Dream of Waking

You have to stop using Digsby now.

Lifehacker: Digsby Joins the Dark Side, Uses Your PC to Make Money

CNET: Why it’s time to ditch Digsby

I learned about Digsby from Lifehacker and both sites were pretty big proponents of it’s use when it was new and amazing. It’s still an awesome IM client but I’ve seen the spam IMs and recently had to reinstall it and wade through page after page of “free” program offers. None of this stuff existed a couple years ago when the client was new. I can’t recommend Digsby anymore though. What pushed me over the edge was the idle CPU use. Yes, of course, this stuff is hidden within the labyrinthine EULA. The point is that when a program is going to use your idle CPU cycles for a purpose other than what I’m using it for (like an IM client using the idle cycles to index searches) then it needs a big fucking flashing sign that says “I’M DOING THIS THING YOU POTENTIALLY WILL NOT APPROVE OF” before it does such. Slipping it in there make it malware. It’s just too much.

But I’m not going to just say “stop using this!” without giving you something else instead! Pidgin is free, without malware or crapware, and does nearly everything Digsby does with a couple of plugins. I’m also told that Trillian Astra is worth checking out.

But please, stop using Digsby.

Pidgin

Trillian Astra

I’m in a gaming rut. There’s nothing in particular that I really want to play that I already own. This weekend I spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at my game collection, trying to work up the nerve to install and play one. I want to play Doom 3 but it doesn’t play well with 64bit Vista. I kind of want to play Deus Ex but then I remember that I hate Deus Ex. But hey, what’s like Deus Ex except fun? Deus Ex: Invisible War. And I just so happen to own it on Steam.

I install it. As it downloads I find that wizz-bang new High Definition textures pack. The game finishes downloading, I install the texture pack, and run the game. Crash to desktop. No error given. Okay, maybe the texture pack isn’t playing nice. Uninstall the texture pack. Run it. Crash to desktop. No error. Fuck. Maybe the texture pack didn’t uninstall cleanly. Delete the game, re-download the game, run it. Crash to desktop. No error. The support forums have mention of the same problem but the answers are never the same for each post. None of the solutions work. I’m just fucked.

Today I’m on 24 hour duty. I’m using my laptop, which runs Windows XP. Maybe I can play Deus Ex: Invisible War! Slowly download it. Run it. Holy shit, it’s working. Get in the game, start to enjoy myself for about 20 minutes, the power goes out. Turn it back on, it’s giving an overheat error. This is an old laptop. It’s never overheated before but this is not unheard of. I try a couple more times to make sure it wasn’t something else with the same results. When I go home for dinner, I made sure to get my small tools to bring back with me. I open up the laptop, dust out some old Iraqi crap, pull out two dust bunnies conveniently located around the fans, and put it back together. When I start it up, I can hear one fan going. The other isn’t. Okay, that’s an improvement. Run the game. Start to enjoy myself. Power cuts out. I’m fucked again.

I can sit here and watch Battlestar Galactica for three hours straight but I can’t play a game for longer than 20 minutes. I don’t even want to bother with playing a less graphically intensive game at this point. In conclusion, the laws of heat transfer can go to hell.

I just cancelled my preorder for a Matte Black Nintendo DSi with one-day shipping. Katie complained instantly when she knew I pre-ordered it so I started to think about why I wanted one. I want one because it’s got bigger screens, better speakers, a downloadable game service, and my DS lite got pretty trashed on the last deployment. But I usually play with headphones on and the downloadable games are going to be lame like mahjong and puzzle games and I can live without bigger screens and the scratches. So I guess I have better things to spend the cash on.

I’ve had two entries eaten, one by wordpress/shitty internet and one by the bad behavior plugin. I hate life. Last two entries summarized; I’m eating Iraqi food and I can’t take pictures fuck!