Evening Reading
by Steve Gibson, Aug 29, 2007 6:00pm PDTYeah, so I think maybe a few more weeks and we'll actually have a pretty good podcast. It's improving each week which is a good thing. Perhaps!
- Chicago decides WiFi is for suckers
- Major Vista update in 2008
- FBI wiretapping
- Net regulation rejected
Daily Filter: Planetside 2, Deadlight
Weekend PC digital deals: strategy-o-rama
38 Studios, Harry Potter Kinect - Shacknews Daily: May 25, 2012
Minecraft for Xbox 360 dev working on 'Adventure' update
Demon's Souls servers extended again
RE: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=15008754#itemanchor_15008754
Received it yesterday and it works great! If you count the time, that's 3 days from offer to receiving it. That's just incredibly awesome and cool.
Thanks again Megarust32!
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What do you want....now?
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http://shackers.gamewith.us/wii/metroid-prime-3-corruption/friend-codes
I just added about 4 new folks, please return the favor!
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Tuesday night, my air conditioner went out. Actually it was some time during the day on Tuesday but I didn't notice it until Tuesday night when I got home from work. I called Joey, told him what it was doing and he diagnosed the problem for me: either the capacitor that powers the fan motor, or the fan motor, on the outside unit. Capacitors cost about $10, fan motors cost about $40 (both prices wholesale).
Wednesday morning I'm writing a check for $421. That's 2.5 hours for labor at $75/hr (90 minutes of which was driving to get parts), $150 for a fan motor, $20 for a capacitor and $50 for a call-out fee (i.e. just by showing up, I owe him fifty bucks). But best of all, the AC is fixed. Right?
Well, the new setup wobbles. Bad. Like shaking the entire top of the unit bad. So I'm standing there with the repair guy saying "should it be wobbling that much?", he says it isn't that bad, he even adjusted the fan position to fix the wobble a little. The problem is, you re-use the fan blade and if you ding that fan blade even a little (as he no doubt did removing it from the unit) it will move around when you spin it at 1075 RPM's. So I figure fine, if it breaks I can just call him back. Fast-forward to midnight that night, and yep, it's broke. The wobbling had caused the wires powering the fan motor to fall down into the fan blade, cutting the wires and shorting the entire AC unit (which tripped the breaker). My only regret is not being there precisely when it happened to see the shower of sparks fly up into the air.
So I call the guy bright and early at 8AM, hey dude the fan motor is out again, the wobble made the conduit fall into the blades and the blades cut the power wires. I'm at work, so he heads out, replaces the motor (again) and the fan blade (at his expense), then calls me back to let me know that it's working. When I get home, I turn the AC on, and it's blowing cold air. Good, all fixed.
But I go outside to inspect the outdoor unit, and the fan is now sucking air down into the unit, instead of blowing air up out of the unit. The original fan that was on there blew air out. The first replacement fan blew air out. Every residential air conditioner unit I've ever looked at in my entire life blows the air up and out. The function of the fan is to cool the compressor coils, it does this by sucking air through the coils and blowing hot air out the top of the unit. Reversing that airflow gives you some air circulation, but the unit is far less efficient.
So I call the guy and immediately get attitude. You're killing me here, this is why I don't do residential, blah blah blah. I asked him the question straight: I don't do this for a living man, you do. You tell me, is that fan supposed to suck air into the unit or blow air out of it? He won't answer me straight, because I know I'm right and HE knows I'm right. He immediately comes over and I can tell that he's frustrated, so I show him that the fan is blowing the wrong way, and I head back inside.
He's done in about 15 minutes. All it takes is reversing a couple of wires to the fan power to reverse the fan direction, it's not hard. When he hooked it up this morning he could have thought to check the fan direction and it would have saved him the trip this evening to fix it.
So our lesson for the evening is two-fold:
1. If you're going to overcharge somebody for a job, and you want to protect your profit margin, do it right the first time. In each instance the repair guy had to come back out because of a problem that he himself had caused.
2. Educate yourself about the work that someone is doing for you, especially if it is expensive work. Observing the work that they do, verifying the results and just letting them know that you are watching them will show them that you intend to hold them accountable and get you better results in the long run.
oh and p.s. Bioshock rules
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I'm asking this around most of my favorite gaming forums about this. I bought the monitor off E-Bay, and it seems to work fine with scaled down resolutions. Hoping I didn't get a bum monitor, because this is the A04 version, and not one dead pixel... thanks guys, if anyone has any experience with these monsters :)
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http://www.sparklyfresh.com/audio/how-much-longer.mp3
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I just stumbled upon something that's pretty sweet (if I and/or the Shack can get it to work). I'm trying to see if I can get Google Calendar to import in my Outlook Calendar from Microsoft Office Online. With Outlook 2007, you can publish your calendar to Microsoft Office Online (I didn't realize this till today). It creates an ical file online...so I should be able to add said ical file to Google Calendars. The idea is this: Outlook 2007 automatically publishes my Outlook calendar to Microsoft Office Online; Google Calendar subscribes to the ical file that was just made in Office Online. Now I have my calendar seemlessly going to Google Calendars (and don't need to use any remotecalendar program). The one hitch is that Microsoft Office online doesn't actually give me a direct link: it actually gives me a link that starts with webcal://blahblahblah.ics. However, if you just change webcal to https, you get the file. Unfortunately, when I try to add the *.ics link (with https) into Google Calendar, it says "can't find url", even though I can paste the link directly into firefox and download the file. The whole point of iCal is that it's a standardized format, right? So Google Calendar should be able to import it in. Any ideas why it's not working?
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This is in no way a competitive clan. It's just a way to play together between us.
Don't forget to sign-up on Gamewith.us
http://shackers.gamewith.us/ps3/warhawk
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I've been putting game release dates on my personal Google Calendar and I have known you can make them public.
So I've made mine public and people can view it at the following link:
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=90dd7mquq10esmi692sm2bpanc%40group.calendar.google.com
You can even subscribe to it with the link in the calendar or it's also located in my profile.
Unlike these other game release date calendars I keep mine up to date and at the moment only reflect release dates on the systems I own. PC, Xbox 360, NDS, and Wii. I will start to add other platform games as well and if there is official news on Shacknews or other gaming news sites I'll list a link in the item as proof. I'm going to start doing that from now on and look for recent articles on the shack about game release dates.
Feedback is appreciated and it will help to keep it up to date. Hope everyone will enjoy it.
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http://members.shaw.ca/morgin/a.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/morgin/b.jpg
i need that to say '08 instead of '07
much thanks.
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http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/thebraveone/
Jodie Foster in The Brave One. Naveen I-also-want-your-balls Andrews is in this shortly. The trailer makes it look better than Death Sentence.
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Hmmm!
In reply...
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Hell, I don't care where, I just don't wanna go home =/
p.s. fuck you multisync, digitalburro, action wombmate =(
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Our Live Account is Ratalon ADD US!!
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This weekend is Free DEFCON gaming on steam.
Starting at around 5pm on Friday through Sunday, you can play Defcon on Steam for free.
Just download the trial and it will convert.
C'mon, you know you want to repave the earth with your "nucular" weapons.
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Developer Walkthrough Video in HD
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24261.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24281.html
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thanks to Tkillbox and his shack message, I disabled my wacom tablet (who knew this to try it first? most random glitch ever) and I finally played the bioshock demo as intended, dx10 at high detail. i dont know if the sound was effected by the wacom tablet as well, but this second playthrough for whatever reason sounded so much better than the first time through.
some observations (that probably have been said before many times, but oh well, you're reading anyways...
dx10 makes nice fog and ripples, and the softer transitions from the edges of particles was nice. but beyond that, there is no major difference between dx9 and 10 except for that my game was smooth as glass the entire time in dx9, and pretty smooth most of the time with dx10, as there were a efw moments that i wouldnt call a slowdown, but a definite drop from close to 60 down to around 30 fps.
it's up to you whether the small extra touches are worth the performance hit. I hope future dx10 games find a way to avoid the slower, but still playable, performance. i dont care if a certain effect takes a shorter amount of time in dx10 to make, it doesnt play quicker, that's for sure. if dx 9 can in theory pull off the same visual effect without the performance hit, but it takes the designer a week longer to design it, fuck it, i'll deal with it, i'd rather them make it in dx9.
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http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2351086.ece
In a way he's right. We need a sci-fi revival like fantasy has had in the last decade.
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mostest deliciousest tomatoes i've tasted.. yumm
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Would you prefer:
A: Lesbian scene with her doing another tattooed woman
B: Really hardcore and raunchy scene with her and a dude.
Whichever gets 5 votes first I'll post in this thread.
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Yet we still know the full boxed set http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JPNH is coming! (and none of this is in HD!)
Sadly, still no word yet on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machete_%28film%29
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genjuro
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/1383-Zero-Punctuation-Console-Rundown
Sure to make all of the console fanboi's mad
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfgNf64duII
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One of my favorites is this Bomberman 64 commercial, set to the Spiderman theme. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XTLG4_Om7c
Post your favorite videogame ads!
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And for some reason, Jeremy Piven, motherfucking Ari Gold, is standing against a wall in the video with Common nodding his head to the beat. Does anyone know why?
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See if you can get a key here:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=171065
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http://www.darkhorizons.com/news07/070830o.php
guhhhhh. why?? It can't possibly be better then the original?
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