Saturday, September 29, 2007

Funny Work Stories: The Lightning Rod

So I get an email today from one of my many bosses, wondering why I haven't closed the back parking lot gate the last two days when I left work.

Now, we play this game here all the time.Here's how it goes:

My "job" is to close the back gate when I leave. I have a key that fits inside a slot on the side of the building that can do this. This slot, obviously, is on the outside of the building. Sometimes, for obvious weather reasons, you don't want to stand there turning this key while the gate slowly closes.

Well, there exists a number of garage door openers - or "clickers" as we refer to them - that can close the gate remotely. You simply open the back door, click the button, and the gate closes while you are protected from inclement weather.

The man who emails my boss and complains about the back gate being left open is the very man who likes to hide all of these clickers so that the closing employee cannot find them. For the most part, I grin and bear this childish bulls**t because I need this job to pay my mortgage. Until I find another, less idiotic job, I have to deal with it.

Now, if you were to check the weather reports for the last two nights in the Binghamton, NY area, you would see that we had severe thunderstorms. We're talking small flash floods on the roads, hail, wind, and some crazy-ass lightning.

Ask yourself, does any job pay you enough to stand in the lightning storm, holding a metal key in a metal slot that is attached to the largest metal object in sight?

F**K NO!

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Busy busy busy...

Well, I just knocked out another review. Logitech's G9 mouse down, uh...a few more to go. It's very easy to fall behind the amount of stuff being piled on my desk. When I started doing hardware reviews, I had no idea how much stuff we would pull in this year. It's a lot more than I could have ever dreamed. I like it!

I also have another interview for a full time job coming up, and I'm still waiting to hear about the last interview.

Oh, and I'm trying to divide me free time between Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, WoW, Zelda on the Wii, Ghost Recon 2, and Guild Wars. Yeah, that's not going to well, and next week Quake Wars gets added to the list. Ah well, it's all in good fun.

Razer Deathadder firmware issues: Press release



Dear Razer Gamers,

It has been brought to our attention that the Razer DeathAdder gaming mouse firmware version 1.21 has some compatibility issues with several recently released PC motherboards* (full list of affected chipsets and motherboards below) in the market. Such issues include instances where the mouse has intermittent power issues and exhibits undesired performance issues when plugged into this isolated range of PC motherboards.

We would like to thank the gamers who have helped us update the list of incompatible motherboards, which we are constantly updating and will be posting it onto our web sites if any other affected models are found.

We have released a new firmware update (Razer DeathAdder firmware version v1.25**) which addresses these compatibility issues for all Razer DeathAdder mice that are already on firmware version 1.21. Please note that all other owners of the Razer DeathAdder not using firmware version 1.21 (i.e. firmware version 1.1) are not affected by this compatibility issue.

In the meantime, all users with a Razer DeathAdder gaming mouse on firmware version 1.21 are advised to upgrade their firmware to version 1.25, even if your motherboard is not amongst those listed. This is to prevent any inconveniences that may occur should the mouse be brought to any LAN events and/or tournaments with computer systems using the conflicting PC motherboards.

The firmware is available for download at our Razer Support website here. For further assistance, please contact a Razer support staff on our website.

Razer is committed to providing all gamers with an arsenal of the best gaming peripherals and constantly ensures that all relevant platforms support Razer peripherals as intended.

* List of Motherboards:

• Intel 865P Chipset

• Intel 865PE Chipset

• NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Chipset

• NVIDIA nForce 680i Chipset

• Intel P965 Express Chipset,

• Intel P965 Northbridge, i82801HR Southbridge

** Requires Razer DeathAdder driver version 1.08

Headquartered in San Diego, California, Razer™ collaborates with gamers to develop, manufacture and market cutting-edge gaming peripherals utilizing proprietary technologies that give gamers the competitive edge. Razer products have earned critical praise and won multiple awards from around the world for their precision, sensitivity, usability and distinctions in product design. Engineered to near perfection, Razer’s reputation of being the leader in gaming peripheral technology is embodied in every single Razer product. For more information, please visit www.razerzone.com.

Amazon MP3 store

Amazon is now selling MP3s. Why is this better than iTunes, Napster, or any of a host of other sites? It's a very simple answer:

Amazon sells DRM free MP3s.

What does that mean? It means you own that MP3 when you buy it. It means you can put it on all of your PCs (iTunes an others limit the number of PCs), it mean you can burn it to a CD to put in your car, you can copy it to an MP3 player, in short, you can pretty much do what you want with it, short of redistributing it.

All for the same price as an iTunes DRM loaded file. Nice.

ABC news has a story on it HERE.

I purchased several single songs, and an entire album tonight. The purchase was fast, and the downloads were very speedy. And the MP3s are all 256kbps encoded, so they sound great. I've been waiting for this service to go live for a long time, and I'm very happy with it now. The only tiny problem is that not all labels/artists have signed on yet, so you can't find every song you want, but I think most of them will sign on in time.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Stargate Atlantis Season 4 Premiere

STARGATE ATLANTIS (Season 4) premieres Friday SEPTEMBER 28 at 10PM - Watch it LIVE! - Let others know 9/28 is the Official 1st Watch it LIVE day. Stargate fans across the nation need to band together for this- no DVR's.

Of course, I don't have cable, myself, but you can bet I will be getting it from iTunes as soon as it is available.

Robert Jordan's wife posts epilogue to his life

Dragonmount Post

Razer Copperhead review up @ MMORPG.com

Razer Copperhead Review