October 27th
What is a "real gamer"? These days people like to toss around that they are this ideal, while claiming x is inferrior and isn't touched by a "real gamer". This topic here is primarily going to consist of video gamers. I scoured the internet for a concise definition, but all I found was a wide range of differeing opinions. The most annoying ones were often ones written by some asshole that was more than likely a contraceptive mishap. By that, I mean I see things like "Well, only Real Gamers have an XBOX!". These very same people often tout the graphical horse-power and processor power, or they list a string of games that they feel are far superrior on that system of choice.
I've seen other cock-grabbers define a "real gamer" as someone who plays competitively. The definition of competivite in this scenario is very broad. It ranges from some bullshit term coined by some pathetically slovenly excuse of DNA called "cyber-athelete" to people in "clans" or "guilds" where a bunch of faggots circle-jerk over how awesome they are. It doesn't stop there. Other people claim that a real gamer is one who goes through every game they have, trying to achieve some predertimined goals of their own. Of course, this is often said by the pompous-ass ninnies that I describe earlier in this paragraph.
If I were to gather anything from my "research", I could only assume that "real gamers" are elitist jerks that like to look at pretty pictures. A real gamer believes that they are totally awesome, and the games they play and the system they play them on are far superrior to everything else. Being a real gamer isn't about having fun, perhaps enjoying innovative ideas or platforms. Gameplay? They don't want anything new, they want tried and true.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with "tried true" up to a certain point, but it seems to me that people who proclaim to be a real gamer don't want any thing more. They want the same package with new and improved looks. The second something different comes out, they tear it apart like some rabid wolverine. They fail to perhaps realize the importance or significance of what it is. Sure, it might not have been executed properly, or has yet to be fully utilized, but just because it's new doesn't mean it's bad.
To me, a real gamer is not exactly any of those things above. I think that a real gamer enjoys a game for everything that it has to offer and can appreciate what it is in reference to "the bar". They don't just stick with one aspect and claim the game is suddenly far superrior in every way because of that one aspect. Simply put, a real gamer enjoys gaming for what it is, fun.
October 9th
In case you've been dead, read this.
Copyright doesn't have to be a tricky subject. I do think it's wrong for people to download something and not (eventually) pay for it if they like it. However, I do not think it's fair for someone to be forced to waste the time to buy something before being able to try it and learn that they do not like it. Demo's are often not good enough, as the full version is often a vastly different experience. I have often tried before I bought. When I did not like the product, it was quickly removed from my computer, never to be seen again. When I did like the product, I made it a point to buy the product. Sometimes it was years before I'd buy it, as I did not have the funds, or because I didn't like the price, but I did make it a point to buy.
Yet this is illegal. Consumers are expected to potentially buy a pile of shit and thorougly enjoy how the smell permates through every orifice of their nostrils. If that's the kind of experience you like to endorse, well, there is no hope for whatever people want to label as their "brain".
I fully endorse creators getting due compensation, but I also fully endorse the rights of consumers.
October 3rd
And How Exactly Are We Supposed to Make Money?
I don't exactly understand how the company I work for stays in business. The profit margins can't be much of anything. We spend so much money trying to please customers that we sometimes ending up losing more money than we made from them. This becomes especially true when I'm dealing with the Q.A. department.
Here are a few examples!
Backstory: The complaint the customer has is that the control "Doesn't Work". It's a very non-descriptive complaint that we receive all the time.
[Me]: We should deny this warranty. Right here is an obvious sign that this control was dropped, and thusly, damaged (points at what is very obvious and should have never came to me).
[Someone in Q.A.]: What? What do you mean?
[Me]: See this face plate here? Yeah, this black thing on the front? See how it's shifted in one direction instead of being centered?
[Someone in Q.A.]:Yeah...? What's your point?
[Me]: (Sighs) Here, watch... (I attempt to forcefully push the face plate back to where it needs to be, and cannot.) See that? A great deal of force, more than that I can muster has bent the screws and plastic that are holding this in place, and caused this to be pushed over. I know these don't leave the final assembly area looking like this. When my tech see's shit like this when he goes to reverify the control, he will fix it. Besides, you can't even reasonably connect the handset into this. Their complaint is that the control "doesn't work", which it does by the way. Their complaint isn't shipping damage, or this face plate being shifted.
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, that doesn't mean anything!
[Me]: What?!(Shakes head) What?
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, how do we know that this wasn't damaged during shipping, or from our shipping department?
[Me]: Well, we don't. But here's the thing. If they were concerned about that, they would have claimed shipping damage like any other customer has done in the past.. Their claim, as this paper says, and as I stated a moment earlier, was that the control doesn't work. I also told you that this control works. I'm claiming that we should revoke their warranty because they damaged it. You very well know that we can't replace these faceplates. We have no means to acquire them from the original manufacturer without going James Bond on one of their facilities.
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, there's clearly no proof that they damaged it.
[Me]: Well yes, if you keep ignoring everything that I'm saying, the proof might not appear to exist. You are a fucking moron. (Walks away.)
Backstory: This control arrives with a hole in the lid. The customer is claiming shipping damage.
[Me]: This control here, the one where they're claiming shipping damage, well, uh, the voltage drop across this contactor isn't within the specifications. The only way for this to be possible is if the control was used. We absolutely do not send them out otherwise. Also, going by the date code on the contactor, this one was one I replaced when it was here the first time for repair. You see how dirty it looks? The bolts and nuts on this just don't become this dirty just by sitting around. It has to be used. One last thing, the hardware on the contactor was loose. This only happens through moderate to heavy use. Any contactor that's brand new won't have this problem.
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, how do we know it wasn't damaged during shipping?
[Me]: Is that a serious question?
[Someone in Q.A.]: Yeah...
[Me]: Well... it's very obvious that this control was used, used enough to get this control a little dirty and make this contactor's voltage drop marginally out of spec. So, if there was shipping damage from the start, why would they use it? The obvious answer is that they wouldn't. I've never heard of anyone using something that was damaged and claiming shipping damage. This is proof enough to deny their warranty all together.
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, we can't prove that they damaged it. It very well could have been damaged during shipping, used it, and then decided that they didn't like it being this way. Besides, they're a big customer, so even if we do try to fight it, upper management will just give them the warranty anyway.
[Me]: I don't understand how we can expect to make money this way. They cleary had used this. It's reasonable to conclude from the evidence here that they damaged it and are trying to screw us. We need to start putting our foot down.
[Someone in Q.A.]: Well, there's nothing that I can do!
[Me]: You're already doing nothing. You guys always do nothing. So what's different?
Oh, and dealing with customer service is always fun. Today was a good example of some of the very same I put up with every day with them. There were four controls sitting at the final assembly area of mine. They have been there for a month. The reason for that is that we were waiting for one control that another area does to finish doing it. I got tired of seeing those controls there and went to the appropriate team leader to ask him what was taking so long. He whips out his daily report, scans it over. Well, that control is not showing up on there. This means that it was shipped some time ago. So I sign off the paperwork, write a note on it stating that the control that's not with the order was already shipped and who to speak to about it if they had any questions, and sent it over to customer service.
Well, the paperwork manages to find it's way back to me. One of the other techs was in the area, and customer service told them to bring it back to me, and why. Their first reason was that I didn't mark with control was unrepairable (there was one that we couldn't do anything with due to it being stuck in the case). The other reason was that the order wasn't finished, meaning it was missing the control that was already shipped.
The one control that was unrepairable was pretty easy to spot. It was dirty, missing the bolts, and it had an unrepairable tag with it. It was a sure sign that it was not repairable. By looking, just merely looking, they could have deduced that. Apparently, if it's not written down exactly what's unrepairable, they charge the customer's account. Even thinking about it makes me speechless. I can't really describe how appalling the utter laziness and stupidity is. The icing on the cake was the note on the paper work that they didn't bother to read. I had written it there so they could not bother me after I signed off on the paper work.
If those assholes would have taken one minute to just proactively force some thought power, it could have saved me five minutes of my time. My position is more important than there's, and thusly, wasting my time is a big waste of company time. Things like this are a common occurance every day. Every day...
September 22nd
Valve has recently released the "orange box" for pre-order. Inside this box that's orange are some of Valve's upcoming games, and two games that have been released. Valve had originally planned to release a "black box" version; a box that is missing those two games that have been already released. This other box that's less full was originally planned to go into stores, but then Valve retracted that statement. They then decided that their loyal customers would only get the black box version if they bought it through STEAM.
While there's no official statement, I'm not sure if there will be some cheaper package on the release date. Valve's pricing scheme seems out of whack. I envisioned the pricing scheme like so: TF2 - $10, EP2 - $20, Portal - 10$. It was stated that if you bought EP2, you'd get TF2 and Portal with them. This is what I'd call the package deal. I was expecting that to cost around $30. Valve's pricing game has gone double of what I expected if you were to buy each one seperately. I just think that's a little extreme. Yes, it is three games. One is just merely a redesign of Narbacular Drop. One is just an online only game that is a merem upgrade from it's predecessor. One is just a six hour single player game.
People are gobbling up the orange box package because they saw how Valve priced things and then said, "durh, this is a really good price!". Every single one of those people has forgotten one basic principle of economics: the customer sets the price. The person selling it can have their own price, but if people don't like it, it will not sell. Here, we have a classic symptom of people forgetting that. They've forgotten that they can set the price floor. Very few people have actually looked at the numbers and said, "that's just a ridiculous amount of money!". Let's face it, you're getting 3 half games. That equates into 1 and a half games.
Another thing that annoys me is that people are saying that Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 are "free" with the purchase of the orange box. No, they're not free. They were equated into the pricing they had set up. Just because they say that they're "free" doesn't really mean they are. I for one certainly don't want to pay for two games that I already have. I can't give them away. Everyone I know already has the games, or they don't like the Half-Life series.
Black-box please!
September 1st
[22:23] Kneo24: Keanu Reeves needs to learn how to put some emotion in his voice at the right time.
[22:23] Kneo24: I'm watching Speed, and when he's obviously angry, his voice is calm.
[22:23] Kneo24: What kind of name is Keanu anyway?
[22:25] nukeade: His dad was retarded so that was the best he could do at spelling Ken.
August 26th
Mirror, Mirror...
Reflection is an interesting topic. When you look into a mirror, what do you see? Do you physically see what everyone else sees? Or do you see what you want to see? How about when you see pictures of yourself? View recordings? Is there a different experience for you, an unfamiliar experience? Are there really a thousand different words you'd like to use to describe how the light is hitting your retinas and how your brain will eventually interpret that input?
I think about self-improvement all the time. Sometimes I might make an effort to act upon it, and other times I may not. It's hard for me to say that I'm really big on self-improvement. Ask any person that has taken the time to get to know me. They wouldn't say that's a true characteristic of me. At least I think that's what they would say. Even so, it creeps into my mind every day.
It's hard for me to improve upon myself for a couple of reasons. The first being that the people who know me the best rarely want to divulge any sort of information that would be useful. I usually hear the "oh you're fine". Seriously. It's bullshit. Everyone has flaws. I personally used to always think that my voice is a little high pitched and whiny. That's something I've always wanted to improve upon. How does one go about making their voice sound naturally deeper? One day I was just casually playing with my digital camera, musing to myself certain aspects of it. A few days later I go to clean off some test pictures I had taken with it. Lo' and behold there's a few video clips! I download them to my computer to figure out what the hell they were doing on there. I open up the first one and I hear a strange voice...
It's my voice! I am incredibly tone-deaf when it comes to myself. I had honestly never taken notice of it before. When I hear myself speak, I hear a voice that's completely different than what you will hear. It was nice to discover that, as I no longer had to waste time in that area, trying to figure something out.
How about when I look into a mirror? What do I actually see? Is the picture I see better or worse than what I'd see in a photograph? Personally, sometimes it's one or the other.
The second reason it's hard for me to improve upon myself is because I sometimes have an unhealthy level of skepticism. I sometimes seriously question my views about myself. And maybe, just maybe I do it way too much.
Ultimately, I just find this topic to be a little amusing. Hollywood and the media are being blamed for causing people to have poor self-image, yet in turn the very same Hollywood and media will tell us that it's their (Hollywood and the media's) fault for causing poor self-image, and that we all should be happy with ourselves. I find such vagueness to be laughable. If everyone were just to wake up one day and say, "Self, I'm ok with you", I believe people would eventually degrade. People would stop with self-improvement. I do believe some people have an unhealthy obsession with their physical flaws, which in turn become major character flaws. That is certainly a shame. However, I feel that it's important to constantly evaluate yourself. We should all strive to become better people overall; this includes looks and personality. No one likes looking at someone that is detestable, that their appearances makes them go "ugh!". No one enjoys being around someone where their personality elicits the same type of response.
I have been very guilty of putting this off for far too long. About one month ago I decided to put my foot down and commit myself to it. I realize things like this take time, and I haven't seen many results, but the ones that I've noticed are pleasing.
I'm ok.
August 25th
"Thrown Away, Have I Been Thrown Away?"
I've been having some very mixed feelings about this topic lately. Melissa has once again just pushed me off to the side. She was calling me about four times a week, and then she tells me she started to date someone. After that conversation, I haven't heard anything from her in about a month, until last night. She "txted" me, asking if I was around. I just ignored it. The thing is, she does this every time she starts dating someone. I become oh so not important to her anymore. I'm just seemingly a stray thought in the back of her mind.
I could potentially attempt to communicate with her, but when someone is ignoring you, you don't keep nagging them. It's just creepy. This isn't the first time she has done this, and I honestly don't know if it would be the last time she'll ever do this. Whatever it may be, I think I'm finally done. I don't believe I need her in my life anymore. I think that this time I can do it. Letting go is a hard thing to do. It's probably even harder for me because I rarely let anything go.
I feel used. That's what it is. I feel used! It sometimes appears she only talks to me because I can make her feel good about herself, and that she likes the idea of liking me. She's all take, take, and more take. Where's the give? With my other friends, it is a two way street. We give, and we take. It's not a problem. I just don't like feeling used. She could say a few nice things to me every now and then; throw me a fucking bone. I'm an idiot. I'd probably would have kept going back if she would've done that. Every time we would have a conversation, it was always about her. I'd just tune her out while she babbled at me. It's all I could manage after a while. It became pretty obvious to me that whenever I'd take a moment to talk about myself, the tone of her voice with her responses were disinterest.
I don't know if I'm making the right decision here. It's not like she was always like this, and she still isn't always like this, but now I see it increasing; I honestly don't know if I can foresee it diminishing.
Before you let the world mess up your soul, try to be the girl you once were."
August 11th
I haven't played Stepmania in a few months. I decided it's time to start playing again. An hour to two hours a day on light difficulty is a pretty decent workout, and most of all, really really fun. My one pad started to fail, big time. It first started with the A button, which I used as my start button. I was annoyed, but decided to map it to the start button on the control box to have that button do the same effect. A nuisance, but it worked. Shortly after that, the up arrow would intermittently work. Being the type that fixes electronics for a living, I decided to delve into this pad to see how it was constructed and how it works.
The first step I took was to E-mail RedOctane to see if they could give any assistance and answer some technical questions that I had. A few days later they respond back with that they did not have access to any information that would help me out or answer my questions. I was a little peeved by this, but then thought about what I work with for a living and how it works. In reality, it's probably some other company that assembles these things. They just slap the RO label on it, and RedOctane calls it theirs. RO might make $50 from each pad sold at the most. This is not a very huge profit margin for them.
The next day I decided to start tearing this apart to find the route causes of my problems. Screw by screws, those two panels come loose. Tear this piece off, pry that piece up, I've soon found the problem for why the up arrow was intermittent. A wire had broken loose. Bummer. A little more tearing things up and I can't find the cause of the failure of my A button. The wires are there, all there. Nothing is broken. I pry more stuff up so I can follow the wire to verify the integrity of it. The wire looks fine... Getting tired of looking at the construction quality, frustrated that I can't reassemble this, I finish unscrewing and removing other parts so I have replacement parts.
I took pictures and commented on what I feel could be improved upon. You can read it by clicking here.
July 14th
June 26th
I am playing sick today. Playing as in I felt Mistress Migraine coming to floor me for the next few days, took some precautions, and ended up with only a sore throat. I didn't need to take off today, but with a week of sick time to use, there's no point in going back to work to push myself hardcore so I can get sick again. I've found the key to pulling off a good call-in for being sick is to do it as soon as you wake up. I always sound like shit when I've just woken up. Always. For now, I'll keep chewing on cough-drops.
Really though, nothing that interesting has been going on lately. I think I live to work right now, instead of work to live. I've come to terms with that and have decided this will change when I need it to. Sure, living to work is boring, but really, you can't do anything without money. I don't have any prospects right now. I'm ok with that too. (I have a few, but none of which I'm remotely interested in.) I suppose one could call this a "rut", but usually when you're stuck in that, you feel miserable. I don't feel miserable. A little bored sometimes, but not miserable. Eh, shit happens.
And as I write this up, I suddenly remember why I can never take off of work. I'm not over exaggerating here. Shit hits the fan when I'm gone. I'm sure when I go back tomorrow, I'm going to have to take care of a lot of bullshit because no one communicates with anyone.
So I've played me some Dystopia lately. Not hardcore like I used to, or even a lot of Dystopia. Just some. It's the most fun I've had in a long time. The purpose wasn't really just to play the game, but to keep current with discussions about the game on the forums. I decided to practice the heavy class some since I've really never played it before. I'd play it, but it wasn't to often. After playing the heavy class a bit I found a lot of glaring issues with the class that makes it subpar compared to the other classes and posted my well thought out analysis of whats wrong and what could possibly be done to fix it.
There's some good discussion going on, but the dev team has remained inactive since they released version 1.1. Fuzzy has been married recently and is too busy with work. Teddy has apparently dropped off the face of the planet (except for the occasional post of random shit). They now have no coders and no access to do any sort of news updates to the front page of the website. It seems strange that these guys would spend 4 years developing this mod and then just leave it. I get that they need some time off... but the release was in March. It's now Nearly July. Granted that's only four months, the lack of news and inactivity from either of them makes the mod seem dead. The other members on the dev team are still active somewhat, but without access to the front page and a lack of any coders, well, not much hope is there. They keep telling us that SOMETHING will be posted soon, but as to what, I do not know.
I think that what this boils down to is this: I feel that they should keep us informed a little better since, we, the fans, are what keeps the mod alive. This mod isn't going to be around forever. But I'd like for it to last as long as possible. If you don't keep people in the loop, you will slowly lose players.
June 6th
While my friends were extremely busy ignoring me over the weekend, I watched a few documentaries. The best one I saw was a documentary on the 2006 presidental election in Belarus. The documentary highlighted how the government uses propaganda via state-sponsored media, which is the only available form of media.
Make no mistake about it, Lukaschenko is as dictorial as they come. You can not hold power in such a manner for so long without permeating every orifice in your people's lives. Also, this can't be effectively accomplished without getting rid of dissenters in some fashion. One of the more interesting moments to watch was how they spread propaganda to the masses. There were a group of people who were independent poll watchers. Their goal was to ensure that the election was fair and that no one stuffed ballots for one side. The Belarus government hired two actors to portray as these people, claiming they were part of some group that was about resistance fighting. They badly told a story of how they were trained.
One man went into his training in detail. He claimed that he was taught how to poison the water supply. You get a bucket of water. Find a rat and kill it. Place it in the bucket of water for two weeks. After the two week period, the water should be diseased and poisoned, ready to be spilled into the water supply. The government then used this as a means to arrest every independent poll watcher, citing terrorism in the process. When these people were arrested, all the government found were the buttons indicating that they were poll watchers, and cellphones. You never know what they could've done with those cellphones and buttons!
Something like that makes me question every time you hear this and that about foiled terrorism plots in the US. How many of them are real? I can only hope that the government doesn't just make them up, but with the same token, how do we know? Remember 9/11? The government found passports of the hi-jackers two blocks away. With that information, they had this big presentation tracking people up the ranks through Al-Qaeda on who did it. Smelt like bullshit back then, and it still does today.
My point here is that propaganda is a very effective tool to garner support for whatever cause you wish to partake in, and that not every person in the government is out for your best interests.
It's a very compelling thing to watch. Not only does it make you feel for those in that country that do have their eyes open, it also shows that even in some terrible places the fainst ray will always shine brighter than expected.
May 22nd
Local Government: A How to on Epitomizing Stupidity
I was talking to Melissa on the phone (yes I am speaking to her again) and was reading my mail while she babbled on and on about some shit I've heard before. I recieved some mail from the tax collector (I've had learned to hate this woman over the years; it's a shame tar and feathering isn't commonly practiced anymore). I open it and read. In bold print at the top it states: Notice of Denial or Reduction Of Refund. I whisper to myself, "What the fuck?". Perfect timing, I guess. Melissa says, "I know, right?" and keeps droning on. Sitting there, seething in anger, I skim down the paper. I find the important part, their reason is as follows:
THERE IS A DISCREPENCY BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE LOCAL WAGES REPORTED ON YOUR W2. WITHOUT AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY YOUR WAGES ARE DIFFERENT WE ARE FORCED TO ASSESS LOCAL INCOME TAX ON THE HIGHER WAGE. AS A RESULT, YOUR REQUEST FOR REFUND HAS BEEN DENIED.
I toss it to the side for the time being, as trying to figure out how they can do that would just make me more angry.
Well about an hour or so ago I read the notice again, find my W2 and shout out, "What the fuck?". My local wages, for whatever reason was higher than my state wages by $1000 on the W2. I do some very simple math to figure out how much I should be taxed and find that the amount on my W2 matches. So apparently my refund is being with-held because I paid the appropriate tax amount. Now due to their idiotic mistake, I realized that since my employer screwed up with the W2, the local government owes me another $15. Furthermore, I get to help create an inefficiency in the local government by wasting some jackasses time by calling them and settling this issue.
But in all honesty, I had forgot about my tax refund from the local government. It was probably $10 or something. They could have probably kept that and I would have never given it a second thought. However, now I want my fucking money!
May 20th
Jerry Falwell has died. Thank Darwin! A lot of news outlets have done nothing but given fluff pieces on the mans life, not even remotely highlighting how terrible of a person he was. In case you didn't know, or have forgot, or refuse to believe that he was a hateful prosterlyzing fuck face, here's a short list:
- Hated Jews
- Hated Homosexuals
- Hated Blacks
- Hated Pro-choicers
- Hated Feminists
- Hated Children Shows
This list just highlights the fact that he hated fair and equal treatment of anyone. If you weren't a white, christian male, you were dirt beneath his feet. Or if you were children show that you could very loosely claim had homosexual ties, well...
This man deserves no respect because he died. Just because someone is dead doesn't mean that the horrible things they did should be footed to the side. Hey, Hitler is dead, who cares about his genocidal acts? He's fucking dead, let's give him some damn respect! Yes, yes, I know Falwell didn't actually do any of those terrible things so stop your bitching. The point here, for those that are too dense to understand, is that a bad man does not deserve respect.
May 12th
I was making some sort of attempt to play a game earlier and I noticed more lag than I normally receive. I alt+tab out and for some reason I look at my system tray instead of going to task manager. I had recently updated some programs and there they were, all sitting in my system tray trying to update at the same time.
Upon installation I distinctly remember seeing zero options asking me if I wanted that to happen upon install, or when I boot my computer. This is a fairly common practice these days and it fucking pisses me off. It unnecessarily hogs up resources that I do not want to be used at that moment. I never asked for these programs to ninja their way to my system tray and I certainly don't want them there. In fact, there's only a few programs I want to be showing in my system tray at any given moment. I have Trillain, my networking stuff, windowblows security shit , volume manager, and the "safely remove hardware" junk because I'm using a SATA drive. I don't need any other program to maliciously hide itself in my system tray.
And I'm sure I can't be the only person this annoys. I always hear inexperienced computer users complaining how it takes their computer forever to load and then it runs slow, blah blah fucking blah. You know why they complain? BECAUSE THEIR SYSTEM TRAY IS CLOGGED! Never fails. Every time I hear that complaint, that's the first place I look. Second place I look is the startup folder. Those are the top two reasons why the average idiots computer boots slowly and runs slow. Most programs that I've ran into do not ask you if you want this stuff there. They just automatically assume you do. You are not making anything more convenient for the majority of the PC users, so knock it the fuck off assholes!
I've been mulling over whether or not I want to share any files that I've worked on for Stepmania here. There's that whole copyright infringement issue that would get in the way. While I might be able to attempt to use "fair use" as a defence, these people probably have more money than I do and wouldn't hesitate to hire a good lawyer so I'm broke for the rest of my life. Or they could just have the RIAA chase me. Either way, they'd tell everyone that I would commit robbery on the high seas. Honestly, I don't want anyone thinking I'm a pirate. One could easily and accidentally on purpose put the word "butt" in front of pirate, making a rather sly joke about my sexual preferences. Why should I give people ammo like that?
I updated my checklist index page with what percentage I have completed for each set. The mirage block is fairly close to being completed. If I can't find some cheap lots listing the cards I want or need for Urza's or Tempest block, I'm going to have to buy the cards I need. That would be cheaper than outright chancing a booster box or buying a complete set. The other stuff, I'm probably going to buy booster boxes. I tried the factory sealed sets with two of the Kamigawa expansions and one card in one of those sets already had a crease in them. And yes, these were factory sealed. At that rate, I don't trust whomever or whatever is looking over the cards. At least with a booster box I can at least pick and choose what goes into my binder for my set.
After playing F.E.A.R. over again, I decided to buy the expansion and am patiently waiting for it in the mail. There is no oppurtunity cost associated here, at least a noticable one, so I can wait the few days it will take for this to arrive. It was cheaper buying it on eBay than driving out to Circuity Shitty or another store that sells PC games. Hopefully the expansion won't be gawd-awfully easy on the hardest difficulty setting like the first part to it was.
The online play for F.E.A.R. for the most part is horrific. Aimbotters, speed hackers, and wall hackers populate the servers that aren't empty. The melee system also has some serious hit reg issues. They need to find a way to unlag that so when I do hit someone with my unarmed attack that had just came around the corner, they're not going to laugh at me while they blast my crotch away with their shotgun. F.E.A.R. has the same issues a lot of other games have, they value "realism" (let's ignore the fact that it's a game) or gameplay. Realistically, it should be the other way around. You can't call yourself a true gamer if you enjoy games like that. A true gamer enjoys the game for the gameplay aspects, not the pseudo "OMG I HEAR FOOTSTEPS AND HAVE INSANE RECOIL LULZ!!!" horseshit. If I wanted real life, I'd go outside. Now that is what I call real.
May 10th
I like Wired, a lot. Why? Because they're always on top of stories like this. I really encourage anyone using AT&T to have their service disconnected and find another service that isn't so willing to intrude upon your privacy. And when you change service providers, let them know why. Mark Klein has the cojones (the size of jupiter) to tackle both AT&T and the NSA, the least any of us could do is show support for him in some way. I think taking your money out of AT&T's pockets is one of the better ways of doing it.
And if you don't think the government intruding upon your privacy is a big deal, then I guess you wouldn't mind if I video taped your most private and intimate moments, taped your conversations, and shared them with the world, right? Trust me everyone has something to hide. It may not be illegal, but there is always something that you don't want people close to you knowing about.
May 5th
For the fans of the series "Fallout", there has been an alpha stage tech demo released that Interplay was working on. It's very bug ridden, but it's not bad. It's a tech demo, so you get what you get. All of the fan boys are complaining that Bethesda will ruin Fallout 3, but that has yet to be seen. At any rate, it's interesting to see what Interplay would have done if they could have completed it. A lot of those free download sites have incredibly long queue's just to download this. So I am offering it without the wait here (241MB).
To conclude my little rant on my previous entry, after I thought my conversation was over, he decides to use another e-mail account to send me more bullshit. His e-mail went directly to my spam folder. As I was about to delete the contents of said folder, I notice his name in there. Confused as to why it didn't go into my inbox, I open it. I notice that the e-mail address is different. This immediately reminds me of those chicken shit little mother fuckers who will only act tough towards when you aren't paying attention.
I read it and laughed, hard. This guy assumes that he can do a third of the business he's done in six months time, in a week. He claims that he wasn't out to rip any one off, despite the fact that I found more than ten seperate cases where he misrepresented the quality of the cards, all but one or two cases where the card was in worse shape. This leads him to somehow believe that he cares about his customers and that he does everything he can to please them. Delusional, right?
April 30th
I have thrown myself back into the habit of using eBay, however I believe my recent venture there has somewhat soured my taste for it (and this is probably a good thing, trust me). I only needed one card to finish off the Revised edition of MTG. One card. This card was "Underground Sea". I also needed a 4th edition "Wrath of God". Along with this I wanted to see if I could get a Revised "Wheel of Fortune" in mint condition. I have a few, but they were obviously played with. Keep in mind, these are cards I want to put into a binder to collect.
I was buying a decent amount of cards from Troll and Toad, those three were out of the many. I decided to do a little eBay searching for the more expensive cards to see if I could get a better deal for them. Those three were indeed going for much cheaper and in the same shape or better of what I could get from Troll and Toad from one seller. I always read a sellers feedback comments before I decide to do any bidding or using "Buy It Now". It should also be noted that this seller did not have a scan or picture of the cards. (However, most sellers use a stock photo anyway.) There were some complaints about the cards being misrepresented, but these people also gave positive feedback. I could only assume that the misrepresentation couldn't have been that severe. Perhaps instead of "Near Mint", the card might have been "Near Mint Minus", one slight deviation lower. That's not really a big deal to me.
So after waiting almost two weeks (slow shipping anyone?) my cards finally arrive. They were mailed in the same hard plastic sleeve. I pull out the WoG first. It was as advertised, near mint. Next I pull out my WoF and US at the same time. I inspect both front and back like I did with the WoG. The WoF is supposed to be Gem Mint (pack fresh and perfect in every way). The US is supposed to be Near Mint. Here is what I found: Front and Back.
Clearly, these cards were not just misrepresented, they were severely misrepresented. I can only conclude that this guy does not know a hole in the ground from his asshole. The WoF shows obvious signs of water damage AND that big white spot on the back is a tear. You also see slight whitening occuring. This card is "good" condition. Shows signs of heavy play/damage. If I go by most grading scales, it's four deviatons lower than advertised. Ouch. The US? Well, there's quite a bit of whitening around all edges of the card on the back. If the border on the front was black, they'd probably be there. Unfortunately what this picture doesn't show is the dirt marks on the front of it. Though it's safe to assume that they are there if the back edge of the card shows that much play wear (which the angle doesn't show as much as there really is). At best, this card is excellent minus. One minor deviation above "good".
I had contacted the seller about this. He asked for scans or pictures, what type of grading scale I would use, and how much I thought would be a fair refund since I wanted to keep the cards. I did a bit of research on different websites that sell cards. While my personal grading scale is a little more strict than others, most people agree the important aspects of card grading. The price I paid for the WoF had matched the condition it was in when I compared the price to other website. The US, however, was looking to net me a $7.65 refund. That seems like a fair partial refund.
Before I went price searching however, I had sent the pictures to the seller and we had a disagreement on conditions. The disagreement was with the WoF, but that quickly becomes irrelevant. He did agree that the US was in "excellent" shape (I used excellent minus when I told him what I thought, so I assumed him using "excellent" was an agreement to the terminology I used, and the fact that he said, "I agree the card is in excellent shape").
After finding the necessary information I send this guy what I have. I explain to him that I'm not going to argue the WoF since the price I paid for it matched the condition and the average rate in which it sells for in that condition. I also tell him that I think a $7.65 refund seems fair based on the condition of the card that we agreed upon. (FYI, I ultimately end up using Troll and Toad as my references for pricing. They are generally right in the middle as far as pricing is concerned, which I also explained to this fellow.)
I wake up this morning and check my e-mail. This guy is now refusing to give any sort of partial refund. His main reason? He paid $5 more than what the card is worth and by giving me $7.65 back, he'd be losing money on it. Also, he no longer agrees on the condition that the card is in. Though he does offer me a full refund if I send the card back. Well, that's nice and all, but I want to keep the cards. I thought I had made that clear from the start of the conversation.
In conclusion, fuck you, Antarctica!. You fucking fat cheating pig raping mother fucker. You are a thief. Now, more than ever do I refuse to send this card back for a full refund. You'll just try to end up ripping off another person with it. That's what I call "dishonest". It's also apparent that you misrepresent your items on purpose. If I do not see the refund that I want by tomorrow morning, I am going to tear up your feedback a little more. Sure, I gave you a positive on the WoG, but I can certainly give you two negatives on these other two items. If you can only barely manage to get 33% of your listings correct, don't bother, Captain Dipshit. Do me a favor and lay your head on the railroad tracks and wait for a train to come by, but only after you've given me my money back.
April 22nd
Over the past two weeks I've added a little something to my pictures section. Go ahead, make fun of me. I know you'll want to after you're done seeing that stuff.
April 16th
While I've stopped playing Dystopia entirely and have pretty much removed myself from the community, I will continue to support the mod, as I do think it's an excellent mod. I will also continue to lurk around the forums. With my lurking I found this. It's a screensaver of the "panel offline" you see on the panels in game when they're no longer useful. Just pop this file into your c:\windows\ directory. The name, when you go looking for it, is Panel Offline 18fps. Enjoy!
April 15th
I play games online to get away from the bullshit of life. Not to be thrown into it. I just want to have some fun and relax. With Dystopia, that is no longer the case. I can't have fun, and I can't relax. Why? It's not because of the noobs who don't know what to do. It's not because people refuse to play the game in a manner that it should be played in (i.e. ettiquette, rushing for objectives - not camping your spawn and sniping). I can deal with that.
What I can't deal with is constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if one asshole who follows me from server to server is going to TK me and run off for a little bit, only to come back and do it again. And again. But they'll do it intermittently so that I get lulled into a false sense of security. So when I do stop looking over my shoulder, they can do it again. The only other alternative that I have is to fill up my hard drive with demos just to catch this one person that not only TK's me all the time; the people I'm playing with get caught in the cross-fire as well. I am tired of it. I'm not returning to that game until they're globally banned. Seeing how that won't happen because proof is never provided because of how randomly this player does it, it seems likely that I won't play ever again.
And you know what? It's a damn shame. It's a damn shame because I play that mod more than any other game I've ever bought. It's a damn shame that people have nothing better to do than be an e-bully just so they can get off.
April 15th
I am getting back into one of my hobbies today. That one is collecting Magic: The Gathering cards. I'd still like to play the game every now and then, however finding someone to play is a bit more difficult. For those that are into the collecting aspect, feel free to abuse my checklists. They're hawt!
April 9th
I've uploaded two things to the server today. They both are Dystopia content. The first item is a promo video that one of the community members has made. You can access said file by clicking here. It's 57.7MB in size and used DivX 6. The next item that I've uploaded is the original startup sound that you heard in the demo. While I do like the version 1 startup sound, I still like this one more. It's more of a nostalgia thing with me. You can grab this file by clicking here. Starting with your steam folder, here is the direct path where you should pop the file into: Steam\steamapps\SourceMods\dystopia_v1\sound\UI. If you want to keep the gamestartup1.mp3 file that is there, rename it to something else.
April 6th
So I've been doing a semi terrible job of ignoring everyone, except for one person. She's not a bad individual persay, but out of all the people to ignore, she might deserve it the most. I have given a lot of thought to this, to this little stint of madness that consumes me from time to time. I hate to say this, but she may be the source of some of my problems. It's only when I think about her when these fits occur. They don't always happen immediately, so it's probably not fair for me to make a direct correlation or even possibly an indirect one, but I'm doing it anyway. I've put a great deal of time, effort, and money into forming something with her to always have it blow up in my face.
You spend countless hours making your plan, carefully trying to construct your way into a situation that will give you an opportunity, only to see it was for naught each time. I think that would have some sort of negative reaction on most people. At the very least Melissa probably deserves an explanation of why I'm pushing her out of my life. I'd like to believe that we were friends at some point and time, but I know that she'll say something that will ease my mind and make me forget until it happens all over again. I don't want or need that situation going on anymore. But the worst part of this is that I feel guilty. I feel bad every time I think about m actions and question whether or not I'm doing the right thing.
There are a few things that always occur to me whenever I start thinking about this topic:
This makes me wonder if people have ever felt the same way when they've done the same thing to me.
Why do females feel as if they need to treat me in such a way?
What's so terribly wrong with me that people feel that they should treat me this way? What is it about my personality that equates into the whole "spinnach stuck between the teeth"? I'm tired of hearing that there's nothing wrong with me. There has to be something wrong with me if just about everyone I have ever known treats me as if I'm only of secondary importance while other scum are their top priority.
These questions eat away at me all the time. And for sure, I'll never know the answer to them.
April 3rd
Today was like any other day, for the most part. There's a phrase or word for it, and I'm not sure what that is. Allow me to explain, if you will. I start my day off by waking up late, realizing that I had forgotten to set my alarm clock. Knowing that if I skip breakfast, I'll only be fifteen minutes late. If I take the time for breakfast, I'll be approximately half an hour late. I decide to be half an hour late. I wanted a real breakfast, not just pop-tarts on the run. That shit sucks. I also wanted a shower, one in which I take before eating.
I decide on the frozen waffles, which I of course toasted very nicely. Instead of using butter or some butter substitute on them, I opt for peanut butter. Peanut butter is considerably more filling than butter. I also decide to wash this meal down with a glass of milk. It's still not a great meal, but definitely more appetizing than pop-tarts on the run. I eat my breakfast, brush my teeth, and leave for work.
On my way to work, I almost get into an accident. The light had just turned red as I was driving through the intersection. Some guy was already half trying to turn where I was driving. He apparently had been blocking the intersection for quite some time now. I saw him from a distance away. As I approach the intersection he tries to move. Sorry, buddy, grab a Snickers.
I arrive at work with ten minutes before the whole "half an hour late" thing. However, due to the way accounting -> human resources handles things, I'm still half an hour late. We get paid in increments of fifteen minutes, not by the minute like a lot of other companies. So if you're a minute late, it's the same as being fifteen late. 20 late is the same as being half an hour late. Instead of relaxing for that ten minutes I won't be paid for, like every other day that I'm there before my shift starts, I start working anyway.
Everything is going fine until lunch. It just so happens that we go to Arby's. I ask for a shake instead of a soda with my meal. The woman totally ignores me and yanks my card out of my hand and swipes it through. It's not really anything to be completely angry over, but I was anyway. I'm always fairly angry when I'm blatantly ignored. I have issues with people not paying attention to me. It stems from people not paying attention to me. In situations like this I choose to bottle it up instead of just letting it out. Letting it out seems quite dangerous for the other party. So when my order arrives, the douche bag hands me my food on a plate. In an annoyed tone of voice I say to the man, "this is to go". He gives me a queer look, looks at the screen, an angrily puts my food into the bag. I snatch my bag out of his hands and give him the eye. You know, the look that says that if you continue taking that tone with me, I'll rip your head off of your neck and defecate down the opening. As I'm walking to my coworkers car, I see these to wetbacks giving me a dirty look. Seeing as I only have two eyes, I choose to stare down the one that looks the strongest. I win, of course. I always win. When my coworker comes to the car, he yells out, "those god-damn spics need to be careful of who they give fucking dirty looks to!".
So after lunch is over, everything is going fine up until the second break. They've been shuffling people around and we have someone new being trained on the DYNO. One of the other team leaders is in charge of the DYNO area (i.e. how it's ran, not everything that goes over there). He has a question and asks him something. I sit in the vicinity of this guy and partially hear the question. Something to do with one of the products I'm in charge of. He says, "Uh, I dunno, just do this, I guess." Now, one would think that if they had a question about one of my products, that they would come to me. This, of course, rarely happens. Just about everyone does it. They tend to second guess what I know because this other jerk-off worked on these controls before I did. But what they fail to realize is that he did nothing to improve the process, something which I've been trying to fix. I'm about 3/4 of the way there. A few more months and I think I'll have the quality issues worked out and everything will be fine, but I digress. It's just pisses me off to hear other people second guess what I do, or just be out right disrespected. I don't deserve that.
Now about half an hour before it's time to leave my boss comes over to me and gives me a stern warning that I need to start being careful about me coming in late. He knows it's not something I do often, but it could seriously reflect on any future pay raises. I understand what the company is going through right now, so instead of making a scene about it (what's the point, nothing has actually happened yet), I tell him I understand. The previous year he tried telling me the same thing and that my pay could be docked, with which I told him if that happened, I was looking for a new job. I of course took a gamble saying that, but lo' and behold, my pay was not lowered.
What really bugs me about this whole "OMG WE NEED TO PUNISH EVERYONE WHO IS LATE ONCE IN A WHILE" mindset is that it lowers the moral of people. I come in about 15 to 20 minutes before my shift starts and get to work right away, fully aware that I won't be paid for the work I do. I'm not going to be some childish prick about "waaaah! I won't get paid for this work, so I'm not going to start until it's time to!". But of course, management never notices that. They don't see it on paper, so therefore I'm not actually doing that. I also take documentation home to update it so a.) it's easier to understand and b.) I fix any potential quality issues. They never take notice that while I'm not salary, I still do salary type work. But what gets me the most is that other team leaders are salary and come in late all the time. Since they don't have to clock in, it's never noticed that they are late. They rarely make up the time they miss, and no one says anything. Yet there I was, getting a friendly lecture on how I need to watch my attendance.
What the shit.
April 2nd
So I've been following the American Idol craze this year more intently than the previous years. This year the Vote For The Worst phenomenon is having a bigger effect than it previously had. The Howard Stern listeners certainly have had an effect, but this following was big before that and I believe it's just an accumulation of their previous gathering that got to the point of at least poking Stern's attention. The most amusing part to this craze is some fat fucking lying ass bitch named J. She claimed that for 16 days she was starving herself because Sanjaya was still on the show.
Her reason for quitting? Her doctor told her to. I guess her doctor also told her it was okay to be a fucking cow too, right? No, but seriously, the bitch doesn't look to be more thin. Just turn the brightness up on her new video to get past the deceptive lighting and camera angle and you'll see that she looks the same. In fact, she might look even closer to this.
But one thing that really pisses me off about this obeese pig is that she makes fat people seem uncool. Why should guys like me, or this guy get mixed up in your rolls of doom? Do us a favor and STARVE! You could easily last for about eight months. Bababooey.
March 29th
High-strung:
- at great tension
- highly excitable or nervous
- edgy
- Me
Therein lies my problem. I've always been like that, I think. I try to relax once or twice a year to recharge my cells. My first attempt didn't work to well. I went into that seemingly in-the-know that something would happen, and it didn't. That is a real let down. However, my vacation wasn't completely ruined. Perhaps some time later this year I'll try to take another vacation to try and relax.
Without that needed time to forget about my troubles, it eats away at me. I need to spend a week every now and then forgetting who I am and what I have to deal with so that I can deal with those potential issues. I think that's what I'm going through right now. If I could spend a good amount of time ignoring everything and actually not having to deal with it, I'll feel well enough to do it.
March 24th
Oh, I've Got Issues
I think the worst of it is over. Well, I hope the worst of it is over. After breaking a few more things and then going out and buying replacements, I feel better. I feel at peace, for now anyway. But none of that really solved my underlying issues. All I know right now is that I feel better and I don't know why.
Yesterday after buying a new mouse to hold me over until my third G5 arrives (along with other expensive hardware upgrades that is going to turn this machine into a bigger beast than what it already is), I meditated on why I was so angry so often these days. What brings about these fits of rage? I've always had them. They've been gone for the past five years or so, but they decided to come back. Is it because I feel unhappy? Do I feel inferrior? Do I need something in my life that I'm missing? Am I just a miserable failure?
All are questions which I attempted to answer for myself.
Why am I unhappy? Is it because I still live at home with mom and dad and I see everyone else moving on in their life (despite that most of them can't fucking afford it and are always broke, but keep on spending their money anyway)? Is it because I don't technically own my own car (even though I pay for everything for it anyway)? Is it because I'm overweight? Is it because I'm single? Is it because I feel I'm stuck at a dead-end job where I feel unappreciated? I answered yes to all of them. Each one is having some affect on how I feel.
I want to move out, I want to live on my own. Every time I think about it, I know I can't do it. Not because I can't possibly live on my own, but because my parents need me here. Without me throwing money at them all the time, they'd never be able to live without my aid. They're always complaining about how the bills are going unpaid or some such shit. In reality though, I know I'm not doing them any favors by staying at home. They need to spend their money more wisely. They, for one, could stop drinking. They could stop smoking. They could stop buying pot. They could buy less at the grocery store, less expensive shit.
I could lose weight if I had a goal to work for. Trust me, just losing weight for general reasons like health, to me, aren't real goals. They're just obvious side effects of being in better shape. It could possibly help cure my single issue, or at least get me laid more often, but those type of women, I don't want to be around. I've had my oppurtunites and every time they come up, I feel greatly annoyed. I feel annoyed that they're the typical whore who thinks of only themselves. If you're going to flirt with me, 1.)introduce yourself and 2.)show a general interest in me, not just my dick. I don't appreciate you striking a random conversation at me while you drone on about your mundane life all the while you stare at my crotch. I don't go around trying to get laid by anyone I can to fill some void in my life that most people tend to do. I like the idea of having one partner for an extended period of time. Sex is great, but you're definitely not a better person by any means for having had a lot of different partners.
My job, well, I'm stuck here until I get a good offer, or until I can finally move out. I'm powerless where I'm at. Powerless to do anything to make my life better there. If I choose to be demoted, I'll still have to do the same bullshit for no extra pay. The only difference is that I won't have an official title. It's bullshit, but I really have no other choice. And no, shit jobs like Wal-Mart or unemployment are not options for me.
I know what I need to do, I think. I just need to set some real goals and work towards them. I need to stop making excuses and breaking these goals. I know the drive and motivation is there somewhere. I know it's there because I've had it before. And perhaps that my biggest problem. I've known these are issues for quite some time. Every time I try to rectify them, I fail. I lose interest. Something happens. Maybe my approach is all wrong. I don't know. I know what I need to do, I just don't know how to do it. For me, that is the most frustrating thing.
March 20th
It's hard to admit things to yourself. It's so much more easy to sit there and lie to yourself. Honesty? Who fucking needs that bullshit. Being a delusional mess at least keeps you going somewhere. Even if it's the wrong path, you know you're doing something and don't have a care in the world. But even then, there is a limit, a point which you know you've seriously screwed something up somewhere. Even then you know you can't keep going.
And I can't. I know I can't. I've known this for quite some time, but I didn't reach my limit until now. I don't know if this is "rock bottom", but I do know something. Everyone wants to believe that they're a somebody, that they are important to someone. Perhaps they want to believe that their life holds meaning or value. If they were gone, someone, somewhere would deeply miss them.
And you want to know what? It's all fucking bullshit. When you realize that you yourself are not important, that you hold no special skills or value, when you start to devalue yourself, you have sunk to the very depths of your soul. You are in that dark place. Perhaps that mythological glimmer exists to guide you on the right path, but does it even matter?
I've been stuck in a rut for a long time now. It doesn't matter what I try to do to better myself. I instead go into a self destructive streak that will do the exact opposite on an exponential level. I have no drive or motivation to accomplish anything, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself because I now finally realize that I am insignificant. I have exactly two friends who give a shit about me. My other so called friends wouldn't care if I fell off the face of the planet. The two friends I do have, I rarely talk to or see. I've had no girlfriend for quite some time. The type of women who do pay attention to me now make me feel more depressed just by the sheer thought of having any sort of contact with them over what I've had to endure already. I no longer give a shit about my family. I'm just some tool in their grand scheme of perpetuating the loserness of the family line.
So, you see, if I were to just disappear tomorrow, only two people would give a shit, and unfortunately I need to sever any ties I have with them. I am not in the least bit upset with them in any capacity. I just feel it's what I should do. They certainly can't help me now. I refuse to allow them to get themselves mixed up in my trash heap of a life. I wish I could just quit work, but I need something to pass my time, and I do need an income. I'm not exactly sure for what, but something tells me that at the very least, I need to keep working in the inner most sanctum of hell for a little while longer.
I can only wish for a little hope for the journey that I'm about to go on. The first part of the journey I have to take is getting rid of my intoxicating rage. I've held it in for so long and now it's all coming out. It's so incredibly unhealthy to even have a 64th of the anger I have. Unfortunately, the only way for me to get rid any of it is to be violent. All I've done so far is break a few things that I've had extras of. I just hope it doesn't go any further than that. I really need to figure out how to channel this into something constructive.
The second step is getting rid of this black hole that's engulfed my heart. If I'm not angry, I feel perpetually unhappy. It propagates itself by the self-pity I have. Once I move to this step, I'll know that I'm accomplishing something. At least when I'm there, travelling along this path, I already know how to turn this into something good.
And maybe, just maybe when that time comes, I'll just find the inner peace that I've been searching for my entire life. Maybe I'll find that little place that makes me feel like a person, something which I haven't felt since I was eight years old.
(I'm sorry.)
[/emo]
March 18th
I've fallen into that horrible trap again. The one where I purposely torture myself over hours upon hours of documentation. Torture without compensation. I get bitched at by everyone I know for taking my work home. I'm a chump. I can admit it and not feel bad. Someone has to be the chump.
But you know what? In the long run, being the chump is preferable. It only helps me out. I know we're working on contract deals with these companies. I'll be the person in charge of setting up these lines. When we get these contracts, there's less work that I want to do. Taking home the procedures I have and updating them is the best method I have to making my life easier.
I've uploaded some reviews that I'm sure no one is looking at. For those that are interested, they can click on the "reviews" link on the left side of the screen. For now, it's back to hammering at my keyboard.
March 11th
So here we have another story of the RIAA being douche bags.
Honestly, suing a fucking college student isn't going to solve anything. It's not going to help your case, it's not going to make you look like good decent folk. Suing a 12 year old girl is a just and moral thing to do. The dead? Oh, they're not afraid of raising a few zombies for a little extra coin either.
How else can they pay for their lobbying efforts? How about paying for those people who hold high offices in the RIAA? They can't be cheap either! Not a single cent is ever heard of going to the record labels. If the RIAA sues 200 people and at the very least settles for a thousand on each person, that's $200k. 2k a person? That's $400k! Now you see why they sue so many people? Because they can. No one is stopping them.
I ignore the legalities on this issue because it's mostly a bunch of bullshit being spoutted by idiots who don't want free advertising for their art. I instead look at the moral side of things. It's simple. If you don't want people listening to your music, don't release any of it, ever. Instead, you can have zero fans, zero potential people who might want to support your creativity after having first listened to it.
Honestly, take your thin skinned hide and go back hiding in that decrepit hovel of hole that you want to call your "home", or "studio", or "cardboard refrigerator box". I don't want you suing me because I might enjoy your music and I want to share it with others.
And now here's a story of how the FBI director didn't know that his subbordinates were abusing the PATRIOT Act. Like I'm going to actually believe that. You didn't know? How could you not know? You probably told them it was ok to do so. This has been going on since it came out. Here's a google link proving my point. For one second don't think I'm going to buy your apologetic story of having the wool pulled over your eyes and that you will "take action". You had oppurtunities to do some serious investigating at the first hint. A 4+ year investigation is way too long. You can't fucking trust the FBI, and hence, you can't trust the government.
March 9th
Ben and I were having a discussion about VG Cats yesterday. We both feel the comic is almost done. The update are largely inconsistent and he's always being held up by "side projects", or some other bullshit. I decided to do a little forum lurking to see if any of the forumites are in some god awful bitch-fest-a-thon-o-rama. All I saw instead was normal forum conversation. So I decided to lurk a little more and came across a link for 3D Bubble Bobble.
I kid you not.
So I downloaded it, unzipped it, and had a go with it. Ben claimed he had issues with it, but the only suggestion I'd make is to add a cross hair. It's a solid game with the nostalgia factor. I don't plan on playing this game extensively, as there's no sort of save option, but I found it to be fun. In the end, that's all that matters.
March 3rd
I'm having mixed reactions about Wii Sports right now. Let's take the boxing for example. If I want to do a left or right hook, whenever I make the movement for it, my "Mii" instead makes a lot more often than a hook. I thought that perhaps my issue was a response issue and maybe, just maybe, 6 feet away from the screen was too close. I move back a few more feet and notice the same issue.
Or how about Tennis? The instruction manual tells you how to swing the wiimote for certain effects, but when I do that, well, I can't reproduce those effects. I wish I could lob the ball, or put a spin on it, but there seems to be no good way of doing so. And sometimes when my Mii swings the racket, he doesn't swing it fastly enough, resulting in a miss.
The bowling is well, bowling. It actually works. Baseball? Works too.
Golf is great until you're on the green. Once you're on the green you have no way of telling how the terrain is laid out. So often pointing the ball directly at the hole does not land you in, you need to figure out where the bumps and hills are at. Perhaps through the arts of mysticism I can divine how I should putt the ball, or I could just play the same holes a thousand times so I learn through trial and error. My bet is that the arcane arts will yield better results, and faster.
But I play tennis and boxing the most on those, and that's where the annoyance comes in. I'm not sure why I like the tennis, but I really really do enjoy it. Boxing I like more for the workout that I get. It's fun to pummel your opponent, but damn, after half an hour or so, you break out in a decent sweat.
Twilight Princess so far is looking to be a very promising game. A lot of people are saying that it's a short game, that they beat it in 14 hours. I've spent around six hours on the game and just finally beat the first dungeon. Not because "LOLZ YOU SUX!!!", but because I'm taking the time to explore the game. So I doubt it really is a short game. Maybe, just maybe if you're one of those lameass fuckers who buys a "strategy guide" which tells you how to do everything, you will make short work of the game.
I'm sort of tired of Nintendo retelling the same story in different ways, however. I wish they'd do a cotinuation of at least ONE of the storylines and go with that (preferably "A Link to the Past", but this story is intriguing and it's keeping me going. The story is that the shadow king has taken over the world of light, turning everything into twilight. Now it's your duty to revive the light spirits in each parts of the world to restore the light and gain the power necessary to fight the Shadow King. So now, instead of collecting Triforce pieces, you're collecting pieces of shadow to gain the necessary power to fight him.
It's a simple synopsis of the story. The way the story is being presented to you is done very well. It's a shame that Nintendo didn't use any actual voice actors for the dialogue. I hope that for the next Zelda game that they do not allow you to pick a name, have it default to "Link", and hire some voice actors for the dialogue. Things like that allow for greater immersion into a game. I believe we're at that point in the console era (even on a Wii-Cube) where voice acting is a definite must.
Version 1 of Dystopia is starting to become more annoying than fun. It's not gameplay issues, it's player issues. There's no set etiquette and I've recently started a post on the forums to try and gain ideas to make gameplay not only more fair, but more fun.
What I've noticed is that those with a fast computer will often spawn a good 15 to 20 seconds before anyone else, enabling them to cap the first obj without any defense being there. What I've suggested is that a.) wait for the defending team to spawn and actually have time to defend, b.) join the defending team first, instead of the attacking team, or c.) if someone does cap the first objective that quickly, callvote map_restart. It's terrible when you don't even have a chance to play the first objective.
Another thing I suggested was to not allow a round to stay on the first objective for the entire round. Meaning that if the first ten minutes of the round has elapsed, either callvote balanceteams, or allow the attacking team to take the objective so the game can move on. It is seriously frustrating when you can't cap the first objective, or stuck defending the first objective. The game just drags on and isn't any fun. If you feel that your defense is that solid, then your team shouldn't have any issues keeping that defense for the next objective.
And the final thing that I've mentioned is that when you are joining the game, if you see that teams are even, join the attacking team. The maps are designed so that it's easier to defend than it is to attack.
If more players would follow these three simple rules, gameplay would be so much more fun and enhanced.
February 27th
So happy birthday to me! Hooray! Melissa had the nerve to leave a message on my voicemail calling me an old fart... that bitch! I'm so going to find a gray hair in her head, pluck it out, and show it to her. I'll have my revenge, you wait and see... (oh, and did I forget to mention she dyes her hair?)
But joking aside, I got a Wii for my birthday. My mom wouldn't tell me how she came about getting one, but she did find one. I also got Zelda with it, but haven't tried it yet. Wii sports is actually fun. I seriously have no idea how to play tennis, but the other sports games are a blast. I really enjoy the boxing. It's just fun. I can see why everyone is saying this is "party console" right now, but I'll reserve my judgement until I have a chance to do more with it.
Lately, however, besides the birthday thing, I've been playing Version 1 of Dystopia. It is pimp, and perhaps the best source mod you can find. The major appeal to the game is not the cyberpunk theme, but the team oriented gameplay. It's just sex.
But for now, I think I'm going to go back to playing with my Wii.
February 19th
I've "finished" my story of the trip I had. I may make a few slight changes here and there for flavor purposes, but this is just mainly what you get. I am in the process of talking to Melissa about how I feel and the dialogue is at least going somewhere. I'm not really upset with her, towards her, or any other negative feeling. Right now I'm more concerned about her well being, partly for selfish reasons, partly because she's my best friend and I'd like to think that I take care of my friends when they need me. Without my friends I'd be nothing, I'd have nothing. Sure I have family, but they can't relate things to me in the ways that my friends do. My family will always be there and they technically do hold a higher priority, but family I have a lot of. Friends I do not.
I've also updated my review on the iAudioX5. During my flights I toyed around with the device more and found some options I previously thought weren't there.
February 18th
Not The Vacation I Was Expecting
I think I should give a small back story. I went to Tennessee to see Melissa, a girl whom I graduated high school and have continued to be good friends with (up until now). We had always like each other a lot as more than friends, but the timing was never right, so nothing had ever happened beyond a friendship basis, except for the ocassional hand holding and flirting.
Last year when I went to visit her at her sisters wedding, we grew pretty close. Again, nothing happened. Just bad timing. She was in a qausi-relationship with some dirtbag and she was also still getting over a very bad break-up.
So let's fast foward to Thanksgiving last year. She wanted me to come visit her since she was sort of, but not really, close by. I told her I wasn't going to make that trip if nothing was going to happen. That pissed her off, but I went into greater detail about how I was tired of doing the friends thing, having to hold back all the time. I start pouring my heart out to her. She finally, after all these years, actually tells me that she likes me. Words I've been waiting to hear for so long... So we decide on a good time for me to come down to visit. I told her I wanted to stay for at least a week. She seemed to enjoy that idea. During the few months between that time and now, she still seemed to show some interest. I was positive this was my chance.
I wish I had foresight.
Saturday
I get up at around 4 AM so I have ample time to wake up, and pack the last few things that I needed to pack. My flight was leaving at 6:30 AM. Fast forward to four hours later and I'm at my destination. I meet Melissa and her sister at the airport. The second I saw Melissa I noticed something was different. She didn't appear happy to see me, she didn't say that she's missed me, and just hugging her felt different. This sets the mood for the rest of the week. I knew right then and there that I had made a mistake. I'm terrible at a lot of things, but I know when my plans fall through.
So her and her sister drag me on a lot of errands. They were trying to finish preparation for their dads 50th birthday party. Jet-lagged as shit, I don't protest. I literally had little energy. Melissa ignored me a lot Saturday afternoon, but she had a good reason as to why. I tried thinking nothing of it, but my imagination likes to run off with ideas and take them to places that I don't want them going.
That night of the party... was, well... very shitty! I was tired. So very tired, and to top it off, she ignored me quite a bit! That could have been due to me not being very alive, but she didn't make much effort to keep me vigilant. After the party we went back to her place. She's renting the place from her sister, and her sister and her husband still use the master bedroom. It's not a pleasant situation for Melissa, but that's a little irrelevant for my story. Melissa asks me if I want to watch "House" in her room with her for a bit before we go to bed. In my delerium I thought it was an invitation to stay in her room with her as well. For about the first fifteen minutes of the show, she kept checking on me, making sure that I wasn't sleeping in her bed. I took the hint well enough, sleep in the guest room when the show was over. After she started to nod off, I give her a hug, say goodnight, and clumsily walk into the geust room. I was fairly annoyed and confused.
Sunday
Sunday morning Melissa's sister wakes me up with breakfast in bed. And I thought Melissa was the resident chef! The best scrambled eggs I've had, ever. While Melissa is doing... whatever in her room (you know, ignoring me), Kristin and I talk for a bit. She too notices that Melissa is acting strangely towards me, but has no idea why. So breakfast is finished and Melissa comes out of her room. She is getting ready to go visit her personal trainer, something she had scheduled a while back. This didn't bother me as I had already known this was going to happen. As she's about to leave her parents call her asking her to show the family around where she works. (Melissa works at a very large hotel that has numerous restaurants, spas, gyms, and whatever else have you.) For the first time during the trip Melissa thinks about me and tells her parents that they need to come and pick me up, and that she'll see them after her session with her personal trainer.
A few hours later Melissa shows up and we decide to eat at one of the restaurants. We all find one that we can agree on and eat there. Nothing special really happened there. I had some pasta dish I couldn't stomach, which is surprising; I can usually eat a lot of different restaurant foods. Her grandma was generous and paid for everyones meal. After the lunch everyone wanted to visit the shops in the hotel. This endeavour also turned out to be just okay. The most memorable moment there was when we were in the obvious cowboy store. We found some cowboy (and cowgirl) hats. Once she found one that fit, it actually looked cute on her. She kept complaining that she didn't feel comfortable wearing a hat. I tried one on and she immediately started laughing. "Yeehaw" I uttered out and took the hat off.
So after the very long hotel visit we go back to her parents house. Everyone wanted to play the "Over the Hill" edition of Trivial Pursuit, except for me. Well, I think I was included but I'm not too good with questions from 50 years ago.
It's not like I was trying to be a party pooper, I just didn't want to spend my vacation spending my time around Melissa and her family. I went there in hopes of spending most of my time with only her. I am not a big "Trivial Pursuit" person. In fact, I mostly don't like games that require you to have majored in game show trivia. I'm not big into pop culture, I don't follow politics that much anymore, and I certainly don't read books by the hacks on the New York's top selling list (well, most of the time anyway). Sports? Most of them are boring to watch. So as you can see, Trivial Pursuit is not a game I would like to play.
After about an hour or two of that torture Melissa finally becomes bored with it and asks if I want to play darts. Now, that's something that I can play. I play it poorly, but it's something I can do with her, and it was just the two of us. Playing darts with her was a little uneventful; I had fun but it was nothing special. When it was getting a little late, we left and went back to her house. From there we went to her room to watch "Napoleon Dynamite", which by now I'm sure most people have seen. I hadn't seen it yet, so I intently watched the movie. The movie bored me to sleep, and I probably had missed half of it. After it was over, I retired to the guest room.
Monday
I wake up, notice the time, and struggle to get Melissa out of bed. She had to take her aunt and uncle to the airport. After the airport we head back over to her house. Her sister was cooking us breakfast again. Pancakes, eggs, and fried potatoe's! Pretty tasty. Kristin and her husband leave shortly after breakfast. Melissa felt like doing nothing at all, all day, so we just vegged out on her couch and watched the discovery channel (when there's a marathon of Myth Busters, you've just got to watch it). I wouldn't have minded that so much, but it was on seperate couches. It appeared like she was making it a point to be as far away from me as possible - just really trying to do the whole strictly friends thing.
We had planned on visiting Lynchburg the next day, and then going to Chattanooga right after that. Melissa had mentioned this to one of her friends, and she just sort of invited herself along. So in the evening after eating dinner with her parents we start to head back over to her house to pack our things for the next few days. I packed my things fairly quickly and had time to wait around. So during the waiting process I go into one of my zoning out/meditative states. She finally finishes packing and knocks me out of my daze momentarily so we can get into her car. In the car I return back to my trance like state.
She asks me if there's anything wrong. I of course lie to her and say no, and politely ask her to be quiet and give me some time to think. After another 20 minutes of that I hit my meditative peak and discover the right words to say. I could tell you what occurred to me during this phase of extreme concetration, but you wouldn't believe me, so I'll leave that part out.
I ask Melissa if she had remembered our phone conversation from about a month or two ago. She says she does. Good, I guess. She at least knew where I was going. I knew how it was going to turn out, I had a good idea of what her response was going to be. It's a good thing I prepared myself for it, I guess. I had asked her if she would consider being a couple, seeing if we were compatible while I was down there visiting, like we had talked about. She knows that I'm tired of waiting on the side line, being second best, having to always hold back. But instead she tells me she'd rather be single right now. She just isn't interested in being with anyone in any capacity. I didn't believe it when she told it to me, and I'm not sure if I still believe it any more now, but that could also just be me not taking things as they are because I feel hurt.
I was deeply hurt by this. Who wouldn't be? Some woman you've been trying to get to know on a more personal level for so many years finally tells you that it's going to happen, then when the oppurtunity comes, she tells you the same type of bullshit that you always hear from her. Melissa tells me of some of the relationships she had with other men in the previous months and how badly they've turned out, blah blah blah blah bullshit blah blah blah. As if I care at the moment. You lead me on... again... Again I was lead on. I just become really quiet and start to ignore her. She doesn't deserve my attention for a few hours, at least that's what I thought.
Melissa and her friend had to get up really early and go to an Aerobics class with another trainer. I had no idea what the sleeping arrangements were going to be but I do quickly find out. Melissa and I get this dinky little blanket for the two of us. I'm already laying on the couch quite comfortably and Melissa attempts to lay down next to me. I hadn't moved any of the cushions and there was very little space for her to do so. As she lays there for a whole thirty seconds, I move my arm so it's on top of her and around her waist so I can get a little more comfortable. She complains that my arm is too heavy and moves onto the floor. What the hell? Of course if I want any of the blanket I need to follow in pursuit. So down on the floor I go. I make an attempt to get really close to her, not making any serious moves or anything. I just wanted to be close to her. She inches away from me and complains that I'm too close to her.
Now I'm even more hurt by this. Up until last year that was never any issues with us sleeping in the same area together. Nothing had ever actually happened between us in the past before and I didn't want to press the issue now. I'm confused, pissed off, and hurt. She was acting considerably worse than the times that we had slept in the same bed and we both had a significant other. At least those times we weren't against being close to each other, and in those cases it wasn't even flirty or sexual. It was a comfort thing because we both were used to having a warm body next to each other, we knew our boundaries and didn't go beyond that. Now the girl I was seeing at the time had known (because I made it a point to explain to her what kind of friendship we had) and she didn't care. Melissa's boyfriend did care, but it wasn't my problem that she dated men who didn't trust her.
So with the minimal amount of blanket wrapped around my feet and no other part of my body, I shiver myself to sleep. I remember my lessons from the scouts and curled myself into a ball that would trap in as much body heat as possible and possibly even create more. It wasn't very comfortable, but I did manage to sleep. for a few hours.
Tuesday
After the girls were done with their aerobics class we go out to breakfast. The place we arrive at is called the "Pancake Pantry". After sitting there for ten minutes and not being served, we move ourselves to another table. The original we were sat at had wet seats anyway. Within minutes we have a server. Melissa and I end up ordering some omelet connocotion that comes with pancakes. Instead of ham in my omelet, I ask for sausage. I also get freshly squeezed OJ as a drink. The foods presentation was average, but I never care about presentation that much. Now, as to the taste... All I have to say is that those were the best pancakes I've ever had.
I had planned on ignoring Melissa more during that morning, but I found it very difficult to ignore her, especially when I was paying for her meal. (I am a very weak man when I'm around her, and yes I had already offered to pay for her food.) Breakfast wasn't all that bad. Having her friend there did help to lighten the mood a little, which made conversation pleasant.
So off to Lynchburg! I sleep on most of the car trip over in an effort to continue my plan of ignoring her, but to also get some sleep. Once at the Jack Daniel's distillery I wake up and walk around the small museum they have there in the waiting area before it's time for your tour to start. I didn't really pay attention to much of anything once I was there. The tour, I don't remember much of that either.
I think the only thing that I really took away from that tour was their barreling method. First and foremost they make their own barrels, and each barrel is used only once. It's said that there's still at least four gallons of jack soaked into the wood in any given barrel. It's more interesting to note that other whiskey makers will use those barrels, giving their own whiskey a slight taste of Jack Daniel's. Also, the one statue they had, they had attempted to build it to scale. Apparently they had to make the statue's feet bigger because Jack's original shoe size was too small and the sheer weight of the statue could not be supported by small feet.
Once the tour was over, we head into the town square and notice how most of the shops are already closed. It was only 3 PM. Buh. Very strange. I managed to buy one thing, and can turn it into two gifts. It has two items in it, so you do the math. One item happens to be a flask with a leater case. Both the case and the flask have the Jack Daniel's logo on them. The other item is a belt buckle with the Jack Daniel's logo on it. I also redeemed a coupon there for a free Jack Daniel's shot glass.
Once we arrive into Chattanooga and having slept a little more, my mood changes. I'm still very confused but not as much as I was. Hunger was setting in. We quickly head over to the hotel and check into our room. We look inside one of the hotel booklet's and decide on a barbeque joint called "Sticky Fingers".
First of all, I probably had have one of the best servers I ever had there. She was cute, and she was friendly, but not annoyingly friendly. She didn't poke her nose in our business, but she would have conversation with us when we initiated it with her. To top things off, she got us a free sampler of ribs to try out the different sauces they had there. She also topped off my beer for me when I had spilled it.
For our appetizers we had decided on the "onion straws" which they called the "git'r dun-yuns", which apparently most of the servers there hate. They originally called them "onion thingies" or something and ran a contest to rename them... That's what won. For the meal we got a very large helping of ribs that was enough for three people. The meal also came with half a breast of chicken, some pulled pork, and three side dishes. I decided to give Samuel Adam's lager a try and found that the after-taste was strange. Dinner was enjoyable. And yes, I did pay for Dinner. My mood was starting to change a little and I liked that. We enjoyed dinner. The conversation was pleasant. We had discovered that Melissa didn't like the phrase, "nigga please", and abused it as much as possible.
The girls wanted to get drunk, and I really wanted no part in that. So we head to one of the trillion liquor stores that they have in Tennessee and they buy some cheap wine. We hurriedly head back over to the hotel so we can watch "House". Melissa falls asleep fairly quickly being that she was going all day on only five hours of sleep. After the show is over, I too fall asleep.
Wednesday
We get up and eat our crappy "continental breakfast". From there we check out of the hotel and head back to the main portion of Chattanooga to visit the aquarium. That was a much needed trip to get my mind off of things. We opted out of the IMAX theater portion due to my protesting, and mentioning it'd be more fun to actually see the fish. It's a shame that I didn't bring my camera with me. I could have taken so many spectacular pictures. But it was fun, and that's the important thing.
After the aquarium we head back over the car to visit other places in Chattanooga. We find a parking ticket on the car. Apparently our meter had expired 11 minutes previously and the piggies around are more like hawks with that sort of thing. I offer to pay for it (which coincidently the fine was $11 dollars) since Melissa didn't have much money at the moment. Now, this is my very first time reading a map on the fly. Finding the city hall wasn't easy. After much arguing and being lost for close to an hour, we finally find the City Hall. We pay off our parking ticket and decide that perhaps we should eat lunch.
We stop at "TGI Fridays". This is my frist trip to a TGI's. It was also her friends first trip to one. I make a joke about Melissa breaking our Friday's cherry. Melissa gave me a dirty look, but her friend and I laughed at it. They each order the three course meal thing, but it's not as flexible as you think, so I went with my own version of it. I first ordered a bowl of broccoli and cheese soup. Then I ordered a hamburger. I finish off my meal with a brownie and ice cream on top of it. Through the meal I was drinking Corona's.
Melissa talks about perhaps visiting other places but I remind her we have to be back around Nashville in a few hours. During the trip we stop at a gas station so her friend can use the bathroom. Melissa comes up to me, hooks her arm around mine. Then she puts her head on my shoulder and tells me that she appreciates me. It was nice to hear, but I'm not sure how much of that was true. Once back in the Nashville area we go to her parents house and pick her mom up. We were going over to The Flying Saucer, a bar with so many different types of beer. We get our drink on while we wait for her dad to arrive.
Now this is not how I envisioned spending VD, but I went with it. About an hour later two of her male friends arrived, one of which she had dated, which I didn't find out about until our little conversation monday night. He apparently took advantage of her when she was feeling vulnerable and for some reason she still likes him after that. Melissa ignores me for 90% of the time after he arrives. Her parents leave not too long after they arrive. She spends a good deal of time whispering shit in his ear (which I took as a sign as being stuff she didn't want me to hear). She also ran off with him for a brief period of time to some secluded location in the bar. I had no clue what was going on there, and I didn't ask.
I'm pretty pissed off here. Here she is, ignoring me, having little secret conversations that other people knew about, and then runs off with the guy for a small period of time. But it honestly could have been nothing. At least I can only hope it was nothing. Perhaps they had more to talk about in private that they didn't want anyone else knowing. Also, at the end of the night Melissa has the nerve to put her drinks on my tab. Ok, so I really didn't care that much, and I knew it was going to happen anyway.
We eventually leave and head back to her place, where during the whole trip home all she wanted to do was bitch about how her crappy her sister is treating her. Once we actually get to her house, she immediately retreats to her room and keeps her door shut. I wanted to talk with her some more, have an actual conversation, but couldn't because she'd rather be selfish.
Thursday
This day was probably the most boring day yet. Melissa didn't wake up till noon, vegged around for a little bit, then told me that we had to take her dad to the doctor's office, where we waited there for two hours. I spent a good portion of my time ignoring her. She was right there next to me, but I ignored her most of the time. I started to feel bad for ignoring her. I don't know why I felt bad, but I did. I head to the bathroom to gather my thoughts and decide that how I'm acting isn't any better than how she's acting. After I come out of the bathroom I find that she's sitting in my seat. A little game, I suppose. So I come up behind her and start massaging her shoulders and rubbing her back. She complained that I was doing it too hard and asked me to stop.
Now I know this is bullshit. All of the other women that I've ever done this to have simply loved it. I have magic hands. She just didn't want me touching her. So much for extending an olive branch her way. So I stop and try making small talk with her. That didn't work too well either. Bleh.
So her dad finally comes out, all doped up on pain killers. I drive his car while Melissa drives her own. We stop back at her parents house to drop off her dad. Melissa tells her parents that we're going out for Sushi and invites them along. Just effing great. Getting real intimate alone time with her seems to be impossible, doesn't it? We go to this place called "Minami's", which is pretty much a less fancy looking version of a Beni-Hanna's.
The sushi was subpar, something which you get here in central PA. They used frozen fish instead of fresh fish, which ruins the taste. When you taste the seaweed, the cucumber, or the avacodo more than you taste the fish, you know it's not proper sushi. I order a little more than I could eat so I could share it with Melissa in an attempt to get some sort of intimacy going. Sushi, in general, seems like an erotic food. So sharing it with someone you like should create some sort of intimacy.
Now after dinner we had planned on visiting the movies. Unfortunately plans had changed. Her friend that invited herself to our Chattanooga trip had needed a ride home from work. So instead we wait around and watch TV. I'm laying on the second half of the couch and her on the first half. I take a small nap. At some point she too had fallen asleep, stretched out, and my arms ended ing up being wrapped around her hips. Now I'm not minding this at all. I get a chance to stare at her ass, even if it's fully clothed. I fall back asleep. Not long after an alarm goes off. It's time to pick her friend up. Yay...
Instead of immediately dropping her off at her place, the both of them decide on fucking ice cream. So they stop off at the local grocery store chain, Kroger's. I buy Melissa's ice cream and make her friend pay for her own. We head back over to her friends house, eat some ice cream, and then leave. Once again, sleep time. Nothing happens.
Friday
Friday was probably the hardest day, yet possibly the most enjoyable. Knowing that this was my last full day there I wanted to make the most of it. Unfortunately making the most of it didn't happen, but we did spend the entire day alone.
She once again woke up late and cooked breakfast around noon. She didn't realize she had ran out of eggs and was upset by this. She wanted to show case her "mad omelet skillz" to me. Despite the lack of eggs, it was a good meal. She had used the left-over pancakes as a side dish for the meal. Seeing she works in the food service industry as shift supervisor for a kitchen, it's no wonder that her presentation was excellent. I comment her nicely on what she had served and took a bite. Again, I gave her another compliment. This is not the first time I have tasted her cooking, and each time I taste something she cooks, it never tastes bad. Even stuff I've never liked before suddenly tastes good through her mgaical culinary artistry.
Not sure on what to do, we watch TV for a few hours before deciding to head over to her parents house to check on her dad and play some more darts. Then another two hours after that, it's time to eat some sushi. This time no parents came along. Melissa tells me of her and her father's favorite sushi place and takes me there. The name of the place is "Samurai's".
The restaurant is a small dive in an obvious place, but it never seems busy. I found the whole 50's music thing to be a strange element to add to the atmosphere of the restaurant, but it didn't detract from anything. She orders two rolls, and I order two pieces of sushi and two rolls. For the next five minutes we talk about our past sushi experiences. While we were deep in conversation our food arrives... on one plate! This made me quite happy; a traditional way of serving sushi. Seeing as the food was served, we dig in. I first try the sushi style tuna that I ordered. I lamented that it clearly was frozen. I ask Melissa to try to the other piece and she agrees with me. I point out that maybe it's just hard or not feasible to get fresh tuna. I then start digging into the rolls. Three of the four rolls are some combination of a spicy crab roll, and I don't quite remember what the last roll was (now, any sort of fish or shell-fish used in these was fresh). About half way through the rolls I try the sushi style lobster that I ordered. This was fresh and thusly was exquisite tasting.
After about half an hour we're nearly done and I have this sad look on my face. She asks me what's wrong, to which I reply, "I want to eat more sushi, but I'm too full!". We both laughed and finished our meal. The grand total, including tip, was about $55. That is not a bad price for two people. I wouldn't say this is the best Sushi adventure ever, but it certainly is near the top of my list. (Maybe I can convince Ben to write up a review of the sushi place he frequents in Pittsburgh in the Squirrel Hill area.)
From here we decide to visit the movies to see "Factory Girl", but before we visit the movies we visit the mall. Unfortunately the mall and the movie theater was in the rich people's district, but Melissa had two free passes to the movies. She has to use the bathroom pretty badly, so she drags me around until we find the toilet rooms. As I patiently wait in the general area for her to do her dirty business, I see a group of older wealthy people come out of the elevator. One of the women takes one look at me and suddenly grabs the arm of the man next to her, and then turns her nose up at me. Best snubbing ever. I start to laugh and the people around me give me dirty looks, like I'm not allowed to laugh at the idiocy of the upper class.
So once she comes out of the bathroom we start looking around at the different stores. She first pulls me into a culinary store, in which I ask a lot of questions. After the tour around there she takes me into some sort of bath and body store. She makes me smell some different lotions and body spray's. After we leave she asks me if there's any store I'd want to visit. Knowing that we don't have much time till the movie, I jokingly say, "well, you could give me an early b-day present. We could visit a lingerie store, you can pick out a few sexy things which I will pay for, and then once we get back to your place you can model them for me." The evil eye came around and Melissa tells me that she isn't doing that unless she plans on using it, and she doesn't plan on using something like that any time soon. Burn.
So we walk around for a few more minutes before leaving. From there we head over to the movie theater. The movie might be something appreciated by an Andy Warhol fan, but as to someone who doesn't give two shits about that joke of an artist, the movie is enough to put you to sleep, literally.
After the movie we head over to Bailey's in Antioch. Melissa had to drive, so of course she didn't drink as much as I did, but I stuck with Harp Draft and opted for the 23oz. glasses. After four of those I was fairly toasted. We just talked the entire time. I don't remember exactly about what, but I remember it being good general conversation. It was just very very fun. I thought super bitch Melissa was over. We connected on a level that hadn't been ahcieved all week. After the bar we go back to her house. On the couch we eat ice cream and look into her year books from high school. I had my arm around her the entire time and she didn't pull away. Things were going good. She showed me her year book picture from ninth grade. Phew, not very good looking. She didn't grow into her looks until her junior year. She wasn't too happy with how she looked in that picture. I commented that she's a beautiful women now, and that's what she should care about. She blushes a little. I take that as my cue and move in for a kiss. As soon as I get close she turns her head and acts like she's coughing. I get the idea and stop trying to pursue that avenue. We continue looking at her year books a little while longer and then head towards our rooms.
I ask if she minds that I sleep in the same bed next to her seeing as it's my last night there. She looks at me funny and inquires why that matters. I tell her it just does... that I want to be around her on my last night here. She sights and reluctantly says it's ok. She pops in a House DVD. Laying there in bed, she makes sure there's enough space between us. I didn't plan on doing any funny business with her, I just wanted to be close to her. I really should expressed that better... I really really should have... I fall asleep fairly quickly.
Saturday
Saturday I wake up at around 6am briefly. Very briefly. I shift my position and put my arm around Melissa. She rolls away from me and pushes my arm away. I'm upset by this and immediately leave the room to sleep in the guest room. I sleep there for a couple of hours and wake up. I watch TV while I wait for her to get up. We had planned on getting breakfast together, but she wanted to sleep instead. Once she actually wakes up we head over to the airport. She drops me off in front of the airline I take. We hug one last time and depart.
Afterwards
The plane ride was a plane ride, and well, that's it! That is the story of my trip to see Melissa. I honestly originally thought I had a bad time, a very bad time. In retrospect, the time I had was actually enjoyable, and any time that I didn't enjoy could have been made more tolerable if I didn't feed off of her moodiness. I still think Melissa is a great person. She's just going through some things right now and is having a hard time dealing with them. I desperately wanted to pursue a relationship with her then, but maybe another time, maybe when the time is right. Whenever that may be, I don't know, but maybe one day the time will come. By no means am I in love with her, but she is a pretty fantastic person overall and for once I'd just like to be with someone that's that great.
February 9th
So uh, normally I'd post some sort of update with some length to it. You know, something with girth, something for you to chew on. Not today. I am going on a much needed vacation to visit a very special friend of mine. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for Tennessee. I'll be back in a week!
February 5th
The Copyright Issue in a Nutshell
[11:56] nukeade: I can't believe that Viacom is so rabid about getting old episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head off of YouTube. It's not like they're making any money off of it anymore.
[11:56] Kneo24: You know, they could release some installment of famous grasshopper mutilations!
[11:56] Kneo24: That's pure gold right there.
[11:56] nukeade: That was probably the single greatest moment in all of Beavis and Butt-Head.
[11:57] Kneo24: Like with Nintendo not doing shit with their old product for years, but prosecuting people for sharing it, only to five years after that say, "hey, let's make this available on the Wii".
[11:57] nukeade: Yeah, no shit. Atari even does it with their old 2600 games, some of which are so rare that you couldn't reasonably purchase one to play for less than $1000.
[11:58] Kneo24: There is still a demand, albeit small, for these things. If you're not going to profit from it, and openly show no interest in doing so, why prosecute?
[11:59] Kneo24: You'd make more money from not prosecuting and trying to find a way to re-release this stuff.
[11:59] nukeade: The bottom line is that copyright needs to be cut down to 10 years.
[11:59] Kneo24: I agree.
[11:59] Kneo24: In the digital age, no more or less is acceptable.
[12:00] Kneo24: I wouldn't even mind the original copyrigh system. 7 years, another 7 at max if you wish to renew. That was it. A total of 14 years. If you didn't get what you wanted out of it after those 14 years, too f-ing bad.
[12:02] Kneo24: Now the copyright laws are so extensive that you and your children can prosecute people for years to come to make your income.
[12:02] Kneo24: That system offers no incentives to continually create.
[12:02] nukeade: Basically. Make one decent work, profit forever.
[12:03] Kneo24: Less goes into PD, more stays in the hands of a few people. Culture ceases to exist. People cease to create. Society stagnates, or becomes worse.
[12:03] Kneo24: I may be over simplifying the matter, but it is true.
[12:04] nukeade: It is. I mean, a few examples: there are some Beavis and Butt-Head episodes that *are not known to exist* anymore... the copyright holder couldn't be trusted to keep track of the part of culture that they released and kept from us. There are some classic games that you can't play because the ROMs were all taken down and they're out of production. There are bands whose CD I can't find because they weren't popular enough to warrant keeping in record stores.
[12:05] nukeade: So in an era where memory is so cheap that you can get a 1GB e-mail account for free, we still have so much being lost.
[12:05] nukeade: That is sick. Absolutely sick.
[12:06] nukeade: Classic television shows, for example the clip that caused the only witnessed case of fatal hilarity in modern times, have been lost so that only 10 minutes or so still exist.
Here's an article that inspired such conversation.
February4th
There's a new intro vid for Dystopia. You can view it by clicking here (23.7MB).
I have uploaded a new section. I've dubbed it, "pictures". Cause, you know, it has pictures in it. The first section details the PC's I've built with some explanations behind my thoughts on building them.
February 1st
And The Week is Almost Over...
*sigh*
This week has been tough. It hasn't been a challenge in the traditional sense. It hasn't been encumbersome in that sense either. It's just been tough. The only good day so far has been Tuesday? Maybe it was Monday? I don't remember clearly. I just remember being disrespected day after day. It's as if that good day didn't even exist.
Before I continue, I guess it helps if I go over what I do on the Monday thru Friday grind. I work for a company that repairs forklift controllers. I am currently a Team Leader there for three different product lines. Let's continue.
The first day was annoying. Every morning I get a daily report of what orders are still open. We call them "open-all's". A more technical term I'm used to is WIP (works in progress) report, On this report, I have to mark down all of the lates, and why they're late. Not difficult to do, it's just a matter of finding whatever it is that is late.
We are currently out of a part that allows us to surface mount microprocessor's to boards that use a through-hole socket. So on the open-all I've been writing, "parts" next to whatever is currently late. The customers have already been notified that they'll have to wait another couple of weeks before they get their controls back. The part just simply won't be here till then. So, you know, the issue is taken care of.
Well my boss comes to me and asks me why I keep writing, "parts" on the open-all. I told him what part we were missing. He asks me specifically what part of that we were missing. We are currently missing the boards that we solder the micro's to. These things come in two parts - the legs and the board. So then he asks me if I had talked to anyone about it, as in seeing if we can get the boards in here faster. I had done that a week and a half ago, and I told him so. I had talked to two different people about this issue, telling them I had a lot of controls waiting on these things.
He looks confused, states hurriedly that he was going to look into this issue himself, and walks off in a huff. I'm thinking, "What the hell?". On annual review my boss gave me praises for taking care of issues by myself. So why is that now an issue? Furthermore, if I'm waiting on parts to fix quality issues with these things, what can I do? Just leave these micro's in their sockets and cross my fingers, hoping that the vibration won't cause connection issues that they undoubtedly have?
A few of the techs that work on a different product that overheard the entire thing commeneted on what a jackass my boss was.
The next day of disrespect came from one of the techs in a different area. He got paged by customer service. The only time they ever page him is to have him translate. They don't pay him any extra money to do this, and management never says how appreciative they are of it. It's not even his job to do that. No where in the title of "technician" does it say that a person has to translate. He didn't hear the page. So one of the women from CS comes to him yelling at him, thinking he was ignoring them. He's upset and starts yelling back. I stick up for him and say on his defense that he shouldn't translate for them anymore unless they start paying him a translators wages. He snaps at me saying that I shouldn't be talking to him like that, and that he'll kick my ass. He actually had the nerve to get out of his seat and start walking near me. I briefly thought about dropping him, but I really don't like fighting, so I went back to my seat. The Team Leader of that area stands up after I have walked away, like he was trying to diffuse the situation. Fuck him too.
The jerk who tried threatning me comes to me later and apologizes, but you know, the guy is a firecracker. He's always like that. Upper management knows he's like that. However they refuse to do anything about him.
And then there's today. Kind of like the other days. Kind of... but more annoying. More irritating. More frustrating. The one product that I work on has a high warranty return rate (16%). I'm not exactly sure what the common fail is yet. We did happen to fix one of the issues about three months back, but uh, that doesn't cover the rest of the controls I've done before that time that are still under warranty. There's also other varrying issues, I'm sure. I think a large portion of these are No Fault Found's.
Well, one customer is upset with us. They had sent in a control to be repaired, claimed we didn't fix their issue and sent it back under warranty. The engineer and I could not get this thing to fail at all. We locked up the motor with a wooden brush to try and get it to fail, and it still wouldn't fail. It instead snapped the brush into two. So we figure there's nothing wrong with this control. The customer claims we're missing something and wants to send in their demo control that they know is broken to see if we can fix it.
The engineer wants to take a look at this control with me. So I open it up and I see shit that I've never seen burnt up before. Never. So we know that they are beating the shit out of these things. We find all of the little quirks and issues, fix them, test it under load with a motor, and ship both controls back.
The customer calls back saying that both are not working, but have different issues. The one that we had recently fixed, is having a lifting type issue. Now, the only thing these have to do with the "lift and lower" function of the forklift is there is a switch on there that cuts the control back to half speed once you've steered past a certain degree and the forklift's mast has lifted up to a certain height. They're claiming that this switch wasn't working.
Their issue with the first control was that it would just shut off. They claim that that issue still exists, but that they don't have the lifting issue... What? The forklift isn't going to do anything if that control isn't working, so how do they know whether or not that switch is working properly without the forklift actually running?
So now back to what I want to bitch about with these. I have a few more of these to repair. I also want to train my only technician on these. So the first one I pick up has a part number I've never seen with these before. I set it to the side and grab the next one. The power connection tabs usually have poor solder work, so we add more solder to them. Well, on this one, the tab was missing and I see that the board was charred. The copper trace was still there, but the board underneath it was charred. So I say it's unrepairable. The reason is that once I dig out the carbon that is there, there will be nothing to suspend the copper trace to so I can put the tab back in.
Apparently reasoning like that isn't appreciated, especially if it's with controls that have a high warranty return rate. The VP asks me what I'm thinking, and I of course tell him. It seems like a no brainer to me. He tells me he'll need time to think about this. That naturally means he's going to have some ass kissing jerk-off take a look at it and say, "sure, we can fix this!". He did exactly that. So he comes back to me, tells me that we're going to fix this. I wonder what kind of magical powers he expects me to have with which I can use to fix this.
I need a new job.
January 28th
| Browser | Percentage |
| Firefox | 49.9% |
| Internet Explorer | 43.8% |
| Opera | 4.6% |
| Mozilla | 0.9% |
| Konqueror | 0.3% |
| Unknown | 0.3% |
I think it's interesting to note that Firefox, a much better browser than I.E., is at the top! I hear Opera is a better alternative than Firefox, but to me Opera felt like Mozilla and I never liked Mozilla (which thankfully has seemingly been scrapped so Firefox can flourish).
So what's up with you die hard IE users? Do you not know about any other browser alternatives? Or do you think that IE is the "bomb diggitty yo!" I didn't start using Firefox until about four years ago when I started working on TLV (which I am glad to say it no longer exists). I found that it greatly enhanced my browsing experience. Firefox still does everything better than IE. You know, the direction IE has gone it's just trying to be like FireFox, and it's failing, miserably.
So, that reviews section I put up is going to be a neat little feature. I'm just going to... reiview things! Music, books, electronics, places I visit, etc... When it grows, I'll split it up into sections. I'll probably even have one of my friends write some sort of searching script for me, or implment the free google one for me. But you know, that won't be for a while yet. Right now I have two reviews in there. One is a book, and the other is an electronic device.
I'm going to attempt to update it once a week with something. I'm not going to make any promises that I know I can't keep, but I am honestly going to try.
January 27th
New pictures from V1 of Dystopia. These highlight a bug I found, which of course no longer exists. It's all about hamsterballing.
When a callvote for "balanceteams" succeeded, and a person was jacked in to cyberspace, when they'd spawn, there would be a hybrid model. Furthermore, at the JIP, an old dead model would still be jacked in. However their camera view would be of the player who was originally there. It made the JIP useless. Furthermore, if you attacked the model that is attached to the JIP, the player, if spawned, would take damage!
January 26th
New section. Click it, read it. Perhaps tomorrow I'll post an actual update here, or something.
January 20th
So I've been doing RC testing for Dystopia for about two weeks now. My experience so far has been a sour one, I think. Sure I'm having fun playing the new version of Dystopia, but there's a lot of shit that's still broken. You can't call something a "release canidate" if it's still heavily buggy. Generally speaking, RC's have very few bugs and are mostly complete. They're called RC's so the last few bugs can be found.
RC 1 was generally bug free, have a lot of issues background wise, but mostly bug free. After that it's oddly become more and more buggier. One thing is fixed and other issues arise - things that weren't issues before. It's very frustrating. I know these guys have lives, and I know they're busy, I know coding isn't always easy, but god damn, don't release a patch that seemingly breaks more than it proposed that it fixed.
But that's not even the main thing I want to bitch about.
I think my problem stems on two fronts:
1. No updates to the maps.
2. The coders see