Analogue: A Hate Story

Problem:

I liked this game so much I had to write a review.
I'm doing game reviews now?
What is this, some type of Japanese erotica?

Solution:

This post.
Apparently.
Nope, but Rule 34 probably applies to this as well.

Musings:

This game is unique and amazing.  I thought I might enjoy it, but not this much.  But before you go purchase it based on my glowing review, let's go over some things.

This is not erotica.  It's an animated e-book and everything that implies.

If you hate reading, you will hate this.
If you do not have patience, you will grow bored with it.
If you do not enjoy exploring people's stories, you will have no interest in the characters.
If you do not have dedicated time for this, you probably won't be able to take it in well.
If you have an aversion to Japanese style characters, you will think the main characters look dumb.
If you are really into Call of Duty or other AAA action games, this may not be for you.

As an aside, I am not a "cultural" person.  Some people on reddit will talk reverently of "experiencing" other culture in a deeply religious sort of way.  Kind of like visiting poor villages and mountains and exotic locations is some type of deeply fulfilling spiritual pilgrimage as long as it is done with a very expensive digital camera.

I am not one of these. I try not to be too culturally insensitive, but I really am not that interested in other people's cultures or food.  I try to respect them as much as possible, but I don't understand the excitement made around them by my fellow countrymen.  I can't do fish, any combination of rice/soy sauce/seaweed makes me sick to think about it, and most Thai dishes are offensive to my nose and stomach.  It's just not my thing, even though I have tried to get over them.

That long disclaimer aside, this game is still amazing.  I just have to figure out how to describe it well because animated e-book sounds like the children's ebooks for the iPad that have little charaters moving in the margins to entertain you as you read.  So maybe I should classify it as a point-and-click adventure game with no avatar to move around and a lot of text to read?

Or I'll just list you the awesome parts:

Getting to pretend to hack into an ancient spaceship.
Dealing with two detailed [and conflicting] AIs.
Discovering the history of a mini-civilization organically.

These may sound like some pretty thin gameplay mechanics, but they are done amazingly and the game is only about 5-6 hours long if you're a fast reader, so they stay fresh.  The AI interactions are amazing because at least to me, they felt like real people with dreams, desires, and failings.  The story that you uncover is very rich and deep, which is good because it's the focus of the gameplay.  The author, Christine Love, is an visual novelist, which explains why she was able to make such a strong showing in these areas.  I'm glad for the simple style, it works very well for the game and it allowed the creator to work within her areas of strength instead of pulling a AAA and trying to put some sort of shooting mechanic in just because that's exactly what every game needs.

Not saying that I would have complained if the game had let you come aboard in some limited way to walk around in a top-down 2D way to add a little RPG sort of variety, but this game is amazing for the simple indie title it is.

Hate Plus is the sequel which just came out a few days ago.  I haven't had a chance to play, but I really look forward to exploring this new story because Analogue: A Hate Story is the best kind of book.  It's not a game, it's like the reading experience you dreamed of.  The characters feel and are alive, you feel like the *earn* the story and are really searching for it, and there is some interaction with the actual world that really lets you imagine you are there.

HTC Sensation Restart Loop

Problem:

My phone is a 2 year-old HTC Sensation that has been pretty reliable, which is great.  However, I started having troubles where the phone would shut off randomly.  Not the worst thing in the world, but when I tried to power it back up, it would get all the way to the home screen and then the screen would go black like it had fallen to sleep.  However, it had shut itself off instead which led to an infinite boot loop.

Solution:

My temporary solution was to perform a battery pull, which sometimes fixed the problem for a while.  Unfortunately, it would return at odd intervals.  I got pretty fed up with this, so I started looking around online for help.  I was surprised that it was apparently a battery issue, but it resolved my problem, so I have no complaints.  (For the record, I had bought new aftermarket batteries recently because my stock one was wearing out, but I do not think this had anything to do with it.  The Anker batteries are of good quality.)

The real problem was a battery contacts/voltage issue.  Apparently if the battery voltage is too low, the phone will shutdown to protect itself.  This is what leads to the infinite loop I was stuck in.  Two fields of thought exist on how to remedy this and I tried both.  The most successful was cleaning the contacts.  I used some sandpaper, but anything should work.  You just want to scrape the surface of the phone's contacts to ensure that no residual contaminants exist there.  The second option is to try to put a small piece of paper on the top side of the battery that will force it into the contacts more thoroughly.  This doesn't really help on the Sensation because of the steps built into the battery, but I did it just to be careful.

Musings:

While I know that this blog barely even registers on the internet, I apologize for being gone for so long.  I was hoping to keep up a post every few weeks, but even that is frighteningly busy when you're frighteningly busy.  All my own fault, but it's not like that makes things easier.

So my phone is getting to about the 2-year mark where phones start to break down.  Everyone knows this point, it's when the device that has had 99.999% reliability drops down to 95%.  It might not sound like much, but 1/20 tries being unsuccessful can be pretty devastating to sanity.  Here is a list of the problems encountered so far:

Could not enter new address into browser, had to restart phone.
Could not exit phone call because end call button wouldn't work.  Finally worked on ~10th try.
Power button works intermittently to wake up phone.
SD card fails to reinitialize, had to restart phone.
Phone does not successfully change between mobile data and wifi, have to restart phone.

Now, I understand that phones are complex devices.  You have hardware, Android base operating system, HTC's touch-ups, and carrier add-ons.  The fact that phones are so reliable with all of these layers is pretty impressive from an engineering perspective to me.  Unfortunately, I'm just as annoying and single-minded as any other consumer when I'm a consumer.  Honestly, I don't care about having lots of upscale phone features as long as it can text/call/basic web surf in 100% reliability.  And I guess that's why people upgrade their phones every few years.

I can handle these issues if the phone can still do the "basic" functions I outlined above.  However, the infinite reboot cycle was really driving me nuts.  However, phones are pricey and I love my phone, so I wanted to keep it a little longer.  The Sensation really was a sweet spot in phone development, one of the first dual-core phones.  Newer phones blow it out of the water, but right now I'm keeping it around as a challenge to see how long it can last.  It feels great to get my money's worth out of electronic devices since so often they mysteriously break and you curse at yourself for trusting in another product with bad quality control.

Time Vs Money Paradox

Problem:

I'll assume you're working hard to get along in life and probably won't die anytime soon from natural causes.  So what if you suddenly found out that you were going to die soon.  Would you be happier?  If the answer was yes, why would you probably not want this to occur?

Keep in mind you can have whatever wealth you currently have (or debt you can get into) and probably won't die literally tomorrow, you might have six months.  People make movies and songs about how touching this is, everyone will have to treat you as if the world revolves around you (at least until you're dead or miraculously recover), you can probably quit your job and get the first real vacation of your life, and you can pretty much just live it up for a short period of time.  So yeah, you'd probably be happier in some ways.  The stress is off!  You can't save yourself, the future is written in stone and you can party until it gets here.  Don't get all existential on me yet and start moping for no reason!

Solution:

Just kidding, this is a philosophical paradox, there's no solution.  This was just a thought running through my head.  It's really just a special case of the Time/Money paradox.  I don't know if this is a real thing, but I assume it's obvious enough that it is.

Basically it's stated as, "You can live as if there's no tomorrow and have the best days of your life for a short while. (But you'll have ruined your chance at a future.)"
Or, "You can live as if you'll live for a very long time and slave away and live like a miser, but one day you'll be able to relax."

This is basically the exchange rate between time and money and people tend to stick with the second answer.  At least those with hope for the future.  Don't hear many success stories from the second group except for artists who dramatize it.

Musings:

I already cheated and got into my musings in the Solution, but it all kind of meshes in here.  The question isn't which path you'll take, people seem like they make the choice pretty easy.  It's basically a bet about how long you plan on living.  Is putting money in that 401K worth it?

Of course, if you're filthy rich, this would bring a special case of being bored and rich vs. being able to taste life more fully, but I suspect this may simply be a movie trope or just a simple choice that slackers deal with every day.

The real question here is philosophically speaking, *why* exactly would you want to keep on living a life where you have to work before you can retire, if you can afford to do that at all.  Of course, there are a thousand reasons, otherwise there would probably be a lot more suicides or a lot more people doing actions that blatantly bring on an early death (oh wait, that's called the American lifestyle).  But you know what I mean.

Will the average young person be able to retire?  I've done the math and unless you're really counting on a top 10% or better paying job, saving very well, and some amazing investing, you won't get much retirement income, social security or not.  And what if you die before you get there in a car crash?

But the real distillation is after you boil down your chances, what is so much better about living?  Because you'd have to find it in your everyday life.  You can't find it in that potential future, because if that's what you're counting on, your priorities are screwed up.  It's an exchange rate, trading now for the later.  You can't really go too extreme one way or the other.  I mean, you can, but it's probably not for the best.

Just by simple odds, you'll probably see success stories on both sides (as long as someone can write a good enough eulogy for the fun who die young).  But if you weigh it in your mind, are you setting a decent exchange rate for yourself?  If you died tomorrow would you massively regret something?  What is in your future that is worth living miserly for?  Hopefully not so you can just afford a nice nursing home.

The answer probably is that if you're normal or within a couple standard deviations thereof, the answers are simple and and answers are trite and if I told you what I thought, you'd laugh and tune me out.  Because the answers aren't logical because feelings aren't logical.  The only way to answer someone is to give them a nonsensical or contradictory statement that defies logic.  That's basically what a trite statement or paradox is.

I'm not even sure why they make sense, because they don't to my logical mind when you try to break it down like a Lego and build a better you with it.  But they do, if you're willing to let an emotional you at it.  Like the kind of person you become if you stay up late enough (or drugs would probably do, but I'm not familiar with them).  But if the movies are correct, they'll probably do the trick, though I wouldn't recommend it as you might end up a little too far in left field.

Besides, I don't want to give you an answer, that would defeat the point of the question. Another trite but true statement comes to mind, but I'll avoid that one too.

(I'll leave one last note.  If you can solve the question without much thought, you're cheating with the cheap and easy answers like God or my family or my life is SO amazing right now.  In this case, maybe stay up a little later and stop being so logical.  Or maybe you're just that lucky and this post doesn't apply to you at all. That's pretty awesome, you'd better get back to that amazing life of yours.)

Displayport Handshake Issues

Problem:

If you have a newer graphics card and display, you may use a Displayport connector to connector your computer and monitor.  When the computer falls asleep, sometimes it will not be able to wake back up again  and the monitors do not show any signal.  On other occasions this will manifest as one monitor not waking up properly even when the other will.  For me, this usually seems to happen to the main display. 

Solution:

The only immediate fix is to restart the computer.  I have tried combinations of power monitors on and off and plugging into different ports, but this does not produce any results.  In the long run, updating your graphics card drivers may assist with this.  I received some improvement after my most recent update for my AMD 7950 graphics card, but it still happens occassionally with my Dell U2412M monitors.

Musings:

This problem is another quick one for me.  This isn't as much a solution as a place to inform people about this known issue.  If you do a Google search for "Displayport Handshake Issues", you will see other people with this same problem.

It drives me nuts when new technology gives problems like this, DVI and VGA do not have the same potential issue.  However, this is just a result of being an early adopter.  It's been out for years, but from what I've seen on forums, many people are still using DVI even as it is slowly being phased out.  Who knows, it might even be a problem on Dell's end with the U2412M hardware.  The only other post I could easily find through a Google search seems to implicate Dell's monitors.

Msconfig

Problem:

Your computers takes an extended amount of time to boot.

Solution:

Install an SSD...just kidding.  Also a good solution, but that post will come later.

Go to Windows Start Button / Run / msconfig.  This will launch the image shown at the top of the post.  Click on the Startup tab and it will show you everything that runs when you start your computer.  If you have never done this before, there are probably quite a few entries that can be removed.  For instance, many regular programs do not need to update or perform tasks while the computer is booting.  Make sure you verify each entry you uncheck through a Google search if unsure.  Reboot your computer and see the difference.

Musings:

I decided to tackle a short one today.  This isn't as much a real guide as just a reminder to use this tool on a regular basis.  New programs are always trying to sneak entries into Start-up that don't need to be there.  This list should usually just consist of important operating system, wireless, and touchpad/keyboard drivers.

Nissan Sentra Cabin Air Filter

Problem:

The inside of your 2006 Nissan Sentra starts smelling musty and it won't go away.  You also don't think you don't have a cabin air filter and therefore haven't changed it in 7 years.

Solution:

Realize you have an air filter and replace it ASAP.  Mine was quite a bit worse than the one shown above, I wish I had taken a picture of it.  It was about filled to the brim with dirt, dust, and leaves after 7 years of not being replaced.

Musings:

Disclaimer:

Let me start off with a disclaimer, that I am not a car person.  However, car issues do affect my daily life and for some reason they are coming to mind so that's why I'm writing about them first.

Why I didn't need an air filter under any circumstances:

So, a 2006 Nissan Sentra is a decent car that I like a lot, but it's no luxury car.  I was under the impression that only higher-end cars have cabin air filters, leading me to laugh at regular auto places when they offered to replace my cabin air filter, because I thought I didn't have one.

Whether urban legends or not, I had gained through anecdotes the understanding that many car places will try to rip you off, up to and including telling you your air filters were dirty and bringing you a fake one to demonstrate this.  In the stories, the gotcha moment was when the hero turned down the replacement and found that his air filter was blue, but they showed him a WHITE one!

Anyway, replacing a regular air filter is simple enough that I do it myself, so I was also used to saying no anyway.

So, pass through the years with me of always having the air smell funny in the car and having my wife complaining about it.  But you know what?  I didn't treat the car *that* well and we did live in Florida at the time so I figured we had a little mold/mildew issue.  I certainly wasn't going to pay for a clean-up though, the smell was only somewhat musty and not worth whatever outrageous cost an automotive place would probably charge to dismantle the front section of the car to clean it out.

The Discovery:

One day, we replaced my wife's 2004 Chevy Aveo with a 2008 Ford Escape.  Best swap ever, I have stories to write about that car.  Also, we apparently only buy cars with even years, so I guess my next car will have to be a 2010.  After purchase, I started doing routine maintenance such as replacing the wipers, air filters, and having the battery checked.  Since we were dealing with such a fancy car (may not be to some people, but it will be the nicest car we've owned for probably many years to come), I realized it might have a cabin air filter and sure enough it did.

As I'm standing there at Advance Auto Parts, I'm looking at the screen as the cashier is looking up parts for both of our cars and I see cabin air filter pop up under Nissan Sentra.  I ask him about it and he doesn't know off the top of his head, but we head in a couple of menu options and it looks like my car has one.  What the heck, I believe it, so I buy cabin air filters for both cars.  As a fun fact, when I opened up the Escape, it had been living for 4 years without any air filter.  Lazy chumps!  Even my cheap little Nissan came with a filter from the facory!

The Nitty-Gritty:

When I get home, I look up the process online.  It's pretty simple and you can see quite a few youtube videos about it.  Basically, you start by opening the glove box and pulling in the tabs you see in the back.  They can be quite resistant, but be assured that it's just friction.  No turning is required, but it can be helpful in overcoming the friction.  When you get the pins fully pulled in, you should be able to pull out the glove box entirely.  Then you should use a Philips head screwdriver to remove the 4 screws at the top of the hole, all the same size.  The middle two are holding on the bracket used to keep the glove box shut, so once you've removed those screws, slide the bracket off.

Now you need to pull out the large plastic insert piece and surrounds the interior of the hole and then unclip the air filter cover at the back.  It should be pretty obvious, it has two catches with words like "Lift" or something like that.  Behind it is the air filter so now you just need to replace it and redo the previous steps in reverse.

Like I mentioned earlier, the first time I replaced this was with a 7 year delay.  The filter was absolutely disgusting and literally filled to the bring with dirt and leaves.  I have no idea how the air actually got through it, maybe it went around somehow.  Now I replace it about once a year and while it doesn't need it that often, it's usually some sort of gray color so I figure it's not totally unnecessary.

Nissan Sentra Extended Crank

Problem:

When you try to start the Nissan Sentra years 2002-06, it will take a long time to start and may not make any progress at all in 5-10 seconds.  So you release the ignition and try again and will usually get it by the 2nd or 3rd time.  If you have excess power draw in the car such as the AC on, you might as well just give up and turn it off first.

Solution:

Replace the check valve in the fuel pump assembly.  This is such a well-known issue that there is a service bulletin out for this issue.  NTB05-052A is the reference number and you can find on a Google search or just look down below.  I had this replaced and it starts like a champ, even with the AC on.

Musings:

The Start:

So you might find my lack of detail in Problem/Solution annoying.  I found it a little irritating to hold back from providing more details.  But this is on purpose because my goal for this site is to present problems and solutions clearly and concisely and not let them get too bogged down with musings.  If someone just wants the short and sweet, they should be able to find out about it without digging through a long, elaborate, and divergent discussion.

My knowledge on the subject comes from the fact thatI own a 2006 Nissan Sentra and this started happening after only a few years of ownership.  Being young and dumb (or just slightly younger and dumber), I ignored the issue because frankly it is a nuisance issue and didn't seem worth the trouble or money at the time.  The two very important facts I overlooked was that this jumpst from mild nuisance when you're happy and not in a hurry to seriously frustrating when you're stressed out and in a hurry.  Or in the case of thinking an axe murderer is chasing you in a parking lot could probably induce a heart attack.

The second fact I overlooked is that my car was still within it's 3 year warranty period at the time.  However, since I waited until outside that period, Nissan said screw you, good luck fixing it.  Being an engineer, I can totally understand why they would do this.  I probably would too if I was a large company.  But even so, it feels dishonest to tell someone that you won't fix their problem that you know you caused for them and that you know probably did break within the warranty period.

Setback!

Time for a Setback!  So I was getting to a point in my life where I had a steady job out of college and could consider expensive frivolities such as resolving outstanding issues on my car.  Weird huh?  I have had a decent paying job for about a year by the time I get to this point and while I'm not a miser, I'm certainly not as spendy as most people I knew in college.  So I have no idea how people do it, but that's beside the point.

So here I am, at Advance Auto Parts in the parking lot replacing something on my car and this guy a few parking spots over starts talking to me.  Now, parking spots aren't as personal as urinal stalls, but they do have their similarities which made this awkward at first.  But I got over it and had a chat with the guy, it turns out that he also owns a 2006 Nissan Sentra and wanted to ask me about issues.  He said he had the same extended crank issue, but had monitored his fuel line pressure and didn't think the check valve was bad.  So he had replaced many of the stock systems in the engine and upgraded them.  I was intrigued, but this was like showing a chimpanzee the finer points of a space shuttle: I didn't catch anything.

The only thing I understood was that a "person who know more about cars than me" thinks it's not the service bulletin problem.  This got me by for another year or two on apathy, but then I finally gave in.  My garage told me the check valve was bad (and they were right, when it was replaced the problem went away immediately).

Getting down to it:

So now you're realized that you have to pay for the new parts yourself and install them.  If you're a do-it-yourself-er, you can probably handle this yourself.  Just go out and buy the $283 part kit from Nissan and you're good.  But serious, they charge THAT for just a few parts!  Yep.  Sucks to be you.

But if you're in a hurry like me and don't feel like ripping your car apart, you can have a mechanic do it for you.  Just depends where you are on the time vs. money curve, or you can plot this in 3D by making the third axis the laziness factor.  When I brought this up to my mechanic, he suggested that once he ripped the car apart and then the fuel pump assembly, I might come out about the same to just buy the whole fuel pump assembly so he could just drop it in and not put so much work into labor.

Well in that case, it's even easier to replace yourself, but now you're back $600.  Well, that sucks too, but do you really think it's worth pulling it apart yourself?  It's really a preference thing.  I know cars aren't anywhere close to magic, they are just relatively simple mechanical devices.  However, I also know from engineering projects that experience does make a world of difference in reliability.  And I don't want my baby to cry if you know what I mean.  I want the world's least expensive, most boring, 100% reliable car.  Some people want antique project cards that are expensive, sporty, and only 80% reliable.  I say 80% because I imagine they would have to function at least 4 days out of 5 or it probably wouldn't leave the garage often.

So I took the least time intensive but most expensive route and had the garage do it for me.  Painless and now my car starts very reliably.  It's just a little thing and I got by with an extended crank for about 6 years, but every time I start my car now, I thank myself for replacing it.  But as a last note, Nissan you suck for making the replacement part so expensive!  Around $283 just for probably like $50 in parts is a rip-off!

The Procedure:

Here is the PDF of the procedure, I believe the Service Bulletin has been revved up to C by now, but I could only find A online for free.  I have included the "ugly" extra features on the pdf so you can download it from here.  I strongly dislike it when people put up pdf files, but don't allow you to keep them yourself.


[Edit 2016.09.25] My apologies, it appears that Google Drive has removed support for displaying the PDF here.  Try this link instead:

Service Bulletin NTB05-052a

Footnote: My headings look bad, it looks like even though Blogger thinks that H2 is bigger than H3 in composition mode, it actually shows up smaller because it is being defined by something else.  It's been a while since I've done HTML, I'll have to see if I can fix it.