$1000.00*, Just For You!

That’s right. I will pay you eight hundred one thousand Canadian dollars if you can help me solve something.

Back in 2006 I encrypted a RAR file and have long since forgotten the password.  I presume it’s no fewer than seven characters in length, but probably no more than sixteen.  It uses letters (of various caps), numbers, and some punctuation, but I can’t exactly say which punctuation as again, I can’t remember.

I have taken on the task of trying to crack this password by means of a brute-force attack. However, if you know anything about encryption you’ll quickly come to terms that this password won’t be discovered in my life time. At which point it won’t matter what is in that RAR container, I guess.

However, if you’d like to help me take a shot at it, drop me a line (my email address can be found HERE). *If you can help me and reveal the contents of that RAR file I’ll send a cool GRAND your way.

Suggestions are welcome.

Jesus, Is That You?

Alright, enough with this nonsense about seeing Jesus in a piece of toast, or the Holy Mary in a pan of scrambled eggs.

I saw the “Scary Movie” guy in my soup.  I initially was going to put the soup up for sale on eBay, but I got hungry in the meantime and ate the potential profits.

As for Jesus, I think I saw him once, but I had to flush quickly as the restaurant was busy and someone was banging on the restroom door to …  or maybe he did want to see Jesus…

We’ll never know.  I’ll never care.

Move on, people.  Get a life, find a hobby.  Find a form of interest to keep your mind occupied instead of looking for potentially fictitious figures in your food.  If Jesus wanted you to find him he’d be ringing your door bell asking about the quickest way to fame.

So, what WOULD Jesus do?  I guess we’ll never know.  Bon Appetit.

Free Pool. Think Quick!

I think Tony may be onto something.

How about free beer… yesterday.  You missed it?  Oh, so sorry.

There’s always pool… tomorrow.

Judge Judy, Are You Real?

Many times I have watched Judge Judy and wondered if the cases were real.  The TV always reassured me that they were real people with real cases and the decisions were final.

Fine.

On a few occasions I have tried looking up certain cases on the Internet to see if I could find any evidence of them.  Out of the times I tried I have been successful only once.  The others … well, it’s like they never existed.  Or perhaps have been quickly taken down by the show creators, litigants, or Google.

Then, recently I was watching an older case which I taped on October 26^th, 2009, Paula Rana v. Roger Kaday.  I noticed that on one of the plaintiff’s documents what appeared to be her last name was censored while Judge Judy was looking at it.  It was a hospital record from the emergency room.

My question is this: if Rana is really Paula’s last name, why censor it on an official document? Do they censor people’s real last names to protect them from others who may be watching the show.  Could there be another reason?  Why does the document in question appear to have more letters than the last name “Rana”? What else are they not telling us?

*EDIT* I just wanted to add this this must be a very recent case as there is other documentation shown during the trial on which the date of August 27, 2009 appears (the bill pictures is presumed to be from August 25th, 2009). Just two months before airing! I have no idea how long the turn around time is from filming to post production to airing, but even if it’s a month, the case is less than two months old… and yet, I still can find nothing more on it elsewhere.

*EDIT II* I don’t know where to go with this. I mean, I never believed the show to be a complete fake, but after changing a few search strings on Google I am lost in the search… Judge Judy appears to be fake, according to one individual (who apparently appeared on the show) as portrayed by what is seen HERE. He apparently even has a web site referencing this situation HERE.

There are more like it, but it looks like I opened up a can of worms….

Save UP TO 50% off This and That

Save UP TO 50% off?  Well, gee, ONE percent is still “up to” 50%.  Could anyone be any more vague than this? Besides, if you’re offering some sort of discount and promoting it in such a vague manner then I beg to ask if your prices are either ridiculously over the top to be able to offer half-off this-and-that while staying in business, or perhaps you’re just so severely vague about what you’re offering that it doesn’t matter what you advertise are there are so many ways to spin the deal and manipulate it in your favour.  So, which is it?  Fifty percent off this or fifty percent off that?

Fifty Percent Off Crap

We All Make Misteaks

… but lets leave the spelling to the professionals, shall we? Which reminds me, if you’re making a sign for the field that you’re in, what business do you have if you can’t spell it correctly?

Kelsey’s: Our PR Department is Better Than Yours

After submitting the previous message on the Keley’s website I got the following reply from Karyn Whitelaw:

Dear Mr XXXXXXXXXX [deleted],

Thank you for your e-mail.At Kelsey’s our approach to pricing for All You Can Eat Wings was based on discounting our regular order of 16 wings (usually $17.49) by $2.50 and offering them as AYCE. This is seen as significant value to many of our Guests. A price point of $17.49 for 16 wings is also common among our competitors.

At Kelsey’s we appreciate both your patronage and feedback.

Karyn Whitelaw

Guest Services Manager

Cara Operations

So there you have it. Now I know why Karyn has the position in the company that she does. She did a great job answering the question, but failed to really justify the answer. I guess it’s like Chevrolet selling a $30 000 Cobalt saying that they do it because Mercedes has their own entry level car at a similar price point.

Perhaps next time I will go to a bar and not a restaurant.

Kelsey’s… Leave Your Wallet At the Door

Many of us have been there. Somewhere where things just didn’t feel right. In my case, I was at a local Kelsey’s and after hearing a commercial for their wings and seeing it in print I had a few words to say to them.  What you are about to read is what I wrote on their “Talk To Us” page on their website.

“I love wings. I really do, so hear me out.

Do you honestly think that all you can eat wings for sixteen bucks is a good deal? WAKE UP!!!

Unless you have been living under a rock since opening up your first restaurant, wings are almost short of a dime a dozen. Yes, I know they are pricey as a snack or an appetizer, but I can get 30 cent wings at most establishments during their wing nite. That’s the equivalent of 53 (yes, count them, FIFTY THREE of your “all you can eat” wings). Unless I am the extreme human being capable of eating 53 wings then your price is a rip off. And even then, guess what… at 53 I am breaking even. Perhaps at fifty…. FOUR I will start to get my money’s worth versus other restaurants.

So, even at the regular price of seventy cents per wing–not on a wing nite (at my favourite establishment) I can get twenty-two wings. TWENTY-TWO!!! I usually order twelve, or sixteen if I’m hungry. Twenty if I want to take a wing or a few home. At Kelsey’s I would have to order at least TWENTY TWO!!!

How the hell do you guys justify getting off with such a price?!? I understand we all have to make a profit to earn a living, but this is pure theft. And then you expect for me to leave a tip at the end of the meal? Good friggin’ luck.

When you decided to rake me over the coals is when I decided that the tip was a part of the meal!

Call me, if you can justify your actions. My phone number is included with the rest of this form. Don’t hesitate. I’m standing by the phone. Believe me, I am!”

Make your judgment.

I Enjoy Coffee, but Why Do You Stand Me Up?

On a regular basis I come across stickers affixed to newspaper boxes. These stickers promote a dating site with a slogan along the way of “the most fun you can have for twenty dollars”. Or something like that. There’s also a website link and a telephone number. Clearly, this is a dating site or a site designed to appeal to singles looking to become couples.

Curiousity got the best of me, but instead of paying long distance by calling the number I decided to visit the site. I wanted to see what all this fuss was about. After all, I’ve been looking at these ad inserts for several months with no change, so something finally gave and I went.

I visited www.coffeedates.ca and was greeted by the picture below:

Apparently the site is experiencing some troubles. Fair enough. Almost all sites do at some point. So I revisited the site for five twelve days straight, and quite often several times a day, to no avail. The message I got each time was the message you see above.

However, it’s quite surprising to note that although the site is out of commission, either temporary or otherwise, it’s also quite interesting to know that for immediate assistance one can click on the arrow at the bottom of the page and instantly be transported to sites that offer you a match. Several, actually. There’s a catch though:

These sites are all the same and offer you a number of matches for a fixed price.

Here is where it gets better.

The bait leads me here first: Dating By Design, which follows the general price breakdown:

$95 = 30 days of service or 1 match
$175 = 6 months of service or 5 matches
$200 = 1 year or 10 matches
Icebreakers for Students or Seniors = $125

Hmm… sound suspicious? Well, it should.

First off, there are no details on what a match would entail. So without a criteria how do you know you’re even going to get one? Then there is a timeline problem. I can go for five months without getting a match and then in my sixth, and last month, I get one. Next thing I know my membership is up for renewal and I’m out another two hundred bucks. Yes, $200. You did see the asterisked fine print reading “plus applicable taxes”, didn’t you? And if I’m a student or a senior, do I get unlimited matches? Oops. They kind of forgot to specify this, didn’t they? No telling how many matches the studs and spuds are getting. What if I don’t get a match?

That was the site which was going to let you off with hope. This next one is where what little hope you had will be diminished to ash and blown away.

That site was Icebreakers, whose link lead to Dating By Design (I expected Icebreakers.com, but oh well). This next one, Temptations, is along the same lines, but it only gets more expensive. My logic would lead to the following equation:

Icebreakers = lonely/curious = $.
Temptations = horny = $$$$$$$$.

Follow my logic?

It’s also interesting to note that each site is listed at the top of the initial site, but to get to it one has to go through several other, badly designed, pages whose images look like they were pulled from other sites and that’s over and above the obscure clicks needed to finally get the visitor to spend money. For instance, if I click on a link at the top of the Dating By Design page it leads me to another page that is a ’storefront’ to yet another page which involves a cheesy graphic or two. It isn’t until that page that I get a chance to click and spend money, but click where? As it turns out: anywhere, and once I do I am lead to the page that… well, Ka-ching!, Ka-ching!, TAKES MY MONEY.

Speaking of money, Temptations charges the following rates:

One Match: $275
Two Match (sic): $375
Three Match (sic): $575

And then there is temptations for couples, students, and seniors in that exact order, and the pricing follows a familiar structure: $250, $225, and $225, respectively.

No idea what the students, seniors, and couples actually get for that money.

There are a few more sites linking from the initial site, all with various prices but along the same structure. Neither one is clear as to what you get for what you pay. They all look like they have been designed by the same person using the same free hosting web service [WEBS (formerly freeWebs)] to make a buck. Whether any one of these sites is legit is for someone with money to burn to find out.

If you have money to burn, by all means, try those sites (and give me a shout with your results). In the mean time, I’m going to get some free candy. This guy seems legit.

Oh, and at what point does the Twenty Dollars come in???

Your Apartment > Your Measuring Tape

Comical, but when you’re displaying measurements of an apartment and all of a sudden you find yourself describing the measurements as “large” it may be a sign to quit while you’re ahead. At this point you have either run out of measuring tape, or intelligence.

Why GTA IV is Possibly the Worst Release of 2008

When you can’t play, and you don’t pray, you pirate.

In my past I stole cars,  beat up people, blew things up, and if I had to, I even killed. But that was in the previous GTA games, in this one it is me who feels a tad suicidal.

I bought GTA IV and was so excited to bring it home. Unfortunately, I tried playing it, but I had crashes, bugs, glitches of various sorts and couldn’t really enjoy it. From my computer overheating and freezing when attempting to max out the visuals on the game, to actually buying a new ATI 4870 GPU with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory (the newest type of memory with a new design to help with heat dissipation), to no disk in drive messages I finally got fed up and started searching the net for answers. And answers I did find.

I managed to track down various patches and cracks that didn’t seem to work as they came. But while patching the game I lost track of what I had already done to it and inadvertently applied a patch over top of another patch that was already in place. To my surprise, both of them put together made the game work. Amazing.

Okay, so since I paid for the game and had limited success in making it playable should I keep it after downloading a patch from the net that made it work? In my opinion: no. The next day I returned the game to the place of purchase. But I didn’t stop there. I still wanted to play the game and after attempting to do it legit I downloaded a copy of the game from the net and applied the said patches with the same results. Now it’s time to bend the rules a bit. Rockstar, either lay off on some of that copy protection or hire some of these crackers. Your customers will thank you for it in the end.

You’ve probably seen these all over the net, but here are MY five reasons why GTA IV should never have been released (yet):

5: Buggy
Yes, I know that Rockstar wants to make it in time for the Giftmas Christmas season and sell as many copies as they can, but when it’s virtually unplayable how many of those copies may be coming back after the holidays? Even the new (version 1.0.1.0) patch doesn’t fix all problems while introducing new ones with mixed results (and yes, the patch above works with that version too–for now).

4: SecuROM
In order to keep people from pirating the game, so much copy protection had been thrown into the mix that perhaps that may be a part of the reason why the game is so unreliable. And who is it deterring from pirating the game? Not the pirates. Heck, not even the honest people as I used to be one of those and said ‘to hell with it, Rockstar’. If you’re going to treat me like a criminal, it’s only fair I start acting like one.

3: Ridiculous System Requirements
The System Requirements can be viewed by clicking on this link, as posted on Wikipedia. Playing with the minimum specs is like trying to play the Atari 2600 while shouting “Woo-Hoo, It Works!”

So where do I fit into these? I have Vista 64-bit SP1, a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU (Intel, of course), 4 GB of RAM, Gigabytes and Gigabytes of HD space, a compliant sound card and, as mentioned above, ATI 4870 GPU with 1 GB of GDDR5 video card. I haven’t measured the frame rate, but based on the slightly choppy scrolling I’m guessing it’s between 20 and 25 fps. I even tried defragging my drive to no noticeable improvement.

Rockstar, if you’re going to make and release a game that you want people to play and actually enjoy don’t make it for the hardware of the future. It’s not what people have now. All but the most hardcore gamers won’t have the latest hardware, and most users will probably fall somewhere between the minimum specs and recommended specs or slightly better. But definitely not on the bleeding edge of technology. Very few people can afford to spend $600 on a video card and get a $1000 CPU to go with it plus all the other components to make the first two work. Has anyone at Rockstar taken a break from developing porting the game to check the status of the economy lately? I know you want your game to look amazing, but if people can’t take advantage of it now, they probably won’t care in the future, when the game is old and something newer and shinier has hit the store shelves. You know the old saying: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

2: Overpromises and Nearly Delivers
This game is hyped. It’s been longly anticipated and short of people lining up for hours to get their hands on this game our expectations have been raised. Occasionally you buy a game and it sucks. Simply put, it’s a horrible game, but then you may have never heard much about it, or the storyline turned to be a prescription for insomnia. With the GTA series Rockstar created the bar on how games are made and then with each release raised it a little. But with this most recent release I think Rockstar dropped the bar and what’s going to make this game so bad is not the game itself, but people’s expectations of the game. Those expectations are going to be shattered to bits and pieces.

1: Windows Live, Rockstar Games Social Club, and whatever other crap I must install just to play this game!
I want to play GTA IV. I don’t care about going online. I expect to have an EXE (or a shortcut to that executable) which I double-click and the game plays just like previous GTA games. If you, Rockstar, want to launch a social community online that’s great, but don’t force people to participate just so that they can play the game. Okay, so I’m not forced to participate per se, but I have to install the latest version of Windows Live, and the RGSC (which attempts to run every time Windows does—what’s up with that, Rockstar?). Without those components you will either not be able to play the game, save the game, or both. Oh, and as far as the online aspect goes, because my game is now cracked don’t expect to see me going online to play. Not that I was ever planning on doing that, but at least you could have made money on my purchase of the game. Tsk, tsk. Now look what you’ve done.

Am I Proud of What I’ve Done?
Yes and no. Call me hypocritical. I don’t care. I’m proud that I’ve managed to make the game work using dishonest means (hey, it shows that I can track down stuff online), even though I may not agree with piracy. I also don’t agree with being treated like a criminal.

If the game didn’t have copy protection it’s still almost guaranteed that people would buy it and copy it. But include a few large and colourful maps, a nice manual, a glossy hint/cheat book in the box and that’s the tangible stuff that will have people spending their hard earned cash at almost any price. People may copy the game, but it’s the other stuff that they are willing to pay good money for, myself included. Hey, I’d love to have some of that exclusive stuff that can only be obtained by purchasing the game. Trying to sell bits and bytes? You’ll soon realize that it doesn’t really work. Bits and bytes can easily be copied and usually are. They also don’t convey a sense of value. Think of buying songs online and actually getting a CD with those same songs–doesn’t it feel better holding what you have just paid for? Gamers appreciate value. Pirates don’t care, and no matter how much protection you put on your release it will only frustrate the honest users, and as for pirates? Again, they don’t care.  They weren’t going to buy your game anyway.

Arrr, Matey!