I thought today was supposed to be March.

Last I heard, Microsoft Train Simulator 2 was supposed to be released February 10, 2004. Of course, I haven’t seen any signs over the past two weeks that it had actually been (the official Microsoft site hasn’t been updated in a year, and just says “Release Date: 
TBA”). I finally stumbled upon EBgames.com’s purchase page, which claims a release date of 7/1/2004. I guess it’s back to waiting patiently.

I think Train Simulator is a great game, but Train Simulator 2 leaves me with a huge quandary: My three-year-old PC is just barely powerful enough to run the original game at a decent resolution and framerate. I don’t know what the official specs for the sequel will be, but the game almost certainly won’t run well on any computer I own. For that matter, I haven’t switched my PC on in months, and I’ve been thinking of getting rid of it to reclaim the desk space anyway. I’m really looking forward to playing the new game, but the idea of spending hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on a new computer just to play a $50 game seems ridiculous.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for Microsoft to do a Mac version of Train Simulator 2. I guess I’ll just have to be happy with Uru.

A few minutes ago, I was reading the rec.gambling.poker FAQ, and got to a section where it was talking about “the nuts.” Without realizing what I was doing, I walked into the kitchen, got a handful of mixed nuts, and started to eat them. After I sat back down, I realized what I had just done. I’ve known for years that I’m relatively fickle and easy to influence, but this is ridiculous.

I’ve been meaning to link to “The Lord of the Rings: A Source-Criticism Analysis” for a while. It’s pretty funny, although it troubles me a little to appreciate it (and link to it), since the fellow is “a popular Catholic writer” who is probably trying to imply something critical about the Bible source-criticism texts he parodies in the article.

I had been hoping that my favorite Usenet article ever would be fully accessible to people who had only seen Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but unfortunately The Return of the King is just different enough to ruin the post a little if you haven’t read the novel. It’s probably still good, though, if you don’t mind spoilers for the books.

At least three times, I’ve seen the signal crossing just east of the Sunnyvale Caltrain station exhibit the following behavior: as a train approaches the station from the west, the signal starts to blink, and the crossing arms drop. The train stops at the station (still not having reached the crossing), to let passengers get on and off. Just before the train leaves the station, the crossing “times out” (the train never having reached it) and turns off, letting cars cross the tracks for about five seconds before the train pulls out of the station and activates the crossing again.

I can understand the pessimal behavior on the part of the crossing equipment; it doesn’t know whether or not the train will actually stop at the station. The crossing is only a few hundred feet east of the station, and if an express train is approaching at 79 mph, it does need to start its signal well before the train would reach the station. Otherwise, there would not be enough time to safely enable the crossing arms. But it seems almost as unsafe for the arms to come up for just a few seconds, without a train ever having passed. I could easily see an auto driver, after seeing the signal come on for a few minutes, then stop, and then immediately start again, without seeing a train, deciding the signal was just broken, and trying to cross anyway.

It seems like the easy solution would be to increase the length of time the signal waits for a train to pass to encompass the extra minute or two this scenario encompasses. Of course, that does add an extra minute or two to the case where the signal really is triggered unintentionally, by a train that does not plan to enter the crossing anytime soon, or when the signal is accidentally tripped.

My last AT&T Wireless bill contained the following paragraph, in capital letters (as a side note, my last two AT&T Wireless bills have been for “-$0.00”. This is certainly a welcome change from them overcharging me for the previous four months):

IF YOU HAVE CALLED CUSTOMER SERVICE RECENTLY, YOU MAY HAVE SPENT A LONG TIME ON HOLD. THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN CAUSED BY AN EXTREMELY HIGH VOLUME OF CALLS, BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE. THIS SITUATION IS AS UNACCEPTABLE TO US AS IT IS TO YOU. WE APPRECIATE YOUR CONTINUED PATIENCE AND SUPPORT. REST ASSURED THAT WE ARE WORKING AS HARD AS WE CAN TO REDUCE HOLD TIMES WHEN YOU CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE. YOU CAN EXPECT TO SEE PROGRESS DAILY.

My first thought was to wonder why they needed to wonder if I’d called customer service recently. After all, the first thing they do when you call (the second thing is to put you on hold for a minimum of half an hour) is to ask for your wireless number. So they know if I’ve called. They know exactly how long I was on hold for. They know how often I called, and whether I got so frustrated that I hung up. So why bother with the “if you have called” bit? In fact, if the person hasn’t called, they may not be aware that your customer service sucks, and you may not want to tell them.

My second thought was that I have called recently, and I have spent a long time on hold. Frequently. I’m exactly the customer who, if you wanted to target a selective apology message, would receive it. But if they wrote the message, even though it was only going out to a few customers, as if everyone was getting it, it makes the company look better, since it seems like they are being magnanimous enough to apologize to everyone. This appeased my inner cynic, at least.

My third thought was to remember a story Guy Kawasaki tells in one of his books—either The Macintosh Way or Selling The Dream, because those are the only two I’ve read—about how, when he ran ACIUS, he would send expensive gifts (e.g., ACIUS T-Shirts and coffee mugs) to his competitors’ executives, with a generic “Dear Customer” cover letter. The idea was to convey the impression that all customers were getting these items.

My fourth thought was that I hadn’t written in my weblog in a while.

Hey Comcast: While I appreciate your calling me at dinnertime to thank me for choosing your cable service and to offer me more channels and premium networks at a higher price than I’m paying now, I must admit that your sales pitch was slightly diminished by the fact that you kept calling me “ma’am.”

Since everybody else is doing it…

I Am A: Lawful Neutral Gnome Bard Thief

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral characters believe in the triumph of law and order above all else. It does not matter whether the leader is for good or evil; the leader will be followed, because the order they provide is the most important thing.

Race:
Gnomes are also short, like dwarves, but much skinnier. They have no beards, and are very inclined towards technology, although they have been known to dabble in magic, too. They tend to be fun-loving and fond of jokes and humor. Some gnomes live underground, and some live in cities and villages. They are very tolerant of other races, and are generally well-liked, though occasionally considered frivolous.

Primary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Secondary Class:
Thieves are the most roguish of the classes. They are sneaky and nimble-fingered, and have skills with traps and locks. While not all use these skills for burglary, that is a common occupation of this class.

Deity:
Callarduran Smoothhands is the True Neutral gnomish god of stone, the underground, and mining. He is also known as the Deep Brother and the Master of Stone. His followers enjoy mining – especially for rubies. Their favorite weapon is the battleaxe.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

I bought Myst III: Exile over two years ago, soon after it was first released. I finally installed it last month. Tonight I finished the game, and I only used a hint site once. What did I think? Spoilers below:
Continue reading →

My mother sent a bunch of leftover ham home with us after the winter holidays, so this morning, with the aid of some food coloring, I made green eggs and ham. I would eat them with a goat.

Michaela recently linked to the Mayfly Project, which asks people to “to sum up the last year of their lives in twenty words or less.”

Here’s mine:

It is the policy of Apple Computer not to comment on unannounced products.

I’m beginning to think there should be a rule that an artist should not be allowed to sing a song more than twenty or so years after originally writing it. I was flipping through the channels earlier, and came across a KTEH showing of a Neil Diamond concert. I caught him in the middle of butchering “I’m a Believer.” It was bad. Not just your ordinary I’m-60-and-it’s-time-to-reinvent-my-style bad. It was William-Shatner-singing-Lucy-In-the-Sky-With-Diamonds bad. Worse, actually, since I’ve got a 1971 recording that proves Neil Diamond knows how to sing the song. Plus, of course, the 1967 Monkees version (Diamond wrote the song for the Monkees), which is also excellent.

As I continue to watch the concert, I find that many of the songs are not too horribly bad. Still, that’s not exactly a glowing review. Maybe it’s unfair to expect someone to sing the same song every day for thirty years and still sing it the same way. The hundreds of thousands of fans in the audience certainly seem to be enjoying it. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon who doesn’t like change.

AT&T Wireless offers several data plans with their GPRS-capable (“mMode”) phones. Let’s look at the cheapest three:

Note that neither the Included Data nor the Mini plans include any data; with the Mini plan you pay $2.99 extra to pay a little less per kilobyte. So let’s compute the break-even point, where it’s better to pay for Mini. It turns out to be 299 kilobytes, for which both plans total $8.97 a month. But wait: for only $7.99, you can get the Mega plan, which includes over three times as much data for almost a dollar less.

Note that you don’t have to decide up front; AT&T lets you change your plan retroactively for the whole month, and your current data usage can be discovered either via the Web site or using the phone itself. So if you’re on the Included Data plan, all you have to do is check your usage near the end of the billing cycle, and if you’re at 267 kilobytes or more, call Customer Service and switch to the Mega plan.

So one has to ask: Does AT&T Wireless offer the Mini Plan for any other reason than to extract an additional fee from people who aren’t good at math?

I was just listening to the preview of Blake Shelton’s Playboys of the Southwestern World on iTunes, and it got me thinking. The preview starts at the chorus, and it fit exactly. The sound clip starts just after a verse would have ended, and stops just before another would have begun. You get to hear the entire chorus, but with no cut-off lyrics or sudden stops in the middle of a musical phrase.

This got me thinking: Does embracing modern music distribution mean composing your songs to have the perfect thirty second preview?

From a Walgreens‘ spot I just saw on TV:

If only all businesses were like Walgreens… they’d have your credit card on file, and you could buy things just by giving your name.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.