New costume supplier found

A problem of mine has more or less solved itself by a phone call that arrived yesterday. As I am in the process of expanding my home based costume renting business, I was looking for somebody locally to manufacture costumes for anything that is not a licensed character.

Some lady from Pretoria phoned me yesterday with a proposal for selling me costumes and also making them in her factory. She picks one company per province to supply costumes to which she sells. Somehow this came just in time, but I need to order costuems three months in advance most likely due to financial year quarters.

The duck pond

As summer is more or less here there is a lot more light in the morning when I am sitting in the train on my way to work. Between the railway line an the N1 opposite Century City and Canal Walk is this slightly biggish pond. The last couple of evenings I have noticed ducks that are swimming amongst the plants. This has now become more visible in the morning as well.

Missing music CDs

Recently it became apparent, that some of my treasured music CDs have gone missing. They are not where all of my other CDs and DVDs are. I know of two people that would take them without asking and one of them is overseas.

The annoying part about that is the fact that those are difficult to get, and the companies selling them here put 138 percent markup on music CDs, which is the very reason why I stopped buying music CDs, because that became too expensive a few years ago due to the continously rising prices. Then sometime after that the music industry started making a big fuss about people copying the music instead of buying... I wonder why

Most of the music available these days and being played at least ten times per day on radio for months on end, is mostly rubbish music for the masses that don't know of better. The really good stuff is not being played on most radion stations.

Christmas Function/Dinner Season

As every year, companies are having their annual Christmas functions/dinners and the requests for costumes are becoming more.

Somewhere I should actually still get a decent Santa suit, maybe a mask of an old man as well for it. Santa is supposed to be old, not young.

The same applies for easter, since I have had requests for easter bunny suits, but those are quite expensive.

For the next Free Comic Book Day promotion I need to get another costume at least and hopefully find somebody who can be there as a female superhero character. I still clearly remember the last fiasco with the students that bailed out two days before the annual event, just because they were not informed properly by the agency that organised them and other reasons.

Recording from a TV Tuner card

A few years ago my television fried itself and could not be repaired. Due to a lack of space and finance to get another small television like what I had, I got myself a TV Tuner card for my PC. Since I already have a screen and the antenna, I just needed the tuner part.

Normally the video recorder (tapes) was set to record shows from television while I was at work and then I watched them on my Television/PC later. Due to age, the VCR started wrestling with the tapes instead of recording the WWE wrestling that I normally watch and other things.

PowerVCR 2 version 3.0 which came with my TV tuner card ended up being slow, bloated and mostly useless. It also took more than one minute to start up. Some other application came with the TV tuner card which doesn't look pretty but runs well and supports the light-weight remote (with the all-important mute button). Except that this application doesn't have a recording feature. With my old RivaTNT card was an application with could also use the TV Tuner, but that ended up being totally unstable and only had brief manual recording.

Recently I got PVR Plus which came with another card, that has got sheduling to record shows, runs fast and stable, starts up quick and looks nice. Now the problem is that it records in MPG format (makes sense to do that), and a lot of modern media players just simply cannot handle jumping to a specific location inside of an MPG video. I tried Media Player Classic, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player 10 and eventually I found that the very minimalistic BSPlayer can actually do what the rest could not.

It has taken me now a bit more than two years to finally get something that allows me to replace my old faulty VCR.

Weird phone calls

This morning is stuffed full of the strangest phone calls available.

First somebody phoned me from Secunda (on the other side of the country), just to rent some of the costumes that I rent out from home. Later I got a written confirmation from that person with some horrible colourscheme and font. The text was all uppercase and in attorney-speak.

Finally at the office, it was raining phone calls for Metropolitan (insurance company), JunkMail and Cape Ads (that is another story on its own) and some other strange things. I am in the internet business and haven't got anything to do with these other companies.

The Cape Ads/JunkMail story evolved to another level:
The 082 number that they have for their Adhotline is not controlled by Telkom (I phoned and asked about that and they said I should phone Vodacom), Vodacom tells me that the number is invalid. When I phoned the number, the call doesn't end up anywhere. How some people get through to our 021 number is a total mystery.
Slowly but surely these calls for Cape Ads/JunkMail all the time is becoming an annoyance.

Family issues again

Today my sister in Wndhoek asked me if I had any idea for a birthday present for our father. As always I have no idea what he needs or wants, or even what he is interested in. Her birthday is two days away from his. She also told me that one of our uncles has died last Saturday. That was something which I expected for a while due to his medical condition. Since I only saw him once every few years that wasn't much of a shocker. My father was close to death this year and 12 weeks in the hospital is not a fun matter.

More costume rentals

Today another phone call for a birthday party happening this Friday. On Monday three people came from nearby somewhere to look at some of the costumes that I rent out. The phone call today was for different female characters. Yesterday a lady phoned who was quite desperate to rent my Catwoman costume, since nobody else in Cape Town (possibly South Africa) seems to have it. She probably needs that for a Halloween party. Finally some people are appreciating the fact that I list all of my costumes on my website:
BKE Costume Rental.

Online games: What makes and breaks them

For a couple of years now, online games (web browser games and otherwise) have been evolving into a social community activity. First person shooters normally don't develop much of a community, expect for new mods, maps, graphics packs, etc. Role-playing games that tend to take several months to play normally end up with IRC channels, forums and of course in-game interaction with other players. Normally the players can also group together and form Clans, Alliances, Parties, Cults, etc., depending on the game type.

What does get highly annoying with the browser based games is when the game is full of bugs and incomplete sections, but then the developer focuses on stuffing every frame (frames based games) full of adverts which cause errors and annoyances. I have played an online browser based game since February 2005, the round is getting closer to finishing (6 to 12 months usually), and the game is now in Beta 5. The greatest annoyance is the fact that now ads pop up inside the main frame, and since they get clipped off, there is no way to reach the close button on the right. The advert for the premium account to remove the ads and get extra features is always present, but that is only available for two countries in Europe, while I am in South Africa.

World of Warcraft

Lately I have really been getting keen on purchasing a copy of World of Warcraft just to simply go and explore a nice big virtual world and interact with other players as what is done with other massive multiplayer online role playing games. Currently I am busy on one since February this year. I am just concerned about the connection speed for overseas and the resulting phone bill.

More potential costume rentals

Yesterday evening three people came to look at costumes for a birthday party on Friday. they are most likely going to rent four costumes and they are situated in the area where I am staying.

Counter-Strike weekend

It has been years, since I have last played Counter-Strike. This weekend I played the new version with the Half-Life 2 engine. The new version of Counter-Strike is less interactive than the old version.

Several unsuspecting minds very introduced to the evil addiction of Chuzzle. :)

Definition: Organised Chaos

Everything is neat and clean for the person who put the stuff there, but not for anybody else.

Busy weekend

This coming weekend will be quite busy with sleepless nights due to a visit to a friend in Kuilsrivier forthe entire weekend.

A friend of mine got a new PC yesterday, which was very long overdue, now he can finally play DOOM3. Hopefully he enjoys the freakshow and dark corners.... :)

Weekend plans dilema

Last night I got a phone call from someone in Kuilsrivier about network games the entire weekend. This tends to cause certain dilemmas with my existing weekend plans since I was planning on visiting somebody else whom I visit every Saturday evening.
A sneaky email has been sent out so now I am waiting for the replies.

Rent issues

I had a serious chat with the tennants yesterday about their outstanding rent.
Apparently they had to use it to bail some fmily member out of jail for drunken driving and attempted murder due to being drunk. According to their promises, they will pay double the rent money at the end of month.
Once they start saying something about electricity due to lack of cash, then that is the perfect opportunity to ask if the rent has already been paid.

Game Review: Dungeon Siege II

The game Dungoen Siege II (DS2) is one of the few games noteworthy of actually getting my attention. Most games in my opinion are just yet another rehash of another rehash of some clone of some other game.

Some people say that DS2 is a Diablo 2 killer. Based on what I have seen it comes close but doesn't yeat beat Diablo 2.

DS2 is using an enhanced engine of the original Dungeon Siege. The expansion pack made it nice. Many character and design flaws, as well as the annoying level-up problems were fixed.

The scenery is quite nice, but it starts becoming repetitive at times. DS2 has got main quests and sub quests. The sub quests let the player do a lot of backtracking between Acts 1 to 3, which gets rather annoying. The information given in some of the sub quests is also a bit too vague. Certain sub quests only become available with having certain characters in the party.

A new feature is the specialities and the associated powers which recharge during combat. The monster AI has been improved a lot, but the monsters aim a bit too much for the combat mage all of the time. The player and party AI seems to have become more stupid and degraded. There are bugs where weapons do not show when held, and spells (Transmute in particular) don't seem to always function.

A new feature are the pets that can be developed, once they are fully grown, the pets are not as much fun anymore, but they become quite powerful. The spells are also just repeats (lesser, greater, master), sicne they are just different-powered version of the same thing. The design flaw were a spell cannot be used later on since the mana is suddenly not enough anymore has fortunately been removed.

Another good thing is the fact that the difficulty selection has been done like Diablo 2, and the character level is now shown ingame.

The 3D graphics and scenery have been improved, the story as well and fortunately no undead since that topic became quite stale.
For any game the following applies: Good graphics does not mean that the game is good no matter what the artificial hype says.
In the case of DS2, the graphics actually complements the game.

Good advice: don't run DS2 with non WHQL compliant video drivers, otherwise there will be some very interesting graphical glitches.

Overall, the game is great, this is the closest that any game got to Diablo 2.

Sleepy weekend

This last weekend was more or less as usual, except that I was a lot more tired than I expected. The worst thing is that I slept through most of WWE RAW.

I got a letter from a lady who is married according to my informatino, but she mentions that she is apparently interested in me. For me that might be a welcome message, but I am not interested due to her history of all kinds of issues, including drug abuse, court appearances and the occasional jail cell stay-over. I get easily frustrated if there is someone around me the whole time who bothers me about all kinds of things.

Visiting friends in faraway places

Yesterday evening I drove to Big Bay, which is a couple of Kilometers away from Melkbosstrand to visit some friends, who have invited me for dinner there. The evening was quite interesting and exactly as expected.

My friends are planning on opening a voluntary non-religious rehabilitation centre somewhere in a farming area. The idea is to only have people there that actually want to be rehabilitated. For the government and other rehabilitatino centres where people are forced to become religious fanatics against their will, there are apparently constant waiting lists of at least three months.

Internet problems

Today is yet another day where internet connection swapping is frequent, but still doesn't quite solve the connectivity problem.

A friend of mine is having a good fight with connecting a Windows 98 PC with a Windows XP PC. Lots of VxD error messages, and the usual typical problem of the netowrk neighbourhood not showing any PCs on the network. This problem has been around for years, and has never been fixed properly, just like all of those Windows Explorer bugs in Windows XP, which date back to Windows 95.

Of course the usual MSN Messenger sign in issues are frequent as well.

Cold day after warm day

Today had a cold wind, after yesterday was so hot. It is not quite summer yet, but will be soon.

Tomorrow I am invited for dinner at a couple that owes me money, but seperately from each other. Just to make sure, I am not going to take cash or Bank cards along.

Back on the train

After having to drive by car yesterday in the traffic jam, it was very relaxing this morning to walk to the train station and then chat with one of the usual suspects on the train. This morning is also a lot warmer than last week.

It seems like the condition of my father is steadily improving.

The new costuems that I got yesterday are quite nice. The two with the padded muscles are very comfortable as well and there is also no tension on the zipper at the back.

New superhero costumes have arrived

After a lot of delays, expenses and red tape at the depot, I finally managed to get hold of my latest order of costumes for my home based costume rental shop.

First there was a car accident on the N1 where a car lost its left rear wheel. At home I had to convert some emails to text files for printing later. Then there were constructions at N1 City, which caused me to walk a detour. Bank queues and slow walking people followed soon. Then I could finally print out the emails and drive to Capemail in Epping.

At Capemail, I didn't want to bother parking inside, just to find out that later I had to actually bring my car in, just to get my parcels out. At least the guy at the exit was friendly and helpful.

The costumes themselves are nice, especially the Iron Man costume that I had ordered. Mr. Incredible seems a bit big for me, but it also seems to be a different design. The Invisible Woman costume does not have a zipper at the back as expected, but these stick together strips, except that they are round and small. The mask of the Iron Man costume fits me well, but I got to put it together when the rear is already on my head otherwise I won't be able to put it on. The Iron Man suit itself like Mr Incredible suit has got a zipper at the back.

Meeting old school buddies

This weekend was the annual German Oktoberfest in Cape Town. It was lots of fun at the Paulaner Bräuhaus at the V&A Waterfront. I met somebody who could possibly be a distant relative of mine and school buddies from somewhere around 1990 to 1992 or later.

On Friday I got two papers from Capemail in Epping about two packages of the costumes that I had ordered. The problem is, that there was no amount mentioned on the papers and the place was closed on Saturday. This morning I phoned there, just to find out that I need to bring a printed invoice along. The problem with that is that I don't have a printer and I would have to take my car to the office so that I can drive to the place during lunch break.

Traffic jam and war

Today was a good super high quality traffic jam on the N1 (Cape Town). Apparently there was a small accident on the attached M5 which was cleared up quickly, but since everybody had to slow down to watch, that caused huge slowdown shockwaves from the smaller M5 onto the big N1 and that caused another four-car pileup as well.

The online game that I have been playing since February has now become a full scale war amongst several alliances.

September this year is long

So far it feels like this month is nearly halfway, just to notice that today is only the eigth. There are still another full three weeks to go. This is going to be a tough one in regards to finance, and I am still expecting two packages for which I have to pay. The tennants are already broke, so I don't know how they are going to get through the month.

Small business exapnsion

It seems liek my small home business is now slowly beginning to expand faster. The enquiries are coming more, it is becoming easier to finance new costumes. This year there were two enquiries from the film industry and a promotion for a comic book shop.
Yesterday I have started contacting other costuem renting companies which do not share the same niche market about referers for enquiries that do not cover what we actually have. This should hopefully help both of our businesses in the logn run.

Computer game addicts

A friend of mine is quite badly addicted to games. He has got financial problems, needs to desperately upgrade his PC, but yet he buys games.

Yesterday, Dungeon Siege 2 was available in the shops, it was supposed to be released on 15th September 2005 only. Normally I get home from work at around 6:40PM, 7:20PM he phoned me to ask if I already bought my copy of the game. At that point in time, buying a game was the last thing on my mind due to other issues and financial reasons. I had to tell him, that the earliest when I would buy that would be at or after end of the month. He really needs to get his priorities sorted out!

Most games the last decade have all just been copies of other games, so there is hardly anything that even gets my attention. If I buy one game a year it is a lot, since there are years when I don't buy any.

Matieka and Readers Den on the internet

All of the reports and links going to the Reders Den Comic Book Shop website seemed to have pushed the website to the top spot on Google when "readers den" (without the quotes) is typed in. There are other shops internationally with the same name, but international in this case is of no use locally. I am already looking forward to the next Free Comic Book Day promotion next year at the Readers Den in Claremont, preparations have already started. Which characters will appear there are another matter, but hopefully arrangements can be made to get female characters as well. The students bailing out this year was a disaster.

It seems like that the Matieka website is also becoming better known. Judging by the number of downloads of the event programme and the number of visitors to the actual events, the website with the details must have helped something. Soon, I will start updating the site and giving it a new look with some event photos.

People that have got no clue what they want!

Yet again, there was this highly annoying situation of some person asking me to help out to do something. The work was done exactly to specifications, but that person had something totally different in mind than what I was told. If somebody wants attention that way, then that person will soon not be liked too much by those who are being volunteered to do work for whatever reason. These people would not understand the issue then in any case.

Another case is of course where nobody wants to be accountable for anything. Somebody who works at a government department told me something interesting about that. If bills are not paid or other things, nobody seems to be responsible for anything. This is for certain departments, so I don't actually want to know how bad the big picture is, and the inefficiency and waste of tax money in regards to this.

Matieka 2005 photos received

On Saturday after a lot of hassle and misplacements, I finally received the photos that I have ordered of the German carnival called Matieka which takes places annually in Stellenbosch. When I get around to scanning in those photos, I can finally update the website to make it look a bit more lively.

This coming Saturday, I can give a friend of mine his photos that he ordered.

The trip to Stellenbosch was also good to test if I still get the heat problem with my car radiator. The radiator mostly stayed cold.

Rainy day

Yesterday was supposed to be some rain, there was a bit during the very early morning, but not during the day.

When I woke up this morning, there was a lot of rain coming down. I was expecting that to continue on my way to the train station, but there was nothing of it at the time.

According to the weather report there is going to be rain in the afternoon or evening. It would be annoying if that only comes down on my way home from work.

End of month budget blues at the beginning of the month

Since September is only five weeks long and the bills are topped up as usual, plus car repairs, plus products that I have ordered for my home business, I have now a small financial dilemma on how to get to the next payday.

The everyday rice issue is already in effect, but jsut eating rice cannot be good either, but at least that is one way to stretch the budget quite a bit.

The one order that I sent off has been cancelled due to the telex taking too long or the bank just simply being full of nonsense. Most likely it is the nonense part...

The next challenge is going to be cheap but proper and effective marketing, since there is hardly any budget for that.

Hospital release and hot car engines

This morning my father was released from the hospital. He was in there for more or less seven weeks. I have no idea what his plans are now, but I can take a couple of guesses based on his behaviour and questions.

Last night I fixed my problem with the engine getting too hot and the fan not switching on: The thermostat switch was slightly scorched and a fuse was not in the right spot. At least now I have no worries about driving long distances again.