Tales from the crypt()

Another change of looks

2011-07-23T00:12:00.002+03:00

I guess I'm bored. No, I'm not bored, I wanted the +1 button and I couldn't add it to my old template.

Oh well... *shrugs*

Packaged People

2011-07-19T01:31:00.001+03:00

That's what we are. Packaged products.

We live in large, stacked boxes containing smaller boxes and we call the smaller ones "homes". We occasionally have to deal with leaks and other refuse coming from the neighboring packages. Talk about poor packaging, sometimes more than one products are stored in the same box. And sometimes, often enough, these products are not compatible with each other. Then a reaction occurs, sometimes an explosion. Sometimes older items are packaged together with newer ones. Then sometimes the new ones get tainted with all sorts of noxious emanations if they spend enough time in the same package with the old ones.

Every day we escape our home packages and we go follow our dreams and ideas somewhere else. We temporarily enter different, mobile boxes we call "transportation". These move using certain paths in the huge warehouse we call "city". God forbid you miss your box, or get into the wrong one. In that case, we may be late for what we call "work".

Then we reach our destination, the box called "workplace". The products we share the space with are of the same make as we are. Different lots, most likely, but the same make. At my workplace, we stare at other boxes and push some buttons, trying to communicate with them. We're basically training those little boxes to do things for us. The other products in the workplace are doing the same thing. Most of the time, all you can hear in the "workplace" box is the click-click of the different kinds of buttons. Then there's the lunch break and we eat out packaged lunches.

Only in the evening, when the work is done for the day, we may get to look around as we walk through the warehouse, towards the transportation box station. Some parts of the warehouse are even beautiful. Trees, a lake, some frogs jumping clumsily across the alleys (btw, how the hell did those frogs enter the warehouse?). If we choose the right path, we may even see the ducks and the swans and the peacocks. All of them are just different products, unaware of their condition. The white peacocks and the black swans are my favorite. Brilliant idea, to make them come in different colors, I suppose their inventor must be at least some VP by now.

Then we arrive at the "home" box. I, for one, will immediately open another box, similar to the one in the workplace box, and this box inside my home box will grant me access to some virtual boxes with no material boundaries. I call those "on-line communities". Extreme metal box. MMO box. Geeky box. Twitter box. Google box, I am now putting a story inside a smaller box inside this one. Why am I doing this? I don't know, it just occurred to me that I should store it somewhere and this looked like a good place.

Then I'll make some instant coffee, packaged in a jar. Or some tea, packaged in bags packaged in cardboard boxes. With some water packaged in pipes. And sugar packaged in paper bags and then in another jar. Everything packaged in a cupboard packaged in a kitchenette packaged in a single-room apartment packaged in a box called "block of flats". Stored in a warehouse called "city". Matryoshka style.

Oh, and, before I go to bed and sleep my instant sleep, I need to ask: is there any way to escape from the packaging system?

History repeating

2011-03-20T19:04:00.000+02:00

Most people don't seem to get it. They keep coming and saying that what you like is just a pile of crap and let them show you what the good stuff is.

I can only assume that they are so busy judging their peers that they never have the time to look at themselves.

Oscar

2010-07-09T02:10:00.000+03:00

'Nuff sed.

How to kill your survivor paragon for dummies

2010-05-07T00:55:00.001+03:00

Long time no see and the rest. However, this lesson was sooooo frustrating that I really have to write about it.

So, there are three prerequisites:
1. be greedy
2. be stupid
3. you don't usually fumble with the keyboard, but you absolutely must do it when you realize that you're dying

Looks like I met these criteria and managed to make short work of several months during which I brought that paragon to be an almost Indomitable Survivor. Almost, yeah, there were less than 100K points left until the second tier of the Survivor title.

How on Earth did I do it? Easy: I wanted to do the Tihark Orchard mission and get the master's reward for it. I was hungry for XP, okay? Tihark Orchard is a rather easy mission, but one has to enter it alone. No heroes, no henchmen. So, I managed to kill The Hunger in Moddok Crevice, and I got killed by a pitiful actor while re-enacting the victory of Turai Ossa over Palawa Joko. And the fake Palawa Joko only causes -2 health degeneration with his Life Siphon hex.

So, I beat him, but I was hexed and my life was slowly going down the drain. I realized that and I wanted to resign the mission, but... you know, fumbling with the keyboard in a moment like this is worse than any "death by lag".

Of course, that was not my only mistake. Why the hell didn't I take some Skalefin Soup with me, huh? That would have slowed the degeneration. And why didn't I, at least, use one of the Mysterious Summoning Stones I had in the backpack? That's a real mystery. If I used one of those, I'd have saved my energy for regeneration skills. And then I chose to type the resign command instead of hitting "M" and map-travel to the outpost with a double-click - which means the same thing.

Bah! R.I.P. Dayo Sundance! And she was not just any survivor... I accidentally realized that the Survivor title was still enabled when she was level 18, and only then I started paying attention to it.

*sigh*

Internet Exploiter

2009-11-25T03:20:00.001+02:00

I guess I'll never know who called Microsoft's browser Internet Exploiter. That's not supposed to be important but, somehow, the (in)famous browser lives up the expectations created by that nickname. Or true name, if you please.

I can't sleep so I'm reading Slashdot. At 3 in the morning. And guess what I've stumbled upon? A brand new article that's pointing out the fact that the fabled Internet Explorer 8 is making secure sites insecure. Geez, that was supposed to be the best version of IE ever! And you know what's worse? The fact that, according to The Register, the vulnerability resides in a browser component that was designed specifically to protect against XSS attacks!!!!

However, it looks like there are ways in which we can protect our poor data from being molested by attackers.

I gave up

2009-11-25T01:30:00.002+02:00

So much for Runes of Magic! Two days after I finally got to play it, a client update broke it for good. It said that it can't find some procedure in t2embed.dll. Isn't that cute? Of course it's also VERY wrong, but that's life.

Meanwhile... a virus walks into a bar...

Angry troll is angry ~X(

2009-11-17T03:47:00.000+02:00

What the hell was I thinking when I wanted to download and install Runes of Magic? *headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*

Okay, so the client installation kit takes about 5GB of hard disk space which, of course, takes a rather long time to download. It also takes a long time to install. But I expected to be able to play after installing it.

Wait, what? Play? Just who the hell did I think I was? No sireeee, now we have to update the client. And then update the client. And then UPDATE the client and update the client again. Two hours of UPDATING the client and we're at 81% done. I bet that after this update there will be an UPDATE and then an update and another update until the end of the year.

Why the hell would someone expect the users pay to get the fabled in-game currency (diamonds) in order to give their character a bigger stick after such a loooooooooooong update? I already want to delete my account, this game is boring. What kind of gameplay is this? Sit in front of your PC and stare at the update screen, hoping that the "Start Game" button will become active?

What did I tell you? The update is over. As I guessed, the UPDATE started. Is this game client really downloading? Or is it uploading the entire content of my hard disk to some server on the Moon?

Again, why did I want to try this game? Oh, wait, it says now that the current version is 2.1.2.1916.en. According to the "version.txt" in its "Download" directory, the latest version should be 2.1.2.1944.en... *maniacal laughter*

I think that maybe I'm going to be able to play it before the end of January 2010. Yay Frogster Interactive! NOT!

*fuming*

Fun with Windows XP

2009-11-10T18:12:00.003+02:00

Something happens every once in a while that makes me wish Windows never existed. Like, seeing services.exe use 2 GB of virtual memory. Really.

I kept wondering what the hell was wrong with it. It started to happen after a Patch Tuesday, the one in October 2009, to be precise. I kept searching the web for a solution until I found a clue: the phenomenon was linked with Comodo System Cleaner. Someone said that upgrading to some specific version solved this issue. Oh well, my version was newer than the one that guy recommended :(

So I just uninstalled Comodo System Cleaner and the services.exe process stopped eating my computer. I don't even know if it's Comodo's fault for this, as we all know what a PITA a Windows update can be. Also, I'm still using the Comodo firewall and it's not creating any issues.

WinXP SP3 here... And no, I won't link you to the technical forum where I found the Comodo reference. There's a bad overlay on that page that steals your first click and redirects to some page with a title of "Acai". I will link you to something, though: The Web of Trust website. Get your browser plug-in and stay safe!

Button

2009-07-18T03:02:00.001+03:00

Put The Big Red Button on your site

Damn this weather

2009-07-11T16:55:00.002+03:00

Damn it! The clouds darkened the sky so much that my inner clock believes it's past 9 P.M. As if the DST was not enough to drive my internal mechanisms crazy ~X(

Rain

2009-07-01T02:36:00.005+03:00

Oh well, I didn't get to take any pictures of wildlife. Guess why? Because I don't get up early enough to have the time for a little bit of roaming through the park.

One of these days I almost stepped on a tiny frog. Tiny means that it was the size of a large fly, at most 15 mm long. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera with me.

To make up for missing the birds and frogs, I took some pictures of the downpour on Sunday, from the balcony.

Furniture for the crypt()

2009-06-19T03:59:00.004+03:00

Hey, this could be a nice addition to my freshly renovated place! Check it out at BoingBoing!

Wildlife

2009-06-19T01:39:00.006+03:00

So, the crypt has been cleaned up. I exorcised the old spirits that still haunted it. I wanted a clean start, and I also wanted it to look like a proper crypt.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, wildlife. Fine, what's wildlife got to do with a crypt? A lot of things, I'd say, since crypts are not the dead places you would expect. You can always find some spiders, cockroaches, flies, maggots, bats, moths, mice, and other small creatures.

Tomorrow I'll take my camera with me. I hope that turtle doves and sparrows count as wildlife, given the fact that I seldom leave the city. Maybe I'll get to take a snapshot of a common blackbird or a seagull, if I'm lucky. The stray dogs and cats don't count as wildlife, though I think I'll take a picture of the gray cat we befriended at the office, if I have a chance.

Reboot

2009-06-16T23:48:00.000+03:00

The crypt is being renovated. Thank you for your patience.