Today's Lessons Learned

Today I learned a few things while at college.  Unfortunately they were little truths about myself and for the most part unrelated to greater education.

#1:  When you feel nausiated still from the acid reflux/Pizza Hut Pizza you had for dinner.....getting a double cheeseburger from the school cafeteria is a bad idea.  Overly filling greasy cheesy meat does not sit well, especially after having done #2 and I don't mean "Number Two".

#2:  When suffering a diabilitating back problem, walking across campus with 5 college text books could quite be the stupidest idea possible.

#3:  It is easy and embarrassing to forget how to program when you take over a year off and don't practice at all.  I will have to go dig up old code and notes so I can have my AI homework done by Thursday.

Back To School...Great...

Well today I get to suffer as I am back in college classes for the first time since May of last year and instead of trying an easy schedule...I decided to be a masochist and go for an all dayer on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Basically my days look like the following....

6:00 Wake up and Shower
6:30 Eat
7:00 Leave the House so I can beat traffic and get a parking spot
7:45 chill in the computer lab or on laptop doing internet type stuff
8:30 Artificial Intelligence
10:00 Programming Languages
11:30 chill till 1 pm
1:00  Computer Organization
2:00 Comp Org Lab (Tuesdays Only)
2:00 chill until 5:30 (Thursdays Only)
4:00 chill until 5:30 (Tuesdays Only)
5:30 Math Structs in CS
6:45 40ish minute drive home
7:30 pass out

The only good thing about those long breaks is I can either get some homework done or play Games for Windows Live on my laptop.  Unfortunately being a 27 year old college Junior, you miss out on killing time with group bullshit as all of your groups of friends graduated 5 years ago....and 18 year olds are exhausting.

Rand Al Thor 19 said, when he heard about my schedule, "Oh noes, grumpy/disgruntled Fro!"  and I am sure he is right.  Look for the littlest things to set me off during the week.

A New Blog Post For A New Year

The video is for Apple and his love of cats. 

Yesterday I finished up Monkey Island and Chaotic.  Now I am working on finishing Sacred 2....which was an awesome game for about 150 hours....after that I know what it is to truly despise a game and not want to play it.  It took me 2 days just to will myself to level the Temple Guardian from 9 to 15.  The Dryad isn't so bad and I already have her up to 10 and expect to finish up that achievement today.  The only thing left at that point is the Shadow Campaign and getting the set gear rings off Omega Deez.  I am also working on knocking out the 100 games played on Battlefield 1943.  Only 70 more matches to go.

Rand al Thor begged me for an Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? Game Time blog post.  So here you go Randy.  I have never played a trivia based game that cheats....or is not fact checked....or so poorly programmed.  This is the only game that I know of that tells me to spell exhilarate and then misspells it giving me a wrong answer for the million dollar question.  5th Grader Devs.....Webster does not spell it exhilirate.  Another favorite wrong answer for me was when the game asked me what word means when an actor speaks quietly for the audience and is supposedly not heard  by the other stage actors.  In the multiple choice question answers it has both aside and stage whisper.  Due to not being a drama geek, the only one I have heard of is an aside ala Shakespeare. So of course the game wants stage whisper which has the exact same damn definition as an aside.  Frustrations like this lead me to hate the game with a passion and traditionally I love trivia games. 

Pwn'd and Boned

When I started saying pwn'd and boned, I always had Shake N' Bake at the back of my mind.  I don't know how you kids pronounce pwn, but ever since my EQ days 10 years ago it has always rhymed with own... because to pwn something is to perfectly own it.  I guess I have been typing it out a lot the past few weeks because just the other day Stallion asked me if I had it trademarked yet.

Well I have news for Mr. Stallion83, of Find The Turd fame, I am unofficially trademarking "Pwn'd and Boned" and it's little sister "Pwn and Bone".  So in my mind, I own those 2 phrases.  If I catch anyone using my catchphrases...prepare yourself for an imaginary lawsuit...and to be Pwn'd and Boned (tm).

Pwn'd and Boned (tm) is linked to my real reason for blogging today.  I started saying it on trueachievements after I would complete a game.  Well I have 2 new goals... one is to hit 300k with 300 completions(100 arcade and 200 retail) and the other is to beat StophJ to 300k.  I only need another 32ish retail and 48ish arcade completions.  The hardest part will be hitting 300k with only 300 completions and doing it before Stophj lays the hammer down on me.  So keep an eye here to see if I pwn and bone (tm)....or get pwn'd and boned (tm).

Death Warrior - Why Rampage Should Stick With The UFC

The great thing about growing up during the late 80's and early 90's was that we had a plethora of great movies covering combat sports.  Movies like Rocky, Karate Kid, and Bloodsport are considered classics.  But we also had to suffer the cheesy movies with bad acting, directing, and writing.  These range from Kickboxer to American Ninja.  So of course with the rise of MMA and UFC, we were bound to go get some cheesy MMA movies.  Not to disapoint, Death Warrior was recently released on DVD.

I just can't believe I watched this all the way through...

The ECA rapes and pillages members!

While browsing CAG this morning (http://www.cheapassgamer.com/), I noticed a thread regarding membership cancellation issues regarding The ECA.  The ECA is a non profit advocacy group for electronic consumers a.k.a. gamers.  They usually charge 20 bones for a years membership to the org and offer up discounts to retailers online and old fashioned.  Several months ago, they had a 10% Amazon.com promo code that many people signed up to access.  A couple months later, they offered free ECA membership with a promo code published in Game Informer magazine.  Of course Amazon was not happy and killed the code.

The ECA then changes it's TOS to make sure that members have to jump through flaming hoops of death to cancel their membership.  You can no longer email them, phone them, or use the auto renew off button on the site.  And anyone that turned auto renew off, you are still going to get charnged 20 bucks when your year is up.  Did your credit card expire? Doesn't matter...The ECA will play the guessing game on your new expiration date.  So how do you cancel this great membership? Snail Mail.....and they have to recieve it 30 days before your renewel.....which they don't notify you of until 30 days before.  Their TOS also claims that mail might conviently be lost so if you want them to get your cancelation.....better send that sucker fried and certified.  And from what I am reading on the forums....that is not working either.

So you have a membership that you want to cancel and decide to ask questions on the ECA forums....be prepared to be banned.  Ask them questions and they play the smoke and mirrors game with you.  Question their answers and welcome to the state of bandom and be prepared to be called retarded by the board sponsered trolls.  Yes, a consumer advocacy group has just ripped off you the consumer, called you a retard, and run their forums like nazi's....thanks for looking out for me ECA!

Not only are they ripping off members but they are breaking various CT. laws (their state of origin) in regard to online transactions and subscriptions.  Perhaps the greatest part of all of this is what arcane93 posted over at CAG....

Here's the thing -- he can't. I have asked this question again and again, both here and on their forums, and the most answer that I ever get is "read the website" -- despite the fact that I have noted each and every time that I had already done so. I have been all through the website -- I see lots of position statements, and I see petitions (including one very poorly planned generic petition to Congress linked on the front page asking them in very vague terms to "protect the rights of gamers" -- who thought that was a good idea?). When I go to the forums, I see links to interviews and some discussion amongst members. So sure, there's a lot of talk about what the issues are, and that's great.

What I don't see anywhere is anything about what actions the ECA actually is taking or what they've actually accomplished. Nothing. And when I asked on the ECA forums, I was directed to a lot of smoke and mirrors. One person (GamesLaw, I believe) directed me to a several-year-old forum post by Hal Halpin himself in which he stated that he can't tell us what they're doing because then their enemies would know too (paranoid much?). Another person (Gypsyfly) gave me a bunch of links to those same position statements and petitions that I mentioned earlier -- again, great, I'm glad you have positions, but that doesn't tell me what you're doing. A third one (the infamous KN, who is the first apparently actually mod sanctioned troll I've seen on a forum) called me a "front page tard who can never hope to fit into our community" for even asking. Um, ok, sure -- with that attitude, I don't want to be a part of your "community". Thanks.

Likewise, in a post in the former ECA thread here, Gypsyfly actually had the nerve to say that members need to do "research" to know what the ECA is doing. You know what? No. Part of the purpose of any advocacy organization is to educate and keep their members informed. The ECA has massively failed in that respect. I shouldn't have to dig through a forum site looking for any sliver of information that I can manage to find in order to simply know what the organization that I've joined is up to. I should be receiving regular updates from the ECA -- not general gaming industry news, but specific ECA news telling me what they've got going on.

And there's the problem. The ECA makes themselves look very good on the surface. They put important sounding position statements up on their site, which I'm pretty sure that the majority of us who play games would agree with. Hal writes articles in magazines like Game Informer about how these issues are so very important. They put out several newsletters of general gaming industry news, the information in which, I'm sure, is largely (and probably through automated means) culled from other sources and available elsewhere. But try to go beneath that, and find out what advocacy work they're actually doing (other than writing about how the issues are really important), how they're actually affecting those issues, and what they're accomplishing, and you hit a brick wall.

Honestly, even if I wanted to be more actively involved in the ECA's work, I wouldn't know how to even begin. Other than providing a few lame web petitions for me to sign and collecting my membership dues, they have provided no means for me as a member to be involved. Unless, apparently, I'd like to do some "research" first.

And yet all that their staff and their apologists like this guy can do is run off these generic lines about the "important" work that they're doing, and spout insults at those who ask questions. I'm honestly baffled -- are these people somehow seeing what I'm not, or are they the ones who only look at the surface?

Really, I tried. Yes, the Amazon discount was what enticed me into actually taking the leap and joining, but I also had an interest in some of their issues. I really wanted them to be a good, legitimate organization that I would be proud to be a member of. But the entire attitude, even before all of this went down, has completely turned me off to them.

At this point, I don't think anyone can answer that question about what they've done for us, because honestly, I don't think anyone actually knows.

Fro out~

Return Of The Whore

I am back. Backyard football and Wolverine are on their way from Goozex...started up Gamefly again.  Time to pwn up some n00bs. My Goal? 300k by May.