Then I wake up to see a Slashdot post in my RSS feed that links to an article mentioning that the Droid X has what amounts to a “fuse” in it that will “blow” if you attempt to alter the base operating system.

If the eFuse failes to verify this information then the eFuse receives a command to “blow the fuse” or “trip the fuse”. This results in the booting process becoming corrupted and resulting in a permanent bricking of the Phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with.

There are two obvious reactions to that: “Those bastards!” and “Wait, what?” A little detail for those who may not recognize what that’s saying. At some point, Motorola’s going to stop supporting software updates for the phone. So what happens, after that point, if you want to get the latest Android update? If you’re the basic user, you’re out of luck. If you’re tech savvy, though, you modify (hack, mod, root, etc.) the phone so that you can download and install the latest update. What this is saying is that if you try to do that, your phone will lockdown and simply fail to work.

In essence, Motorola has placed a “bomb” in your device, the device that you own, that will cause irreparable¹ harm to the device if you use it in way they don’t approve of. This is different than locking down software, which is bound by EULAs and so forth. When you buy hardware, you own the hardware. Period. If someone messes with your hardware, that’s a crime. Cue the class action lawsuit.

However, this may actually be bullshit. Here’s a later comment from the Slashdot article:

It’s not even clear if this information is real. TFA [mobilecrunch.com] links to a forum post [mydroidworld.com] which doesn’t seem to actually contain a source of the information (the OP states it’s a mix of “hard information” and “conjecture”). Said forum post then links to the eFUSE wikipedia [wikipedia.org] article, which lists Droid X as having an implementation of eFUSE. However, if you look at the Droid X wikipedia page linked to from there, you’ll see the original mobilecrunch.com is what is cited for the eFUSE inclusion bit.

People love a good conspiracy and reading malice into any large company, so this particular fact has been mostly overlooked. In a few days, more information will probably be available, either confirming or refuting the allegations. But even if the allegations are true, there’s hope:

eFuse is an IBM brain child, and they have it in several of their RISC products. The XBox 360 has one in its xenon (ibm power pc) processor. The Texas Instruments OMAP processors that motorola chose for their droid x are using the eFuse technology. The statement that it is not reversible via software is bull, once you figure it out, you can set up a JTag interface (as any serious modder will do anyway) and then you can reverse the eFuse bits and try your mod again.

All the same, Cody and I are going to give the Droid X a few days to accumulate reviews before we decide whether or not to buy. The reality is that neither of us is likely to mod our phone, and by the time the phone reaches its EOL², we’ll almost certainly be ready for new hardware anyway.

1. Irreparable by you, anyway.
2. End Of Life; when a developer stops officially supporting something

Many people have the Google search engine web page set as their default page.  That’s fine, and not a terrible idea.  When you want to find something, and don’t know where to go for it, Google’s a fantastic gateway.

What Google is not is a place to put in a URL (a web page “address”).  If someone provides you a URL, and you put it into the Google search bar, you are asking Google to search for that URL.  This is, in the technical sense, not going to get you want you want.  Unfortunately, because Google is so expansive, it often does get people what they want.  This builds a bad habit that reared it’s hideous, deformed head lately.

If you punch the wedding website URL into Google…you get links to this blog.  That’s because I’ve mentioned the wedding here, and Google is also picking up on the “McC3D.com” part of the URL.  You won’t get the wedding website itself, because it doesn’t index (i.e. Google doesn’t pick it up in its catalog of the internet).   The blog does index.

This was presented to me as a “problem with the wedding website” that “people couldn’t get to.”  When I hear those words, I become alarmed.  My webserver’s pretty important to me, and if something’s not working correctly, I want to fix it as quickly as possible.  But when I find out that the only thing wrong is people not understanding how to properly use their web browser, I get upset.  Very upset.  I don’t particularly care to have technical issues pinned on me that are A) not technical and B) not my fault.

The anatomy of a web browser:

This is the proper way to use your web browser.

In closing:

I swung by Romm last night, the jeweler from which we purchased Cody’s engagement and wedding bands, and had a look at their selection of men’s wedding bands. Platinum, tungsten, titanium, and cobalt are all the rage. That suits me fine, since they are all far more interesting to me than the traditional offerings of gold and silver.  I doubt it comes as much of a surprise that doing things the “traditional” way usually bores me.  This is part of why it’s been so difficult to find attire for my groomsmen and myself.

At first, I had the notion of doing a tungsten ring.  Tungsten is chemically notable for having the highest melting point of any stable metal (they use it as the filament in incandescent light bulbs for this reason). Materials with useful application are cool.  Detractor: it’s heavy. On the flip side, titanium is used in air and spacecraft manufacture because it’s strong and light.  Detractor: it’s alarmingly light — so much so, that I would fret about losing the band and not noticing.

My Wedding Band? Probably!

Then they showed me a cobalt ring. Aha, now this was interesting. Looking essentially no different from the other three metals, cobalt struck the right balance of wear-resistance and weight. It’s also hypo-allergenic, which is a plus for me; though am not 100% certain, I suspect  that I may have a nickel allergy or something similar. The particular cobalt ring that caught my eye also has a totally badass carbon-fiber inlay that lends it a holographic effect when it moves. I’m reasonably sure that this is the ring I want to get.

Cody and I will be heading there tomorrow to nail down those details.

Invitations have been cast to the four winds at this point. Cody and I plunked down and cooked up a design we were both happy with, had ‘em printed, and mailed ‘em off as we accrued the needed addresses over a period of a few days. We re-tooled the website slightly so that all of our invitees could RSVP online, via a fun little form that also invites them to supply song requests. Additionally, Cody and I can now see at-a-glance who has RSVP’ed in the affirmative, in the negative, and who hasn’t RSVP’ed, as well as our total guest count, and other fun data like that.

You all are wearing the exact same thing, in different colors!

The new daunting task is finding something to wear. You’d think finding a slightly atypical waistcoat wouldn’t be that hard, but apparently everyone and their mother only makes the one sort of waistcoat. Yes, I realize that “buttons down the center” isn’t technically a single type of waistcoat, but it may as well be. I want something that doesn’t look like every other thing out there, which is much the same way I felt about finding a suit when I was still looking for one.

I recently bought a three-piece suit for a friend’s wedding. One piece among the triad is a waistcoat. It’s an interesting design — it buttons diagonally rather than straight down. I returned yesterday to the place from which I had purchased said waistcoat, only to have them show me three essentially identical waistcoats and then inform me that they couldn’t help me. Bull. At this point, I’m tempted to try and find something unique at a costume shop and then have it replicated by someone. Costumers, I suspect, will make more interesting clothing than tailors.

Blogging is a weird thing. I want to get to a point where I’m posting something of vague value every day. However, doing so is complicated by several unrelated factors. The bulk of my time is devoted to work, which I can’t talk about. I also spend a good chunk of time playing WoW. Self-indulgent flights of fancy aside, most people won’t care about my latest WoW exploits. I also want to talk about my story ideas and other things of that nature, but keeping those sort of under wraps is the prudent choice, so that nixes that subject. That leaves wedding stuff and other life events to talk about, which are more sporadic topics with bursts of information. I could wax poetic about mowing the lawn or taking out the garbage, but…do you really want to hear about that?

I didn’t think so.

Wedding planning is proceeding apace. We have a lot left to do, but none of it feels daunting. From my perspective, the biggest thing left is a toss-up between decorations/flowers/centerpieces/etc. and invitation design. A lot of stuff fell into place on other fronts this weekend, freeing us from tackling some decisions. Specifically: Stonewall Farm now has a liquor license, so we can just do an open bar through them rather than figure out how to stock one ourselves; we now know what we’re doing for dessert and it’s eminently attainable; we know what we’re doing for wedding party favors; and, of course, the cruise.

Invitation design makes me wish I’d taken a few GD courses in college. Coming up with something that is both representative of us and that doesn’t also look cheap/designed by an amateur is…not easy. I keep on wanting to reach out to GD-trained friends, but I don’t want to burden them with something like this, either.

Ah well. It’ll sort itself out.

Speaking of done and happy, the wedding website is finally live.

A random collection of WoW-related thoughts follows.

• After spending several hours researching and implementing a customized UI for Jakosta, live use made it clear that it was a big pile of fail. With some more research, a few more addons², and some alterations to existing addons, I think I may have something truly awesome. Won’t have a chance to test it until tomorrow, though.
• Speaking of Power Auras, I got absurdly excited about it once I first tried it out. I immediately started wondering how I might apply it to Deowyn as well. After running my heroic for the day, I realized that it would be useful for at least two reminders: when I’m in combat without the Glyph of Life Tap buff active, and any time that Fel Armor isn’t active. Might also be worth having one when Haunt is available for casting, though I think the Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text notice I have for that is sufficient.
• Every time I hear “Everybody’s trance dancing tonight” from the DMB song “So Right,” I think “Everybody’s stance dancing tonight,” and want to make up some alternate, WoW-themed lyrics to the song.
• I think WoW has become my favorite hobby, which is amusing. Every time I worry about it, I just think about Jace’s “I Play W.O.W.” song and feel better. That said, I’m hoping to do some novel editing and guitar playing while Cody’s away, too.

I’m tempted to rant about driver etiquette, but have lost the gumption for the time being. My urge to write such missives tends to peak while I’m, y’know, driving, which is a somewhat inconvenient time to compose them.

1. It’s not really a surprise when I’ve already declared my intention to do it.
2. Power Auras FTW! Holy crap!

This happens to me often. I’ve encountered thousands of words², but I simply don’t retain them all due to use atrophy. It’s a problem with my primary language, but even more evident in my secondary one, German. Every time I hear spoken German, I can understand about 25% of it³, definitely don’t know about a third or more of it, but the remainder consists of vocabulary that I recognize, and at one time did know off the top of my head⁴, but no longer do due to disuse.

This problem tends to constrain my vocabulary. To some, it may sound like I indulge in excessive, multisyllabic verbiage. To me, I always sound as though I’m faking clever vocabulary by repeatedly returning to the same core group of so-called “big words.” I wonder: is there a remedy for this?

A related linguistic anecdote from high school springs to mind when this topic presents itself. During my sophomore year, my family and I hosted a German high school student⁵. He reacted with surprise to vocabulary homework in our English class. He understood having it in our foreign language classes, but to have it in the class ostensibly dealing with our primary language prompted an “Americans are stupid” expression to cross his face⁶.

That said, he probably had a point: his English vocabulary and comprehension often seemed to exceed that of many of my classmates.

1. Dictionary.com remedies that, of course and now having written that sentence, I am refreshed on what it means.
2. Across several languages, no less.
3. Being generous.
4. I just had a moment where I asked myself, “Isn’t there a single word for ‘off the top of my head?’ Case in point.
5. This isn’t the sort of year-long hosting that one often means, but rather a short two-week visit sponsored by our respective foreign language classes.
6. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me. This might have been my own self-conscious, guilt-ridden reading of a much more innocuous reaction.

Had a very smooth Sartharion run last night for the weekly raid. Five guildies and five pugs. No one died, and our resident tank and the pugged tank both rolled 100 on one of the items that dropped³. I’m getting close to happy with Deowyn’s UI, but I still feel like I have a long way to go before I have an adequate tanking UI for Jakosta. It doesn’t help that Jakosta doesn’t really do any tanking yet, and so I’m not just creating a UI that makes sense for leveling, but also one that makes sense for tanking in the future. This might be foolhardy, but the last thing I want to do is try to learn to tank while also learning my way around a retooled UI. So far, this is the best tank UI I’ve seen. It’s too cluttered for my taste, but it has a lot of elements that I do like. It’s also widescreen, which means even a direct adaptation would take some juggling.

I’ve spent more time fiddling with Jakosta’s UI lately than I have actually playing her. Maybe I’ll get a chance tonight.

1. There’s a large contingent of 38 employees that utilize their lunch breaks for playing Ultimate Frisbee. I have been an infrequent participant thus far due to my damn allergies hitting more or less right when I joined the company and the weather got nice.
2. Real Sudafed, not that placebo Sudafed PE crap. If it doesn’t have Pseudoephedrine HCl in it, don’t buy it; it doesn’t work.
3. Our tank then won the roll-off by 2, so yay for her!

My parents came to visit this past weekend. With them, my mother brought me a bluetooth headset that she originally purchased for herself, but never used. Having used it today to chat with her and my dad on my drive home from work, I have to say that I’m impressed. It’s a pretty awesome device for something so small. And I admit: tapping my ear and saying “Call <x>” to make a call makes me feel pretty futuristic. There are still some problems in the whole voice recognition department⁵, but that’s par for the course.

Speaking of technology, and coming to the actual observation that prompted this post, I walked by the living room just now where Cody was watching Glee. She had her laptop set out in front of her as she watched. After a few incidental thoughts about how curious it is that we, as a society, are no longer content consuming media in one form at a time, I thought back to an article I read many years ago regarding the integration of humans with their electronics (i.e. cyborgs). The author of this article proposed that we were already cyborgs; it was just a matter of degree.

We are often tied to our computers. The Internet is the conduit through which many of us communicate, inform ourselves about current events, and educate ourselves about the world⁶. Many of us now depend on computers as part of our ability to execute our profession successfully. Many of us depend on computers for the existence of our professions⁷.

None of this is to say we would be non-functional without them⁸, but rather that they are thoroughly entwined with our day-to-day existence. With that in mind, will actual electronic-body integration be all that remarkable a thing? A technical achievement, absolutely. But will it truly revolutionize anything? Or will it be just another progression from room-sized computers to tower PCs to laptops to netbooks to smartphones? It’ll be hard to get smaller than the current smartphones⁹ without impairing their usability. The only place left to go is in — inside your head, integrated with your eyes and ears, etc.

But is that really all that different?

I am, as it may be obvious, not someone who is particularly intimidated by technology’s progression. I think it does far more good than harm¹⁰ and it’ll only get better. Sure, there’s always risk, and as the technology advances, so too does the risk. Risk doesn’t mean danger, though. It just means that you stand to lose or gain in varied measure.

The other day, I had a narrative scene pop into my head¹¹ wherein a group genetically/biologically “perfect” humans squared off against cybernetically-augmented humans. The face off was more or less a pissing contest, and went something like this:

“We are pure and perfect. Your capabilities may infrequently exceed ours, but at least we don’t have machines defiling our bodies.”
“Yeah. Too bad for you on that one.”

I think that sums up my feelings.

1. Okay, technically this morning.
2. The plural for schema is schemata, not schemas, by the way.
3. Admittedly, I probably don’t need to have half a terabyte of data just sitting around on my disk drives, hence the effort to organize.
4. Mainly, my internal home webserver that I use for proofing out ideas before they go live
5. “Call Home.” “Did you say…Send a Message to Voicemail?” “…no.”
6. For good or for ill; that’s not really the topic I’m addressing
7. I certainly wouldn’t be a technical artist without computers. The position wouldn’t exist.
8. Though, admittedly, much of our modern society relies on computers for smooth operation.
9. Without some kind of virtual projection technology, anyway.
10. It’s the anti-religion!
11. This happens quite often. If I recorded every one of these scenes, I’d have volumes of material.

First, there was that whole winter holidays thing. Second, upon returning to work following the winter holidays, I was informed (along with many, many others) that I no longer had a job. Downsizing, division cutting, etc. Basically, the company retooled itself into something completely different. C’est la vie. First thing I did when I got home was start working on my website/resume/etc. By the end of that week, I’d already sent out several inquiries.

Fast-forward through two months of hand-wringing, and a lot of WoW-playing, and I find myself working at 38 Studios. I can’t say enough about how awesome a company 38 is. You’ll have to read about it for yourself. I will say this: it’s an incredible feeling to be working on something that excites you. I can’t provide any details, I’m afraid, but I can’t wait for our game to come out just so I can play it! The only downside is the hour-long commute¹, but audiobooks are helping me get through that². I’m so jazzed to get to work every day that the commute really doesn’t matter. I end up voluntarily working 9-10 hour days, without even realizing I’ve done so until I look at the clock and it dawns on me that I should probably think about going home at some point.³

Wedding planning has continued, though sluggishly. We’re starting to pick up steam now that I’m working again, though, so that’s good. We finally got rid of our rattling, rumbling, not-at-all-working dryer and purchased a new, awesome dryer⁴. I did the first lawn mow of the year today, with much success. Mower seems none the worse for wear having spent the winter in the shed.

Still haven’t finished⁵ editing the novel I wrote in November, but now that things are settling back into something resembling normalcy and I’ve had a chance to recharge my batteries, I’m ready to dive back into the little world I created. I’ve also speced out a new system that I plan to upgrade to in the near future⁶. In preparation for that, and because I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, I pre-designed the file structure that I plan to use for my new system. Hopefully, it will keep me somewhat organized.⁷

Since the weather is finally getting nicer, I’m also getting the itch to finish off the various house projects that remained incomplete once the cold weather set in. Chief among these are finishing the pantry and repainting the upstairs bathroom. Once those are done, I want to replace the screen doors on both entrances with ones that actually open in a logical direction. I may replace the back door altogether. It’s fine as a barrier to entry, but it’s pretty drafty.

As if all that weren’t sufficient, there are a ton of weddings and other events on the horizon: my friend Jen is getting married in May, our friends Keith and Lisa are getting married in June (and I’m in that wedding as a groomsman), my birthday and bachelor party are at the end of July, I’m getting married in August (and Keith is in that wedding as a groomsman), and our friends Christina and Alex are getting married in October.

To top things off, also spurred on by the improving climate, I’m considering actually tackling some of the costume-making ideas I’ve had kicking around for years.⁸ I have no idea how I’m going to fit all this together.

Somehow, I always manage.

I’ll also be making an effort to write more here. Ideally, I want to post once or more a day, just so that I’m writing something every day. Practically, of course, that’s not likely. Ah well.

Thanks for reading!

1. And that’s one way!
2. So far, The Mote in God’s Eye (Niven, Pournelle), The Last Colony (Scalzi), American Gods (Gaiman), Zoe’s Tale (Scalzi), and about half of The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger.
3. Fortunately, Cody is so happy that I’m happy about my job that she doesn’t mind at all.
4. They even delivered it the next day, and hauled away our old one, all for free!
5. Okay, I admit it, I haven’t actually started the editing process in any concrete way. Lots of brainstorming, but no tangibles.
6. My current machine will become our house server, running Ubuntu of course
7. Knock on wood, and all that. When it comes to organization, I’m a contradiction: I’m always disorganized and I can’t stand disorganization. Mm, self-loathing. Tasty.
8. Yes, stormtrooper armor is on the top of that list, thank you very much.