April 2007 Archives

Call Me Beep Me does as a chiptune.

I haven't done a desktop wallpaper in ages.

Check out a bunch of them based on the Elder Scrolls Computer Game series here. I really like this one from Morrowind:

Charlie Brown finally finds a way to use the kite eating tree when Linus raises the wrong spirit. :)

Robot Chicken parody of Charlie Brown and The Great Pumpkin.

High Adventure Games gives us a link to Terraonova: The Planet of the Day. You may recognize the author of that program. It's John Walker, the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD.

The cool thing is that he's given me permission to use the script that powers that feature as part of my project, Colonies and Empires. Maybe I'll work on it someday.

As an aside, I would this as well. Might help me with my work with C&E.

Continuing on our Small Home Towns aren't small anymore thread, Linda sent me this link about missing guns from the evidence locker at the Washington County Sheriff's Department.

The inventory is complete and the news is appalling. Seventy firearms -- 45 more than originally reported last week -- are missing from the evidence locker at the Washington County Sheriff's Department.

But that's not the scary part. Notice that the date on that article is April 24th, 2007, right?

The Attorney General's Office has been notified and an investigator is expected to be in Machias the first week in May.

I guess the Attorney General doesn't think it's a serious issue. edit: Another news story on the issue. Not sure why they're calling a county sheriff's office, the Maine Sheriff though. Sounds like Maine only has a single sheriff's department.

Awhile back, Raincoaster gave us a post with Alanis Morissette singing (if you can call it singing) a cover of Black Eyed Peas' mindless tune "My Humps." And, of course, everybody else has got it up there now as well. But for some reason she just doesn't look that good in it. She seems off for some reason. *chuckle* She look better in this though. ;)

Link

I gotta admit that I agree with most of these. One of my biggest pet peeves of working in the wordpress.com support forums along with other forums is when folks write these big long novels as support requests and don't get to the point or clearly state what the problem is. Or even the folks who don't want to give you details as to what the actual problem is. Bloodly hell....

You want help? Here's the method I wish folks would use in requesting help:

1) Read the tools already provided to you. We have a search bar at the very top of the forums. Try dropping in some keywords into it. Chances are someone else has already had the problem before you. Something broken? Take a look at the front page of the forums. It may already be reported. There may already be a solution.

2) Say hi to start off your post. Chances are someone is going to go out of their way to help you. Be polite. Works wonders.

3) State specifically what the problem is in under 20-25 words. Stating specifically helps. "I'm having an issue with adding a new link to my blog roll" works a lot better than "Something doesn't work." "My CSS file is missing from x-y-z.tld" works a whole lot better than "My blog looks funny." (Although I'll grant that one since many new users might not know what CSS is)

4) Got an example? Link specifically to it. If it's a general issue, provide a general link so we can see the issue. Specific issues need to have specific links. Never assume that we're going to see the exact same thing that you're going to see. If I could read minds, I wouldn't be sitting here answering support questions on an online forum.

5) Thank the folks who will help you.

6) Wait. Chances are there are other folks also needing help. Give them a chance to help you.

And if you're a webbased business who relies on volenteers to run your support forums, thank them once in a while. Give them the tools that then need to do their job help your clients. Listen to suggestions made by them to you. Pop in once in a while and show some interest in what's occuring in the forums. Publicly thank those who go out of their way to cover your asses. (I'd give you a link to that but that hasn't occured.) Drop a tshirt into the mail when you have a big get together and the volenteer can't attend. Sure, comping them for stuff is nice but doing something nice for them is even better.

And if one of those volenteers tells you that you're wrong about something, take a second and think about what is occuring. They may be right.

Else you may discover those volenteers slowly drifting away...

AuctionAds gives us a peek at their hardware.

edit: Link fixed.  The image on their end is broken though.

Not that I'm trying to encourage piracy or anything but is anyone running eMule around here who maybe could grab me a couple of files please? The ports are blocked from here. :( I found some old Gangbusters games that I would love to have. :)

...I ask a question and no responds in the WordPress forums. All that time I spend helping folks out and no one can take a few moments for me. It's frustrating.