When shit goes right

So, since childhood I have this trauma about loosing stuff. I lost plenty of keys as child which earned me the corresponding "chat" from my parents.

So when growing up, I developed a bit of paranoia about it and with two exceptions, I haven't lost or forgot anything in the past 25 years.

Until today.

I was on the way to a customer, by bus. Due my paranoia I never ever put down my small bag when traveling. However it was hot and my neck was sweaty, so I put my bag down.

Damned routine I tell you: when my stop came, I stood up, picked up my backpack, but forgot my small bag behind me, as I am used to the fact it comes "automatically" coz I never put it down in first place.

3 streets later I realise. OMFG. Keys, visa, ID, everything in that fucking bag and speeding away to downtown without me.

Quickly opened the browser on my phone (good that wasn't in the bag) searched the number to call metropolitan transport info. They gave me two other numbers for the bus central and after a few tries I got through and explained my case, giving the wrong bus-line number 2 times as I was kinda nervous.

And the woman that helped me on the phone actually managed to contact the bus driver, who recovered my bag before some passenger did. And the best is that we also managed to arrange it so I could catch the same bus in the opposite direction 45min. later to recover my bag, intact.

Well done TMB, I wish everyone had always the same luck as me today.

Fucking spam and the lies!!!

Ok, so the thing is: in most online services that require registration, I create (on one of my domains) a totally new email.

What for? I dunno, long ago I needed it for my job, and now I keep doing it. It allows me to know which asshole sold their data to spammers or which company has so bad security that they got hacked.

The latest scenario:

I am registered in a online game shop. You might know it: gamehubs. so I registered there with gamehubs@mydomain.com

Lately I have been receiving news letters from another game shop called gamepointexpress.com to the same email address.

So, I wrote to gamehubs if they sold their database or what happened and they actually responded telling me that their email server had been hacked a while ago and that they would not sell their database and much less to a competitor.

Ok, the story would have ended there... but it didn't. I went to my inbox, the latest email received by gamepointexpress.com and looked at the bottom of the email:

"Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy." and a link to unsubscribe.

SafeUnsubscribe sounded familiar, so I pressed the unregister link and was redirected to a simple form that allowed me to unsubscribe and to give a reason.

And now the big surprise... when I pressed OK on that form, I was presented with a confirmation page with this text at the bottom:

"Gamehubs uses SafeUnsubscribe which guarantees the permanent removal of your email address from its mailing lists. "

WTF?

This obviously prooves that gamehubs didn't get their mail server hacked at all. it is a complete LIE! They didn't sell their database to someone either... they just created a new company and used their database to start spamming.

now the question is... why do they create a new company to sell something they already sell at their main web, but cheaper?

Screw history (class)

So, in the train right now... Full of kids, students.
The one closest to me is reading some notes. He probably has an exam today. Apparently it's history.
ARGHBRBRBRBRLLL HIIIISTORYYYYY ZOMG!!!1!eleven
Not only was it the class I hated most, but I came to the conclusion (and still believe) that learning history is totally stupid and should be optional, like a 3rd language is, for those that are actually interested in that crap.
I mean: OK, there are a few basics everyone needs to know, like: don't screw with the jews if you don't want them to get their revenge causing a world economical crisis (j/k)
But c'mon, who the fuck cares that king X started to siege king Y's castle on Z specific day. What the fuck is that knowledge good for? Jesus Fucking Christ, use those damn hours to teach more math, more grammar, other languages or more gym.
In a few years the world will be filled with fat retards who can only write assisted by a word corrector, only do math with a calculator (and won't even know the difference between + and -) but yeah: they'll know why where and when that fucking king sieged that other one 700y ago. Or what would be the modern version: they'll know why where and when Angelina broke up with Brat.
WHO THE FUCK CARES!

Red Dead Bear Anger

I think I've never been so close on throwing my x360 controller into my TV. Red Dead Redemption. Qute good game. But full of glitches which will be fixed by the time the game is a "classic" and got a platinum version already.

So, I've been working on my 100% (which I got as of now) and I was on the Master Hunter - Rank 6 I think (or 7?)

Goal: kill a Grizzly with your knife and skin it. Sounds easy. done it in multiplay already where you got like docens of bears all in same spot....

WELL IT WASN'T THAT EASY.
first I spend like 20 minutes riding around tall trees and surroundings to find a damn bear. when I finally find one I was not even paying attention anymore and he killed my horse and me shortly after.

OK, let's go find that bastard... 20 minutes more seeking a damn bear. seems like the one that killed me went to celebrate, coz same spot and he wasn't there. I found another one...
I hit him... and he starts to run away? WTF? Pussy bear dammit. I spend 10 minutes straight (not even lying) running behind the fucking bastard. Impossible to hit with the knife from behind. Then suddenly he gets into a camp full of boars and I though "hopefully they'll slow him down"... to my suprise the fucking boars didn't attack the bear. Well, ok. they'll probably run off. Nope, not running either... THEY FUCKING STARTED TO ATTACK ME!!! what the fucking hell? Jungle Book Conspiracy or what!!! And dead I am...

15m. later... found another bear... same fucking story again! He runs and runs and runs and runs until finally some boar comes to his rescue WTF! total of another 30m. wasted.

I pause the game, go read some forums and FAQs and guides and what not... nothing really useful. One guy sais you can shoot him into the legs to slow him down and if the final blow is with the knife, it would still be valid. Ok, let's try that.

I'm getting more lucky finding bears. This time only took me fucking 10 minutes. The Benny Hill show begins once more. I hit him into the leg: bullshit slower. He doesn't slow down. Not a pixel. I shoot him again, into the other leg: he fucking DIES!!!!

next 45minutes is a mixture of seeking, benny hill, dying from one damn shot into legs, boars attacking me, me falling down mountains. I wasted like 50 medicines so far, I got attacked by 20 boars, I killed 5 Grizzlies trying to shoot them into the foot and I let a couple of strangers DIE because I didn't go to help them.

In the end... I just got LUCKY. I found a bear (5 minutes), I chased the bear (5 minutes) and I managed to get to his side and hit him a few times till he finally died.

I look at the clock... 2 hours and more had passed... and I was a pixel away from having to buy a new 37" TV.

worst A.I. ever!

mass effect 2... the disapointment

ALERT: might include spoilers.
so... I've been playing Mass Effect 2 (and I'll continue playing to get more stuff done) and man am I disappointed...
after playing ME1 for around 100H. (different chars and dialog options, etc) what is that I get in ME2?
1) 1,5H. lose ship and die. rebirth and get new ship
2) 15H. gather team. do missions for your members so they're happy
3) 1,5H. enter omega-4 relay and kill the bad guys

WHAT THE FUCK? that's it? WHERE IS THE STORY? Man, in ME1 you had to chase Saren around the galaxy. Find out clues in Feros, Noveria, etc.
In ME2 after you gather your team, it's GAME OVER. What the fucking hell?

Exploration does not exist whatsoever, mineral mining is dull as hell (hello!!! year 2300 or whatever and have to probe planets MANUALLY?) and history is inexistant and the final boss sucks monkeyballs.

Last but not least... ending sequence shows a shitload of Reapers coming setting a real shitty base for ME3 in my opinion. So far killing ONE Reaper was really hard... in ME3 we'll have to kill hundrets of them just like that?

I really hope they do better in ME3 coz ME2 was a real huge disappointement. A good game (secondary stories are told nicely, etc) but shit compared to the first ME (and TBH I didn't bother THAT much about elevators. gave me a chance to drink, eat or go and have a poo)

I guess all those fanboys that are around now didn't play ME1 or played it so long ago they don't remember well... otherwise I don't really see how they can like the crap and nonexistant story in ME2.

another virus story... trojan horse injector.el (solved ofc!)

Typical scenario... customer with virus. no big deal you'd say... WRONG!
this trojan injects himself into windows system files. i think it was a newer version than .el, as it does inject into svchost.exe

so... found what virus it was and off we go, to the webs and support lines of our offical antivirus... AVG and symantec CE...

what a fucking big FAILURE of assistance, geez.
both where saying to update to latest database (omg, really?) and reboot into safemode to make a scan.
yeah well HELLO! do you realize that safemode also uses fucking svchost.exe?

when talking to those noobies i come to think they never ever have seen a CALCULATOR in their life, much less a COMPUTER. fucktards.

so... once again, on my own here. asking papi google... FAIL AGAIN. found some webpages with same problem. most of those forums went like this:
1) user: yeah hello, i have a problem
2) tech support (after 4 days): yeah erm... get hijack this and post a log
3) tech support (after 7 more days): yeah ok, as there has not been any response, we close the post as SOLVED.
and the website top banner sais: our statistic is of 99% solved problems.
YEAH NO SHIT ASSHOLE

found a forum with people really helpful... but geez, some stupid shit going on. they spend 7 pages of forum making the user (who doesn't even know what copy&paste is) download programs, sending logs, trying to delete stuff... to realize after the seventh page that THE USER HAS STILL SYSTEM RESTORE ON AND THE VIRUS IS IN IT.
rule nr. 1 of cleaning a virus from a windows machine: TURN OFF SYSTEM RESTORE (and be ready to repair windows if needed)

anyways... i failed at repairing the problem "in-situ" coz it turns out some of my tools where outdated plus the customers internet connection sucked (i mean.. .DL a 30mb virus database 15min. WTF!!!!)

so... after updating my shit, what did i try?
- ubuntu 9.10 live-cd + avg 8.5 = FAIL. freaking shit avg doesn't even install properly on a live-cd ubuntu. google again failed me too. maybe it is possible, but i wasted too much time on your ass.
- ubuntu 9.10 live-cd + bitdefender: found a nice tutorial that seemed to work... but after updating database and starting a scan... suddenly all icons and programs in ubuntu just disapeared... time wasted once more.
- UBCD windows live-cd + avira: problem here is that the UBCD fucking ramdisk is DYNAMIC SIZE, meaning that with this crappy computer and his 512mb ram, only 133mb ram where assigned to the ramdisk. and guess where avira gets installed and tries to download updates and all that shizzle? YES: the ramdisk! updates kept failing because there was not enough space, even tho i setup avira to use another drive as temp

WHAT WAS THE SOLUTION?
same as last step mentioned above. but instead of trying to auto update, i downloaded the specific file from the avira website. then i manually updated avira, did a full scan and some shit got deleted. then i restored the svchost.exe from the windows instalation cd (doing a full repair would not have been a bad idea either) and booted up.
did a malwarebytes pass cleaning some other stuff, then ccleaner as we are at it and finally uninstalled AVG (licence got corrupt somehow) and installed it again.

so, here it is. the first working solution EVAR on the internetz for this fucking virus. this solution will probably work for 99% of the people without having to send fucking logs to fucking forums. you just need to download some shit and burn it to cd on another computer.

if you want the links or names of exact every tool i used, just leave a comment. as only TWO persons read this blog anyways, i can't be arsed to post them now ;)

god and earthquakes

5 words: LEAVE HIM OUT OF IT.
ok, so... in first place, i am not really a believer and if i had to believe in something it would be the "human faith" (meaning we believe in ourselves) rather than "believe in god".
that being off the table, after the recent earthquake in haiti, some asshat stupid media thought "oh yeah, lets go create some drama and ask some religious guys about what they think of it"
yeah... bright idea. and of course they got what they wanted.
now newspaper forums are full of people saying "omg the church doesn't care for haiti", "omg what the religious guy said was horrible" and bla bla bla..

YEAH WHAT THE FUCKING HELL DID YOU EXPECT ASKING A CATHOLIC PRIEST OR BISHOP OR WHATEVER THE FUCK THE GUY IS???
did you expect him to say something like "oh yeah hum, haiti is the source of all worlds evil and they all needed to die" or something like "yeah eh god has a plan for all those poor souls and they will all come back as angels to protect us from alien invasions in 2012"

geez. or better said. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

leave religion out of the fucking natural disasters, dammit. those people in haiti have it bad enough as it is and you only fucking care to go to a bishop and create more drama about the whole mess.
like one of the people there said to a reporter: "we don't need cameras and photos, we need WATER and FOOD and MEDICINE"

and as we are at it, someone wrote today to the newspaper something along the lines "hey i don't really like U.S.A. and so on, but their army is doing a hell of a job in haiti now and i want to thank them."
and i second that. whethere we like or not the country from where the help is coming from, THANK YOU.
and this is coming from a guy who is not gonna donate a single cent to haiti. why? because i have my own problems and my 5$ won't make a shit of a difference when there's people out there smoking cigars that are more expensive than my monthly income. there's other people with more money who should fucking donate their cash. not "average joe".

another good game ruined for me :(

Batman: Arkham Asylum. 37€ (on the PC)
...

10 hours on saturday and another 6~ish on sunday
...

GAME OVER.


WHAT THE FUCK?
yes, i "only" have like 69% completed. but the story mode is OVER. i can run around the asylum as much as i want... not a single bad guy to hit or anything. just run around and find the remaining 31% of secrets.

i played the medium difficulty. after finishing it i started a game in the hardest difficulty but i had to stop. not because it was too hard for me (well i admit i died more than usually, hehe) but because the fact that in order to beat anything but more than 3 guys as same time requires the same strategy over... and over... and over: hit, evade jump, hit, evade jump, rinse and repeat. not only does it take ages, but it's also boring as hell.

i am the "story mode guy". reason why i also HATE l4d: i finished that game in less than one evening.

game industry is allways whining that they lose soooo much money on piracy. well FUCK YOU mister game industry. maybe if you did DECENT GAMES at DECENT PRICES people would actually buy your shit. besides, ps3 can't be pirated and Sony whines as much as the others.

arkham asylum is a very nice game. i love it... as long as it lasts. i can't believe someone would pay around 50€ (on the PS3) for a game that can be beaten in like 20 hours. that's like 2,5€ the hour geez!
yes, tons of nice secrets to find, nice challenges and all that... but even if you take your time to find every single secret before proceeding to the next screen, you'll finish the game in around a week or two, depending how many hours per day you play. that's shitloads of money for little hours of entertainement TBH.

and then... don't get me started with the milking of DLC. yes, downloading content is usually cheap on the XBOX... but as some game review magazines stated: way to release an unfinished BETA you have to pay for, and then keep paying for the rest of the game.

there should be an option to have enemies, or training dummies, or WHATEVER in the game after you finished the storyline.

now i can only wait for the joker-DLC and play all the game once more... and this time i will finish it even faster because i know all the tricks already, /sigh

something nice for a change: a PLAN

A few days ago i was feeling extremely well. You know, it was the kind of day where you are in good mood from the moment you leave your home, on the way to work, at work, etc.

And you might wonder "HOW COMES"?

here is the magic formula for EVERYONE to be in a better mood each day:
"YOU NEED TO HAVE A NICE PLAN"

yepp, that's about it.

i'll explain: each day we go through that routine called our lives. we think about working, we think about paying bills and maybe we're looking forward to watch CSI this night (just to find out is an old and repeated episode).
this makes us bored. which ain't good i tell ya.

so... i had a plan. it was friday (so i also was looking forward the weekend) and i had free in the afternoon. so i planned to go to the cinema (alone) to watch a movie... and right after that i had already planned to go watch another movie with my wife and a friend.

i realized that having a plan that pulls me out of the routine (even hobbies can become a boring routine, specially if you play MMOs) and looking forward to it during the day made me feel much better. i was lucky and didn't get any shit at work, but even if so... having something nice to look forward for later was quite good.

ofc it's not the first time i feel like this. but this time i decided to write about it. when you walk on the street and watch all those peoples faces... most people looks unhappy. i think THEY NEED A PLAN.

obama and the global warming

Ok, so I admit I hate politics. And I also admit that I didn't read all of the news that I am about to mention.

Anyways, if I understood it correctly, Obama is trying to get some stuff done in USA because of the global warming. The news paper however is afraid that he might fail like Clinton failed.
And if I got it right, it is because the governement would vote against his proposals.

WHAT THE FUCK?

ok, HELLO AMERICA! who the FUCK do you think you are? global warming affect the whole damn planet, not only your fucking continent. why should something that affects the whole world be voted by a small number of people?

yes, it's their country. but it does not only affect them, right?
such sort of things should be ENFORCED on planetary level and not be voted by individual countries.

the music of garbage

Was reading the newspapers, like most mornings, and noticed a tendency of people writing letters complaining about the noise the garbage trucks and the like do.
message to asshats like those people: GET BETTER WINDOWS. isolate your fucking home better and stop crying into the public that you wake up at 4am BECAUSE YOUR FUCKING WINDOW IS OPEN.
What solution would you suggest anyways, smartass? have more trucks do it, but during the day? And your next letter will be about how bad traffic is during the day due all those garbage trucks, right? Or maybe your next letter would be about how taxes where raised once more because those extra trucks aren't for free, you know? Changing trucks for more modern and silent ones costs money too, besides there is no way around the noise the garbage does when falling into the truck.

stupid retard whiners.

Master of Trolling?

Since I use the internet... I've been banned from many many places... with many many accounts. For expressing myself like I do (as in: this blog) and for speaking out my thoughts and criticizing without trying to hide behind a fake and nice speaking personality.

So... been banned and unbanned on countless IRC chat channels, some BBS, some MUDs, quite a few forums (specially world of warcraft forums where I got my own account banned several times PLUS friend and family accounts too, hehe)

But today... I might have set a new record...

You see, I read the "la vanguardia al minuto", which is sort of the RSS feed for news on one of spanish most important newspaper.
So, I see this news about a small manifestation this morning, go to read it and see plenty of people without a fucking clue talking shit about the people who did the manifestation.
And so I told them.

10 minutes later... the news was DELETED from the newspapers webpage. So, basically after 6 hours of RETARDS talking out their asses, I come, put them into place (didn't use any swearwords... I promise!! xD) and the news post gets deleted. LOL. the ones previous and after that post are still there, so it's not a timed deletion.

Who's that movie from? I DON'T FUCKING CARE!!!

So, I use to go apple.com/trailers and see what movies are coming up and see if something catches my attention.

Well, something DID catch my attention and I am fucking sick and tired of it. It seems like for quite some time now, there is this trend (and not only when it comes to movies) to start the fucking description or in the trailer itself with "from the award winning directors of XYZ" or "with award winning actor XYZ" or shit like that.

uh uhh, from the creators of "4 weddings and a funeral", geez I found the trailer interesting WHO THE FUCK CARES WHO YOU GUYS ARE. Are you so little important that you need to re-establish yourself by signing your movietrailers in this way? Are you afraid to be forgotten and die alone? BOHOO cry me a river. Fucktards

"With award winning actor Rober de Niro" jesus fucking christ. I know who the fuck RdN is, I don't need to be remembered every fucking time I see a trailer from a movie with him that he won some fucking awards. And if I don't know the actor, I surely don't give a damn about the awards he won. WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?

Wasting fucking precious seconds of my life by telling me useless and retard information. Tell me about your fucking film, not about the awards you won, your movie won, you were nominated or your fucking kid won in preschool, I DON'T CARE

Newsflash: HELLO! I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THE FUCKING AWARDS THE FUCKING MOVIEMAKERS GOT. IF YOUR MOVIE IS SHIT, NO AWARD WILL MAKE ME WATCH IT.

DLNA, the horror ^^

You would think that after spending 1200€ on a TV, that everything it has to offer works perfectly out of the box.

WRONG!

I bought a Sony Bravia KDL-37W5500, and while the image and sound quality is perfect, I got it for the DLNA options.
What is that?
Basically, in monkey language it means "play the movies I have on my PC via a network on my TV"

WRONG AGAIN.

I had done a little bit of research before I got the TV, but apparenlty the info is a bit misleading, incomplete or I was just fucking drunk when I researched.

the PROBLEM:
I knew I had to use a server software on my PC. Silly me I hoped that a 1200€ TV would come with it's own fucking software, how wrong I was.
So, the TV arrived saturday afternoon and I spend whole weekend figuring out how to playback my fucking stuff on the TV.

The network setup was automatic and simple. The problem started while trying all kinds of software. Either the TV didn't find the software server, or the other way around, or it found it but didn't list the media library or it listed it but could not play anything.

the SOURCE:
the source of the problem is that sony TVs only work with a handful of video modes (call it codecs or whatever you want) and after endless searching through the fucking gazillion of advertising and selling sites u find when googling "bravia dlna" or similar, I finally found the hint into this direction.
I tested several server softwares and got stuck there for hours, because they promised "transcodify on the fly" ...

tversity: doesn't even work with this TV yet. apparently developers have abandoned customer-care for a while now already... nothing to complain about as it's a free product
nero mediahome: none of the video transcode options seems to be compatible with the TV. works for mp3 and fotos tho
windows media player 11: no transcode options whatsoever
simple center: could not test the transcode options coz their fucking website is broken for over a week now and I can't even create a damn account, prereq needed to enable the transcode options. how the fuck do this guys pretend to make any money this way...

so, after being stuck with this bullshit for half a day... I stumbled upon the "ah so easy but still a fucking hazzle" solution. One of the videos I was trying to see actually worked... and after analizing the codec used (I knew the TV would only work with MPEG2, but there are still shitload of different options) I finally came up with a codification that works perfectly, with all of the above mentioned media server programs and without using transcodify on the fly, just transforming the movies myself before sharing them.
Which kinda sucks... to have to recode everything before watching it...

Basically what I managed to get working was a MPEG2 720x576, PAL 25fps, 4:3 resolution
i used a trial version of IMTOO MPEG ENCODER for this tests, but the fucking bugger expired in the middle of the night so I need a new encoder for more testing.

I also researched some MPEG2 wikipedia pages to see possible resolutions and as soon as I get home I'll do more tests.

Tho my real hope is on the tvsersity devs to put the fingers out of their asses and get a new version with the bravia TVs working or the simplecenter monkeys to fix their web so I can test their software. I'd really love to have a server software with transcodify on the fly working rather than having to recode every fucking single file before watching it.

You'll say: get a samsung TV or get a mediaplayer box or use your ps3/x360 but sorry. that0s not what I bought and not what I want, so I'll keep trying like this.

EDIT 24/apr/2009:
so, after several days of trying to find the proper dlna server software, i have kind of given up expecting them to transcode my (divx) files to a compatible mpeg-2 on the fly.
solution for now? transcode everything manually before sharing it to the TV.
new problem? the fucking TV is only compatible with certain standards.
new solution: the easiest way i have found is to open WINAVI and convert any files i want into DVD and save them in the shared folder. as dlna server software i use NERO MEDIAHOME 4. I could actually transcode my files with nero vision, but the bastard doesn't work properly with MKV files, but WINAVI does.

EGYPT 2009: [11:57] Somguan: yes, at least 'for the record'

As my friend agrees on MSN: I'll post something about my holidays in Egypt.

I'll be editing this post when I got more time, so re-check it sometimes. As for now I'll be very brief and post a link to the photos.

7 days in Egypt 2009:
- sunburned neck (cured)
- nosebleeding/hypertension in middle of the valley of kings (cured)
- sunburned lip (not yet cured)
- stomach virus/infection (not yet cured)
- eye infection (not yet cured)
- typical air-conditioner cold (not yet cured)
- fridge cleaning due forgetting that by turning off electricity, fridges usually stop working... (done)

but still all in all a good experience. nice places, not too hot (most of the times) and nice ppl. in our group.

pictures (170~ out of 750~)