Ramblings 006

Several Unrelated Rants

Message Board Users I Abhor - Any person on a board that...

thinks of themselves as the know all be all end all know it all too good to answer simpler questions. Example. Poster: "Hey I can't get this LAN game to work with my buddy" Mr. King-of-His-World:"Anyone who doesn't know how to start a server shouldn't be posting. Period." (A pretty good paraphrase of one of woekele's responses from the Urban Terror board.) Google it google it google it. Welll, you pompous troll have you ever thought that maybe the message board they posted their question on WAS the google search result?! Dang! And then I can't believe this thing someone came out with: lmgtfy.com

nitpicks things totally irrelevant to the topic. Example. Poster:"How are I to edit my game's cfg filef?" Self-Procalaimed-English-Professor:"Wait - 'How ARE I'? I can't believe it! I don't know the answer so I'm just going to post tripe like this on the board for points cause I'm so awesome lolz." I was actually on the English Honor's Society in college and yet I still communicate with people who have problems expressing themselves with the English language. Nitpickers seem to pride themselves on their 3rd grade reading level and LOOOOVE to show it.

Bring Sprites Back To RPGS!
I am still of the firm belief that the best RPGs ever made were on the NES, SNES and especially the PS1. Why? Sprites! Tiles! Textures! Color! Now RPGs are coming out that have "hyper anti aliasing vector rasting with 4000x5890 resolution!" So instead of a legendary game like Lunar: Eternal Blue or Wild Arms 2 we get Final Fantasy MCMXLVII. The developers are so involved with the graphics nowadays that they skimp on plot and gameplay. Do you know why newer RPGs can still boast about "50 hours of gameplay"? Because it's 30 hours of you going through cutscenes/movies/trilogies and falling asleep.

The Horrific Misuse of the Word "Core"
The word core is a physical, TANGIBLE center of something. What happened to the words "main", "primary", "I think I'll buy a thesarus"?

Videogame Store ChainPolicies (You know the big 2)
I buy a game for $60. It's crap. I try to return it for store credit and they say "it's new and there's no cellophane on it so it's opened, can't do it." Only, there was no cellophane in the original transaction to begin with. So now I'm stuck with the broken game they refer to as Monster Madness for the PS3. (*EDIT!*: An employee explained to me that the feds won't let them buy back new games for equivalent store credit to protect against piracy. That's understandable I guess.)
They've all stopped selling 16 bit console games.
They give you 1/10,000th of what they'll be selling your trade--in for.

Sales Quotas & Business Consultants
Business consultants have convinced the management staff of EVERYWHERE that alienating customers is good. Employees are forced to "get numbers" no matter where I go. "Do you want insurance on that game?" "You wanna super size that for a buck?" "Have you seen my soul? I'm scared..." My first shock was a Wendy's where I saw Excellence in Sales plaques. Who the why huh? For the longest time I thought working at a fast food joint worked like this: Someone outside the building gets hungry. They decide what they want to eat. They come in and look at the menu. They order. You serve and ring them out. They eat. Happy happy. Guess not. And recently I got a sales pitch at a US Post Office! Private sector! Civil servants! No more pleasant conversations anymore, you fellow customers. Expect a sales pitch from a cop in5 years.

Dress Codes for Certain Places of Work
I'll be doing an IT contract in a few days that requires walking, kneeling, walking, crawling,lifting heavy objects and genrally sweating my brains out. What's the dress code? Dress shirt, dress shoes and khakis "in order to make a professional appearance." I sure as **** know when I hire contractors to pour my foundation I don't want them in 3 piece suits because, o I dunno, it might impede their work efficiency?!?!!?!? And I can tell you another thing right now - uniforms and dress codes don't maintain eployee morale or promote unity. How about giving employees responsiblity, a sense of purpose, and the money their work is worth instead of this gay dresscode shit.

Corporate Radio Stations (see:ClearChannel)
They play the same top hits 9876 times a day. I like NPR (nationwide), WMHTand WEQX. Independence is a good thing. It lets me listen to new stuff everyday. If I like a song on the radio I'll buy it. You don't have to bombard my ears with it 243 times a day.
END (I'm tired and there's typos in here I know)