Category Archive: technology

Block stacking

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Fri. August 27, 2010

Long ago, the first video game system that was ever given to me was the Nintendo Game Boy. It was a Christmas gift and was totally unexpected. I actually cried for joy when I got it. Now, the game that shipped with the Game Boy was Tetris. I spent many hours on that game and became pretty good at it. It served me well whenever I played head to head battles with other people at school–including my computer science teacher. During lulls, sometimes I’d challenge him to a versus game on the school computers. I always ended up on top; I had a knack for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. I remember some friends being amazed at how I often managed to survive even with my blocks stacked high. At night, I remember finding an Internet Tetris client: TetriNET. Among my friends and I someone would set up a server and we’d all connect to play a multi-player battle Tetris game. Sometimes these sessions would last until the wee hours of the morning. Crazy stuff. I had a decent track record with that.

I stopped playing Tetris actively after high school. I had a version of the game on my computer, but I didn’t really touch it that often. Over time my skills rusted. I never thought I’d get back into it. The other day though, while I was poking around the Wii stuff at BestBuy, I spotted Tetris Party Deluxe. It wasn’t crazy expensive or anything so I just picked up a copy. I figured that it might come in handy as a party game at some point in the future. I broke it out this evening just to see if I was as good as I was maybe a decade ago. Umm…nope, can’t say I am. I can hold my own, I guess, but…yeah, my old-self would have cleaned the floor with me. No matter. The game is still fun after all these years. It’s so simple, and that’s perhaps one of the key factors as to why this game can withstand the test of time, right?

To close this off, here’s a guy playing Korobeiniki on an electric guitar.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j9W5PBsa30

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Language to language

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Fri. July 30, 2010

Honestly, when I was first searching for a proper post-grad job back in 2006, I was making a slight effort to get out of my comfort zone and find a job using a language that I had only used in class but not really in the workplace. Java seemed to be the language that would give me the most opportunities, so that’s where I cast my net. In the end, that didn’t pan out. This job found me due to my Perl skills listed on my resume. The language that I had used for years but decidedly set aside has kept be going for almost 4 years now. If I think about it, that’s rather fortunate, isn’t it? It allowed me to get my feet wet in the real world, though, honestly my feet were already figuratively soaked at that point, but that’s besides the point.

Perl, Perl, Perl.

I had to be the jack of all trades. I was an application developer, interface developer, consultant, quality assurance checker, business liaison, all wrapped in one. Those were crazy times. Well, as you know, times change. I’ve mentioned this before, but yeah, my job was phased out. That’s never a great feeling, eh? In the end though, the company decided to hold onto me. And now here I am trying to get up to speed in Java. I was actually a little concerned about having to make this change since it’s been many years since I last touched the language. I think it must have been my artificial intelligence class in 2005. Seriously. Over the past week I’ve been feeling better and better. If there’s anything I should be more concerned about, it’s learning the project I’m on. Besides the fact that the technology behind the project is in a different language altogether, it’s actually the evolved version of the project I was on before. The concepts are familiar but different. It’s blowing my mind. Also, my job focus has narrowed significantly. I said that the previous project had me wearing different hats, right? This new position has one hat, and one hat only. That aspect kind of makes me sad, but I guess it’s necessary due to the amount of focus needed.

Anyway, I suppose I’m writing about this because it amazes me how I’m managing this transition. I expected it to be rocky, and it is, but…I expected worse–not only from the job, but from myself. Am I selling myself short? Yeah, I am. However, in this case I was taking one of those “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” stances. Going from language to language is a scary prospect. I kind of feel like I was thrown into the deep end. I guess I knew how to swim all along=–I just forgot that I had the skill.

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Clogged slots and fishing for strips

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Fri. May 21, 2010

I was tidying up a bit around my place when I got a little bit derailed. I took a couple of sheets over to my shredder and tried to put them through the slot. Things wouldn’t budge. I tried switching the thing to reverse to see if it would spit something out, but nothing came out. Once again, I switched it out of reverse and tried to feed it a sheet. Still nothing. I thought I’d somehow broken the machine. Upon closer examination the thing was thoroughly clogged. So, I decided to open up the shredder and see if there was something I could do about it.

Generally, I’m not the type of person that really likes taking machinery apart just to see how things work. Sure, the guts of a machine can be interesting, but really I just expect things to work when expected, know what I mean? I wonder how the heck I ever got into engineering with that attitude, eh? Anyway, it took me a while to open the shredder up because there were unexpectedly a couple of screws hidden under stickers. When I got it open, it became obvious that the thing wasn’t just clogged–it was well and thoroughly obstructed. In the slot, I could see a dam of shredded paper jamming the thing, basically preventing the rolls from spinning at all. How did it get to that point? Well, I think a little while ago I switched the machine to reverse, just to see if something would get spit out. After a while, nothing. However, seeing what happened, I figure that the reverse motion picked up a pile of the shredded paper and jammed it up top. Well, of course, in retrospect that was a horrible idea. I guess that reverse setting is really only meant for emergencies. Seems silly when I say that, but at this point I see no other purpose.

Anyway, since the slot is thin I wasn’t able to fish out any of the paper with just my fingers. Nearby I spotted a thin allen key, so I used that to dig in and hook out as much paper as I could get. For the next half hour I was fishing out tiny shreds of paper. The paper was really lodged in there. It wouldn’t come out that easily. The strips were flying everywhere; a few even hit me in the eye. The end result was a mess on the carpet. How stupid, eh?

What’s the lesson here? Well, I guess the point is that I should know better than to use machinery for a purpose other than that intended. Secondly, I seem more than capable of taking shit apart without breaking it when I put my mind to it. Thirdly, I need to empty the damn shredder.

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Guess what arrived?

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Wed. December 2, 2009

Yesterday, I was watching that UPS tracking page like a hawk. I mean, when I made my order for the laptop the online store provided me with a tracking number and every day I clicked on the link looking for some good news. While I was at work, I’m sure I was getting a little neurotic about hitting the refresh button every hour or so. See, I made the mistake of having the order delivered to my home address instead of work. So, I was hoping to keep an eye on the status to see when the package was on the truck. That way I could hustle over back home and be ready to receive it. At the end of the work day there was no update to the page except for the bit saying that it was at the last station before going out. I thought there would be no worries, and that I could just work from home and receive it. Well, when I got home I saw a notice on the door indicating that the UPS people came by but no one was available to receive it. Curses! What the hell was that? Of course, it really didn’t change anything in terms of receiving the package on the next available day. However, I was frustrated knowing that I could have had it a day earlier. It’s not my fault though: they didn’t update that damn status page.

Anyway, the UPS site says that for residential locations deliveries can happy any time between the period of 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. Hold up…step back for a moment. Look at that time range. That’s a 10 hour window! What the hell is that? I’m lucky in that I’m able to work from home, but what about other people? Seems somewhat unreasonable to me, you know? So, I was up and plugging away at work from my couch from 9 a.m. It’s wasn’t a bad thing. I reckon I got a large amount of work done. Still, by 4 p.m., without any news of an imminent delivery I was starting to get antsy. I had a scheduled run this evening and I was questioning whether I was going to make it or not. Well, finally at 5:30 I got a call from the front door to my cell. The UPS guy finally made it in. Yeah, I’ll be honest, it was all I could do to just remain calm and under control. Upon opening the box I felt like I was a kid at Christmas. I was disciplined enough though to know that it needed a good charge before usage. So, I plugged it in and went for my run. And since my return I’ve been playing around with it and setting things up. This blog entry is actually my first from the MBP. Hopefully there will be at least a thousand more from here.

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MBP ordered

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Fri. November 27, 2009

Remember the other day how I was saying that Apple stuff hardly ever goes on sale? Well, guess what went on sale today? Ha! I used this as an opportunity to order the MacBook Pro like I had wanted last Sunday. The discounts weren’t what I had originally expected. Yesterday, a colleague told me that he was anticipating maybe $200 off of some laptops. No, when I went online this morning I found that the discounts where more like $100 or so. Sure, it wasn’t as big as the potential $200 off that I would have gotten if I went to that Best Buy sale a lot earlier, but it was enough to encourage me to make the purchase this morning.

I don’t think I’m considering myself a convert, per se. I did say in the other entry that I wanted to see for myself how big of a difference there is between using a PC and a Mac. I’m no longer in university, so the need to use a lot of the technical apps specific to PC is a lot less. These days I’m only doing average and mundane everyday stuff. As such, why not go for a system that has a little bit more polish? As much as it frustrates me at time, I’m not going to be chucking my laptop right away. My plan is to have both systems on hand, slowly making the transition to make the MBP my daily system. We’ll see how it goes. I have a lot of questions, but I have enough Mac-minded friends to guide me through my first steps. It’s going to be a fun and interesting time.

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“No regrets, right?”

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Sun. November 22, 2009

A couple of days ago I got a notice in my inbox telling me about a Best Buy Reward Zone event taking place at a handful of stores. The email said that there would be a sale at these locations lasting for two hours. I wasn’t terribly interested up until they sent another email giving a preview of the various price cuts. See, the particular deal that got my attention was the part that said that all laptops priced between $1000 and $1500 would have be cut by $200. I figured that it would be the perfect time to get my hands on the new 13″ MacBook Pro.

My current Toshiba Satellite is about 4.5 years old; it’s showing signs of wear. The right side USB ports are a bit loose. If I plug my mouse in there it wouldn’t be uncommon for the power to be intermittent, making me bang the mouse a couple of times in an attempt to get it going again. The battery is pretty bad now. It can only hold a charge for about half an hour before giving up. The sensor in the taskbar tends to lie to me about how much power it has left when unplugged. When it says 45 minutes, I know that that’s a lie. As a result, this thing is always plugged in now. I can’t imagine taking this thing anywhere anymore without the plug. I didn’t think the unit as a whole was too heavy, especially in comparison to the bricks that my classmates had, but after lugging it around and dragging it through Japan every pound seems to make a difference. At about 6 lbs. this laptop is kind of heavy. Lastly, everything seems to take so long to run now. It should not take 2 minutes to start up Firefox or iTunes. Perhaps all the system needs is a good defragmentation. I don’t know. Ultimately, given the age of the system I figured that it was time to look for something new. This computer has served me really well over the years. It’s just time.

So, why in the world did I start considering getting a Mac? Well, I think it was spurred on via a lot of discussion from colleagues. A couple of them have been drooling over the new MacBook Pro redesign that happened this summer. My former team lead put together a Hackintosh and has been raving over Snow Leopard and how everything seems to be so much easier than it ever was with Windows XP. I mentioned Apple to my project manager and she basically told me how she was happy with her MacBook Pro. So yeah, many people have been nudging me in that direction. As well, I’ve got a couple of friends that are experienced Mac users, and without hesitation they always seem to talk about how great they are. As much as the difference is a few hundred dollars for a Mac, I’m willing to give it a shot. I want to judge for myself whether the difference is huge.

So, back to the Best Buy thing. I was over at my parents’ place setting up my old Desktop system for them to use. I told them about my planned purchase, and they urged me to head out early. They told me that there might be a line. I didn’t believe there would be one. I mean, how many people would pay attention to an email campaign? I figured that I could arrive there at the start of the sale, line up for a few minutes, get in, and get out with what I wanted. Besides, who wanted to wait out there for an hour, right? Well, I drove up to Markham, and as I got closer to the mall I saw a long line up of cars waiting to turn into the complex. That was my first hint that I might have been dead wrong. I parked a long distance away from the store and started walking to the entrance. As I did, I began to notice the length of the line up. I started heading to the back of the line, and it was only then that I saw just how far it went. The queue went around the corner with a couple more bends to accommodate everyone. I think there were a couple of hundred people there–probably closer to a thousand. I don’t know, I’m a bad judge of number at this type of thing.

Being so far back in the line, it was easy to joke about how there would be nothing left by the time we’d get in. Actually, a couple of people in front of me left the line after deeming the wait to not be worth it. A couple behind me were talking about how they didn’t want to leave and then wonder if they’d get a deal or not. I turned around and offered a summary: “No regrets, right?” They agreed. I really wasn’t sure if I’d get anything, but hey, I didn’t want to wonder. The line moved in chunks. The people at the door only let in small batches of people at a time. Around the corner, we could only see a handful of people walking out with things in hand. It kind of gave me hope that I might have a bit of luck. After about an hour, I finally rounded the last corner before the entrance. Form there, I saw many many more people walking out with prizes in hand. Some of them had wide smiles on their face. I suppose I don’t blame them. I know I counted 3 or 4 smiling people with small boxes of MacBook Pros in hand. With each one my hopes faded more and more. At the door a staff member was clapping and cheering at us for having made it in. I laughed at the cheesiness of it all. As soon as I got in, I rushed over to the back to where the Macs were displayed. The one that I wanted no longer had a price tag displayed beside it. I had a feeling I knew what it meant, but I asked a staff member anyway. He confirmed that they were sold out.

Fuck.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I wandered around the store for a few minutes, trying to see if there was anything that I wanted. I think I was just in no mood, so after having waited outside for an hour I just left the store empty handed, and probably looking defeated. I figured that this is kind of what it’s like to do the whole Boxing Day thing. It only strengthened my resolve to not give in to the madness on December 26. It’s silly! I gave my parents a call afterwards and told them that I’d been foiled. After a deserved “told you so,” mom asked how much the laptop would have been and what the discount was. After telling her, she giggled: “$200? Chicken feed!” That made me feel better. As I drove home I knew that I’d have something to write about.

So that’s what happened. Where do I go from here? Well, I still plan on getting the MBP at some point. It’s now just a matter when I want to go for it. This week, before the end of November, perhaps? Maybe I can consider this to be a late birthday gift. Soon enough, soon enough.

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Killing a computer

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Sat. November 21, 2009

Sometime earlier in the decade, while I was studying in Waterloo I had told my parents that they needed to get a computer for themselves. I mean, I figured that it would have given them an opportunity to burn CDs or do online banking without me having to get involved. I was fully prepared to actually help them out by assembling a system. I had some experience doing so from having put together my own computer. As long as you get the right parts that go together, the actual act of assembling the system is then a matter of plugging things into the right spots. Easy enough, right? Well, one day I got a call from my father telling me that they’d gone ahead and purchased a computer on their own.

For a brief moment I was kind of happy for them to have had the courage to go ahead and make the purchase. Then I remembered that they had no idea what they were purchasing. So, with dread I started asking them details. He honestly had no idea, other than the fact that they’d asked the sales guy whether it was the best that they could get. At that point I just knew that no good came of that. They’re not gamers…why the hell do they need the fastest computer? They don’t. For a few days after the call I couldn’t concentrate at school. All I could think about was their new computer. When I got home I immediately started checking things out. Well…it didn’t seem so bad at first. Although, it was clearly something that was slapped together. Then I heard how much they paid for the whole thing. I was dumbfounded. They paid maybe 2.5 times what it would have cost if I had done it. Looking back now, it makes me want to gag. I suggested that they return it, but my father was insistent that we keep it. His reasons varied from “well it’s already there” and “we were told it’s the best!” Riiiight.

Well, I suppose I could have let it all go if it worked perfectly. Thing is, the damn thing always had issues. Sometimes when mom would turn it on it would just get stuck on the BIOS screen. No amount of rebooting used to let it get past. Often I’d have to reach behind, unplug the whole thing for a minute, return the plug and only then would it go forward. Other times, network connectivity just wouldn’t come up leading to frantic calls of “Jay! The Internet isn’t working again!“ Mom would call me sometimes telling me that the thing is so slow. She’d try starting a browser but it would take minutes before it would come up. After some digging I found that the box only had 512MB of RAM. What in blazes?! Seriously. No wonder it took so long. It’s not that mom’s completely impatient; the system just really sucks.

Anyway, the other day I decided that I didn’t want to make them put up with such a system anymore, so I bought 2GB of RAM for their computer. I went over today to swap the DIMMs out. I made the switch and reconnected everything. When mom switched it on…nothing came up on the monitor. In fact, the motherboard started beeping like mad. After a good half hour of swapping the memory again and diagnosing anything obvious that I could think of, nothing was bringing it back to life. I just laughed and declared the computer dead: I think the motherboard is fried. I looked at my mom and we both laughed. Despite losing the box, I think we were both happy to see that piece of shit box kick the bucket. Actually, I’m sure there’s a fix for it, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Instead I offered to give them the desktop box that’s just sitting in my room unused. Heck, why not? My box had a slower processor than theirs, but at least the damn thing worked.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I need to spend an hour or two “cleaning up” the system before I hand it over. I also need to set it up just enough to get my mom ready to do all the stuff she used to do with the other system. I’m willing to part ways with the box. Eventually, I’m pretty sure I’ll get it back; they might move on to something like a Mac. In any case, I’ll have a little piece of mind, for sure.

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The red side of the couch

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Sat. August 8, 2009

For a while prior to the move I had a bit of a dilemma. I was stuck trying to figure out which of the two big companies I wanted to go with for my TV and Internet needs. I decided to forgo the land line leaving all of my contact needs to me cell phone. So far that’s been an interesting experience because I’m having to get used to not having the damn thing on vibrate. The few times I’ve left it on vibrate I’ve missed a couple of calls, which is bad news at a time like this when deliveries are coming in. Suddenly I’m wanting a better ringtone.

Anyway, back to the companies. In the end after talking to a few people that have worked and/or tried both services, I decided to go with the red side of the couch. Oh, you know the one. Well, the technicians came in yesterday to set things up for me. The modem went in without a hitch. The digital box on the other hand was rough sailing. After putting it in they tried a couple of channels. A good number of them were pixelizing (their word, not mine, really). Basically, some channels were blocky and lagging, while others didn’t show up at all. Over two hours they tried several hookup configurations but each one was still having issues. We were running close to the end of the appointment window and they had other people in the building to visit so they had to leave me with the faulty box. They promised however to come back after all of their appointments on the following day with a new box. They also told me to keep track of which channels were messing up. Well, overnight I scanned things and wrote down the problematic channels. There were a lot more than I expected. I also noticed that there was some diagonal banding going on, which looked like some sort of electrical interference coming from somewhere. Puzzling, no?

Today, they came a little bit early at 6 p.m. I figured it was really nice of them to come back on their own time to try to figure things out. Thus, I decided to put on my patient face. They swapped the box with a newer model, but found the same issues with the new box. At that point I could tell that they were getting really frustrated. Nothing was making sense. That’s when they started bringing out the big guns. They went into the hallway and popped open the electrical hookups closet. They took a long cable and ran it from the closet directly into my suite. To their surprise, all channels were appearing clearly. No pixelizing, no banding, no interference. At that point they knew it wasn’t the box. They decided to pop open the electrical panel to see the hookups to my suite. When they popped it open they had a eureka moment. There was a connection in there with a part known to cause issues. They looked irritated and blamed the whole incident on poor workmanship. They disconnected the hookup and put it back together with better parts (I guess). In the end, everything is now in great working condition.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m quite happy with my decision to go with the red company. These technicians went the extra mile and made sure that the service I was getting was what I was paying for. Good show. Take what you will from this story. Yes, both the red and blue companies have issues and each has its share of horror stories–just look around the Internet for some, right? Still, in my case I had a great result.

Just so you know.

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