Why I wanted to make games

Even though I wanted to make games, I don't play them. I can't stand most games of today. I get board quickly with most of them. Puzzles get too monotonous, Most action games are to violent for my tastes, and the few games I used to play for a while are considered almost dead.

Yep, I'm a surviving adventure game fan. I was never very good at playing them. I usually had to resort to the walktroughs. But games like; King's Quest, Space Quest, Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer, even Freddy Pharkus Frontier Pharmacist, were the epitome of what I thought a game should be. They had the best in storytelling, they were funny. And I looked forward to the time I would have enough money that I could one day buy these games.

Unfortunately things change, they simply aren't being made as often anymore. Most of the old games don't work quite as well on new hardware, and It is becoming increasingly difficult to find such games for purchase.

Now, the reason I thought I wanted to go into making games, is I saw the trends in game making and didn't like what I was seeing. I watched as my genre faded and Violent mindless games took over. I had the hope to revitalize my favorite format, and bring back the Family friendly fantasy. But I fear it is hopeless.

Tutorial on how to open the new Microsoft Product boxes

Some of you may have already seen the new cases for Microsoft's new lines of software. They look pretty cool with the small form factor and rounded corners, all made of Clear plastic. But they are quite the puzzle to try to open. They are nearly as difficult as the Rubics cube.

I'm sure it took me nearly half an hour trying to figure it out. I kept trying to open it like a book with no luck. So if you want to take the challenge to open it by yourself then please feel free to skip this tutorial.

For packages which have them, the first thing you will need to do is break the seal on the top of the package. It is a big round clear sticker. The sticker on mine covered the certificate of Authenticity label, so I couldn't just peal it off.

Next pull the red tab to peal off the sticker off of the side of the case which allows the DVD tray to open.

At the top of the Box is another Red Tab. Do not remove this or it will be more difficult to open the case. To open the DVD drawer; simply pull on the Red Tab and the Tray will unfold.

Now you have access to the Discs the booklets and the pamphlets. Here we have Windows Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate open showing the contents.

The thing which took me the longest to figure out was trying to find out where the CD Keys were. While installing the software I hunted and hunted for three hours, trying to find the keys.

It turns out that I just hadn't looked at the back of the box while it was open.

So, there they are. The little orange stickers on the back of the DVD trays.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and will enjoy your software.

Stinky Feet

Lock your Computer, lock your computer. That and no tailgaters. are some of the security things that are drilled into people that work at Microsoft. And for good reason. Employees, Vendors and Contractors deal with sensitive, confidential information which has not yet been released to the public.

Access to a computer could prove access to such information, so locking a computer becomes important. I have pretty much become accustomed to hitting [Windows] + [L] to do so. But sadly some of the more Junior coworkers still don't understand the hazard. So a tradition has sprang up in my team. If certain team members happen to notice that a computer was left unlocked then they will send an email from the unwary team member's computer, to everyone in the team, simply stating; "I have Stinky Feet!". Yep, quite the incentive. I have been lucky enough to not have to deal with the fallout of the resulting email taunts though I have witnessed it happening.

Safari Testdrive

Okay I decided to download Safari to add it to my testing tool belt. I'm writing this post from Safari now. It was definitely not designed for Windows. The resizing borders are missing, It feels naked like this. Eek! Give me my borders please! It also added a desktop Icon without an option to not install one. One of my pet Peeves. Off you go to hide in the Quick Launch.

One thing I noticed, that I do like, is that it seems to have some interaction with the OS, or at least other browsers. I started typing the address to get to this blog and it actually showed up in the list.

Gasp! The middle click worked! It opened a new tab! Shocking! coming from an Apple product. Okay now to test the Print Preview on my Blog. Something FireFox can't handle... Cool. It works about like Opera with Print Preview. that is good.

One of the first pages I had to try of course was the Recipe page I had been working on. And... It looks just the same in Safari as it does on Opera, FireFox, and Netscape. IE and Maxthon look a little different because of a little bit of an odd spacing issue, but I think it is cool that I don't need to change that design to get it to work is Safari.

The metallic grey interface is a little depressing. I really started to love the tan color of Windows XP Luna Blue. Vista's Black is depressing too though. I specifically went online searching for a Desktop Wallpaper with a little color in it, a few weeks ago just for that cause.

I think I will stick with IE as my choice of browser it still loads faster than any of the others and I have become comfortable with IE7. I will keep it on my tool belt though to test websites against.

More Browser Wars are acoming

Hmm. Apple has released a beta for their browser, Safari for Windows. I'm a little torn about it.

For one thing, in my own oppinion, Apple has never really gotten the hang of programming, quality software for Windows. I don't trust ITunes or QuickTime on PC for that reason.

But I am hopeful that if the rendering is identical on PC as it is on Mac, that I won't have to buy a Mac to test web pages for Mac. Wouldn't it be great to have "One Machine to test them all! Mhaw ha, ha, hah. Oh."

On the side of competition, I don't really know how much good it will do. It will certainly be something to watch.

On a side note to the subject, apparently hackers have, within two hours or release, come up with ways to compromise a system running Safari for Windows. It is after all only Beta.

I'm a little hesitant to download it yet. But from the screenshots I have seen, the style they are touting is; the very style I have grown so annoyed at with Itunes and QuickTime. I am one of those that don't like it when someone arbitrarily skins their application for "Cool" not taking into consideration that "I want uniform conformity to my system styling". Brushed metal simply doesn't look as good on every Theme.

You know, I think I am starting to see a trend to Apple's products of late. They are building up a reputation for high end hardware more and more... They are in the process of switching from Motorola to the more Windows friendly Intel Chipsets... Their newest Systems now run Windows Vista... They are starting to port software to Windows... They are making fun of PCs.. Wait that one doesn't quite fit.

Okay I foresee the day Microsoft will make the OS of the Mac. Apple will make applications and high end hardware, as well as their now favorite mobile hardware. Well, who realy knows, only time will tell.

Okay, enough of my opinion.

Work Schoolin

I signed up for a class through Volt and actually got in. It's only $10 and I start on the 12th. I hope I can get something out of it. It is only two nights for two hours a night but it should be interesting.

It is a javascript class. I have studied some javascript before but I would get partway through a book and get board of it. It is hard to keep going through such a book on my own motivation. I managed to get through my even more dull drafting books by doing all of the reading studying and projects in class, where I could almost totally focus on just that book.

There is another class coming up that I am thinking of signing up for but I'm not sure I'll get into it. It is on a more popular subject so it could be a craps shot to get in.

Junkware

After a little searching around, I finally found a decent replacement for QuickTime. It’s called QuickTime Alternative. If set up right, it allows you to play QuickTime files such as Mov files in Media Player.

QuickTime has been one of those pains in the side pieces of software from the first time I ever installed it. The first time I needed it, it came as part of a game, and it overwrote the newer version of QuickTime that was already installed, thus corrupting it. Since then I have tried to avoid installing and using it. And pretty much every time I have had to use it since, I have found the player even slower, with more features I don't want to use. With the addition of ITunes messing up the registry and my files it has become even more of a nuisance. I don't buy music; I hardly even listen to music. I don't need ITunes.

The next most annoying media player is Real Audio Player. With its ads and spamtacular registration Its hardly worth installing

For it there is also a codec Real Alternative for Real Audio Player, but it doesn’t work with steaming audio, which is what you would want Real audio for in the first place. So it doesn’t seem to be worth it yet.

This time I’ve decided to keep my computer as clean of junk software as I can.

Other popular junk software I’m trying to avoid? Well, Let’s see: WinZip, QuickTime, ITunes, RealAudio, WinRar. Oh yeah and Symantec’s antivirus. I have had enough headaches because of it, I don’t want it.

I speek Microspeak, do you?

Microsoft has its own internal language, it is called Microspeak, Most of it is abreviations of terms that are used frequently while working. Others are code names or just descriptions of things that are done frequently. You hear things like: "let's dogfood this", "ping the developer" or "the BVT was run last night" it's part of what makes getting started at Microsoft difficult, part of the steep learning curve.

~Alma

Welcome Meeting with Volt rep

At least I didn't forget my badge today.

I didn't quite get to work before eight AM, like I wanted to, but I was there sufficiently early. Sigh, more responsibility is being handed to me, I'm still choking some on what I have, but little bits are starting to sink in. I hope I'm ready for when Sanjina goes on her 100 day break.

I found out some interesting and somewhat concerning information today. I had an interview aka welcome meeting with my Volt rep. It seems that the Non-Disclosure agreement I signed requires that I am not allowed to get a job with any other agency for a period of 180 days after the end of an assignment. I had previously thought it was 100 days as the Minecode people were quoting me. So, that means that if I had taken a job with Minecode after only 100 days I could have been in some possible serious legal trouble.

Of course Volt has agreements with Microsoft as well as other companies that, if offered, I could possibly be hired on full time. Nothing like putting a leash on your employees. Oh well, at least I am enjoying my current job. I also found out that accrued paid vacation days can only be carried over if returning to work within 140 days, which I just happen to be two days over. Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter, I can't really think of a reason I would be taking a vacation any time very soon.

~Alma

Another day at Work

Okay I did more actual work today. I think I might be beginning to learn how to file bugs. I think a good way to describe what I do is that I am a copy editor for the Help files and websites for Windows Server. I run the documents to be compiled into Help files or Web Pages through some automation looking for common mistakes and also look over the document for any errors.

It is starting to become more interesting. But it is certainly like no other testing I have ever heard of before. This will be interesting. I wonder if I could get hired on fulltime from this position.

Day Three at work

I finally had work to do today. I have no idea if I understood what it was I was supposed to be doing, but I hope I will catch on soon. This is certainly not the kind of work I was expecting. It is very different than what I was doing on the IE BVT team. It seems that I am sort of like an editor, for help content, I check over the finished documents to make sure the formatting hasn't been lost ant the links are correct. Most of the testing is done via. Automation like profanity filtering, link checking, etc. but some of it just has to be done by eye. I spent most of the day checking help files to make sure the content hadn't lost its formatting.

This is going to be an interesting job. Now if I could just comprehend what people are saying when they are telling me, at Eighty miles an hour, what I am expected to do. I’ll just have to keep asking questions.

Second Day of Work

When I checked in with the receptionist to try to get my Agency Temp pass I was told I could pick up my badge. Cool, and on the second day too! I didn't have to wait the full Seventy Two hours I had to wait the first time. So I walked over to Building Eight to pick it up, and was given my old badge back. Even more cool. Then back to my Office to finish installing an OS I couldn't finish the day before.

My Manager was working from home today so I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do. One person was instructed to show me the ropes of the tests, So I sat in his Office as he showed me how to examine the test results, and file Bugs. They certainly aren’t like the tests I had over in IE. It might take me a little while to get the hang of things.

Next, my office again, and a short introduction to one of the main Microsoft wide tools. Then busy work trying to get the systems arranged and trying to learn a little about what I'm supposed to be doing. I had a little trouble trying to do some of the things I needed to do because there are still a few permitions that haven’t propagated. hopefully they will all be ready tomorrow.

I guess I am expected to work for Eight hours a day, and I can arrive whenever I can get there, I just have to be at work between Ten AM to Four PM. Yawn. I'm already starting to feel the drain of Eight hour days. I Hope I can get accustomed to is soon. The hundred day break requirement is nuts, it creates a more difficult transition when returning to work. One of the cool things about this job though is they seem to expect contractors to return after their breaks.

A day at Microsoft. AKA: First day on the job

Today was my first day of work. It was sort of interesting. I first turned in my insurance paperwork in at the Volt Main Microsoft Campus. Then went on over to building 43 But I was about an hour or two early So I wandered around a little outside area nearby until I was only about 45 minutes early. Then I went into the Lobby and registered with the Receptionist who also contacted my Manager to come and get me. I'm in an Office that will eventually hold three people. I'm in an office where I can see a window from my door. I started by setting up my Mail machine, though it was a struggle, since a good portion of my permitions have not propagated on the servers.

One thing about Microsoft, When you start; it is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. You are given a set of computers and told to set them up, with a little help. Then with little, or no training, given instructions to follow to do your work. It's kind of the flying by the seat of your pants training. I suppose, it could be rather exhilarating.

There was a team meeting; I was invited to, where things that are currently over my head were discussed. I am supposed to replace someone that has four weeks left on her contract. So I have a little bit of time to learn and be tutored. She has apparently become quite the efficient tester and has a whole lot of areas she is covering, so I have some really huge shoes to fill. They are working on a semi-automated project to help me do what she was doing, they are calling it Everest. I wonder what that could mean.

There is a second guy on the team that started today in the same room as me. It was his first day ever so he was struggling big time, he was getting rather frustrated. Domains can be a fussy torture devise if you haven’t had to really deal with them before. Finally after I was done with everything I could do I helped him get his Mail Machine in working order. At least I could sympathize with him having gone through the same sort of experience only about Ten months ago. Then home ward bound.

Happy PI day

π, one of the most interesting numbers in existence. Believe it or not, it is one of the few numbers I have actually engrained, well at least to the 7th decimal, 3.1415926. Today is March (3) 14th so it is 3/14 and at 1:59 even cooler. Mmm, Chicken potpie sounds good for tonight, had Bean soup instead though.

Hmm. Other numbers and series I have internalized: Some of the more important degrees of a circle; 0 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 180, [270], 360. Binary powers; 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256.

Happy PI Day

Orientation

I had Volt's Orientation today. Most of it was filling out paperwork and a presentation which I pretty much saw at my first orientation when I started with IE. It will be a relief to get the initiation over with and back into the swing of things. I just hope I am up to the requirements of the job. I’m a little nervous. I have never done production code that might be critiqued; there is a possibility that I will be writing some code, I hope I am up to it.

I'm a little excided as well, I even pulled my badge holder out and it is ready to go for when I get my new badge. I wonder what my new alias will be. I suppose there is this sort of FBI/CIA covert cool kind of aspect of working at Microsoft. Working with technology so new it hasn't even been released yet, the requirement of badges to get in the buildings. Even as a contractor it’s cool.

With my starting work; I wonder if I will be able to keep this blogging up. Usually it takes me a few hours to compose a good post, and with work’s tendency to leave me drained I’m not sure I will have the energy to keep at it. I’ll keep trying as long as I can though.

This is a test

This is a test of the Blogging from Word 2007 ability. This is only a test. The blogger in this blog has developed this test to see if it is actually feasible to use Word 2007 as a blog post mechanism. If this were an actual interesting Blog post this would be replaced with something more interesting. This blog serves Shkyrocket clipboard and surrounding area. This concludes the test of the Blogging from Word 2007 ability. You may now return to your usual blogging activities.

I had an interview with the Virtual PC team.

Okay, I went through the interview. I was interviewed by a panel of three people, on the Virtual PC team. It started outgoing pretty good. Then, they started asking questions… I was asked to name what a number of DOS Command-line script commands do. There were a few that I didn’t recognize. One of them PushD I remembered afterwards what it did. Let's see if I can rebuild the list this time with discriptions.

MD = Creates a directory. PATH = Displays or sets a search path for executable files. DIR = Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory. NET LOCALGROUP = Retrive/modify users on the computer. PUSHD = Saves the current directory then changes it. Restored using POPD START = Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command. IPCONFIG = Windows IP Configuration. PROMPT = Changes the Windows command prompt. DEL = Deletes one or more files.

Next I was asked to test these two applications one was a very simple calculator, the other a Triangle determinater. I did okay I brought up a few good tests but on reflection there is something I should have brought up; I was with the Virtual PC Team. I should have thought to test their applications on different platforms. Duh! Why didn't I think of that on the spot!

After that I was given a Microsoft famous Brain teaser question, even though they are supposed to be discouraged now days. I was given a problem where a balance scale was drawn up on the white board and nine balls. One of the balls is lighter than the others which are all alike. All of the balls are the same size. I was asked to find the lighter ball. Boy did I flounder on that one. Here "http://sakharov.net/puzzle/weight.html?SRC=sakharov&STAT=9Z2&TTL=2" See if you can work it out before continuing on to the answer.

One thought I had while heading home was to bounce them and the one that bounced higher or lower could be the one. But that is not the answer. So what is the answer?

Separate the balls into 3 groups of 3. Place 3 balls on the left side of the scale and 3 balls on the right. If they balance out, you know that the heavier ball is not one of those 6. If one side is heavier, you know that the heavier ball is one of those 3. Then once you know which set of 3 has the heavier ball, you choose any 2 of them and weigh one on each side. If they balance out you know the final ball is heavier. If they don't balance, well, obviously the heavier ball is the one you are looking for. From: Casey, Yahoo! Answers

I was sort of close at one point but, I had for some reason assumed that I had to weigh every time to get the solution. I have realy never been very good with this kind of Brain teaser puzzle. Oh well. Next time, maybe.

I really don't think I have the job. Which could actually be a good thing since when I read the email all the way through I found out that it would only be a three month contract, which could put me with a hundred day break allot sooner than would be good.

Update: 21 Feb 2007 5:22 PM, I recived word on the interview. "Hey Alma, The team decided to go with a no hire decision. I will provide more feedback tomorrow. Zeshan"

I have another Job Interview tomorrow.

Woo, hoo. I have another Job interview with Volt, at Microsoft on Virtual PC, tomorrow. One of the requested skills is C#, So I'm not very expectant about getting the job, but I'm hopeful.

They also want Kernal Debugging skills, Hmm. Maybe I should try to learn to connect the Debugger to IE and try to figure out what the problem is I have been seeing lately.

Interesting Browser Issues

I have run into a few interesting browser issues over the past few days.

On Sunday my Mom decided she wanted to print this Blog out so she could take it up and show my Dad. She was printing from Firefox and found that it only printed three pages, all of which were missing most of the Blog. So I launched Firefox myself and sure enough, the first page would print the Title then the second page the Table of Contents and other stuff on the left side and the third page would print the first page of the Blog body of text. So I decided to print Preview in IE where it showed up perfectly. I then tried Netscape's Browser with the same results as Firefox, which shouldn't be too surprising; since the latest Netscape Browser is just a modified version of Firefox now. Opera did a pretty good job in the Print Preview, but I have become accustomed to IE7's Shrink to fit so the extra page with almost nothing on it makes me cringe, and for some reason it was set to print the backgrounds by default. It's a simple task to turn off print backgrounds but it would have used allot of ink. What my Mom eventually ended up doing was opening the page in IE6 and printing it that way. It worked for her.

If I were to venture a guess Firefox simply doesn’t know how to handle printing IFrames properly.

Now, Ie7 isn't perfect either. I have been experiencing this rather frustrating phenomenon while looking on-line for jobs. I would go to a page of Jobs and middle click a few links, that look like Jobs I could do, to open them in separate tabs, then go to the next page and then look over the Jobs in the other Tabs. If it is a Job I am definitely not qualified for I would close the tab and continue to the next until I am through the tabs and then come back to the page with the lists of jobs and repeat the process. After doing that for a while IE7 would suddenly close all instances of IE open and play the error sound. There isn't even an error reporting dialog, it just closes.

I decided yesterday that I would trace down the problem. I noticed that it happened on opening the new tab, and it seemed to have something to do with the number of tabs opened. So I opened an IE window and clicked the New Tab button until it crashed. I counted 55 Tabs including the original tab created. Then I started over again this time I clicked the New Tab button and then Double Clicked the newly created tab to close it. Doing it this way I counted 62 Tabs, including the first tab, before it crashed. I tried several more times to make sure I could reproduce it consistently, which it did, unfortunately I don't have another Machine with Windows XP on it, to see if it is a problem with my machine, or with something that is installed or whatever.

The only ideas I have as to what the problem could be; is that there is a possibility that there is a variable not being reduced when a tab is closed so that it overflows. Or that the tabs are kept in memory until there are simply too many open and once again an overflow occurs.

Update: 21 Feb 2007 9:00PM, I finaly attached WinDBG to IE and caught the exception. It seems that it has to do with the IE Dev toolbar. It is trowing an access violation error. Interesting.

Job interview at Microsoft for Content access and Protection team

Well, I had a job interview at Microsoft today. One of the Volt reps set it up for me with the Content Access and Protection team, to execute Manual and Automated tests and maintain pools of machines. I thought it went fairly well up until the whiteboard test.

I was given a scenario to diagnose I believe it was the Expedia website. He created a diagram of a web server with two SQL database servers one containing web content and the other searches and other related content. Then he told me that customers had reported that they would go to the site and would get a page not found error page.

So I started fumbling around trying to figure out how to diagnose such a problem. I thought Hardware and brought that up. He said what if you don't have access to the hardware? So I thought of Remote access. And he asked what if you don't have remote access? I thought of Pinging the server. He said okay you ping the server and it comes back okay but the page still doesn't show up. I thought is it only the main page that isn't working? He said that the main page comes back with no page found and the flight page comes back with some of the content such as pictures as missing. Okay, that sounded like the content database is corrupted or the interface between the database and the web server is broken intermittently.

Well the interview ended shortly after this. He went to talk to his boss and then returned to tell me that I would find out in a day or two if I had the job. Then he escorted me back to the lobby. On the way I mused over the problem and remarked about it and he said he just wanted to see how I would diagnose such a situation.

A couple of hours later the Volt Rep called and asked how the interview went. I really wasn't sure. So he sent off his email and a couple of hours later called me back to say that I just wasn't what they were looking for. Oh well. He said he submitted me for another position we'll see if anything turns out.