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From bash.org:

I think there’s a real argument to be made here that using RAID for home data storage is putting effort into the wrong end of the problem.
when you can buy 2TB disks off the shelf, it’s probably substantially simpler to just buy two of them, set up a good backup system, and reap the day-to-day simplicity benefits of one controller -> one disk -> one filesystem.
or to put it another way: your kitten photos do not need the same high-availabity system infrastructure as Citibank’s transaction databases

Yes, I do.

We finished up the televisions at work last night. I was getting pretty frustrated for a while there as one of our managers was apparently in a mood when she came in. She does this during the daytime shifts too, but it was especially annoying last night. A few of us, including the department manager, are standing there discussing our plan for finishing up the TVs when she comes out from the back. Immediately she announces that she’s just going to go help stock freight in another department since everyone’s just standing around here.

This is so friggin annoying. You’ve been here for all of 5 seconds and only just walked up, so you have no idea what we were talking about, and you’ve just decided that we’re apparently doing nothing important. As I said, she does this during the daytime shifts as well. I’ll be working on something, stop to help a customer, turn to answer a question or provide some work-related info to a coworker briefly, and she pops up right then, decides that we’re just chatting about nothing and tell us to go help out elsewhere since we’re not doing anything. Christ, woman, take a moment to analyze a situation before getting all huffy, will ya?

Later on, I’m helping get TVs up and down and mounted and whatever, but I’m standing there for a few seconds waiting for the next TV to go up so I can do my part and she looks at me and orders me to go clean up all the cables on the TVs we’d already set up, which removes me from the well-oiled machine that we’d developed for removing TVs from the oil, preparing them for where they needed to go, and replacing them.

Speaking of the cables, I was the only one who seemed to give a crap about the TVs actually being connected to anything. Left on their own, I have no doubt that both nights would have ended with all of them in a mad dash to get TVs connected, while they ran into problems with cables not reaching because of their placement or not having enough cables where they were needed. You’re welcome, ladies.

Towards the end of the night, my leg was hurting again. The slight overdose of Tylenol I’d intentionally taken had worn off (3 instead of 2, oh noes!), and this odd pain I’ve been experiencing came back with a vengeance. I’m hoping it’s nothing serious. It almost feels like a pinched nerve rather than a muscle pain.

Hopefully the aches and pains of standing for 8 hours a day will be a thing of the past soon. I’ve got a lead on a new job, with an interview either tomorrow or next week hopefully. It’s the same company that Hayley works for currently, so I already know a decent bit on what they do and how they operate. More importantly, it’s data entry. Eight hours sitting down at a computer. mmmm

We started moving televisions around last night at work (Wal-Mart). At first, it was really difficult as everyone was learning the ins and outs and we were still trying to figure out the best way to accomplish our task. Once we got the hang of it, we started moving pretty quickly. Since I’m unable to do much lifting, I had trouble finding my way to help out. I spent the first half of the night floating between groups of people, helping out however I could. The second half of the night, I spent most of my time hooking up the TVs that were in place, helping to get spaces ready for the next TVs to go up, and then cleaning up towards the end so we could go home.

After coming home, I actually wasn’t all that tired yet, so I stayed up to watch an episode of Star Trek: Voyager before finally getting to sleep.

I woke up about 2:30 as my fans were spinning down due to the power shutting off. It came back for a few seconds about five minutes later, then went out again for another half hour or so. This afternoon and evening it looks like I’ll be hanging out with Winston until time to go to work. I want to show off Warhammer Online to him and get his help finishing up the campaign on Gears of War 2.

My leg is continuing to bother me and seems to be hurting more every day. I’m sure it’s not good that I’m standing on it so much. My new job should become reality soon, so that should solve my leg pain.

I’ve been losing my faith in Blizzard and WoW slowly and steadily the past month or so.  Wrath of the Lich King was amazing until you finished all the quests, then it’s back to the same old routine of having to try to find a decent group of 24 friends and scheduling out large portions of your life just so you can see the endgame content… then see it again, over and over again, until you get the shinies you want.

I’m just getting rather bored with the whole thing.

Patch 3.1 was supposed to add some great new stuff.  It added another 25 man raid that I’ll likely never see and a bunch of dailies that were really fun for a while… but got old very quickly.

Now, Blizzard is preparing a patch to hit servers tomorrow that will drive another nail into Fun’s coffin.  Tomorrow’s patch will be changing the daily quests in Wintergrasp into weekly quests.  Rewards will be increased to make up the difference they say, leading me to wonder why they’d bother making the change.

It’s one thing if they thought that people were acquiring spirit shards or honor faster than the developers intended.  But if they’re equalizing the rewards out, then what’s the point?

The quests will reset at 3:00 am server time every Tuesday.  This means that Tuesday will become Wintergrasp day, with the zone seeing little to no use any other day.  Blizzard is taking away one of the major reasons that people flocked to Wintergrasp.

I wish that I could say that players will still go just for the fun, as I do, but WoW’s playerbase has shown me time and again that the masses just don’t do things for fun.  For some reason, the majority of WoW players seems to do things just for loot.  No loot, no participation.  None.  Nada.  The few of us who do play for fun are left with empty battlegrounds and zones, and publicly ridiculed for attempting to form a group for “useless content” or when we know detailed information about something that was never popular because it had no “worthwhile rewards.”

R.I.P. Wintergrasp, the newest piece of fun content to be killed thanks to a bad design choice with no reasoning behind it and a playerbase that plays the game for all the wrong reasons.

As you may or may not be aware, I have a podcast with game industry news here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/45101

I’m rethinking the format, however. The daily show is difficult to produce and all I’m really doing is spouting headlines and adding a witty remark or two, with the occasional “industry insider” tidbit.

Here’s what I would like to do, and I’d like to get your feedback on this idea. How about a weekly show, recorded at a specific time each week, and lasting about an hour. In this show, I and some co-hosts would discuss current gaming news.

Please post your comments below. Thank you.

I’m not sure if I should bother customizing my blog page or not. On the one hand, those finding it via search would be presented with a good-looking page. On the other, most who decide they enjoy my content will just subscribe to the RSS feed and never visit the actual page again.

What do you think?

As many of you likely noticed (I hope), I began producing my podcast again. This podcast is dedicated to game industry news. Please note that it is focused on the industry itself, not necessarily the games. I won’t be reviewing games or giving tips. I’ll instead be reporting on the business side of this entertainment medium.

Please visit the Talkshoe website, where the podcast is hosted, and rate/comment on the recent episodes. Feel free to go back and listen to past ones as well, including the first few, during which I was still trying to figure out a format that worked.

You can find the website here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/45101

Thank you for listening.

The March 2009 edition of Computers in Libraries is hitting the stands and I’m proud to announce that it includes an article I contributed to. Flip to page 41 to read “Using Video Games to Teach Game Design: A Gaming Collection for Libraries”.

When designing any sort of interactive experience, it’s important that a player be given choices.  This helps to keep it interesting.  You may have a narrative you want to get across, but how the player gets to the next step in that narrative still needs to be up to them.

As much as I enjoy World of Warcraft, including its rich story and characters, I found myself loathing one of their design decisions in Wrath of the Lich King.

A bit of WoW storytelling here, just to put it in perspective.  Ten thousands years before World of Warcraft takes place, the black dragon aspect Neltharion turned on the other dragonflights.  During the battle, he wiped out nearly all of the blue dragonflight, and severely injured Malygos, the blue dragon aspect.  Malygos and his flight rule over the magical properties of Azeroth.  Malygos went insane after the loss of his flight and hid for much of the time after.  After having much of his flight restored, though still not as large as it used to be, he began to regain his sanity.  Upon taking a look at everything that had happened in his self-imposed absence from Azeroth, he determined that the mortal races have been far too careless with their use of magic, and that they must cease their abuse of it.  The mages of the Kirin Tor, being mages, took exception to this and have taken their city of Dalaran up to Northrend to fight Malygos.

Eventually, you fight and kill Malygos.

The big problem I have here is.. I was never given a choice in this.  If I want to advance my character to the top levels of WoW, I have to kill Malygos.  But, I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.  Some further discussion seems to be in order and perhaps he’s right!  The mortals of Azeroth have caused horrible events with their mis-use of magic.  Being that he’s existed since the creation of Azeroth and is the foremost expert on magic and its uses, I think we should trust him to determine what’s best.

Sure, I have several choices leading up to this.  I could choose to kill him with 9 friends or 24.  I could heal or deal damage during the fight to kill him.  But none of the choices I can make in the game will prevent me from having to kill him.

Considering the importance of the character, and the far-reaching effects of this decision on the story, it would have been nice to have some sort of choice there.

When you’re designing your games or other interactive experiences, remember how important it is to give them choices that make sense.  Otherwise, you risk losing their attention completely, and the rest of your narrative will be meaningless.