• 15Sep 07

  Beauty (Surprisingly Up-Beat entry)

  The sky tonight is so beautiful. The cool, crisp air has helped to really let you see many more stars. Even the almost constant roar of saturday night/post UK football game traffic on the main road 100 yards from the balconyand the sickly yellow and glaring white lights on the road and in a nearby parking lot are not enought to diminish the beauty of this night sky.

  This is a very active time of yearfor meteorites and every 5 to 10 minutes a small area of the blackness plays host to the fleeting sliver of a shooting star as it passes through our atmosphere.

  ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS.

  • Posted Sep 15, 2007 10:22 pm GMT
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• 11Sep 07

  Customer Service...WTF? (WARNING: Major Rant)

  I've had to spend a bit of time in retail stores over the last several days and so far I've come to one single conclusion:

  The "art" of Customer Service around here is DEAD. D-E-A-D. Six feet under. Kaput. Deceased. No more. GONE!!! It's hanging out with Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis Presley.

  Example one:
  Store: H. H. Greg
  Reason for being there: Price match on a sweet HD TV
  Problem: I went in to check out some HD TV's. Originally they would do internet price matching, but I guess someone alerted corporate office to streetprices.com. After informing me that they have stopped doing internet price matching and me just accepting it, the sales person turned into an insufferable douche bag. Normally they will follow you around and ask if you have any questions to answer and do other things that are traits of good salesmen. I guess he thought I was some broke piece of white trash who stumbled in thinking he was going to hose the company. Either way, he sat at his desk checking his hours while I just kind of wandered around trying to find a TV with a comparable price. When I opted for one on clearance and he was actually forced to go in the back and see if they had one you would have thought I waved a shotgun in his face and forced him to dig his own grave. I actually decided to just tell him what he could do with both his TV and is attitude and I just bought one at Circuit City. No problems there. You would expect that someone getting a percentage of $650+ would be a little nicer about it.

  Example two:
  Store: Walmart (this is going to be good)
  Reason for being there: Only thing open around here at 3am (multiple visits)
  Problem: Getting games from the case usually becomes an hour long ordeal (sometimes longer) while they run around in circles looking for the @$$hole employee with the case key who is apparently on break for his entire shift and not responding to pages. Then they get the key. And they act like they're doing you some kind of enermous favor usually accompanied by the clerk rudely grumbling at you "I don't know anything about video games so just point at it, alright?". Hey, d!ck, you may not be able to tell people the pro's and con's of a PS3 vs. an XBox 360 but surely to God YOU CAN READ! If I say "Forza Motorsport 2 for the XBox 360" surely even you in your high school drop out planning on making a carreer out of wally world glory can look at the boxes and see the one that says "Forza Motorsport 2" capped with the corporate logo reading "XBox 360". Idiots. Last time I was there during the day I was at the Subway they put in the store and there was a group of employees presumably taking their lunches out there making total @$$es of themselves, making tons of noise and annoying everyone. And one guy had a laugh like a male Fran Drescher. Last time I worked a retail and/or grocery job like that I was forced to take my breaks in the back in the Employees Only area so we could unwind and be obnoxious without costing the company business.

  Example 3:
  Store: EB Games
  Reason for being there: GAMESPOT DID NOT CHANGE THE DATE POSTED ON THEIR SITE FOR SKATE ON THE 360.
  Problem: I went into the store and asked for a copy of skate, not knowing they changed the release date. I don't live on the internet 24/7 looking for updates so I still believed it came out today. Curse me for assuming a video game website would have the right release date for a game and even last week during their commercials they said the 11th. After standing in line for 10 minutes while the clerk attempted to explain the trade in system to a guy with obvious mental difficiencies and being patient and not doing things like sighing, grunting, looking at my watch, crossing my arms or any other manner of "hurry it up, I'm getting impatient" gesture I finally get to ask for the game. When I do I get an incredibly rude "We don't have it" followed by him actually sighting the PS3 release date and I said "I thought it was supposed to come out today". He promptly punches a few keys on the computer acting as if, he too, had been forced to do something absolutely horrible. Then he rudely informs me that the correct realease date was the 13th and they wouldn't have ituntil the 14th. So, I think I'll be buying the game at Target along with every other video game I would want.

  There are about 3 or four more examples I could describe here but I don't think it's necessary. Now, to clarify in the case of the sales situations I must point out that I wasn't going in there being rude or even curt with the sales people. I was being respectful largely becuase I've worked craptacular retail jobs before. They brought their own attitude from some other source. The last one I actually got rude with when I left was the guy at HH Greg. I do believe my exact words after he sighed "Yeah, we've got one" like a child does when youhe hasto do something he doesn't wanttowas "You know what, since you know where it is why don't you shove it up your fawking @$$. I want an HD TV for my video games but I don't want one badly enough to put up with your $h!tty attitude. Where's your supervisor?" After registering a short, more-than-likely-useless complaint with the available store manager I left. I also complained to the store manager at walmart which I'm sure did absolutely no good.

  I'm only 24 so I hate to sound like some kind of grizzled old tymer but I have to say it. I remember a time in this country where customer service was something which required you to develope PEOPLE SKILLS. At one point people greeted you with a smile (or at least WITHOUT an attitude) and actually tried to help you. Even if they don't go that far I'm just sick of the constant wave of people being douche bags all the time and nothing happening to make these people learn they have to stop that if they want to get anywhere in life. It just sickens me that everyone around here just seems to be getting worse. I'm going to become one of those psychotic modern hermits who stays in his house and orders everything from the internet.

  • Posted Sep 11, 2007 2:25 pm GMT
  • Category: Rant
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• 6Sep 07

  Bioshock and other new video games (editorial commenting and a bit of a rant)

  As of yesterday morning I completed Bioshock on the PC. I was pleased with this game but not overwhelmed. The graphics are exceptional and it looks like the next UT game is going to be superb. The plasmid power-up system is pretty nice and lends an interesting touch to this game. Hacking security devices, vending machines, and door locks is fun and the old school setup of the minigame lends a great touch to everything. The story is nice and the excellent twists are truly enjoyable. There was nothing really wrong with this game at all. There were no odd play control glitches, no crash bugs, no hardware conflicts. It was a solid and enjoayable game and well thought out...if not a little too easy. That isn't really a complaint, so much as an observation. It's a great game and I think it largely lived up to the hype and deserves its critical praise and high review scores.

  But...

  The game just feels so hollow to me. So many video games coming out now have disappointed me, not because they're bad games, but just because they all have that "been there, done that" feel. The current wave of video games has failed to really excite me. I'm interested in getting my hands on the retail version of Skate and I plan on buying the new WoW expansion when it drops, but I'm not truly psyched about any new games. They all seem so freaking similar to me. I'm actually getting quite sick of FPS titles and I just fail to get too excited when I see that a developer has loaded another FPS round in their chamber. I was also hoping that the new generation of console technology with all of its power and storage space would lead developers to attempt to utilize the technology to try something new. Instead they've just trumped up the asthetics of and some of the physics assosciated with genres we've been seeing all along. I just want to see something new for once. The DS (which I own) and the Wii (which I'm having a monster of a time finding) offer the promise ofa temporary diversion with their unique peripherals and some calssic games from the early days of the home console wars but it still isn't enough since I'm sitting on my PC, PS2, XBox, 360, which are just horribly expensive omni-directional bilge bumps of mundane carbon copy video games. Hopefully once developers are truly comfortable with the limits of the consoles and their controllers we'll see some of them get adventurous and produce a few new things that are a bit out of sorts with the mainstream gaming community. Of course, that will only happen if the big guns (Sony and Microsoft) don't decide to get into another hardware power pissing contest and come out with the PS4 and NeXBox (or whatever the fark they plan on calling it) too damned soon.

  That's another issue, I hope I'm not the only one who felt that the PS3 and 360 dropped a bit too soon. I was disappointed to see these two companies abandon their consoles when they could have really pushed them a bit harder. Developers had really begun tofind those systems' limitations and could have started trying truly new and original things. Of course then Nintendo was almost forced to release the Wii to keep up. (And I am really pissed at them for creating ademand for their product they couldn't possibly meet) I think the main reason we're seeing a lack of originality right now is because the hardware for these consoles remains virgin territory and the limits of these systems have yet to be found they are just kind of occupying media storage space with the info to trump up the graphics and make prettier games. If developers were given greater time to play with these consoles and actually aquaint themselves with the hardware and get comfortable with its limitations then eventuallyno developercould opt to just make a better looking game. This would force developers to go back to the drawing board and try to truly make better and different games to gain an edge over the competition.

  And before you ask, I am NOT looking forward to Halo 3...at ALL. I am not a Halo fan. I was truly disappointed with the first game (and yes, I have played it for the PC) and while the multiplayer is enjoyable it wasn't enough for me to like it.

  • Posted Sep 6, 2007 7:11 am GMT
  • Category: Rant
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