I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

209,

     There is no way in hell I’ll be able to summarize the entire issue between the PS3 and the Wii in one blog.  I mean I could, but it’s going to read like a school textbook.  What I’ll do instead is break it up into a couple of blogs which sounds really familiar.  Oh wait that’s right!   WELCOME TO PS3 VS WII MONTH!

What is the sound of a one Wii clapping?  or Will man ever comprehend PSinfinity?

     I’m trying to make the title sound philosophical, but that’s the best I can come up with.  If you think the technical specs between the two systems are different, wait till you hear the two company’s philosophy on their respective next generation console.  Let’s start with Sony.

     For Sony, they believe that the next generation of consoles belongs to the one with the prettiest, bestest, most powerful system, and who can blame them for thinking so.  History have shown that each console with a generational leap over the previous console ends up owning the market.  Not so oddly enough, that piece of history was written by themselves.  I’m of course talking about the PS1 and the PS2.  Both made a huge leap from the previous console in terms of graphics and processing power, and both times, Sony won.  No wonder they’re staying true to their philosophy.  It hasn’t once failed them.  Their console trully embodies this philosophy simply by being outright powerful in terms of processing power and the ability to output in 1080P, the current highest High Definition output.  Neither the Wii nor the Xbox 360 can do that.  By simply being a game console juggernaut, they believe that the next 5 or 10 years of gaming history is already written with them as the victor.  This…"arogance" can easily be summed up by them when they delcare at their press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006 that the next gen of gaming did not start when the Xbox 360 is released but when we(Sony) say so.  If the conditions that made both the PS1 and PS2 a success persist, there’s little doubt that Sony will win again, but notice the keyword "if" at the beginning of this sentence.

     In the past 5 or so years, the gaming world is starting to show a disturbing trend.  The gaming community is shrinking.  Of all the reasons that this is happening, I’ll focus on the most relevant to the subject.  Have you ever tried getting someone to play video games?  I have, and it frustrates me to no end.  I would give them the controller and instruct them on how the game is played.  Once the game starts:

"Push X to attack"

"uhhm which one is that?"

"It’s that one."

"Ohh."

(victim pushes different button)

"No, no, no, not that one, the other button!"

(victim pushes the same button)

"No, no, ah forget it, just move away from the enemy!"

"How do I do that?"

(tormentor clutches own forehead)

Sound familiar?  It should.  Games have gotten so complex that it’s almost impossible to get anyone to play video games.  Take any non-puzzle triple A title, the creams of the crop of video games, these days, and you’ll see layers upon layers of complexity built into the game which was meant to differentiate and evolve the game.  Take good old Mario as an example.  In Super Mario Bros., all he can do is run, swim, duck, jump and, given the right power up, shoot fireballs.  That’s it.  Fast forward to Super Mario World which is only 3 iterations after Super Mario Bros.  Not only can Mario run, swim, jump, and shoot fireballs, he can also fly, stomp on the ground, spin jump, carry items, slide down a hill, climb fences, float, ride a dinosaur (which adds even more moves), and more.  And this is only Mario, one of the most accessible franchise in the history of video games.  If this sounded complicated, wait til you get to Super Mario 64 when the game goes from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions.  Gamers always expects games to evolve from its predecessors, and the game industry listened.  The problem is that gamers quickly forget about the difficulty barrier this creates for other people who never played video games.  We gamers took for granted all of our gaming experience and demanded to be challenged with each new iteration of games leaving behind those who does not have any background in gaming.  Fortunately, Nintendo saw this trend and realizes the danger if this trend persist.

     Nintendo may very well be doing something even more revolutionary than just creating a more powerful console.  Many would say that Nintendo is capitulating any share of the next generation market.  Some would even say that they’ve gone crazy.  They’re all right.  Nintendo’s next system, the Wii, is nowhere nearly as powerful or as pretty as the PS3.  They’re not even in the same league, and Nintendo is damn proud of it.  For them, the next generation does not belong to the one with bestest, prettiest, and most powerful console, but to the one with the biggest audience.  They’re not fighting for a slice of a slice of pizza.  They’re fighting for a slice of the rest of the pizza.  They are after the non-gamers of the world, and the Wii embodies that goal.  Nintendo intends to focus on expanding the market with the Wii and, in doing so, revitalize the waning gaming industry.  Most of their games have this exact purpose in mind.  In fact the Wii will come with a pack in game called Wii sports.  As you probably already guessed, the game is all about playing sports that everyone already knows how to play such as tennis, bowling, and baseball.  According to Nintendo, calling the Wii a next generation console is a misnomer.  They prefer the term "New Generation."

     The fact is, the phrase "PS3 VS Wii" is in itself a misnomer.  Neither one is truly competing against the other.  Sony came to Main street in front of the the saloon expecting a duel to the death with Nintendo and found an empty street.  Nintendo is inside the saloon having a good time with the other patrons.  They’ll never admit this, but I think Nintendo is saving a seat for Sony and Microsoft to join them on their little venture.

P.S. I tried to blog yesterday, but I couldn’t get in.

211,

It’s amazing the amount of stuff you come up with after the fact.  Take for example today’s job interview that I had.  While I talk about my accomplishments with the software side of things in computers, they’re actually looking for someone with more hardware experience.  Fact is, I could probably do whatever it is they wanted me to hardware wise.  I just thought that giving out an aura of focus in my job search would at least make me look decisive which I heard is an endearing quality.  As usuall, my gamble did not pay off.  My interviewer tried to make it sound hopeful at the end of the interview, but I know better.  He’s going to interview someone else with more hardware experience and will pick him over me.  Had I highlighted more of my hardware experience during the interview, I might have just stood a chace against the other guys.  Oh well!  There goes that little opportunity.  Damn shame though.  If there is any company at all that I would work for it would be an educational institution, which it was, above anything else.  I guess I better get some sleep for my lovely, lovely job at the Department of Elections.

209,

So I watched that show "Heroes" today.  I’m intrigued.  Granted it doesn’t take much to get my attention when it comes to TV shows, but this show seems to show promise.  The basic premise can be summed up in one sentence fragment.  Normal life one day, X-Men life the next day.  So a bunch of people of varying age, size, and geography slowly realized that they have abilities.  I don’t want to say super powers because so far no one has the ability to shoot lasers from their eyes.  So far we’ve seen some basic abilities such as regeneration, flight, and clairvoyance, but the one that intrigued me the most is the one who seems to have a doppleganger that can only be seen through a mirror.  At least I think that’s what it is.  They’ve only shown the power vaguely.  According to the scrolling text at the start of the show, these people with their abilities will become the savior of humanity which I thought kinda ruins the surprise.  At least in the other show about people with abilities "The 4400", their true purpose has not been revealed yet.  Nevertheless, I will continue to watch the show.  Who knows, it might be pretty good.  Unfortunately, my Tivo is too busy recording other stuff at the same time so I’m forced to watch this show the old school way, actually watching it at the time it’s aired.

You wouldn’t believe what we started yesterday.  We started filming Lemon’s music video.  That’s right!  A music video!  As you may remember, Lemon got a little…obsessesed with a certain musical artist by name of Vienna Teng, and he envisioned a music video for his favorite song off of the album.  He came to me for help in realizing his vision.  We worked out all the details about a week ago.  We started filming at 2 PM ended at 9 o’clock.  I never realized just how exhaustive the process is.  By the end of the day, we were dead tired, and we only recorded 18 minutes of footage.  16 minutes of which won’t even be used!  We got all the footage that we needed.  Well, almost.  We’re going to have to go back next week because our other actor was unavailable yesterday.  Hopefully, by the end of this week we’ll have all the footage we need from that location.  After that we have a problem.  Lemon’s video calls for a woman, and unfortunately we are extremely short on friends with 2 X chromosomes.  We could ask our sisters if they’re interested, but it’d be creepy.  So for those of you reading this, any of you women interested in staring in Lemon’s music video?

205, :0

There’s nothing like going to a Magic Pre-release tournament (or any Magic tournament for that matter) to make you feel thin.  Maybe that’s why I keep going to those events.  Probably not.  In case you haven’t caught on, I went to Time Spiral’s pre-release tournament today.  For the Non-Magic readers out there, Time Spiral is the name of Magic’s next set of cards.  Although the set is not out yet, players are able to both see the new cards and use them at a pre-release tournament.  The attendance level broke records again.  The previous record was held by the Ravnica set which is only 4 sets ago!  Over 600 hundred players attended the tournament.  The Winners get 16 booster packs from the new set.  Fortunately for me, the prize structure accomodated those with fairly good decks as well.

I’ve been going to these off and on since 1998 according to the oldest pre-release commemorative card in my collection.  I’ve never won anything in these tournaments before.  This time, however, I did.  Not entirely sure how I did it, but I did.  I managed to win 3 booster packs!  I was probably lucky that I kept going up against players with slightly jankier decks than mine.  Normally I went up against people who were very lucky, and made very powerful decks, for the environment that is.  I hope to use these cards in my decks.  Sliver decks, here I come.

209,

Recently I’ve been playing Texas Hold’em Poker on my Xbox 360.  I don’t like the game particularly, but it was free at the time.  So I figured, why not.  I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been playing it so often.  Maybe it was because I managed to get a straight that beat out my opponent’s straight.  After that I thought I gotten good.  Boy was I wrong.  I haven’t been able to really win ever since.  At one point, I had a flush 10 high, but alas, my opponent, who raised the stakes considerably, had a flush king high.  It was irritating to say the least.  My luck was so bad that every time I had a good hand, everyone around me had such crappy hands that they fold early leaving me with very little to win from the pot.  It was just irritating.   It’s like the damn computer could see my hand or something.  I played that game for like 3 hours today, and all that time I was always the guy with the lowest money.  I would occasionally win here and there, but they were always trivial compared to the loses I incur during hands I thought was a sure bet.  All this virtual gambling is reminiscent of my luck in general with gambling.

Whenever I went to Vegas or Reno, my family always encourage me to play the slots.  I have no taste for it.  The same patern always repeats itself whenever I play.  I win some, but I lose even more.  I’m well aware that everything in a casino is set-up that way, but for some reason, that rule never applies to my mother.  She almost always walk away with more money then she started.  It’s really annoying.  So annoying in fact that I came up with a theory for this incongruence in the universe.  Here’s how it goes.  My mother didn’t give birth to my sister and I for the sake of having kids.  No.  I think she gave birth to us so that she can suck the luck out of us.  Not just any luck mind you.  Gambling luck.  That’s right.  I don’t know what shaman or witch doctor she had to use to make it happpen, but I’m telling you it’s a fact.  My sister’s luck is fairly normal, but mine is just absolutely bad.  I don’t just mean gambling games either.  Just about every game I’ve played that involves luck always goes against me.  Whenever I have to discard randomly in Magic, I tend to lose the cards I need the most.  Whenever the situation is reversed, I always pick the wrong cards.  I have more examples, but you know my memory.

The lesson here.  Never come to me for any kind of gambling suggestions.  I’ll only bankrupt you.

211,

Relax!  They haven’t found any evidence suggesting that Hitler is anything besides a total genocidal fascist, or at least not to my knowledge (I don’t keep up with current events.  They eat into my video gaming time).  The title is just meant to grab your attention, but it is fairly accurate to the strange little dilemma I came up with.

As you may remember, Michael Jackson was charged with mollesting kids (Okay so I do keep up with current event on some rare occasions).  I am a vehement fan of his early nineties and eighties works, but the charges brought to light a strange dilemma along with a somewhat tangential theory on ideas.  Let’s start with the dilemma.  Is it OK to like his music?  Better yet, is it OK to like or even appreciate works or art that came from an "undesireable" person?  With the case of me and Michael Jackson’s works, the case can easily be explained simply by the fact that I like his works which predates the charges.  So that’s probably OK.  Unsatisfied with the answer I came up with, I changed the circumstances somewhat.  What if instead of Michael Jackson it was Adolf Hitler?  What if Adolf Hitler during his spectaclular reign of terror over Europe composed a brilliant piano piece which for the sake of simplicity shall be called Tim.  All of the experts, even the ones outside of Germany mind you, agree that Tim is trully good in every aspect as a musical piece.  Let’s assume that I happen to be a big fan of piano pieces.  Is it OK for me, or for anyone else for that matter, to like Tim?

Here are two nuggets of information I feel you should consider before you start thinking about the answer.

In medicine, doctors and scientist must abide by the Nuremberg Code, a set of rules that protects the rights of human research subjects, when conducting research.  If any of these rules are not followed, the research is deeemed unethical, and its data and findings are dismissed by the medical community.

I had a strange thought about the nature of ideas.  We have this notion of a muse, a supposed entity, or not at all, that brings about great inspirations.  In my strange thought, what if ideas are like dandelions floating in the air until it decides to land somewhere and grow?  Meaning, what if ideas simply find a host to manifest itself instead of ideas being born out of our minds.  It would explain one hit wonders wonderfully seeing how they somehow manage to create something good but never again.  Just a strange thought of course.

P.S.  I got your suggestions and hope to use them someday.  As for the suggestion on talking about my view on religion, well, let’s just say it’s going to take a weeked to talk about that.

(WARNING.  BAD DAY RANT ALERT)

212,

I really don’t know where all of this started.  All I know is that too many factors played a role in making a really crappy day that is today.  Let’s start about a week ago when I got a call about a job interview offer.  Obviously I was excited.  Yesterday I arranged the inteview to be set up for today.  Since I am still working for the Department of Elections, I had to come up with a reason for not coming in to work.  Now that I thought about it, I should have just told them the truth instead of the lie I made up.  They gave me the day off for today.  Later that night, I checked my e-mail (a rare event) and found out that the interview needed to be rescheduled.  Normally the prospect of having the whole day to myself would have been welcomed, but that day off was supposed to be for the interview for a job that looked very appealing to me.  Skip to today when I called them about the reschedule, I wanted to try next Monday because I came up with a got-sick-over-the-weekend excuse for work.  They seemed hesitant about making it next Monday for some reason and will call me back on Friday.  Now I’m scarred that I might have just ruined my chance at getting the job.

     I actually got another job interview offer from my answering machine and decided to call them.  It seems that they need someone very quickly because they wanted an interview today and a second interview tomorrow.  In my haste, I agreed despite the fact that I had to be there in an hour.  Not only that they wanted to test my JAVA, a computer program language, skills in the interview.  I haven’t used JAVA in over 2 years.  I can barely remember how to make a Hello World program.  I don’t know if it’s because of what just happened with the whole rescheduling thing with the previous people, but I got freaked.  I cancelled the interview all together.  Now I’m starting to feel depressed.

     A word of advise.  Never deal with customer service over the phone when you’re depressed.  It’s the perfect chemical reaction to create blind fury.  Remember my sister’s laptop?  Well, I shipped it about 12 days ago, but Dell never sent us the confirmation e-mail that says that they received.  I called them about that.  As you may remember, telephone communication is 4th on my preffered list of communications, and for good reasons.  Something about my voice and ears doesn’t work well with telephone technology.  I always have trouble listening to people over the phone ("Wait what did you say?"), and my voice just doesn’t seem to travel well over phone lines ("I SAID 12 NOT 5!").  Unfortunately every step of the refund process had to be done over the phone.  According to them, they haven’t received the laptop yet, and the UPS tracking number given to me didn’t work.  So I figured the problem is over at UPS.  I drove over to…oh wait a minute, I forgot the tracking number at home.  So I turned around to go home and scour my house the number.  I couldn’t find it…that is until I checked my pockets.  Adding self stupidity on top of blind fury miraculously creates twice the blind fury.  So I drove over to the UPS store where I shipped the laptop demanding answers.  First of all, the tracking number, as it turns out, was missing a number.  That’s why it didn’t work.  Second, the lady that wrote this tracking number for me, apparently, was the manager of the store.  So the incompetence could be tracked to the highest levels of the store.  Finally, according to them, the laptop had already arrived at Dell 6 days ago.  So why would they say that they haven’t received it?

     Apparently, after the second call I made to Dell, I had to give them the tracking number of the laptop so that they can "process" it.  I asked them again if they’ve received it or not.  The operator basicly either ignored that question out right or didn’t hear it due to the incompatible hardware differences that is my voice and telephone technology.  She simply repeated her line of thanking me for using dell and telling me to have a nice day.

     The funny thing about being mad for so long is that you get sick and tired of it.  In fact you get sick and tired of feeling just about anything.  So after that I was a walking shell of myself.  The lights are on, but no one’s home.  Right now I’m getting that vertigo headache I always get when I look down on computer screen for long periods of time so I bid you farewell for now.  Until next time.

210,

I seriously need to write earlier then 11 pm because my brain is hurting.  Might explain why I’m having such a hard time trying to think of something to write.  Oddly enough, the fact that I can’t think of anything to write about is the reason that I came up with this idea.  It’s simple.  I want your suggestions.  Message me with an idea and I’ll see what I can do to expand on it.  In the interest of me, make those suggestions be about me please like "Karli, please talk about your favorite food," or "Oh Karli, please tell us why you’re so tall."  You get the point.  Now get to it.

208,

About 2 days ago, I went to donate blood at the blood mobile outside of City Hall.  I’ve donated blood quite a few times before, but this was the first time something…interesting happened.  So I filled out all the usual paperwork for them to review before accepting me as a potential donor.  They always interview every donor before hand so that the donors truly understand what the questionaire is for.  After they interviewed me, they asked me if I’m interested in using their brand new machine, ALYX, which extracted twice the red blood cells than the normal donation.  To get twice amount of red blood cells isn’t as simple as taking twice the amount of blood than usual.  I’d be seriously ill if they did that.  The trick is to take out twice the amount of blood, separate the red blood cells and give the rest back into my body.  That’s why they need a machine instead of just the usual needle, tube, and plastic bag.  I was intrigued by the procedure and decided to participate.  Apparently only people of a specific size and weight can do it.  I felt special.  Now normally I use my left arm to donate blood, but the procedure needs a very good vein, whatever that means, for it to work.  They decided that my right arm is the better choice for the procedure instead of my left.

Funny thing happened when we started.  I always hate the part where the stick the needle into the vein.  It hurts like crazy, and you’re not allowed to move unless you want the needle to destroy your vein.  When they inserted the needle into my vein, my vein suddenly "bubbled".  It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen on my body.  I felt like I was on "House" or something just watching that vein…"bubble".  It didn’t hurt at all though, and I was more fascinated by it instead of being terrified of it.  The nurses decided to abandon the procedure all together.  Good choice.  They bandaged it and strapped an improvised ice pack onto it.  Despite this mishap, I didn’t lose any blood and, therefore, was still able to donate blood if I wanted to.  I figured "Sure.  What the hell."

Afterwards when I was about to leave, I asked the nurse what happened to my vein.  Her words verbatim:

"Your vein collapsed"

Collapsed!  Buildings collapse!  Bridges collapse!  Houses collapse!  I couldn’t imagine an image of a vein collapsing!  I was mored freaked out by that than actually seeing it bubble up.  It all turned out ok beside the evil looking bruise where the vein ballooned.  I think I’ll try it next time.