Annoying Family

Some things in life are bad,

They can really make you mad,

Other things just make you swear and curse,

When you chewing on life's gristle,

Don't grumble give a whistle,

And this'll Help things turn out for the best....

Sage and wise words there, but I'm sat in the office and after a whole morning of base code frustrations causing me to be mad, I've just been on the phone to my Mother.

Now, those of you whom don't know my Mother let me paint a picture, she's broadly the same character as Hyacinth Bucket from the TV Show Keeping Up Appearances  she talks incessantly AT you, not to you, not with you, AT you.  She's highly opinionated to a fault - worse than me - she taught me how to hold an opinion to the point of fault and be stubborn, but she's far worse.  And true story, we once went on Holiday and when we came home British Telecom had sent a letter to query whether the rented phone we had was out of service, because there had been unusual activity on our line.  The unusual activity was there not being any calls made... So there's the scene, a talker, right, she's a talker.

So it was with amazement that today - just a few minutes ago - I get a text "Call home now"... I call... and I'm informed that my Nan has been rushed to A&E - not very well at all she's not... Okay, right... News, information on the fly.

"Oh, and I'm having a major operation tomorrow"... First I'd heard of it, first mention... "I was going to tell you when you last came around".... The last time I went to their house was two months ago... two months, sixty days... Sixty days where there could have been a text, sixty days where there could have been a phone call, no, sixty days of silence.

From Britain's most talkative person!  Silence.

This is all part of the games my mother plays, she plays Chinese whispers back and forth, she plays about with people, she'll say one thing to one person and then withhold it from another and see when she has that whisper come back to her, she does it to pull the strings and ride the grape vine, and she does it because she's basically retired from work and loves to talk, but always wants to feel the epicentre of life.  When really she's just one person, with one person's story, and she's a minor footnote on very few peoples radar.

And so, to withhold this information from me, her eldest son - appears my younger brother knew all along - was part of her shenanigans and games of whispers.  As Robert Jordon describes it in Wheel of Time - She's playing "the Grand Game"; but instead of their being a crown, fortune of kingdom on the line there's just a few poultry facts which needed to be passed out to include other people.

I find this so frustrating, annoying and I wish I could sit and chew on it, but I'm so tired of this bullshit approach, so tired of the whispers and deceit, because that's what it is, its like she withholds things to taut back to you "you didn't know I've been shopping"... I don't care you've been shopping, and you didn't even tell me... its so trivial.. but "I'm having an operation, and you didn't know I'm having an operation"... Erm... I'd have liked to have known, and liked to have been told...

I know for a fact that her inner circle of supplicants knew all about this situation, its only me, the only person who out strips her in the family (for intellect) whom has been kept in the dark.  Because I'm very pragmatic... "oh you're ill, can they fix it?  Good, go get it fixed"... That's my style, and this whole thing is silly its about a problem she had 20 years ago, and never tackled... 20 years is well enough time!  Not least because she can't claim "the kids stopped me"... we left home over 18 years ago... I've now been gone from home longer than I lived there by a fair few years, but she still wants to pull the strings, and this whole episode is here trying it.

Also about my Nan being in A&E... I work right next to the A&E unit, I can see it out the office window... My mother will be in an operation tomorrow... But she's put herself down as primary contact... she'll be miles away in an operation in another hospital... I'm 500 yards away from Nan and available... but Oh no, I can't take that call, I can't sort that out... because that would be my mother ceding control and she can't bare to think of not ruling the roost

Annoying, annoying, annoying fuckers my family are.

Today I've been looking at a C++ problem, well when I say problem, I think there are no problems you can't work around in C++, but this particular problem relies on someone spotting a compiler error and acting correctly.

The trouble I have is that the compiler error is pretty obscure - this I will admit as a problem with C++ compilers in general - and that the error really has no meaning in the context of the solution I am trying to make the programmer come to.

Let me explain with a little code, I have a class a base class in fact, we'll call this A, and this class has a constant inside, lets say the "Name"... Now we don't want the base class to define a value for this constant we just want it to make all classes which derive from it realise they must define a value for this constant... So the code might look like this;

#include <string>

using namespace std;

class A

{

public:

static const string c_Name;

};

Now, normally here we'd then have:

const string A::c_Name ("DefaultValue");

And if we did nothing untoward would happen at this point, the derived classes could all use c_Name, just it would have only this default value, and the static instance of c_Name in one derived class would NOT be the same string as in another class, they are separate values... so there's no problems.

class B : public A

{

};

Now this derived class has a c_Name, but its "DefaultValue", so you would expect to just define a new instance:

const string B::c_Name ("New Value For Constant");

Unfortunately, this is totally wrong, because the new definition of the constant in B causes a redefinition of the constant in the base class, and multiple initization is not allowed.

So, we remove the default value...

#include <string>

using namespace std;

class A

{

public:

static const string c_Name;

};

//const string A::c_Name ("DefaultValue");

class B : public A

{

};

const string B::c_Name ("New Value For Constant");

And everything now compiles, there's no problem... Except that the base class does not provide a default name, so we're relying on the programmer to spot when they miss the definition of name and not assume they've got to define it in the base class and so stop our intended operation...

But the compiler error is horrible... lets take a look at it from Visual Studio 2010:

"error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol" and then the hell that is the output... 

The error makes sense, we've defined a static in the base class and not defined it anywhere, my problem is how do I educate a programmer - whom will most likely not read my documentation - to NOT define one in the base and so break hundreds of classes in the future - but know to define it in the class they just wrote and give it a meaningful name?

WarThunder - Players Can See the Imbalance

I have to commend the WarThunder content crew for releasing more Historical Battles - my favourite way to fly - however, the imbalance in the different air forces is becoming especially annoying and prevalent.

Now, the Japs, I love my Japs but I'm yet to get a proper zero - I have the floating zero - but not a real one the reason being the god damn grind to gain the lions to buy it and as I'm already posted I'm not willing to grind.  But also the Jap planes are really the proverbial "Glass Cannons", but firepower and no amour - yet this is really real - as other posters & players say all the time - but in real-life the zero could out maneuver everything flying against it, and they can't in arcade and can't well even in Historical Battles in WarThunder - so they're unbalanced.

And because they're unbalanced players avoid wasting their precious time trying to play against over powered - or just balanced - emenies, take a look at this, this is a screen shot fresh of the press a few minutes ago, see the numbers in the queue....

There are two historical battles... Japs v Yanks - WoW there are a lot of Yanks waiting to fly!... And then Brits v Krouts - and oh mamma how many Luftwaffe jockeys are there in the queue?

This is screaming out about the imbalances, the Japs can's survive so the yank tear them up, plus the yanks have strapped a bomb capability to nearly every plane and a billion machine guns to every bomber, so they're being played and earning rich rewards.

The Germans they appear to be being played; through personal experience on the receiving end; because their fighters tear the British planes out the skies - I commented in game to other players about this to hear resounding replies that I was indeed correct - the Brits simply fall out the sky.

Now, Jingles over on YouTube posted his heroic Lancaster flight earlier today, and he shows a surviving bomber - well surviving ish - but this is rarely the case I've been out in Blenheims, Beauforts, Beaufighters and Wellingtons and always been hacked out the sky by well flown 109's.

You can't knock the 109 pilots they're doing things right, but they're only being quite so successful because of this perceived imbalance - I know I'm not a terrible bomber pilot, and I know I'm not an awful fighter jock but me just saying the obvious is not enough, so evidence, check out the numbers in the queues, check them out yourselves....

And you wait, you wait for a Russian Historical battle, there'll be hundreds in those queues as the Russian planes are all pretty much INVINCIBLE.

Work - Feeling Shit & Resurrecting Systems

I already said I feel like shit, well I soldiered through Monday and went home, but it was clear it was a total struggle, and come Monday night I was suffering, could not see - eyes streaming - could not even close them to sleep and then even when I did sleep I kept sneezing myself awake, so Tuesday was a no show, and nor was today I gave myself the day to recover a little more, I feel very much better now - I'm probably awfully contagious, but hey ho.

Right now I've got a sore nose and sore eyes, I've got a chesty cough and that heavy feeling in the center of my chest, that heavy feeling of a threatening chest infection.

So, today I was blissfully tucked up in bed, when the wife came back in from popping to her parents, and she was all panicking, she was handing me her phone, "Your work has been calling me!!!"

Mystery, her number is down as my emergency number, my own mobile is down as my own contact; checking it, its dead of battery, I've not charged it since last week the poor thing.

Anyway, I take the wife's phone from her, blow my nose take a swig of juice and call work, the main reception have no idea who is after me, the manager present in the support department - who is the most likely person to want me - has no idea who wants me, and I had already called into HR that morning, so... Mystery, no-one knew who wanted me.

An hour later HR call me, the big boss wants me, or rather one of the trio of big bosses wants me, there's an emergency project needs consulting on, its stuff only myself or my direct manager can advise on, my direct manager has been signed off work himself for over two months, so they're hoping to god I'm not going to be off long.  I reassure them telling them I'll be in tomorrow, and go back to rest.

But, then I'm mulling over, what is this work, what is the big need... I also got thinking about something else...

There's a certain other person in our department, a person whom volunteers them self to do all the strange things - such as be interim server manager - or chief communications technologist - and they're off and people sit with their thumbs up their ass not wanting to call them, or if they do call them they get answer phone and ignored.... I'm off one day... ONE FUCKING DAY... and suddenly they had to get me, they called not just my battery flattened phone, but my emergency contact's number too...

THEY NEVER CALL THIS OTHER GUY... Now, I'd be flattered, I'd think whoa, maybe I'm needed and valued and getting a little respect in my role - after a decade - but no, I think they just know I'm not going to go mental - like the other guy would - and so the boss guy got them to call me up and check when I was going to be in.

Anyway, whether I'm wanted or not, I've today set about sorting both the snuffly mess that is my head, and my software files... The problem being I've had both my main desktop machine out of action for nearly 5 months with no power supply! And I can't afford a new one - and I've had my laptop tip over with a hard drive fault just last month, so I've precariously had little backup storage and replication of my files in nearly 3 months.

Not to mention some of my files are on Virtual Machines which I hold only one copy of, or the files have not been backed up at all.... A situation which I have to remedy today, and so I've set about taking a copy of the virtual machines from one external hard drive onto another, then a copy again to use for development on my repaired laptop.

Three copies down - over 400GB a piece - that's been a good 43 minutes all around.

I've now got to look at my code back up server - its a linux machine - which has been left untouched since the main desktop PC went on the fritz, its served by a really nice 100GBit switch into my LAN, but because I used the desktop PC as a gateway for it out onto my wireless I've simply not been able to fire it up, so I'm possibly going to fit a wireless card to it, get it connected wirelessly - slow as that is - and give it updates whilst I get the virtual machines working on my laptop and then connect it to the 100GBit switch directly with a wire and we can rock and or roll.

Man Flu

I feel thoroughly drubbed over, I'm sat at work right now, staring at lines of code wondering why the fuck am I here.  The reason for this isn't some deep mid-life crisis, its not some in-fathomable coding glitch either, its the simple fact that I've got a cold.

In Britain, and I guess elsewhere, when a man has a cold he gets short sharp shrift as regards sympathy... "You'll find sympathy in the dictionary somewhere between Shit and Syphilis" as the saying goes.  But also here in Britain there's this rule of not bringing illness to your work colleagues.

So this morning I phoned in to HR and said, "I've got a stinking cold, I can come in, but I'll give it everyone, what do you want?"... They told me to come in.

There we go, here I am, and I've now been to the kitchenette - good luck anyone touching the taps, the coffee machine or the water cooler!  I did wash my hands, but still, good luck.  I'm also coughing and sneezing over my desk - so anyone wanting a document off me is going to get a short barrel of snot.

Consequently, because I was ill, I spent most of yesterday in bed - or being made to do things by the wife - whom would not let me rest...

So I missed this:

This is the second "offer" from them I've missed, I missed out on the gold for fights the other week, and I missed out on this, the reason being illness, but also the current economy has left me feeling lack lustre towards playing at all, its too costly to play the game at the tier I have access to.

I've effectively stopped playing, until they fix the economy there, but its cutting my nose off to spite my face, I would clearly have liked 24 hours of premium.... maybe not yesterday as I was so ill.

RIP - Lucas Arts

Sad news, Disney takes its dead rattle to Lucas Arts, the only part of Lucas film to deliver decent Star Wars content to us since its founding - that's not to say they didn't deliver a turd now and then, but they gave us great content more often than not.

I'm so sad to see the company be thrown away like this, not least because Star Wars 1313 looked to be a decent title.

Now they'll license the brand out and who knows where this might end.... "The Empire on Ice" perhaps?

Read the story as it breaks here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/22025391

E-mail Hacked, WarThunder Ruins Economy & Minecraft restart

What a bit of a roller coaster time I've been having, lots of personal stuff, but then technology has slowly crept back into me.

I'm still enjoying WarThunder - though less so with the currently fucked economic model (I have Spitfire Vb and Vc, as well as two differnet model 109's to buy - all for 100,000 credits, whilst only able to earn about 10,000 per game, this means I'm going to take about 50 games to earn the cash -  and I only get to play 2-3 games an evening, so this is over a months grind to just play the next level of aircraft) and to be honest I can do without a grind of a game.

They did a good job with the April Fools joke in game however - I did enjoy flying in the My Little Pony Airforce, and the artwork was top notch, however I'd have been happier to see an economy fix.

Also, there was an event on Sunday where for winning your first and fifth fight you'd get gold eagles, I never saw this advertised, I never understood the text in game, and I never won in the one game I played that evening, so I never got any gold eagles and this makes me sad, from such PR highs to lows all in the space of a weekend.

The other technology news was that one of my e-mail addresses was hacked, by a chap in India, whom I thoroughly intend to visit and castrate.  Seems he trawled and then trolled my Yahoo e-mail password and started to spam people in my address list at 3am.  The next morning my wife asked "Why were you up at 3am sending me this"... and of course she'd clicked the fucking link, so I had to wipe the laptop, and change my yahoo account and all manner of things.  But being in possession of an ounce of technical nouse I fired  up a virtual machine and tracked this link mailed around down, I also tracked the links in the dozens of failed mail daemon delivery messages spammed from my account.  And they all went back to an educational establishment in the Punjab.

I sent a mail to the administrator of said Educational Establishment, but I don't hold much hope of them cracking down on this shit, not least because this place in the Punjab appears to be a rocky stoney mountain when you look on Google earth, but the image of the site as shown on their web page looks like a none-descript office building from Droitwich - no offence to Droitwich.

The other thing that's been going on is Minecraft - I've had minecraft since it first came out - I've even studied the java code under the hood - yes I'm that much of a geek.  But I've only really played it once.

I started to play it again - mostly as I'm so agreeved at WarThunder - but also because I'm still without power on my main gaming PC so wanted something I can run on the laptop whilst on battery power.

Anyway, I've started to enjoy Minecraft some, I have a little railway, I've got a cow farm, and I'm starting to automate somethings with the seemingly magic redstone.  I've been to the nether and I plan to open a big mining facility to discover more diamonds.  But I'm also tempted to start to record my exploits, and make a series of progress videos.  IJevin on YouTube does a good job of this, but he does seem to appear with lots of gear start off the bat, I'd rather show everything in real-time - or at least sped up in places - to show every rock, every seed, every stick gathered and how it came along.  But this is a pipe dream, I don't have a voice for YouTube video commentary, and I don't have the time, though I've love to have more YouTube content.