I think its funny that they have Mother's day and Father's day. Its probably because older people don't like to celebrate birthdays anymore. So then "Kids day" is whatever day thier birthday is and Mothers Day/Fathers Day is like a birthday for the parents that doesn't allude to the fact that they're getting older.
But then what about the parents who are okay celebrating birthdays? I suppose generally the quality of gifts declines as one grows older, so maybe they're adding these extra gift-giving days to make up for that.
My sons will have a wonderful party with lots of people over and get gifts on thier birthday which they will absolutely love. They will play with them for hours.
I will likely get to eat meatloaf at home with my wife on my birthday. If I'm lucky someone else will watch the kids for the evening. I will probably get wrenches as a gift, which I will hang on my toolbench till I can find the opportunity to use one of them next spring. At least I have father's day to look forward to, though I will probably just get a shirt or more tools.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
To be bullied
The viral video of the moment of a kid being bullied finally snaps and kicks the crap out of his bully. On one hand, it sucks to see someone bullied, and it sucks to see a kid being hurt so severely. On the other hand, as someone who was bullied, it makes me want to cheer the kid on.
The bully is like 1/3 of the size of him and comes up and punches the bigger kid in the face. The kid doesn't respond at all. Then the kid takes a few more swings at him, hitting him in the chest and stomach. The bullied kid finally puts his hands up to block the punches and when the bully takes his last swing the bigger kid grabs him, lifts him into the air upside down and slams him bodily into the ground. If he'd been slammed on his head it would've been much worse. As it was, the bully got up and was limping terribly and barely able to stand.
Both kids got suspended for fighting, but now the bully is known worldwide as an asshole who got body slammed and the bullied kid is known as "Little Zangief".
The part that really impressed me was that after doing this the bullied kid just stepped back rather than kicking the bully while he was down, and then walked away. It takes a lot of self control to do that. Especially after being punched in the face. Granted, the bully had at least one bigger friend with him.
I was bullied in school. I recall one time when my bully ran up behind me when we were running in gym and slid into my feet. I sprung to my feet and kicked the bully right in the ribs. As far as I'm aware, nobody else but his friends saw it. There was no video of the event, no fanfare at all. He probably didn't even learn anything from it. Yet I have to deal with the memories of being bullied, and pent up anger that has never in 15 years found an outlet.
You can bet that if I ever find out my sons are being bullied, all that rage will finally find its outlet and while I may never take a swing at a kid, you can be sure that he will never forget me, his parents will never forget me, and that bully will think twice about even so much as looking at my son again.
That being said, if you don't know who my sons are, you might think twice before becoming a bully for a generation or two.
The bully is like 1/3 of the size of him and comes up and punches the bigger kid in the face. The kid doesn't respond at all. Then the kid takes a few more swings at him, hitting him in the chest and stomach. The bullied kid finally puts his hands up to block the punches and when the bully takes his last swing the bigger kid grabs him, lifts him into the air upside down and slams him bodily into the ground. If he'd been slammed on his head it would've been much worse. As it was, the bully got up and was limping terribly and barely able to stand.
Both kids got suspended for fighting, but now the bully is known worldwide as an asshole who got body slammed and the bullied kid is known as "Little Zangief".
The part that really impressed me was that after doing this the bullied kid just stepped back rather than kicking the bully while he was down, and then walked away. It takes a lot of self control to do that. Especially after being punched in the face. Granted, the bully had at least one bigger friend with him.
I was bullied in school. I recall one time when my bully ran up behind me when we were running in gym and slid into my feet. I sprung to my feet and kicked the bully right in the ribs. As far as I'm aware, nobody else but his friends saw it. There was no video of the event, no fanfare at all. He probably didn't even learn anything from it. Yet I have to deal with the memories of being bullied, and pent up anger that has never in 15 years found an outlet.
You can bet that if I ever find out my sons are being bullied, all that rage will finally find its outlet and while I may never take a swing at a kid, you can be sure that he will never forget me, his parents will never forget me, and that bully will think twice about even so much as looking at my son again.
That being said, if you don't know who my sons are, you might think twice before becoming a bully for a generation or two.
Car Salesmen suck
I must wonder whether or not car salesmen suck as much off the lot as they do on the lot.
I had one salesman this weekend argue with me for more than ten minutes when he wanted me to sign a hand-written paper that had a dollar amount written and "I will buy", saying that he wanted a commitment. What the hell? He wanted it in writing when we already knew what I wanted to pay and he just sat there for more than ten minutes arguing with me fruitlessly. After finally NOT signing the paper he managed to go get the price without any problems whatsoever. And then the price he brought back was more than 25% more than I told him I wanted to spend right off the bat. At that point I walked out.
I got this "excellent" service from a man named "Andy Griffith" at Sands Kia in Surprise, AZ.
I was also the victim of a bait-and-switch scam this weekend. That was entirely disappointing. I should've realized it was going on before I'd wasted my time coming down. The funny thing was that I'd been down to the dealer and when it wasn't there I'd looked at everything else they had, which is exactly the point of the bait-and-switch scam... I turned down everything else and left. But then when I called to see if they had found the car yet, two different people told me that it was there, so I played the part of the clueless consumer and showed up at the dealership again and found that the car was probably "in the shop" which was closed. They could neither open the service shop, nor actually confirm that it was in there. The best that the salesman offered to do to look it up was to look at the online posting for what they had in stock and tried to convince me that I was actually looking for a similar vehicle that had 20K miles more than the original. After looking around the lot the second time I didn't even follow him back to the office, I just went straight to my car.
I got this "excellent" service from Tony Sol at Big Bell Kia in Phoenix, AZ.
I had one salesman this weekend argue with me for more than ten minutes when he wanted me to sign a hand-written paper that had a dollar amount written and "I will buy", saying that he wanted a commitment. What the hell? He wanted it in writing when we already knew what I wanted to pay and he just sat there for more than ten minutes arguing with me fruitlessly. After finally NOT signing the paper he managed to go get the price without any problems whatsoever. And then the price he brought back was more than 25% more than I told him I wanted to spend right off the bat. At that point I walked out.
I got this "excellent" service from a man named "Andy Griffith" at Sands Kia in Surprise, AZ.
I was also the victim of a bait-and-switch scam this weekend. That was entirely disappointing. I should've realized it was going on before I'd wasted my time coming down. The funny thing was that I'd been down to the dealer and when it wasn't there I'd looked at everything else they had, which is exactly the point of the bait-and-switch scam... I turned down everything else and left. But then when I called to see if they had found the car yet, two different people told me that it was there, so I played the part of the clueless consumer and showed up at the dealership again and found that the car was probably "in the shop" which was closed. They could neither open the service shop, nor actually confirm that it was in there. The best that the salesman offered to do to look it up was to look at the online posting for what they had in stock and tried to convince me that I was actually looking for a similar vehicle that had 20K miles more than the original. After looking around the lot the second time I didn't even follow him back to the office, I just went straight to my car.
I got this "excellent" service from Tony Sol at Big Bell Kia in Phoenix, AZ.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Power of gamers
Carol Lieberman Is an author. One of her 3 or so books is called "Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets"
She had an interview last month with Fox News where she remarked: "Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games." Apparently this pissed off some gamers for bringing unwanted negative attention to thier hobby.
Dr. Lieberman is now attempting to rectify her relationship with gamers by offering a more detailed explanation of her thoughts to anyone who would take the time to email her. This change of heart was in response to plummeting ratings of her book, "Bad Girls", on Amazon.com.
Plummeting ratings? oh? Let's see... the first six reviews of the book were five stars. Those were January or earlier. On February 8th she got her first one-star review. In the next few days she's gotten 136 one-star reviews from 136 different pissed-off gamers. Even with all of the actual reviews being higher than one star, there are still 136 out of 152 people saying that her book is a piece of garbage and it has a 1.5 star average. Although not hit as hard as this one, her other two books on Amazon are also at 1.5 stars. "Bad Boys" has 53/60 reviews being one star.
I'm thinking any author should think twice before bad-mouthing video games again. Apparently gamers are a little bit more organized than most people think. All this was in response to a new video game called Bulletstorm. Imagine the fallout if someone publicly bad-mouthed WoW. Aside from maybe RL sports or gun enthusiasts, I can't think of another hobby group that it would be stupider to piss off.
Here's a few reviews that caught my eye:
I wouldn't use this a lining for a cage
This is quite possibly the worst book I've ever had the displeasure of reading. It actually made me I'll at the senseless dribble that this author had the audacity to get published. Anyone who has been made to read this travesty should be given their money back and then more for pain and suffering. This book raped my love of books. I'm just going to play some videogames, those are a decent medium of entertainment and knowledge.
It's encouraging to think that an author such as yourself is so dedicated to empowering young women of today to be the whores that everyone knows they really are. Bless you.
Until my choices have a direct negative result on you or your life than leave me and my games alone. (This came from a one-star review that didn't mention a single thing about the book, but which 47 out of 50 found helpful.)
THIS BOOK RAPED ME
I...I bought it a week ago. I thought it would be fun. We were talking, having drinks together...it roofied me. When I woke up, I was chained to the wall, covered in little bits of paper and ink. The book, which had also beaten me and cut off some of my toes, was playing violent video games. IT MADE ME WATCH.
Whichever University gave her a degree needs to hire somebody to steal it back....
She had an interview last month with Fox News where she remarked: "Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games." Apparently this pissed off some gamers for bringing unwanted negative attention to thier hobby.
Dr. Lieberman is now attempting to rectify her relationship with gamers by offering a more detailed explanation of her thoughts to anyone who would take the time to email her. This change of heart was in response to plummeting ratings of her book, "Bad Girls", on Amazon.com.
Plummeting ratings? oh? Let's see... the first six reviews of the book were five stars. Those were January or earlier. On February 8th she got her first one-star review. In the next few days she's gotten 136 one-star reviews from 136 different pissed-off gamers. Even with all of the actual reviews being higher than one star, there are still 136 out of 152 people saying that her book is a piece of garbage and it has a 1.5 star average. Although not hit as hard as this one, her other two books on Amazon are also at 1.5 stars. "Bad Boys" has 53/60 reviews being one star.
I'm thinking any author should think twice before bad-mouthing video games again. Apparently gamers are a little bit more organized than most people think. All this was in response to a new video game called Bulletstorm. Imagine the fallout if someone publicly bad-mouthed WoW. Aside from maybe RL sports or gun enthusiasts, I can't think of another hobby group that it would be stupider to piss off.
Here's a few reviews that caught my eye:
I wouldn't use this a lining for a cage
This is quite possibly the worst book I've ever had the displeasure of reading. It actually made me I'll at the senseless dribble that this author had the audacity to get published. Anyone who has been made to read this travesty should be given their money back and then more for pain and suffering. This book raped my love of books. I'm just going to play some videogames, those are a decent medium of entertainment and knowledge.
It's encouraging to think that an author such as yourself is so dedicated to empowering young women of today to be the whores that everyone knows they really are. Bless you.
Until my choices have a direct negative result on you or your life than leave me and my games alone. (This came from a one-star review that didn't mention a single thing about the book, but which 47 out of 50 found helpful.)
THIS BOOK RAPED ME
I...I bought it a week ago. I thought it would be fun. We were talking, having drinks together...it roofied me. When I woke up, I was chained to the wall, covered in little bits of paper and ink. The book, which had also beaten me and cut off some of my toes, was playing violent video games. IT MADE ME WATCH.
Whichever University gave her a degree needs to hire somebody to steal it back....
Why a blog?
There's like a million other blogs out there that are more well thought out, more interesting, more specific, more better and more gooder than what I'm about to write. Why the heck would I want to add to the mountains of BS on the internet that nobody ever reads?
Well, if you read my first post what you're reading is pretty much an email that I wrote to my wife. She might read it. She might just skim thru it. She never responds to my emails. For all I know, I'm throwing my thoughts into a void, never to be thought of again. So I thought: Why not throw them into a void where there's a 0.0000001% chance that a google search will bring them up because you threw in the phrase "More Gooder" or something, and then I can waste your time, random person, with thoughts that are probably irrelevant to whatever you were looking up and most likely years old and obsolete by now anyway. Besides, there's nothing personal in there anyway.
Or the short version: Why not?
Also, I see so many people who get all excited about thier blog and then nobody reads it and they get discouraged and then stop writing it. Why would I want to submit myself to what is likely going to be the same series of events? Well, because right now its fun to write. I'll look back at it in 15 years and think something like: "What's the internet? Oh yeah, that's back when everything was displayed on those clunky old screens."
So, person who probably isn't reading my blog, or at least not on purpose, THIS will be my last blog post. Ever. Until the next one. And then that post will be the last blog post ever, until.... well I guess you can just assume that every single blog post that I write will be the very last blog post that I will ever write, and that way when I do get bored of it I don't have to make a big deal of it and explain to nobody about how I'm not going to be writing my blogs because nobody isn't not reading them and if I just completely forget about it then you won't be disappointed because, hey, I told you right now that I was going to not be writing them anymore. You've been warned. And then when I keep writing you can be pleasantly (or otherwise) surprised at each one.
Well, if you read my first post what you're reading is pretty much an email that I wrote to my wife. She might read it. She might just skim thru it. She never responds to my emails. For all I know, I'm throwing my thoughts into a void, never to be thought of again. So I thought: Why not throw them into a void where there's a 0.0000001% chance that a google search will bring them up because you threw in the phrase "More Gooder" or something, and then I can waste your time, random person, with thoughts that are probably irrelevant to whatever you were looking up and most likely years old and obsolete by now anyway. Besides, there's nothing personal in there anyway.
Or the short version: Why not?
Also, I see so many people who get all excited about thier blog and then nobody reads it and they get discouraged and then stop writing it. Why would I want to submit myself to what is likely going to be the same series of events? Well, because right now its fun to write. I'll look back at it in 15 years and think something like: "What's the internet? Oh yeah, that's back when everything was displayed on those clunky old screens."
So, person who probably isn't reading my blog, or at least not on purpose, THIS will be my last blog post. Ever. Until the next one. And then that post will be the last blog post ever, until.... well I guess you can just assume that every single blog post that I write will be the very last blog post that I will ever write, and that way when I do get bored of it I don't have to make a big deal of it and explain to nobody about how I'm not going to be writing my blogs because nobody isn't not reading them and if I just completely forget about it then you won't be disappointed because, hey, I told you right now that I was going to not be writing them anymore. You've been warned. And then when I keep writing you can be pleasantly (or otherwise) surprised at each one.
Boring Gear Stats
I play World of Warcraft. I've played on and off since it was released in November 2004. Just now I was thinking about my warrior tank's gear.
It seems to me that gear stats are a little more boring now. I don't disagree with them removing what they did, but there's relatively little variation in gear now. For tanking specificially it'd be cool if there were armor pieces that had increased armor or some amount of regeneration if only to make people wonder if they might be better. Also, there's no gear with Str + Stamina + agility. Or even Strength + Agility. Agility is still good for crit rating and SHOULD be good for dodge rating.
Also, enchants seem a bit more limited. There should pretty much be enchants for all stats for all pieces. Why couldn't you put + armor on your chest piece, for example. Maybe it should be a leatherworking or blacksmithing thing. People should be able to fully customize the stats on thier gear. Of course, getting better gear to put the enchants on would still give you an advantage.
I once imagined a video game based on D&D's Spelljammer world. I had a whole notebook full of notes for it, and lost the whole thing. I wonder if it is in a box somewhere.
I wonder how game designers do thier thing. Do they come up with the names of everything first and then make up some stats? I can imagine that they have a guy who sits around all day and makes up names for items, checking that they don't already have an item with a too-similar name. And another guy who sits around all day dreaming up different looks and textures for armor pieces. I imagine that to cut down the work for the name-making guy they had CATA gear come in normal and heroic versions. After a couple of thousand names you have to start getting pretty damn creative. In fact, they've come up with some item names that dont' even sound like they should really be item names at all. For example: Burned Gatherings. wtf?! Fortunately with this expansion they can just whip out a bunch of Egyptian-sounding words and names. Orsis, Pharoah's, Setesh, etc
It seems to me that gear stats are a little more boring now. I don't disagree with them removing what they did, but there's relatively little variation in gear now. For tanking specificially it'd be cool if there were armor pieces that had increased armor or some amount of regeneration if only to make people wonder if they might be better. Also, there's no gear with Str + Stamina + agility. Or even Strength + Agility. Agility is still good for crit rating and SHOULD be good for dodge rating.
Also, enchants seem a bit more limited. There should pretty much be enchants for all stats for all pieces. Why couldn't you put + armor on your chest piece, for example. Maybe it should be a leatherworking or blacksmithing thing. People should be able to fully customize the stats on thier gear. Of course, getting better gear to put the enchants on would still give you an advantage.
I once imagined a video game based on D&D's Spelljammer world. I had a whole notebook full of notes for it, and lost the whole thing. I wonder if it is in a box somewhere.
I wonder how game designers do thier thing. Do they come up with the names of everything first and then make up some stats? I can imagine that they have a guy who sits around all day and makes up names for items, checking that they don't already have an item with a too-similar name. And another guy who sits around all day dreaming up different looks and textures for armor pieces. I imagine that to cut down the work for the name-making guy they had CATA gear come in normal and heroic versions. After a couple of thousand names you have to start getting pretty damn creative. In fact, they've come up with some item names that dont' even sound like they should really be item names at all. For example: Burned Gatherings. wtf?! Fortunately with this expansion they can just whip out a bunch of Egyptian-sounding words and names. Orsis, Pharoah's, Setesh, etc
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