Category: Geekery

Half Life 2

I got Half Life 2 for Christmas. It arrived this afternoon. So far today I’ve spent about 2 hours playing it, and so far I’ve gotten to two “exposition points” where you meet somebody friendly and you think they are going to explain everything to you, but really all they do is say “You’ve got to get to so-and-so’s lab, RUN LIKE HELL”. I’ve met a lot of those ghoulish looking “Civil Protection” guys, and those flying buzz saws, and just a minute ago I got cut to ribbons by a helicopter gunship of some sort. I’ve got my crow bar, a pistol and a submachine gun. Ammo for the SMG is darn scarce, which is annoying. Back in HL1, it seemed you used the MP5 all the time – I find myself having to be more careful about this SMG.

Technically the graphics are stunning, the AI looks way better, and so far I’ve seen some very cool things. One of the interesting things was the way the NPCs would keep turning their head towards you as you walked around them when they were talking.

Of course, all this technical sophistication comes with a cost. The original came on one CD, this one comes on 5. I played the original on a 300MHz Celeron 300A overclocked to 450MHz and a 16Mb TNT graphics card. This one is a Athlon XP2400+ processor and an 128Mb ATI graphics card, and I get the impression I’m barely keeping up. The hideously slow loads as you move from one area to the next are still there, and they seem longer. One of the strangest things is that some mobile objects fade away as you walk half-way across a room away from them. The smaller the object, the sooner they fade away. One thing that was a little annoying to me was the lack of an Obstacle Course or Boot Camp to get used to the movement controls. Instead, as you progress you get little prompts the first time you are likely to need something, like “Use Z to zoom”, in a box on the screen. (Speaking of which, I wish I could shoot when I’m zooming.)

I’m only playing at medium level this time, which is just as well – I keep getting my ass nearly shot off, and then finding a big cache of health/ammo/armour. As a matter of fact, just before I quit, I found one that got me from about 17 health and no armour up to 100 health and 30 armour. Laura remarked “You know you’re being prepped to hit something really nasty”, and she’s right. So I hit save and decided to call it a night.

I can tell that this game is going to be fun. I don’t know if it’s going to be as much fun as the original, but it’s looking good so far.

Micro Rant

If you’re new to the project, don’t start telling me that the way I’m doing something isn’t automatic enough and I should just tell our translators that they should do this, this, and ths so that we can automate more of our process. I’ve been through 7 previous rounds of sending stuff off to the translators and dealing what they sent back, and it’s hard enough to get them to remember the corrective action report you sent them the last time, never mind getting them to use 100% consistent file names.

That is all.

Why are spammers such assholes?

Ok, spammers are lowlife lying scumbag thieves. That much is a given, and it’s not exactly news. So why am I upset? Well, because a spam got through my filters. And not just any spam, but a spam advocating a cause I support – helping the UCC get their commercial on the air in spite of anti-gay backlash from CBS and NBC. And to make it worse, it went to one of my role accounts, not my normal account. I occassionally post to usenet with this role account, but almost always just to groups that are local to that role, although sometimes I use it to post to other newsgroups in the region or to the news.admin groups. I never have, and I never will, use this email address to sign up for newsletter or ask for information – that would kill the very reason for having role account.

I immediately fired off a complaint, pointing out that before I got the spam I was supporting the cause, but now that they’ve descended to spam I wasn’t. No response, except a few days later I got another spam. This time I said what I really thought.

What followed was the usual dance of denials, lies, evasions, and general scumbaggery that anybody who has talked to a spammer is all too familiar with.
Some highlights:

If your name wound up on our list without your consent it was assuredly not due to anything intentional, such as harvesting.

Bullshit.

And by the way, a courteous note would have done just as well.

My experience suggests not.

So why am I upset? It’s just business as usual for a spammer, right? Well, except this one professes to be a non-demoninational religious organization, and I sort of expect them to have a moral code. I’m naive that way.

Mail filters written by idiots.

I got an email from my Dad, and since it’s a Microsoft Turd document I tried to bounce it to my work account so that I could read it there. But it bounced:

<tomblin@foo.bar.com>: host mailgate5.foo.bar.com[192.232.121.235] said: 550
    Message refused - Banned text appeared in header or body: 'shit' (in reply
    to end of DATA command)

I piped the message through strings to see where the banned text occurred. It was somebody’s name – “Phil Matushita”. Words fail me.