sports car traveling at 55mph. Perhaps they are just past their athletic prime and no longer possess the reaction time required for pushing their vehicles to the limit. Or maybe they're just very aware of how much it would cost if a dent was ever placed on their precious gem.

Either way, there's nothing funnier than following a Porsche at 55mph in the slow lane (I was heading for the exit, mind you), then watching the driver slam on the brake lights as if going any faster would tear their $100k vehicle apart (he, on the other hand, was not exiting).

Alright.. this is just ridiculous....

I just spent half a day of work fixing Windows on my work computer, which Windows Update broke. Apparently, somewhere along the line, the automatic update got some corrupted install files. Every time I started up my computer, it attempts to run itself, then crashes svchost.exe with some memory error.

If you looked into your task manager, you'll probably see several entries by svchost.exe. This is a process that Windows uses to execute DLL's, thus an integral process of the system that just can't be allowed to fail by any extent. After my svchost.exe took a dump (and not all of them, just one of the many processes), my XP-styled UI disappeared, reverting back to "classic style". I couldn't run certain applications, Internet Explorer hung & crashed, and I could not access any networked drives.

The solution was, to turn off automatic Windows Update completely. Reboot the computer so it no longer tries to run the Windows Update process. Then manually go to the Windows Update site to get my updates. After wasting a few hours figuring out what's going on, and fixing it... now my computer is up and running again. Still, isn't this the type of thing that should *never* happen with an automatic update process? Now I'm leaving my automatic update off permanently to prevent any future occurrences of this issue.

Now that Windows Vista is shipping to enterprises along with a planned consumer release in January of 2007, you would think that all the major magazines are conjuring up their mega-features and 80 page reports on a much-delayed and somewhat trimmed-down Windows release. So on the lookout for the mega-issues of PCWorld, PCMag, and whatever else tickles your tech-geek fancy coming just around the corner. Meanwhile, the SuperSite for Windows has a very through and detailed review of Windows Vista which will quench your thirst for the meanwhile (and likely much more complete than what you'll get out of those 80/50/30/15-page features).

As much as I adore Paul Thurrot (and that's no sarcasm, I really do admire how much time & effort he put into giving us accurate & detailed information), I can't help but note the enthusiasm and appreciation he has towards one of the "most important Windows release in years." I mean, if you only release one major OS revision ever fives years, are there anything less important? However the review eschews every possible comparison to other existing operating system and turns a blind eye towards the alternatives. There's much to be said about judging an OS release on its own merit, but the whole mega-multi-part review just reminds me of how much Windows Vista is just playing catch-up.

The most apparent example of this, is the 3d-accelerated UI of Vista. The Aero/Glass (I'm still not sure exactly how it's branded, Aero Glass, Glass Aero? Aero, then Glass? *shrug*) interface in itself is close to being unusable. For those of you who has not seen it yet, there are basically translucent UI element all throughout the operating system. The windows in background are blurred through the translucent elements, thus giving you the frosted "glass" effect for which the UI is named after. Problem is, having multiple windows stacked this way causes visual confusion and provides no improvement to productivity. Transparency in Windows has been done before via third party addons, although not accelerated by hardware, and from an usability stand point has never worked well.

So if the interface is so bad, why did Microsoft put it in? It's the same reason why people mod their computer cases, cut out windows on the side and put in a bunch of neon lights. Anyone who thinks a bunch of tied down cables and liquid cooling tubes lit by a dozen LED and neon light is "cool" clearly has no appreciation for aesthetics and design. At some point Microsoft thought that's the user base that they had to impress.

Flip3D is equally atrocious as a task-switcher. It's Microsoft's attempt to make something that resembles Expose, without just copying it completely. Expose on the Mac instantly zooms out all of the windows you have open, allowing you to look through the windows and find the application that you are working with. Flip3D, places the windows at a diagonal view that detracts from readability. Furthermore, it stacks the windows up, so a single view of all your open windows isn't really possible. At the end of the day, it is no more effective the good ol' alt+tab. What I found most offensive, is that for all the 3d accelerated power, the windows aren't even anti-aliased, giving you an ugly jagged edge as it is repositioned into an isometric/diagonal viewing angle.

Interface aside, the underlying security improvements of Windows is nothing more than just catching up to Unix, the underpinning of MacOS X. The one thing that would've taken Vista past OS X, instead of just playing catch up, was the ambitious database-driven file system. So ambitious in fact, that WinFS was axed years before the final development cycle. Who knows when we'll get WinFS? Another five years? Would WinFS still be relevant?

What about the bundled software? Vista finally has a built-in Calendar without people having to shell out money for their own PIM or Outlook. It also now has separate applications that handles photos and other media, instead of dealing with those media organization strictly from Explorer (not IE, but Windows Explorer) as it was in Windows XP. Basically, Microsoft just copied iCal, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. Way to go Microsoft.

The last item that I've found extremely disappointing, is that Windows Vista is supposed to be the version of Windows that finally allows us to take advantage of the 64-bit processor now found in most PC's. It seems silly that all of our AMD Athlon and Intel Core chips has had 64-bit extension for more than a year now, and still yet to be able to take full advantage of it. However, Vista 32-bit and 64-bit are actually different installs. So if you install 32-bit Vista, you'll have to reinstall completely if you want to use 64-bit. If you install 64-bit today, you'll probably find software or device driver conflicts as they weren't written for the 64-bit Vista.

MacOS X, btw, is 64-bit (even though I think few apps are written to take advantage of that yet), and has been for almost an entire year now. No separate installs, no separate drivers. It just works.

Vista will do just fine, because people with PC will eventually upgrade, new PC's will ship with it, corporations will adopt. However, it is nevertheless a disappointing and underwhelming release. Anyone who sees through that will heavily consider switching to a Mac, just as I have.