Paul vs. Car Round 1
Current mood: tired
Category: Life

I tell people that the probability of me getting hit by a car goes to infinity with an increase in time at an alarming rate. Today I proved myself right. I have to admit that I am partially at fault. 1) It was wet out, 2) the car had demonstrated a penchant for erratic behavior, and 3) I did kind of change lanes with the intention of inhibiting the car's progress. That said, this driver was a complete ass-hat.

First the car, which when we first encountered it was stuck behind some left turning traffic, decided to suddenly swerve into the right lane where my brother-in-law and I were riding (legally, in bright clothing, with lights and helmets). Luckily the driver saw us (or heard me yelling) and stopped before running us over. Apparently, however, the driver felt we had somehow wronged him by delaying his chaotic, swerving progress, and thought he would extract revenge on us by accelerating quickly and swerving around us again. As I heard his engine revving angrily I became indignant and decided to teach him a lesson like D'Artagnan and the Comte de Rochefort. Unfortunately D'Artagnan was bested in his first encounter with that gentleman.

My challenge to the car was to change lanes, blocking the path of the impatient motorist. Unfortunately, the driver elected to raise the stakes rather than back down from my challenge, and proceeded to accelerate directly into me (and I should note that the car was a good car length behind me at that time and had plenty of time to slow down). I collided with the car's right front corner at a mild angle such that I was pushed to the side. If the pavement hadn't been soaked I might have stayed up, but as it was my bike slid out from under me, and I proceeded to slide along the pavement for ten feet or so.

Instead of stopping to accuse me of whatever the driver felt I was sufficiently guilty of to warrant ramming me, he sped off. This might have had something to do with the two police officers standing at the corner where this happened, or just the fact that the driver was a humungous pussy. Unfortunately the police didn't react quickly enough to A) stop the driver, B) get his license plate, or C) pursue the culprit. Although, to their credit they were quite concerned with my well being, and agreed that I was in the right, and the driver was, as I've said, a complete ass-hat.

Luckily both I and my bike are none the worse for wear save a few bumps and bruises, and was able to finish out my ride over to my friend Langston's BBQ.

My only regret about the encounter is that it is probably that I suffered more damage than the driver, who has probably rationalized and internally justified his maniacal behavior.

My only hope is that my assailant's conscience rack them with lamentation resulting in emotional distress, eventually culminating in their horribly painful suicide, at which point their unclaimed body will be donated to science, and their soul will burn in hell for eternity.

11:53 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Architect Judo
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

In my line of work you frequently run into people whose ideas have gotten so big that the person appears to have lost all touch with reality. Generally they sound more like a stoned person than an engineer. They would sound like they were completely full of crap if their ideas we're laced with actual technologies or components that do make sense. In fact their ideas might actually be good, they just lost their ability to convey them to other human beings at some point (and neither do they have to ability to implement them since they stopped coding so long ago). Joel Spolsky has a great post titled "Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You" from back in 2001 which I only just discovered, although I forget who linked me to it. It's a great article, definitely recommended reading.

Aside: I like to call this type of thinking Architect Judo, Judo being something magical or mysterious, or Architect Hewy (spelling?), Hewy being a term I use as a synonym for "crap" but nobody else seems to agree with my definition, at least not on the internet.

Currently listening : Laughing Stock By Talk Talk Release date: 19 November, 1991

3:22 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Installing XNA Game Studio on Windows Vista
Current mood: Still frustrated about the Xbox thing
Category: Still frustrated about the Xbox thing Web, HTML, Tech

I recently decided to give XNA Game Studios a whirl, and despite the fact that it is not supported, decided to install it on Vista. Visual Studio C# Express installed along side of my Visual Studio for Team System installation without problems. However, when I went to install XNA Game Studio, the installer failed and rolled back because "Visual Studio C# Express had stopped working." The log file was unhelpful and contained only the following details:

Error 1722. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action RegisterWithCSExpress, location: C:.., command: "C:..Program Files..Microsoft Visual Studio 8..Common7..IDE..VCSExpress.exe" /installvstemplates

So, I said to my self: "Self, I can probably install those templates manually later, there's no need for the installer to fail because VCSExpress is crashing." Perhaps not the best judgement since this crash demonstrates the inherent instability in my environment, but I decided to proceed anyway.

Having already installed the Windows SDK, I installed the Orca.msi located in the SDKs bin directory (Orca is a tool for analyzing and modifying MSI files). I was then able to open up the XNA msi in Orca. I quickly noticed the "RegisterWithCSExpress" action in the ActionText and CustomAction sections. After dropping both these rows from the msi I was able to run the installer successfully. I ran the VCSExpress.exe /installvstemplates command line manually to see if I could get any output regarding the crash, but I didn't get any and it crashed as expected. However, upon running VCSExpress normally I found that the templates had been installed successfully. Considering I've already had another crash when closing VCExpress, my guess is that the crash is happening as its shutting down and not really having any adverse effects.

 I haven't actually created anything with it, although I did verify that the a default XBox Game project builds successfully, so no promises about it actually working, but at least it installs.

Cheers,

-Paul

Cross Posted From: http://blogs.msdn.com/paulwh/

2:09 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Xbox 360 Warranty
Current mood: frustrated
Category: Life

I just learned from Chris Sells that Microsoft has extended the warranty on the Xbox 360 from 90 days to 1 year. Man, am I ever pissed!

Let me explain.

Back in July I bought a 360. It's sweet. XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) is awesome, media streaming from the PC works great, and the games are, as should be expected, amazing both in terms of graphics and game play (for the most part). Unfortunately my enjoyment was short lived. Sometime this fall my system started behaving erratically. Games would crash regularly, DVDs would freeze, and on frequent occasions I would get the dreaded "red ring of death" and the system would simply refuse to boot for days at a time. After 2 support calls it was determined that I would have to send it in to be repaired or replaced, at a cost to me of $140 (plus shipping?). If I had sent it in, the new system would have its 90 day warranty renewed. This seemed like a seriously bum deal to me. I pictured myself shelling out $140 just to have the damn thing break again 90 days later, at which point I'm shafted again. At this point I was kicking myself for not having gotten the EB Games one year replacement plan.

After doing some investigation I discovered that Best Buy had a 2 year replacement plan, and so I decided to bite the bullet on my former mistake, selling my broken system back to EB Games for $130 and heading over to Best Buy to get my brand new system w/ 2 year replacement plan. I try to ignore the fact that, accessories and games including, owning a working Xbox 360 has now cost me upwards of $1000. Sigh.

So now Microsoft decides to extend the warranty. #^&%*@!

Talk about adding insult to injury. If this had happened a few months earlier (or had it been the policy from the beginning as it should have been), I would have been able to warranty my faulty system at no cost.

Is this the right thing for Microsoft to do now? Yes, and to their credit they are retroactively refunding people who were charged for warranty service previously. Does this excuse the horribly un-customer-friendly behavior of selling a faulty piece of shit with a grossly deficient warranty? Hell #$%^ing no!

Xbox team, this doesn't even come close to setting things right. You're still only a small notch above petty thieves in my book.

1:41 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

New Car
Category: Life

I got a new car last week. A 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon.

The new car:

..

The old car:

..

11:28 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

An Inconvenient Truth
Category: News and Politics

I went to see Al Gore speak at the key arena. Seeing his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" has been on my list of things to do for a while, so when I heard he was speaking I figured it would be a good opportunity. His talk didn't go into the level of depth I would have liked, but that's understandable considering the time available and the diverse audience. Basically he puts a friendly face and a southern, down to earth feel on all the scientific data available today. Most people are so intimidated by scientific journals, or even science related magazines, that they turn to the dumbed down, biased, and more often than not, flat out wrong, popular media. So what Al Gore is doing with his speaking, is presenting an accessible version of the truth, instead of an accessible lie to divert attention from the truth, which is what people get from the popular media. Unfortunately if you don't trust Al Gore, you're probably still a skeptic after watching his presentation (the power of denial is pretty strong). It's unfortunate that more people aren't driven to learn more and investigate the truth, but are instead inclined to accept the more convenient lie.  I'm an agnostic when it comes to the existence of a deity because of come to the conclusion that 1) it's not knowable, no matter how much time I spend on it and 2) it doesn't really matter, meaning that my not knowing whether a deity exists is not going to cause harm to anybody else, and I don't think it will cause any imminent harm to me. Environmental issues are not the same. Agnosticism on global warming is unacceptable because our not knowing puts not only ourselves but our neighbors, our children, and our entire civilization, in grave, knowable, and imminent risk. Therefore, each of us has a responsibility, if we value our lives, and the lives of our fellow humans, to investigate the truth to the best of our ability, arrive at a defensible, firm conclusion, and act in accordance. Which brings up one of my main complaints, Gore's speech lacked one critical component of public speeches: a call to action. My understanding is that is the movie, and the website have a lot more information on what people can do, but he didn't mention many of these things in his talk. In fact he didn't even mention his website until the Q&A section. His talk did a great job, I think, of 1) reminding people of all the facts, and 2) renewing people's passion for doing something about those facts, but he failed to tell people what they should do to get started. Hopefully people will have enough passion to take the initiative to find ways they can help on their own, but unfortunately it is human nature to let these things go unless you have a well defined checklist that you can get started on as soon as you get home. So here is my call to action for him: 1) avoid driving, or at least avoid driving alone, take mass transit or carpool, 2) Vote! I hope you vote for environmentally aware candidates, but as long as you're taking part in the political process it's a step in the correct direction, 3) investigate the facts, and come to your own conclusion, on every issue, global warming, the candidates running for office, the initiatives on the ballot, 4) check out the website, watch the movie, there's a lot more you can do.

8:28 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Riding to Work
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Life

Rode my bike to work today via the Burke-Gilman trail (Route on Bikely.com). It was a great time, beautiful weather, good scenery, and the trail is great (except for the occasional oblivious 4 abreast runners or bikers, I mean what the hell, do they think they own the god damn trail? its a good thing I can ride my 27mm skinnies on loose gravel, yeah I'm just that good). Anyway, the only major bummer was that I, being the numbskull that I am, left my helmet at one of my stops (brilliant!), and didn't notice for about 15 minutes, at which point I figured some small animal had probably taken a shit in it, so I proceeded on. I did the 26.6 miles to Marymoor in exactly 2 hours, making only 3 stops, 1 to remove my jacket (and lose my helmet), and 2 for water. Once at Marymoor I was too beat to attempt the hill climb up to Microsoft campus, so I checked my email on my new phone, and took a knap on a picnic table. After the knap the ascent went very slow, but I made it only walking about 50 yards. For my first long distance ride (its long distance for me), and only my 3rd respectable ride (Point83 ride to Pacific Rim Brewery, and July Critical Mass being the first two), I'm quite happy with it. Anyway, enough personal stuff, bottom line, its a cool trail, I recommend it.

3:30 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

/span Remote Desktop and Dual Monitors
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Found this cool new Vista feature today and I just had to share it. When using mstsc (Microsoft Terminal Services Client, AKA Remote Desktop) on a machine with multiple monitors, give it the /span command line arg and it will extend the remote desktop onto both your monitors. Sweet. Only in Vista.

9:33 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

New Phone

On a personal note, I got a sexy new phone.

Its got Windows Mobile 5.0, a 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera, and WIFI. Needless to say, I'm crazy about it.

Shoot me a PM if you need my new phone number.

6:01 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Zune & Alexandria - Microsoft Competes Against Itself?
Current mood: aggravated

"The first rule in government spending, why build one when you can have two for twice the price"
-Contact

In case you havent heard, Microsoft is finally doing something about the inability of its partners to produce a successful IPod competitor. Details have been trickling out about a suite of new products: two players dubbed Zune and Pixys, and a new music service code-named Alexandria. Not unexpectedly, reactions to early prototypes of the players have been varied to the extreme. It seems that a large number of people hate them because they are a rip off of the IPod, and about as many like them because they look so much like the IPod. Its not hard to see the chips falling along religious lines as people develop opinions. The music service, Alexandria, has largely escaped notice from the majority of commenters. Om Malik picked up on the issue, although he focused mainly on the effect it will have on Microsofts PlaysForSure partners. However, upon reviewing the details posted on Engadget, the apparent stupidity is even more startling. Apparently Microsoft will not only have a new and redundant service once Alexandria is released, but a completely proprietary one. For those who dont know, Microsoft already has two services for purchasing music online: MSN Music (Pay Per Song) and URGE (Pay Per Song or Subscription). These services and more all work well (if not flawlessly) with Windows Media Player. Alexandria on the other hand will be a separate service that doesnt work with Windows Media Player or PlaysForSure players, and Zune will only work with Alexandria and not with URGE or other PlaysForSure music stores, according to Engadget. Om accurately points out that this garbled mess of choices will likely be a turn off for potential customers. All Microsoft needed to do was make a media player that was as simple, small, and sexy as the iPod line, and make it compatible with the existing stores, but instead we get an Apple-esque proprietary triumvirate. What happened to Microsofts philosophy of consumer choice and openness?

I find myself staring up at the sky asking WHY! What could possibly be the reason? Is it the issues with the Windows Media Player UI? Was the Zune team afraid WMP would be their weak link? Or was it competition issues? Fear that PlaysForSure partners would feel Microsoft is cutting into their market? Antitrust? Maybe they were trying a little too hard to emulated the Apple iPod-iTunes model. Or is it just the kind of bureaucratic inefficiency thats inherent in a company the size of Microsoft? Has the Zune team been developing in a bubble, completely isolated from whats going on with WMP and URGE? Arg.

Personally, I believe in PlaysForSure, and I believe in URGE. If Zune & Alexandria really are completely proprietary and isolated, then I think its a gross misstep on Microsofts part. I believe it will fizzle, and it will only serve to distract people from the existing offering Microsoft has in the form of URGE and third party players (which despite the lack of a good iPod competitor, is a pretty good offering).

Zune makes me a Sad Panda.

Update: A more official release has been published on the WSJ, doesn't appear to shed any light on the issues raised here or by Om Malik.

5:43 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment