Monday Mission: Birthday v. 3.2

Birthday is a utility program that runs on pre-scheduled dates to remind your system of its ultimate mortality. It also functions as a maintenance program by highlighting the positives and negatives of the system's functioning.

Birthday v. 3.2 can only be installed on an Andrea system currently running Birthday v. 3.1. Attempting to install Birthday 3.2 on a system running an earlier version of Birthday may cause the system to crash irreparably. Systems other than the Andrea model will have their own Birthday programs to install; please ensure you have purchased the correct Birthday program for your system type!

Installation

This update will install automatically on the one-year anniversary of v. 3.1. No action is required on your part; your credit card will autmoatically be debited.

New Features

v. 3.2 of Birthday is packaged with Frances v. 0.33, which enhances the happiness and contentment of the system overall. While it does slow down processing time and increase the system's fatigue, we feel that these issues are more than made up for by the excellent features and programming of the Frances package. Birthday v. 3.1 was packaged with Frances v. 0.23, and while this was an excellent program, a year's worth of advances are more than reflected in the new release. You will especially notice an increase in Chatter and Bloggable Conversations, Scampering, Make Believe, Sharing and JOY.

Fixes and New Bugs

Unfortunately, the software developers are still struggling with entropic decay of the Andrea system. Some fixes have been completed, but these are outweighed with new bugs.

Fixes

v. 3.2 of Birthday comes equipped with an install of Self-Maintenance 1.1, which impels the system to confront its entropic decay and take action to preserve the energy and form remaining to the system. As the effects of entropic decay are not yet as pronounced as we anticipate they will be for Birthdays v. 5.5 to 7.5, the effects of Self-Maintenance 1.1 might be slight.

Birthday v. 3.2, due to the greater demands it places on the system, must be installed during a week of vacation. Do not attempt to attend work while Birthday 3.2 is installing.

Birthday v. 3.2 contains an optional moduleswhich we strongly encourage users to install: Ambition 2x. This will help to compensate for the entropic decay inherent in the system. Unlike previous versions of Ambition, 2x is more selective and can be applied with greater focus to more meaningful endeavours.

Previous versions of Birthday, especially v.s 0.5 through 2.9, were always accompanied by snowstorms. However, the global installation of Climate Change v. 20.5.0 has drastically reduced the likelihood of this event. While Climate Change's effects on the Andrea system (and most other systems) will overall be negative, we anticipate that the lack of snowstorm accompanying future installations of Birthday will be positive.

New Bugs

New issues the developers are already aware of and working to address include the following:

- v. 3.2 has a more pronounced grey streak than earlier versions.

- v. 3.2 has been infected with a virus previously known as Wrinkles, but recently renamed Fine Lines by the cosmetics industry. This is only a nuisance virus and will not affect the system's functioning. No known fixes exist for Wrinkles/Fine Lines, but several developers offer possible fixes at prices ranging from $20 to $2000.

- This version also has decoupled from the Marital software suite. However, completion of the decoupling is not anticipated to be complete until sometime after the installation of Birthday v. 3.3. This will affect system functioning in various ways. For a full list of changes and modifications, please see the release notes to Marital Suite 8.5.

- As a result of the decoupling, the installation of Birthday v. 3.2 differs in important respects from the several versions immediately preceding it. For example, Family Dinner has been replaced by Girls' Night Out v. 1.0.

Remaining Known Issues

Birthday v. 3.2 has several known issues remaining from previous versions:

- The installation of Birthday is still accompanied by a shopping spree. We recommend users save up in advance of the installation.

- The consumption of large quantities of snack foods still accompanies the installation of Birthday, though thanks to Self-Maintenance 1.1 you should notice that this is less pronounced than in earlier versions.

- Birthday v. 3.2 does not noticeably decrease the print-addiction of the Andrea system. Scrapbooking, photography, and internet surfing are also not affected. As a result of the decoupling, television watching has been drastically reduced.

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(Today's mission is to write release notes. Jennifer from Under the Ponderosas has helpfully supplied links for anyone who isn't a tech writer in their regular life:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/aa740486.aspx
http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/arch_bbedit825.shtml
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/about/releasenotes.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q230293/
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/8/releasenotes.html

Explained thusly:

"When a software company issues a new piece of software (version 1.0), sometimes they let it go with a few known, minor bugs; sometimes a customer will discover a bug. So then the company will fix the problem and release an "update" or "patch" to the software free of charge. The software update (version 1.0.1) will have documentation explaining what the update is for. These are the release notes.

"The structure of release notes will vary but they generally include:

"A very short overview of what the software does, usually two lines;
"A list of the minimum system requirements or an explanation of how to install the software update;
"A list of the new features or bug fixes in the release;
And any remaining known issues."

I'll be back with mine shortly.)

Posted by Andrea at March 26, 2007 7:02 AM under Monday Mission

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