Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

A technical breakdown on the two systems.

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point—probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360's GPU.

Below are the specs from Sony's press release regarding the PS3's GPU.

RSX GPU
550 MHz
Independent vertex/pixel shaders
51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
300M transistors
136 "shader operations" per clock
The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as powerful as the 6800 Ultra.

The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell processor. Sony's calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.

However, using Sony's claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.

With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU (330M) it's not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very close.

The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360's three general purpose cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for true graphics related calculations.

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipes, 6 vertex pipes, and runs at 400 MHz. Given the RSX's 2x better than a 6800 Ultra number and the higher frequency of the RSX, one can roughly estimate that it will have 24 pixel shading pipes and 4 vertex shading pipes (fewer vertex shading pipes since the Cell DSPs will do some vertex shading). If the PS3 GPU keeps the 6800 pixel shader pipe co-issue architecture which is hinted at in Sony's press release, this again gives it 24 pixel pipes* 2 issued per pipe + 4 vertex pipes = 52 dot products per clock in the GPU.

If the RSX follows the 6800 Ultra route, it will have 24 texture samplers, but when in use they take up an ALU slot, making the PS3 GPU in practice even less impressive. Even if it does manage to decouple texture fetching from ALU co-issue, it won't have enough bandwidth to fetch the textures anyways.

For shader operations per clock, Sony is most likely counting each pixel pipe as four ALU operations (co-issued vector+scalar) and a texture operation per pixel pipe and 4 scalar operations for each vector pipe, for a total of 24 * (4 + 1) + (4*4) = 136 operations per cycle or 136 * 550 = 74.8 GOps per second.

Given the Xbox 360 GPU's multithreading and balanced design, you really can't compare the two systems in terms of shading operations per clock. However, the Xbox 360's GPU can do 48 ALU operations (each can do a vector4 and scalar op per clock), 16 texture fetches, 32 control flow operations, and 16 programmable vertex fetch operations with tessellation per clock for a total of 48*2 + 16 + 32 + 16 = 160 operations per cycle or 160 * 500 = 80 GOps per second.

Overall, the automatic shader load balancing, memory export features, programmable vertex fetching, programmable triangle tesselator, full rate texture fetching in the vertex shader, and other "well beyond shader model 3.0" features of the Xbox 360 GPU should also contribute to overall rendering performance.

Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.

Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.

CONCLUSION
When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games—by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services—will outperform the PlayStation 3.

A National Geographic story titled "A Robot in Every Home by 2020" reports that the industrious South Koreans have been busy designing enormous and terrifying robo-butlers for personal use. According to the article, "they could be used for entertainment, education, home security, and household chores." Looking at the size of this thing, I can definitely see the home security aspect. I'm not as confident about the entertainment factor, though. Maybe it dances.



But of course, this is South Korea, meaning that anyone reading this story is of course wondering precisely how long it will take before South Korean scientists realize they can use the technology for white-hot perverted robot sex. And, of course, they already have. Here's the disturbingly life-like female version. Note the pensive, hand-on-chin look on the face of the scientist in the background. I like to think he's engaged in a heated internal debate over what to sex first:


"Do robots dream of electric sheep? And if so, would the dream be distracting enough that I could sniff its panties while it's doing so?"

I imagine even the most hopeful robot sex enthusiast would have to admit: the technology isn't quite there yet. That's one creepy-looking dead-eyed robot. Luckily, however, given the Never Spoken Aloud, But Come On, You Know Why They Built This purpose for a robot that looks like a pretty woman, it's doubtful the Uncanny Valley's going to come up much as a problem when you're exclusively looking at the back of a robot's head. No word yet on which holes will be made available on the android, but one thing remains clear for any enterprising young virgin with money to spare: as enticing as an android sex slave sounds on paper, that is one risky ******** handjob.

Forget the dangers inherent to having damp sex with the equivalent of a toaster; if you're letting something with mechanical robot piston arms touch your p***s, you're more adventurous than Indiana Jones. I'll occasionally set my clock radio wrong, and the worst thing that happens is that the Eurythmics wake me up a half-hour earlier than I'd intended. The day I decide to start ******** my clock radio is the day I show up at an ER with a sparks-spraying, Eurythmics-playing robot wrapped around my d**k, a can opener in one hand and an incredibly surprised look on my face.

Still: I hope you're paying attention, nuclear arms-building North Korea, to your enterprising neighbors to the south. If you're looking to take over the world, forget about uranium and start building sexbots. With any luck, North America will have gratified itself to extinction within a generation.

Steve Irwin, who most know as the Crocodile Hunter—aka That Crazy Australian Guy With The Bad Haircut Who Ran Around the Outback in Snug Khaki Shorts Lifting Up Unbelievably Lethal Animals by the Tail, Pointing at Their Crotches and Telling the Camera "Looks Like We've Got a Sheila!" —died a couple days ago while filming a documentary, after a sting-ray barb caught him in the chest. He was 44.

Doubtless every 'net comedy hack will be spending the day writing cringingly unfunny headlines like "Crikey! I'm dead!"—because as we all know, there's no tragedy that an 18 year-old with a blogspot account and a pirated copy of Photoshop can't mock ironically by Madlibbing a few Simpsons quotes—but as for me, I just think it's sad. I liked Steve Irwin. How could you not?

In high school, my mates and I used to watch The Crocodile Hunter, Steve's eponymous nature show, with a quiet, studious awe that our classes certainly didn't merit. There was something about how ridiculously dangerous the situations were that this idiot kept throwing himself right in the middle of, coupled with that wide-eyed sense of childlike wonder that spread all over his big face any time he explained something about nature, that made it one of the more enjoyable shows on television.

I guess on some level, sure... we were all laughing at him a little. You can't run around in khaki short-shorts smiling as innocently as Steve did, or get as unabashedly excited about kangaroo poop as Steve got, without inviting at least some measure of ridicule. Yet simultaneously, there was an unspoken understanding among us that, even if he did perhaps owe most of his bravery to having the emotional development of a functionally retarded ten year-old, the dude had balls the size of Ayers Rock. It's probably an unwritten rule of male machismo that once you've got "Put crocodile in headlock" on your résumé, you're pretty much allowed to act and dress however the ******** you like. Steve earned the right to be ridiculous.

Perhaps because of this, I don't think anyone's filing Steve Irwin's death under Didn't See It Coming. When your job title is Professional Crocodile Hunter, living to 44 is probably considered a ripe old age. If anything, I imagine people will just be disappointed. I mean, seriously, we all knew that crazy b*****d's luck was eventually going to run out—I think in our hearts, though, we all imagined it'd be a bit more romantically mythic than "stabbed by a sting-ray." I'll bet Steve Irwin did. You can't spend your life chasing after the world's most deadly animals without one of them eventually figuring out that you're very stupid food. He knew the day would come. I just think that he, like all of us, envisioned a more glorious send-off—covered from head to toe in the vise-like grips of crocodile jaws, maybe, while on fire and falling down a gorge.

Sadly, the animal kingdom denied Steve an inherently cool death scene. All the same, though, I'd remind you that he did take a sting-ray barb in the chest. This is a picture of a sting-ray barb, which according to Wikipedia is razor-sharp, serrated and coated with toxic venom:

I mean, Jesus Christ. That might not be as cool as Mid-air Shark Attack While Parachuting Into Mouth of Volcano, but it still sure as hell beats Heart Attack From Too Many Cheeseburgers.

We'll miss you, Steve. Hopefully you're in a better place now, with all manner of dangerous and poisonous mythical creatures—all of which are patiently waiting for you to walk up behind them while you yell excitedly at a camera, before lifting up their tails to prod curiously at their genitalia.

I hadn't seen him in a few weeks, and so things start normally. "Oh! Hey! How you doing?" I say, smiling and walking over.

"Alp! Not bad! How you been, man?" he asks.

So far so good. I make a move for a handshake--pretty standard territory where I come from for someone you haven't seen in a bit. I opt for a standard three-pump-release shake for the occasion--firm and decisive, but not too firm, so as to make it clear I'm about friendship as much as business. Following the third pump I go for my standard release-and-hand-to-pocket maneuver, so as to better jiggle change and rock on my heels while talking.

But then suddenly, like an F-18 fighter jet whose controls won't respond, it all goes wrong. He stops my hand in mid-release from the third pump and, without warning, segues the pump into a 45-degree-angle hand-lock.

Flustered at the audacity of his rebellion from handshake norms, I nonetheless try to regain my composure. Alright, I guess we're doing this now, I think, and hold the hand-lock for two seconds--what I estimate to be a decent amount of time for a handshake that, to my mind, implies a level of brotherhood I hadn't been prepared to acknowledge. Uncertain if I'm supposed to lean in for a combo back-pat or not, I end up not. It's not like he saved my life in a car fire or anything, I think.

I wait for him to release the hand-lock, which he does, and it is here where I make my crucial and devastating mistake. Unmindful of the possibility of a third stage to the handshake--at two stages, the entire ordeal's already gone into overtime, in my mind--I let my hand down...and leave him hanging. Before I can even react, he segues from the 45-degree-angle hand-lock to a closed-fist tap, while I already have my hand halfway into my pocket.

Horrified that I've disengaged from the handshake before it had come to a full and complete stop, and just as scared that I might look uncool in front of a black man, I quickly bring my hand back up for the fist-tap. He pretends like the entire handshake business has gone off hitchless and starts talking, but I know he knows: I, the dorky white guy, ******** up his cool black guy handshake.

If I can take any solace from the ordeal, it's with the perspective that maybe he's the one who should feel embarrassed. The three-pump shake is the established norm. Any deviations not worked out ahead of time shouldn't automatically be assumed to be part of the shake canon. What if I'd gone for a single-pump tight-squeeze shake with an elbow-grab combo right when he brought out the hand-lock? There would have been a four-arm pile-up and blood all over the place. There's no room for freestyling in the handshake arena.

Still, though--I screwed up his cool black guy handshake. Man.

Sex Lies Deceit Murder Treachery Masks Stripping
BEHIND THE EVIL
Sex Lies Deceit Murder Treachery Masks Stripping
Queen of Demons


Kris grew up in the deepest bowls of Hell. As neice of Satan, she spent her time torturing people and lived a life of canabalism. She terrorized people, and stole their souls from them easily. Her uncle was extremely proud and dubbed her "Queen of Demons".

She got bored with her life in Hell, and decided to rise to the surface, and see what chaos she could create.

One day, while sitting in a park and laughing at the children falling off the monkey bars, she met the one called "Ella" who asked her to lead her military. Agreeing, Kris devastated many a n00b for the Ice Queen. Meeting the head of the Dept. of Control, General Disarray, in a local strip club was a turning point in her demonic life. Upon purchasing his soul, they formed a partnership that no one could destroy.

"Look... Eating people is not that bad. What me and the General do is a public service" she said, addressing the reporter. "Do you have some problem with the way we do things???" With that, Kris ate Connie Chung and the interview was over. The Doomsday Duo currently struggles against the valiant efforts of the League of J.A.C.K.A.S.S (Justice And Civility, Kinship, And Selfless Service).

Sex Lies Deceit Murder Treachery Masks Stripping
BEHIND THE EVIL
Sex Lies Deceit Murder Treachery Masks Stripping
General Disarray


Shivelamouse grew up in the small town of Mississauga, in Canada. As one who was shunned by society, he spent his lone time studying. He studied a lot, but he just didn't study school. He studied the world, and scoffed at the state of society.

"I'm through doin' what others tell me to do, and I am sick of this world and the stin-, and the stinky people in it! From now on I will dedicate my life to bringing chaos to the world that has rejected me!" he said.

With the power of technology, Shivelamouse became GENERAL DISARRAY, Stripper by day, Evil Mastermind by night! One day while robbing the local supermarket with his Death Ray of Annihilation, the one who goes by the name "Ella" asked him to join his army, at the head of control. There, he rules the citizens with slightly-tarnished iron fist. But that's not enough. He must n** the ignorance in the bud. He aims for the rest of the WORLD! Selling his soul to the Queen of Demons, the two partnered up to form the DOOMSDAY DUO! Oppressing the ignorant masses for...a long period of time!

"Conquering one city first is a reasonable plan that allows some leeway for setbacks." he said, focusing first on Gaia City. The Doomsday Duo now struggles against the valiant efforts of the League of J.A.C.K.A.S.S (Justice And Civility, Kinship, And Selfless Service).

Monday
------

8:05am

User called to say they forgot password. Told them to use password retrieval utility called FDISK. Blissfully ignorant, they thank me and hang up. God, we let the people vote and drive, too?

8:12am

Accounting called to say they couldn't access expense reports database. Gave them Standard Sys Admin Answer #112, "Well, it works for me." Let them rant and rave while I unplugged my coffeemaker from the UPS and plugged their server back in. Suggested they try it again. One more happy customer...

8:14 am

User from 8:05 call said they received error message "Error accessing Drive 0." Told them it was an OS problem. Transferred them to microsupport.

11:00 am

Relatively quiet for last few hours. Decide to plug support phone back in so I can call my girlfriend. Says parents are coming into town this weekend. Put her on hold and transferred her to janitorial closet down in basement. What is she thinking? The "Myst" and "Doom" nationals are this weekend!

11:34 am

Another user calls (do they ever learn?). Says they want ACL changed on HR performance review database so that nobody but HR can access database. Tell them no problem. Hang up. Change ACL. Add @MailSend so performance reviews are sent to */US.

12:00 pm

Lunch

3:30 pm

Return from lunch.

3:55 pm

Wake up from nap. Bad dream makes me cranky. Bounce servers for no reason. Return to napping.

4:23 pm

Yet another user calls. Wants to know how to change fonts on form. Ask them what chip set they're using. Tell them to call back when they find out.

4:55 pm

Decide to run "Create Save/Replication Conflicts" macro so next shift has something to do.

Tuesday
-------

8:30 am

Finish reading support log from last night. Sounded busy. Terrible time with Save/Replication conflicts.

9:00 am

Support manager arrives. Wants to discuss my attitude. Click on PhoneNotes SmartIcon. "Love to, but kinda busy. Put something in the calendar database!" I yell as I grab for the support lines, which have (mysteriously) lit up. Walks away grumbling.

9:35 pm

Team leader from R&D needs ID for new employee. Tell them they need form J-19R=3D9C9DARRK1. Say they never heard of such a form. Tell them it's in the SPECIAL FORMS database. Say they never heard of such a database. Transfer them to janitorial closet in basement.

10:00 am

Perky sounding intern from R&D calls and says she needs new ID. Tell her I need employee number, department name, manager name, and marital status. Run @DbLookup against state parole board database, Centers for Disease Control database, and my Oprah Winfrey database. No hits. Tell her ID will be ready tonight. Drawing from the lessons learned in last week's "Reengineering for Customer Partnership," I offer to personally deliver ID to her apartment.

10:07 am

Janitor stops by to say he keeps getting strange calls in basement. Offer to train him on Notes. Begin now. Let him watch console while I grab a smoke.

1:00 pm

Return from smoking break. Janitor says phones kept ringing, so he transferred them to cafeteria lady. I like this guy.
1:05 pm

Big commotion! Support manager falls in hole left where I pulled floor tiles outside his office door. Stress to him importance of not running in computer room, even if I do yell "Omigod -- Fire!"

1:15 pm

Development Standards Committee calls and complains about umlauts in form names. Apologizing for the inconvenience, I tell them I will fix it. Hang up and run global search/replace using gaks.

1:20 pm

Mary Hairnet from cafeteria calls. Says she keeps getting calls for "Notice Loads" or "NoLoad Goats," she's not sure, couldn't hear over industrial-grade blender. Tell her it was probably "Lettuce Nodes." Maybe the food distributor with a new product? She thinks about it and hangs up.

2:00 pm

Legal secretary calls and says she lost password. Ask her to check in her purse, floor of car, and on bathroom counter. Tell her it probably fell out of back of machine. Suggest she put duct tape over all the airvents she can find on the PC. Grudgingly offer to create new ID for her while she does that.

2:49 pm

Janitor comes back. Wants more lessons. I take off rest of day.

Wednesday
---------

8:30 am

Irate user calls to say chipset has nothing to do with fonts on form. Tell them Of course, they should have been checking "Bitset," not "chipset." Sheepish user apologizes and hangs up.

9:10am

Support manager, with foot in cast, returns to office. Schedules 10:00am meeting with me. User calls and wants to talk to support manager about terrible help at support desk. Tell them manager about to go into meeting. Sometimes life hands you material...

10:00 am

Call Louie in janitorial services to cover for me. Go to support manager's office. He says he can't dismiss me but can suggest several lateral career moves. Most involve farm implements in third-world countries with moderate to heavy political turmoil. By and by, I ask if he's aware of new bug which takes full-text indexed random e-mail databases and puts all references to furry handcuffs and Bambi Boomer in Marketing on the corporate Web page. Meeting is adjourned as he reaches for keyboard, Web browser, and Tums.

10:30 am

Tell Louie he's doing great job. Offer to show him mainframe corporate PBX system sometime.

11:00 am

Lunch.

4:55 pm

Return from lunch.

5:00 pm

Shift change; Going home.

Thursday
--------

8:00 am

New guy ("Marvin" wink started today. "Nice plaids" I offer. Show him server room, wiring closet, and technical library. Set him up with IBM PC-XT. Tell him to quit whining, Notes runs the same in both monochrome and color.

8:45 am

New guy's PC finishes booting up. Tell him I'll create new ID for him. Set minimum password length to 64. Go grab smoke.

9:30 am

Introduce Louie the custodian to Marvin. "Nice plaids" Louie comments. Is this guy great or what?!

11:00 am

Beat Louie in dominos game. Louie leaves. Fish spare dominos out of sleeves ("Always have backups" wink . User calls, says Accounting server is down. Untie Ethernet cable from radio antenna (better reception) and plug back into hub. Tell user to try again. Another happy customer!

11:55 am

Brief Marvin on Corporate Policy 98.022.01: "Whereas all new employee beginning on days ending in 'Y' shall enjoy all proper aspects with said corporation, said employee is obligated to provide sustenance and relief to senior technical analyst on shift." Marvin doubts. I point to "Corporate Policy" database (a fine piece of work, if I say so myself!). "Remember, that's DOUBLE pepperoni and NO peppers!" I yell to Marvin as he steps over open floor tile to get to exit door.

1:00 pm

Oooooh! Pizza makes me so sleepy...

4:30 pm

Wake from refreshing nap. Catch Marvin scanning want ads.

5:00 pm

Shift change. Flick HR's server off and on several times (just testing the On/Off button...). See ya tomorrow.

Friday
------

8:00 am

Night shift still trying to replace power supply in HR server. Told them it worked fine before I left.

9:00 am

Marvin still not here. Decide I might start answering these calls myself. Unforward phones from Mailroom.

9:02 am

Yep. A user call. Users in Des Moines can't replicate. Me and the Oiuji board determine it's sunspots. Tell them to call Telecommunications.

9:30 am

Good God, another user! They're like ants. Says he's in San Diego and can't replicate with Des Moines. Tell him it's sunspots, but with a two-hour difference. Suggest he reset the time on the server back two hours.

10:17 am

Pensacola calls. Says they can't route mail to San Diego. Tell them to set server ahead three hours.

11:00 am

E-mail from corporate says for everybody to quit resetting the time on the servers. I change the date stamp and forward it to Milwaukee.

11:20 am

Finish @CoffeeMake macro. Put phone back on hook.

11:23 am

Milwaukee calls, asks what day it is.

11:25 am

Support manager stops by to say Marvin called in to quit. "So hard to get good help..." I respond. Support manager says he has appointment with orthopedic doctor this afternoon, and asks if I mind sitting in on the weekly department head meeting for him. "No problem!"

11:30 am

Call Louie and tell him opportunity knocks and he's invited to a meeting this afternoon. "Yeah, sure. You can bring your snuff" I tell him.

12:00 am

Lunch.

1:00 pm

Start full backups on UNIX server. Route them to device NULL to make them fast.

1:03 pm

Full weekly backups done. Man, I love modern technology!

2:30 pm

Look in support manager's contact management database. Cancel 2:45 pm appointment for him. He really should be at home resting, you know.

2:39 pm

New user calls. Says want to learn how to create a connection document. Tell them to run connection document utility CTRL-ALT-DEL. Says PC rebooted. Tell them to call microsupport.

2:50 pm

Support manager calls to say mixup at doctor's office means appointment cancelled. Says he's just going to go on home. Ask him if he's seen corporate Web page lately.

3:00 pm

Another (novice) user calls. Says periodic macro not working. Suggest they place @DeleteDocument at end of formula. Promise to send them document addendum which says so.

4:00 pm

Finish changing foreground color in all documents to white. Also set point size to "2" in help databases.
4:30 pm

User calls to say they can't see anything in documents. Tell them to go to view, do a "Edit -- Select All", hit delete key, and then refresh. Promise to send them document addendum which says so.

4:45 pm

Another user calls. Says they can't read help documents. Tell them I'll fix it. Hang up. Change font to Wingdings.

4:58 pm

Plug coffee maker into Ethernet hub to see what happens. Not(too) much.

5:00 pm

Night shift shows up. Tell that the hub is acting funny and to have a good weekend.

Keeping abreast of our titular heroine and her bosom buddies

It seems somehow fitting that I began playing Lula 3D the day Betty Friedan died. It was a real "drove the Chevy to the levee" sort of synchronicity, except in this case it was a hot-pink Chevy driven by a Hindenburg-breasted blond compulsively stuffing the ginormous crevasses between her bosoms with liqour bottles, beer cans, house cat-sized pillows, dirty magazines, DVDs, a cell phone, hot sauce, a megaphone, and a fistfull of butts. Oh, and a bag of licorice. Stupid, to be sure, but preferable to other inventory locations that certainly must have crossed the stunted imaginations of the no doubt pantsless programmer of this relentlessly and ineptly smutty game.

My expectations were suitably and soberly low. I wasn't Sam and Max Hit the Road so much as Sam and Max HIT THAT AZZZ!, but I was playing this game for the same sort of contrarian enjoyment that I get watching the Nude for Satan DVD. After all, this is a game that trumpets "Bouncin' Boobs Technology" on the game box and actually includes the in game command "Use [discomfitingly large and knobby black vinyl marital aid] on Sarah." How could it not fail in the most delightful fashion? Well, as it turns out, pretty easily. Lula 3D should have been so deliciously bad it was good; instead it was so bad it was just really bad.

A big part of the problem is that the character models look terrible. Now, if I were making a dirty adventure game-just for hypothetical fun, let's say it's a Sapphic romp called "Squeaky Loves Tyne"-I'd make sure that when Squeaky Fromme surprised Tyne Daly by dressing up as Alice B. Toklas in a merry widow, she'd be the most sizzingly sezy naked Manson family hottie ever digitized. That swastika carved into her forehead would *POP*! And when Tyne would momentarily lift her massive head from her feeding trough, overcome and in thrall to the lusty burnings in her sagging loins, you can be sure that the calzone sauce and mushrooms dripping from her slack jaw and splashing across her heaving mammary regionals would be extra-super-duper-hot. Scalding, in fact.

The Characters in Lula, not so much hotness. As expected, every woman in the game is agrossly exaggerated caricature of feminity-the last time I saw pontoons the size of Lula's, a gigantic fan was strapped to them and Dennis Weaver was riding them around the Everglades with a really friendly bear. OK, that's all well and good, but imagine, if you will, the animatronic glory of Disneyland's Hall of Presidents.Now imagine Abe Lincol's lurching robotic a** in Frederick's of Hollywood knockoff's and you've got a pretty good approximation of the polygon-shearing spastic marionettes clumsily aping sexytime in Lula. It's obvious the developers have no understanding of their market, especially when you consider that Lula 3D can only be purchased online, a marketplace where consumers urgently searching for women stuffing licorice in their cleavage must grappple not with the challenge of finding it, but of deciding which 24-hour webcam they should subscribe to. If you're going to promise titillation on the Internet, buddy, you've got one heck of a bar to clear. The Real Dolls awkwardly bumping into each other in Lula don't come close.

Of course, I shoulda expected this. None of the smut games have ever really delivered. Custer's Revenge and its cactus rape subtracted so much eroticism from the universe that it is most likely responsible for the death of Kelly LeBrock's career (although the Steven Seagal marriage thing didn't do her any favors). Rianna Rouge and her high-minded efforts to unite the other-dimensional Sinep and Yssup tribes via postage stamp-sized QuickTime topless videos was simply Citehtap and Llud. The best of the lusty lot might be the Phantasmagoria games...which is like calling Basic Instinct the pinnacle of film-making. Leisure Suit Larry? He's supposed to be unsexy in the same repellent yet lovable sort of way Ron Jeremy is. If you're finding Larry Laffer sexy, you have problems that cannibals wouldn't wish on their worse enemies.

To be fair, Lula has its moments, however brief. I grew particularly fond of the English as a 14th Language student doing the voice acting for the scantily clad heroine. Hear her repeatedely mangle simple exclamations like "OH MY GARDT!" or somberly intone "GILLS WHO TREBBLE DANSH DUNT HAVE ANUZEE JOAB" never lost its simple charm. At least, that is, until the basset hound inexplicably followed Lula into every porn shop and strip club started humping someone's leg or looking up a stripper's skirt or taking a massive leak on the floor. That did a pretty efficient job of squashing simple charms.

The thong-wearing bottom line for Lula 3D is that it is so resoundingly inconsequential that even Joe Liebermann and Hillary Clinton won't be able to muster any outrage over this AO title. "Our kids are playing this?" I imagine them muttering as Lula crams some tomatoes into her boob-ventory. "What morons."

(Dedicated to Rieluni. She knows why.)

Ah, the nature documentary. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved them. The subject rarely matters; they could be about lions or elephants or fish or birds or snails or bacteria. Whatever, they're cool and interesting, and they're always narrated by someone whose voice manages to be soothing and reassuring, even as he describes a) something's belly being torn out by something else, b) a fish swimming up the a**s of a sea cucumber, or c) regurgitation.

My favorite types of documentaries are those about baby animals, who are followed around by camera crews until they either reach adulthood (the animals, not the crew) or are eaten by hyenas (the animals and/or the crew). We are warned early on in the show that many of the young animals will not survive the difficult winter/summer/migration/layoffs ahead, and that sucks, because the little animals are extremely cute, and we love them.

And, hey, what's the deal with those hyenas, anyway? They're such dicks. No matter what documentary you're watching, the hyenas will show up and try to kill the subjects, particularly the extremely young and vulnerable subjects. Lion cubs, tiger cubs, antelope, uh... cubs. Alligator cubs, bird cubs, bacteria cubs, whatever, the hyena will show up about halfway through and try to eat them. I recently watched a show about dolphin cubs, and right in the midst of some playful underwater frolicking, a hyena shows up in full scuba gear, paddling over to threaten the safety of the young. I'm starting to think that the camera crews just bring a hyena with them, in a sack, and when it looks like things could use some jazzing up, they release it.

I haven't seen a documentary about hyena cubs yet, but I bet some hyena tries to eat them, too. If there is such a documentary, it should be called "Hyenas - The Assholes of the Wild."

Anyway, as the animals progress from extremely cute babies to unlawfully cute young adults, there's always a period where they are shown wrestling and playing and grappling with each other. We learn that it's more than just cute behavior, though, for at this point, the narrator will unerringly say something like "But this playing serves more of a purpose than it may seem. The cubs are learning valuable skills they will need later as adults."

It's true, too. Playful wrestling as cubs translates into ripping the belly out of something as adults, which we see near the end of the show, right before the narrator blames me for the shrinking habitat of the lion/bear/dolphin/mitochondria. But he blames me in a soothing voice, so I don't mind.

Still, when I hear about this play-as-survival theory, I always think about my childhood, and try to determine if I learned anything during playtime that has helped me later in life. After some calculating, I have broken down my past playtime activities into categories, and the percentage of time I engaged in each of them:

Running Around Pretending I Could Fly And Project Power Beams From My Hands Like A Superhero: 64%

Getting My a** Kicked By Bigger Kids: 30%

Blowing Bubbles In Milk: 4%

Smashing Matchbox Cars With A Hammer: 2%

Hm. Well, I don't see any of these activities being beneficial to my older life, except perhaps getting my a** kicked, which has prepared me for the psychological and spiritual pantsing I get on a daily basis at work. Still, it might not qualify as play, because in no way did I, nor do I yet, enjoy it, so I may have to rethink its inclusion here.

In retrospect, my childhood should have been spent like this:

Pretending to Fix Copier Jams: 59%

Waiting for A Make-Believe Bus: 28%

Explaining to My Imaginary Co-Workers How To Save Something To Their [A:] Drive, For The Fiftieth ******** Time: 10%

Learning to Smile Politely: 2%

Running From Hyenas: 1%

Easy Money
Anyone got a License to kill?

In an irrefutable sign of the apocalypse, Curious George is on the brink of a nationwide terror spree, er, theatrical release as I type this. Odds are that as you're reading this, it's raining frogs and the gutters of your home run red with the crimson juices of splattered amphibians (unless tattered clumps of froggy skin are clogging them up, in which case I recommend a lenght of garden hose and hearty lung power for some good old-fashioned siphoning). What does this all mean? For starters, you can expect to see me halloping around on my pale horse just about any day now. Also, the creative forces in our world have all been expended and have resorted to the worst sort of self-cannibalism imaginable. Should the world last just long enough, I fully expect to see a 3D Sensurround release of Nanny and the Professor any day now. And Games? Games are no less immune to the rehashed-license syndrome reducing our once proud threatres with a $10 cover charge. Enter the Matrix, Law & Order, CSI, Celebrity Deathmatch, The Seven Samurai-for the love of God, there's even been a game based on Skittles. Not just based on candy, but on candy utterly bereft of the gameplay promise that even a Three Musketeers bar would imply. Well, I for one am utterly sick of being kept off the licensed-property money train. I've got just as viciously hobbled a mind as the half-wit responsible for the American Idol game. Punch my ticket, conductor-these morally bankrupt game ideas should secure me a seat for a relaxing ride on those golden rails!

Deliverance
A veritable treasure trove of varied gameplay, this property's got it all: bow hunting, white-water rafting, fighting, and a PaRappa the Rapper-style banjo duel. An innovative audio-feedback system in tandem with specialized bundled headset grades your sincerity as you "squeal like a pig," determining how long the game's signature minigame is prolonged. You don't need a purty mouth to enjoy it-but it helps!

The Beverly Hillbillies meet Black Emmanuelle
This cross promotional gem isn't so much a game as it is The Most Perfect Thing Ever. Frankly, I don't need a whole game of this-just some rough charcoal sketches by even a marginally talented artist would come close to scratching this incessant burning itch on my brain. Either someone satisfies these perfectly understandable longings or I'll have to resort to DIY trepanning. Again. Really, is this so much to ask?

The Passion of the Christ
Umm....bad call.

2000 Maniacs
The blood-soaked world of drive-in impressario Herschell Gordon Lewis might seem an odd (and somewhat redundant) subject for a game, but this one's got a hook: It's edutainment! A math game for kiddies that plays off the "2000" in the title to make numbers fun. If hunky Todd loses a pint of blood every 30 seconds after an unanesthetized operation by a passel of bloodthirsty freaks, how many minutes of watching the maniacs consume his still-living kidneys in front of his horrified face must he endure before mercifully transpiring and having his corpse desecrated in the most horrible ways imaginable? Hot jets of blood making learning fun!

The Three Musketeers
Are you like me? Probably not, and you're not probably thanking whatever you call God for that right about...now. Fair enough. But are you like me in that you've always wondered why the Three Musketeers fought with swords and not actual muskets? It makes no sense: Would you create a candy bar called Benjy the Axe Murdering Pinhead and put a normal-headed girl named Mavis who kills with a whip made out of razor wire on the wrapper? This action game finally addresses that wrong, and even better, it's child friendly, dodging the dour prudery of the ESRB by having all the excessively musketed victims bleed creamy nougat! Oh, irony, tho art delicious-and so milk chocolately!

In a world utterly bankrupt of originality, these ideas are positively foolproof, and I've got more-you wouldn't believe how gut-bustingly hilarious the Requiem for a Dream multiplayer game is. Yet one question remains:

When do I get my money?