Category: Uncategorised

iOS4

On balance it appears to be a decent upgrade, though there’s some issues on my iPhone 3g.

The good

  • Google calendar integration
  • Notes > gmail storage
  • Changes to the mail interface & threading

The bad

  • I’m sure it’s more sluggish than before, slower on the response after shifting apps.  I suspect there is more checking back with the net / google / apple going on in the background.
  • Google / Apple, how about a decent todo / tasklist tool?

The evil league of evil rumour mill

  • iAds has been enabled for targetted adverts.  It is possible to opt out http://oo.apple.com/
  • However it appears that the location tracking being logged back to Apple Central{tm} and passed on to their “partners” can’t be opted out of.
  • It’s possible that this isn’t as evil as it sounds but there’s nothing in the formal statements / documented agreement which completely clears their name either, It’s something I’ll be watching for and commenting on as news grows on this.

Won’t someone think of the children!!

So the “bag of wind kicking tournament” is in full swing, as expected the English national team went out with the “1966, we’re going to win” and proving to (as ever) be made of complete fail.  Them going out in the first stages will fortunately mean the coverage backs off a bit and the stupid levels of hype die down and we can back on with normal life.

However, what this carefully crafted rant is about is the various schools which are apparently closing early tomorrow (England kicks off mid-afternoonish) so the school kids can watch the match.  What!?  It’s a sodding football match, closing down the school does have potential problems for parents, scheduling of pickups where required, potentially access to the family home etc etc.  I know the teachers want to watch the match but that’s not really significant.

Cue the morons on the radio with the standard lines of “it’s only once every four years”, “what a parent having to take responsibility for their children”, “but it’s football”, “chill and watch the game” and other meaningless moronisms.

So let’s look at a couple of those excuses.

“It’s only once every four years”, and in two years time we’ll have the same excuse for the olympics, the same applies to the commonwealth games etc etc.  All the major sporting world championships are on a four year cycle.  Football is nothing special, there are plenty of us in the UK who couldn’t give two farts for football.  It is when all is said and done, only a game.

“Parent’s having to take responsibility for their children”, the parent who raised the problem (who had 24 hours notice of the school deciding to close early) had taken responsibility for their offspring.  Making sure they’re ready for school, get to school, knowing when school closes for the day and having contact information with the school for if there is a major problem / illness / poor behaviour etc etc.  The school has decided to change their side of the service which they get paid to provide for an entertainment event.  Remind me, who’s the responsible one again?

I accept that there will be problems with some children faking illness, skipping school at lunch etc etc to be at home for the game, or firing up the iPhone to try and watch the game in lesson.  These are problems for the school and parent to deal with.  It comes with the territory.  For the record if the short one skipped school for this reason he’d be without television / iDevice / computer for quite some period of time.

Gardening

Veg:The cut and come again has gone “mental”, I think we could feed a warren of bunnies this year if we decided to.  The tomatoes are growing well, I’ve moved one set from one side of the lawn to the other for better sunlight.

The ongoing war with the local moggies is escalating, I’m dousing the herb bed with pepper dust now to see if that stops the little bastards from digging everything up and killing off my plants.  I shall no doubt rant at length about pet owners who disown all responsibility of their pets behaviour and actions because “it’s their nature”.

The plants in the plastic greenhouse are doing very well, I need more greenhouse space I think, something for the medium term planning.

Lawn:

Clearing continues, I need to whack it with another (stronger) dose of the weedkiller.


Dramaz!

Ahh, the smell of freshly minted drama, nothing like it.

So thanks to a collision of events (personal and the world cup) we were short on numbers and there was no way which we could attempt anything other than Sindy (she and LK being the only bosses left on the lockout).  The team was suboptimal, a single tank healer and a number of new bugs and it was what I’ve come to term as a “grumpy raid”.  Some of the leads were snappier than normal in vent, more crap from various raid members than normal, the usual suspects slacking off and not flasking.

All avoidable fun and games.

So after a couple of nabbed up wipes a certain dps drops without warning, notice or comment.  Just “poof!” and gone.  Colour me completely unsurprised when the forum post turns up a few days later announcing that they’re leaving.

So analysis, it’s been coming for a long time, this member is consistently the last to flask and has probably added 5-10 minutes of downtime to raids thanks to not flasking / eating / buffing because he’s off slacking or doing something else.  Will he be missed, certainly in the short term, dps numbers continue to be a problem, though less so now that there is no obvious “farm night”.  He was one of the higher signups, so did bring that utility to the raid.  In the long term it’s unlikely it’ll change anything, drama comes and drama goes, we’ve plenty of angst coming wih the raid lockout changes in Cata and what they’ll mean for 25-man raiding, whether it remains possible to build the numbers to do it or whether it becomes a vehicle for building multiple 10-man raids.

Causes of manic laughter (and possibly breakdowns)

“Your admin assistant will know”.

This pretty much sums up the problem with orkplace, all the bits which were there pre-merger are “big corp” and have structures and lots of people employed in lots of jobs giving lots of capacity and people who are there just to be assistants to other people.

Enter this bit of the org, we were an aquisition, purchased for the software we write and were a small startup, these structures don’t exist but the assumption is that they do.  It is assumed that there are teams dedicated to all sorts of things, people on hand to leap on issues 24×7 and so on.

The latest fun involves some testing which has been dumped on my team and which last time sucked up weeks worth of effort for an entire section.  This time round we have been talking about it, $BOSS has been informed what the realistic timescales are and lo and behold… rather than the six weeks it will take we’ve committed to the customer that it’ll be three weeks with one person out for the entire period and during the summer holiday months….  Of course there will then come the pressure for weekend working and excessive overtime on that part of the team, so I’m starting the fight back now.

There are times when I think upper manglement are determined to either break staff so we’re short again or piss them off to the point they leave taking experience with them.

So.. isn’t one tank enough for you?

Actually no.  Ok to a certain level I enjoy DK dps but melee dps has to be my least enjoyable form of the game because of the sheer amount of faff in keeping within the hit box when the tank is moving the mob all over the damm place (guys, trust me on this, where you can keep the mobs parked).

So we currently have Korenwolf, the raid geared wrecking ball who has always been and remains the “main”, he’s the class I understand the best and where the muscle memory is setup the best.  I know what to do when things go to hell on trash packs (like last night where we ended up with two large packs of adds, a couple of casters and a big skeleton in PoS at the start thanks to a face pull by the dps).  Everything got picked up and brought under control, including the casters sat at range (thank you shield for your caster stun effect).

There is the dead gnomish girl, I’ve got the hang of how to pick up and hold aggro on her (nothing like seeing a gnome tanking a toenail) it’s not as instinctive as ‘wolf but she’s getting there.

Now, as part of team pirate we have a bear tank, he’s solid he knows his stuff but we’re seeing threat generation issues which I need to understand properly so we can either fix or work around.  So to that end the boomkin spec is parked and tree boy goes bear for a while.  Now to get my head around rage and all that sort of thing.

Random links for reference