VPN Interests Me

Today’s topic is how the heck I got 8 viruses on my computer today. I got rid of all 8 with Anti-VIR. My guess is when I leave my cable connection active – viruses come on my computer and download more viruses. I was wondering why my connection was used all the time. It’s a pain in the butt to have to start Anti-VIR every two days to see how many I got. Viruses make my browser “not respond”, and then my computer completely freezes. I have enough RAM to physically sort out the unnecessary CPU usage. This time I only have 1.65 GB of MP3s on my computer and from what I know no one can add a virus thread onto a MP3 file….yet.

In college today our class was learning about physical topologies. (bus, ring, star, extended star, mesh) Extended stars are the most common topology. What confuses me is Ethernet does not always need TCP/IP addresses to run. Ethernet can also run on token ring using the MAC address. The man who supposedly teaches the curriculum (whom I had last year in Micro Operating Systems) taught us about Intranet (not Internet) which is a virtual personal network (VPN). I find VPNs interesting. But I also agree more with the ‘other’ kind of Internet. The kind that everyone uses... Instant messengers are very much like VPNs in many respects although still apart of TCP/IP. They have a file transfer protocol, text messaging to any node in the world with an email address using the TCP/IP protocol. Well if not using a web browser, email clients such as Microsoft Outlook uses SMTP or POP3 protocols. It can be either.

I learned that satellite transmission are in fact TCP/IP signals that are, of course, sent out in space to arrive to a different host satellite so it goes back to ground. When I think of satellite….I think of Hawaii. I mean they can’t all get high-speed Internet on that tiny group of islands thus they need satellites to access Internet unless an anonymous Internet user goes through 56k dialup. We also had an interesting conversation on how to define “baud” which is actually an alternate term used by networks specialist to describe bandwidth in the old days. It’s really easy to figure out – 56K divided by 4 equals 14 baud. Everything is converted into bits and bytes. Storage and memory are KB, MB, GB and bandwidth and through-put speed are described as bits, kilobits, megabits, gigabits or baud. Not baud so much anymore.

I can’t believe I’m agreeing with people who say anything that’s point blank stupid. And some of what they say is – so I don’t know why they ask such silly questions. I would rather not have this part true (where adults can shout out random comments at the teacher), but I fear I have no other choice. I can not flunk this class for the very same reason I can not just ignore everyone. It’s just wrong and CISCO is very interactive in it’s nature. You must interact with the teacher to stay ahead of the party in my opinion. For example, Jeff gives instructions, and those other people in class confirm what the teacher said. Why? If they would just listen….they wouldn’t have had to ask in the first place. I don’t think anyone there is a moron…at least I try not to say that out-loud.

Now I shall speak gratefully about my growing RPG collection. If reading this bores you – please stop reading. I went into Game Stop to look around I knew I was either going to get La La Pucelle : Tactics or Phantom Brave. Game Stop had both – apparently the publisher of Phantom Brave published a limited amount of this game for North America. I liked this game but I was 5 dollars short or I’ve would of owned it. A used copy of La Purée Tactics just came in and I swiped it before anyone else could. The reason why I found out about Nippon Ichi was when I bought an odd game called Disagea - Hour of Darkness at Toyriffic 6 months ago. I looked like an import and I was half right. It’s an Import translated into the wonderful language that Americans use very day, the one and only English. IGN.com said it was a great game – 9.2 out of 10. La Pucelle Tactics got a final score of 8.8 out of 10. Phantom Brave got 8.6 out of 10. All three got a 5.0 or 6.0 in the graphics although all scored above 8.5 in actual game play. I own 46 PS2 game cases now. I am sure that all three of these games are going to be very hard to find in the future. I counted today, and I have a total of thirteen RPGS for Playstation 2. I couldn’t take the game and run – I would have gotten arrested. Besides, looting the game store is pretty bad. I like RPGs because I like the action time battle system and the traditional turn-based battle system equally. Star Ocean 3 is actually the first game that allows me to choose which one I prefer I hate being hustled. The game store teller asked me if he could help count my change – I had like 10 dollars in cents. Toyriffic told me that they do not wish to talk about Game Stop. Game Stop and Toyriffic are obviously in the same business. It’s MY KIND of business! However, it is obvious that these stores give gamers a chance to own a game that isn’t at the local Wal-Mart or Target or Shop Ko. I believe game specialty stores are paradise for old school game collectors. I happen to think I was one once, but now I’m having second thoughts on this old school collecting thing. I don’t play them – they’re worthless dead weight and I don’t play them – right? So, therefore, I conclude to only spend money on videogames that I play for week or more.

Anyway, I tried out Star Ocean: Til the End of Time for the first time. The intro was really good, it’s better than Star Trek, love the imagination that went into the metropolis. From what I heard off IGN.com the graphics were a little dated, but they looked fine to me. IT is comparable to that of Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga. I want to know if this game is another Xenosaga. Believe it or not Xenogears was developed by Squaresoft, but Xenosaga moved to Namco instead. Namco plans to make six episodes. Otherwise, Squaresoft would have had three Science-fiction RPGs. I think everyone on the face of the planet knows what the 3rd one is. I shall not comment no more.

It is actually not long ago I first owned Grandia II, technically my first RPG. I bought Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in 2001 which is technically my 3rd. My second is Skies of Arcadia. N64 was the last console to buy if you wanted a RPGs in your game collection (speaking for myself) unless you wanted to own a great game such as Ocarina of Time as I have. It’s no secret it’s a well developed RPG. It was above average on all levels where other RPGs at a time were above average on just a few levels. In 1998, I can think of only Final Fantasy 7 or Xenogears which succeed in being fully 3D. As more average RPGs are released, more of them become above average and thus we have what’s called the “sleeper hits”. Sleeper hits, of course, are games that achieved technical achievement (graphics, gamplay, sound, presentation, story), but never had the publicity that high profile RPGs none other than Final Fantasy X had, but in reality it’s whatever make me happy, of course, which is why I take time to read multiple reviews on my new videogame strategy plan. It’s buying only RPGs above 8.0. Pretty simple…I think so.

This week I almost quit writing for Modblog. The problem with Modblog is I don’t know anyone, therefore, it is very hard to write to an audience which aren’t into the technical side of computers. My blog certainly attracts both the technical crowd as well as gamers, but not as much as technical geeks. I like putting my opinions on a public site, not because I’m always right, but because the point of the website is to attract attention. The web address doesn’t matter – it’s the content on the site. For example, this blog shows on the 3rd page on MSN Search Engine if you search keywords, “Ian’s Blog”. If you search keywords, “Ian’s Smashing Good Blog Site” with Yahoo, Google, or MSN Search, it’ll show up as number one! I only start searching websites through MSN Search a month ago. It clearly has everything that Google and Yahoo has, and my site appears on it. Oddly enough, if I type keywords “Toyriffic” into Google’s textbox. , this web log shows up on the second search page.

As for review sites…I’m have a little problem reading. Different gamers like different things…this is obvious. For every 8/10 and 9/10 there also has to be someone with a 4/10 or 5/10 rating. A good example of this is Gamefaqs.com. Go there and read opinionated stereotyped gamers whom write 3 pages reviewing their favorite games. If I had that time to write a review – I’d rather just read one of IGN or Game Revolution’s reviews. It’s hard to find a guy/gal on Gamefaqs whom really written a lot of reviews. Although Gamefaqs is a community site even more so than IGN - IGN has a very large discussion board with over a million signed up who post 1000+ comments every day. Apparently, they are the only one besides Gameshark.com or Gamespy which employees writers to work for them. Gamefaqs is known for it’s game walkthroughs – best place on the Internet to get a videogame walkthrough these days. There is also Neoseeker.com. I prefer Gamefaqs which I’ve used since 1999.