i really wanted to avoid vista. but I also didn’t want to compromise on the hardware. and all of that meant I was stuck with vista. dell does offer xp still, but only on select machines, and I didn’t want those models. so anyway, i’m stuck with vista until I can muster the courage to try installing xp.

i gotta say how much of a step sideways its been so far. ubuntu really is looking soooo much more like an option. I just gotta see if I can realistically run a few apps under wine. one of the stupidest things thats happened so far is that I performed a copy of my music share directory off the network. it came up with an informative dialog box telling me how much it was copying, and how long it thought it’d be (not sure how it does math, but it said it was 30gig, copying at 25mb/sec and it was going to take 6 hours… not sure how that works). anyway, that was a nice step forward from xp.

but then the machine it was copying from died (actually accidentally turned off). so what would you expect to happen? an error dialog probably? nope. not even that. its still sitting there telling me it has 1 hour to go. furthermore, the machine has been back on the network for a few hours now (i’m streaming music off it right now through my sonos system) and vista still tells me that the machine is unavailable when I try to browse to it. I can ping it just fine. but I can’t browse to it.  oh any the copy process hung.  as in task manager doesn’t even kill it type hung.

now, I’m confused. isn’t copying pretty trivial these days? ubuntu does it really well. if the copy does, it throws up a useful dialog asking me whether I want to abort, or retry. so, i’m confused. when is the future of windows coming? coz vista can’t be it.

it is humbling working at a place like valve.  this was a recent headline on one of the online industry rags.  orange box beats halo3.  sure, not everyone agrees.  but there are heaps of articles around now that compare orange very favorably to halo3.

now, don’t get me wrong, halo3 looks like a reasonably nice game.  its got some pretty graphics – in many parts its nicer than any of our games.  but its pretty un-inspired.  there’s nothing groundbreaking in there.  there is no feeling, there is no compelling writing, and the multiplayer element is totally run of the mill.

it feels great to be apart of a company that can go up against the behemoth that is microsoft, and the marketing frenzy that is halo3 and come out on top.  being a part of the process valve has developed for creating content is truly awe-inspiring, and humbling.  the is the first company i’ve ever worked at where I’ve truly believed in the quality of the product we create.

the next installment of the tf “meet the team” videos. if you haven’t played tf2 yet, go and get it now. its one of the most fun, addictive multiplayer games in the known universe. plus its easy to jump into a game, play for half an hour and go do something else. well, theoretically anyway. as long as you have the willpower to tear yourself away.

the orange box was officially released as of about 10 minutes ago.  go and buy it now.  unless you’re insane.  its the best game package EVER!