You might have worked a little too long if… June 27, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Play, Work , add a commentA response to a entry in the office modification tracking software reads like this:
In times of old (last week) there was an afternoon where this very feature was added. For it was discovered that the sort came after the dividing of data into pages, which meant that even if you knew there was other data that should have sorted higher, you only truely sorted what you were already seeing. I frowned greatly on observing this odd behavior and to avoid a phone call from both deloy and bob (and michael) upon making the same observation, sharpened my delete key and delivered a killing blow to the change. And for a time, there was peace in the land…
Its alive! June 27, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Work , 1 comment so farJust confirmed that our big website project for one of HP’s user groups has gone live. We’d been waiting for the final DNS switch, but it seems to have happened this morning.
Happy Birthday to me? June 26, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : General , add a commentSo my birthday just passed, its been a while since I’ve bothered to celebrate them, so I spent the day (well and the day before) joking about how this or that was my birthday present or celebration. (To give you some idea, Thursday I’d wondered if Mario’s would deliver a pizza with candles in it) Saturday came & I was doing my best to not actually leave the apt for the day when Dan called. Apparently Michael & James were going to be over there playing Halo 2 on X-box live & he suggested they could use a fourth. I was non-commital, but agreed to swing by. An hour or so later I jogged over. Michael & James were there, but they weren’t the only ones. It seems that they’d decided to celebrate my birthday for me (they’d apparently been waiting for me to show up for a bit). Sam & Nathan (Dan’s roommate, not my former roommate) were also there. There was beverage, bbq & ice cream cake. Our feasting stretched long into the evening as we made fun of horrible movies on sci-fi. Then after finally getting some xbox in, all departed to there homes. It was a lot of fun, thanks guys.
Oh I almost forgot, Sam & Michael picked a book up for me at a local book sale. They are pretty sure it use to belong to Prof Eichoeffer, and its titled “Psychic & Ufo Revelations In The Last Days”. Their reasoning being that if you draw a diagram with 3 groups of people in Greenville; those who are A) UFO enthusiasts, B) Would know enough to be able to pinpoint terminology in the text that is incorrect and C) Would actually correct said errors in the margin. We find it hard to believe that there is someone other than Eichoeffer in a town this size. Let me give you a couple entries out of the contents: “The End Times Are They Upon Us?”, “Looking To The Stars For Salvation” and “The Ashtar Command and Operation Landing Light”. Really I could give you every chapter name, but those 3 give you an idea how great this book is. This so beats “Smidget: The smallest horse in the world” that Dan gave me a year or two ago just to get rid of it.
Update: Michael was kind enough to provide the diagram mentioned above:
One of many…. June 23, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a commentI’ve not been sleeping well recently, but I was just laying in bed, lights & computer all powered down. Nothing but the sound of A/C quietly moving the air around the apartment while the various splashes and humms of the fish tank keeping its contents alive and struggling with said A/C for acoustical domination of the now darkened batcave. Click, the compressor just clicked in, the breeze has dropped a few degrees while the fish tank seems to have given up on dominance, lets hope its still working on the first task.
But I digress, as I laid there in bed I realized that there was something I’d rather be doing right then, and that is telling a story. I’d ignored that thought as I went to bed because I don’t know that I have any storys that are clear enough in my minds eye to shape into a post. But after pretending not to know why I wasn’t going to sleep, I decided that I’d go ahead and tell a story, anything I could dredge up really…..
Some of you know that I spend a fair amount of time playing City Of Heroes, the rest of you must not be in regular contact with me. I was playing earlier tonight with a merry band of adventurers including 2 Dan’s, 1 Nathan, 1 Mandie, and of course, myself. For those who are curious, yes you probably know one of the Dan’s & the Nathan in the group. At the time, Nathan & one of the Dan’s were out shopping (Nathan had a character with a lot of money, Dan’s character had a need for a lot of money), so I was mucking about in a mission with the other Dan and Mandie. More setup is probably needed before I can tell the story though, Mandie’s character was a controller type, which as you might guess, primarily helps manage the enemy (aka mob) by holding them or otherwise debilitating them (make it easier to hit, etc), but can also give other heroes around her various boosts (heal them, revive them if they die, or make their powers recharge faster and a couple other things). Dan-who-was-present (aka Poly Dan) was running his defender, whose primary skills involve helping other heroes, but can also function as a decent ranged attacker. I was running my Kheldian, which is a reward for maxing out another character. My character can be a ranged attacker with ok defense (aka blaster), can switch to a form which is an awesome ranged attacker with little defense (squid), or can maskerade as a lobster-like critter that has very high defense, hand-to-hand attacks, and generally is used to distract the mob from the heroes that are easier to squish (in this case, Dan & Mandie). Ok wow, that intro took forever, now we are finally getting to the story…
Dan stepped into a cavernous room we’d hadn’t cleaned the mob out of and pointed out that it was an ideal room for me to herd. I agreed & switched to lobster form & went charging in while they waited for me to return to the doorway with most of the mob in the room chasing me. This idea may sound a little crazy, and at times it is very fine line, but if done properly the tank (me) keeps the enemy bunched up and not attacking the squishies who are free to use more powerfull powers that affect multiple mob at once. If done incorrectly, the squishies get attacked after using said powers, and well, squished. In such cases the tanker’s chances can often come down to how lucky they are and how fast they run. I’ve done my share of herding though, so I give all this nary a thought as I charge through taunting the mob into following me, occasionally stopping to hit one to really get their attention. I burst back through the doorway with somewhere between 20 and 30 mob who were of a slightly higher level than myself. Mandie & Dan quickly worked to heal the wounds I’d suffered on my romp, while trying to impair or defeat those very annoyed enemies. It quickly became apparent that I may have stepped a little to close to that fine line that distinguishes a good herd from a bad herd. We had so many that I had to stay in tank form (where I couldn’t do near as much damage) just to keep the large number of mob from wiping the other two out. The other two were doing a great job of wearing them down while keeping all of us alive, but it was a battle of attrition where if any of us used up so much of our energy reserves (aka endurance) that we weren’t able to continue whatever we were doing, it could very likely cause the endevour to fail. My thought processes degenerated to a very stream-of-counciousness attempt to balance hitting the mob against keeping the mob from hitting my friends. Hands racing across the keyboard I triggered power after power…
wait that one has turned towards my friends, taunt him to make him focus on me…
is mire recharged? almost almost….
here is one thats weak, a few hits and I can finish him…
biff, poww…
quick, my health is low, do I try to use a power to heal or use a green [single-use health boost]…?
dan’s endurance is low, toss him one of my blues [single-use endurance boosts], slug the minion who slipped past me and is pounding on Mandie…
The numbers of the mob slowly dwindle as the weaker ones (minions) succumb to our combined firepower. This leaves only the lieutenants and bosses for us to pound on, but at the same time we’re all running low on endurance and I’m running low on inspirations (those single-use boosts). They are weak, but are we any better? I don’t know, I don’t know, one of my teammate’s health bars going yellow informs me that someone has slipped past while I was worried about the final outcome. Someone big enough to deal a good amount of damage…
I spin and blindly hit keys to select the mob thats pounding them, I hit a key and my taunt causes it to turn back towards me, not even waiting for it to lumber the few yards back as it attacks me instead, I return my attention to the shrinking group of opponents in front of me. By now only the strongest of them are left, those that take can take a beating & keep on shooting, punching or vainly trying to slow us down. Even those still standing are in poor shape, I’ve worked hard to spread out my damage dealing to help keep them focused on me, and from the looks of things my teammates have been spreading their attacks out as well. The closest mob faulters, then freezes as one of Mandie’s holds pins him in place, I activate mire (hurts nearby mob while making me more accurate & stronger) and lay in to him with my most powerful melee attack, it knocks him on his back, but he staggers to his feet, bairly alive and still held in place. My follow-up weaker strike finishes him with ease. Things are getting fairly relaxed as there are only one or two left now, seeing his friend drop, the last one. He’s headed in the general direction of another group, perhaps I can get him to come back without catching the other groups attention… no such luck another group of 5 or so mob decend upon us before we can recover, but even in our somewhat drained condition their numbers are not great enough to pose as serious of a threat. A short time later, they are all laying at our feet.
A second passes as everyone catches their breath and silently marvels that we all survived it. Then almost as one we start typing that same sentiment into the team chat. We wait while marvelling and recovering, both in game and in real life. After a bit my heart rate drops back down to where it should be, and my hands stop shaking from the adrenaline. I silently scold myself for almost botching the herding, and for accidentally drawing the ire of that last group that if we’d been able to wait, we’d have mowed through like a scythe. But I remind myself that we did succeed, and after redistributing some of our prized remaining single-use boosts, we jog around a wall to do battle again. We’re grown use to this terror before triumph, to us this is just one of many battles we had and will fight in this make-believe land.
As a side note, I should mention that Nathan rejoined us in time to help fend off that second smaller wave, oh and in case you were wondering, the fishtank is still babbling at me.
run that by me again? June 7, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Play, Work , 1 comment so farOne of the miriad of projects that I’m working on is a website. This website has documentation built into it. Recently the users apparently asked if there would be offline documentation to go with the final site. Now, its probably a good thing that I wasn’t in on that conversation, because my first response was to ask if that was grounds for calling a client silly to their face. My second reaction was to ask if we could bill them to print the documentation straight off the website & mail it to them. I’m now wondering if those consultants who charge exorbidant fees for the smallest tasks do it in retailiation for being asked to do things that are incredibly ridiculous.
Update:
It occured to me that most of my recent mentions of projects, have been discouraging ones. Just so everyone knows, we really do like this project (and this client) but they just make silly requests here and there.
In unrelated news, DF will probably be quiet for the next week (which isn’t in itself news) because I’m headed to California with my mom and a few other relatives (the news to this is that there is actually a reason other than “I just didn’t write anything”). I leave tomorrow afternoon, which means I should pack sometime.
sad state of affairs June 6, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Play , add a commentI’ve finally got a pretty good setup in my apartment, with the right configuration of fans to make it so I don’t have to turn on the AC for quite a while. But a problem with this arrangement has cropped up. My computer is overheating, not during ordinary usage mind you, but while playing City of Heroes. I must resolve this issue, and I’d hate to be forced to turn on my AC simply to let the AC deliver justice. I’m scheming (wonder if I could find a better CPU fan), but would be open to suggestions.
congradulations… June 5, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : News, Play , 1 comment so farBecause it brings me great joy to announce this on my site before dan gets it on any of his sites, congradulations are in order…. It seems that yesterday Dan proposed to his girlfriend Julie. Amazingly enough she actually accepted 
I also discovered that Cory, one of the honorary christian house members, is also engaged. These announcements make it apparent that us single grads need to close ranks & properly defend ourselves against this rash of engagements. It may be to late for Mark, Brian, Cory, Dan, etc etc, but it isn’t too late for the rest of us! Hold the line! 
That poor soul… June 3, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a commentA certain crazy client has actually convinced a recent graduate to accept a position with him. While it sounds terribly self-serving, I’m honestly not sure if I should congradulate or console him. I do hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid he’s in for worse than he thinks he is. Oh well, he never thought to ask the current technical staff the right questions about the job, and since we only met with him while the client was around we couldn’t very well bring any concerns up. He’ll start in a couple weeks, ironicly while I’m out of town.
Oh and speaking of insanity, my launchcast station has revealed to me that Billy Joel has something to say about the subject…
You may be right, I may be crazy,
But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for