As a kid we always said the best job in the world would be a videogame tester. I mean, c’mon, you’re get paid to play videogames all day…how bad can it be? And while I will still dream of getting paid to play videogames for living, second on my list of ultimate jobs has quickly become that which only a few obtain in life – master Lego builder.

Yes, Lego builder is dream job #2. Again, you’re getting paid to play with Legos…how bad can it be? Recently, as reported by CNet, a new master Lego builder was crowned out of a contest. A contest!!

Seriously. One day you’re paying your ass of at college to get a degree for your career and the next day you’re building Lego masterworks for Legoland. It doesn’t get any better than that. Lucky bastard.
And what does a master Lego builder create to win the ultimate choice job? A snowman breathing fire. It wasn’t big or really that impressive looking. It looked good and is far more than anyone I know could whip off in a mere two hours, but if someone said to me, “Hey, build me a fire-breathing snowman out of Legos,” I’d like to think I could do it (although not in two hours).

But, some might say I get paid to play with Legos already, so maybe I shouldn’t be pushing my luck…

The third and (possibly) last X-Men movie is the first of what promises to be a good summer season for movies, and one of two huge comic book movies. It was extremely nice to get back into the theatre and enjoy a good, solid movie. However, in comparison to the previous two X-Men tales, this one had to live up to a lot.

From a sequel standpoint, X3 pretty much delivers as you would expect. The fight for mutants continues as we throw more and more mutant characters on the X-Men fire. Making a return are, of course, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Storm, and Professor X. But, as seemed to be a trend in primetime TV shows this season, many characters are eliminated from the cast. Some expectedly, some as a surprise. Joining the team are several classic heroes and villians from the comic books, including Beast, Juggernaut, and Colossus.

In short, Jean Grey managed to survive the soggy pummeling she received at the end of X2 and, thanks to a flashback, we find out that she is the most powerful mutant ever. But Jean isn’t the same old Jean, and Wolverine is determined to save the one he loves from herself. All the while, the human government has found a “cure” for mutants (that works extremely fast). Naturally, Magneto wants to kill all the humans to preserve the mutant way of life and superiority. Blah, blah, blah…nothing new there, frankly.

I’m sure I’m not spoiling anything by saying everything turns out OK in the end. The good guys still win, but at a price.

Despite the additional mutants and the pinnacle of mutant battle, X3 does not top X2. X3 tackles a very deep storyline with Jean Grey returning all while trying to progress the fighting between good and bad. Because of this, X3 moves at seemingly breakneck speed, moving from huge event to huge event without letting you really grasp or digest what’s going on and why. X2 had a great buildup for the final confrontations at the end of the film, yet the movie moved at a great pace.

Several new characters are introduced in X3, some X-Men, some just mutants with side stories, but none are explored in any great detail nor are their talents exploited on screen as much as they could/should have. It’s good to these characters in any capacity, but I was looking to see more of Angel and Colossus both. Even the new villian characters were under-utilized. You can’t get behind any of the new characters because you barely have any time to examine them. The only one that comes close is Angel, who gets a wee backstory at the beginning of the film.

But, despite all that, we do get to see action in the Danger Room and a first look at a Sentinel giant. Both being those tiny little high points that get the “Hey, cool!” response from fans that read the books or the cartoon.
Don’t get me wrong, X3 is a good movie that delivers for the summer season. But as a fan of the series, I was hoping for some more story, even if it means slowing things down a bit. Even making the film (gasp) 2-hours would have been acceptable to get what the audience wanted.

(BONUS: A trailer for Superman Returns is showing with X3)

And with Monday’s primetime lineup, so came the end to my packed television watching schedule. Thank god. Keeping up with shows is very troubling and takes a lot of effort. The only thing is does offer is a routine for whatever night of the week the show is on.

My big TV night is typically Monday with CSI: Miami and 24, both of which ended last night.

The last 24 was a 2-hour “event” that really didn’t surprise me nor amaze me. Everything turned out alright – as we knew it would. Jack foiled the president’s evil plan and no more good guys died, only the bad guys.

The death of Robocop kind of sucked. One problem with the show is the switch between dramatic and low-budget. In some cases we’ll get cool explosions and great deaths, others, like with Robocop, he is just shot twice and that’s it. No leap into the water, no nothing. But it ended that plot line.

And once we think all is well and Jack is safe, he gets kidnapped…by the Chinese!? Oh yeah, last season’s government faux pa rears its ugly head. You don’t mess with the Chinese, but no doubt next season Jack will manage to kill every last Chinese person in the name of democracy, all with nothing but his attitude and single bullet.

To recap:

• The evil President Logan got caught
• Lobot’s posse was not captured or found out
• Jack was taken by the Chinese
• Chloe’s ex-husband has an accent and an ego (I hope he comes back next season)
• President Palmer is still dead

24 is one of the few shows I watched every week like clockwork. Shy of the Monday I went to RAW, I saw every one and stayed on top of who was going where and who was dead, at least who died that made a difference.

An area where 24 really got to me was the chase. Jack was chasing the same damn people the entire season and never got to them until then end. I guess that makes sense, but I everytime it’s we have him…we have him…ah shit, he got away.

Sure, we save a mall, we save a city, we save a country, but wrapping up unbelievable action is not enough to satisfy me and keep caring at the same time. I stopped caring about any of the characters long ago and just enjoyed the action because that’s all there is – fantasic action, but action nonetheless.

I’m not one that likes the “to be continued…” endings on any show. Even the multi-part American Chopper episodes stopped me watching that. In some cases, many cases, I want a problem, some action, and a solution to the problem all in a hour. Keeping up is exhausting as every week I have to rethink what happened and why I care. Hell, at one point the Samurai Jack cartoon started splitting episodes and I stopped watching that too! A cartoon!!

However, 24 only left one cliffhanger, where other shows, like Desperate Housewives, leaves like 16 storylines up in the air. If I have to keep a laundry list of the who-with-who and what then I’m less likely to watch next season.

In the case of 24, next season I know I need to watch the first 4 episodes and the last 4 episodes and be happily entertained. I now know I can use 24 as the goto show during commercials and watch whatever else is on.

Oh well…all is right with the world once again. Thank the lord for pro wrestling, for it has no off season.

For more thoughts on the last 24, catch King Tom’s review

What do you get when you combine Spy Hunter, Wipeout, and Tempest all in one game? You get Torus Trooper. I came across this gem of a game while reading the latest issue of PC Gamer. Stuck in as almost nothing more than a footnote, this game is the latest PC game to come out of some Japanese guy’s nose.

As the magazine put it, “every time a Japanese guy blows his nose, a cool PC game comes out of it.” Torus Trooper defintely quenches my recent thirst for a good game.

While the home page for Torus Trooper doesn’t seem like much, and frankly, doesn’t tell you much about the game, trust me when I say this game is worth the quick download and quick install. It runs on Windows and just about any PC should be able to run it. I ran it first on my laptop and then moved to the big boy upstairs for even more rock-n-roll.

Torus Trooper (TT) combines the speed of the old space racers like Wipeout with the concept behind Spy Hunter and the dizzying movement of Tempest with a little bit of Gyruss thrown in. Trooper has a classic arcade feel that can’t be mistaken.

There’s no story to worry about with this one. You’re in a space ship and you’re trying to shoot everything while not getting blown up in the process. You have two buttons to worry about: your big gun and your bigger gun. The normal gun will shoot anything and everything, but the bigger gun will kill twice as much a add multipliers to your score.

What? Score?

Yes, a big draw behind this game besides being simple is it revolves around your ability to get a high score. You have no one to beat buy yourself.

The less you die, the better score you get. You have a set time to start with. When time reaches zero your game is over. You can die as many times as you like while you have time left, but every time you die, your time limit goes down by 15 seconds. To combat this, the more bad guys you kill and the more levels you pass, the more time is added to your limit. Even on the first try before I understood what did what, I was able to stay alive long enough to get to level 3.

The rules aside, TT does many things right in terms of making a good game.

1. It’s simple. You make your ship go and shoot. You don’t have to worry about where to go or why. Just move your ship randomly and you can do well. Few controls make it easy to play.
2. It looks good. Some might consider it primitive, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The “basic” graphics no only let the game play very fast, anything more would be even more distracting. The game moves so fast you would miss any pretty backgrounds anyway.
3. It sounds good. Simple sounds with some present-but-not-obvious techno music make this one easy on the ears but not boring.
4. You die fast. And I don’t me you die often, but when you die you get a new ship instantly and keep on going. There isn’t any fancy death cut scene to suffer through. You know you’ve died, it doesn’t need to rub it in.
5. Auto-save. When your game time runs out, TT automatically saves your last spot by level. Each time you can start where you left off or start from any spot prior. Of course, a new game means you start with a score of zero.
6. High score. Again, the goal of the game is a high score. No puzzles to beat or maps to make. Just quick skillz to make that score six figures and beyond.

As of this writing, I’ve only played the game for about a hour, so I’m not sure if there is an end or if levels just keep going and going. Eitherway, much like Pac-Man, there’s probably a point where you just can’t beat and it all comes back down to score.

If you are a gamer, or were a gamer, you owe it to yourself to at least try this game. With any free time I have, I am considering setting up a Torus Trooper scores page where others can upload their high score screen shots. Keep an eyeball out for that.

God bless Japanese guys and their sneezes.

—-
Installing and playing Torus Trooper

1. Download the ZIP file from the TT home page or from the Toast download
2. Extract all the files using the folders it has (/tt/)
3. Run the tt.exe file

When the game starts, use Left and Right arrow keys to pick your difficulty. Normal is a good place to start

• Use Z to fire your gun
• Up arrow sets throttle to fast; Down arrow throttle to slow. Your throttle stays where you leave it, so you don’t have to constantly hold Up or Down.
• Use X to fire your big gun. The longer you hold it down, the bigger the shot gets and the more baddies it kills. But using the X gun slows you down big time.
• Hit Escape to quit

I’ve written before about my mobile dilemma. Aside from the data management problems that stem from having a laptop, becoming mobile wasn’t free. Well, almost, but not completely.

My job throws away tons of computer equipment on a regular basis. They don’t resell or recycle, just toss. As part of the IT team, we hear first of the plans and thus get first dibs or the so-called “junk” before they are thrown out.

After an hour of rumaging and testing, I manage to secure a Sony Vaio and a Dell Latitude laptop. They both had their issues during the discovery. Limited battery power, missing keys, and other cosmetic problems. All in all, and plugged in, they both booted up, which was enough for me to take them home and try to get them into some sort of useful shape.

The Vaio, which I thought would be the hardest due to Sony’s proprietary mess, turned out to be the easiest to work with. Everything worked. It had Windows 98 installed but I quickly turned that into Windows 2000 and we were off and running. The size of the Vaio is tiny for a laptop and thus made it a perfect school computer for the wife. The easy of setup aside, the laptop did lack some speed. It is a Pentium III but only with preinstalled RAM. So a quick look online found additional an 128Mb of RAM for a mere $25. I couldn’t pass that up. With more memory and with Word working great for papers, there was one thing missing – the internet.

The Vaio didn’t have any wireless network card, nor did I have a wireless network, so we had to remedy that sooner than later.

Now, I was (and still am) a bit skeptical of wireless networks. Without a hard line connection, I often question their reliability and security. Nonetheless, as a good nerd it was time to dive into  that realm once and for all. Time to shop.

I picked up a wireless access point to connect to my LAN and a wireless card for the Vaio. Got it home, followed the instructions and was up and online within a hour. Not bad. Plus it was easy to configure security and find the network. Frankly, I was fascinated to find my card picked up about 3 or 4 other wireless networks within the neighborhood – some secured, some not.

With the Vaio conquest completed and the wife smiling, it was my turn to get a laptop. The Dell, which was a more normal laptop size, was mine. It also had to be plugged in to work, but had a built-in CD-ROM (the Vaio had external) and also a built-in wireless card. Nice.

With that, I didn’t have to purchase any network card for the Dell. But, as it would have it, the network card that came with it was a BITCH to configure. I scoured message board after message board trying to find a solution to get it work. I read about problems with the card itself, and also bugs with Windows XP SP2′s wireless connectivity.

After many an hour over many a day, the solution to the wireless trouble was simple. All I had to do was use a static IP instead of use DHCP. After all that time and all the trouble I’ve been reading that others have had it comes to something so simple. But whatever…it worked!

So now we’re both laptopped and wireless. Translation: We’re now in front of the TV more, watching AND laptopping.

It’s awful, frankly. The freedom of laptops (shy of finding the nearest outlet) has turned me into a bigger couch potato. But yet in the same swift motion, I’ve been reading more because I have a blog in my lap. So, almost like a book, I can read while half-watching a show and only needing to tune in when the show gets good.

Is mobility more of a blessing or a curse? That remains to be seen, but so far I see it as 50/50. It’s nice to be able to sit somewhere a little more comfortable and still compute, but data management is still a puzzle that I’m working on solving.

Total cost of mobility:

Vaio laptop…..$0.00
Dell laptop……$0.00
Wireless access point…..$40.00
Wireless laptop card…..$30.00
Extra laptop RAM…..$25.00
Increased laziness…..priceless

I’ve been watching Wheel of Fortune this week. I’m not sure why. Probably because I’ve been watchin Jeopardy and just don’t move my ass for a the entire hour. This week has been college week on Wheel and the skills of the 20-something future Presidents of the United States is so depressing it’s not even funny.

On today’s show, a girl from the Airforce Academy had the following letters in the puzzle and approximately $12,000 to win. The clue is, “a place”.

E_CLUS_VE
N_GHTCL_B

Honestly, I would hope you would be able to solve this puzzle as-shown. The girl had a lot of money. The other contestants were hitting their head now because they didn’t see it earlier. She had the choice to spin or solve. She spins!?

With a look of complete bewilderment, Pat Sajak goes “Oh! She spins…OK” and she spins, thankfully she didn’t hit bankrupt. Now while it was a little, shall we say, “unsafe” to spin at that point with all that money on the line, I can go with a gambler’s spirit. If you know the letters – the consonants – you’re allowed to spin.

She spins. Gets $300 for the next letter she guesses correctly. And she picks the letter…K

And with yet another, even more-befuttled look on his face, Pat just shook his head and said, “sorry, there is no K”. Of course, it was hard to hear what he said over the groans from the audience, as absolutely no one – not even Vanna – can believe what they just heard. I won’t blame someone for being a bad speller, at least not for words like “acceptable” and “cemetery” – but really, “exclusive”, come on – I don’t believe anyone (well, so I thought) would try to spell it with a K.

As by the rules, she lost her turn and the next person solved for the win. In one single moment, what little faith I had in current sutdents and the future of our country went right out the window.

That particular puzzle of the show aside, watching a week’s worth of college kids trying to play Wheel has led us to come to the conclusion that people have forgotten how to play Wheel of Fortune.

Here’s a clue. The goal is to win money! Money, money, money!!

Buying vowels is not how you make money on Wheel. Why? Because you are buying vowels. It costs your possible winnings to buy a vowel. Consonants get you money.

The phrase “I’d like to buy a vowel” has become part of Americana and can be used in almost any situation if you’re witty enough or try too hard. Because of this, I think that when people get on the show they just want to say it and think it’s cool to say it, thus the point behind the concept has been lost. They forget that’s what you DON’T want to do on that game.

You don’t want to buy vowels! Buying a vowel, let alone multiple vowels, is what you do LAST when you have no clue what the answer is. No clue.

You also don’t buy any vowels if you know any consonant in the puzzle. For example

LEMON_ _E ST_N_

There is obviously an A missing from this puzzle. But it is also obviously missing D.

D is a consonant. A is a vowel. D is gets you money. A costs you money.

If this was your puzzle and you knew the answer, as you should, go ahead and spin, but for lord’s sake, you don’t buy a vowel. You pick a D and get your $400 dollars. Then you solve the puzzle, as at that point there would not be anymore consonants left.

Merv Griffin is a smart man. He made some of the best gameshows in the world (shy of TPIS, of course). They’re popular because they are simple and something everyone can play and win. But if you watched this week, you would have thought Wheel of Fortune was like taking the MCAT or something.

Honestly, are college kids really this stupid? I hate to rag on people, but good lord, I could have solved these puzzles in 4th grade. Afterall, Wheel is nothing more than Hangman with money.

As a software developer, I have a seemingly unique role where I get to interact directly with my customers to make exactly what they want. I’m not trying to hit a mass market or the middle of the bell curve…heck, I’m not even trying to make money. I just want to make products that work for people and do what they need it to do. It’s a good position to be in, but in this scenario a successful product is only as successful as the customer wants it to be.

I’ve made dozens of programs for various departments within my company. From the generic programs, like calendars, to the department-specific, like staff management and logging, and each one has something in common, a business partner (BP). That being the person from the department that is my contact for product development. It is essentially up to this person to guide me through what they want, what they like, and what they don’t like about their new software.

Any developer will tell you getting requirements out of a client is like nailing jello to the wall, but it has to be done in some capacity. More times than not, I’ve been paired up with a BP that knows very little about what they want, they just know they want it. Given this, there is usually very little motivation on their part to see a successful product at the end.

That’s the worst case, however, when you’re batting 0 for 2. Sometimes you split the difference and find a BP that knows exactly what they want, but doesn’t seem too interested in whether or not the product succeeds. I’ve found these are the delegated folks that were just told to help me, or they’re bandwagoners that see someone else with a program and then ask to have one made for them too. It sounds good when their hear it, but then don’t put any effort into getting it the way they want, leaving it up to me. “Whatever you make will be fine…” a sentence you never want to hear. I’ve had many products die on the launch pad and it’s very discouraging.

Then there’s the very, very rare occasion when you hit 2 for 2. You find that BP that tells you what you need to know, AND is excited about the project and wants to see it succeed. In this case, they don’t need to know what they want, they just need to know their problem.

Part of my job is to help people solve problems. Need to track and calculate cost of sprockets? Not a problem. You know your problem and I can help you get a solution made. But had bad do you want the solution, and do you believe such a solution will really help?

Having a BP that gets excited about their product, I found out recently, is a big motivator that really moves development along. Having someone that wants to see the product succeed as much (or more) than you do is the most help anyone can give me. Knowing that the product will be put to use and seen as a crutch instead of a hurdle for the client changes my attitude towards development. It shouldn’t, but it does – cursed human nature.

These BPs are on top of things. When I send an e-mail with a question, it’s answered same day – not in a week. If I stop by for a chat to get more details and ask more questions, 90% of the time they’ll stop and hear me out and provide me with instant feedback. When it comes to testing, they are so excited to see something working they will play with it and break it as soon as possible so I can fix it and have it ready for launch.

This is development nirvana.

Problem + Motivated BP + Developer = Great product

So if you’re ever asked to be a BP and work with a developer on the new project, learn about what the problem is so you can properly get motivated to want to see it succeed. If you can’t get behind why you need the solution, then don’t be the developer liason. Suggest someone that will care enough to want to see the product succeed.  Otherwise, you’ree wasting your time, the developer’s time, and the company’s money.

The videogame market is becoming as big, or bigger, than the motion picture market. It seems there is always something new to push. New graphics and sounds. Old games with new graphics. New games with old graphics. New characters with old controls. You can mix and match all day, but the problem always ends up being the same – it’s all the same.

Games on current systems, like the new Xbox360 and even the now greyed Playstation 2 visually are heads above their older versions. But it’s still the same game. If you’re driven a Corvette in one videeo game you’v driven in them all. When you kick and punch, it doesn’t matter where or how well it looks, you’re still punching and kicking.

This delimma alone is a large part why Nintendo has my vote for next important videogame console. While I believe I am way paste my videogame prime, part of my justification is that there’s nothing new to excite me about playing hardcore again. At least until Nintendo game long with their next-generaton console, then called Revolution, now (oddly) called Wii.

Watching the videos from E3 and reading what Nintendo is trying to do has me excited about games and that hasn’t happened in a long while. Nintendo gets it, as they always have, that games make the console, not just the technology.

Nintendo’s new system boasts some fancy controller and downloadable retro  games. All very cool, but each is just a means to an end – better games. I will always say Nintendo is better at games than it is hardware (the console), but that’s exactly what we, the gamers, need. We need better games that are fun and challenging to play.

Nintendo sounds like they are actually trying to achieve better games.

What do I want?

I want games that are fun, easy-to-learn-yet-challenging, and replayable. That’s all. Is that so hard to deliver? I’d rather have control and fun over realism.

Go take a watch and see what Nintendo claims they can offer. If they have the skillz to pay the billz, then videogaming just got a whole lot more fun and interesting.

So I’m watching a little bit of Face/Off inbetween my regular Sunday shows. I come across a part where the Russian mob boss askes the other bad guy for “the case”. He goes over and takes a big metal case out of the floor boards. The other guy hands the first guy your standard issue metal briefcase full of money. It’s some outrageous amount of non-sequential, unmarkd bills. Every stack is nicely wrapped with a bank wrap and fills the briefcase perfectly…perfectly!

Each stack of stacks goes just to the top of the briefcase from corner to corner. Now what are the odds of that? Seriously, here. You get a million dollars in case and have to stuff it into a briefcase. In what denominations do you get a million dollars of cash in? Hundreds? Fifties? Eitherway, that’s a lot of cash. And there’s a set amount of each bill per wrapped stack – so, you know, like one-hundred $100 bills per stack or something? It’s not going to be arbitrary…that wouldn’t make sense.

So we have a fixed number of stacks to make the total amount, each wrapped and labeled, and you’re telling me that amount fits into the briefcase perfectly? Bah. I think the gangsters have to get the cases specially made. They let Mario the Briefcase-maker know they are going to have $1 million in $100 bills and he makes it accordingly. That’s the only way. You’re not going to go to Babbages and get a briefcase that fits cash perfectly. There would be some holes or uneven stacks.

This means somewhere out there is a little, unimposing, unsuspicious store that custom makes steel briefcases just for the mob and other mercenaries that have to hall around incredible sums of money. Let’s face it, as a mobster your briefcase has to look nice. If you have holes in your money stacks the guy you’re buying off will think you’re jippin’ him and that’s not good for either side.

Of course, my solution would be to forgo the metal briefcase altogether and just use a sack or something. A Kroger bag is by far the most inconspicuous thing you can put your money. No one is expecting that. You’re walking around with a steel briefcase people are gonna know something is up – you’re just asking for trouble. A satchel or backpack…something other than a briefcase. Plus, then you don’t have to get with Mario to get one made. He books up fast, so you might have to wait on an order, which isn’t good if the drop is in six hours.

Passwords are a bitch. By all rights they shouldn’t be, but the fact remains we need so many of them. If we just had one it wouldn’t be a problem. Until then, all we can do is use pet passwords.

Pet passwords are good and all, but can be dangerous if used for everything. I have a set of about 4 pet passwords, one for each type of site. So the accounts I use for shopping online have the same password. The accounts for newsletters and message boards have a different password, and so on like that. This way it varies the passwords a bit, but makes them still easy to remember.

Recently, however, I’m finding more sites are requiring rules for your password. Like it must have 8 characters or cannot contain any word that appears in your user name. For many cases, if my username is “bobdog” I might make my password “bobdog” but that doesn’t fly so much anymore.

My usual solution is to look around the room and provide the name of an object, like “mouse” or “cokecan” but those don’t have enough letters.

So what do you do? You can only use your wife’s name and pet’s name so many different ways. And the variations of your birthday are few as well – not do mention, the least secure type of passwords.

By some standards, a so-called “good” password should contain at least 8-characters that should include lowercase letters, uppercase letters, a number, and some sort of special character, like a exclamation point. Frankly, I think that’s a little much, but at work I don’t have a choice and have to follow the rules.

While talking at work a co-worker he suggested something that was a great idea and works really well.

Make a sentence and use the first letter from each word to make your password. And at best, include a number in the sentence, or at least a word that can be represented as a number.

Let’s take the sentence: My goldfish is 2 weeks old and lives in a bowl
The password from this might be: Mgi2wolb

Or another: I like to drink Pepsi with my breakfast
Would be: il2dPwmb

I was surprised at how well that is at making good passwords yet still being easy to remember. Now I find myself repeating that sentence in my head everytime I type it, but hey, whatever works.

So still keep your pet passwords, but make each of them using this method and you’ll have better password security without having worry about forgetting it.