Tag: fool’s gold

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Bone of Contention – Final report

As parties of our group booking headed to YahSo restaurant, we started getting calls saying there was no booking and so the evening started.  Turns out that despite seeing the owner in person and completing a booking form there was no actual table booking on their systems.

At first, I jumped to the ‘on No, not another black business with poor service’ bandwagon but dug deeper into the root cause if the problem.  Turns out the back office sticks to it procedure of booking form and deposit for all group bookings. We failed to respond in time to their Gmail account and there you have it.

Yet another case of technology taken too far, visiting the restaurant the day before with the human factor was fruitless. Booking facelessly online would have secured a table.

 

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Out of warranty, uninsured and not supported

It’s pretty hard to convince an individual to invest any time into a Personal IT disaster recovery plan.  Even if they have experienced some IT loss, folk simply think their gadgets will continue working forever,

A visit to an Apple genius bar will see a constant flow of disparate anxious end-users who are there because of some kind of IT failure.  As an engineer, it’s great solving problems and putting out fires but most incidents can be easily avoided.

Did you backup today?
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Digital Blood sports

In less than 3 days the Second Life effect has kicked in.  Playing The Division as a 4 player squad commits you in a different way than any single player game ever could.  Firstly, there is the session commitment where it would not good form to quit unexpectedly.  Unfortunately, this is often the case if you pay attention to your physical life and a 2-3 hour session is broken in the middle of a mission so you can bath the cat WTF.

Skill level

A strong feeling of ‘must do better’ strokes your ego as you seek to improve your abilities and skills so you can bring a brilliant experience to the team.

Enough is enough

Knowing when to stop as a team without bad feelings is key as well as actually playing with like-minded people.  Of course, this just relates to titles where you have full voice chat enabled.

Lost in the crowd

Titles like Star Wars BattleFront give you the mass experience when 20+ players can jump in and out of games without it really getting too personal.

Warping space and time

There’s a real distortion of your physical world and you could easily miss important events like Weddings and such.

Heading back to my safehouses

For now, I’m deleting The Division to focus on more self-paced titles.

Slept in the daytime, no meds today

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Excuses to stealth

At age 14, I strategically used Valentines Day to anonymously share my feelings with girls I fancied or admired in class and watch from a safe distant never revealing myself in person.

Today it’s almost impossible to be truly anonymous and successful hiding is actually frowned upon as freakish and creepy.  The same techniques to surprise a Loved One can be used to destroy, mislead or corrupt without trace but It comes down to moral intentions and belief systems. Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to bring out the undetected schemer in you.

Stealth: The ability to reach and/or kill your target without detection.

Stealth mood is one of the most satisfying gaming strategies built into a wide genre of titles, in fact, many games award or punish you based on your stealth skills.  I’m rather addicted to stealth IRL and in my digital playgrounds, the best penetration testers often adopt this mindset to their core.

“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”  Kali OS

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I got a refund

I took a chance, called PlayStation Support in LA about my failed DLC install and actually got through to a human being who quickly proceeded an unexpected refund.

Total result.

Find the human being the machines

Now I’m a happy gamer again…it was only $14.99 but the principle was everything.  Anyhow, looks like I won’t be wondering the Horizon Dawn landscape for now unless I complete the game in my UK profile then purchase the DLC for the UK market.

Horizon Zero Dawn™ – still places to explore in the DLC

Over 50 days since my last gym session