There Should be a Licence to Use the Internet

So while I was on the computer, my sister came up to me asking how to save her word document to a USB key. I explain that you have to plug it in, then go File -> Save As, and select the USB key from the drop down list. Easy enough.

No apparently that was too difficult.

EQUALS MASSIVE FAIL

So when I get to the laptop, the first thing that I notice is that the USB key (aka Nerd Stick as I call them) is plugged into the ethernet RJ-45 port.

Best part: I got yelled at when I pointed out that she made a stupid mistake.

Lets assume for a second that one does not know much about computers, but you have a brain that functions. You take this device that you know is a "usb stick" and that if you can plug it into the computer you can save your files to it. So you take a look at what the connector on the "usb stick" looks like, and try to search for something that kinda looks the same.

Looking at the usb stick you notice that its pretty rectangular. On the laptop (which in this case is a Dell Inspiron 1525) you see a few "slots" on the sides. There's some that it can't go into (ie VGA, s-video, etc), some that are far too small (ie mini-usb), and some that it might fit into. These would be 4xUSB ports, a HDMI port, ethernet, and modem. The ethernet and modem are pretty square though, and you have a rectangular thing, so it'll probably fit in one of the other slots much better. You try one port which happens to be the HDMI with various orientations with no luck. You do the same for what is the USB port. After flipping it over, it plugs in, and Windows starts talking about how its found some new hardware. Success!

NOW WHAT WAS HARD ABOUT THAT

Seriously, I've been told my entire life that my generation is the "generation of technology and information!!!!" but I have yet to see that. All through out my life I've seen examples like this one above. Its just sad.

Not even a little sad. Massive fail sad.

What do you guys think about the current generation and their ability to use technology? I think its so sad that, continuing with my rant about Facebook, the Internet really should have some sort of "basic training" or a quick exam in order to pass. You must be at least this not stupid to be allowed to use a computer.

/sigh

Facebook really has become a bloated POS

I feel that I should copy what I posted on Facebook the other day here. I hope its not THAT hard to read; I did type this up at 1am in bed so keep that in mind when my sentences don't make any sense. I've editted and expanded it to help correct my mistakes :P



So the other day when I logged onto Facebook I stopped and looked at the site. Lately its been pissing me off, but I was always in too big of a rush to look at all the flaws that I find in it. When I stopped to really look at it, I've found that it really has become a bloated POS that has reached this point due to the general idiotic population. You know the people that I'm talking about. The highschoolers that "are cool", the 20-something-ers that never grew up, and those people that when you talk to them, you wish that the internet required a licence to use akin to driving.

You see, I've been using Facebook since before it was cool. I had it when nearly everyone that I talked to had never even heard of it. That said, I was introduced to it by someone else. Specifically, it was my then-not-yet-(now ex)girlfriend (who I despise to this day, but that's beside the point). Back then it had a purpose that it did well. I could send little messages to my friends quickly, and they would get them. I could share photos that I've taken instead of having to email them out or publish them on some photo sharing site that blows ass. I could even type notes out (like this right here), if I wanted to speak my mind a little.

But of course, then Facebook got popular, and the site had to change.

They added more and more "features". As I take a look at today's Facebook homepage, I see crap. Its actually really really bad. Although they have made some good design changes of the revisions, it is still REALLY BAD. Looking at the homepage, the biggest one is the complete waste of space. The main center column (and main purpose) of the frontpage is the update minifeed thinger. To the left and right of that middle column is crap. Now I understand that they made the site an absolute width (instead of making it relative to the viewer's resolution), but then they go and make the main column even skinnier. HUGE amounts of wasted space under the useless content in the left and right hand column. That is poor design.

Then what about all the crap on the frontpage? The first thing that I have to do when I log on is block a bunch of quizes because it is useless information made by some person that has no idea what they are doing. And of course to top it off, the Facebook programmers didn't add an option to block all quizes right there....no I have to block them individually. Or how about all the crap on the right hand side? I don't care if someone "became a fan of funny faces", or that it is suggested that I add to my friends list people that it thinks I know (and clearly must be friends with). It is "features" that they add that have no real value.

Its because of all the stupid people, and the decisions made by the administration that have joined Facebook that it has gone the direction that it has. All the moronic people that think that it is a good idea to have some of this crap, which clearly the administration changes their product for (biggest proportion of customers) when actually, a lot of the features do absolutely nothing of value.

The original site that I joined way back had a purpose. Although I can still do a lot of it, there is now a ton of shit leaching off the useful part of Facebook that makes it hard to continue to see the benefit of using their service.

This reminds me of Windows. The core of it is alright...it serves a purpose, and it does it pretty well. Its only recently (hint hint vista hint hint win7) that the thing has so much OOO LOOK SHINY that is suppose to make it "better" when its really worse.

Auriaya Down!

Something that I did not see happening when I went into Ulduar last night happened....we got Auriaya down on 25 now!

Me spanking my friend at healing

The picture above was our second attempt last night on her. We got her to 3% before she killed us all. I think the funniest part is that Frostblade (my irl friend) and I both forgot to re-equip our weapons after our previous attempt....lol

To be fair to him though, he is a pally healing a fight where the MT doesn't take that much damage (after the initial pull heh).

Actual kill shot.
Notice I'm still beating Frostblade :D

Right after that we got her down. And yes, I remembered to put my weapon back on this time. My total healing was less this attempt though. Which is not a problem of course. We went in much better prepared to make sure that we called out when the add she spawns is almost dead (so people can get a head start of moving out of the void zone), and making sure that she AoE shadow damage dealie was interupted. We had minimal deaths this time (previous attempt we had a few dps die early due to standing in void zone).

It was good times. We moved onto Hodir after that to get some attempts in....too many people failing. I got rooted once at the same time two small runes appeared under my feet (roots?), so by the time I could move again (shapeshift in + out) they both did damage to me, 1 shotting me q_q . That was our last attempt for the evening though, and I was brezed a while later, but I was dead for a good amount of the fight. Here's a shot of how that attempted ended.

Notice: Bear balls in Frostblade's mouth

Normally when we are all dieing Frostblade will DI me if its up and, of course, I'm still alive. This time he decided to spite me and DI our priest Sofi (damn you Sofi!). I decided to take this opportunity to give a little payback to Frostblade :) .


Maybe I'll type up a "how I heal Auriaya" post in a few days or something...

Meet the Druid!

Alright, so I may not have a cool intro video like Valve does for its classe updates, but still, this is a post about my main character in WoW...Fermi from Dragonblight, the resto druid!

Yes, I forgot to take a screenshot of my talents. Stats are completely unbuffed.

A few common questions people have for me after they find out that I play that character are, where is your character's name from? Why do you play a female character? Alliance...whaaaa? Well, here's some answers for you folks.

• My character is named after the physicist Enrico Fermi. He's famous for his work on the first nuclear reactor, and did a ton of work in various nuclear, quantum, and stat mech fields. For more information see here his wikipedia article.
• Why do I play a female character? Well, since I'm an alliance player now, and since I wanted to be a resto druid, it was either male or female night elf. Since the male night elves look...well...silly, I rolled female. Plus, I didn't want to spend days looking at what is suppose to represent the back side of a male...lol
• Yes...I'm playing alliance these days. Although I'll always be a horde at heart (my first characters were horde, and I miss my 70 tankadin), I decided that if I was going to come back to WoW, I was going to play with my friend that I live with (when I'm at university). Since he's always played alliance in pretty much the same guild since vanilla, I figured that I would join him. This isn't my first time playing alliance however....my first max level toon was my mage during BC....and that was a human!

Now that we've got that part out of the way, I'm going to talk about Fermi's history.

As soon as her level was high enough to enter deadmines, she stopped doing quests in favour of instance runs. My friend and I had everything worked out so that we would have multiple lvl (approx) 60s through instance runs. I demanded that Fermi was the first so that I could start my outland questing while we worked on getting our other alts through the instances.

Eventually, I hit 80 and started to gear up. Over the course of 1 weekend I pretty much got everything I needed for my guild's "raid level 1" clearance. I was still missing just a few things at that time however. That week was also the guild's first time battling Malygos. They needed another healer since someone didn't show up, so I said that I would help out.

And boy oh boy, that was fun.

It was the first time that I would be healing alongside my friend in a raid situation. Of course, he's an awesomesauce pally healer, so it was good times. So even though I had terrible gear, I came out in the top few of the healing done, beating the other better geared resto druids. How did I do that? I'm better than them, that's how :P.

We ended up downing him the second night we went in. A bunch of us (spearheaded by me) on the forums came up with a strat that would work for our guild's skills. I was then lucky enough to get the leather healy belt from Maly that night; my first raid epic. Woot!

Now when ever I do maly (which isn't that often these days because everyone is on ulduar), I decimate the charts. I use a combination of grid+clique and mouseover macros to heal. During vortex I'll mash my LB button and move my mouse over people's icons in grid to apply a single LB to them. In maly, LB can be upwards of 50% of my healing.

I *still* need the cape from KT, as it's looking to be the BiS still for resto druids even with ulduar out. Never did get the OH from maxxena either. If I can find some time to do the during-the-week ulduar runs (work keeps me from staying up too late during the week) then maybe I can get The Ironmender from heroic-kologarn.

I wants it naow!
(especially seeing as its going to be ages before I get 4pT8 q_q )

I've got some Life/Computer stuff I'll post about later, but this one was dedicated to ma drood.

Until next time!

Back into the Swing of Things

Yes. I know. I fail at posting. Blah blah blah.

First off, how about a school update? I finished by second year of undergrad at UW. Woot! How about a summary of how the courses went?

• Classical Mechanics & Special Relativity: WOW this course ended up being pretty intense. It started off ez-mode (summary of basic calculus and mechanics) but then turned to WTF mode. Assignments took us upwards of 14+ hours to complete...in groups. Yeah. Was a fun course though. Prof was awesome; he tried his best to connect with the class. Not sure if that worked for everyone, but it worked for me. I did end up getting killed on the final though :(.
• Optics: That was one boring class. Not sure what else to say. The content was easy, but just SO BORING. Actually, it was more the professor's ability to make it interesting that was lacking. Useful course? Yes. Good prof? No.
• Thermal: Nice course, fairly easy throughout most of it, much more difficult at the end. That's about it.
• Stats: Wow what a joke. I would not have taken that course if it wasn't a prereq for a 4th year course that I would like to take (applied crypto). Take it if you have to, other wise skip it.
• Intro to Combinatorics: Hands down, best math course I have taken to date. I now understand power series stuff (unlike my inability to grasp the concepts during DE in 2A), and graph theory was a lot of fun. I'm take the 3rd year Graph Theory course this fall (3A term). Most people complain about this course for its difficulty, and they are right, it isn't easy, but once again, best math course I have taken to date.

Now about a social life update? Lets see here....hmmm....yeah. lol

In the fall I'm moving off campus (finally) to live just north of campus with my 2 good friends. We're living in a small 3 person townhouse, so that should be fun. I've been working my ass off this summer so far trying to figure everything out that I need for the networking side of things for our house. Which reminds me....

I HATE ROGERS. That is all.

Started my summer work since I'm back at home now. Working at the same place as last summer, doing more or the less the same stuff. Today I managed to get version 2 of the intranet website rolled out, which was much fun. I'll type more about work another time.

I've also completely moved to Ubuntu 9.04 on my personal computers for everything that I do other than video games. Its just so much better than XP. There is no doubt in my mind about it. While I was typing this I was working on installing 9.04 on my laptop. It did have 8.10 on it, but I wanted to do a "minimal" install, and of course, use ext4 as my filesystem. Seems to be working much better now.

But what about video games Steven? Yes yes, I have been playing a bit. And by a bit I mean a decent amount. And yes the game is WoW. I'm back!

So during my 2B I got WoW up and running again with a new account for 3x experience goodness. With that bonus experience I managed to get myself a lvl 58 druid, rogue, shaman, and paladin. Since then my druid has gone resto and hit 80, my shaman 72, and the other characters are awaiting me to play them :).

My resto druid is clearly my main. And for the first time ever in my WoW, I am very VERY well geared. Although I didn't have full BiS pre3.1, I was still full epics with my lovely Torch. These days when I heal Ulduar I'm either the top healer or what feels like the only healer (aka completely blowing the other healers out of the water) in both 10 and 25 man. Although I don't like the LB changes from 3.1, it has made me an even better healer. I just can't wait until I get 4pT8... /drool.

In case you were wondering my main's name is Fermi on Dragonblight. My shaman's name is Lorentz on the same server.


I'm going to spend some more time posting this summer. I enjoy being able to share my thoughts with anyone interested. I have a feeling that there will be a good amount of WoW healing information coming this summer so you all you trees out there can be awesome-sauce healers in your raids like myself.

Until next time!