Ass See Ass SAP engineers strikes again

In the continuing saga of the SCS SAP engineers' effort to solve the world's hardest to align printer in the whole wide world, engineer 'S' came back with another buddy to attempt to bring peace to the world.
For those who didn't read the long complain story yet, you can read it here, under the sub topic, Paper type and Paper Source.

Walking out of the board room after solving a projection problem, I was intrigued when the all too familiar engineer 'S' tried to get hold of me. I knew it would be a blast working with these awe-inspiring guys again, haven't not seen them for a month or two.
We got to the dot matrix printer again, and engineer 'S' showed me that there was something wrong with the printer. It was months after the problem was reported and the problem is still hanging in the air. They claimed that the printer settings couldn't be saved and the network printer settings couldn't be found for the printer. The printer is also different from the setup guide they had with them. The setup guide is the sort that is haphazardly compiled with a load of screenshots made be a lowly paid general clerk with a few barely sensible pieces of English text sticking in-between them, printed on what looks like toilet paper, in full colour.

Guess, what. The two experts are so highly experienced that they couldn't tell that the printer in the setup guide is a laser printer and the one that they were setting up is a dot-matrix printer. And when they finally figured that out when I pointed out the difference, I told them that they were wasting time arguing about the difference of the printer type because the type of printer being setup here doesn't matter at all. For all the normal people out in the streets, so long you can read and follow instructions, preferably applying a IQ of at least 80, all will end well. It's like arguing that a Sony Playstation will not work because you are not using a Sony TV. The two awesome guys took a hint and shut up for good. I guessed that they saw enough of my annoyed and amused face rolled into one for more than a occasion already.
FOR GOODNESS SAKE, DON'T FOLLOW A SETUP GUIDE BLINDLY !!! USE YOUR BRAIN IF YOU STILL GOT ONE !!!
They earned the next scornful reply from me when they told me that they couldn't change the network portion of the printer's settings. It's not like the first time I told them this. We went through this before, and their memory had failed them miserably. I wonder how they couldn't learn from their previous mistake, like what a baby do.
OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES ! DAMN IT !
With their obvious lack of basic knowledge of networking and Windows, they didn't know how to tell if a printer is a network or a local printer in Windows. I could not forgive them that they failed to see that the printer is attached via a parallel printer cable, not a UTP Ethernet cable. Morever, I have yet to seen a network capable dot matrix printer before, unless in conjunction with a print server. A parallel port printer cable and a UTP cable has completely different connectors on both ends and different thickness in the cable for your information. Has these 2 guys ever installed a printer before ? Which self-respecting IT professional didn't ?
Next they showed me how they couldn't save the customised paper settings for the printer. First, engineer 'S' selected a paper profile, and complained that the "save" button is greyed out. I took a look, and figured out that the paper profile is not editable by design, thus that the "save" button is greyed out.
Next they key in the new paper profile and pressed the "save" button. The profile details disappeared and they claimed that it could not be saved because it, eh...had disappeared into the thin air. It didn't strike them that the profile was already save and all they need to do is to select it from the profile list to see it again. The controls were cleared because the system is waiting for the user to enter another set of new paper profile.
I demonstrated all that and the two IT professionals stood there rooted in silence. It took engineer 'S' a moment to collect his voice and said that he didn't know how this works. This was unacceptable as they are professional software engineers themselves working in a big local company, and they should have seen more user interface designs than I have.
Before he could splutter anymore nonsense, I cut he off rudely in mid-sentence, on purpose of course, saying that I didn't knew anything before hand either. I am so tired of his nonsense and sorry excuses already, and I didn't have the patience to listen to another worthless speech. It took me less than a minute to figure things out and worked the system, not hours. Sarcastically, I asked them if they need any more help before storming off, shaking my head in complete dismay.

If these two sad losers can be IT professionals, they must have bought their certifications from some unknown university with no webpage and falsified their working experience by blindly copying someone else's resume. Or the other possibility is that they somehow earned their living through lies and deceit, somehow getting through day after day. Maybe IT really isn't their cup of tea, so they should help out by offering their positions to some other people who are more attuned to the IT. This is exactly the type of people who gave IT professionals a bad name. Hard working engineers like me have to suffer bad vibes and shame brought on by these leeches of the IT industry. How sad !
(By the way, you can buy your degree and certificates.
Here is my take on engineer 'S'
Technical skill - 4/10 - Some how managed to performing an amazing feat by completing the SAP project without showing that he knew how it works at all. A complete SAP noob like me is able to tell him how a function works by observing the input and output while he couldn't figure it out for weeks and months.
IT Knowledge - 0/10 - Has as much IT knowledge as the dead cat on the streets. Did not demonstrate knowledge on the most common OS, MS-Windows or common hardware like a printer.

Internal PR skill - 0/10 - Lost credibility very quickly due to obvious incompetence. Project manager 1 quit prematurely and his replacement shunned the project as early as possible.

External PR skill - 0/10 - End users and project managers completely lost faith in his ability to deliver anything usable within a reasonable time frame, if they are expecting any at all.

Final score
10 / 100

Quick ! Employ this guy to get your SAP project signed off earlier because the customer will just sign the handover form as fast as possible just because they want to get rid of him for wasting their youth ASAP !!! Just be prepared to see a letter suing you for liquidated damage soon though.

Sotong Devil makes tea

Have you ever wonder when do you need some caffeine to start the day ? I guess I could really use a cup of tea yesterday morning. Feeling sleepy, I went to the pantry to make a cup of lipton tea. Having a high sensitivity to caffeine, means that I do not usually drink coffee as it will cost me my sleep at the end of the day. So I have always sticked to tea.

As usual, I will grab 2 packs of creamer and 1 pack of sugar after drowning the tea bag in hot water. I then made my way back to the storeroom which is really my helpdesk HQ for the past 1.5 years and the foreseeable future.

I have a habit of adding in the creamer and sugar about 2 minutes after adding in the hot water. So it was time to do so. I looked into the cup and saw something astonishing.

The water is still clear.



Wait a minute, tea bags are not computers and they do not malfunction. I stared at the cup for 5 seconds, lost in thoughts. I held the cup closer for a look and saw that the tea bag didn't diffuse it's goodness into the water at all. Then it dawned on me that the cup feels cold and there was no steam rising.

Oh yes, I have added cold water into the cup instead of boiling hot water. So boys and girls, you can't make tea with cold water. It will not work.

The lesser of 2 evils : Marshmallow Fries

I would say MacDonalds is doing an excellent job dominating children's minds with their trade mark golden fries. The happy meal will not be so happy without the little pack of fries right ?


In an apparent effort to take the little kids off the oily real fries, someone came up with a healthier alterative : Marshmallows which look like fries. I found this during a trip to Suntec carrefour and it striked me of how ridiculous things are nowadays. Why can't parents just stop feeding their kids junk food like these? Marshmallows are still full of sugar, and can still give the children an urge for the real thing.

It reminded me when I was in kindergarten, that there was an old lady selling junk food next to the PAP kindergarten I was enrolled in. We were fascinated by the cigarette candy which looked like the real thing. The kids who could afford it, would sometimes buy a stick or two and put in their mouth like a smoker do. It's just mimicking the actions of some bad adult role model or plain play acting but it gives a dangerous idea that smoking is actually cool.

It's a good thing that I am one of the poor kid who couldn't afford a stick or two. And as an adult, I couldn't put myself in the position to smoke a pack or two everyday. It's a expensive and painful way to commit suicide. As the lesser of two evil analogy goes, I take death by junk food over death by smoking.

Hellgate London opens a floodgate of hellish bugs

It's such a romantic idea. The people who made Diablo 2 walked out of Blizzard, setup Flagship Studios and created Hellgate London. I was sold, and bought a copy, expecting the game to be as addictive as Diablo 2 was. I had a blast with Diablo 2 for 3 years, a solid investment with it's only expansion, Lord of Destruction.

I went to Funation at Ang Mo Kio hub and grabbed a copy of the collection's edition for $75 on Tuesday, and went straight home to give it a shot. The games is in full 3D, basically a fast pace action shooter with Diablo 2's skill tree. It was great for a while until the big ugly cracks started to show up.

As this blog always go for the ugly side of things, and with no exceptions made, this post will not be a promotion of the game, but paints a harsh review of reality for this game.

Installation was about 15mins from a DVD, taking 7GB of space. It didn't surprise me when the auto patch screen came right up when I started a multi-player game for the first time. It's kind of expected and didn't take too long to complete.

There were still many bugs in the game and it feels that it was rushed into the market for Halloween. I was expecting game balance issues but that was not the case. The very playability of the game is at stake because of it's numerous crucial bugs. Here is a list of what I have encountered so far.

1. Memory leaks
   The dread "Memory exhausted error". The coding is done pretty badly. The memory leak problem is so bad that no one can play without rebooting once every 3 hours. I haven't seen a commercial game having memory leak problem for a long time. Getting more memory is not the solution, it will just delay the onset of the problem. Sloppy !
   
   
2. Lack of statistical numbers
   The development team has left out the most important feature from Diablo 2 : The numbers. There is no way to find out how an item is different from another when there is only a miserable here and there. The modifers on the items are amazingly confusing and doesn't help in seperating the trash and gems.
   
   
3. Poor icons artwork
   The choices for icons are very bad. Very often, you cannot tell the difference between different grades of a item and the icon itself makes little sense. I have to spend a lot of time trying to use the tooltip to see what the items really are.
   
   
4. Irritating NPCs
   The NPCs made too much noise and there should be a way to shut them up. It''s fresh for the first time, but highly irritating after that.
   
   
5. Invisible party members, update problems to party bars and portraits, teleport to party location not working, party member does not show up on automap
   As a MMO game, these are crucial features of the game that should be working perfectly from day one. It's a real eye sore here. The party member is either invisible to each other, or unable to teleport to each other. Half way through an instance, the party member's torso can just disappear, leaving a floating gun firing alongside with you.
   
   
6. Chat problems
   The chat window itself is badly made. Switching channels is hard and I couldn't figure out how to filter chat channels. During peak hours, you can see a amazingly fast moving chat window flooded by WTB, WTS and WTT requests. This could only get worse if nothing is done about it. The chat window itself had low layer priority and that means whenever you open a menu, it gets hidden under it. Since it cannot be moved either, it became very hard to chat with people while opening the in-game menus like inventory, character, skills etc. Opening certain in-game menus also causes the chat box to go out of the screen. This is awful, a MMO game with serious in-game chat flaws. Come on, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft did way better than this.
   
   
7. Buddy list not working
   A MMO game with a non-working buddy list ? There is no way to know if your good friend is online or not. Terrible. Back to MSN guys.
   
   
8. No Looking for Party/Quest mechanics
   Another glaring problem. I am unable to get a team going to do quests quickly because I have to yell out in general chat before I can get a party started. Suddenly, World of Warcraft's LFG function and Diablo 2's Battle Net support looks so shiny.
   
   
9. Getting stuck in areas
   It's advisable not to jump around at corners because it is likely to get you stuck. I got stuck once every 2 hours because I was jumping randomly at the edges of the instances I was clearing. Poor boundary boxes drawing at fault here. Since there is no /unstuck command, you have to quit the game and start from square one again. No more bunny hopping guys.
   
   
10. No in-game GM assistance
    There is no GM to be found, no in-game ticketing system and so, you are on your own there. It's a wild wild west situation. Be it a game bug, or abuse by other players, there is no law enforcement available. This will eventually lead to the demise of the game if not tackled fast. As with any MMO game, if there is no enforcement guys around, the chat channels will be flooded with rubbish and people will leave the game for good because of the terrible bugs that cannot be submitted fast. As soon as the first duplication bug is exploited, all hell will break loose. The entire in-game economy will collapse and palladium will no crease to have any real value.
    
    
11. Need for identification for items
    It's a legacy feature from Diablo 2 that should have been discarded. It's a waste of time to identify items and does not add value to the game at all.
    
    
12. Lack of support
    There is virtually no support for the game. As I mention earlier, there is no in-game support at all. Asia support is done via hellgate.iahgames.com. You can log to the site, log a case but get no ticket number to trace your case. Not even a auto-email is sent until 15 hours later. The IAH forum is full of gripes from disgruntled players who alse experienced numerous game-stopping problems with the game. There are no replies from the administrators or developers at all. Smart move, because it's so buggy anyway. If there is support, it will be swamped completely and rendered useless.
    
    
13. Connection problem
    You will get disconnected seemingly randomly or cannot connect to a multiplayer game. You just have to keep trying until you get through. The player authentication server is most likely at fault here. The game will tell you to check your firewall, anti-virus settings etc but it's simply a load of bullshit.
    
    
14. Free/Monthly subscription cannot be activated
    The game comes a month of free online subscription that enables additional features such as bigger stash. However, the game still doesn't let us activate the subscription. Very disappointing.
    
    
15. Level cap
    There was a level cap at level 22 until 6 Nov which made many players angry. This is the first time in gaming history that an unannounced level cap was imposed when the actual cap should be 50.
    
    
16. Lack of end-game content
    There is no end-game content like in Guildwars of World of Warcraft. After going through the linear story, you are left with the option to PvP. And that means, to challenge another player without any rewards other than the satisfaction of killing another player and advancing through a ladder. This is another outdated "feature" from Diablo 2. The developers are expecting the gameplay to be the same as Diablo 2 where players just raid normal instances to no-end for items. That's too shallow. If I want to do PvP on a ladder, I will be better off in Guildwars or World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft features tough end-game instances which are so tough that it takes some time to overcome them.
    
    
17. And lastly, unable to load a multi-player game
    The worst problem of them all. I am now completely unable to play a multi-player game. It simply hangs after it starts to load. Re-installations didn't work and my account was fine. So it's a game that I enjoyed for a few hours and that's it. I am not interested in single player games because it's worthless. If I am interested in single player game at all, I would have downloaded a pirated copy off Bittorrent.

This is not all, there were reports of people having other problems as well. Try and do a google search for "hellgate london problem" and you will see 1,930,000 results. Recruiting 10 million players to save London ? I seriously think that they need 10 million man hours to recode the game.

This game should not have be released at all. It belongs to early beta quality. Curse Electronic Arts for allowing this crap to be released at all. I smell corporate greediness in the air. The Flagship studio guys are better off learning a thing from their last company. Blizzard is famous for delaying a game until it is ready. Seldom do they patch a game for show stopping flaws. It has always been game balancing and more features. Guildwars was done properly and also made by people who left Blizzard.

The idea is good, but the implementation is bad. The gameplay is addictive despite it's serious flaws but not having the chance to play the game I have paid for is pissing me off. It will take a couple of hundreds of megabytes of patches to fix this still born game and I hope they can fix this fast.

Game score = 25 15% Very bad game

Hellgate london should have stayed as a beta. Too many show stopping bugs and terrible technical support. If you are considering buying the game, wait for another month and see if they have patched the game to a more playable level.

Latest Update :

On 10 Nov Sat, IAH they announced that all player data will be wiped on Monday ! This is probably the first in MMO history ! Everything will be lost to the nethers ! The character, the items ... everything ! Woah this one tops them all !

Apparently, Asia servers were not patched to patch 0, and they couldn't apply it without screwing all the players. This will go down in gaming history as the worst game ever released.

Update 12/1/08 : In the end, they managed to patch the game without wiping the character database. But to clean up the database, they added a "Elite" mode in a veiled attempt to force people to ditch their pre-patched characters

hellgate.iah.com

[Urgent News] Implementation of Patch0

10/11/2007

Gamers,

Thank you for your patience while we worked to upload Patch0 onto our local servers. For the past two weeks, IAHGames and our partners have worked overnight almost everyday as they attempted to implement Patch0 onto our existing servers.

In the end, it has been determined that there is no way to implement Patch0 onto our Hellgate: London servers without also discarding relevant player data.

Because of this, when Patch0 is installed on Tuesday, there will be a complete character wipe.

We understand this event is frustrating for you, and we are sorry for the problems in implementing Patch0. As compensation, we are providing all gamers who purchased both the Standard and Collector's Edition Box Sets 4 weeks of free subscription benefits. Each box already includes 30 days of free subscription benefits, meaning all of you will be entitled to 80 days of free subscription when the service becomes active around the end of the year.

IAHGames and our partners have taken this event very seriously, and yesterday our CEO and Deputy CEO flew to Seoul to discuss the issue with the CEO of HanbitSoft. As a result of the meeting, HanbitSoft has graciously agreed support IAH Games' decision to provide free subscription time as compensation. HanbitSoft and Flagship Studios have also agreed to provide all further patches on par with US patching time lines, to ensure the SEA version of Hellgate: London stays up-to-date.

The implementation of Patch0 and subsequent character wipe will occur at 1200hrs(GMT+8) on Monday, November 12. After the Patch is implemented, a comprehensive test will be run to ensure there are no further problems. The process will take about 8 hours.

We would like to repeat we are sorry for the delay and the frustration it may have caused you. Please accept the game time as compensation, and thank you for your support until this point.

Sincerely,

Team HGL

Vii is out now !

Yes it's the 威力棒 Vii, not the Nintendo Wii. Our super distant relatives have done it again. After reverse engineering CPUs, mobile phones, cars and a whole chunk of stuff, the world's factory now give us the 威力棒 Vii !

The Chinese guys must have spotted a potential market when the over priced and perpetually unavailable Nintendo came back in 2006. The resulting gaming knockoff looks and plays like the Nintendo Wii, including the star feature, the motion sensor controllers.

However, apart of that, the Vii isn't a outright clone of the original. The most glaring difference is the lack of compatibility with Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo Wii games. It doesn't seem to have a optical drive, so I assume that it uses cartridge of sorts for games. It do come with some built in games right out of the box.

This also signifies that the the Vii has it's own software and hardware architecture, and basically, it stole the appearance and input controller from the Nintendo Vii. From what it seems to me, it's just a proprietary console made in China that doesn't offer any additional games yet. So for the China folks, this knockoff will be a good and cheap substitute of the real thing, since the little kids are unlikely to be able to tell the difference anyway. Since there is already a library of games built-in, and Nintendo Wii games are largely a load of crap anyway, the Vii indeed makes a nice alternative.

The Vii is so new that there is none posted in eBay yet and no pricing information available. I doubt any of the Vii will land in Singapore, so don't bother to wait for it.

Original Article from Engadget

PSP Buying Tips

I just got a PSP recently, and it's keeping me and my sisters happy. After going through the process of buying and getting it to work, here is the FAQ for buying a PSP if you intend to do so. So you guys didn't have to go through all the sweat and pain that I encountered.

As a warning, this FAQ contains information that might brick your PSP if you are not careful, do don't blame me for your own actions.

1. So what to buy ?
   Buy the latest model, PSP Slim & Light. It comes in many colours and designs, starting from $250 w/o GST. Don't ever get into buying the older PSP. The new PSP is 2/3 the weight of the old model and 5mm thinner, which makes it better to hold.
   
   
2. Can play chiong games or not ?
   Can. But you have to mod your PSP first. Unlike your Xbox 360 and PS2, you are only required to flash the ROM on your PSP. For the PSP slim, it currently version 3.71 M33. Most shops are willing to do it for $20 or you can google and DIY. It will also allow you to do a lot more with the PSP with homebrew applications.
   
   
3. Where to get the games ? Free or not ?
   Games ? It's all over the internet via Bittorrent. For those who haven't BT before, it's time to start. There is no need to pay for any of the PSP sites which offers paid download content.There is no need to buy any UMD games to make the downloaded games work as the M33 custom firmware has a good work around for games that checks for a UMD.
   
   
4. How many games can it hold ?
   The largest memory stick pro duo available is 4GB for around $86 from Sandisk. That's around 10 games. I got mine from Best Bargain at Sim Lim Square.
   
   
5. Battery can tahan how long ?
   Approximately 3 to 4 hours for me.
   
   
6. Still got accessories to buy?
   Got. Buy the screen protector. It will be worth the money sooner than you thought it would. The rest of the accessories are just crap and useless most of the time. I personally like the PSP slim without the plastic casing or silicone skin.
   
   
7. 1 player game no fun lah
   There are many games which allows peer to peer competitive play via WiFi.
   
   
8. Got WiFi ? Meaning can go surf net at MacDonalds ?
   I couldn't get Wireless.sg to work on my PSP because of the way it needs to store cookies on the web browser. However, normal WiFi networks work fine. The strange implementation of the PSP keyboard can be frustrating too.
   
   
9. What else can it do ?
   You can convert a whole bunch of videos to PSP format and use it as a video player. I got a colleague who's friend used it as portable cartoon player for his kids. Loading up the kid;s favorite cartoons on the PSP seems to save him a lot of pain. For me, I installed emulators on it to play old games and some applications to spice things up.
   PSPGenesis - SEGA Megadrive emulator
   NesterJ - Nintendo emulator
   Snex9xTYL - SNES emulator
   
   
10. Can you help me to mod, give me games, and install stuff for me ?
    No. Unless you are a chio bu, single and available.