Waiting in a Virtual Queue

Today tickets went on sale for Disneyland's Star Wars Nite in April and May. Last year I had the pleasure of attending with my wife and daughter. We had a great time and planned on doing the event again this year. We hope to correct the mistake we made last year and not try to spend the morning and afternoon in the park. The event starts at 6pm and runs until 1am. They limit ticket sales and that allows you to walk onto almost any ride. Furthermore they have special events, unique food offerings, and themed swag.

I knew that tickets would go on sale this morning at 10am MST and so I started watching the clock as I did my morning exercise at Snowbird. I also knew they would start adding people to a virtual queue at 9:45. I happened to be on the Little Cloud chairlift at the time and so I pulled my phone out and joined the queue. I got to the top of the lift and saw that I had 20 minutes before I could make my purchase. I skied down to the mid-mountain lodge and checked my time. I had 15 minutes to wait. I skied to the bottom, walked to my car, took off my ski boots, and jumped into the car as my turn to buy tickets arrived. I quickly made the purchase and then put my phone away so I could drive home.

Last night I worried that I needed to be on the Disneyland website right at 9:45. Annual pass holders could purchase the special-event tickets a few days before the general public and some of the nights sold out. My worries turned out to be unfounded as tickets for all 4 nights are still available at 4:30pm today. However I thought it neat that I could log into the website on my phone while riding a chairlift and be placed in a virtual queue. That allowed me to stow my phone in a pocket and ski down the mountain without having to have my attention riveted to my phone. I wasn't sure turning off my screen would still allow my place to be held. It did and worked very well.

I always prefer to visit websites using my computer instead of my phone. This allows me to use a large display that is easy to read. I also don't worry about someone hacking my connection and getting my credit-card information. Fortunately my smartphone turned out to be the right tool for the job today. Any time I need to be in a virtual queue, I will use my phone in the future. 

 

Video Game Review: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Before the pandemic started, I had my buddy that used to work at Electronic Arts (EA) purchase me a copy of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for the PlayStation 4. I then payed him back the $20 for the game and brought it home. My youngest son found the unopened copy of the game and asked if he could borrow it. I was finishing up another game at the time and so I loaned it to him. Naturally he redeemed the code inside for the extra goodies and ended up paying me for the game while he kept it for about a year. He then loaned it to my older son who played it for quite awhile.

With not being able to go to the office to get another copy for myself, I was feeling a bit left out. Then my oldest son let me know the game was on sale at the PlayStation store for about the same price as my friend could get it for me. Naturally I jumped on the store and picked up an electronic copy to download. I just finished playing it and am glad I finally got the chance to run through the game.

Jedi Fallen Order is an open-world adventure game which is a genre I really like to play. It is not nearly as complex as Horizon Zero Dawn or any of the recent Far Cry games. While there are some puzzles to solve and plenty of combat, it doesn't have all of the complex gathering and crafting. You have some echos and collectibles to find but they are minor parts of the story, unlike in other games.

If you are a fan of the Star Wars movies, you will love this game. It takes place just before the original Star Wars movie and has a pretty interesting story line that adds insight into saga. You also get to explore some of the planets in the Star Wars universe. It took me about 70 hours to complete the game and I played it on my PlayStation 5 even though it was created for the PS4.

The game has an ESRB rating of T for Teen due to some mild language and violence. After all, you do run around with a light sabre slicing droids, storm troopers, and creatures in half. I would have no problem letting my grand kids watch while I play this game. The fact that you don't have a complex crafting system also makes it easier for younger audiences should they wish to play.

I found the game to be very enjoyable and recommend it to anyone that is a fan of the Star Wars movies. Towards the end, it did get to be a bit redundant but less so than many other games I have played. There is still a lot I can do should I wish to platinum the game (get every single trophy or achievement) but I also have a lot of other games that I am interested in playing. I paid about $20 for the game and feel you get a lot of entertainment for that price.

Content is King

The new video streaming service "Disney+" recently launched. This afternoon I looked at Disney's stock price and it rose $10/share. Coincidentally I looked at Netflix stock and it dropped $10/share over the same period. You have to wonder if there is a correlation.

I currently don't have any streaming video subscriptions nor do I plan to sign up for any but I have to admit that if I did, I would start with Disney+. Why? They have the most content I am interested in watching. If you look at my movie collection at home, I have a ton of Disney movies. Not just the animated ones but also most of the Marvel and Star Wars collections.

So what is Netflix going to do? Well I have to recognize that Netflix is fairly nimble and has done a great job at adjusting their business strategy based on market changes. I think they will be able to come up with content through their own efforts or through acquisition. There should be a lot of companies merging content in the near future because it doesn't make sense to subscribe to CBS's streaming service and then pay more money for NBC's or a number of other smaller providers.

Today at the office we had a discussion about who is signing up for Disney+ and if they are ditching another streaming video service. Everyone that is signing up for the new service is cancelling something. My own son sent me a message saying that he was getting rid of Netflix for Disney+.

I will be interested to see how Disney+ changes the video streaming market and hope that is spurs collaboration among the smaller players. That is probably the only way some of them will survive.

Medical Robots

I got home from skiing today and found my son watching "The Empire Strikes Back." I love the Star Wars movies and so I joined in for some of the viewing. If you look at all of the movies, they are really the stories of the 2 robots: R2D2 and C3PO. Science fiction always has a use for robots but the only ones we have today are for building things, exploring other planets, or vacuuming our homes.

Yesterday I had to go to the doctor to renew a prescription. I used to never visit the doctor. Now I go quite frequently and know him well. He knows that I live in Utah and work in the Bay Area. He knows I am headed to Japan tomorrow. I know that last month he took his 3 daughters to Europe. My visit with the doctor lasted a good 20 minutes but most of the time we just talked about families and trips. I didn't mind the visit but afterwards I realized that I could have saved myself a lot of time if I could have replaced my doctor with a medical robot.

Don't get me wrong, Doctors play an important part in helping to diagnose illness and help us remain healthy. I just know that healthcare costs continue to rise and nothing our government is doing will keep that from happening. I suggest we give scientists at NASA a larger budget and have them build medial robots like the one that fixed up Luke Skywalker after his unfortunate interaction with the abominable snowman on the ice planet Hoth. When I look at all of my doctor visits over the past 3 years, only one of them really needed a physical doctor. The rest could have been to visit a robot. Most of the time when I go in, the doctor checks me over and then sends me to the medical lab next door to give a few vials of blood. Then I get a call from him the next week and he adjusts the quantity of a medication. For my visit yesterday, I just needed a prescription refill and my recent blood work from December eliminated the need to test my blood. A robot could have taken care of that for me.

Fixing a Slow Internet Connection

It is Christmas break and so my oldest son and I spent the afternoon setting up our PlayStation 4 consoles so we can kill bad guys together. Last night we saw the latest Star Wars movie and so naturally we plan to spend a fair bit of time playing Star Wars Battlefront.

This afternoon we got done skiing and decided that instead of playing split-screen coop we would each try playing on our own consoles. We set up a small monitor next to the big screen in the TV room and worked through the difficulties of having 2 consoles so close together. When we tried to initiate Share Play, we were told that my home Internet connection was too slow. So we pulled out some tools to see if we could fix the problem. The first was to bring in a laptop and run a speed test over the WiFi network. The tool of choice can be found at SpeedTest.net. I then ran another test on a computer hardwired into the home Internet connection. The wired connection tested at over 50 Megabits per second. The WiFi tested at only 2. That is a huge difference.

The next course of action was to try and figure out how we could speed things up over WiFi. My son introduced me to a tool on his Android phone called WiFi Analyzer from farproc. This showed us that all of my neighbors have their 2.5 Gigahertz WiFi routers all set up around channel 11. Guess where my WiFi connection was set? It was on "Auto" but was really using channel 11. My router only does 2.5 Gigahertz and so I manually set the channel to 3, where nobody seemed to be. I then reran the speed test and got much better numbers. Unfortunately they were not good enough for Share Play.

When trying to use Share Play you are told that it is best to use a wired Ethernet connection. Fortunately I have a large spool of CAT-5 cable and the tools to make Ethernet cables. We measured everything out and made 2 cables capable of reaching from the hub in my office to the PlayStation 4 consoles in the TV room. We tested the connection and the network ran sufficiently fast to use Share Play.

We got ready to play and then discovered that with Share Play, my son could watch me play or I could watch him. However we each couldn't play Star Wars Battlefront with only a single copy of the game. That was a bummer. Fortunately we each have a copy of the game and so we popped in the 2nd disk and have enjoyed several survival games together.

It is good that I now have enough network speed to use Share Play but the real problem turned out to be that we each needed our own copies of the game. I am glad we went through this exercise though as I now know a lot more about WiFi networking and have the tools to fix problems when they arise. Hopefully someone else finds this useful.

So Many Games, So Little Time

I am working from my home in Utah this week as it is the Thanksgiving week and I figured I would abstain from adding to the chaos in the airports this time of the year. With all of my recent travel it feels kind of strange to be home for such an extended period of time. Normally I don't play video games at home but as I find myself with a lot more time here I have turned on my consoles every now and then. It is a great way to stay awake when I am tired.

I only have a PS3 on my boat in California while I have both a PS3 and a PS4 at home. That has opened up a number of games for me this week. Here are some of the games I will be playing this week:

1. Star Wars Battlefront - I preordered a copy and it arrived while I was in Japan last week. Since I have been home I have gone through several training missions. If you are a fan of the Star Wars movies, then you will love this game.

2. The Order: 1886 - I was given a copy of this game when it came out yet have never found the time to play it. I understand that it should only take 4 to 6 hours to complete and look forward to finally being able to dedicate that much time to it.

3. The Uncharted Collection - I have all three Uncharted games for the PlayStation 3 but only ever played the first game. My sons have played both the 2nd and 3rd games and said they are awesome. I enjoyed Tomb Raider a lot and look forward to a very similar game. I want to get all 3 Uncharted games completed before Uncharted 4 comes out next year so I am ready for it.

Now for the standard disclaimer: I have connections in the video game industry that allow me to get really cheap copies of all these games. In fact I may even work for one of the companies that creates the games mentioned in this post.

Office Move

Today was my last day in the office space I have occupied over the last 3 years. On Monday, I will go to my new office and unpack everything I have spent the last week packing in preparation for the company move. It has been a bit hectic over the past couple of days and I doubt the next week will be much better.

One difficult thing about the move is that I have a responsibility to monitor our production databases and systems. We also have a network operations center (NOC) that also monitors things 24x7 and so there is a nice backup when I am not around. I got into the office this morning and discovered a quick problem that needed fixing and was able to get it taken care of before the NOC was alerted. I finished packing the rest of my office but kept my computers running until the last minute. Everyone around me had their computers turned off and disassembled. It reminded me of those poor souls on the Ice Planet Hoth in the movie "The Empire Strikes Back" who had to stick around and carry out their duties while everyone else got an early jump on leaving the doomed planet.

Fortunately my company's move does not take us to the far reaches of the galaxy nor did I have to blast my way out of the old office in the Millennium Falcon. We will be moving less than a mile away from our current office. While my office will be smaller, our new campus had much better facilities. We are also a lot closer to a number of restaurants in addition to an in-house cafeteria that will be a welcome change for lunch. I have yet to see our new office space and so Monday is going to be a big surprise. I hope I am not disappointed.