Patching and booting

It seems like applying the Dungeon Siege 2 patch v2.2 does not seem to work when attempting to update the game from a fresh install. After a long search of finding a download server where files can actually be downloaded faster than 0.6 K per second (thank you to fileplanet, adrenaline, fileshack, gamershell, etc., etc. for not being of any help and throwing adverts at me!). The URL that finally was of help, after some serious search results filtering was Game Revolution. The site may not be quite fully up to date, but otherwise it is great and files actually download, unless they don't exist anymore for certain games.

After a short session at work yesterday, I went to a friend of mine to help with a problem he has got due to a PC of his brother-in-law. His own PC cannot detect CDs in his DVD writer some some weird reason. His Windows XP CD did not install properly on the PC of the brother-in-law. Other CDs had the same problem, but with different files. It seems like the memory of the PC is damaged or something else. The PC did not come from a proper shop, but as usual from somebody that the brother-in-law knows.

Yesterday evening, while waiting for a client, I had a look at the new Quake 4. The fact that it is a continuing story from Quake 2 is very nice, so it immediatly becomes a known environment (a nasty one). The transitions to the next section are all smooth, and keeping all of your squad mates alive is important or face a swift death. No more single person running around like every other first person shooter out there.

Crazy Halloween weekend

As compared to last year October (2004), this year (2005) was a lot of requests from people who were trying to rent costumes. Tomorrow a batch of nine costumes is coming back, which means lots of laundry.

So far I have never been to a halloween costume party, but that kind of thing is very new here and only now starting to be picked up by the local population.

Last night my PC decided to give me a nice NTLDR not found message, which resulted in a reinstallation of Windows, since I didn't have write access to the NTFS partition with Linux (too experimental still and Microsoft doesn't want to share much info that would actually help the public [read here: software buyers]).

The version 2.2 patch of Dungeon Siege 2 gave its problems, ending with error code 15, which means: Cannot find an old file.
This was after a clean installation using the four original CDs.
Lately I have had a huge amount of problems with applying official patches to games installed with official proper legal CDs or DVDs. It seems like the quality of software is yet again getting worse.

Paper war sorted out...for now

In the hopes of finding an important paper, I went through my infamous stack of papers on my kitchen table to throw away letters for ex-tennants and product catalogues, that mysteriously come to me by mail, without me asking for them, or handing out my contact details.

The paper was found, and the paper stack shrunk a lot smaller. Lots of useless paper rubble was removed and it was about time, since it got a bit overwhelming.

Costume ordering

In the last couple of days, I have had issues trying to get hold of a costuem that was supposed to be sent to me from a local supplier.

Yesterday evening, I have had yet again the problem with the Catwoman costume, that the pants are too big, so I finally ordered the small version and a new Superman costume. My current Superman costume is busy trying to fall apart sicne it is being rented so much.

Yet another Catwoman size issue

This month is going crazy in regards to people wanting to rent costumes from me. Halloween is not much celebrates here in South Africa. Last year October I hardly rented out anything. Renting out two costumes per month was a lot back then.

One of my Catwoman costumes is currently in Secunda, the other one is booked to be picked up on Friday for Saturday and be brought back on Sunday. Another lady phoned me today for that one also for Saturday. So far it is not certain yet, if that costuem will be rented by the person who has booked it, so the other lady might still have a chance to rent it.

Now I really need to get another Catwoman costume in a smaller size, as well as another Superman costume since my current one is busy breaking and it is very popular.

Nightmares for several days

The last couple of days were filled with overtime time, working on weekends, and work or burglary related nightmares.

I am trying to get some project finished for a client and have been coming in to the office early and left late, as well as working on weekends which I normally do not do.

Mostly I ended up waking up sweating, or waking up because of a dream in regards to all kinds of things suddenly going wrong on the project. Another dream was about somebody breaking in, going past valuables, just to steal a stack of shirts.

Lock dilemmas

Saturday morning when I brought a friend of mine back home, we ended up standing in front of a very locked gate. The key managed to turn the turnable inside part of the lock as it is supposed to, but the catch that is supposed to move decided not to do so.

The end of the story was that nobody came and went at 3AM, the lock didn't open, and my friend ended up staying at my place for the night. On Sunday I brought him back on my way to the office. Another resident there had no problems with his key, so it could be a key related issue.

Dawn of War Winter Assault

This weekend I installed the Dawn of War expansion pack called winter Assault. Getting free space wasn't much of an issue. The installer was a pain.

First the I had to restore the original executable so that the installer would work, since the official patches didn't seem to be useable. Unistalling the game did not work for some weird reason, so I had to manually delete it, and hunt it down in the registry. After a long day at work, this is exaclty what I didn't want to have to do. Stuff in the registry was scattered over multipel profiles, only after deleting those entries in every profile, I saw "Install game" instead of "Play game", all of that just because the uninstall did not work.

The third time around, after reinstalling the original game and the expansion pack, I finally succeeded. Why the developers don't remove the CD check once they supply patches is beyond me. Always digging out those valuable original CDs, just because of a CD check is an annoyance.

At the time when I could start having a look at the new features, I was highly annoyed and more interested in uninstalling rather than playing the game. Due to the unstinstall previously designed skins and banners also did not come across to the new installation.

The official patches are a pain as well sicne they are incremental. Tehy might be smaller to download (especially on a 56K Modem), but to do any updates is a pain.

Home business website update

Last night I made a business decision on the topic of getting outside staff to help out on occasions. This is mostly aimed at students who need a bit of additional cash or want a bit more experience. The decision to add a jobs page to the site, also triggered setting the site for a higher resolution, since it was initially designed to fit the 640 width. Since Windows XP is using 800x600 as a default, the new width has been set to 780 pixels width to cater for the scrollbar on the right.

Amongst the job listings are: resellers, people needed for photo shoots, people needed for a promotion next year, people with sewing skills for creating new costumes. Some of the jobs are for younger people and some are for all ages.

The reseller system will be commission based, and should theroretically end up as passive marketing. Even if that works partially, I am going to be quite busy.

Days of catastrophic disasters in the office

These last three days (including today) have just been chaos, mayhem and nothing actually working, except for the phones ringing the whole time.

The hard drives of two different servers died and clients phoned accordingly. Email doesn't seem to work on occasions. All kinds of clients had their emergencies, while I ended up hopping between three different projects due to deadlines. Obviously overtime came along.

Yesterday evening I was supposed to meet another client for my home based business, but that was shifted to today because of the overtime at the office yesterday.

Today was a continuation of yesterday, but things seemed to have calmed down a bit and are back under control.

Marketing staff for advertising and increased costume renting

For the last couple of days, I have been playing around with the idea of advertising some commission based referral concept to improve word of mouth marketing and increasing the quantity of costumes being rented out.

Obviously this would give less income per rented costume, since part of that money would go to the person referring the client to me, but it might actually help with more market exposure and improved market research.

The difficult part is how to present that on my website, so that it doesn't look too badly like blatant advertising. I could use the opportunity to add a jobs section due to the occasional (currently once annually) event or promotion coming up where people are needed. Currently I do need some peopel for posing in different costumes to get decent photos taken for the product catalogue ("costumes" page) on my website.

Popular costumes in Cape Town

Since market research about which costumes are popular amongst the Cape Town population is more or less not existing, I have always been asking clients who rent costumes from me, in regards to what else they might be looking for.

What I do know is, that the Superman costume is the most popular costume that I do have. Lately the requests for a full Darth Vader costume have become more common, which means that I would have to get one of those from overseas and possibly a decent helmet with it, since the current costumes only have the front part of the helmet.

So far two of my clients have actually had their own Darth Vader helmet, which they either got overseas or locally at some strange shop.

My own research comes from telephonic or email enquiries, talking with people and the survey that is on my site as well. Looking at what some people wear at costume parties is also a great pointer towards what might be popular.

PC City building games: Pharaoh and Cleopatra

Many years ago, I bought an entire package of city building games in a bundle, which included Caesar III, Pharaoh and the Pharaoh expansion called Cleopatra. I was hooked years ago a few times, now I am back on that same issue. As far as I remember, even the latest version of SimCity wasn't as detailed with the effects of just simply building one extra building, and then having to make decisions that in the very long run can change fortune or misfortune.

The ways of getting an income differ depending on the map and mission. There are many aspects to keep track of, and achieving certain goals require some hard decisions. A decision that was working for one thing might cause some severe problems later on (like a sudden overproduction and then not having room for the goods that are traded).

As missions in these games advance, the demands become a lot fiercer. For example not being able to give the Pharaoh Gold and Money on time will bring his army upon your town, while the Bedouins are attacking, money is in a deficit, buildings are collapsing, fires ravage throughout the city, and the trade is going nowhere fast. Raising taxes doesn't actually help much with the money problem, since the population might get upset and leave. At this point in time, you should hope, that you are actually still employing a tax collector and that the tax office is still standing. The main income comes through sales and trade.

There are things to worry about such as various gods, finances, the Pharaoh, warlike neighbours, malaria, fires, floods, buildings collapsing (if you haven't got enough architects), prosperity rating, kingdom rating, popularity rating, food supply, water supply, lack of various services, and so on.

These games are really intended for multiple attempts and a cool mind to get this right. Once successful, it is a great feeling to have a prosperous city after going through hell initially.

Game Review: The Punisher

After seeing a gaming friend of mine play the game called "The Punisher" I decided to try it out myself. He plays every game on easy, and he was complaining about the bosses in this one.

I started playing "The Punisher" on medium difficulty. The first feel was just like "Max Payne" but not quite as atmospheric, but otherwise quite similar.

An annoyance is the fact when you have two shotguns and you want to change to double pistols for accurate shots, then one shotgun is always thrown away. This is a blessing and a curse, since a lot of time is wasted when reloading both shotguns during a gunfight, but both shotguns are also highly effective during a close quarters shotgun, where a single shotgun is too slow.

Once finishing a mission, there are new challenges added and to beat your own time/score. At least it isn't exactly the same replay.

So far I haven't gotten to a boss yet. From what I have seen when my friend was playing, the same problem as with "Max Payne" happens where a boss takes hundreds of bullets and the health hardly goes down, or there are only very specific things that actually work and only at certain times. What makes the boss fights even worse is the fact that other bad guys pop up the whole time and waste precious moments and health that could be used on the boss. Having to fight bosses multiple times doesn't help with this.

Overall the game seems good, but the formula is slowly beginning to get stale as well.

Crashing computer harddrives

Yesterday was a lot of bad stuff going on with faulty and/or crashing harddrives of two different computers. One of our major servers at a hosting company had a hardware failure. The server is currently getting everything reinstalled and restored. This kind of problem comes with daily wear and tear, can happen if components start getting old.

After my clients left in the evening, I went to a friend's place to fix a network problem, which turned out to be a lot of problems due to a partially faulty harddrive. My friend is yet again at some rehabilitation. His wife has apparently already been to eleven of those, but has excapted out of most of them.

The drive at my friend's place is slowly dying, once that has happened the entire system needs to be properly reinstalled. My friend used to have an Aplle Mac for many year. When that machine got old, the harddrive died horribly according to what I was told.

Crazy phone call day

Today is just plain weird in regards to crazy phone calls:
I got multiple calls from the accounting company where a friend of mine lives and works. It seems like that is a network problem, most likely a network cable. These things are quite hard to judge over the phone, especially when the person on the other side is quite computer illiterate.

After that phone call a client phoned with DNS and mailing script issues. At least the developer that they have got isn't a total loss to society, so I gave him the required information and he shouldby now already be able to at least have something working.

Shortly after that, a supplier of mine from Empangeni phoned, which is more or less on the other side of the country.

Shares talk

On the train this morning there was a very interesting discussion about shares for listed and unlisted companies. I missed the earlier train due to sleeping too long and not hearing my alarms. The talk was quite interesting in regards to what scams some people are doing even with all of the regulations in place to prevent a lot of stuff like that.

More costume renting requests today

Today I got more phone calls for costume renting purposes, including a call from Tygerberg Children's Hospital, which seems to be one floor below where my father currently is located. As expected, they want a lower rate, which I find acceptable, knowing that the hospital needs money urgently for staff and facilities maintenance.

The other person is lookign for a clown costume, for which I urgently need more wigs, clown noses, another mask and possibly make-up. So far I have had no requests yet for that costume.

For Christmas I am trying to organise a Santa suit, since I had enquiries for that last year. Getting a bunny suit for easter is another matter.

Internet connectivity

Yet again the internet connection is slow and unreliable. Apparently the second national telephone provider is having their launch today, at least four years after that was supposed to happen. Telkom always tries tomilk everybody for money and prevent any competitor to do something about their monopoly. The real issue is of course the internet connection speed and downloading issues. Here in South Africa is no flatrate, Telkom has put this nice wonderful cap on everything.

I am still considering the option of Wireless internet connectivity, since I continuously get disconnected from two different ISPs. Most likely the lines are too busy.

Hectic work

Currently I am busy with getting a website ready to go live Saturday evening at midnight. Some things are causing grief. Some includes are being ignored on occasions, and that causes a page to be a bit empty.

More costume renting

An existing client phoned this morning to rent another costume for the end of the month. Finally some of my efforts are beginning to pay off, and I can start expanding my business if I can rent out multiple costumes every month.

The next step would be to get some of the costumes requested (like Shrek, Santa Claus, bunny suits, etc.) and get some others which people won't find elsewhere.

Back to the hospital again

On Saturday, my father was brought back to the hospital. His bloodpressure went up quite badly and he is totally confused, so that nobody has a clue what he is trying to talk about.

His first stay in the hospital was five weeks where he left too early, then three weeks later he was back for seven weeks. Three days after his birthday, he is back there. Hopefully that won't be to long this time around.

Yet another costume to repair

After getting my deluxe Chewbacca costume back from when it was rented recently, it looked all fine from the outside. As usual, it was put into the washing machine. After taking it out, I discovered that the seam started seperating at the one arm, but that is only really noticeable from the inside and not from the outside. Now I am wondering if the washing machine wasn't maybe a bit too full, and the washing cycle could have caused that damage. That will be easy to fix, but it will cost me some time and money.

I have realised lately, that a lot of my costumes really are just meant to be used a few times, but I knew that in any case. Many have paid themselves off already, but many more still need to be rented. Maybe it is time to go to stage two and slowly get some better quality costumes which should hopefully last longer. Cheap buying is sometimes expensive buying.

Time between birthdays

Today is the day between my father's birthday and my sister's birthday.

The small birthday party yesterday was lots of fun with some good chatting about many topics. There were issues about new jobs, cars, car engines, air filters for computers, computer networks, computer games, tenant rent discussions and some medical debates. This always happens when Prof starts talking, then few will get a word in. :)

For my sister I have had absolutely no idea what she wants or needs for her birthday.

Framed photos and memories

A good friend of mine has several photos of his past in frames standing in his apartment. The most recent one was a photo of him and myself at the costume party at the German Carnival Matieka. Another friend of ours (always at home playing games) came to visit one day and saw the photo. Then he asked when that happened, since my friend only frames photos of certain memorable events or periods of his life. Fortunately none of us were recognisable on that photo, that could have given a lot of questions. He did not seem to realise who he was looking at on that photo. :)

Last week when we were at his place and talking about a girlfriend, I heard some questions about who that is and yet again sensed some slight odour of jealousy. Hopefully that won't cause friction later on.

Missing the train home

Walking together with colleagues from the office to the train station is usually quite fun, except when that causes delays and then missing the train. This is exactly what happened yesterday. One my my colleagues takes the bus at the train station and another one takes a later train than what I take. The last bit I rushed to the station, just to see the train disappear in the distance.

The next train along my route only leaves just after 7PM, while my usual train leaves at 6:15PM. As I was waiting for 7PM, I saw one of the usual people from the train in the morning. We started chatting, and he suggested to take the train he was taking since he is usually picked up by his wife, so he offered to drop me off at home.

Yahoo! Messenger problems

Lately I have had some really annoying problems with Yahoo! Messenger: I use it at home on occasions, and usually sign out (as I did the last couple of days). At the office out of some strange reason, I get a message, saying that I am already signed in on another computer then I cannot sign in. After that, the application crashes. Signing in at hoem usually works with no problems, provided that my internet connection from my dial-up 56K modem actually works. The help section on Yahoo is absolutely no help at all for that topic, but everything else is covered. Downloading the Messenger was a pain to begin with.

MSN Messenger gives similar nonsense with the usual excuses of checking the proxy and firewall settings. In the meantime, every protocol has got access to the outside from any application on any of the platforms that we use at the office. At least the web based version of MSN Messenger works.

ICQ is to some major extend also a pain, since it always wants to start in the middle of the screen, and even when not set, it automatically adds itself to the start-up of Windows. This all makes me sooooo happy indeed... :(

Family birthday and tenant rent

Today is my father's birthday, I haven't seen him for a while, but I will see him this evening. While I am there, I will attempt to ask him about the case of the tenants and being behind with their rent.

Last month the tenants had an excuse about bailing somebody out of prison who was drunk, drove while drunk and due to that, attempted to murder somebody. Apparently this has happened before, so it is obvious, that that person has not learned anything out of a brief prison stay, if he gets bailed out all of the time.

This month, there is an issue about money that they are waiting for from their house that was sold, where they were badly cheated on since weird things happened with the ownership papers. That is still no excuse not to pay rent.

If the latest by middle of next month no money becomes visible, then some legal steps need to be taken. This takes the bank money transfer periods into consideration.

Identity theft on mailing lists

On Yahoo! Groups I am the moderator on a mailing list, where sombody suddenly got really active with advertising to sell something. Many people complained including the person whom everybody believed to be sending all the adverts to the list. The real person does actually sell those items, but only upon request, and not by aggressive advertising.

The investigation that followed the matter caused the identity theft to be discovered. The person who did that was banned and a message was sent to the members to explain what has happenend. Previously I have only read about this problem in various newsletters, but never actually encountered it yet.

What gave it away was a search for the name of the person, where the email address was quoted as well. After that it was really obvious what was going on. Hopefully now the members will settle down a bit, because many got upset.

Finally got contact with new supplier

After several phone calls, I finally got email contact with my latest supplier who is manufacturing costumes. The costumes really look good, but most of them seem to be useful mostly for events and not so much parties, which is currently my main market. Now it is just a matter of getting the entire list of costumes that can be ordered to make a selection of what I want to get for now.

The usual Catwoman size issue

On Saturday somebody came to possibly rent a Catwoman costume that I have got. The problem was, that the medium sized costume is too large for that person. This has happened before and seems to be the third time. I really need to get the small version of that to have any success with it.

I have two Batman costumes from the animated series, where both costumes are a medium size, but the costume with the muscle chest is too big and the costume without the muscle chest is too small. Both Batman costumes come from the same manufacturer.

PC Game: C&C Generals Zero Hour

Saturday was full of driving around to find all kinds of things, just to find out it was mostly a waste of time. At least I got hold of two capitvating comic books. :)

Sunday I was supposed to get a visitor (client), but that was postponed due to a boat show. That visitor will come this evening.

The afternoon consisted of visitign a friend, who had a visitor and a client visiting at the time. The client had a problem with an iPod that disconnects automatically shortly after connecting it. That iTunes was the cause of a lot of those issues.

Later on we played a bit of Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour. No matter what some people say about the game: it is a very good game, except for the annoying intro videos that EA wants everybody to watch all the time. Unlike WarCraft 3, the resources are more or less infinite. The computer can be a nasty and an easy opponent.

The different specialities of the Generals take a different way of thinking to properly utilise them against others. The GLA seemed very different from the USA and China in regards to playing, and they don't have an airforce, but they don't actually require micromanagement of power stations and airbases. To make up for the lack of airbases, they have their tunnels, which have to be built first. The tunnels can be lifesavers.