There is another.
Grand Theft Auto IV looks amazing. Of course, it won't be out until October, and even then it may have ten different versions depending on how many groups the game pisses off.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories seems to be out for PS2 now. Ooh. I did not know this. Cut me a slice, Vic Vance!
Saturday, March 31, 2007
OMG GTA!
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Like the Swallows of Capistrano...I Have Returned.
If the temporary loss of my mouse was disorienting, the sudden and unexpected demise of our DSL modem was nothing short of earth shattering.
The new modem arrived today, after it wasn't shipped overnight last Wednesday.
Earthlink, my ISP for more than six years--after they assimilated me from Netcom--like most companies, have outsourced their tech support to India. I could launch a flat-out assault on outsourcing tech support, considering that's how I lost job #3, but that's not funny. I don't feel funny about that at all, and I'm sure if you've ever had to deal with anyone asking you questions off a list about a computer you know inside out, you've felt funny too, but not in the general "ha-ha" amusing clown way.
I have deep-seated paranoia about my past catching up with me. After all, the first thing I did back in 2001 with my late DSL modem was upload the Star Wars Holiday Special to alt.binaries.starwars because no one else would. My rip was crap, and required a special German codec to watch, but it lit the fire under the ass of whoever eventually made the current version that does the rounds, so I regret nothing.
After a few days of my service going off, but back on, I started to realize my account hadn't been taken away by irate but really slow Wookiee musical haters, but that something else was actually very wrong. I checked out the support page, and there were no reported outages, which only meant that there could be outages, but that the people experiencing the outages were unable to report them. I, however, had the power of dial-up, and a weak-ass slow power that is, too, so I reported an outage.
Earthlink gave me a credit for the outage and I happily skipped away to dinner, realizing only after several more hours of no service that something was actually very seriously wrong. I'm in the habit of checking for line noise, so I crawled under the desk with a DSL filter and my Queen Amidala phone for the twentieth time that week and, upon verifying no new line noise had appeared, made the terrible decision to call tech support.
What happened next was just the stuff of what I assume happens during bad drug trips. Other than the fact that I don't generally talk on phones, I'm the one who has to walk back and forth from the phone to the computer and verify that everything tech support is asking has been done 500 times so Mum had to figure out what the techie was saying then repeat it to me three rooms away while I fought the urge to get on with "James" and say a far more colorful version of, "The modem's just dead and please replace it before I say something I'll regret because not only do I have aphasia and forget 'Link' halfway down the hallway, but I'm pretty sure the modem is dead, but okay, because you're just doing your job and really don't know anything about computers beyond what's written down in front of you, I'll turn it off and wait four hours before declaring time of death."
The next day, thanks to a man I met on a newsgroup--which you can access over dial-up, unlike Earthlink LiveSupport which informed me my connection was taking too long--I took the lifeless modem outdoors, to the junction box, and plugged it in. Flat line. Call it.
Being Mum had already played me the day before on the phone, she called in to ask for the replacement modem. It would be sent overnight. "You will have it tomorrow," the techie codenamed James said.
We did not get it tomorrow. "It will take a day-and-a-half," we were told on the third phone call. James didn't put the order in, as a matter of fact, because he had technical problems and no one had bothered to put the order in after he went home. So I spent the next five days with my computer, offline and loving it like the good old days. I wrote; I played games; I kept up with my comic and posted the strips with the dial-up. I freed up ten gigabytes of crap I just never had the time to get to, and I swear I'll never let it get that way again. I hate to say it, but I missed very little.
I can't say I curse the day I ever found out about the Royston Utilities, I can't say the Internet is without great things, but I think I've learned to back the hell away and just use the Internet as a tool. You know, like WS_FTP, MP3Trim, and MetaPad. That doesn't mean I won't still be checking Cute Overload, but if it comes down to that or playing with my own cats, the hamsters in bras can wait.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
I'm cut off from the world.
I just realized it might be nice to let you all know I've been having less than good results with my ISP recently. Basically I'm on dial-up, and that's only a few seconds at a time for only important things because the phone bill will get hit if I stay on too long.
Oh, have I got a story for when I come back.
Meanwhile, this and this and this sum up my life at the moment.
I'm the rabid squirrel.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Flickr beg notice.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
You kids don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
I find perverse joy in watching people try to figure out how to use a computer without a mouse. It's how I started, using the alt+ combos and that block of six keys...yeah, you mousers, I give you thirty seconds to locate your End--WITHOUT LOOKING!
Why the uppity bitterness? I don't know. Maybe it's because my mouse decided to go nuts and occasionally the cursor whizzes by as if to remind me it doesn't need me if I'm going to be all in love with my keyboard.
I always wanted to make a cursor with a finger other than the index finger extended. Had I gotten around to that, the mouse's current movements would be even more humorous.
It's interesting to see what websites play well with keyboard shortcuts. Blogs are tedious to tab around, especially one like mine with a long list of links down the left side. Newsgator, my RSS hunter/gatherer of choice, works amazingly well.
YouTube videos, however, are practically inaccessible unless a link is included. Flash in general is impossible to navigate without a mouse, because the window neds to be clicked on before ctrl+w or ctrl+tab will work; so are Java-based scratch-off lottery games--those are impossible to win with a working mouse, as well.
Somewhere in between Flash and Java are the navigational links for Yahoo! mail. Unless you're hellbent on decoding the status bar, there's no indication what you'll actually be getting when you hit enter.
It's a true experiment in something even less than mediocrity, and I'm glad to have done this service so you don't have to. Treat your pointing devices kindly and they won't leave you hanging while you try to throw together a graphic or two. Treat them poorly, and learn to use that thing with all the letters and numbers on it fast.
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