I wish so badly that the game could be played on a tabletop, like the Microsoft surface. It would add a personal touch that would be incredible. It would truly seem like you were a general in a war room playing war games. Or it would be the next generation of chess. Anyway, they’re planning on releasing the game on the PC, the PS3, and the XBox 360. I can’t wait.

If you want to read more about the game you can take a look at this Kotaku article.

So let’s hear it from the readers: What’s your favorite addition in the 3.0 beta? Are there any features that you were looking forward to that didn’t make the cut?

For more information check out Gizmodo.

Also, if you’re looking to get in on the beta but don’t want to be forced to pay forced to pay for the developer’s program, check out SingleGrain.com. These cool guys are giving out 50 betas of the 3.0 OS in a couple of days, and you could get in on it too!

Later folks,

Tyler

Switching gears completely, I can’t believe Prince of Persia dropped $20 two weeks after its release. I’m glad that wasn’t one of the games at the top of my must play list. I have way too many on that list right now as it is anyway.

Christmas is by far my favorite time of year. There’s just this feeling of happiness in the air that you don’t normally feel. I like it.

Well, those are my random thoughts for the day. I love using BitPim to add wallpapers and ringtones to my phone. Nothing like having Bill yell “Reloading!” for a good text message alert.

I like sleeping. Later.

1. Call me a terrible person, but no matter how down I am Stephen Lynch can always brighten up my day.

2. No woman knows what she wants. That’s a fact of life.

3. Maybe I haven’t seen many movies, but Planet Terror is pretty damn campy.

4. The first CD I ever bought was a Brittney Spears CD. The last CD I downloaded was Brittney as well.  What does that tell you, other than the fact that I don’t have an absolute perfect taste in music?

5. 7 Pounds is an amazing film. Everyone should be required to see it at some point in their lives. Se7en is the same way, whaddya know?

That’s all I got for now. More Stephen Lynch time! You guys go listen to Will Hoge if you’re in a happy non-comedy mood.

Who am I kidding? I’ll probably post for a few days and then get bored of it and desert it again. Ah well. Here goes nothin’.

Now for the meat of this post, in which I link to stuff that I didn’t make simply because I think it’s cool.

Enigma Desktop Tutorial on Lifehacker

http://lifehacker.com/5087956/customize-your-own-killer-enigma-desktop

Now I’m a guy who likes to have a pretty desktop that’s functional and clean. Exactly why this detailed tutorial on creating my own enigma desktop using rainmeter is perfect for me. It may be perfect for you too, I don’t know. All I know is that you should check it out. Your desktop could end up looking like this. Not too shabby, eh?

Going along with the custom windows theme topic, I’d like to present you a list of the top 10 themes from, in my opinion, one of the most talented skin designers out there: lassekongo83 of deviantART. I’m not giving any reasoning though, I’m lazy like that.

10. Muin

9. Hydrangea

8. Kupo XP 2.0

7. Interstellar

6. Shine

5. Alduin

4. Auriel

3. Pungsvett

2. Shiftie 2

1. Clean Glass

Anyway, that’s all for now folks. It’s pretty late and I’m gonna get some shuteye. Here’s an uber nerdy picture for you viewing pleasure! Later peeps!

Post 1: First Post

So this is my first blog post. I decided to start one up, seeing as I just started an internship this summer at Cisco and I’m very excited about it. I’ve been working at the company for the past couple of weeks and have been living at my wonderful girlfriend, Susan’s, house. It’s a pretty convenient location, about 20 minutes from the office. I like my job a lot. I’m learning a lot and getting paid pretty well to do it. I would love to be able to continue something like this into the future. It has done nothing but reconfirm that I want to be a computer programmer when I graduate. So far the stuff I’ve been doing hasn’t been extremely interesting, and I can’t say anything more about it seeing as I’ve signed confidentiality contracts and stuff.

Anyway I’ll keep updating from here on out with all my thoughts and all that stuff. Hope you people enjoy it!

Post 2: RIP George Carlin

The great George Carlin passed away yesterday. Easily one of my favorite comics. I always enjoyed seeing his HBO specials and listening to his wacky routines. He was a wonderful comedian that was quick, witty, and very intelligent. I haven’t yet had the privilege of hearing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit, but his routine on buzz words always had me smiling. His most recent special “It’s Bad For Ya” was as brilliant as some of his earlier work. He was a genius that you don’t see very often and will be sorely missed.

Post 3: George Carlin: The Modern Man

George Carlin – Modern Man

Here’s the buzz words stand up that I posted about earlier. It’s pretty brilliant.

Again, RIP George Carlin. You will be dearly missed.
Post 4: Bill Gates Complains About Windows

I found a gem today browsing Gizmodo. One article looks at a memo from 2003 from Bill Gates to his design and programming staff. In the e-mail he just lays into them because of his terrible experience trying to install Windows Moviemaker. Wow, problems with Windows? What a shocker.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Haha, that’s good stuff. You can see the Gizmodo article here. Anyway, that’s about all I got for today. In conclusion here’s a picture of bears riding horses.