DogsWithoutWings.com Blog

This little turtle got caught by a gator. Wanted to help him but didn't want to mess with the balance of nature. After we rode off he pulled him down into the water.

U mirin'?

Saw this this little guy in the everglades while riding. He started to kick sand when he saw us, not sure if he was digging a hole or protecting his territory.

After too many years of not riding a group of us started doing 15 mile rides on the weekend (need more exercise). Felt good but sore. Seeing that we all had Walmart bought mountain bikes, one person upgraded to a nice brand name hybrid (road/light trail). Like a sheep, I followed the lead and I have one coming in this weekend (a little cheaper than my friend's). Cost me 650 bones. Feels bad man, but at least the economy is stimulated.

Here it is, the 2010 Specialized Crosstrail Elite

With bigger hard drives backup becomes more important because of the amount of data we keep on our computers. I started using Sugar Sync to backup my Subversion repository but I think I need something that can store a ton of data for my pictures, video, etc. This is where Drobo comes in, specifically the Drobo FS. This model is a 5 disk gigabit ethernet network store which uses a technology called BeyondRAID. Unlike regular RAID you can add, remove and replace disks without reconfiguring the device. You can also switch from 1 to 2 disk redundancy on the fly, assuming you have enough free space.  On top of that you can mix and match drive sizes without the storage penalty of regular RAID, and if you are already at the 5 disk maximum, swap out your smallest disk for a larger one. It is kind of pricy at over $500 but I need to have a complete backup strategy going.

Happened to me in 2007, stolen from my driveway overnight.

2000 Acura Integra GS-R
2000-2007 RIP
Feels bad man.

Writing emails may never be the same.

Dammit I got my copy while I am at work with 3.5 (about three fiddy) hours to go. Gonna be a long work day.

So I recently opened a checking account at Chase. On the brochure is their new envelope-less ATMs (my Bank of America has had them for a couple years). To activate my debit card I am required to make an ATM transaction or call a number and refuse a few services they try to sell me. So I took a check, enter my card, my pin, the check and boom. CHECK NOT RECOGNISED. WTF? It was a printed check, not handwritten. Tried again, same outcome. Tried a third time, REJECTED. No way to override the system.

Now I have to wait until Saturday because I work almost the same hours as the bank. I actually never had this problem at Bank of America. Sucks brahs.

Update: It seems that this problem was not an isolated case and they are waiting for the company to update the software in the ATMs.

Sweet, I knew my silverlight development skills would be useful for something. Hopefully this will also increase the number of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) windows application. Get to work developers!

Silverlight

A dog's struggle with cancer was put to an end, video shows his last minutes. I love dogs.

Video

Women should stay in the kitchen?

There's this feature I just found out in Windows 7. If you move your mouse to the top of the window until you get the resize icon, if you double click it will fill the screen verically. Do it again to return to the original size.

Do they even make these anymore?

According to Matt from IGN, speaking to a developer at the GDC some previous Natal showings have been far from impressive. He writes

"Natal, though -- the motion offering from Microsoft -- not so much. The same studio rep calls Natal a big, buggy mess. "It's sh*t," he adds, saying that it just doesn't work as promised. That it's slow and that the camera is imprecise, which he notes, is causing some major development woes."

You can read the rest of the article at IGN.

So at GDC XNA Game Studio 4.0 was announced for the Windows Phone 7 (I think that's what it's called). But it doesn't support Zune HD, wtf. I don't want to get a phone contract to develop apps or games. Fix this Microsoft!

XNA 4.0 FAQ

Cost me $30 but I recycled a computer (Pentium 2), printer, and crt monitor at Staples for $10 each. Closet looks nice and empty now, except for all the notebooks I used in my 6 years of college. Gotta save the planet brahs.

When you find this in it.

So Microsoft is having an event on their cloud computing platform Azure on the 11th in Fort Lauderdale, FL and I will be there to be a part of the cloud 'revolution.' I don't know the gist of storage buckets, but my entire company's web presence could be moved to the cloud except (yes there had to be one) one Visual Basic ActiveX control that needs to be registered on the server. We use it for generating PDFs which may possible be replaced by the Silverlight 4 printing features. It still would require a lot of work though.

I did mention in one of my previous post that software takes 3 rewrites to get right. Maybe this site will be moving to the cloud next. It would certainly reduce my monthly costs since I'm paying for 1.5 terabytes of bandwidth a month but use less than 1 gigabyte. What can I do? Companies oversell.

Unlike most other Securom games listed on Steam, Battlefield Bad Company 2 didn't list its usage on the game info box to the right, but in the middle of a lengthy disclaimer below the description. Learning about this 18 hours before the release I immediately opened a ticket to request a full refund of my preorder, which I had paid for over a month in advance.

Why is this? I remember EA dropping Securom for their Steam releases after the backlash from Spore. Why? It was my most anticipated game this year. Now my only exposure will be a Gamefly rental of the inferior Xbox 360 version. Inferior because of my superior PC specs, and the addition of 8 extra players per map.  How I miss the 64 player games of old. The hours I wasted on Battlefield 1942, Vietnam and 2 were some of my best gaming memories ever.

Isn't Steam in itself enough DRM? I have to log into Steam and also use my Steam issued CD key in order to play online. Why? Why? Why? Just take my money and let me play in peace. In a couple months when Gamefly actually has the game in stock to ship my way I will be cursing at the controller, because the guy just infront of me... turned after getting pierced by my gun... only to end one of my many lives... because the wrist is mightier than the thumb.