Players I pardon in Tribunal #2

I am going to have a list of player's I've pardoned in League of Legends Tribunal.  Know this.  If you get banned and I pardoned you, you are truly unfortunate.  I tend to punish lots of stuff.  "easy" "noobs" etc.  If you said that, you'd better have handled the rest of the team for the rest of the game(s) with lots of respect otherwise you're punished.  Anyway, so Naming and Shaming is illegal, that is why I am listing here summoner names from EU West, that come up in tribunal, that I pardon, not punish.  I will not publish a name that I punished as this is against the tribunal rules.


MrPatriarche It was tight, but your swearing etc. was not directed at anyone.  I could see you got angry, but you kept it in place well. Pardon from me.


7wtf8wtf9 Another tight one, but it seems you did call for help.  Try to swear less, "fat kids that dont have friends irl have to flame others in online games" Thankfully you stated it "generically".  You are so close to punish, it's not even funny, but I'll call pardon.


TGoG Hyperion Benefit of the doubt... You only had 2 games, and were borderline in both.  Try to get your frustration levels down when you are losing your lane.


justperfect You seem to have a knack for pissing your teammates off.  You're not outright rude, but people report you when they want someone to blame. Try to encourage the team more, and respect each others' wishes.  


I accidentally pressed pardon on another guy.  I meant to punish him :-(. 

Players I pardon in Tribunal

I am going to have a list of player's I've pardoned in League of Legends Tribunal.  Know this.  If you get banned and I pardoned you, you are truly unfortunate.  I tend to punish lots of stuff.  "easy" "noobs" etc.  If you said that, you'd better have handled the rest of the team for the rest of the game(s) with lots of respect otherwise you're punished.  Anyway, so Naming and Shaming is illegal, that is why I am listing here summoner names from EU West, that come up in tribunal, that I pardon, not punish.  I will not publish a name that I punished as this is against the tribunal rules.


Majkutson close call, but you survived.  2nd Jungler pick is not great, but not bannable IMO. I would suggest you stay away from ranked/draft until you have full set of runes and can play Tank, AP carry, AD carry, Support and Jungler.

Lol... I had like 4 pardons today... but only started with this dude.  Anyway, hoping for this to become a regular thing... Though if I get the game running from here... probably less so. :D

Trying to get LOL to run from behind firewall, and copy #3

Ok, so I had the failures... I asked some questions, and I have some leads.

1st Lead: I posted on the EU forums and found out that one needs to run the installer... Now this obviously does *something*.  And I found out that it installs Pando Network onto the PC. I think this is used for bugreports etc. So I believe that the server may check for this as anti-cheating and perhaps as an additional way of knowing all is fine on the clientside PC.
2nd Lead: When I tried deleting it to install elsewhere, I found that I couldn't.  The owner of the files was BUILTIN: ADMINISTRATOR.  Right, so I believe it's because it came from a flashdrive. But I changed the owner of the folder to myself.  (Right click in the root, click security, Advanced, owner, change owner to (Replace owner of subcontainers and objects)..

So lets see if it worked!

Nope....

Comments from forum suggests that I need to have completed the original install, and only during patching copy the whole folder over... I'll try that tomorrow, asking my friend to get the full install file for me.

Trying to get LOL to run from behind firewall, and copy #2

Sigh, OK.  So I got dx9... .dll from a website, and placed it in \windows\system32  (I had it in the ...\league of legends\ folder first, but no dice).

So now, running from the phone connections (all other LAN connections disabled) I can get it to patch (it didn't download much, less than 1mb) perhaps doing some registry (there are some things now things in registry, but not a lot worth of "Riot Games" worth), but not yet connect to server.  I am unsure why I am not yet able to connect to the server, but I am going to post some forum questions or perhaps to help and support.

I also tried to "repair" the installation, dunno if that did anything productive, but it's still not connecting to the server.

Trying to get LOL to run from behind firewall, and copy

Right, so this is my first post in a series in the hope to get LOL (League of Legends) to run from a non-administrator, behind a firewall PC.

Ok, so bandwidth is a concern, as I don't want to raise too many concerns.  I copied LOL from my home PC folder and extracted some registry keys I thought might be appropriate, though RIOT seems not to be too dependent on the registry (good boys! I prefer it this way).  This is to reduce the bandwidth of actually downloading and patching the game.

Step one, run it... Oops... Firewall blocks it.  It complains of no HTTP access.  Ok, so I have access to a 3rd party external PC that I can tunnel through, but experience tells me I will not have sufficient speed through there to have a decent speed.  So I'll go via my own phone or 3g modem.

To do this I had to try to get my phone to tether (android Samsung Galaxy S+ --- it is remarkably hard to tether USB... strange anyway)...  For this I had to download the USB drivers, which I got here.

I disconnected the LAN connection (This ensures that I use the correct connection) Obviously this breaks all LAN stuff like mapped network drives etc. Next I check that the new connection is working... For this I just ping www.google.com from a command shell.  (Success, and pretty low pings too! 55ms average).

Then I run it...  (I run the lol.launcher.exe.)

It complains could not start as d3dx9_39.dll was not found... :-(((  Ok, Dx9 is 95mb... Will have to find out from someone if we already have that somewhere, as I don't want to download 95mb from here (or my phone)...

Vodacom again...

Interesting that my previous post was about vodacom too.  I should write one about the data services in my area too, as I've been on their back about that for about 8 months.  But that is another issue.

Lomvula at the data call center from Vodacom insisted that one cannot buy data bundles on the web for your "secondary" account (mofaya) on the web, you *have* to call the call-center.  As I have in the past put an additional bundle on my Mofaya, I know this to be untrue. Yet she insisted, and was not particularly polite about the whole thing. And when asked for her name, she was very reluctant to give it (again, as I'm sure she said at the start).

If you log on with your secondary account you'll get this message:

Master account holder privileges

Contract and Top-up customers of Vodacom Service Provider have access to Master Account Holder features which allow access to services to be controlled. Access to this service requires that you are either a master account holder or that you have been granted access to these services by your Master Account Holder. According to our records you are not a Master Account Holder or have not been granted access . Please try one of the following solutions:

• Your Master Account Holder will need to grant you access to this feature. If you know who your master account holder is, contact them to request access. They can grant access via the My Account section of this site or by calling Vodacom Customer Care.
• You may not yet be activated as a Master Account Holder. If you believe that you are actually a Master Account Holder and would like to be reflected as such, please contact Vodacom Customer care.

You could probably get your secondary account to get master account privileges, but I haven't done this.


How to do it (if it works correctly the day).  You log in with your main account (if you have one, otherwise I don't think you'll have any issues getting a bundle loaded).  Then click on "My Bundles".

That yellow is how the system didn't work today, what I was trying to fix with Lomvula. Once there, click on Once off data bundles.

Now click on the "My cellphone number" dropdown box, and select the data sim's number.  When selecting my number here, something went wrong the time I bought it.  It said something (unfortunately it didn't say it again when I did this documentation), but the number went to my new number.

Then simply proceed to buy the bundle.  Simple?  Well, please educate Lomvula.

@Vodacom - Shocking email ability... Can you Read?

Ok, so I emailed vodacom with some questions (a specific store)...

Hi,
I am due for an upgrade, and would like to express interest in the Samsung Galaxy S+ (i9001).
I am currently on a "weekender" but I am not really happy with it, as I am less of a talker, and more of a data user.  So I was wondering if I could go top-up 135 or perhaps the all day 100.

I would also like to know on the Everyday off - peak s, it doesn't specify that the minutes are for off-peak periods only on the web.  Is it in fact anytime minutes, or is it only off-peak minutes? (http://www.vodacom.co.za/personal/phonesandpackages/everydayoff-peaks)

If you could fill in for me the table above, it would really help me make my decision.  Also, could you indicate if the above monthly prices are VAT inclusive or exclusive?

 Just by the way, it's pretty hard to try to get a blog to display excel like tables. :-(

Anyway, so eagerly awaiting their reply I got this...

Please note when you upgrade you may migrate to any package, there will be no cost for this migration

The Everyday Off Peak 120 package free minutes does not qualify for Data, only for Voice

It is only off peak minutes that can be used off peak times

Useful information I'm sure. Free migration, and... well, I wonder if he was thinking I was hoping to "surf" with my minutes... And just to clarify, I can only do that (which I can't) during off-peak times.  Anyway, maybe I could've made my initial email more clear.  No answer about VAT, nothing about the cash pay-ins... So here's my next attempt:

Thank you very much for your reply.  Could you please elaborate on these points:

• The cash pay-ins for the different phones?  (Galaxy S+ or the Galaxy II... Please note that it is the i9001 and NOT the i9000).

• Is the bills VAT inclusive or exclusive? 

Ok, this time I think my questions are concise and pretty much understandable. Their reply:

Please confirm if you would like the pay in’s for these handsets on the Everyday off peak 120 Package? 

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! You did not even attempt to answer my fairly explicit questions?  Are you even reading my email?! Ok, here I am still going at it...

I assume there would be a pay in.  And I am interested in one of those handsets.
 Could you please indicate the different pay-in amounts on the different contract/phone options. 
The yellow blocks.

 Their reply... was... the most IQ I've seen I guess... 

Good Day Please see below dealsheets we have

And proceeded to copy and paste everything they have on the two phones from their dealsheet "document".  Which I believe was probably a violation of their terms and conditions with Vodacom.

I believe I would've received better service from an automated computer program.

Git via a http proxy on windows

I found this tutorial on line (there are several ones similar to this one). But that didn't work for me.

Reason being that our proxy is more adamant at asking for the password than most. So what worked for me was:

git config --global http.proxy http://[username]:[password]@[proxyaddress]:[port]

Obviously, everytime you update your password you'll need to update your global proxy setting.
Port is usually 80, or 8080.

Fringe vs Heroes

I was recently "forced" to review Heroes vs Fringe.

(Also as a side note, the Auto-Save failed, because I assume it was 5:20 in the morning on the 20/5... Nope. must be some other reason why the autosave failed, because 5:21 it still failed.)

I want to give a shout-out to the fringe team from South Africa, I think some auto-search of google *might* hit it, if they're interested, their fans will hit it anyway. I watched Episode 20 of Season 3 of Fringe yesterday evening fairly late (as DSTV/Multichoice increased their prime time to 5-11? WTF 6 hours of prime time? Anyway... continuing) on TV. Fringe is similar genre as Heroes, but they, so far, has stayed true to the initial "universe" and made the plot more interesting. (Some things like the plastic discs implanted in the palms, they've kinda gone away from), but generally the story remained interesting, they stayed with characters, and did a great job so far.

Relatively speaking, heroes had changed the plot, they've switched Sylar to good, they've F*cked up their own creation which we came to love. So basically, I'm watching fringe, and won't really watch heroes/buy heroes/support heroes series. I think the writers failed heroes, and I'll never know if they made it better, because of that failure.

I guess because fringe is a much smaller cast, the show has higher odds of doing things right, and surviving increased pay that actors will demand. Also I think they might reach a proper "natural" end to the plot.

Absa Loses internet?

Absa's internet banking for the last 24-48 hours have been so shockingly slow, or even non-existent, that many believe their security is at risk. When I was logged on yesterday, it was so slow that the left panel never appeared, and my surephrase was only displayed during log-on not during the session itself. The response rate was also so slow that clicking on an account took so long that the session would normally have timed-out (maybe it did, but it just didn't tell me?) before the click completed.

Hello Peter's comments are mostly going towards "other" because well, internet banking connectivity is not one of the options. http://www.hellopeter.com/feedback.php?period=7&company=ABSA

Personally I *hope* it's up to incompetence and not a security flaw. But, I have to say, there is not a single word on the site regarding it, there is no communication, it is absolutely shocking how bad they are handling it.

Back to the surephrase part, really ups the risk that it was a security problem. :-(((((((

GMail Priority inbox

I like the priority inbox. I think it's clever, it's intuitive, and it makes a lot of sense.

However, currently the inbox looks like this:

* Important-unread

* Starred

* The rest

I'd like to have

* Important-unread (including auto-archived stuff - ie not in inbox)

* Unread

* Important (read)

* The rest (in the inbox)

LOL, ok after posting this, I found that you CAN do this. Under settings -> Priority Inbox

So now I have

* Important and unread (including the ones that has skipped filters)

* Unread

* Important

* Everything else (as they call it)

:-D Happy!

RICA... well stupid

RICA is forced upon us in South Africa (it's some act where you have to register your sim card so they can track you in case your number/sim is used in crime). I registered today, because I upgrade my cellphone contract tomorrow (or it's due anyway).

But if you, like me, are a bit of a techno guy, then you don't get snail mail anymore. So how do you prove where you stay? My edgars accounts, my vodacom acccount, my bank statements, all goes to my email now (I started that just before RICA came, and now what?!). So I went to the police station to fill in an affidavit to state I stay where I stay. It worked fine... but what bothered me about it all is that my address is on my ID, and my ID is required for RICA. So yeah, stupid if you ask me. :-/

Spier - Moyo bathrooms

I don't know how some stuff gets past senior management. Maybe they don't know or they don't see it. But I can't see how a place that asks so much money to eat there, can be as crass and tactless about which toilet is which...

What do you hate buying the most?

There is always a cognitive dissonance in me when I have to buy toilet paper, and refuse bags.

In retail terms, those are called "grudge purchases". This is because, well, the one you pull through your buttocks, and the other you just throw away. The point is, you don't want to spend a lot of money on stuff that you just want to throw away.

I remember once buying toilet paper, saying, "I can't believe I pay this much for what I'm going to do with it". Then the sales assistant replied, "yes that's a lot of money for what it's for". But you see there is a difference. It's for a clean buttocks - now that's a worthy cause, one I'm willing to spend some money on. But what you do with it... not stuff I want to spend money on. A grudge buy. I don't buy the cheapest toilet paper anymore... because I think that's a rip off too. So the lesser of the two evils, are the double ply thick decent toilet paper.

On to refuse bags. Now with these I haven't found anything that I am really satisfied with. The expensive ones are definately better... but are they worth the premium? Searching for the above images, I found there's a gazillion different types of refuse bags... clearly a diverse market. But where do I fit? I like cheap, because... well, I'm sure you can figure it out, but I am not happy with them. They tear at the worst times, they are just not worth it... but neither are the ones with draw strings, or scented etc. or heavy duty. Just give me decent quality at a decent price. That's all.

What do you hate buying, but have to? What is the brand/choice you've settled on and why?

BING story

I sat at work, and noticed my colleague had BING open in their "side" bar in IE. Oh, I didn't know she's such a techie that she can even knows about BING. Turns out, no, she doesn't know anything about BING, she just types "google" into microsoft's search engine, and continues to the top link. :-)

McDonalds on Durban road (Bellville RSA)

I was at McDonalds a week or two back... and I got stuck in the drive through. They were cashing up or something (it's a 24h McD's and it was about 8:30 AM), and but it took me 25m to get through it... And I didn't order anything, I needed to be somewhere else at 9:00 so I needed to get out there quickly.

So I was unhappy, and I voted with my feet... yeah... but that doesn't change anything. So I emailed McDonalds South Africa, and logged a complaint. But you see, they still have not come back to me. So my consumer blog is starting.

Consumer blog too

I've decided I'm going to give consumer reviews on products that I like, or dislike for whatever reason. It'll often be on the marketing of the product, or the packaging, or just the usage etc.

I'll be posting my first consumer review shortly...

Real Life Spammers...

I got a SPAM email today from Glenrand M-I-B... Except that it wasn't from them...

from: By Design
reply-to: postman@housemail.co.za
to: xxxxx@gmail.com (I removed my email here to reduce my possibility of SPAM in future)
date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:51 AM
subject: Policyholders reminder: get building cover at a premium rate
mailed-by: kscope.mcentre.co.za

I have a policy at Glenrand (my car is insured there), and I haven't had any problems with them. So they are reputable... more so than AIG I guess. :-)

Anyway, so I send them an email saying that these people are emailing from no-where, and it's the first time I've received such a SPAM email from them... and the fact that it's not sent by an email address at "glenrandmib.co.za" really reduces the authenticity of the email.

Also, the spammers has added a lot of their own detail to the mail (which makes it better I guess?) Colleen@kscope.co.za... but also a telephone number! So I phoned Colleen at 021-462-2291. Asked her how she got hold of my email addy... She asked if it was the first time I've received any emails from them, and I replied yes, and wanted to know where she got my email addy.

Well, she said they either got it from their "client" or from a website... My email is available in the world... but that still doesn't give you the right to just SPAM me...

What worries me though is the fact that I have a policy with glenrand, so they have a bit more information about me than they legally should have... and that's not cool.

www.kscope.co.za believes they give a special service... but in my honest opinion, it's just spam...

A quote from their website:
"Step 1: We find new clients for you by creating an email database of 10 000 prospects specifically for your products and services using international search engines. We have specific software that selects the prospects in your market. Your database of 10 000 new prospective clients could be local, national or international."

Linux vs Windows (the old days, and now)

In the old days, (lets say 8 years ago)... most hardware didn't work on linux except with a LOT of work. In those days, stuff used to "just work" on windows. However, these days, things don't "just work" on windows... You need to install drivers (back then windows had about a list of 100 vendors per device, and had a something that should work with your hardware)... These days, you need to download a driver from the internet (which you may had to do then too - but then it was 1mb), and they come pricy when it comes to bandwidth. 45mb for a driver? You must be f#%king kidding me... Wait... you have a hardware abstraction layer you have to connect to... how hard can it be? 45mb?!!! The *whole* linux kernel is less than that (I believe... I think it's 27mb).

I'll be just naming the product I have in mind here... HP OfficeJet 4255 all-in-one. I think it's a shame that driver sizes has increased as much as they did. I don't know whether to blame windows or the companies, but the bottom line is: linux does it with much less bandwitdh, and probably much less effort.

The fact is just that linux is getting with the hardware curve, and windows is almost falling behind it. (And the vendors creates the drivers themselves!)

A vista driver 163mb (same product)... That's 3/8 of my cap of a month.

Alternate rules for Boule

I've got a miniature boule set. I bought it marked down at Edgars... Anyway, it doesn't have the "target" ball.

So, I have six marble sized balls, with which I want to play boule (or a similar game).

So I've devised these rules (they are not yet refined but bare with me):
* Players alternate throwing (this may need to change?)
* The player with the most balls creating the smallest triangle (in circumference) gets 1 or 2 points (1 for having 2 of the 3 "points", and 2 if he has all 3 points).

Throwing last seems to be a big advantage... I'll be testing these rules over the holiday, and I'll give a follow up post on how it goes.