I just got off the phone with the USAirways.com technical support line.  For the past two weeks, we’ve been having problems pulling up our travel confirmation via the website (the website only provided an error code and an 800 number to call for assistance) and for the third time, technical support was unable to give us an explanation as to why this is happening.  Fortunately, they are able to get the information on their computer and were able to confirm the flight.  Every time, they will say that they will send an e-mail outlining the confirmation, but we never get any e-mail.

The conversation with this last technical support person is a real hoot.  Same conversation took place—blah-blah-blah–he says they will send an e-mail.  I told him that the same thing happened with previous calls to tech support, but we never get any e-mail, then the conversation went on like this:

Tech Support: Sir, do you have a pop-up blocker?

Me: Yes, I do.  Eh…what’s that got to do with anything?

TS: Well, sir, that’s the reason you are not getting any of our e-mails.  Your pop-up blocker is “blocking our e-mail.”

Me: WHAT?  GOOD GOD NO!  That’s for blocking pop-ups for browsing the intarwebs!  (I couldn’t help myself laughing at this point).  DUDE, you should not handing out that FALSE information!  Pop-up blockers has NOTHING to do with “e-mail blocking.” 

TS: Sir, I’m a technical support person.  I know what I’m talking about…

Me: You know what?  Never mind…I got the information I needed.  (Laughing loudly as I hang up the phone)

Holy macaroons, USAirways?  What’s your criteria for hiring these people?

Popularity: 14% [?]

John Brownlee and Eliza Gauger’s offbeat blog, Table of Malcontents, is–as Eliza stated on her blog–”being gassed by Wired.”  Weirdos Readers like myself have until the end of the month to savor John and Eliza’s ramblings on Wired.  I guess the writing was on the wall when I check my bloglines subscriptions…as of today, there are only 78 subscribers to this blog since its inception. 

Hopefully, Wired management pulls its head out of its {insert proper word here} and reconsider cancelling this blog.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I was looking forward to this game. Too bad it’s not as good as I imagined it to be.

First of all: the load times. Whaddahell?! It’s not loading from the DVD, it’s from the hard disk. And the load times is still retarded long.

The frame rate is inconsistent. This is basically a side scroller; it should always be 60fps. For pete’s sake, Virtua Tennis is fluid at 1080p. The animation is a little choppy, too…hard to ignore that it throws me off.

The controls is just not good, IMO. i think mapping the movement to the analog stick was a bad idea. There’s a DELAY in pressing the buttons and the response on the screen. It’s a constant struggle for me…especially in swordfights.

And, lastly, it’s one BORING game. It’s probably because the gameplay itself didn’t age well.

That’s a waste of $10.

Updated: I played the whole game to the end. I guess it’s one of those games you need to finish no matter how bad it is. I still think it could have been a much better game, mainly because of the horrible controls. There’s a delay, and it the button presses are BUFFERED; it gets annoying not only in combat, but also when trenching through those blades…these guys mentioned the awful controls…but said it’s not a deal-breaker for them…PSSHssssffft…I wonder how much Ubisoft paid them to give an 8.5 for a flawed game?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Thom Hogan just wrote a lengthy, thought-provoking rant on how a compact camera should be designed…which will cater both the casual user and the pretentious Galen Rowell wannabe.

I commend Thom for having the balls of steel of writing the article and even offered a huge sum of money for the first company to be able to produce this elusive camera (No, the Sigma DP-1 does not count).

I agree for the most part (do not want the built-in Arca-Swiss plate…yikes!  that would make the camera thicker than the M8!), but I think the write-up could have been much shorter.  And it goes something like this:

1. Take the current Ricoh GR-D…with its near-flawless user interface.
2. Slap a Bayer-pattern-designed 10MP APS-C sensor
3. Improve the horrid RAW processing…make it at least 3fps in RAW mode.
4. Keep everything else.  (Yeah, even the idiot mode)

Seriously, Ricoh is so damn close it’s not even funny.  Come on, Ricoh, I’m hoping you get this done for GR-D Mark II.

And I’m willing to pay…uh $699 for it.  No more than that.  Come on, Even the D40x sells for that price with the kit lens.

Popularity: 16% [?]

I bought another PSP mainly because of the PSP/PS3 Remote Play integration.  The bonus was I am able to play the PSP installment of the greatest game series of all time (No, Metal Gear Acid does NOT count).

Well, I’m not really sure what went into Hideo Kojima’s head for changing the classic MGS camera control scheme, one of the reasons why I love ths MGS series: Before MGS: Subsistence, The camera scheme has always been on top, not behind the character, which makes control (at least for me) great compared to the behind-the-character camera scheme similar to Splinter Cell.  In Subsistence, you can turn this off…in Portable Ops, you cannot.  It’s gawdly-annoying.  It’s so annoying I cannot bring myself to finish it.

My only hope is this camera scheme does not propagate to Metal Gear Solid 4, because that will be a deal-killer for me. 

Popularity: 15% [?]

You’re looking at the results from two of the best RAW converters for Nikon NEFs.  At the left is from Nikon’s own Capture NX, and at the right is RawMagick Teams’ Raw Magick Lite. 

These aren’t really straight conversions, of course.  There is little post-processing (a little curves and levels processing to bring up the midtones and colorspace converted to sRGB for consistent color across browsers).

(Click on the image for the larger version) 

Few observations:

• Nikon’s conversion needs less tweaking
• Nikon’s conversion favors contrast in lieu of a less smooth gradation from shadows to highlights.
• RML recovers details (especially in the highlights) better.  Not a lot, but noticeable.
• Nikon’s colors tend to be magenta-biased.

Until I tried RML, I thought NX does a brilliant job of NEF conversion, and I thought nothing comes close (though I thought NX does a HORRIBLE job of noise reduction). 

So what do I use?  Both.  For critical work, I use RML…but for a quick conversion, I use NX.

Popularity: 14% [?]