The Frustrated Bunny

Technology. Science. Politics. Geek. Etc.

Category: Random

Personal / Random

Diablo 3 beta slated for Q3 2011, release in Q4

Several sources are reporting that Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaim announced on Blizzard-Activision’s quarterly financial conference call that the external beta for Diablo 3 will open in Q3 of this year. That’s calendar quarter, not fiscal quarter, by the way, meaning that the external beta could begin as early as July 1 (but as late as September 30). Internal “friends and family” beta testing has also reportedly already begun. Morhaim also announced that they’re targeting the launch for Q4 of this year (between October 1 and December 31), but Blizzard is currently not making any promises about that. If you’ve been...

Random

How to: Protect yourself in severe weather

Following a series of severe storms that tracked across the southern U.S. earlier this week, many of the comments on my Twitter feed by friends affected by the weather led me to a somewhat surprising realization: many people living in areas where severe weather is common aren’t really sure what actions are necessary or they aren’t sure which actions are best to take in their specific situation. In this post, I will discuss several basic things about severe weather (specifically spring and summer thunderstorms), how to prepare, and how to react. Most of the advice I give will be fairly...

Random

Disaster relief donations: Stretching your donation dollar

Donations toward disaster relief following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan are much lower so far than they have been for recent, comparable catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. According to CNN, four-day donation totals for Japanese relief are approximately $25 million, compared to $150 million for Haiti and $108 for Hurricane Katrina. Several explanations have been offered for this, including so-called “disaster fatigue,” where people who would ordinarily give feel tapped out from all of the major disasters that have happened around the world in the last few years. The CNN article also provides other hypotheses...

Conventions / Random

Surviving Convention Season: Part 4 – Conventioning on the Cheap

I’ve been seeking a good topic for a new part to this series for awhile (see parts one, two and three), and a discussion on Facebook finally yielded the idea I’ve been looking for. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before; I even touched on in briefly in part one: how to go to a convention when you really can’t afford to go to a convention.  The first option is actually quite obvious: go to free conventions.* Some free conventions, such as MomoCon (which is among the largest free conventions in North America), are fairly large and...

Personal / Random / Technology

Cutting the cable

My experience with cable, why I canceled and what I use now instead When I moved into my apartment in 2006, I signed up for high-speed internet and digital cable with Comcast. In Atlanta, the only other cost-effective alternative is DSL through AT&T bundled with satellite through (I believe) DirecTV, and it really wasn’t as good of a deal. Not to mention, because of the location of my apartment, mounting a satellite dish would have been a problem. So in short, Comcast was really my only option. Over the four years that I was a Comcast subscriber, the problems I...