Power

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An article last week and this week caught my attention. The first article starts the ball rolling with the debate of whether it is better to leave your PC running 24/7 or to turn it off when not in use. I have almost always been in the "leave it on" camp. My computer stays on all day and most nights although I do shut it down the night before when I will be away during the day. I figure the power savings warrant this despite the wear and tear on components that going from cold to hot might cause. I also use the power savings settings available in XP to put things into "standby" when I am not around.

This "standby" power saving setting is what caught my attention in the second article:

Alan Meier at U.C. Berkeley is one of the smart guys on this subject. He added up the standby machines in some typical homes and found that it's like leaving on a 60-watt lamp--for your entire life. With 102 million households in the United States, that's roughly a 6,120,000,000 watt-level of standby draw.

I have never really thought about all the appliances a typical household has that uses this type of technology. Not to mention the number of "always on" devices around like clocks. There is a clock on the oven, the microwave and of course the VCR.
Will any of this change my daily routine? Probably not. But it is interesting to think about.
Do you worry about power savings? What is your computer shut-down practice?

A lot of nothing keeping me busy.

Wow. It's been a week since I made an entry. I'd like to say that, "I have just been busy as hell" and "one thing led to another..." and "I couldn't find the time" and "I'm taking one game at a time". But all that would be verbal diarrhea and untrue. So here is the mundane of my last week (there wasn't any excitement):

Last Wednesday:
Work, bought Far Cry with the gift certificate my brother gave me last fall at EB Games and commenced playing. Watched (sort of between gaming deaths) NBA playoffs. Bed.

Thursday: Work. Played basketball. Leafs update. Far Cry. Bed.

Friday: Work. Told it was my last day until they can get a plan in place as to what direction I.T. is going to go. Got paid. Car "brake system warning light" comes on. Make car appointment for Monday. Boss asks me to come back in on Monday to "finish up" some last minute things he threw at me to do. Told him it would have to be Tuesday due to uncertainty of car. He was cool with that. Got home and watched the Celtics take a beating. Decided at that moment to jump on the Indiana bandwagon for the same reason I jumped on the Celtic bandwagon in 1979...Larry Bird. Watched the Lakers go down to Houston. Much rejoicing (I admire the Lakers but I CAN'T EVER like them - see NBA History Celtics vs Lakers). Far Cry. Bed.

Weekend: A blur of children going to sleepovers and swim meets. Leafs. Basketball. Playoffs rock! Far Cry. Watched Rundown and Timeline on DVD.

Monday: Car appointment. Need brakes (duh). Need to return next week when parts arrive and will cost $1000+. Watched Kill Bill volume 1. It is way cool even though I am not a Tarantino fan. If you like the old Chinese/English dubbed kung-fu movies you have to see this. The movie is over-the-top but is done in the style of the old kung-fu movies.

Today: Work. Really done.

So that's it. Exciting, eh? Well I warned you it was a lot of nothing. By the way, Far Cry is awesome. It is kicking my ass but I keep coming back for more. That's the sign of a good game.

No Sympathy Part 2

Still no sympathy even after reading this ridiculous assessment. The facts are unchanged. He stole. He turned himself in. The only thing not 100% certain is if he knew he had been caught on surveillance. My guess is he was tipped off that he would soon be exposed as a thief and decided to "spin" the event. Maybe what really gets to me is the blatant inequality in the system. Read this editorial. Something isn't right.

Where's that guy from?

I'm watching game seven of the Boston-Montreal series. Half way through the 3rd period it is a scorless tie. The Boston fans start up a chant of "U-S-A U-S-A". Too funny. The Bruins have only five Americans on their roster. Stick with the "Let's go Bruins!"

Figures. As I am writing this Montreal scores.

No Sympathy

I have no sympathy for Svend Robinson. Stealing due to stress? Medical leave? Give me a break. If this guy runs again when he's all "better", then the folks in Burnaby-Douglas need their head checked. For all the slamming Hamilton took for Sheila's GST fiasco, she certainly had help in her problems. Chretien reneged on his promise to scrap the tax and left some members of his caucus holding the bag. Robinson can blame nobody but himself and his alledged stress.

Now, please excuse me. I've had a stressful week and I figure I might as well "snap" big. I'm going to walk out of a store with a new TV I haven't paid for.

Painkiller

Check out this new game. Rated "Mature" with blood and gore this game is a rocking good time. A typical First Person Shooter (FPS) action game you play the part of a guy trapped between heaven and hell. Your role in this world is to beat back the scores of hell's soldiers.

The action is unrelenting. Wave after wave of baddies come after the player and you must mow them down. You must dispatch each and every one of them or else you can't move on to your goal of reaching heaven, or at least finding out why you were denied access.

I enjoyed this game not because it is anything new or revolutionary. I enjoyed it because the game doesn't try to be anything it isn't. The game was designed to be frenetic and succeeded. Well worth the download if you like this sort of mindless distraction.

Simple comforts and solitude

Men, from the beginning of time, have tried to carve out a small bit of the world they can call their own. A place where no one else dares to venture as there is no mistaking the said area to be theirs. Primitive man picked an area outdoors that was far enough away that they could not hear the "keeper-of-the-lists", letting him know that she needs something.

"Og, I need an area rug for the cave. When are you going to go kill a bear?" she would ask.

"Ok. I'm on my way. If I'm not back when the sun has risen and fallen six times, you are free to give the list to someone else." he would grunt back, and off he would go.

While out on these "tasks", man found comfort in the silence and solitude. He knew he could get a bear in just two suns, max, but those extra four suns were just bliss. It was time to commune with nature and really get in touch with the softer cave dweller that was trapped in all early men. As men evolved and the list-keepers got wise to their game, (notice the list-keepers didn't evolve....they were already far advanced and were just biding their time while man caught up) man had to find other ways to sneak some solitude. The answer was...the bathroom. The throne. The reading room. Guys know what I'm talking about.

Real men know how to work this to their advantage. The aftermath of a good "throne speech" allows even longer quality time with ourselves. Ever notice how the paint can be peeling off the walls and birds are dropping from their nests, but you hardly mind your own stink? In fact, the worse it is the more we admire it. That's how we carved out our solitude. No one comes into another man's zone without the risk of respiratory failure and yet the creator of the zone breathes free and easy. Shear genius.

But in my family, the queen list-keeper and the list-keeper in training have devised a way to disrupt the solitude in a sort of Pavlovian conditioning scheme. I already said they are smarter. You see as boys become men and this right of passage is played out, men develop a definite routine. It may be that the time of day never varies, or it is always after the morning coffee or only a Reader's Digest gives just the right stimulation. Whatever it is, the routine must be followed. And the routine doesn't end until the room is vacated and the manly warning, "Don't go in there!" is proclaimed. But ask any behavioural scientist how to break a habit and they will tell you that the routine must be broken. This is where my list-keepers are waging war on my solitude.

It's very simple. It's very shrewd. It's very insidious. What my little list-keepers have started to do is use up all the toilet paper and not replace it. The whole solitude comfort zone is horribly disrupted by this.

Imagine, if you will, the solitude seeker coming to the realization that now that the ritual is about to come to its natural conclusion, the end game is not possible. The ritual folding, and all that follows, can not take place. What's worse is that the scheming list-keepers are no where to be found and the solitude seeker is left to his own devices. He must rise from the throne, clench tight his cheeks and waddle to the cupboard/closet where the toilet paper is kept and waddle back to the throne room. By then, the magic of the zone has been disrupted and the solitude seeker's stink immunity has worn off. He becomes very aware of the fact that he does indeed have severe gastro-intestinal issues that medical science has yet to figure out. The remaining parts of the ritual are either rushed through or completely ignored. He may even spray an air freshener in the room! (The ultimate wussification of the ritual!)

I'm fighting back though. I have added the "checking first" ritual. What will the list-keepers do next? It's their move.

"So let it be written. So let it be done."

The old company name was being painted over on all the signs at the plant. The whole process reminded me of the scene in the Ten Commandments where Rameses (Yul Brynner) is banishing Moses from Egypt. Rameses declares that the name of Moses must never be spoken again and that all references to "Moses" must be removed from monuments and records.

It's interesting that such a simple gesture visibly boosted some people's morale. It demonstrates just how betrayed many have felt over the gradual decay of the company.

Full Steam Ahead

The bankruptcy process I have mentioned over the last week is moving right along. My group implemented the name change to the company documents and 99% of everything went very smoothly. Only one form had an issue which was easily solved by changing a value on a file and some users have complained about some reports being printed with smaller fonts than they are used to.

This is more due to a change in the technology used to deliver the reports than the work that our group did but we will try to figure out how we can make some of the old printers get happy with the new technology. I guess this curse of the old technology can be expected when a company has neglected its office technology for so long. After these small items are sorted we will move on to phase two and change the documents to be ready for the next name change in about a month.

Although this doesn't affect me, the next hurdle for the company will be the day the old company dismisses its entire staff and the new company hires them at a 10% decrease in salary. There will also likely be some who are simply not re-hired. That won't be a day with a lot of "warm-fuzzies".

Laser Tag

Yesterday, my family traveled to Richmond Hill to surprise my brother-in-law for his birthday. His wife had set up a surprise party at the local Laser Quest. He was told to stop by the strip mall where the Laser Quest is located because the grocery store in the mall was having an "amazing sale on ground beef". For some reason he bought this story and had no idea that about 25 friends and family were waiting for him. The look on his face when he pulled into the mall and noticed all the people he knew hanging around there was just priceless. He must have thought it was one hell of a good ground beef sale to attract all these people!

The Laser Quest game begins with each person coming up with a code name to play under. Your name is entered into the computer and then you wait in a staging area where the rules are explained to the group and then you get your equipment. You are given a vest that has flashing targets on the front, back and shoulders. A laser gun is attached to the vest and you are given a magnetic key to initialize your equipment with your name. The laser has a display on it that will tell you during the game who tagged you.

The playing area is a multi-level maze and is lit with black-light. They have different game types. We played a free-for-all game where every player is a target and we played a team game (girls vs. boys) where you only shoot at the other team. The computer keeps track of how many tags you make as well as how many times you were tagged and gives you a score. The game lasts 20 minutes. By the end of the game you are drenched in sweat despite the fact running is not allowed. The play area is warm and the vest weighs a couple of pounds but the sweat must be mostly due to the adrenaline rush and thrill of trying to succeed in the game.

Once the game is over you are given a score sheet showing your "stats" and your ranking. I found this was when some of the most fun occurred. People that seemed so un-competitive (like my wife and sister-in-law) were pouring over their sheet to see if they had out scored their spouse or kids. It was very funny to hear them teeter on the verge of trash talking.

If you have never tried this game, you might want to consider it for your next party. In the group we had together, the ages ranged from 8 to 68. And from the feedback I was hearing, everyone enjoyed it. I was especially surprised that my wife enjoyed it. She is usually quite anti-gun and violence being involved in things labeled as "play" but she found this game to be fun. The game might be more costly than a bowling party, but it was also more fun.

Update to Holding Pattern

As I mentioned in "Holding Pattern", the company I do work for is emerging from bankruptcy. The union voted on the buyer's new deal and passed a 10% wage reduction. Staff will also be getting their wages cut by the same 10%.

But we are still waiting for things to be truly official. My group of Computer Analysts were all set to go at midnight April 2. We were going to implement the interim company's name on all appropriate out-going documentation. With only 23 seconds to spare, we were all put on hold. Apparently the bankruptcy judge needed to be consulted again and the buyer's wanted one more go around on some of the numbers they had been provided. Crap! It's like a bad dream that keeps coming back each time you fall asleep.

Everyone at the company just wants it all to be over so that there is at least some certainty what tomorrow will bring. I suppose Monday will be the new dawning. Perhaps this is some kind of poetic justice that the new company will commence just as the clocks spring forward to day light savings time. Hopefully, the new company will also spring forward to new profitability and stability.