So, it's finally happened... President Trump has been impeached. On one side, the Democrats (less a few politically vulnerable members) determining, and voting to match that determination, that the President did not just wrong things, but sufficiently wrong that he needs removed from office. On the other side, the Republicans, flying in the face of the evidence on display, determining the opposite, deciding that nothing the President did was all that bad, because those darn Democrats were out to get him from the start. Not, mind you, because he didn't do what he's accused of doing (that I've heard to date at any rate), but because he's their guy, and the other side are just meanies.
That much alone pretty much seals, in my mind, that the Republican party of today is entirely corrupt, and it doesn't speak well for the few Democrats to follow their lead either. I mean, the first article you can maybe argue one way or the other, but the obstruction of congress one is pretty clear cut... and this stage of the process is just deciding something wrong likely happened, then passing it on to the Senate to determine how wrong and what consequences need to take place because of it. Even if the Senate is going to do their best to quickly and quietly dispose of the burden laid at their feet (which is extremely likely, what with a Republican majority and Trump being "their guy"), this was a perfect opportunity for anyone on the Republican side of the house to say "yeah, this is messed up, maybe we should at least consider there might be a problem", but each and every one decided that party solidarity (and the party's support for their re-election) trumped their oath to defend the Constitution.
Assuming the impeachment trial plays out as expected, and the President is exonerated, the remaining year of Trump's first term is likely going to be a cavalcade of further misbehavior, all with a side of "What ya gonna do, impeach me?" thrown in. Then, it's the election... where the Democrats hope they can grab control of the reins of power, but generally not upset the cart too much, lest they lose their corporate backers and/or spawn a wave of militants from the other side. Republicans, on the other hand, are hoping to ride Trump through that election, do even more to enrich themselves and their backers at the expense of the nation, and maybe find out if Trump was really joking when he's suggested staying on for multiple terms. Between the two, it's not a matter of whether the ship stays afloat, just how quickly we get to watch it sink... and, of course, what rises in its place.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Sunday, December 15, 2019
One last look back at BoxThrone
A few months back, I posted about my experiences with ordering from BoxThrone, and, while I've now gotten and am well pleased with the product I ordered, albeit late, there is one bit from that post that warrants looking in on. I noted at the time that their then-current Wave 5 was being offered with a delivery promise of 15DEC19 at the latest. Well, that's today... what's the word from the BoxThrone website?
Well, it's certainly not good news for anybody who was banking on a delivery in time for Christmas. Their pre-order FAQ (today's copy saved courtesy of the Wayback Machine) says their delivery window is now today through the 31st... but it also says the current status of their orders is "On Ocean", which I'm taking to mean that they're all on a container ship somewhere right now, after which they'll have to be unloaded, sent to their distributors, sorted, and finally shipped out to their end users, which doesn't sound feasible in the roughly two weeks until the end of their current delivery window... so, sorry, Wave 5, looks like Christmas is canceled for you.
Of course, in the meantime, they've also accepted orders for a Wave 6 group... I seem to recall getting an email or the "order now for delivery by Valentine's Day", and the current delivery date there says March 7th at the latest, so that'd be another miss. Oh, and they're accepting pre-orders for a Wave 7 group with a May-at-the-latest delivery date (I'm not following up on this one, I've already seen the pattern here). Oh, and of course, there's some poor folks in Wave 4, where the status currently says "Mostly complete".
Yeah, long story short, if you're giving the BoxThrone people money right now and expecting on-time delivery, the evidence doesn't support that in the slightest. I'm even more firmly in the "get back to me when you have stock on hand to sell" camp now.
Well, it's certainly not good news for anybody who was banking on a delivery in time for Christmas. Their pre-order FAQ (today's copy saved courtesy of the Wayback Machine) says their delivery window is now today through the 31st... but it also says the current status of their orders is "On Ocean", which I'm taking to mean that they're all on a container ship somewhere right now, after which they'll have to be unloaded, sent to their distributors, sorted, and finally shipped out to their end users, which doesn't sound feasible in the roughly two weeks until the end of their current delivery window... so, sorry, Wave 5, looks like Christmas is canceled for you.
Of course, in the meantime, they've also accepted orders for a Wave 6 group... I seem to recall getting an email or the "order now for delivery by Valentine's Day", and the current delivery date there says March 7th at the latest, so that'd be another miss. Oh, and they're accepting pre-orders for a Wave 7 group with a May-at-the-latest delivery date (I'm not following up on this one, I've already seen the pattern here). Oh, and of course, there's some poor folks in Wave 4, where the status currently says "Mostly complete".
Yeah, long story short, if you're giving the BoxThrone people money right now and expecting on-time delivery, the evidence doesn't support that in the slightest. I'm even more firmly in the "get back to me when you have stock on hand to sell" camp now.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Stadia - more nits to pick
Just to be clear, I'm still generally liking what Stadia brings to the gaming table. However, now that I've had the setup for a couple of weeks, I've seen a few more things that might influence whether somebody wanted to give this thing a go.
First, I experienced my first issue with the actual streaming of controls and games. It was only for about 20-30 seconds, but resulted in a sudden loss of screen resolution and some severe control sluggishness. Think like an approaching-full-second response time increase and converting button presses to button holds, that sort of thing. I can only guess it was some momentary networking issue. Since it's only happened to me once in two weeks' play time, I can brush it off as a minor nuisance... but serious competitive players and people inclined to throwing controllers in fits of rage might feel quite differently about such a thing even being a possibility.
Second, since Destiny 2 whines about not having a microphone every time you start the game, I snagged a 3.5mm headset to plug into my Stadia controller (thanks, Woot!). Now, the Stadia controller/ChromeCast combo is obviously the preferred method of play (given that it's the only way, currently, to get a 4K stream), so I expected no problems. However, I experienced pops/crackle on the audio I got through the headset... which, if it were just voicechat audio, that might be one thing, but, at least in Destiny 2, all audio is routed to the headset if it's plugged in, with no option to split it out that I could see. Naturally, I verified the headset itself isn't a problem by plugging it into my Nintendo Switch Lite, where there were no such issues. So, either there's a hardware issue with the Stadia controller's audio jack, or there's an audio processing disparity between the ChromeCast and the Stadia controller, or there's something about audio over WiFi that the Stadia controller isn't properly adapting to. Hopefully, this is something the folks at Google can patch the controller firmware to fix... these days, there are many games where voice chat is nigh on mandatory, and nobody wants to experience their game as if the audio is being transmitted over AM radio.
Finally, there's a potential Stadia store issue. When I fired up Destiny 2 this morning, there was a notification about needing to buy a "Digital Deluxe Edition" before the 10th, if you wanted the coming seasons' contents at 25% off regular price. Of course, if you go to the Stadia app right now, and look through the "All Games" list, there is no such edition listed. So... is this notification intended for all the other Destiny 2 platforms? Or, is Google footing the bill for the next season for Stadia users? Or, is there a new version that should have been on the storefront by now that isn't? I guess we'll see, come the 10th... but any answer that involves "you should have been able to get the thing at a discount, but now you can get it at full price" is going to rankle a lot of already-wary Stadia users.
Well, it'll be interesting to see how things evolve here over the next couple of months. The Destiny 2 pricing question is probably my biggest thing at the moment, since that ties to the value of the eventual $10/month Stadia Pro payout, but I think these are all things that will need to be addressed if they want to be at all competitive once they open their service to the general public for "free".
First, I experienced my first issue with the actual streaming of controls and games. It was only for about 20-30 seconds, but resulted in a sudden loss of screen resolution and some severe control sluggishness. Think like an approaching-full-second response time increase and converting button presses to button holds, that sort of thing. I can only guess it was some momentary networking issue. Since it's only happened to me once in two weeks' play time, I can brush it off as a minor nuisance... but serious competitive players and people inclined to throwing controllers in fits of rage might feel quite differently about such a thing even being a possibility.
Second, since Destiny 2 whines about not having a microphone every time you start the game, I snagged a 3.5mm headset to plug into my Stadia controller (thanks, Woot!). Now, the Stadia controller/ChromeCast combo is obviously the preferred method of play (given that it's the only way, currently, to get a 4K stream), so I expected no problems. However, I experienced pops/crackle on the audio I got through the headset... which, if it were just voicechat audio, that might be one thing, but, at least in Destiny 2, all audio is routed to the headset if it's plugged in, with no option to split it out that I could see. Naturally, I verified the headset itself isn't a problem by plugging it into my Nintendo Switch Lite, where there were no such issues. So, either there's a hardware issue with the Stadia controller's audio jack, or there's an audio processing disparity between the ChromeCast and the Stadia controller, or there's something about audio over WiFi that the Stadia controller isn't properly adapting to. Hopefully, this is something the folks at Google can patch the controller firmware to fix... these days, there are many games where voice chat is nigh on mandatory, and nobody wants to experience their game as if the audio is being transmitted over AM radio.
Finally, there's a potential Stadia store issue. When I fired up Destiny 2 this morning, there was a notification about needing to buy a "Digital Deluxe Edition" before the 10th, if you wanted the coming seasons' contents at 25% off regular price. Of course, if you go to the Stadia app right now, and look through the "All Games" list, there is no such edition listed. So... is this notification intended for all the other Destiny 2 platforms? Or, is Google footing the bill for the next season for Stadia users? Or, is there a new version that should have been on the storefront by now that isn't? I guess we'll see, come the 10th... but any answer that involves "you should have been able to get the thing at a discount, but now you can get it at full price" is going to rankle a lot of already-wary Stadia users.
Well, it'll be interesting to see how things evolve here over the next couple of months. The Destiny 2 pricing question is probably my biggest thing at the moment, since that ties to the value of the eventual $10/month Stadia Pro payout, but I think these are all things that will need to be addressed if they want to be at all competitive once they open their service to the general public for "free".
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