Bad Day (and SEPTA Hate, Pt. 3)

Sometimes, these posts write themselves.

I was having an ok day yesterday, not great but not bad either. It was just like any other work day. Sure, I don't enjoy going to work, but I also don't loathe it. Most of my weekdays are just... days. As was yesterday, up until about 2 pm.

I was surfing the web in the little free time that I had yesterday, checking my Google Reader rss feeds and chatting on Google Chat, when all of a sudden a slew of system errors started popping up on my screen. Here is what I saw:

WTF?

Now, I'm an IT guy, but even this message doesn't mean too much to me. I thought I would try the "Check online for a solution" option since I had never seen this error before. So I clicked that option and here's what I got:

WTF????????

Whoa. At first, I thought it was funny, hilarious even. I report a problem and get a message that Windows Problem Reporting stopped working. Ha ha, funny. My next question was: "if Windows Problem Reporting has stopped working, can I check for a solution?" This was all very comical to me at this point. So I tried clicking "Check online for a solution" again and got the same message. The answer to my question was a resounding "no". So of course, I had to copy and paste these screenshots to post on the web. This was just too funny to let go. So I tried to open Paint to paste my screenshot. Crash. I tried again. Crash. Ok, so Paint isn't opening. Now what? How do I get this hilarious screenshots saved? Microsoft Word? I tried to open that and... crash. Now I'm getting a little concerned but I still thought that I could reboot and everything would be a-ok again. But I still needed to save these screenshots. And then it came to me. My Outlook was already open so I should be able to send an email. I pasted the screenshots into an email and sent it to myself. Success! Now, to get my laptop back to normal (it's about 2:30 at this point).

I rebooted my machine, thinking it just needed a memory dump or some such. I log in to Windows and... nothing. Just errors. "Windows Explorer has stopped running", "Windows Module Installer has stopped running", etc., etc. Uh-oh. At this point, I am not longer finding this comical. I am now thinking there may be a serious problem with my computer. What could I possibly have done to cause this to happen? I was doing NOTHING out of the ordinary. Surfing the web, chatting with friends and colleagues, etc. I rebooted again and booted in Safe Mode this time. Everything seemed fine. I ran a chkdsk to scan my hard drive for corruption. No issues detected. Ok, let's try to reboot again. I logged in and bam! more errors. Services shutting down all over the place. Plus, I can't even launch any administrative tools to investigate. Even Task Manager was shutting down when I opened it to try to launch/end processes. I started Googling on my work computer at this point. I found a few useless solutions. I finally rebooted and ran system diagnostics, thinking the problem could be rooted in corrupt memory or hard drives. Memory can become corrupted out of nowhere and this memory is two years old so who knows?

After about an hour of running system diagnostics, all the tests come back as passed. My memory was run through about 15 different tests and passed all of them with flying colors. At this point, I am stumped. I am taking stock of my applications at this point and formulating a plan to re-install Windows, chalking this all up to a Vista issue. I am actually planning, at this point, to downgrade to Windows XP Professional and say "to hell with Vista". Then I get a bright idea. This just started happening about 2 hours ago (it's about 4 pm at this point). I should have a recent restore point. I boot up in Safe Mode and start System Restore (I had a restore point from Wednesday morning, luckily). At this point it's 4:15 and I normally leave work at 4:25. Crap, why didn't I wait until I got home to do this? I have a green and blue screen that simply says "Please wait while System Restore Initializes". Initializes??? It hasn't even started running yet?! It's 4:23 and I have to get going. I think that maybe just closing the lid of the laptop will keep system restore running while I'm on the train.

It doesn't. Instead, it shuts the computer off. Great, now I screwed it up. I boot up the computer again, starting Windows normally, and log in and... everything is back to normal. No errors, all my applications are loading up properly. I get a popup saying that System Restore completed successfully, which baffles me because it just told me 2 mins ago that it was still initializing. I'm afraid to do anything more at this point and I really can't deal with all this right now so I shut down and head for the train station. Feeling victorious, I head down to my platform and hear this over the loudspeaker:

"Attention all R5 passengers. Service on the R5 Lansdale-Doylestown line has been indefinitely suspended. You are advised to seek an alternate means of transportation."

All aboard the Express to... oh nevermind

I stand shock-still for a few minutes looking at the other equally shocked R5 riders that I recognize before swiftly heading upstairs and grabbing a few train schedules. I know that the R5 going the other direction makes stops past Center City, but where or when the trains get into the station is voodoo magic to me. I called my fiancee and ask her if she can possibly pick me up. She has to tutor at 6:30 but she calls the kid and is able to reschedule. I tell her to meet me at Lansdale station at 5:44. I head down to the platform for the R5 Thorndale and ask a guy there if any of the R5 Thorndales go through to Lansdale. He tells me that I have to take the R5 Lansdale line to get to Lansdale. Thanks, Captain Obvious. I remind him that the R5 Lansdale line is DOWN (you dumb f*ck, but I didn't actually say that) and I need to find an alternate route. He says he needs to find out what to do in this case so he asks the rather important-looking guy in a reflective vest sitting down at a desk-like thingy and this guy snaps that he's "not a route advisor" and orders the other guy to find so-and-so and he should be able to tell him which route to take. So the guy walks away and doesn't come back.

So I go over to map again to look at the lines. It would seem that the R2 line goes to Hatboro, which is really the best I'm gonna do at this point. The next train arrives at 5:02 on the same track as my usual train. I get down there and it seems like a lot of other people have the same idea. I actually was able to procure a seat towards the back of the train, but I was one of the last people to do so. The train was packed with not only R2 passengers but also the displaced R5 passengers. I text my fiancee and tell her about the change of plans. I got to Hatboro at around 6:00, so it wasn't too bad. Turns out, all hell was breaking loose because of the light rain we got yesterday (yes, light rain). The root of the SEPTA problem was actually a PECO power outage in Ambler, thus suspending the lines. There were traffic lights out and apparently flights, both arrivals and departures, were delayed up to 2 hours at Philly airport. Seriously, it was just rain. And it wasn't even heavy rain. It was just plain old normal rain. No thunder or lightning. Very little flooding on the roads. It was barely even raining in Center City.

So we went out to dinner after I got back and the only good thing to happen to me all day happened at Ruby Tuesday. I ordered a 12 oz. beer and got a 21 oz. Woot! And, they didn't charge me for the bigger beer. Double woot! As we drove home, the electricity was still out in places. Two lights were out on 309 and the entire Wal-Mart shopping center looked to be without power. Seriously, it was just rain, nothing else.

Just... rain. I guess sometimes, things happen that are completely out of my realm of understanding.

Ticketmaster Fiasco

I come to you today with a tale about how annoying it is to deal with customer service and how disorganized the NCAA tournament ticket-buying process is. Let me start from the beginning.

I love March Madness. I have gone to two 1st and 2nd round sites, including Tampa last year, where all the upsets happened on the same weekend. When I heard that Philly would be hosting a 1st and 2nd round set of games in this year's tournament last May, I got excited. I figured this would be a good way to get to see some tournament basketball without having to pay for travel or take vacation. When I got the information in the mail, though, I realized that I had to put a deposit down almost a year in advance. Then there would be a lottery to determine who got tickets and where the each lottery winner's seats are. The problem is that everyone pays the same price. So one person could pay the $220 and get courtside seats, while someone else could pay the $220 and get Section 222, Row 15 (last row in the arena). The games are being held at the Wachovia Center and I know how bad the upper level is for basketball. I didn't want to take the chance. I wasn't going to shell out $900 a year in advance for the possibility of ending up with upper level seats. When I went before, my brother got the tickets (he works for a certain large sports entertainment network and has connections), so he was always able to get good seats. So the Wachovia Center had their little lottery and distributed the tickets in June or July of last year. I just kind of forgot about it until last Friday.

On Friday, I got my weekly Ticketmaster newsletter email with the latest events on sale in Philly. In the email, one of the events was "NCAA Tournament 1st and 2nd Round Men's Basketball". As you can imagine, I was a bit confused. I was under the impression that there was a lottery and that all tickets were distributed. I clicked on the link and the website said that the tickets went on sale Thursday, 3/12 at 2:45 pm. Strange date and time considering that the tournament starts on Thursday, 3/19. Anyway, I selected 4 tickets and clicked submit to search for tickets. The site basically said that the tickets are given out randomly. I would have to buy a package and go to the arena on Tuesday (tomorrow) and pick them up. The part I still wasn't sure about was how there were still tickets available. I wanted to get to the bottom of this so I called the Wachovia Center box office. They should know about this, right? They are the ones hosting the event and distributing the tickets. I talked to a very rude customer service rep that sounded like she had some place to get to quick and didn't have time to talk. She told me that they distributed all their tickets last June. I told her that Ticketmaster is selling tickets to this event on their website. She said that the Wachovia Complex has nothing to do with that and told me to call Ticketmaster. She hung up without saying "goodbye".

So I called Ticketmaster. After navigating through endless automated prompts, I finally got to speak to an actual person. I asked him about the tickets being sold on the Ticketmaster website for the event. He said that the tickets would be assigned randomly. I told him that I had concerns over whether or not there actually were tickets available, since the Wachovia Center did their lottery already. He told me I should call the Wachovia Center box office. When I informed him that I already had, he asked me to hold and checked with another rep. When he came back, he told me that the tickets were "first come, first served" but if I bought a package, that I would have tickets to the games. I thanked him and hung up. I thought about this for a while and all I can come up with is this: the Wachovia Complex had their lottery and didn't get enough people to bite. They had extra seats left after the lottery process and those tickets went to Ticketmaster to sell online. The other possibility is that the NCAA only released a certain number of tickets to the Wachovia Center and gave the rest to Ticketmaster. That doesn't make much sense to me, though, unless the NCAA is in bed with Ticketmaster, but I guess that wouldn't surprise me. But why now? Why didn't the tickets go on sale sooner? Even if they had gone on sale two weeks ago, it still would have been better than 6 days before the first game. And why can't you pick your freakin' seats yourself? I hate this lottery bullshit. The problem still was, I had no idea where my potential seats would be if I bought a package.

So I had an idea. I called the Wachovia Center box office again and asked the (much nicer) rep if they had any tickets left for the 1st and 2nd round games. Her answer? "No, we distributed them all through the lottery." Ok... So I told her that Ticketmaster is selling them online. She said that I should buy them then. She went on to explain that the box office distributed all the tickets they had last June. I asked her if they gave out all the tickets available for the whole arena and she said she didn't know. They don't tell the reps how many tickets are sold, they just process the applications and send out the tickets. This is a little disconcerting to me. The box office reps at a major sports complex don't know how many seats they have left for a major event. They don't know what seats are already taken, and which ones are still available. I mean, I'm sure somebody knows, but the reps don't and I didn't have the energy or remaining brain power to ask for a manager.

In conclusion, I did not buy tickets. This is a horrible job by the NCAA, the Wachovia Center box office, and Ticketmaster. First off, the lottery process is awful. It's so dated and it turns people like me off to the idea of buying tickets for these events. There are some locations that didn't sell out this year and I'm sure that this is one of the factors for that. Nobody wants to sit a half mile away to watch a basketball game and nobody wants to shell out over $200 per ticket to take that chance. If the NCAA was smart, they would let the box offices and Ticketmaster handle this the right way, which is first come, first serve just like every other event. It works great for concerts and other sporting events, so why not this? I can see having a lottery for Final Four tickets, maybe, but for the 1st and 2nd rounds? Come on, you can all do better than this.

Review: Bioshock (360)

I got my Xbox 360 a little over a year ago so I'm still catching up on some games that most 360 owners have probably already played. Case in point: Bioshock. I'm not a huge fan of the FPS, or first-person shooter, but when I saw Bioshock on sale for $19.99 on Newegg, I told my fiancee that I would like that for Christmas, please. I recently finished it and all I have to say is, wow. What a game. And that's coming from somebody who is usually pretty critical of, well, just about everything.

Story
Ok so here's the deal. The game is set in 1960. The main character, Jack's, airplaine crash-lands in the Atlantic Ocean and you appear to be the only survivor. There is fire and destruction all around so you swim to the nearest stable object... which just so happens to be the bathysphere entrance to Rapture, an underwater dystopian/failed utopian society. The radio in the bathysphere comes on and you meet an ally named Atlas, who is set on protecting you and finding you so that you can save his family and get out of Rapture. On the other hand, there is a man named Andrew Ryan who you learn is the creator of Rapture who is hellbent on keeping you from accomplishing your goals. As you progress through the game, you learn more about Rapture and how it got to the state it's in.

The goal of Rapture was to escape the shackles of society and create a laissez-faire society free of the oppression caused by political, economic, and religious forces. This allowed the brilliant scientists that Andrew Ryan brought to Rapture to make rapid advancements in engineering and biotechnology. One such advancement was the discovering of ADAM, cells extracted from a new kind of sea slug that allowed scientists to change the human genome, allowing them to splice genes to give humans special powers. Dr. Tennenbaum found that ADAM could be mass-produced by injecting slugs into the stomachs of little girls, whom they took from orphanages.

Soon, the gap between the rich and poor in the society widened and a hero emerged. Frank Fontaine started programs to help the poor, something Ryan's philosophies did not support, and started a huge smuggling organization that provided people with items from the outside, such as religious materials. He also controlled the plasmid industry, which allowed normal people to give themselves powers by injecting their bodies with formulas. He attempted to overthrow Ryan, but failed miserably and was crushed and reported dead. Ryan seized control of Fontaine's plasmid business, but a new hero emerged, Atlas. Atlas started splicing his own army and on the eve of 1959, Atlas and his forces launched their revolt. Ryan launched his counter-attack with his own spliced army. The result was that Rapture was overrun by gene-spliced freaks that laid waste to everything in their path. To solve the ADAM shortage problem, Little Sisters were mentally conditioned to go around Rapture and extract ADAM out of dead bodies and recycle it into raw ADAM by ingesting it. They are protected by Big Daddies, which you may have seen before.

Scarier than they look once you actually fight one

That's where Jack comes in. Jack arrives in Rapture just as all this is going down. Without giving away the story, suffice to say that you make your way through Rapture, splicing your genes and gaining abilities on your way to try and take down the evil Andrew Ryan. The game is filled with twists and turns and deceit at every corner. You can't trust anyone in this underwater world filled with horror and suspense.
Score: 9/10

Graphics
The graphics in this game were surprising sharp for being almost two years old. There have been great advances in graphics technology since this game has come out and yet it still looks brand new. It actually looks better than some of the games that I have played on the 360. The game is built on the Unreal Engine 2.5 with some Unreal Engine 3 features thrown in. Even with the occassional freezes (it happened to me only once) and slight glitches, the game looks absolutely fantastic. It fully immerses you into the environment of Rapture and gives you a real idea of just how dismal this place is. The ambience of being so far underwater a miles away from real civilization is very creepy. The graphics contribute to that by portraying Rapture as very dark and deeply depressing.

The creepiest part is the lack of a sky... water in every direction

You never know what is lurking in the shadows or behind a closed door. The character design of the splicers (enemies) are horrifying and the bosses and Big Daddies are scary as hell. I wish there were more games that looked as good as this one.
Score: 9/10

Gameplay
The gameplay was fantastic. The controls were very easy to learn and very intuitive. Sometimes the problem with an FPS is that the controls are too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. That was not the case with Bioshock. They hit it right on the head. One interesting piece of the gameplay was the use of health packs. Many FPS games nowadays do not use health packs and instead just require the player to take cover and rest for a few seconds to recover their health. This was different for me at first but, at the same time, a relief. It made you feel like you really could die at any moment in this place. The sheer volume of enemies that spawn at certain points of the game is very much horrifying and the lack of ammo at certain points of the game makes you feel the desperation that Jack must feel. The game (on the normal difficulty level) is not too hard, but also not too easy. I died a few times, but generally I was able to get by despite lacking ammo or health packs numerous times. The game combines elements of using abilities, shooting, running, and hacking into machines. The hacking element was the most intriguing because the hacking system was totally different than anything I've ever experienced. There are a number of different machines to hack, including ammo and item machines, health stations, safes, and bots and turrets. When you start the hack, you have to rearrange tiles that represent tubing to get from the start point to the end point. While you are doing this, fluid starts to flow from the start point through the tiles you have already placed. If you do not connect the tubes before the fluid gets to a dead end, the machine emits a powerful shock that takes most of your health bar away.

Once you get good at it, it's not so hard... until the end of the game

It was an interesting way of accomplishing this aspect of the game and I actually enjoyed hacking once I got good at it. It's an almost necessary part of the game at many spots throughout your journey so I recommend practicing early and often.
Score: 9/10

Sound
The sound combined with the graphics to make this a fully immersive experience. I can't remember the last time I sat on the edge of my seat for just about every minute of a video game, but this game makes you do exactly that. You are constantly hearing sounds of splicers nearby or the thud of the Big Daddy's boots on the ground or the creepy voice of the Little Sister, telling the Big Daddy that she's ready for "dream time." The images of the Little Sisters stabbing their syringes into dead bodies to extract ADAM, combined with the *squish* that accompanies it makes you shudder.

Watch out for that splicer!

The mindless ranting that you hear from the splicers keeps you on your toes at all times, because you know that they could jump out from behind a door or from a bathroom stall at any moment. And that's not even the best part. The music that plays throughout the game creates the eery setting that is Rapture. The game is set in 1960 and the music that plays throughout the game is off of the Great American Soundtrack. You're in a place that you don't know, with eery oldies music seeping through the PA system. Excellent work of using music to further immerse the player in the environment and atmosphere of the game.
Score: 9/10

All in all, this was one of the best games I have ever played. It was just an all-around excellent game. The story was interesting, the gameplay was intense, and the graphics and sound fully immersed me in the environment. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time I played this game. I think the best sign of a great game is whether or not you want to play it again once you're finished. Now that I'm finished with it, I want to play it again already. It was that good. Unfortunately, I have other games that I have to tend to first, but I'm sure I'll pick it back up before Bioshock 2 comes out, which should hit stores sometime this Holiday season.
Overall Score (not an average): 9.5/10

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry