Pender’s Fabulous Journal of Random Stuff and Things!!!!

This is pretty cool, I didn’t even know they were making them: Intel’s made a quad core CPU (I can’t link directly to the quad core site, it’s flash or somethign stupid). Which basically means you have 4 computers in one. Unfortunately the chip costs $1300+tax (at the usual place I buy computer parts). Even dual core cpu’s are only about $250+tax, which means for the equivalent cost of 10 cpus, you can get 4 cpus on 1 chip. What a deal!

I hope their marketing engine is good. I would want one, but of course then I’d need a motherboard that could support it and 4 gigs of ram to make it worthwhile, then probably two video cards connected via SLI to make gaming worthwhile. Then of course I’d need a 62″ HDTV plasma tv that I could hook the computer up to and use as a monitor. Then I’d need a time machine to go back to last week and buy the winning lottery tickets to ensure I could pay for it all, including the time machine.

One of my biggest pet peeves at work are shitheads who like to write “please advise” at the bottom of every stupid email they send. Even if they are not soliciting advise, but want you to do something, they ask for us to advise them. “Yeah, I advise you to do it yourself, shithead”. Is what I write in my head, but instead completely ignore whatever they said in their email and reply with “all set” when I’ve completed the work. You ain’t getting advise from ME, bucko.

Often the people sending the email have absolutely no clue how the system works and the reason why their stuff isn’t working is because they are under the impression that the system is magical or highly proficient at reading their minds and fabricates data out of thing air. In which case I write “I advise you to learn your god damned system” in my head.

Sometimes something’s not working and they ask for advise when really all they want is for us to fix it. If I advised every user who has no idea about computers how to fix every problem, I’d never have time to actually fix any problems!

To me “please advise” is just a pompous jackass way of saying “what did you do?!” or “make it go!” and basically just takes up space so that people who really have nothing useful to offer, so they say this to make themselves sound more important. I think at the end of my emails I should write “so there!” or “how about that?” or perhaps “well ain’t that somethin’?!”, since all of it generally means nothing at all.

Instead of “please advise” just rely on your actual communicative skills (if you friggin’ have any) and hope that the REAL words you’ve used in your email portray what’s not working or what you want done to speak for themselves, instead of tacking on your generic, idiotic, bloat.

Please advise.

This article on cnn.com made me laugh on-line a few times, here’s my favorite line:

“It helps me to maintain my mobility as a physical problem but it also helps me to keep the pain at a distance so I can focus on my work,” MacLean told Reuters.

Here’s the latest photo album at myphotoalbum.com. In it includes Halloween, the Truck we’re buying (4 wheel drive, $1500, 1993, 227k KM) and Hollywood’s recent trip to saint john.

Hollywood sent me this, I thought it was pretty funny.

Warning: contains a copious amount of cats whose spelling and grammar is atrocious.

Apparently there is a large and thriving community of private WoW servers out there that are free. A VERY large community. Here’s just one list of hundreds, and there are other lists out there as well.

I was offered an opportunity to connect to one of these private servers, which I think I will. Moreso out of curiosity to see how buggy it is and if it’s actually playable.

I have to wonder where the server code came from. One of the developers may have shipped it off to a friend on the interweb then that friend sent it to a million other friends. I hope the guy that initially gave it to 1 friend got a billion dollars for his trouble, cause that’s probably how much money, or more, blizzard will lose if these private servers catch on.

One of the things that surprises me is the openness with which people are announcing to the world “hey look at me, I’m stealing propriety software from blizzard!” I’m really shocked that blizzard isn’t just buzzing around the internet putting cheap nerds in jail all over the place. I would think that it’s one thing to connect to a private server and get to play the game without paying the monthly fee (even though you DID purchase the game initially). I would think it’s 1000x worse to actually put up a server to enable others to connect to it and play.

If these private servers do catch on, I wonder if blizzard will start actually offering the server software for lease so that people can legally put up their own private servers. Make the lease cost an amount based on a certain number of simultaneous user’s connected and make that number cost the amount of money about half of what people normally pay for the real blizzard servers right now. So a 10 person server would cost like $50. Then that server could charge its userbase that amount of money to play to pay for the lease, or ask for donations, or whatever. Then blizzard could offer support and a proper download of the server software. That way they don’t have to pay as much for the servers they do have, closing some down, but making just as much money from it (cause server costs and support of each server costs a lot), as it would just be joe shmoe individual running the server. Is blizzard brave enough to attempt this model? It’s a coporation, so probably not. It would be cool though.

My biggest beef with massive multiplayer online rpg’s is the word “massive”, which equates to the word “full of morons”. Turning a “massive” multiplayer online game into one where the userbase can be controled (ie: only friends), is a dream come true.

I would write more, but you’re already bored.