RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A RANDOM TOPIC #2
TOPIC OF THE DAY: Video Arcades.
I thought of this topic because I recently read an article about how arcades have been on a steady decline for some time. Apparently there's just no money in it anymore.
I've seen this in arcades all around where I live. Out of all the arcades in my vicinity, most of them are maintained by a larger business whose main source of income does not come in the form of quarters.
There's the Brunswick Zone bowling lanes in Lowell, Massachusetts. My brother and I used to come here often, but we've slowly been losing interest as time passed. First, they removed some of the old fighting games. Then they put in more shooting games. My brother stopped coming after they removed the Blitz '99 football game. We'd spent many a quarter playing the only game that would allow you to play for a guaranteed 20 minutes, cursing at each other all the way. Then they removed it in favor of a DDR Extreme machine. I was still interested, but my brother wasn't.
Then recently, the DDR machine was replaced by a newer In The Groove machine. Same gameplay as DDR, different songs. This one has less songs than the old DDR Extreme machine, and it's nowhere near as well-maintained. The bars at the back of the dance pads are wobbly, the dance pads themselves stick, and the speakers are turned down way too low. You can barely hear it over the bowling. Not good for a game that relies on audio cues. So the only reason I'd go back there is if they fix up the ITG machine and turn it up to a level where my footsteps don't overpower what comes out of the speakers.
There are of course, the arcades at movie theaters. Again, the arcade games are a secondary source of revenue to the tickets and $5 popcorn. I haven't been to the arcades at the AMC in Tyngsboro or the Showcase in Lowell recently, but while I was at college, I would go to the arcade at the Cinemark near the Hampshire mall in Hadley every weekend. The only reason I got to arcades any more is for DDR, and this place delivers: a DDR extreme machine that offers 5 songs for 3 quarters, and an In The Groove 2 machine that offers 3 songs for one quarter.
This one also happens to be frequented by some really good players, though I don't know hardly any of them by name. We just stand around and watch each other perform songs that make the uninitiated stare on in amazement.
I suppose that since I'm talking a lot about DDR, I should explain my level of skill. The songs are rated from 1 to 10 steps in DDR but they go as high as 13 in ITG. I can reliably do most 8-step and below, and a handful of 9-step, in both games. The reason I haven't advanced much higher is probably a combination of factors. I don't have the stamina; I haven't learned some of the fancier footwork necessary for 10-step and above; I can't sightread the arrows fast enough.
The other major game I like playing in arcades is fighting games. There's usually at least one in most arcades, but I've started seeing them fade away in favor of more shooting games.
Whatever happened to Killer Instinct? That's a game begging for resurrection. KI3 can bring back all the classic characters and maybe a few new ones, and they can do it with 3D environments as well. I'd love to see a battle to the finish between Fulgore and Cinder again.
Another MIA fighting game is the Mortal Kombat series. It's still on consoles, with the latest incarnation, MK: Shaolin Monks, supposedly for XBox360, probably already on the shelves, but I haven't seen an arcade version for quite some time. The last MK4 machine I remember was at Skate 3 Roller Kingdom in Tyngsboro, and I haven't been there since...eighth grade? maybe longer. Again, a new arcade release is due. Midway brought out a handful of new characters with a new storyline, brought a handful of the old characters into 3D, and ignored the rest. What abaout Kabal? What about the evil sisters Kitana, Mileena, and Jade? What about the Lin Kuei roboticized ninjas, Sektor, Cyrax, and Smoke? It would be great to see them in 3D in arcades...get on it, Midway. I still play Blitz '99 and The Grid. You owe me.
Not going away any time soon: Tekken. The arcade in the UMass student union building has both Tekken 4 and 5, side by side. The 5 machine even has the nicer Japanese-style ball-topped joysticks rather than the common tapered-handle sticks you see on so many other game cabinets. And since my roommate brought a PS1 to the dorm, I picked up a $4 copy of Tekken 2 from a Gamestop at the local mall over christmas break. Who says bargain bins are worthless?
Now if only I could find the original and 3 as well...I'd have almost the whole series available.
Street Fighter. I still wanna play the original Street Fighter 1. Too bad it's not in any arcades I've ever seen anywhere. In this country or in others. Ah well. Unfortunately this series is slowly fading away as well. Not that there aren't any new versions. But Brunswick Zone getting rid of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are part of the reason my brother stopped coming there. There's a SVC Chaos machine at the Cinemark, but I think the SNK crossovers are missing something. Probably because of not being pure SF.
The Street Fighter Alpha series is great because it has almost every SF character since its blockbuster Street Fighter 2.
Side note: I'm a Ryu player. There's something about being able to carry over your skills from one game into 15-25 others with minimal effort that I think is satisfying. It's nice being able to see a Street Fighter game, any game, and know how to play your character while others have to struggle with another character because this game left out his favorite. Why Ryu over Ken? Only real reason is that I find Shinkuu Hadou-ken more fun to kill someone with than Shoryuu-Reppa. And the fact that he's in MVC2 and I can't find Ken anywhere.
Fighting games are slowly being removed in favor of shooting games. Just like gangs have been slowly moving away from bare-knuckle fighting and just using guns instead. And the guns have been changing from handguns to automatic weapons too. Just a side thought.
Area 51. One of those games where if you memorize exactly where to shoot when, you can avoid being hurt the entire game. Commonly known as "Rail Shooters," because of the fact that you move like a car on a rail track. This one was the most widespread one that I've seen. Sometimes bundled with Maximum Force. Same principle, different places to shoot. Some more recent incarnations of this principle include Extreme Paintball, Target Force: Terror, and Area 51: Site 4. All of them are completely static, which gets boring after a while. Though if you go at it enough, you can impress people by beating the game on one credit.
A few games deviate from this formula, but not by much. House of the Dead and Virtua Cop only differ in that you have to shoot the enemies more than once to kill them. CarnEvil and House of the Dead 3 made your pistol into a shotgun. Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Revolution-X, which features Aerosmith, turned your pistol into a machine gun and added the ability to fire rockets (or, in the case of Revolution-X, exploding CDs). Then Gunblade and L.A. Machine Guns took that formula, ditched the rockets, and made it 3D. The Time Crisis series took the standard pistol and added the ability to go to cover, represented by a pedal that could be pressed to go forward and shoot, then released to find cover and reload. After two games in this series, Time Crisis and L.A. Machine Guns had a baby and called it Crisis Zone. Now you have the machine gun AND the shoot/hide pedal. Silent Scope made your gun a sniper rifle, which had a smaller screen in the scope, so you could actually see a zoom view. That was kinda cool. But it really made your eyes tired after a while. The latest new version of this formula I've seen is one called Ghost Squad, where your gun is now an assault rifle, which could become a shotgun if you so chose.
Given their long history, it's only a matter of time until we finally get to wield RPGs and Bazookas, which rest on your shoulder.
Picture this: A long row of 10 arcade machines. Some have assault rifles, some have heavier full machine guns, one has a rocket launcher and another has a sniper rifle. All 10 players must work together, since they play as an entire U.S. Army squad. If the arcade doesn't have room for 10 machines, the rest of the squad members could be computer controlled. Or better yet, connect the whole complex to the internet, and players in different arcades can play together on the same squad.
Ever play Point Blank? Just a test of accuracy. No plot. More fun than a lot of other shooters I've played.
Driving games are still on the rise. I never really liked these games. I don't like driving a real car much either. I'm not going to say much more, except that all you Initial D fanatics and your ilk should shut the hell up. I don't care how realistic the driving experience is, it's not fun.
I mentioned The Grid before. It's the first time I've ever seen an FPS implemented in an arcade, particularly with that sort of hardware: a joystick for movement and a trackball for aiming.
Some arcades have games where you can win tickets. Most common of all these is Skee Ball, and its successor in spirit Ice Ball, which are identical except Ice Ball multiplies all the point calues by 10.
I've never seen anyone like this but I could picture someone who plays Skee Ball with the same focus and intensity as some serious gamers I've met. He practices for hours, he spends rolls of quarters on Skee Ball, he can hit the 100-point hole 9 times out of 10. Saving his tickets for the one day he can finally "buy" that 20,000-ticket item behind the counter. Someone who brought in that many tickets was regarded by arcadegoers as a legend. A myth. If you caught a glimpse of him you were the luckiest person in the arcade. Especially considering that after you play one or two games of Skee Ball, you have maybe 4 tickets, just barely enough to win a handful of Tootsie Rolls.
But the ticket counters are gone. In the Time Out arcade at the Hampshire Mall in Hadley, there is a machine that takes your tickets and allows you to pick a prize. It's kind of like the experience of finding out that where there once was a counter serving food, there is now only a vending machine.
With all of this in mind, let me tell you about my favorite arcade. In Nashua, New Hampshire, off the Daniel Webster Highway, is a place called FunWorld. It's three stories tall and is packed with arcade games. It has Fighting games. It has Shooting games. It has Driving games. It has DDR and ITG. It has games that award tickets and a real ticket counter. It has vending machines...but also the counter selling pizza and nachos. It has a playplace for the little kids featuring a 101-foot tube slide, a sea of plastic balls, mazes, and a moonwalk area. I haven't seen any place like it anywhere else. They're getting rarer and rarer now, it seems. It's the last bastion of true arcades in the Middlesex County area, and I'm going to keep going.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Thursday, October 13, 2005
RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A RANDOM TOPIC #1
I had been meaning to write more in this blog, but partially because I haven't had time and I haven't had any ideas, I've let it sit here. So today, I'm going to write all my thoughts about a given subject.
TOPIC OF THE DAY: Cookies.
Now in order to properly write about any topic, you need to be properly inspired by the thing you're writing about. Inside Herter Hall, where I have my History of Japan course, there's a stand where a guy sells various baked goods and trendy bottled fruit drinks like Odwalla and various incarnations of green tea. $1.20 and one oatmeal raisin and one chocolate chip later, I'm properly inspired. So here goes.
The oatmeal raisin cookie was just as chewy as I like it. There's really no other way. But by the same token, Oatmeal sans raisins must be crunchy. I don't know whythis is true, but it is. I got the oatmeal raisin at the stand because I so rarely find good oatmeal raisin elsewhere.
Chocolate Chip cookies are much more ubiquitous, and there's much less of a chance you'll find sub-par ones. If you think about it, Chocolate Chip cookies are a more American dessert than Apple Pie. Where did Apple Pie come from? Well, "Dutch Apple Pie" is not really Dutch, but a bastardization of "Deutsch" or German. This happened a lot to German things after World War II, due to people's attitudes towards Germans, or so I've read.
Meanwhile, Chocolate Chip Cookies were invented in Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1930. You've probably heard this story before: Ruth Wakefield, wife of the owner of the Toll House Inn, was attempting to make chocolate cookies. She put in bits of semisweet baking chocolate, thinking it would have melted while baking. They didn't. She decided to sell them anyway. The rest is history.
Chips Ahoy! with milk are great. And the supermarket clones of them aren't too far off either. Demoulas/Market Basket Supermarkets, close to where I live, have Chiperiffic brand, which are virtually indistinguishable.
Even better are those tubes of cookie dough; slice em, bake em, and you got oven fresh goodness, just crispy enough to remain solid, and the chips melt on your tongue. It was the only reason I bought a baking sheet, metal flipper, potholders, and some Palmolive one-use dish washing pads last year: so I could buy a tube of cookie dough, walk to the 19th floor kitchenette, and bake a batch that would make me the hero of the hall.
Chocolate Chip cookie dough is also fun to eat raw. Risk of Salmonella? Yeah, but I could also choke. Same thing: the risk is there, and I choose to do it anyway becuase the chances aren't that great.
Another great kind of chocolate chip cookie are the Peggy Lawton brand. 3/8 inch thick, 3 inches across, pack of three for 50 cents. It's a local brand, so don't expect to find them unless you live in or near Massachusetts. Also comes in other standard flavors: oatmeal, chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter.
Which leads me to the issue of nonstandard flavors. Brand name cookies. Oreos are probably the example that spring to everyone's mind when I say "cookies." Consequently, I have a lot to say about Oreos.
Some people prefer to eat the Oreos whole, some twist them open and lick the frosting, I switch off. And sometimes, if I have the Double Stuf variety, I like to take a knife, slice down the middle of the frosting, and have two halves with equal frosting. Try that some time. Don't use a plastic knife. You'll just fuck up your dessert.
Speaking of slicing Oreos down the middle, you could try stacking these cookie halves so you end up with a triple- or quadruple-decker cookie sandwich.
Oreos in 6-packs you find in vending machines are smaller than the ones you find in family-sized packages. Why is that?
Chocolate creme Oreos? We don't need new flavors. The original was chocolatey enough. Please don't go any farther...oops! Peanut butter creme Oreos. That's enough...(still waiting for the next new mutant to come out).
Oreo clones. When I was younger, my folks would buy this Oreo clone called Hydrox, made by some company called Sunbeam. Same company that made Vienna Fingers, like an elngated vanilla oreo. Hydrox were good, but not nearly as good as the real thing. More recently, I've seen that Austin, the company responsible for packaged peanut butter crackers, also has a clone of Oreos, and I have to say they're horrible.
Nilla wafers. ...No comment.
Keebler cookies. E.L.Fudge is the only one that springs to mind and frankly I don't care about anything else they have to offer. Except maybe those chocolate-covered Graham crackers they sell. Those are pretty good.
Devil's Food cake cookies. Word to the wise: Don't bother buying the Snackwells brand. If you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't bother eating Devil's Food Cake at all. You can't eat just one cookie. I've tried and failed every time except when it was the last cookie in the box.
SCENARIO A: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Devil's Food Cake. Eats 5 cookies.
SCENARIO B: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Snackwell's Devil's Food Cake. Perons thinks "These aren't really that bad for me, they're Snackwells" and eats two 6-packs of cookies.
NET WEIGHT GAIN: Equal in both cases. Probably.
And then we have Girl Scout cookies. They're great, but you gotta buy a lot of em if you want 'em to last the whole year, because those girls only sell them in the late winter/early spring. Way to satisfy all those people who want you to buy a box because their daughter/sister/niece/whatever is selling: buy one box from each. You've laid in a supply for the hotter months ahead, and you've gotten those people to stop bugging you. Perfect.
Thin Mints. You'd think they'd go great with milk. In my experiences, not so much. That chocolate coating keeps the liquid from being absorbed into the cookie. They're better plain anyway.
Then there's the variety called Caramel DeLites, formerly called Samoas. Was this change made to avoid annoying people living in American Samoa? Whatever the case, the combination of caramel, chocolate, and coconut is nice once in a while, but it suffers the same problem as thin mints: can't dunk 'em in milk easily. And you don't want to have em too often. I don't know why but I usually get tired of them really quick.
Moving on to other cookies we find Animal Crackers. I still like these even though they're geared for kids 10-15 years younger than me. I just don't seem to notice which animal I'm biting the head off of any more.
Cookies with M&Ms in them. I don't really like M&Ms, so consequently I'm not fond of these. But it makes me wonder: if people can make sugar cookies with M&Ms, has anyone tried making peanut butter cookies with Reese's Pieces? Get on this, Hershey, you're stitting on a gold mine here. Let those folks at Keebler handle it like they did Rainbow Deluxe cookies. You'll make millions.
Biscotti. They're technically cookies. If you can find the ones dipped in fudge, jackpot. One time I was at a friend's house and hadn't eaten anything all day, so he offered me some chocolate-chip biscotti. I ate all that was left in the box and washed it down with a Diet Coke with Lime. The biscotti were all right, but not something I'd ask for above anything else. I was just starving at the time.
Cookie Crisp cereal. Bringing the concept of Milk & Cookies to breakfast. Personally, I don't wanna see chocolate (or for that matter, fake-"froot" flavors) at breakfast. Unless it's inside a chocolate croissant. So I've never had Cookie Crisp cereal, at least not in the state General Mills recommends (the classic Jerry Seinfeld way: in a bowl with milk). As a semi-off-topic side note, my brother does a pretty good impression of Rush Limbaugh in which Rush is screaming for more Cookie Crisp.
Dunkaroos. For those who haven't heard of them, it was a little package of quarter-sized cookies and a small tub of frosting for dipping. Never bothered to try them, but the commercials were interesting.
Hershey's Cookies 'n' Cream candy bars. Doesn't taste very much like either cookies or cream.
And finally we come to the only inedible cookie on the list. I'm talking about browser cookies. The kind that certain sites say must be enabled to view certain things. Somewhere in that name, there's a Homer Simpson gag waiting to be made. Someone could be talking about computers, probably Lisa, and mention browser cookies, prompting Homer to go "Mmm...cookies."
I had been meaning to write more in this blog, but partially because I haven't had time and I haven't had any ideas, I've let it sit here. So today, I'm going to write all my thoughts about a given subject.
TOPIC OF THE DAY: Cookies.
Now in order to properly write about any topic, you need to be properly inspired by the thing you're writing about. Inside Herter Hall, where I have my History of Japan course, there's a stand where a guy sells various baked goods and trendy bottled fruit drinks like Odwalla and various incarnations of green tea. $1.20 and one oatmeal raisin and one chocolate chip later, I'm properly inspired. So here goes.
The oatmeal raisin cookie was just as chewy as I like it. There's really no other way. But by the same token, Oatmeal sans raisins must be crunchy. I don't know whythis is true, but it is. I got the oatmeal raisin at the stand because I so rarely find good oatmeal raisin elsewhere.
Chocolate Chip cookies are much more ubiquitous, and there's much less of a chance you'll find sub-par ones. If you think about it, Chocolate Chip cookies are a more American dessert than Apple Pie. Where did Apple Pie come from? Well, "Dutch Apple Pie" is not really Dutch, but a bastardization of "Deutsch" or German. This happened a lot to German things after World War II, due to people's attitudes towards Germans, or so I've read.
Meanwhile, Chocolate Chip Cookies were invented in Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1930. You've probably heard this story before: Ruth Wakefield, wife of the owner of the Toll House Inn, was attempting to make chocolate cookies. She put in bits of semisweet baking chocolate, thinking it would have melted while baking. They didn't. She decided to sell them anyway. The rest is history.
Chips Ahoy! with milk are great. And the supermarket clones of them aren't too far off either. Demoulas/Market Basket Supermarkets, close to where I live, have Chiperiffic brand, which are virtually indistinguishable.
Even better are those tubes of cookie dough; slice em, bake em, and you got oven fresh goodness, just crispy enough to remain solid, and the chips melt on your tongue. It was the only reason I bought a baking sheet, metal flipper, potholders, and some Palmolive one-use dish washing pads last year: so I could buy a tube of cookie dough, walk to the 19th floor kitchenette, and bake a batch that would make me the hero of the hall.
Chocolate Chip cookie dough is also fun to eat raw. Risk of Salmonella? Yeah, but I could also choke. Same thing: the risk is there, and I choose to do it anyway becuase the chances aren't that great.
Another great kind of chocolate chip cookie are the Peggy Lawton brand. 3/8 inch thick, 3 inches across, pack of three for 50 cents. It's a local brand, so don't expect to find them unless you live in or near Massachusetts. Also comes in other standard flavors: oatmeal, chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter.
Which leads me to the issue of nonstandard flavors. Brand name cookies. Oreos are probably the example that spring to everyone's mind when I say "cookies." Consequently, I have a lot to say about Oreos.
Some people prefer to eat the Oreos whole, some twist them open and lick the frosting, I switch off. And sometimes, if I have the Double Stuf variety, I like to take a knife, slice down the middle of the frosting, and have two halves with equal frosting. Try that some time. Don't use a plastic knife. You'll just fuck up your dessert.
Speaking of slicing Oreos down the middle, you could try stacking these cookie halves so you end up with a triple- or quadruple-decker cookie sandwich.
Oreos in 6-packs you find in vending machines are smaller than the ones you find in family-sized packages. Why is that?
Chocolate creme Oreos? We don't need new flavors. The original was chocolatey enough. Please don't go any farther...oops! Peanut butter creme Oreos. That's enough...(still waiting for the next new mutant to come out).
Oreo clones. When I was younger, my folks would buy this Oreo clone called Hydrox, made by some company called Sunbeam. Same company that made Vienna Fingers, like an elngated vanilla oreo. Hydrox were good, but not nearly as good as the real thing. More recently, I've seen that Austin, the company responsible for packaged peanut butter crackers, also has a clone of Oreos, and I have to say they're horrible.
Nilla wafers. ...No comment.
Keebler cookies. E.L.Fudge is the only one that springs to mind and frankly I don't care about anything else they have to offer. Except maybe those chocolate-covered Graham crackers they sell. Those are pretty good.
Devil's Food cake cookies. Word to the wise: Don't bother buying the Snackwells brand. If you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't bother eating Devil's Food Cake at all. You can't eat just one cookie. I've tried and failed every time except when it was the last cookie in the box.
SCENARIO A: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Devil's Food Cake. Eats 5 cookies.
SCENARIO B: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Snackwell's Devil's Food Cake. Perons thinks "These aren't really that bad for me, they're Snackwells" and eats two 6-packs of cookies.
NET WEIGHT GAIN: Equal in both cases. Probably.
And then we have Girl Scout cookies. They're great, but you gotta buy a lot of em if you want 'em to last the whole year, because those girls only sell them in the late winter/early spring. Way to satisfy all those people who want you to buy a box because their daughter/sister/niece/whatever is selling: buy one box from each. You've laid in a supply for the hotter months ahead, and you've gotten those people to stop bugging you. Perfect.
Thin Mints. You'd think they'd go great with milk. In my experiences, not so much. That chocolate coating keeps the liquid from being absorbed into the cookie. They're better plain anyway.
Then there's the variety called Caramel DeLites, formerly called Samoas. Was this change made to avoid annoying people living in American Samoa? Whatever the case, the combination of caramel, chocolate, and coconut is nice once in a while, but it suffers the same problem as thin mints: can't dunk 'em in milk easily. And you don't want to have em too often. I don't know why but I usually get tired of them really quick.
Moving on to other cookies we find Animal Crackers. I still like these even though they're geared for kids 10-15 years younger than me. I just don't seem to notice which animal I'm biting the head off of any more.
Cookies with M&Ms in them. I don't really like M&Ms, so consequently I'm not fond of these. But it makes me wonder: if people can make sugar cookies with M&Ms, has anyone tried making peanut butter cookies with Reese's Pieces? Get on this, Hershey, you're stitting on a gold mine here. Let those folks at Keebler handle it like they did Rainbow Deluxe cookies. You'll make millions.
Biscotti. They're technically cookies. If you can find the ones dipped in fudge, jackpot. One time I was at a friend's house and hadn't eaten anything all day, so he offered me some chocolate-chip biscotti. I ate all that was left in the box and washed it down with a Diet Coke with Lime. The biscotti were all right, but not something I'd ask for above anything else. I was just starving at the time.
Cookie Crisp cereal. Bringing the concept of Milk & Cookies to breakfast. Personally, I don't wanna see chocolate (or for that matter, fake-"froot" flavors) at breakfast. Unless it's inside a chocolate croissant. So I've never had Cookie Crisp cereal, at least not in the state General Mills recommends (the classic Jerry Seinfeld way: in a bowl with milk). As a semi-off-topic side note, my brother does a pretty good impression of Rush Limbaugh in which Rush is screaming for more Cookie Crisp.
Dunkaroos. For those who haven't heard of them, it was a little package of quarter-sized cookies and a small tub of frosting for dipping. Never bothered to try them, but the commercials were interesting.
Hershey's Cookies 'n' Cream candy bars. Doesn't taste very much like either cookies or cream.
And finally we come to the only inedible cookie on the list. I'm talking about browser cookies. The kind that certain sites say must be enabled to view certain things. Somewhere in that name, there's a Homer Simpson gag waiting to be made. Someone could be talking about computers, probably Lisa, and mention browser cookies, prompting Homer to go "Mmm...cookies."
Monday, September 19, 2005
WORLD OF WARCRAFT POST #2
Every few months or so, Blizzard Entertainment, viewed alternately as gods or scum, releases a major patch to its MMORPG World of Warcraft, a game which has me by the throat and won't let go.
The purpose of most of these patches are to fix things. Perhaps a graphical bug makes you see spots. (If it's only one person reporting the bug, then Blizzard tells him to call his opthalmologist.) Perhaps there's an unkillable monster that wasn't meant to be. Perhaps there's a guy sho's supposed to drop a Sacred Diamond-Edged Bastard Sword of the Monkey but isn't.
Consider the most recent patch, patch 1.7.0. The most notable changes are the addition of new stuff. The Arathi Basin battleground left the other two battlegrounds deserted for a while. The Zul'Gurub instanced dungeon got everyone on the Skullcrusher server, my server, all hungry for new loot, incuding a 5-piece armor set for each class.
I'm not sure whether Immortality is the biggest or most skilled guild on the alliance side, but I will say this: they have the most Bling. If you are a level 60 character in Immortality and you have no epic gear, it must mean you haven't been in Immortality for more than 24 hours. This guild has reputedly killed Onyxia -- a dragon so powerful Blizzard allows a full raid group of 40 people to make the attempt -- with a mere 26 people. For 500 gold, you can go with them on Onyxia raids until your tier 2 set helm drops. They were the first to finish Molten Core on alliance side and have reached or maybe even beaten Nefarian in Blackwing Lair.
I would have been able to find out directly if the Onyxia rumor was true, but both of my friends who were former members of Immo are no longer so. (Afic rerolled Horde and joined Nightmare Asylum, and Avelynn has been kicked out for having Afic as a roommate.)
The point being, either Immortality or Nightmare Asylum (its Horde counterpart) will probably beat it first. Maybe they already have.
Another major change was to the Hunter character class. Their pets have gained a significant buff, largely due to the availability of new passive pet abilities that improve armor, stamina, and spell resistance.
Though my main character is a priest, I do have a hunter character who is level 51 as of this writing. Maybe you've met Keahrde. I've been doing a lot of Maraudon runs with him in an attempt to get him a Megashot Rifle (mission accomplished!) and do some quests. Before the patch, his trusty wolf, Lekhrad, had about 170 unspent training points because there wan't anything to spend them on, even after teaching Lekhrad all the relevant skills (highest rank of Bite and Dash). Now, Lekhrad has 30 left. I thought Lekhrad was a pretty good tanking pet before (his Stamina was greater than his master's). But there's definitely an improvement with the added skills. Mend Pet? HAHAHA!
The other improvement to the hunter class is the redistribution of their talent points. This is Blizzard's attempt to give players the ability to make your hunter different from someone else's hunter. Because of the sweeping changes, all hunters were allowed to spend the talent points again (One per level above level 9; for a level 60, that's 51 points. For Keahrde, 42. Hunters below level 10 didn't miss anything).
I spent my points roughly the same way they had been. Mostly in the Marksmanship tree, with a few in Beast Mastery. I recently grouped with another hunter who had done the opposite: lot of Beast Mastery, a little bit of Marksmanship. (Good job Blizzard on encouraging people to use the third tree, Survival, for their hunters.) The difference was noticeable. I definitely outgunned the other hunter, but his pet blew my wolf out of the water. (I'd guess that was also because he had tamed an elite cat named Broken Tooth, which has the fastest attack speed in the game, while I had just picked up the first wolf I could find after learning to tame beasts.)
But the fourth and final item is what I want to bring your attention to most. Blizzard implemented a function called the Dressing Room. If you see an item that can be equipped and wonder, "What would I look like wielding that?" you just need to CTRL-Click to find out. Useless Timewaster? All Right! I was all set to search for a priest in Immortality with the full set of Vestments of Prophecy, so I could see what Omni, my 60 priest, would look like wearing that set.
But then I started thinking: Why do we have this? Why not something more useful, like bug fixes? or maybe they could have started to overhaul another class? (Rogues need a serious nerf. If you play one, and disagree, stop reading now.)
Then my thoughts turned, as they so often do, to current events, specifically Hurricane Katrina. and I drew the following parallel:
PROBLEM: There are all sorts of balance issues and bugs that need to be fixed. Not to mention, the Tier 2 Epic sets look like shit.
SOLUTION: Ignore this and give the players a Dressing room feature.
PROBLEM: There are hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need the government to give them aid so they can rebuild their towns and their lives.
SOLUTION: Ignore this and start talking about another tax cut for the rich.
The difference between these two scenarios is that Blizzard is irreplaceable. "We built this world. You don't like it? Go play Guild Wars. We'll survive without your $15/month. Because we know you can't survive without us."
But we can get rid of the people in power who fucked up here.
And ite reminds me of the fact that once Bush's remaining 3 1/4 years are up, we don't have to deal with him ever again.
Every few months or so, Blizzard Entertainment, viewed alternately as gods or scum, releases a major patch to its MMORPG World of Warcraft, a game which has me by the throat and won't let go.
The purpose of most of these patches are to fix things. Perhaps a graphical bug makes you see spots. (If it's only one person reporting the bug, then Blizzard tells him to call his opthalmologist.) Perhaps there's an unkillable monster that wasn't meant to be. Perhaps there's a guy sho's supposed to drop a Sacred Diamond-Edged Bastard Sword of the Monkey but isn't.
Consider the most recent patch, patch 1.7.0. The most notable changes are the addition of new stuff. The Arathi Basin battleground left the other two battlegrounds deserted for a while. The Zul'Gurub instanced dungeon got everyone on the Skullcrusher server, my server, all hungry for new loot, incuding a 5-piece armor set for each class.
I'm not sure whether Immortality is the biggest or most skilled guild on the alliance side, but I will say this: they have the most Bling. If you are a level 60 character in Immortality and you have no epic gear, it must mean you haven't been in Immortality for more than 24 hours. This guild has reputedly killed Onyxia -- a dragon so powerful Blizzard allows a full raid group of 40 people to make the attempt -- with a mere 26 people. For 500 gold, you can go with them on Onyxia raids until your tier 2 set helm drops. They were the first to finish Molten Core on alliance side and have reached or maybe even beaten Nefarian in Blackwing Lair.
I would have been able to find out directly if the Onyxia rumor was true, but both of my friends who were former members of Immo are no longer so. (Afic rerolled Horde and joined Nightmare Asylum, and Avelynn has been kicked out for having Afic as a roommate.)
The point being, either Immortality or Nightmare Asylum (its Horde counterpart) will probably beat it first. Maybe they already have.
Another major change was to the Hunter character class. Their pets have gained a significant buff, largely due to the availability of new passive pet abilities that improve armor, stamina, and spell resistance.
Though my main character is a priest, I do have a hunter character who is level 51 as of this writing. Maybe you've met Keahrde. I've been doing a lot of Maraudon runs with him in an attempt to get him a Megashot Rifle (mission accomplished!) and do some quests. Before the patch, his trusty wolf, Lekhrad, had about 170 unspent training points because there wan't anything to spend them on, even after teaching Lekhrad all the relevant skills (highest rank of Bite and Dash). Now, Lekhrad has 30 left. I thought Lekhrad was a pretty good tanking pet before (his Stamina was greater than his master's). But there's definitely an improvement with the added skills. Mend Pet? HAHAHA!
The other improvement to the hunter class is the redistribution of their talent points. This is Blizzard's attempt to give players the ability to make your hunter different from someone else's hunter. Because of the sweeping changes, all hunters were allowed to spend the talent points again (One per level above level 9; for a level 60, that's 51 points. For Keahrde, 42. Hunters below level 10 didn't miss anything).
I spent my points roughly the same way they had been. Mostly in the Marksmanship tree, with a few in Beast Mastery. I recently grouped with another hunter who had done the opposite: lot of Beast Mastery, a little bit of Marksmanship. (Good job Blizzard on encouraging people to use the third tree, Survival, for their hunters.) The difference was noticeable. I definitely outgunned the other hunter, but his pet blew my wolf out of the water. (I'd guess that was also because he had tamed an elite cat named Broken Tooth, which has the fastest attack speed in the game, while I had just picked up the first wolf I could find after learning to tame beasts.)
But the fourth and final item is what I want to bring your attention to most. Blizzard implemented a function called the Dressing Room. If you see an item that can be equipped and wonder, "What would I look like wielding that?" you just need to CTRL-Click to find out. Useless Timewaster? All Right! I was all set to search for a priest in Immortality with the full set of Vestments of Prophecy, so I could see what Omni, my 60 priest, would look like wearing that set.
But then I started thinking: Why do we have this? Why not something more useful, like bug fixes? or maybe they could have started to overhaul another class? (Rogues need a serious nerf. If you play one, and disagree, stop reading now.)
Then my thoughts turned, as they so often do, to current events, specifically Hurricane Katrina. and I drew the following parallel:
PROBLEM: There are all sorts of balance issues and bugs that need to be fixed. Not to mention, the Tier 2 Epic sets look like shit.
SOLUTION: Ignore this and give the players a Dressing room feature.
PROBLEM: There are hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need the government to give them aid so they can rebuild their towns and their lives.
SOLUTION: Ignore this and start talking about another tax cut for the rich.
The difference between these two scenarios is that Blizzard is irreplaceable. "We built this world. You don't like it? Go play Guild Wars. We'll survive without your $15/month. Because we know you can't survive without us."
But we can get rid of the people in power who fucked up here.
And ite reminds me of the fact that once Bush's remaining 3 1/4 years are up, we don't have to deal with him ever again.
Friday, August 19, 2005
So I've been listening to Air America Radio this week, and I'm politically charged up, like someone walking across the carpet gathering static electricity. Time to deliver the shock and release all my feelings about current political issues. You, my readers, are the unsuspecting person about to be shocked in the back of the neck (in most other cases, usually my friend Adrien).
Now I will be drifting from subject to subject, meandering, digressing, and going off on tangents, so bear with me.
To start things off, there's the issue of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Bush has taken a five-week vacation (in the middle of a war, even!) to good-ole Crawford, Texas, and Cindy and a group of other mothers who have lost sons or daughters in Iraq are now camping as close as they can to Bush's property. (A neighbor of Bush let them camp on his property, right next door.)
Why are they camping there? To ask our Fearless Leader a simple question: "For what noble cause are we sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq?"
Why does Bush not answer? He can't. There is no noble cause. First, they said Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Later, we found out that that was false. Next, they said we were deposing Saddam because he was a truly vile dictator, in collaboration with Al-Qaeda. Looking at the turmoil currently going on in Iraq, what with the possibility that it may not become the secular democracy we had hoped, but rather an Islamic republic, it appears the Iraqis were better off WITH Saddam. And, if Hussein actually does have ties to Al-Qaeda, we haven't found them yet, even though we've kept him detained for over a year now.
Then, they said we were trying to install a democracy. Why Iraq? There are plenty of countries in this world that are not democracies.
China is not a democracy. Why didn't we invade them? We can't do it. We can't bring democracy to them. We may have a technologically superior military, but they have the advantage of numbers. To use a computer gaming term, they can Zerg us.
If you armed the entire population of China, and we armed our entire population, and sent our population to invade, they outnumber us 4 to 1. Every soldier of ours would have to gun down 4 chinese before being shot himself (or herself). If we decide to pull out the Nukes we've been keeping around for just that very occasion, not only will the image of Americans as greedy imperialist pigs be forever cemented in the mind of the world, the Chinese will then use THEIR NUKES AGAINST US. War on Terror, meet World War III.
What amazes me more is that the Chinese can do that without insane military spending. CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2067rank.html) states that as of 2003, United States military expenditures were about $370 billion. As of 2004, China's military expenditures were about $60.7 billion. We spend 6 times more money than the next guy in line, and yet we're at a disadvantage.
Which begs the question: What are we spending all that money on? We're certainly not spending it on BODY ARMOR FOR OUR TROOPS which we still need.
(By the way, watch the TrueMajority intro video at http://www.truemajority.com/oreos to see ice cream tycoon Ben Cohen explain his idea for how we could be spending our money more judiciously.)
But getting back to Cindy Sheehan, Apparently Bush is running away from here; plans for a vacation from the vacation are in order. Where is Bush going? Idaho, the state that has the highest level of support for him. Both Jerry Springer and Randi Rhodes, who have shows on Air America Radio, have come to the easily-supported conclusion that Bush doesn't want to listen to anyone who doesn't agree. That can't be done in a democracy; both sides have to be heard. No Dialogue, No Democracy. That's how it works. Remember when Bush said:
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
(Quoted from CNN.com 12/18/2000).
And on that note, It seems I have run out of steam. Join us next time, when our political target will be Rush Limbaugh. Thank you and good night.
Now I will be drifting from subject to subject, meandering, digressing, and going off on tangents, so bear with me.
To start things off, there's the issue of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Bush has taken a five-week vacation (in the middle of a war, even!) to good-ole Crawford, Texas, and Cindy and a group of other mothers who have lost sons or daughters in Iraq are now camping as close as they can to Bush's property. (A neighbor of Bush let them camp on his property, right next door.)
Why are they camping there? To ask our Fearless Leader a simple question: "For what noble cause are we sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq?"
Why does Bush not answer? He can't. There is no noble cause. First, they said Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Later, we found out that that was false. Next, they said we were deposing Saddam because he was a truly vile dictator, in collaboration with Al-Qaeda. Looking at the turmoil currently going on in Iraq, what with the possibility that it may not become the secular democracy we had hoped, but rather an Islamic republic, it appears the Iraqis were better off WITH Saddam. And, if Hussein actually does have ties to Al-Qaeda, we haven't found them yet, even though we've kept him detained for over a year now.
Then, they said we were trying to install a democracy. Why Iraq? There are plenty of countries in this world that are not democracies.
China is not a democracy. Why didn't we invade them? We can't do it. We can't bring democracy to them. We may have a technologically superior military, but they have the advantage of numbers. To use a computer gaming term, they can Zerg us.
If you armed the entire population of China, and we armed our entire population, and sent our population to invade, they outnumber us 4 to 1. Every soldier of ours would have to gun down 4 chinese before being shot himself (or herself). If we decide to pull out the Nukes we've been keeping around for just that very occasion, not only will the image of Americans as greedy imperialist pigs be forever cemented in the mind of the world, the Chinese will then use THEIR NUKES AGAINST US. War on Terror, meet World War III.
What amazes me more is that the Chinese can do that without insane military spending. CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2067rank.html) states that as of 2003, United States military expenditures were about $370 billion. As of 2004, China's military expenditures were about $60.7 billion. We spend 6 times more money than the next guy in line, and yet we're at a disadvantage.
Which begs the question: What are we spending all that money on? We're certainly not spending it on BODY ARMOR FOR OUR TROOPS which we still need.
(By the way, watch the TrueMajority intro video at http://www.truemajority.com/oreos to see ice cream tycoon Ben Cohen explain his idea for how we could be spending our money more judiciously.)
But getting back to Cindy Sheehan, Apparently Bush is running away from here; plans for a vacation from the vacation are in order. Where is Bush going? Idaho, the state that has the highest level of support for him. Both Jerry Springer and Randi Rhodes, who have shows on Air America Radio, have come to the easily-supported conclusion that Bush doesn't want to listen to anyone who doesn't agree. That can't be done in a democracy; both sides have to be heard. No Dialogue, No Democracy. That's how it works. Remember when Bush said:
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
(Quoted from CNN.com 12/18/2000).
And on that note, It seems I have run out of steam. Join us next time, when our political target will be Rush Limbaugh. Thank you and good night.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
WORLD OF WARCRAFT POST #1
Some people have no imagination. I can tell this by the kind of names you see on people's characters in World of Warcraft. Just a brief list of the most overused:
Characters whose names contain the words "Dark,""Fallen," or "Shadow." Apparently people think that being obscure and shrouded mystery is cool. Not when everyone is mysterious; then it's just bandwagon-style idiocy.
Characters whose names contain the word "Killer." You're a killer? No shit, you're a killer. Everyone is a killer. You can't get far in WoW without killing something. I tried to level a priest without killing anything (bad choice of character class, I know). I got to level 2 on XP from discovering new places before it all became too dangerous to traverse. Maybe I should try a rogue instead. The point is, it's impossible to be a pacifist in this game. To advance a trade skill beyond 75 points, you need to be level 10...I don't think you can get enough from exploring, so creating a character specifically for crafting can't be done without a little bloodshed.
Rogues whose name contains the word "Rogue" in it. As if the yellow Energy bar beneath your health bar didn't tip me off.
Guilds whose names contain the word "Knights" or "Legion." Dark Knights, Blood Moon Knights, and the guild I'm currently in, The Iron Knights. We're currently debating whether the name for the guild for all our Horde alts on Arthas should be Dark Knights, Dark Legion, or, my suggestion, Zeroth Order, modified to Zeroth Order Knights. (Which is currently last place in the poll. I can't win.)
Zeroth Order is a great name. Zeroth actually refers not to some mythical dark god or something, but an actual english word:
ze·roth
P Pronunciation Key (zîr
th, z
rth)
adj.
And another thing: too many one-word guild names. Immortality, Transcendence, Exodia, Vindictive, Tainted. All of these are Alliance guilds on Skullcrusher.
I'm not saying that any of these names are bad, per se, but they're uninteresting.
Some good guild names I have found:
"OMGLAZERGUNSPEWPEW" -- Just making fun of l33tspeak.
"Cannabis Vendor" -- Takes advantage of the fact that both the guild names of players and the functions of NPCs are contained in angled brackets (<>) beneath a player's name.
"is in a guild" -- "This guy is in a guild." This spawned several knockoffs, including "Needs a Drink," and "Does not want a Guild."
Well, I hope my guild name wins, despite having only one vote (mine).
And for all those looking to start a guild...Think first.
Some people have no imagination. I can tell this by the kind of names you see on people's characters in World of Warcraft. Just a brief list of the most overused:
Characters whose names contain the words "Dark,""Fallen," or "Shadow." Apparently people think that being obscure and shrouded mystery is cool. Not when everyone is mysterious; then it's just bandwagon-style idiocy.
Characters whose names contain the word "Killer." You're a killer? No shit, you're a killer. Everyone is a killer. You can't get far in WoW without killing something. I tried to level a priest without killing anything (bad choice of character class, I know). I got to level 2 on XP from discovering new places before it all became too dangerous to traverse. Maybe I should try a rogue instead. The point is, it's impossible to be a pacifist in this game. To advance a trade skill beyond 75 points, you need to be level 10...I don't think you can get enough from exploring, so creating a character specifically for crafting can't be done without a little bloodshed.
Rogues whose name contains the word "Rogue" in it. As if the yellow Energy bar beneath your health bar didn't tip me off.
Guilds whose names contain the word "Knights" or "Legion." Dark Knights, Blood Moon Knights, and the guild I'm currently in, The Iron Knights. We're currently debating whether the name for the guild for all our Horde alts on Arthas should be Dark Knights, Dark Legion, or, my suggestion, Zeroth Order, modified to Zeroth Order Knights. (Which is currently last place in the poll. I can't win.)
Zeroth Order is a great name. Zeroth actually refers not to some mythical dark god or something, but an actual english word:
ze·roth
P Pronunciation Key (zîrth, zrth)adj.
- The ordinal number matching the number 0 in a series: the zeroth power of 10.
And another thing: too many one-word guild names. Immortality, Transcendence, Exodia, Vindictive, Tainted. All of these are Alliance guilds on Skullcrusher.
I'm not saying that any of these names are bad, per se, but they're uninteresting.
Some good guild names I have found:
"OMGLAZERGUNSPEWPEW" -- Just making fun of l33tspeak.
"Cannabis Vendor" -- Takes advantage of the fact that both the guild names of players and the functions of NPCs are contained in angled brackets (<>) beneath a player's name.
"is in a guild" -- "This guy is in a guild." This spawned several knockoffs, including "Needs a Drink," and "Does not want a Guild."
Well, I hope my guild name wins, despite having only one vote (mine).
And for all those looking to start a guild...Think first.
Monday, July 25, 2005
LISTENING TO MUSIC: PART I of Many
Country music is an oddity.
I never really liked country music for the longest time. So, having no control over what we were listening to at work, I spent the first few days of being in close proximity to a radio thinking one thought: "This sucks."
After about two weeks of exposure to it, I'd have to say the sting is gone, and some of the songs are actually kind of funny. Like Tim McGraw's "Do You Want Fries With That?" about a guy who, after losing everything after divorcing his wive, meets his ex's new husband at the drive-thru at McDonalds. While the country twang never appealed to me, the whole concept was a somewhat refreshing twist.
And "Alcohol" by Brad Paisley. The singer sings like he's reading off clues from the Twenty Questions boardgame:
"I can make anybody pretty
I can make you believe in a lie
I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size
I've been known to cause a few breakups
I've been known to cause a few births"
I can make you new friends...or get you fired from work
and from the day I left Milwaukee
Lynchburg or Bordeaux, France
been making the bars lots of big money
and helping white people dance
got you in trouble in high school
college now that was a ball
had some of the best times you never remember
with me, Alcohol"
While, again, the country twang just ain't my thang, the singer personifying Alcohol did something you don't usually hear in mainstream pop radio.
I can't help but think that people in the southern states would hear Boston's country station, WKOB Country 99.5, and think that we New Englanders had watered down what the station calls the "greatest music in the country."
Greatest? A little pretentious, to be sure. So what is the greatest? I'm not going to ask the question, no one will ever agree. I wouldn't care about the answer anyway. All I will say this: there are some kinds of music that are better than country, and some that are worse.
Another thing: my perception of country music was that it was filled with Jesus-this and Jesus-that and everybody living life in Christ and all kinds of syrupy evangelical Christian ideals. I can only guess that either:
1.) Being the Massachusetts liberals that we are, we watered down the content of the music, OR:
2.) My perception was wrong.
Because whatever the case, very little is mentioned about Jeee-sus or Christianity, specifically. There's talk of going to church and reference to "the Lord" here and there, but not to the extent I expected.
(In case you were wondering, I'm agnostic. My mother was raised catholic, but my father never attended church and neither have I. That's all I'm willing to say at this point.)
So my view on Country has changed. It's changed from being hated to being one of those styles of music that I could go either way on, like Jazz or the highly experimental forms of Rock that my brother listens to. Don't absolutely love em, but won't ask you to change the station either.
Country music is an oddity.
I never really liked country music for the longest time. So, having no control over what we were listening to at work, I spent the first few days of being in close proximity to a radio thinking one thought: "This sucks."
After about two weeks of exposure to it, I'd have to say the sting is gone, and some of the songs are actually kind of funny. Like Tim McGraw's "Do You Want Fries With That?" about a guy who, after losing everything after divorcing his wive, meets his ex's new husband at the drive-thru at McDonalds. While the country twang never appealed to me, the whole concept was a somewhat refreshing twist.
And "Alcohol" by Brad Paisley. The singer sings like he's reading off clues from the Twenty Questions boardgame:
"I can make anybody pretty
I can make you believe in a lie
I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size
I've been known to cause a few breakups
I've been known to cause a few births"
I can make you new friends...or get you fired from work
and from the day I left Milwaukee
Lynchburg or Bordeaux, France
been making the bars lots of big money
and helping white people dance
got you in trouble in high school
college now that was a ball
had some of the best times you never remember
with me, Alcohol"
While, again, the country twang just ain't my thang, the singer personifying Alcohol did something you don't usually hear in mainstream pop radio.
I can't help but think that people in the southern states would hear Boston's country station, WKOB Country 99.5, and think that we New Englanders had watered down what the station calls the "greatest music in the country."
Greatest? A little pretentious, to be sure. So what is the greatest? I'm not going to ask the question, no one will ever agree. I wouldn't care about the answer anyway. All I will say this: there are some kinds of music that are better than country, and some that are worse.
Another thing: my perception of country music was that it was filled with Jesus-this and Jesus-that and everybody living life in Christ and all kinds of syrupy evangelical Christian ideals. I can only guess that either:
1.) Being the Massachusetts liberals that we are, we watered down the content of the music, OR:
2.) My perception was wrong.
Because whatever the case, very little is mentioned about Jeee-sus or Christianity, specifically. There's talk of going to church and reference to "the Lord" here and there, but not to the extent I expected.
(In case you were wondering, I'm agnostic. My mother was raised catholic, but my father never attended church and neither have I. That's all I'm willing to say at this point.)
So my view on Country has changed. It's changed from being hated to being one of those styles of music that I could go either way on, like Jazz or the highly experimental forms of Rock that my brother listens to. Don't absolutely love em, but won't ask you to change the station either.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
First thing I want to say: I got a raise today.
Finding a summer job wasn't easy this year. Last year, the company where my dad worked, Ounce Labs Inc. had already hired someone to fill their paid internship position. So I needed to start filling out applications.
Origially, I just applied at places where I thought I might want to work. I've never been much for working with people face-to-face. I could stand a job as a stock clerk or something, at, say, Staples, or CVS, or Best Buy. As time passed and no callbacks came, I turned to temporary agencies. First Olsten Staffing, then Volt Services Group, tried to find some kind of an office setting I could work in. Eventually, I started filling out applications for food-service jobs. McDonalds and restaurants of that nature. Twenty apps later without even so much as a "we got your application and will call you when we can pencil you in for an interview" call later, I turned to a third employment agency, Marathon Temps. They specialized in light industrial work, and a mere 10 seconds after I returned to them with my second form of ID (oops), they found me the job where I am working now.
Liquid Metronics, Inc. is a manufacturing plant in Acton, Massacusetts, and a subsidiary of Milton Roy USA, along with Williams, Linc, Hartell, YZ Systems, and Haskel. It manufactures metering pumps and controllers to other industrial businesses. Water treatment, chemical engineering, anyone who works with large amounts of chemicals, probably could have LMI as a supplier for all their pumping needs.
This was irrelevant to me, since I wasn't actually making any of these devices. I was an inventory clerk. My job, as I was shown by my coworker Nat, was to fill parts orders from the workers on the shop floor. An order would come in, I would look up the part number, search the racks of parts, and bring them out on a cart to whichever assembly line needed them. Easy work; I could do it in my sleep. (And given that I had to wake up at quarter to 6 to be to work on time at 7 am, I might have to.)
At eight bucks an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week, for about eight weeks, I would have filled my initial purpose of getting a job: have plenty of spending cash at college. You do the math, and don't forget taxes. But, as I said before, I just got a raise today. I'll be making $9 an hour starting Monday.
Oh, and I've been moved, possibly permanently, to recieving. Now instead of getting parts from a rack to bring to the shelf, I take the parts off the truck, and enter them into the computer system before Ron, the senior recieving staff member, gets one of the other stock guys to move the parts ON TO the shelves. Which means they're training me to drive a forklift. I was thinking, "now THAT would be an interesting thing to put on my resume." Amongst all the computer credentials would be the line "Certified in operation of a Crown SC forklift truck." And the interviewer would think, "WTF?" (or something more professional-sounding.)
Probably the most interesting thing about the job is the diversity. I'm the only white guy there. Scratch that. I'm the only YOUNG white guy there. Other than me, there's my official boss, Fred Smith, who runs the machine shop, Chris, who has taken over as head of the stock room since Fred is going to be away from the machine shop/stock room area more and more, and Brenda, whose last name I don't remember and whose jaded attitude towards work keeps the rest of us grounded in reality. Chris is in his early 30s, and everyone else is at least 40, probably pusing 50s. Then we have two latino guys in their 20s, Nat and Saúl, who showed me the ropes in my early days (god, I work here three weeks and I'm already talking about "early days"). Horn, an asian man in his 40s who spends most of his time working in the machine shop (presumably as Fred's right hand man). Sophoan, an asian guy in his 20s who left about a week after I got here, and whose job was taken over by Chris. And two guys we hired about two weeks after I got here, an african-american guy bout my age named Timmy, and an asian guy, also about my age, whose name I can't remember.
On the shop floor, Spanish is a more common language spoken than English; I'd estimate about half the people out there could only speak enough English to get by on the job. Not much when you consider that all the assembly line forepersons also speak Spanish. I took five years of Spanish classes from 7th grade to 11th grade, then mostly forgot it, but I can still occasionally make out a fragment of a conversation, if I listen closely enough.
So I'll be here for another five and a half weeks. It may not be exciting work, but I'll be bringing in cash and getting something else to add to my resume. And it'll be enough of an experience to remind me that I have the potential to move beyond blue-collar work. As Fred told me, "We want you to go to school, to get an education. You don't want to be stuck in this hellhole."
I don't think it's a hellhole now, but perhaps it's one of those places that's a "nice place to visit," but you "don't want to live there."
Finding a summer job wasn't easy this year. Last year, the company where my dad worked, Ounce Labs Inc. had already hired someone to fill their paid internship position. So I needed to start filling out applications.
Origially, I just applied at places where I thought I might want to work. I've never been much for working with people face-to-face. I could stand a job as a stock clerk or something, at, say, Staples, or CVS, or Best Buy. As time passed and no callbacks came, I turned to temporary agencies. First Olsten Staffing, then Volt Services Group, tried to find some kind of an office setting I could work in. Eventually, I started filling out applications for food-service jobs. McDonalds and restaurants of that nature. Twenty apps later without even so much as a "we got your application and will call you when we can pencil you in for an interview" call later, I turned to a third employment agency, Marathon Temps. They specialized in light industrial work, and a mere 10 seconds after I returned to them with my second form of ID (oops), they found me the job where I am working now.
Liquid Metronics, Inc. is a manufacturing plant in Acton, Massacusetts, and a subsidiary of Milton Roy USA, along with Williams, Linc, Hartell, YZ Systems, and Haskel. It manufactures metering pumps and controllers to other industrial businesses. Water treatment, chemical engineering, anyone who works with large amounts of chemicals, probably could have LMI as a supplier for all their pumping needs.
This was irrelevant to me, since I wasn't actually making any of these devices. I was an inventory clerk. My job, as I was shown by my coworker Nat, was to fill parts orders from the workers on the shop floor. An order would come in, I would look up the part number, search the racks of parts, and bring them out on a cart to whichever assembly line needed them. Easy work; I could do it in my sleep. (And given that I had to wake up at quarter to 6 to be to work on time at 7 am, I might have to.)
At eight bucks an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week, for about eight weeks, I would have filled my initial purpose of getting a job: have plenty of spending cash at college. You do the math, and don't forget taxes. But, as I said before, I just got a raise today. I'll be making $9 an hour starting Monday.
Oh, and I've been moved, possibly permanently, to recieving. Now instead of getting parts from a rack to bring to the shelf, I take the parts off the truck, and enter them into the computer system before Ron, the senior recieving staff member, gets one of the other stock guys to move the parts ON TO the shelves. Which means they're training me to drive a forklift. I was thinking, "now THAT would be an interesting thing to put on my resume." Amongst all the computer credentials would be the line "Certified in operation of a Crown SC forklift truck." And the interviewer would think, "WTF?" (or something more professional-sounding.)
Probably the most interesting thing about the job is the diversity. I'm the only white guy there. Scratch that. I'm the only YOUNG white guy there. Other than me, there's my official boss, Fred Smith, who runs the machine shop, Chris, who has taken over as head of the stock room since Fred is going to be away from the machine shop/stock room area more and more, and Brenda, whose last name I don't remember and whose jaded attitude towards work keeps the rest of us grounded in reality. Chris is in his early 30s, and everyone else is at least 40, probably pusing 50s. Then we have two latino guys in their 20s, Nat and Saúl, who showed me the ropes in my early days (god, I work here three weeks and I'm already talking about "early days"). Horn, an asian man in his 40s who spends most of his time working in the machine shop (presumably as Fred's right hand man). Sophoan, an asian guy in his 20s who left about a week after I got here, and whose job was taken over by Chris. And two guys we hired about two weeks after I got here, an african-american guy bout my age named Timmy, and an asian guy, also about my age, whose name I can't remember.
On the shop floor, Spanish is a more common language spoken than English; I'd estimate about half the people out there could only speak enough English to get by on the job. Not much when you consider that all the assembly line forepersons also speak Spanish. I took five years of Spanish classes from 7th grade to 11th grade, then mostly forgot it, but I can still occasionally make out a fragment of a conversation, if I listen closely enough.
So I'll be here for another five and a half weeks. It may not be exciting work, but I'll be bringing in cash and getting something else to add to my resume. And it'll be enough of an experience to remind me that I have the potential to move beyond blue-collar work. As Fred told me, "We want you to go to school, to get an education. You don't want to be stuck in this hellhole."
I don't think it's a hellhole now, but perhaps it's one of those places that's a "nice place to visit," but you "don't want to live there."
Catharsis, n. 1. purgation 2. purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity or fear) primarily through art; a purification or purgation that brings spiritual renewal or release from tension 3. elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression. (from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition)
Here I stand, trying to start again. Previously I had been hosting a blog on JoeUser.com, where I voiced whatever was on my mind at the time. (Near the end of the blog, the subject was almost exclusively World of Warcraft.)
Maybe it was only a temporary bit of downtime, maybe it was my brother's relative success running his blog on this site, maybe a combination of both, but whatever the case, I moved.
The title is a holdover from the previous blog. I first heard it when I was studying greek tragedy as part of 10th grade English class, and I've always liked its sound. If my dictionary definition of Catharsis above puts you off, let's just say, you use some form of art to purge your emotions, to ground you in reality again, to bring you back from feelings of rage, of grief, of fear.
While I never liked Writing classes, it was only because even the slightest constraint on what I had to write made me feel impossibly chained. So I thought I hated writing. Here, I have the freedom to write whatever I want, if it's on my mind. Maybe it will interest you, maybe not. My last blog didn't interest many people, or at least that's what the number of responses to my posts showed.
I have a horrible habit of trying things, becoming interested for a while, and then ignoring it for a long time. Computer games I played for two weeks before going to the rack, albums I listened to a few times before being shelved, collections nowhere near complete. I come back to them, and think, "Wow...that didn't last long, did it?"
That was the fate of my last blog. If this blog should succumb to the same pitfall, don't be surprised. On the bright side, this one, unlike a lot of others, won't cost either of us anything.
Since I'm starting at the beginning, I should probably tell you a few things. There will be a certain geeky bent to this blog. I am a computerphile at heart; my father started me off at age 3 with First Letters and Words for the Commodore Amiga 2000. 16 years later, I'm studying Computer Science at UMass Amherst. I play computer games voraciously. I write music with a software workstation. And occasionally I see a new gadget and think, "My desktop needs one of those."
But this is my catharsis; when I'm tired from a day of work, I turn to the internet to solve all my problems; when I can't help but smile, I need to say why. When my temper begins to flare, I take it out on whatever virtual enemies stand in my way, so that no physical beings are harmed.
If I speak on matters political, my views will have a decidedly liberal slant. I was born and raised in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the great USA (I want to say THE most liberal, but that honor probably goes to Vermont). I read regularly (or used to, anyway) the blog of music artist Moby, which talks as much about politics as it does music, though a lot of it is Bush-bashing. I read the newsmagazine The Nation every time a new issue comes to our door. And I'm a fan of the works of political- and former SNL Sketch-writer Al Franken, and documentarist Michael Moore. (believe it or not.)
If you generally disagree with that I have to say, please please PLEASE back your argument up. If math teachers have taught me anything, it's that for anything to count, you must show how you reached your answer. If your response is well-written and carefully thought out (if you bother to respond at all), then I will read it. Maybe I will respond in kind, but sometimes I might try to write something witty and disarming. Don't take it the wrong way.
And, for those who read my previous blog, I will TRY to cut back on the news regarding my progress in World of Warcraft. Unless you liked those kind of articles.
Here I stand, trying to start again. Previously I had been hosting a blog on JoeUser.com, where I voiced whatever was on my mind at the time. (Near the end of the blog, the subject was almost exclusively World of Warcraft.)
Maybe it was only a temporary bit of downtime, maybe it was my brother's relative success running his blog on this site, maybe a combination of both, but whatever the case, I moved.
The title is a holdover from the previous blog. I first heard it when I was studying greek tragedy as part of 10th grade English class, and I've always liked its sound. If my dictionary definition of Catharsis above puts you off, let's just say, you use some form of art to purge your emotions, to ground you in reality again, to bring you back from feelings of rage, of grief, of fear.
While I never liked Writing classes, it was only because even the slightest constraint on what I had to write made me feel impossibly chained. So I thought I hated writing. Here, I have the freedom to write whatever I want, if it's on my mind. Maybe it will interest you, maybe not. My last blog didn't interest many people, or at least that's what the number of responses to my posts showed.
I have a horrible habit of trying things, becoming interested for a while, and then ignoring it for a long time. Computer games I played for two weeks before going to the rack, albums I listened to a few times before being shelved, collections nowhere near complete. I come back to them, and think, "Wow...that didn't last long, did it?"
That was the fate of my last blog. If this blog should succumb to the same pitfall, don't be surprised. On the bright side, this one, unlike a lot of others, won't cost either of us anything.
Since I'm starting at the beginning, I should probably tell you a few things. There will be a certain geeky bent to this blog. I am a computerphile at heart; my father started me off at age 3 with First Letters and Words for the Commodore Amiga 2000. 16 years later, I'm studying Computer Science at UMass Amherst. I play computer games voraciously. I write music with a software workstation. And occasionally I see a new gadget and think, "My desktop needs one of those."
But this is my catharsis; when I'm tired from a day of work, I turn to the internet to solve all my problems; when I can't help but smile, I need to say why. When my temper begins to flare, I take it out on whatever virtual enemies stand in my way, so that no physical beings are harmed.
If I speak on matters political, my views will have a decidedly liberal slant. I was born and raised in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the great USA (I want to say THE most liberal, but that honor probably goes to Vermont). I read regularly (or used to, anyway) the blog of music artist Moby, which talks as much about politics as it does music, though a lot of it is Bush-bashing. I read the newsmagazine The Nation every time a new issue comes to our door. And I'm a fan of the works of political- and former SNL Sketch-writer Al Franken, and documentarist Michael Moore. (believe it or not.)
If you generally disagree with that I have to say, please please PLEASE back your argument up. If math teachers have taught me anything, it's that for anything to count, you must show how you reached your answer. If your response is well-written and carefully thought out (if you bother to respond at all), then I will read it. Maybe I will respond in kind, but sometimes I might try to write something witty and disarming. Don't take it the wrong way.
And, for those who read my previous blog, I will TRY to cut back on the news regarding my progress in World of Warcraft. Unless you liked those kind of articles.
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