Saturday, March 20, 2010

A chess game

FUN

It's been a long time since I played chess. I played against someone who hasn't played in 20 years! I guess it's rather lopsided. I still haven't moved my king or rooks! Amazing what knight and queen combo can do, especially against limited mobility opponent. Do you see how much space I have? And how tangled his pieces are?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Microsoft Update

TECH

I recently updated my XP operating system. The update reads "Service Pack 3" that is out right now. It's nice to have current update available immediately. That's business at the speed of thought for you.

However, it comes with a new EULA. That's sounds like Microsoft is trying to slip a new agreement with automatic update. I wonder what the difference with the old one. There should be a "diff" output between the two, you know?

Also, the update takes a long time. I think that if the update is significant, then there should be a warning beforehand. Otherwise, people trying to catch up email in the morning before leaving for work will get stuck for two hours. That's not user friendly. Isn't there somebody at Microsoft who is experienced in these type of things. I mean, that happened with AOL a long time ago! Learn from experience.

And I hate it that the update process took a significant portion of real estate, yet only give one line status update. How about displaying a list of things to do, along with time required, and then put a check mark as each step is completed. That would be user friendly. Especially so if the user can say, "Pause the process until I get back from work." That would be terrific.

Unfortunately for me. The next time I use my computer, I get a message "Hard disk full". Apparently, I only get 25 GB partition on the primary. I moved all the data into secondary, and managed to free up 4 GB. Still, that means that I may need to get Partition Commander program and rebalance the partition.

And yes, AOL did have a case where a mandatory upgrade caused a situation where the program ceased functioning due to limited hardware. Which is to say, AOL forcibly kicked out their user. That was when the gold started leaving AOL, BTW.

It occurs to me that 100 percent back up is not enough. You have to have 100 percent seamless migration, preferably the one button kind. I hope Microsoft is working on it.

High Score

FUN

Got new high scores. Carnival King: I get more than 40,000 on all three locations. Memory Game: I kept getting First Place, and it kept giving me free game. The scores climbed up to over 700,000. The secret is to not use any hints. Each is worth 20,000 points!