IRL – Page 19

We don’t care anymore

I work in a new building. It was built across the parking lot from a Superstore, which is always busy. We have comparatively little traffic, though things have picked up a little recently. The branch is close to the southernmost point of the city, and it’s a bit out of the way, which doesn’t help make us more accessible. However, it seems like the driveway to our parking lot is the real thing keeping people away. Take a look at the diagram below.

The blue arrow shows the way I come on on my drive to work. The gold arrows show the flow of traffic, and the purple arrow is the only way to access our parking lot. It should also be noted that this map is technically upside down (North is at the bottom).

So if you can navigate my clumsy map, you can see that when you journey to my building, you must make a u-turn when approaching from the main street. You could always make life easier and come in from the Superstore parking lot, but that’s just silly. Generally, you’re doing a u-turn.

And people bitch about this.

We’ve all heard people complain about stupid stuff before, but they get so riled up about this, you’d think that they’re taking the poor driveway planning as a personal attack on them. One guy came in yesterday and actually yelled at us about it. He’s not the first to do so, but the location has been open for seven months now, so at this point we’re a little taken aback when someone reacts so violently about it. I thought that people were realizing that it’s a tiny inconvenience and moved on with their lives. Stupid me.

Not that I care that people are too useless at driving to make a u-turn (“I had to make a three-point turn to get in here!”), but they take it out on us humble employees, who have nothing at all to do with it.

There are architects who designed the building and parking lot. There is Superstore, whose head office in Ontario is too apathetic to give us the okay to have the median cut out a little at the end (that part of the lot is on their property, not ours). There are the people at head office who are in charge of enacting some kind of solution. But no, the complaints and verbal assaults are all directed at the branch employees. Of course I’m not surprised, because when something goes wrong it’s clearly the next closest person’s fault.

I’m just sick of people thinking we have any say in this business at all. Yes, it’s a minor inconvenience. Suck it up, and then go dust the sand out of your vaginas. We have to do that u-turn every day. No, old man, I’m not going to rent a jackhammer and tear it up myself. You go do that. And enjoy it as much as you can before you get arrested for destruction of property, and probably a handful of other laws I’m sure that would break.

I’m sorry that the driveway is that way, but there’s nothing anyone who works in this building can do about it, so leave me alone. It’s a u-turn. I really don’t care. I’m a fairly competent driver, so it’s literally no problem at all for me.

If there’s a silver lining here, recently construction started to the South and East of our building. People think it’s the construction of a new entry/exit for the parking lot. I just love to watch the hope in their eyes vanish when I tell them that it’s actually just apartment buildings going up. Oh, the sweet taste of shattered dreams…

All aboard the Learning Train!

This is broken now that I’ve moved to WordPress! Now come back in a few hours and see if that greeting has changed. I made up (re: stole) a dealie that makes it change based on the time of day. Hopefully it works right.

The point of this exercise -aside from seeing how little function you can get from as many lines of code as possible- is to play with JavaScript a bit today. The code I used is really not complicated at all, but it took me almost half an hour to get that greeting to the point where it would show up on the page. I don’t much care for JavaScript; I cannot foresee any reason why I would use it. Alas, to learn XSLT properly, one must also know XML. And to learn XML, a firm grasp on JavaScript is highly recommended. So today I’m learning about JavaScript. It’s going slowly.

I don’t really think that it’s useless or anything. It’s just like, I’m reading and there’s these cool things you can do but then I turn around and realize that there’s no reason to. Sure I could put a self-updating time stamp on the site, but why bother? You’re probably reading this on a computer, and the time and date are right there on the bottom-right corner of your screen. I can do algebra on my page with JavaScript, but I cannot imagine any situation where it would be useful. Even if/else is just if/then’s dropout cousin for webpage content. I’d make stuff up just for the sake of learning it, but really, that would amount to making homework for myself. Mind you, I’m in the JavaScript tutorial equivalent of kindergarten, so maybe there’s better stuff beyond the horizon.

Internet I hate you

So I’m trying to get some small part of that project I’ve been talking about up. Not happening. Being insistent on using XML is keeping the project in the “working on” phase, and it’s not getting anywhere. I really don’t understand what it is I need to be doing. Guess I’ll just have to spend tomorrow reading about it… Dammit. I really wanted to have something up today.

Destiny calls me

Okay internet, I need something new. I have finished Scibbe.com.

“But Ryan, how can you finish a website? And a blog at that?” you might ask. I would proceed to wonder why you would ask such a silly question, because the only way that I can imagine that anyone could conceivably finish a blog would be to read all the archives. And that, I have done. A lofty task considering that Brickroad had a pretty consistent 5-posts-a-week thing going on since February aught-nine.

It’s true, I skipped all the “Crystalis the Lovable Warlock” posts and still need to catch up on all the vlogs and LPs, so I haven’t 100%ed it, but I’ve read everything that interested me, and now I need something new. So if you know of any gamer blogs that read half-decently and contain a few posts about other things, let me know. Basically, I want to read my blog, but by someone else. Oh, and long posts are always a plus. I have a lot of downtime to fill with fluffy online entertainment.

Also, maybe go check out Scibbe.com. At least the “13 Weeks of Final Fantasy” feature and the “Memoirs of the Peemeister” posts. There’s plenty of great (or at least mildly interesting) content there, but those are the ones I feel shone the brightest.

Let it all out

I’ve been up all night learning how to integrate XML into my website. The short version is that I don’t think it’s going to work.

The long answer is a little more complicated. XML will work fine for my article pages. The only thing that it’ll inconvenience is the little “related” tab I have on the navi bar, but I barely fill that out properly anyway. I still have a long way to go before I really understand this stuff, but it seems like it will not work at all for the blog. Essentially, all that goes in the XML files is the body text, and HTML tags don’t work there, so I can’t type up a post in my blog.xml and call it good. I’d have to go add a new set of tags to the xsl file too, and that makes the process slightly more complicated than the copy-paste-replace routine I do now.

But maybe I’m missing something? It doesn’t look like it, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I managed to mock up a new xsl index page, and I did it all through trial and error. Just took an example page, and started figuring out how it worked. That’s exactly the same way I learned to do HTML (which is why my coding skills are so limited).

In any case, I’ll be using XML for my upcoming project. It’s still a week or so from launch, which means I’m way behind, but I’ll have plenty of time to work on it next weekend. Hopefully it works well. For now though, bed.

You know I’m bad

I’ve been trying (and mostly failing) to eat healthier lately, but it’s been hard. Turns out you can’t just turn your eating habits around overnight. I suppose it’s possible, but certainly not easy. Anyway, this “Lean Cuisine” business has been working its way into my lunches, but it’s all a bunch of baloney.

Taking a quick glance at the box does not reveal its sinister truths. No, in fact, if you’re not paying attention, you might be tricked into thinking that this meal is healthy for you. But that is a lie. The ravioli is a lie.

Oh, look at this in the corner, it’s the gist of the nutritional information. I know enough about this stuff to know that the six-inch ham sandwich I get at the Subway has less calories and fat than this box of ravioli. Not by much, but this purported “good choice” of a meal might not be all you think it is. But then let’s look at the fine print.

So the truth here is that they aren’t giving you healthy food, they’re just giving you a pittance of the same crap you’ve been eating all along. Very clever, lean cuisine, but not clever enough. My sad little Subway sandwich is healthier than this thing, and there’s more food there. Again, not by a wide margin, but the sandwich is considerably more filling than the even sadder six pieces of ravioli. The only thing that the lean cuisine is able to hold over the Subway sandwich is that the sub costs a bit more.

Maybe some of the other lean cuisine options are actually healthy for you. I haven’t checked them all out, because this is the kind that was in my freezer. Hopefully at least one of the other ones is a little better all-around than the ravioli. I’d much rather eat a bigger portion of healthy food than a small portion of food that’s not good for me.

The Cave Story

I read this website called Ted’s Caving Page a while ago, and I keep telling people about it, but forgetting to actually give a link. Not that people really read this blog, but now there’s a link there and I can get back to sleeping peacefully at night. Well, as peacefully as one can after reading such a spooky story.

Really, it’s quite an excellent piece of literature. While it’s quite likely fiction, it’s written as a journal, which makes the story so much more realistic. And hey, maybe it is for real, maybe it’s not. All I know is that I’ve seen my share of horror movies, and very few of them are as effective at creating a believable atmosphere as this short story. The beginning fills you with a sense of discovery and adventure, then slowly changes those optimistic feelings into ones of fear and dread. It’s so good, and shouldn’t take more than two (uninterrupted) hours to read start to finish. Definitely one worth checking out.

Just killed a man

You know what’s ridiculous? Paying money for things. Don’t get me wrong, I buy stuff all the time. Or when I get the opportunity anyway. Money is a little tight right now so spending on unnecessary goods is last on the priority list. Especially when things are so way overpriced. Like the DVD/Blu-ray sets of Fringe.

I want to watch this series because it seems like a show that I’d enjoy. But everything in the world is stopping me from doing that legally. Netflix, which has been my go-to place for TV, does not carry it yet. Because stupid Canadian Netflix is stupid and has a considerably smaller library than American Netflix. Best Buy will sell me the more desirable Blu-ray set, but for $80 a pop. I make bad financial decisions, but I am surely not paying that much for a single season of a show I’m not totally sure I’m into yet. They have the DVD version available for $65, which is closer to what I’d be willing to pay for the BD set, but not for DVD. Wal-Mart will supply me with the DVD sets for $30 each, only not a single Wal-Mart in the city has season one in stock. Ever.

Also, Wal-Mart doesn’t sell TV Blu-rays? WTF?

So I guess for now I’m illegally downloading the series. Yeah, ya heard me. That’s what I did with the first episode, which is all I’ve watched so far. It’s good stuff though! At least, I enjoyed it. I always find serious TV shows very hard to start watching, and if there isn’t a hook that caters to my interests, I will pass them by without a second thought not matter how good a reputation they have. CSI? Not interested. The Sopranos? Pass. Game of Thrones? Oh God it looks so boring. Actually, I don’t think there’s ever been an HBO series that I’ve even been marginally interested in.

The ones I do like always have a specific little something that pulls me in. For example, I probably would have let LOST go, if not for that scary thing that was roaring in the jungle and uprooting trees at the end of episode one. What is it? A dinosaur? A monster? Something more sinister? There were plenty of reasons for me to stick with LOST (NB: Hurley), but that spooky thing in the jungle was the number one thing that caught my interest and made me watch the second episode immediately afterwards. I wanted to know what that thing was, dammit! And I would watch as many episodes as it took to find out.

Fringe doesn’t benefit from something so blatantly mysterious and intriguing, but rather the promise of many such things in smaller, episode-sized doses. From what I understand, the show is about a bunch of misfits solving mysteries and battling evil with “fringe science.” Already in episode one we’ve seen a creepy virus that makes skin invisible and mental linkage through copious amounts of drugs, so I have a feeling things will get pretty crazy pretty quickly.

The show also seems to be going in the opposite direction of Dollhouse when it comes to the subject of maintaining a running plot. As I explained yesterday, Dollhouse is working things together very slowly, while in the first episode, Fringe has already established basic character backgrounds, a huge corporation that may or may not have evil intentions, a possible secret society, and countless other plot threads that are clearly leading into something bigger. In short, it’s the sci-fi cop drama version of LOST. Which is almost exactly what I want to be watching. Really, my ideal TV situation would be watching LOST for a third time. Alas, I need to branch out a bit.

Hopefully the rest of Fringe continues to tickle my fancy as well as the first episode did. Judging by the little bits I’ve read about it on Wikipedia, I don’t think I’m going to end up disappointed. The fact that it’s a Bad Robot production also leaves me greatly optimistic, as other TV shows by said company include LOST and Alias, not to mention my 2011 Movie of the Year, Super 8. So yeah, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this one. Just wish it wasn’t so danged expensive to watch it legitimately.

It started somewhere in my chest

Hmmm… Updates are coming fairly often these last couple weeks, aren’t they? This could be trouble. But at least I’m getting my thoughts out of my head and onto paper, unimportant though they may be. I mean, almost everything I’ve blogged over the last few months has been about video games. What happened to my ability to blog about slightly less stupid things? Not that Marshmallow Mateys or girls with fake blue eyes are much more interesting. So I’ll try to come up with more random/entertaining things to post. In the meantime, vidja games!

I bought the Bit.Trip Runner soundtrack on iTunes a while back (like… January?), and the game itself before that, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned them here. Which is a shame, because they’re just the best.

Well, that’s a mouthful, but Runner is definitely a solid game, and it’s a real shame that I don’t really play it. I guess that might have something to do with the steep difficulty curve, but that in and of itself might only be a problem because I have a big stupid ape brain. The game is about learning button cues and having the reflexes to execute them in different orders at different speeds. It’s laid out as a man running across various terrain, with a multitude of objects that will impede his progress. Every object requires a different action. For example, you simply jump over small obstacles like rocks and elevated ground, but there are two coloured balls that fly at you in a wave pattern. One will always end up high, which you have to slide under, and one will always go low, which requires a jump. It’s your job to remember which colour goes high and which goes low.

Really, the game is essentially a guitar (or any other kind of rhythm game, for that matter) game, except your notes are obstacles instead of a cue that literally tells you which button to press. And the rhythm game comparison goes even farther than that, because every action makes sound effect that mesh in with the music. There are two types of collectibles scattered throughout each stage: gold and powerups. The gold is just a “try to get them all” thing, so it can be safely ignored. The powerups mostly just boost your score, but they also carry the much cooler benefit of altering the background music, layering on additional melodies and instruments every time you pick one up, which is a super cool effect.

As I mentioned before, the failing here is that the game is hard. Like, I was “stuck partway through world one” hard. Only after playing that particular stage for hours did I manage to memorize it well enough to make it through. Now I’m almost to the end of the third world and hit another brick wall. It’s still a fun game, but you can only fail the same stage so many times before you move onto something you can be more successful at. The nice thing is that while even a nudge from an obstacle will halt your progress, it really only rewinds you. Commander Video is sent back very quickly to the beginning of the stage, and you’re back up and running after a short countdown. No “you lose” screens, no waiting for the level to re-load. It’s all very snappy in pace, and I love that.

Did I mention how much I love the music? I think I might have, but it bears repeating. Man I love the music in this game.

I highly recommend giving Bit.Trip Runner a shot. It’s the only Bit.Trip game that I’ve found compelling enough to try, and I’m glad I did. Even Stephanie had trouble putting it down the one time I made her play it. It’s available on WiiWare ($8) and Steam ($??), and if those are too expensive, there’s a game on the App Store called Action Hero which is a very simplified version of the same game style. I’m sure there are other ones too, but Bit.Trip Runner stands head and shoulders above the rest, if only because its music meshes in with the gameplay so nicely and transparently. Plus the bonus stages are based on Pitfall!, so that’s pretty rad.

Just sleep

I was going to write a post yesterday ranting about my lack of sleep and how I hate being tired all the time. It’s good that I didn’t get it finished though, because it was really stupid and I spent most of it blaming everyone else for sucking up all my free time. And that would make me a dick. What it really boiled down to was that if I want to watch FullMetal Alchemist or play Half-Minute Hero, I have to do it in the time I should be using to sleep. This causes problems for me in the way of me being exhausted all day long, but it’s still my choice, and I consistently choose leisure over a proper rest.

In actual news, I played the Duke Nukem Forever demo. Glad I did too, because I don’t see anything there worth picking up the full version for. Firstly, the gameplay is not Duke Nukem. Maybe the full version is different, but in the demo the levels are pretty linear. No exploring or backtracking necessary. I suppose that kind of game design is outdated, but I’d really prefer if you kept your Halo out of my Duke Nukem, please. It would have been much better if Gearbox had just dressed up Borderlands in a Duke skin. Everybody likes Borderlands.

The other -and possibly more important- thing that threw me off was the difficulty level. Maybe the demo stage is at the end of the game or something, but I chose easy mode and still died every time I encountered enemies. I’m pretty sure I don’t suck at FPSes, because I don’t die all the time in Borderlands or… okay, so that’s the only real FPS I’ve played in recent memory, but I don’t suck at it!

The good things about it were… nothing. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there surely wasn’t anything that impressed me. I kind of liked that you can see Duke’s body when he falls down or you look where his feet should be, as opposed to other FPSes where you’re a disembodied hand. That little detail is something I want to see in every FPS from now on. It really should have been standardized years ago. Other than that, I suppose the full version promises boobies, but that’s not a good reason to buy a game. Last time I bought a game because of boobies, I ended up with God of War, which I found so incredibly boring that I didn’t even suffer through half the game before I traded it in. So yeah, Duke demo did not impress me, and I’m glad that I wasn’t one of those people hyped up for the game enough to buy it blind on launch day. I’ll stick to Duke Nukem 3D, thank you very much. Or even better, one of the old side-scrolling Duke games.