Reminiscing of an older age of computer games - Part II

Well....I thought I'd moved on from this subject that I posted back in April but something in me this morning made me just do a quick Google for Kings Quest. Let me just say I came back with much more then I had planned on.....

For starters I found a website named Sarien.net- Instant adventure gaming. Let me just say that this is flippin' sweet. They have the following classic adventure games all available to play right on their website:

• Gold Rush
• Kings Quest I, II, III
• Leisure Suit Larry I
• Police Quest I & II
• The Black Cauldron
• Sarien Studio

I've already tried out Police Quest for a little to long today. It is just out right amazing. I did run in to a couple small bugs but nothing that disturbed game play. Heck from what I've read on their website there is even multiplayer they've added to these old games so that you can see other players playing the game and talk to each other. Plus you can change to different avatars. The people over at Q42 (the makers of Sarien.net) did an amazing job porting these games to the web. I definitely give my kudos and recommend any of my readers to take some time and read the "about" section of their site and how these ports came to be. Sounds like a really awesome company.

Also, I just found another site that is dedicated in taking the old Sierra classics and remaking them with a change to graphics & sounds/speech: AGDInteractive Studios.

From what I've seen so far they have Kings Quest I & II, and also Quest for Glory II. They also have an in house title named Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchmans Mine. I only had a few minutes to try Kings Quest I but it seemed very nicely done. I'm looking forward to digging more in to their ports as well.

I just cannot express how happy I am to see these classics sticking around so many years later and am very appreciative of all the hard work the people of these companies have done to keep them alive.

Let me know what you think of these....maybe we'll meet up on some online Police Quest or something :)

Telecom & IT....the North vs. the South...

A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago why I hadn't been posting any new blogs. The answer came to me fairly quickly...."I don't feel like I've got anything to really offer readers that hasn't already been said somewhere else". Well after a short discussion and some questions from his side about some telecom information I began to realize that there is actually plenty I can give to readers. Most is likely out there somewhere but hopefully I can give a side to it that perhaps will help people.

I have a unique presence in today's telecom and IT world. I literally work in both of these worlds on an every day basis. I don't necessarily believe I'm an expert in either field but I do believe that I have a moderately strong amount of knowledge. I've been working with computers in some sort of way since the late 1980's and in 2000 I started working for a wireless internet provider. In 2003 I moved on to a CLEC where I was lucky enough to be trained in the world of Bell Standards by some really great old Ma Bell techs. Over the years I've taken that training they provided and applied it to different positions I've held from being a field tech, to a lead trouble screener, and now to an engineering position.

Even though with SIP, IP-PBX's, etc the IT and Telecom fields have been merged together for quite some time I've come to see that there is still a thin gap. A North vs. South so to say. Many times I will hear fellow telecom workers tell me "well you can tell that system was designed by a computer guy". And then I've heard the other side as well. Problem is that many times though both sides are trying to accomplish the same thing there is still a cultural gab between the two that sometimes creates issues in how things should really work.

Now with many IT administrators in today's world also being requested to take care of telecom equipment things just get that much more complicated.

So.....the point going forward on my front. I am going to try and get a post out weekly that has to do with things that I believe are necessary to be known both on a telecommunications side of things and the IT as well. Things going from simple cabling guidelines to deeper explanations of things like QoS on data networks and how they apply to voice IP networks.

I don't have a full schedule of things I'm going to get posted but I'd love to hear any feed back you the readers have on this subject and even better things that maybe you'd like to have addressed. I know I don't have a large amount of readers at this point but please...pass the word along if you know someone in a situation where maybe they've been thrown telecom equipment they have to figure out or maybe are just looking for some general information and I'll do what I can to assist in answering any questions you all have.

Plus I'm going to work on getting a couple of past Bell technicians to possibly write up some small blogs to help get some of their infinite knowledge out on the web.