Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The Mandatory Political Post

Every blog's gotta have one, I suppose.

Personally, I don't like politicians. Even Obama. BUT, there is a lot of good to come out of this election, the least of which is that he'll do much, much better than the alternative.

Still, to me, the biggest thing about this election is that Obama is not just black... he's a halfbreed. All the racists I've met think that's even worse.

It seems like a long, long time to the human eye, but when you think about it: only 44 presidents went by. At the beginning, black halfbreeds were treated so terribly that it boggles the mind. Slavery at best! Now, we've got one as our main leader.

That's hopeful, don't you think?

To me, racism is one of the strongest examples of human faults. It's been with us since the beginning of time, an instinct that other peoples - even just another tribe - are not people. Inferior, animals, etc.

That we've come so far towards negating that fault gives me a lot of hope for the future. We have a lot of other faults I'd like to see gone. If it only takes 200 years to fix a fundamental human fault... well, let's get to it!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Imminent Pictures...

Soon I leave for my month of vacation. Chances are, I won't make ANY posts during that time.

If you want to see photos of my vacation, you should probably watch my new Flickr account. It's got a few pictures in it already, because I'm a shitty photographer and I'd like to be a bit less shitty before I go.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Your Amazon.com Order!

So, for the first time in a long time, I had a little issue with Amazon. I decided I'd fill out their "help-a me!" page and ask them about it: "should I cancel and buy it from the dude down the street, or will you be shipping this item sometime soon?"

In response, I got a letter. The first paragraph was: "I understand your concern that you would like to know that availability of the item, so that you can make the appropriate arrangements."

I said, "okay, hey, that sounds pretty carefully targeted. Maybe I'll get lucky and this letter will help! Plus, their grammar is really clumsy, so maybe it's an actual person!"

"I've checked your order #[redacted] and see that the
availability item "[redacted]" you ordered is listed on our
website as "Usually ships in 1 to 3 months"."

Oh, YOU checked, did you?

"It means it typically take up to 1 to 3 months to obtain and prepare
for shipment, but can occasionally take longer."

Because you're a dumbass, "ships in 1-3 months" means "ships in 1-3 months". Except it doesn't: it's a leftover "cover our ass" clause from before the product was published. Usually, you ship immediately, no matter what your ass-armor says. I ignore ass-armor, because I'm not a fucking lawyer. Your prior performance sets my expectations.

It's such a tiny issue. Not worth getting upset over. So:

"Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here: [redacted]
If not, click here: [redacted]"

Well, let's go to the "your form letter didn't help" page and fill out their "your form letter didn't help" fields with calm, polite info about how your form letter didn't help to answer this very specific question and then click the "your form letter didn't help" submit button.

An hour later, I get the EXACT SAME FORM EMAIL.

Well, I wasn't irritated before, but I'm irritated now. It's "signed" by "Lavanya".

A fictional person, I'm sure. Because no real person would be DUMB enough to sign their name to a proactive form letter. Lavanya checked the status of my order, did she? "I'm not a __FORM LETTER____, you can tell because I personally ___CHECKED YOUR ORDER__. Please have a nice _____AFTERNOON___."

It's a tiny issue. But I just can't help but feel insulted. What poor customer service, to send a form letter that pretends to be more, then send it again after the customer fills out the "your form letter didn't help" form.

The only thing I appreciated about the letter was that it told me where to go to cancel my order.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Party

I am known for my party animal nature in much the same way a wombat is known for his berserker rages. That is to say, I don't do parties, and alcohol just makes the headaches start earlier and end worse.

Still, if I had passed up the Bioshock "Appreciation Party", I probably would have been stabbed to death by feral game design students, so I went. I didn't stay terribly long, as the post time indicates. As I mentioned: headaches.

Anyhow, it was a really nice party. It doesn't take "swankiest", that goes to Intel. But it certainly wins in "models dressed in blood and cancer pretending to be mannequins".

I got myself injected with apple tequila, shamelessly stole a glowing swizzle stick, admired the giant big daddy, avoided the consoles set up with the game (I'm'a gonna play it tomorrow), and convinced someone to send me pictures. It's hard to overstate the ambiance of the place: the whole club was redone to be Rapturous. Pictures will show that, I'm sure.

The big thing for me was a TARDIS in the corner. Yehaw! Apparently the club has one by default. Now that's one hell of a cool club.

Then I went home. I'm a party animal!




Edit: here are some pictures, although they aren't the ones I want. Those "mannequins" aren't.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

It Was a Very Boston Day

This is a very dumb anecdotal post.

Today was very hot. So I went down to Cambridge to see what there was to see. If that decision seems strange, it's because it was hot: my brain wasn't working.

The sights of Cambridge were pretty much normal, save for the shimmering in the air. But there was something new. The most phenomenal smell. Like rotting vomit. It was the most amazing thing, and so prevalent all across the square I thought it might be coming from my coffee cup. To test this theory I walked to the river, believing that if the smell cleared up, it was probably safe to drink the coffee. Again, it was hot: my brain wasn't working.

Western crosses the river twice on the way to where I live, meaning that it actually takes you to the same side of the river you started on. Instead of hiking the depressingly urban length of Western, I decided to follow the river. After all, it would take me back to Western in the fullness of time. At this point, the heat had learned self preservation and was largely trying to keep me off of Western so I wouldn't catch an air-conditioned bus and recover my sanity.

I actually am not sure how long the walk was. All I know for sure is that my iced coffee turned into hot coffee before the trek was complete. But it was evidently a good day for being outside: everywhere I looked, people were draped on the grass or squatting on benches, crowded into tiny but overpopulated parties or onto kayaks. I realized that the heat might be getting to me when I noticed that, instead of ogling the various fleshy bits that people like to irradiate, I was carefully spying on book covers. Looking for titles that would spark my interest.

A hula party and one wheat field maze later, the river came back to Western and I limped towards home. Again, I forewent the bus, because the heat still had its claws in my head.

But it could not prevent me from searching for liquids, my coffee having long since boiled away.

Did you know that the Target eatery charges the same amount for a hot dog as it does for a hot dog and drink? It's same with sandwiches.

Madness! Maaaadness!

So then I got home and wrote a novelette about the various theoretical approaches to succeeding in life. Because I'm such a good example, you see.

And, of course, every personal post on every blog ever has to have a cat in it. So, yesterday, I was in a place that had two cats in it. EXCITING!

This is now officially a cat blog. Until tomorrow. Until half an hour ago, as it's 12:30.

I apologize for this post.

It's hot. My brain doesn't work.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

That's it! Retail stores, the Rant.

I bought "Runaway 2" today, an adventure game. I bought it on a lark, I don't know much about it. What I do know is that, like every PC game I've bought from a brick-and-mortar store in the past year, it doesn't fucking work. Yeah, it wants to see the original DVD before it'll let me play, never mind that the original DVD is in the drive.

So, as usual, I find myself downloading an illegal crack to play a perfectly legal copy of the game.

Worse, I find that I could have bought it on-line for the same price and just downloaded it, no DVD required. Which means the version released to the stores is crippleware. Crippleware that prevents me from playing the game I own.

I can add this to a giant stack of games I bought and could not play without illegal software modifications. A few of them: Half Life 2, Halo, Stubbs the Zombie, Sid Meiers's Railroads... all games I bought and could not return when they didn't work because of "store policy". "You can only exchange them for copies of the same game." Guess what? The game doesn't work on my machine. Period. I still haven't played Stubbs.

Strangely, I've never had any problems with games bought and downloaded - I once had to get a patch, which has been the extent of my difficulties. And I own a lot of games purchased from on-line stores - more than a dozen. All of which work fine.

So, what the hell? The multi-billion dollar industry of game stores can't produce a usable product, but J random downloads work fine?

Hilariously, I saw versions of games I downloaded online in the store - Bookworm Adventures, Shadowgrounds, Aveyond, etc, etc. I almost want to buy them just to verify that the retail versions won't work, even while I have a perfectly functional copy two hundred kilobytes to the left.

No more brick-and-mortar stores. Fuck them.

Friday, June 01, 2007

It's my birthday...

And you know what I want for a present? Really really want?

Ring... ring... ring... ring... "Hi, this is Johnny Rad, I'm not in, leave a message."

"Okay... hi-"

"Welcome to our big company's voicemail system. This mailbox is for " "Johnny Rad" ". If you'd like to leave a message, you may do so after the beep. Once you're done, you may either press pound, 9, 6, 7, or 8. Alternately, you may simply hang up the phone when your message is complete. If you want to send a numeric page, press 3. If you'd like to leave a call-back number, press 4. If you'd like to talk to the operator, press five. If you want more options, press star. If you want to talk to an operator, press zero. If you don't have a touch-tone phone, say 'help' in to the headset. If you are deaf or would like these instructions again en espagnol, press el numero uno. If you want to hear a really funny corporate-sponsored joke, press 2. Now we'll wait ten seconds to see if you press a button... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Beep."

"ggzzznnzz- huh? Oh, yeah, I was calling someone. Hey, whoever you are, I forgot who I was calling... call me back."

...

Fix it.

Either that or lots of money. Either or. I could go either way.

...

Most popular gift this year: invites to LinkedIn. It's an interesting idea: "Here's absolute proof that I was thinking of you!" I guess it seems like an unimpressive gift until you realize that, until half an hour ago, my portfolio was invisible.

Anyhow, if you want to give the gift that keeps on giving, you too can invite me. It's like a gift, except painless, pointless, and almost completely impersonal since I made it easy.

That was the most popular gift. Biggest gift?

The moon is full. It would be quite pretty, if I could see through the dense haze of New England. Technically, they call it "rain". Really, it's just "New England". The actual land beneath is nameless: the weather is the constant factor. Miserably cold and rainy, or miserably muggy and rainy. Some days New England ceases to exist for a little while and Virginia or Florida rolls in for a day or two. Unfortunately, Virginia and Florida won't have anything to do with the people of this nameless place, and they roll out as quickly as they roll in, leaving it once again New England.

Bastards, both of em.

...

There, that was my birthday post.

Originally, I wanted to talk about how the brain learns, and maybe make some neural net references. But, eh, too much effort. Besides, everyone already knows all that crap.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Bosco's Inconvenience Store

If you haven't been playing the recent Sam & Max games, you've been missing out. They are, by and large, a lot of fun. Even if you suck at adventure games, just grab a walkthrough and walk through. It's like watching an especially well-written episode of... something...

But the reason I bring it up is because of Bosco's Inconvenience Store. We live very near an Inconvenience Store of our own. The similarities are frightening.

"Do you have any... Benedryl?"

"You might be interested in what I have behind the counter..."

"Okay, how much is it?"

"Five hundred pennies!"

"That's kind of high..."

"You want it or not?"

"Fine, fine... hey, this is children's Benedryl. Cherry-flavored chewables?!"

"But it works, trust me, trust me!"

But our place also sells beer and wine. In fact, half their store is beer and wine.

Fascinating post, this one. I feel like Neil Gaiman.

Friday, April 20, 2007

I had lunch today...

And my waiter looked exactly like Phil Plait. But in a kilt.

It was strange.

What, not game related enough?

I'm making visualizations of how Quake III is played, tracking the players in how they move, what they pick up, what they shoot, when they die... it's fun. It's supposed to be here, but apparently somebody's been slackin'.

It's not the one you see there. Mine is written in .net 3.0. With WPF.

I have learned that the hoops that MS makes you jump through to do development get smaller and further away with every iteration. Now you need maps, and MS doesn't provide any maps.

I'm not happy about that. I'm very much a "let me program" sort of person rather than a "oooh, force me to maintain good code practices by enforcing eight levels of abstraction" sort of person. :P

Friday, March 30, 2007

Distractions!

Sorry, I'm busy moving and starting a new job. Or, as the song says,

Just moved to my new house today!
Movin' was hard but I got squared away...
'Till I seen something that give me the creep!
Had ah-one big eye and ah-two big feet!

Well, except that I'm in the middle of moving (about to kill the computer, actually) and I haven't yet seen anything with ah-two big feet recently except Darius.

I imagine that I'll give you some more of my ultra-high-end theorizing this weekend. Wouldn't want to miss it! I'll even use words like "disinclined" and "quiescence", just to make it worth the wait.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Like a Professional...

(Boring post)

Deep in the February Freeze-Out, struggling through colds, power outages, and mild seasonal disorder, I have had a grand total of zero progress on virtually every front. But I still feel pretty good.

I've been developing algorithms for social play, as explained in earlier posts, as well as some new feedback loop minutiae. I've discovered vast quantities of stuff that won't work and problems I never knew existed. I think these are mostly my own personal limitations. For example, I can't seem to figure out how to create a "smalltalk simulator" that isn't boring (no emotional investment)... but that might just be the fact that I find smalltalk inherently boring. So, while I have a few ideas about long-term relationship and social gameplay, the moment-to-moment stuff is escaping me. Unfortunately, abstracting makes it feel very strange...

I've also discovered vast amounts of stuff that can work that I never knew existed, across the spectrum. For example, I've come up with a passable system for generating emotional scenes, characters, and plot arcs by doing some new abstractions. Of course, then displaying them with enough verve to matter becomes an issue - it would probably be possible with a few million dollars, although I'm sure new issues would pop up. They always do. :P

Anyhow, it may appear that I'm sleeping, but I have actually been chugging along. A habit I share with many other people is that I'm best at theories and ideas when I'm irritable, tired, and depressed... but, of course, implementation is basically impossible during these times.

So, I suppose I have lots of ideas backlogged for a time when I'm more energetic. Just so you know that they're there.