Quick Pinball Fix

I took Anne’s advice (after much hand-wringing trying to get Virtual Pinmame working), and purchased Williams Pinball Hall of Fame (for the XBox 360). Mostly, I got this one (as opposed to the Gottlieb version) because it has two of my all time favorite pinball machine in it: Funhouse and Medieval Madness.

I have to say it’s a pretty good representation of playing on the full machines — although I often want better camera angles to choose from. My mad skillz at Funhouse seem to have translated over, and my high score on the actual machine seems pretty close to my current high score in the video game. I’m not sure, but playing the video game might constitute a decent form of practice for real pinball.

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Last 1-800-Flowers update

I finally got a refund from 1-800-flowers. 23 days after this all started, I can close the book on this mess.

For the record, don’t bother talking with them on the phone. Just go straight to the online customer support (who could have guessed).

How to Create a Software Pirate

Ubisoft has perfected a simple 4-step method for turning gamers into software pirates:

1. Release a new game with invasive DRM
2. Wait 24 hours for the obligatory cracked versions (or not)
3. Have the required DRM servers crash
4. PROFIT!!!

Seriously, how could they not have expected this… I’m guessing that the DRM authentication servers are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks. Whether this outage is the result of a coordinated attack or not, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see one in the future.

Of iPads, Couriers, and Failure

Apple is about to release the iPad (April 3, 2010), and while I don’t know if it’s going to be a huge success, I think they’ve figured out some problems that others are still struggling with. For instance, I just had a look at Gizmodo’s coverage of the “Microsoft Courier” (what a new font, really?). Ok, it’s a prototype tablet computer — and it’s a failure. At least, it will be if it ships in the form that Gizmodo presents. I think it solves next to no problems, but is extremely limited compared it’s competition that it can’t succeed. I could compare it to the iPad, but I’m pretty sure that’s not even a fair fight. No it’s real competition are netbooks, and they’re so much nicer it’s not even funny.

To really understand my point, have a look at the galleries for each device. The iPad’s is here, and the Courier can be seen here. See any differences?

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My first iPhone app

I’m still tinkering, but I pretty much just finished my first iPhone app that’s more interesting than a list of text. As I mentioned before, I’m taking the iPhone class at UMD this semester; and this is/was lab #3. Basically it’s just a small app that creates bubbles as you tap the screen, and pops them if you tap the bubble. The project specification is online here.

I’ve added a few additional features: “pop” sound and vibration, custom bubbles, multiple bubble sizes and additional colors, application icon, about screen, and removing the status and icon bars while bubbles are on screen. It’s probably not worth $0.99 (and I can’t publish to the App Store even if I wanted to), but at least one of the kids likes it. Mostly, I’m jazzed to have created something that works on the phone. Here are some screenshots (so you can see what you aren’t missing).



Snow Suck

Town Plow on Fire Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse Now, Snotorious B.I.G. call it what you will, the blizzard of 2010 was pretty miserable for us.

If you don’t follow my Twitter Feed/Facebook Wall, you might not know that last week’s snow storm was pretty traumatic for the family. Besides 55″ of snow, we had a town truck catch fire in front of our house, blocking us in (that’s my car just ahead of the truck.

Being trapped in the house wouldn’t have been so bad, except that our power went out about 30 minutes after truck got stuck. We were without power and heat for 32 hours, and it took Kim heating up the phones to get the plow moved in only 25 hours. While being stuck in the house for 1 day doesn’t sound so bad, the house was cold enough that we could see our breath (about 50 degrees). We all bundled up and the kids toughed it out; joining us in our bed for warmth overnight.

The big effort went on towards the end of the outage where we heated aquarium water on the stovetop and manually cycled water in all 5 (condensed from 6) fish tanks. At the onset the tanks were all around 55º, and we had to keep heating water and adding back to the tanks until they got into the 70º range. I think we saved all of the fish, but we might have lost my red cherry shrimp (at least I haven’t seen them since).

Delivering the goods…

It’s becoming clear to me that some forms of customer service are dead. I sit here currently on hold with 1-800-flowers.com after complaining about the bouquet that was just delivered. The bouquet I ordered is pictured to the left, the one that arrived is significantly different. Although their description states the arrangement would include: “Fresh roses, lisianthus, lilies, sunflowers, stock and more”, the only flower from that list that arrived were lillies — the rest of the bouquet is made up of carnations and tulips. Even assuming the promised varieties weren’t available, the color scheme of the arrangement is significantly different. The example bouquet is a high contrast combination of purple, yellow and white, while the one we received is mostly orange, with little contrast. I chose this bouquet for Valentine’s day over more typical arrangements because it was representative of the time Kim and I spent in Provence last year (it’s even called French Countryside). To receive significantly different flowers defeats the purpose. After 2 phone calls and having completed most of this blog post, I’ve been promised that we will get a re-delivery of exactly what we ordered tomorrow. We’ll have to see what happens there.

It’s not the first time this kind of thing happened. Last year we got shafted on an order through FloristExpress.net, though like 1-800-flowers.com they offered a redelivery and did much better the second time. If our local Chinese delivery place had this kind of track record, I’d have to eat out way more often. I wonder if that’s just modus operandi of florists — deliver any old bouquet and hope the person who placed the order doesn’t see it. If they do and they choose to complain, pony up the flowers originally promised.

Next time, I’m going to order from someplace that drop ships straight from a nursery (ProFlowers?), maybe then I’ll get what I paid for…

Update: I just got called by the florist who prepared the bouquet (!). She tried to convince me that what we received was preferable to what I ordered (!!!). She says that the lisianthus didn’t look good, and the sunflowers are out of season. Further, she says she included more flowers to make up for the change (really? couldn’t tell). She doesn’t want to replace the bouquet! So now we’re in take your flowers back, and I’ll take my money back. Let’s see what 1-800-flowers.com thinks of this development…