Slazyk's Musings

Blizzcon 2007, originally uploaded by tigerpaw511.

I was given the opportunity to borrow a pass for a few hours in order to attend this years Blizzcon. For those of you that do not know what this is, it is Blizzard Entertainment’s annual conference showcasing the games they publish. They only sell a limited amount of tickets. With over 9 million people playing World of Warcraft alone, this is a much sought after event.

The hall was filled with far too many pieces of artwork to take a photo of them all. I took a few and those can be seen on Flickr. I was most impressed with the number of PCs they had setup in order to showcase the newest upcoming expansion – Wrath of the Lich King. There was literally hundreds of systems setup just for this purpose. There was also a couple hundred systems setup and dedicated to the second installment of the game Starcraft.  Even though I had a limited amount of time to spend on the floor, I was able to play the new expansion, check out the vendor booths and watch a couple of pro gamers go head to head. Impressive.

I came across this great site for free e-Books the other day. Who is the Burgomeister? Check out the site and find out for yourself. Essentially, this person has placed some great late-20th century literature online for free download. These free e-Books are not pirated copies but rather personal backups of books which the Burgomeister has purchased and is now lending them freely to friends. There are some terms that you need to follow but nothing you can’t handle…like only downloading one free e-Book at a time.   I have also added a link to this site in Cool Stuff for quick reference in the future as this post gets burried.  Hope you enjoy these as much as I have started to.

I hate paying huge tolls for those 411 calls made because I was away from a computer or just too lazy to pull out the phone book. Looks like our friends at Google have come up with a way to get us all that information FOR FREE!!!!!!

Call it the Apple Phone or iPhone, either way this device has been anticipated for a while now.  Check out the Diggnation guys as they shed some more light about this rumored device.  He was right about other Apple products in the past so I would say he is speaking with some authority on this one.  Only time will tell.

Came across this hacking challenge.  Cool way to get your hands on a free PS3.

It’s been just over a month now since I started using my third Samsung SyncMaster 215TW. I am happy to report that this particular unit has performed flawlessly and I have not seen the vertical blue line that was displayed in the other units I had.  At this point I would say that the other units (which were close in serial number) were simply a byproduct of poor components installed during assembly.

I have always thought of Samsung as a leader in LCD technology.  This experience has not changed my mind.

I purchased a Samsung SyncMaster 215TW so that I could get more viewable area from the MacBook Pro while I am working from home. The first monitor I brought home started to display a blue-green line from top-to-bottom about inches from the right of the screeen. I took it back to Best Buy for a replacement. Things had been going great until last night. While working on some photo editing the line “just appeared” once again. Fortunately I had 2 days left on my warranty. I took this second monitor back to Best Buy and once again had it replaced. Why am I sticking with this model? Check out the stats.

So here I am on my third. I’ll let you know if this third one really is “a charm”.