You know, I thought it was common knowledge, but I was completely wrong. Apparently a good portion of the driving public needs me to drop a little bit of knowledge on them. So here it is: Do you know what traffic lights, road signs, painted lanes, center dividers, shoulder barriers, and other common driving indicators have in common? They were all put there by the people who built the roads, freeways, and parking structures to help indicate to drivers where they were actually supposed to be driving their vehicles. I know it sounds obvious, but as the experience in my local Trader Joe’s parking lot has shown me, it’s not really common knowledge.

I do the majority of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, so I’m there at least once a week. Like many parking lots,  each aisle is one-way and only a single car wide. Naturally these aisles also alternate which side of the lot cars should enter and angle toward that direction. Unfortunately, due to the location of the lots entrance, there are only three aisles in front of the store. The two outer ones run down the outsides and the center one comes back up the middle.

I kid you not, every single time I visit Trader Joe’s, some idiot attempts to drive up one of the sides (the wrong way). Obviously this can cause some big problems when other drivers are coming one-way down the other direction (the correct way). I would love to give the drivers the benefit of the doubt and just call them ignorant (instead of idiots), but there really is no excuse for the mistake.

It’s not like this is the one road in the city where things switch from a bidirectional street to one-way street. It’s not even a full speed street where someone might not have a chance to notice the directional indicators because the speed of traffic forces them to make a turn decision before being able to recognize them. This is a 5 mph parking lot where there are clearly huge painted arrows on the ground and all the parking spots are angled in such a way that it would be impossible to pull into a parking spot when driving the wrong direction.

The worst part about it though, is that a majority of the people who make this idiot mistake don’t even realize what they did. They turn down the wrong aisle and then look completely baffled when they see cars stopped and waiting for them to back their confused ass up. No, you know what? That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that today I watched a Trader Joe’s employee walk out to her car and then drive it out the wrong direction. Are you kidding me? On a nice day I could excuse a customer who’d never been to that location and had not yet had the pleasure of dealing with the parking lot there. If you work at the damn store and you still haven’t learned how to navigate your way around it’s parking lot. You should probably be fired for being incompetent. I’m just saying.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Earlier this week while sifting through my RSS feeds, I stumbled onto a pretty ingenious concept design for improving the average traffic light. The “Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well.” While I seriously doubt the validity of the designers ecological intensions, I do believe the concept’s benefits to driver sanity could be enormous.

Sometimes an idea can still be great when the motivation behind it is somewhat misguided. This is how I feel about the Eko light. From the products description (and name for that matter) it sounds like it’s main purpose is to cut down on pollution by allowing cars stopped at intersections to turn their engines off while waiting for the traffic light to change. This is great, in theory, but I don’t see it working in most cases.

Now I’ve read the reports that say idling for 2 minutes is equivalent to actually driving a mile down the road and I understand that it’s better to shut your car on and off when you’re going to be idling for longer than 10 seconds. However, how often are you completely stopped, in park, and ready to shut off your engine the moment the light turns red? The answer is never. Even if you’re the first to the intersection right when the light turns red, you have to decelerate, stop, throw your car into park, and then you can shut down the engine. You’re usually never even the first to the intersection, though. So the light will have already been red before you’ve even begun to slow down your car.

Additionally, traffic lights are already horribly inefficient. When a light turns green, there is a delay between when a car begins to accelerate and when the car behind it begins to follow suit. While that delay isn’t excessively long, it can definitely add up in a line of cars. I’ve sat at several intersections where the light had already begun to change before I had a chance to even start forward progress. Imagine how terrible the delay would become if people future back int the line who couldn’t see the Eko light were waiting to see cars moving before starting their engines. Less cars through each light would mean more congestion, more idling (because you know not everyone would agree to turn off their engines at an intersection), and more pollution in the long run.

All that being said, I still think the Eko light is a brilliant concept. First off, it’s just cool. As a geek, more things should have progress bars. Hell, if my toaster had an LED progress bar and popped up to the AOL guy saying “Toasts Done”, it’d be an improvement. But that’s besides the point. What this invention really offers is peace of mind. You have no idea how many times I’ve sat at a stoplight, especially in a town with trains running through several major intersections, and obsessed about the light’s apparent disregard for the fact that my car was in one of it’s lanes. Sometimes, I think just not knowing when the light is going to change makes it seem like you’re sitting at it for so much longer than you are. Especially late at night when you’re the only car at a red light and you’re not even sure you’ve triggered the sensor. A progress bar would at least give you the feed back you need to know that you’d triggered it. Also, knowing exactly how much time was left would save you from those “damn, I thought I was next” moments.

posted by Christopher Schnese

When it comes down to it, I’ve never really been a huge fan of the holidays. First, they’re really just an excuse to take time off of work to spend time with those you’ve failed to make time for during the off season. Second, the monotonous daily grind of life doesn’t recognize them (i.e. the stresses of the world don’t stop so you can stuff your belly with turkey). And Third, any an all significance inherent in each holiday has all but died off over the years.

Take today for example. We all gather and talk about what we’re ’so thankful for’, yet we just take it all for granted the other 364 days of the year. What’s the point? Well, it occurred to me this morning that maybe that is the point. We’re all so busy with our lives that we never seem to make time to sit down and reflect on the things we really are thankful for. Maybe we really do need another ‘pointless’ holiday to force us to stop, even if only for a moment, and reflect on the things we really are thankful for.

So what am I thankful for? One of the problems for me is that I’m such a cynic. I often focus on the obstacles standing in the way of the things that I want. Because of this viewpoint, I sometimes forget how amazing what I have is. So I guess what I’m really thankful for is the little things; the bits and pieces. I’m thankful for every little piece of this little puzzle called life. Sure, the final product is far from complete, but it’s coming together quite nicely.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope you stop for a moment and find something to be thankful for.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Now I’m nothing close to a domain squatter, but at one point in time I had built up a small cache of domains to deploy at my will. Some of them were for failed projects, some for possible future projects, and some I just thought were clever and hoped I’d one day have a use for. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ‘conveniently’ consolidating all their renewal dates at the suggestion of the company I buy them from. As it turns out, this is one of the least convenient things I could have done. If you pay for all your domains at once, it can be very expensive.

Unfortunately, last year around this time, I couldn’t’ really afford the cost of renewing all of them. So, I let about half of my domains expire. Admittedly, most of the ones I let go were for old school projects or online personas that I no longer operate under, so it wasn’t completely disastrous. Sill, it was hard to see them go. In the end, I just held on to my favorites (and of course the ones that were actually in use).

This year, however, when it came time to let some more domains expire it was a little more of a sacrifice. I had already dumped everything I could live without, so there was nothing left to abandon without really having to feel it. Long story short, I decided to bite the bullet and I purged every domain I had except the three that are currently in use and two variations of my name. My guess is that most of the people who are going to read this post aren’t going to be able to sympathize with the loss, but trust me it’s sad times. And to add insult to injury, the domain registrar feels the need to send me an email every day reminding me of all the domains I’ve let expire.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Last night I attended the wedding of some old high school friends (grats! Ben & Kim). Interestingly enough, it was the second wedding I’ve attended this month that joined together a couple that had been a couple for over eight years (grats! also to James & Nancy). When I woke up this morning I began reflecting over the wedding, the duration of the couple’s relationship, and my own past relationships. After a while, I stumbled on to an obvious, yet really interesting, fact that I hadn’t really thought of before. If you’ve ever had a relationship in your life AND you’re currently single, you effectively have a 100% failure rate for relationships.

[Now I know what you're thinking. "Chris, you're just a pessimist." And you're right, I am. However, the point of this post is actually quite optimistic, so just bear with me.]

So, I took my new found failure rate factoid and continued reflecting on my past relationships.  I thought about how in every relationship there can be tensions that arise from both pre-existing friendships and new ones that are made with the people surrounding the couple. I thought about how those relationships are often tested, strained, or made uncomfortable by a break up. And I began to realize that in the beginning portion of many (don’t bother reading into that word choice too much) of my past relationships, one question was brought up in each of them: “What happens if this doesn’t work out?”

Now don’t get me wrong, it is a legitimate question to be concerned about. However, it’s the wrong question to be asking when you’re starting a relationship with someone new. As I already established in the beginning of this post, 100% failure is the norm for most of us. So we know there’s a high probability that there’s a breakup somewhere in the future. With that in mind, what good can come of asking what’s going to happen if the relationship doesn’t work out? All it’s going to do is force you to concentrate on the bad things and the risks associated with the person you want to be with. The real question you should be asking is “what happens if this DOES work out?”

Breaking up isn’t the exception, it’s the rule. What you really want to focus on is the small probability of success and what you’re going to do when you DON’T fail. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to think that knowing your not expected to succeed makes worrying about failing less significant. Now I know that getting into this mind set isn’t’ going to make it feel any better when it doesn’t work out, but cross that bridge when you come to it. Don’t worry about it when you’re just getting to know a person. Every second spent trying to figure out how you’ll be friends with a person after you break up is a second stolen from figuring out how to be friends with them in the relationship. At least that’s the way I see it.

posted by Christopher Schnese

As pissed as I was, in the end it wasn’t all the crap listed above that really had me frustrated. I mean, the blog itself was completely intact. The thing that really had me upset was that my custom theme was what was destroyed in the attack. Now I don’t claim to be any sort of master designer of WordPress themes, but I like knowing that no one is running my theme. I like playing with it, tweaking it, and getting it exactly the way I want it. Even though I was completely back up an running by Friday morning, it just didn’t feel the same running a theme I had downloaded from WordPress.org.

Well, tonight (or this morning I guess) I finally got around to implementing a new custom theme. And it once again feels like home. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve missed a lot of sleep these past few days and I’d like to get some tonight (or this morning I guess).

posted by Christopher Schnese

Go ahead and take a quick look at your alarm clock. If you’re not  home right now, close your eyes and visualize it for a moment. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Now that you’ve got it, try to remember the alarm clock you owned before that one. Now the one before that. If you think about it, the alarm clock hasn’t really changed much over the past several years. With all the technological progress we see every day, why have there been no significant advancements in alarm clocks?

Now sure, alarm clocks today have far more bells and whistles than they did years back. We now have radios, stereos, iPod docks, wall projectors, and all sorts of pointless crap in our alarm clocks, but none of these ‘features’ really changes the core functionality that we care about: waking up at a specifically chosen time (or multiples of ten minutes after said time). When you really break it down, whether you spend $200 or $5, your alarm clock really only allows you to set a time and make the thing beep at you until you hit it. Is that really the best we can do?

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why our alarm clocks are the most under developed and least advanced pieces of technology that we own. Why can’t someone work on a slick and light weight alarm clock operating system that has more computing power and memory then a basic calculator? Since no one else seems to care, I now offer a short list of suggestions for improving the alarm clock.

Top 5 suggestions for improving the alarm clock

5) Support for Multiple Alarms:
This one should be obvious. Even the most advanced alarm clocks I’ve ever owned only allowed me to set two different wake up times. Then, I can’t even use the beeping for the second alarm. The second alarm only applies to the radio setting. Alarm clocks should not just have a digital display, but an actual software operating system with memory that allows me to save an unlimited number of alarms. Which leads me to my next suggestion…

4) Custom Displays & Alerts:
If I can save an unlimited number of alarms, I’m going to need a way to tell them apart (other than their time). This is why I need some sort of input for assigning custom names to each alarm set. Additionally, while I’m adding text input to the device, there should be an option to display or scroll a note with the alarm while it’s going off. If I’ve set my alarm for 5:00am, then I know what time it is when it goes off. It would be nice, however, if the face of my alarm could remind me that I have a 6:00am conference call or a test to take that morning.

3) Calendar based alarms with priority triggers:
The last couple of alarm clocks that I’ve purchased come with a nice little feature that allows me to designate which days of the week my alarm with actually go off (any individual day, just weekdays, or just the weekend). I want more control than this. Anytime that I have to adjust my wakeup time to accommodate a trip (or anything that throws off my normal routine), I run the risk of forgetting to set my alarm back the following night. This could all be fixed by a calendar based alarm system. If I knew that on the 14th of next month I were going to need to wake up at 4:00am to get to the airport on time for a flight, I could set a an alarm specifically for that date. Now this is where my priority triggers would come into play.

Obviously my 4:00am on the 14th alarm would going to conflict with my daily alarm which goes off at 5:00am. This conflict could be avoided by assigning the 4:00am on the 14th alarm to a priority of “High”. Any alarm set to a high priority would then override all standard reoccurring alarms set for that time period.

2) Remote Configuration and Interaction:
In the example above, I left for vacation and was so excited about my alarm clock’s priority triggers that I forgot to disable the recurring daily alarm for the week that I was going to be away. This is exactly why alarm clocks should have remote configuration and interaction. We live in a world where just about every device we own has the ability to connect to the internet. Why don’t our alarm clocks? I should be able administer my scheduled alarms, priorities, or even disable them all together from my computer, iPhone, or any other network connected device.

1) Proximity (RFID) laziness failsafes (admittedly a little overkill):
Ok, this one is a little silly, but there is totally a use for it. I may be crazy, but this feature could totally save my (and your) ass. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve been late somewhere because I fell back asleep after I hopped out of bed and shut off my alarm clock. If I had a secondary (backup) alarm it would really help. If it was proximity aware, using an RFID keychain dongle, it could actually determine for itself whether or not I needed that backup alarm on a case by case basis. Imagine the following scenario:

Lets pretend my schedule looks like this.
5:00am (intended wake up time) [Primary Alarm]
7:00am (intended departure time)
7:15am (last possible second to wake up and not be late) [Secondary Alarm]
7:30am (last possible departure time to not be late)

Now if everything goes as planned, I will depart from my house before my secondary alarm goes off. This means that if I forget to disarm it, my alarm will be ringing all day (or until I remember and find an internet connection so that I can disarm it remotely). This wouldn’t be the case with a proximity aware RFID keychain dongle. The secondary alarm would only ever trigger if the keychain was still in range of the alarm clock.

So there you have it. Sure, I may be the only person on the planet crazy enough to put this much thought into something as simple as an alarm clock, but you’ve got to admit I’ve envisioned a pretty bad ass alarm clock.

posted by Christopher Schnese

I’m not sure if everyone in the less traffic-heavy parts of the country have them too, but here in Southern California we have these intersections where you can’t make a right turn at a red light. It’s not every intersection, it’s just these specific ones. And I do get it. I understand that there are certain intersections which, due to heavy traffic during specific parts of the day, might not be the safest places to pull into traffic. The problem is that I’ve begun to notice these “no turn on red” signs showing up everywhere with little caveats attached to them, designating when you have to actually pay attention to them. This really annoys me.

As I mentioned before, I understand the reason for prohibiting right turns on red lights and it doesn’t annoy me to have to sit through a whole light cycle at an intersection that does this. What does annoy me is when I have to break my driving rhythm to determine whether or not I can proceed through the light. If the light has a blanket “sorry, you have to wait” sign, I can just treat the intersection as if I were in any of the other lanes. But if the light has stupid stipulations attached to it, I have to determine the block of time turning on a red is prohibited, determine the current time, determine whether or not the current time is within the prohibited time, and then make the judgement call of whether or not I’d like to proceed.

Sure, I know the whole process only take a second or two, but when I drive my attention is often on the other drivers and the moves they’re making (or preparing to make). Anything that forces me to break that attention to do stupid calculations to determine whether or not the local time designates making a right turn at my current red light a ticket-able offense, it’s annoying. That’s not even considering the frustrations of being honked at by the always-in-a-rush Californians who never notice the no turn on red signs anyways.

You know, maybe it’s really just the absurdity of the situation that annoys me. I mean, if the intersection is really unsafe, wouldn’t’ it be unsafe all the time? It’s not like the physical layout of the street changes throughout the day. Isn’t that sort of like having a side street that ends with a stop sign during certain hours and a yield sign others? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Back in September of 2007, Bungie Studios took their beloved Halo series “Next Gen” with the release of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360. Making full use of the beefier console’s graphics capabilities and revamped controller design, the game revolutionized the way we battled the covenant. Now here we are, two years later, and Bungie’s done it again. Tuesday at midnight Halo 3: ODST went on sale to eager fans around the world. Overlapping events in both Halo 2 and Halo 3, this expansion takes the focus off of Master Chief and places it on a rookie Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST). Gone are the days of the Overshield, invulnerability to fall damage, and the seemingly endless supply of ammunition. Make no mistake about it, the game has changed my fellow soldiers. Which begs the question: Is this expansion worthy of it’s full retail price of $59.99?

The Good:
So how does this iteration of Halo fair without it’s beloved Master Chief? Incredibly well actually. Make no mistake about it, ODST is a drastically difference game from it’s predecessors. Until now, each of the sequels offered what really amounts to just a cosmetic upgrade with one little gameplay change – Halo 2 gave us dual wielding and Halo 3 gave us Equipment. ODST on the other hand, forces you to completely abandon everything you thought you knew about killing covenant and offers a uniquely different (at least in terms of this franchise) combat experience.

The previous games were all about Master Chief being a completely and total badass. Any situation could be fixed with an onslaught of bullets. In the off chance that you ran out, you couldn’t throw your nerfed pistol without hitting some sort of ammo crate. If then, by some miraculous reason, you were somehow able to deplete even that ammo, you could always just punch enemies in the face and they’d pretty much just keel over. Thus is the life of a Spartan.

The life of an ODST, on the other hand, is not so badass. You’re still technically an elite soldier, but you don’t have an overshield. You can’t dual wield. You can’t use equipment. And you get hurt when you jump from, well… almost anything. This may sound like a downside, but it’s actually a refreshing take on the series’ combat mechanics. “running and gunning” is no longer the name of the game. Instead, you have to rely on outwitting, outflanking, and generally outplaying your enemy. All of which has to be done while attempting to conserve ammo. I played through the game on the “Heroic” difficulty and spent a huge chunk of my time ducking behind corners and into buildings desperately searching for any weapon that had even a shallow clip left in it.

The level design is also vastly improved upon. Unfortunately, the entire Halo franchise is sort of known for it’s incredibly linear level design that often forces you to push all the way through a boring corridor only to have to fight your way right back through it again after completing your objective. In ODST, bungie focused on huge wide-open levels, may of which are larger than the the “Big Team” maps in Halo 3. Add to that the constant juxtaposition of the solo night moments and the flashback big battle sequences, and the game never feels stale or repetitive at all.

Lastly is ODST’s new  co-operative mode called Fire FIght. Similar to Gears of War 2’s Horde Mode, Fire Fight drops you and up to three buddies onto a map and then precedes to unleash wave after wave of covenant baddies onto the map until you and all your friends have been obliterated. The maps for this mode are absolutely enormous and are literally pulled straight from the campaign. I actually spent my first several hours of the game playing Fire Fight online with friends and it was amazing to find myself later attempting to defend and assault the same choke points in the Campaign that I had been in this mode. Fire Fight is really the crowning achievement in this game.

The Bad:
I’m a huge fan of the Halo series and I’ve love each game that Bungie has released thus far, so it’s no surprise that I also love ODST. That being said, this is not a perfect game. In fact, it’s not technically a game at all. Halo 3: ODST is actually just an expansion, or companion really, to Halo 3. And that’s where it’s problems stem from.

Bungie’s original intention with the game was to give the fans something to keep us busy while we wait for Halo: Reach (the prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved). They admit that it was just supposed to be a little expansion, however, they claim that the project quickly developed into so much more. So much more, in fact, that they’re charging the price of a full game ($59.99). The truth is that ODST isn’t a complete game and doesn’t come anywhere close to feeling like it is.

Yes, there is a new Campaign. Yes, there is a new Co-op mode. Yes, both these modes are beautifully crafted and original. However, that’s all that ODST has to offer. It has no Competitive Multi-Player. Instead, it just comes with a copy of Halo 3 with it’s Campaign ripped out. In my opinion this is beyond disappointing. This game offers a completely fresh take on war in the Halo universe, but doesn’t let us take up arms against each other. How can this be? If you look at the achievement  breakdown for Halo 3, you’ll notice that there are 43 achievements available in Multiplayer and only 36 available in the Single Player Campaign. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this prove that Bungie acknowledges the importance of Multiplayer over Single Player? Why then would they just ignore the feature in ODST?

The second huge blunder committed by the developers is that the Fire Fight mode doesn’t have any Matchmaking functionality. This means that if you don’t have any friends to Co-op with, you’re completely shit out of luck. This is the real shame in my opinion. Fire Fight is simply an amazing mode. So good in fact that, if it had Matchmaking, I might be able to completely forget that ODST has no Multiplayer mode of it’s own. In fact, if I could be assigned to a random squad any time I was in the mood for a Fire Fight, I’d be online right now instead of writing this post. But I can’t. Effectively, the mode might as well not even be on my copy of the game because I don’t know enough people who even own a copy to ever really take advantage of it.

If this expansion would have come out as Downloadable Content at 1600 Microsoft Points (roughly $20), We wouldn’t have an issue. It would be clear that the game was just an Add-On. It’s not though. It’s being sold as a full fledged game. Even if you subtract the money you’re technically saving from the 3 new bundled Multiplayer Halo 3 maps (which we’ve been paying 800 points a set for so far), the game is still $30 more expensive than it should be.

The Final Verdict:
So, now that I’ve gone on about how much I love the game AND ranted about everything I hate about it, what’s my final verdict? Well, maybe I’m just drinking the Bungie Kool-Ai, but even with missing features and the outrageous price tag, Halo 3: ODST is an awesomely fun game. I’d say it’s a must buy for any Halo fan out there. Take it from the guy who took Tuesday off of work and played the game for about 12 hours straight. If you bought this game and don’t love it, well then you probably had no reason buying it in the first place.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Wanna try Halo 3: ODST for yourself?

In the weeks leading up to E3 2009, everyone already knew what games they were excited for. They knew the big first party releases, they new the big sequels, and they knew exactly what they were going to be reporting on after each of the big press conferences. But if you watch or read any of the post-E3 2009 wrap-ups, you’ll find they all have one little thing in common. Just about every single one mentioned a beautiful little gem of a game called Scribblenauts. A game that came virtually out of nowhere to impress the pants off of everyone who saw it.

Scribblenauts is one of those game that makes you want to call “shenanigans” when you first hear the concept. The objective is simple, just collect a “Starite” from each of the levels. The catch is that the game give you nothing but a magnifying glass and a notebook to scribble in. It’s this little notebook, however, that makes the game special. Anything you write in it appears before you. There are literally endless possibilities of what you can create within the levels.

Need a jet pack to fly somewhere out of reach? What about a SCUBA tank to swim under water? Maybe you need a bazooka to kill a large carnivorous animal. How would you like to just obliterate everything with a nuclear bomb? With the exception of a few caveats (copyrighted material and obscenities) if you can think it, it can be scribbled into the game. Scribblenauts is truly one of the most innovative games I’ve had the pleasure of playing in a long time.

Is the game perfect? The short answer is no. The controls can be cumbersome at times, you can scribble in twenty complex objects before discovering all you needed was a coffee table (yes, that was an actual example), completing the first world in standard mode doesn’t provide enough Ollers (in game money) to buy access to the second world, the handwriting recognition feature is sort of janky, and the only free-play level you get is the main title screen. A screen obstructed by a huge start button in the bottom center of the screen. Even with all these “problems”, this is a really fun and imaginative game. In my opinion, it’s a must have for all DS owners out there.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Wanna try Scribblenauts for yourself?