"Differential Diagnosis"

The FCC hosted a public hearing in Boston on February 25th to discuss the future of the internet. In the weeks leading up to this event, several pro “Net Neutrality” organizations educated and encouraged the people of Boston to attend and voice their opinions on the issue directly. The hearing is part of the ongoing investigation into Comcast’s practice of restricting peer to peer internet traffic over their networks.

Clearly Comcast and other anti-net neutrality corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner don’t want the FCC to decide in favor of net neutrality, this would stifle their profit margin by disallowing them, in the near future,? to charge content providers extra to “guarantee” their content is accessible over their networks in a timely manner, if at all.

With such an important matter on hand, hundreds of citizens showed up to the hearing only to be denied entry. Why? Because the limited seating within was filled almost ninety minutes before the hearing began. Closer inspection of the many people inside Ames Hall revealed them to be mere “seat warmers” who showed no interest in the hearing itself by falling asleep shortly before the event began! One blogger from SaveTheInternet.com quoted one fellow having said he was, “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.” The same fellow went on that he had no idea what the meeting was about.

With several sources accusing Comcast of paying disinterested people to sit in to prevent truly concerned citizens from speaking, Comcast finally reported having paid people to hold places in line but never admitted having paid people to fill seats to prevent anyone from attending.

Clearly Comcast doesn’t want the FCC to rule in favor of net neutrality, but net neutrality should be standard practice in a country that claims to promote free speech and equal rights to all citizens. This is a prime example of what? one blogger says is “big corporations using its financial resources to marginalize the public from the policymaking process.”

Having received my first speeding ticket a few months ago, I’m sitting here taking a defensive driving course to have it expunged from my record, and lower my insurance rates at the same time. The state requires I sit here for a total of six hours reading a booklet, and watching videos that look like they were produced in the early 80’s.

Sure, learning about the possible consequences of drunk driving or reckless driving is all fine and dandy, but couldn’t they at least update their material? I’m pretty sure I won’t be driving a station wagon while wearing leg warmers at dangerous speeds anytime soon.

Bah, but perhaps I’m just bitter about the fact that I was clocked going 4 mph over the posted limit, which is still considered speeding mind you, but having had a clean driving record, and safe/clear driving conditions, I would have hoped to have gotten only a warning. Alas, no such luck!

I grew up in a border town, which severely limited my exposure to many ethnicities or races besides Latinos. As I grew older and began learning of the world, I found it interesting to learn and understand the motivation of certain races and cultures, and why they behave the way they do. While this isn’t a scientific study of any culture or race, this is one of the funniest blogs I’ve seen in a long time, and I highly recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor to check it out! Enjoy!

Stuff White People Like

Rarely will I go out of my way to write about a game in any form what so ever, since frankly the only people I influence in regards to games won’t ever read this. However, Lost Odyssey has provoked me…

Having clocked about twenty hours of game play in one weekend is no small feat for me, let alone having a game that can keep me glued to it for long uncontrolled bursts of pure turn-based, random battle bliss. Sure, some believe that turn based games are a drudgery. Others may say random battles are suppose to be extinct. To those nay sayers out there, let me tell you, Lost Odyssey has done these things right.

The one thing that has kept me intrigued with Lost Odyssey isn’t its graphics or the “outdated” game play those other game reviewers are focusing on, its the story. More specifically, its the story of a man who has the gift of immortality. As people get older, they begin to deal with death and start realizing that life is brittle and every one will eventually die. Some people accept this fate, while others spend lifetimes searching for ways to avoid death. As someone who questions the meaning of life, as I’m sure most of you have, I have often wished to experience immortality. To live forever would be great, wouldn’t it?

Lost Odyssey’s story focuses on a man, Kaim, who has been given immortality and has lived a thousand years. Every good story has to have a worthy villain, and how is a villain suppose to kill a man that cannot die? Stripping someone of their memories will leave them an empty living shell, essentially killing the person they used to be.

What the story does throughout the game, is it slowly allows the main character to recall his memories. Often times these memories are recalled in cut scenes, but most of the time you will be reading his memories in the form of dreams triggered by similar events happening in the real world. Kaim’s dreams are presented to the player through the simplest interface I could imagine, a power point presentation is a fitting description. These short stories/poems are presented with timed sound effects, colorful fitting backgrounds, and even the occasional animated effect.

For one to truly understand Kaim, one must read and understand these dreams. Most every dream focuses around death and the frailty of human life. However, death is not always a topic to be sad about. The dreams are a great way to instill the wisdom of a thousand years into the gamers mind. Death is what makes our human lives, and the accomplishments completed during our lives, mean something. It is a right we earn at the end to rest eternally. It is the frailty of life that makes humans want to live life to the fullest. Death is an accomplishment unto itself. To remove a persons ability to die, is diminishing the meaning of their accomplishments.

Having to experience the tragedy of eternal life through the eyes of the writer is heart breaking. One would almost welcome having your memories erased. This is your main character, Kaim Argonar.

You’ve arrived at your doctor’s office fifteen minutes early for your appointment, you casually walk over to the front desk and let them know you’ve arrived. You’re then asked to have a seat in the waiting area while the doctor finishes up with his last appointment. Thirty minutes later, you’re still waiting to be seen!

Fast forward another thirty minutes, now you’re sitting in a room being asked ridiculous questions by a nurse, as she finishes up and walks out the door, she says the doctor will be with you in a few minutes. Ten minutes go by and the doctor finally walks in the door.

Your doctor studies your chart, asks you a few brief questions, then pulls out his magical pad and hands you your salvation. A brief explanation of your illness and the medications he’s prescribed for you, and out the door he goes. Just under ten minutes! So why did he take so long to see you?

One of the most common complaints I hear from people about doctors, is that they’re always running late. You wait, wait some more, and when the doctor finally sees you…its a quick in and out. He doesn’t chit chat with you, he doesn’t ask you how your cat Mr.Cuddles is doing, nothing. Just in and out, how rude! More »

As a “computer guy”, one of the worst calls you can get after hours is a call from your companies’ monitoring center calling to let you know your equipment has failed, and someone needs to go fix it. I dread those phone calls, but at the same time…I love them! Before you peg me as a nutjob, let me explain.

Managing an aging system know for its reliability, security, and stability has its draw backs. Patches are far and few between, and unexpected failures are almost non-existent. This makes learning the crucial ins and out of a system a bit more difficult, since you really have no need to be poking around in it. Super powerful commands and tools available on the system remain unused for years at a time! Knowledge of these commands is slowly pushed into the darker nether regions making it harder and harder to remember. Even worse, the “new guy” is hired and the senior staff member doesn’t feel the need to cover certain commands or tools simply because they are rarely used, or even because he himself doesn’t recall them. The senior staff member leaves, and the “new guy” suddenly finds himself as the senior member. This is why some employees aren’t quite up to par on the workings of the system I work with. I dread the feeling of being just a person filling a chair so the company can get paid. If I’m there to maintain and manage a system, I want to truly learn the ins and outs of that system.

Once I get that phone call, I’m finally able to use some of these commands and tools to get the job done. Even better, sometimes I might not have any idea what needs to be done! Thats great, because the company has “Tier 3″ support available 24/7. Speaking to these fine people is a real pleasure since most of them have been working with this system for years, and deal with all kinds of emergencies almost daily by walking site personnel step by step over the phone through all kinds of procedures. I always learn something new when speaking with someone at Tier 3. A new command, a new feature, a new method of doing something, or even a better understanding of a current toolset. Imagine my surprise when this “new guy” suddenly started getting phone calls and e-mails from other site personnel in my district asking ME for help on something. Thats a good feeling, and one that I truly love.

A good friend of mine once told me something about IT work like ours, “We’re not paid to work, we’re paid to be there just in case.” Its in those “just in case” moments where I truly thrive and enjoy my line of work. You can keep the internet surfing time for yourselves, give me a system failure any day!

After turning on my computer this afternoon, the Windows Vista Update notice popped up. Despite what others have advised me, I’ve been pretty good about installing Vista Updates the day they come out. If anything, I believe I’m proficient enough with Windows now a days that I can solve most issues that might occur.

After the mandatory reboot, I was greeted once again with the Windows Update notice. I installed the only update on the list and went about my business online. A few minutes later, the same update pops up again…this was odd indeed. After poking around with my system and reinstalling the update a few more times, I decided to go straight to Microsoft itself and download the update, which is available here.

I’ve installed the update manually, which I’ve never had to do before with Windows Vista, and the problem seems to have gone away. I kept Googling the issue to see if I was the only one and found a few other people having been experiencing the same problem. Some have used the same method of manually installing to solve this minor annoyance. Seeing as how others seem to have encountered this issue, I decided to post it on here to make it easier for my fellow Vista 64 users to fix this.