There is joy in beantown...finally...

Seems like despite Mighty Sumo's customer service striking out on the order, Sumo Lounge's bean bags are of good quality. The Midnight Blue one finally came in yesterday, and after a thorough testing out by watching "The Two Towers: Spanish Extended Edition", (El Senor de los Anillos: Las Dos Torres FTW). I give the beanbag an A+ for comfort. I have yet to perfect the many shapes you can fold it into, but barring a catastrophic failure, the beanbag was worth the $129.

Hurry up and wait

Had an eye exam this morning to take a look at this annoying stye I keep getting near my left eye. Turns out I have some genetic condition in which the pores around my eyes tend to get clogged easily and so it's easier for me to get styes. Also, the stye kinda got infected so now I have to use this antibiotic ointment as well as an antibacterial eye drop. Whether or not these will enable me to shoot laser beams out of my eyes is still yet to be determined.
The most annoying thing was that I had the first appointment of the day, and I still had to wait 30 minute in an empty waiting room before someone told me that the doctor I was supposed to see had some problems or something or other and that I would need to see another doctor there. But on the bright side, I now know from CNN that a human stomach can hold up to 3 pints of food and that only 5-10% of sore throats are caused by bacteria.

P in a cup

Had to get a drug test yesterday as part of the hiring process. I never knew these things were so complicated. First I had to remove all the loose stuff from my pockets. I even had to remove my badge. The cup they give you also contains a thermometer to make sure the P is between certain temperatures so you can't just bring in a bottle of P and pour it in. You aren't allowed to flush the toilet afterwards either, not sure behind the reasoning...maybe it's to intimidate you with the smell or something..

Okay, Seriously, WTF Sumo Lounge???!!

So Sumo Lounge shipped me a RED bean bag chair when I specifically ordered the midnight BLUE bean bag. Apparently, not only are they incompetent, but also colorblind. I am tempted to send a bobcat to them instead of sending this thing back.

Addendum: Mindi has said they will ship out the new Midnight Blue bean bag and have FedEx pick up the old bean bag free of charge. Let's see how this works out.

Arrival and Departure?

Beanbag was delivered this morning. Too bad I won't get a chance to try it until later today.

In other news, Company A is contracted to Company B to provide IT support. Now Company B wants to bring all IT support inhouse and is offering everyone in Company A same position but as Company B employee. Company A is huge global consulting firm represented by Tiger Woods. Company B is a fast growing energy generation company that is currently ranked as the 3rd largest independent power generation company in US. Oh yeah, I have a week to decide...

Back in the Dark Ages

Yes yes, we all know barbarians invented Banking/ATM fees/Early Closing/etc etc. But Wells Fargo must have invented lines. This morning, the nice folks at Wells Fargo decided to give out free tacos to the people in the building. Sounds like a great move, but they only had ONE station that was giving out the food. The building easily houses 2,000 people and I would say about 400 of them all came down at once for the free food. The line wound all the way past the lobby and around to the other side of the elevator. Oddly enough, the Wells Fargo people didn't seem to care that there was a massive traffic jam in their lobby and didn't open another serving station until the line was almost blocking people from getting into the building.

Retraction of previous statement

Previously, I had said that Sumo lounge didn't suck, only their tracking system. Well, seems like I made a big mistake. Sumo lounge DOES SUCK and sucks big time. We had left off on Wednesday with Mindy, the "manager" promising me that the package had already shipped and that I should receive an email confirmation by email. Well, no confirmation. When I called again to inquire today, no one could find my order...again. When I asked Mindy about why this was the case, she informed me that it's a "new system" and sometimes this happens. So she says she will find the tracking number for me and comes back with this tracking number. Well, I put it into FedEx tracking and it doesn't show up. When asked why it didn't show up, she told me she would find out and get back to me. 5 hours later, I call back to see what the deal is, but conveniently, Mindy is "on the phone" and cannot talk to me. Then when pressed further about what the hold up is, the rep tells me that "FedEx hasn't gotten back to us yet and so you will have to wait"
I decided to actually call FedEx with the tracking number they provided and it turns out the package is FedEx Ground and hasn't even been shipped out yet! I think this Mindy person needs to level her Charm up some more or maybe run for president.

Quest for beans

I have always wanted a beanbag chair. The trip to PAX earlier this year just further cemented that desire. On a whim, I decided to finally order a nice beanbag chair from the people over at sumolounge, the same people who provided the beanbags at PAX. However, after not hearing anything from them for 4 days (not even a confirmation email), I decided to call in to check the status of my order. Apparently, they "never" received my order. When I wondered why my credit card had already been charged, the representative vehemently told me that "it's not possible" because they only run my credit card when the product is shipped.
Now, I used to work at a less than scrupulous computer parts dealer and know all about these tricks of the trade they use. So I pointed out that the charge was made on 11/24 which is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Of course, I know these people are so hardworking that they even ship during public holidays when the shipping companies aren't even open. When confronted with this fact, he decided to tell me that I best contact Mindy tomorrow during normal business hours of 9-5 EST. I found this very strange because the company is located in California which is on PDT...Oh well, we shall see tomorrow.

Addendum: Sumo Lounge doesn't suck, but their whole order tracking system does. After finally getting into contact with Mindy, I was notified that the bag was conveniently shipping today. To her credit, she was courteous throughout the entire call so that's a plus.

Mass Effect

With much thanks to Catnipped, I was able to get Mass Effect free of charge on the first day of release. I am about 30 hours into the game and so far, it has definitely been a very positive experience. Bioware is really great at telling a grand story. Here are my thoughts:

Things I liked:
The graphics are very good. While I am not sure why they couldn’t do some kind of caching on the HD as having to load textures on the fly generates some annoying pauses in the action, when everything is in, the game looks gorgeous. You can see the facial expressions of the NPCs and the battles feel very frantic with bullets whizzing by your head as you desperately look for cover.

The voice acting is superb. All the intonations sound right and the facial expressions usually match the mood of the discussion as well. No blank stares as the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The conversations add a lot of depth to the game and I actually look forward to finding the next NPC just to see what they have to say.

The storyline has always been a strong point of most Bioware games, and this one is no exception. It really makes the player want to keep going just to see where the next plot twist will be and what other new information will be revealed.

The Combat system borrows heavily from Gears of War. Cover is the name of the game here as most enemies are pretty good shots and enemy snipers often times will 1 shot you if you are out in the open. The biotics (magic) of the game is weaved very well into the flow of combat.

Each pitched battle can also happen in many ways depending on what class you are. I decided to play as an Engineer my first time through so in most of the combat missions, I rely on grenades and my other squad mates to do most of the damage while I hide in the back disabling enemy weapons with sabotage and healing my party.

The achievements actually mean something! While all Xbox games have achievements, most of the time, they are merely trophies you hang on your gamer card wall to increase your own E-peen. The achievements in Mass Effect actually have an effect on the game. Unlock the rifle expert achievement, and you can add the rifle talent to your starting character your next time through, regardless of class. Rack up a million credits and you gain access to special weapons and armor only available to Spectres. Heal your party 150 times and you can add First Aid talent to your next character. I think nearly every achievement unlocks something else you can use in a new game

The game also comes in 4 difficulty modes, with Insanity being unlocked once you have beaten the game once. There is also a new game+ mode. All of the above make for an immense amount of replay value. After completing this first playthrough, I seriously think I will play through the game again on the insanity mode with a female character just to hear the dialogue from the other side.

Things I didn’t like:
Bad case of Consolelitis. The inventory management system is pretty lame. It’s essentially a huge long badly sorted list that you have to scroll through. It organizes the items by their item level which is represented by a Roman numeral (so a banshee rifle VI is more powerful than a banshee rifle IV). This isn’t so bad if you are trying to breakdown stuff into omnigel since you can go to the equip screen which auto sorts the items by type as well, but it’s absolutely horrible when you try to sell stuff since it’s just one giant list in the sell window. So if you find out that you happened to have a higher level of an assault rifle and wanted to sell the lower level one, you have to scroll all the way to those items of the same level, often times, this can mean scrolling through 20 or more items, 1 at a time. Add this to the fact that there is a 150 item limit and it just compounds the problem.

The hotkeys are also very annoying as you can only have 1 hotkey mapped to a skill and only your main character gets this hotkey. To issue commands to squad members to use their powers requires you to pause the game and bring up the powers menu then activate. The pauses can lead to some serious breakages of action in a firefight and take away from the overall effect. I am pretty sure this game will eventually be ported to a PC and that should fix most of these interface issues.

Mass Effect really doesn’t give a very good explanation about how to effectively play the game. The manual offers some basic information, but it basically tosses you into the water and expects you to swim. You don't really know the ranges of the weapons and how to take cover, plus the enemies start out WAY higher than your characters do when you first start out and leads to a lot of difficult battles at the beginning. As your equipment and levels start to catch up, it gets much better.

The AI can use a little work. While your squad mates generally do a good job of adhering to your commands and finding cover, sometimes, they make inexplicably retarded decisions like running out into the open to reach a piece of cover that’s just around the corner but out of LoS.

As mentioned before, there is no caching in this game and so everything needs to be loaded on the fly from the DVD. This leads to some annoying load times between zones and I assume leads to why they didn’t include a minimap in the UI. The lack of a minimap usually isn’t a problem though as the zones aren’t too convoluted and simply traversing a path a couple of times will commit it to memory. When you are just totally lost, you can always open up the main large scale map from the menu (very detailed and helpful).

Holiday Cheer

The Thanksgiving grill off went very well. Despite the cold temperatures and rain, everything came off without a hitch. I would like to thank Caxiya for the wonderful job she did of cleaning the floors and hope that she will come clean visit more often. I decided to go with some pre-marinated fajita beef and fajita chicken meat. It was a great idea as the cooking time on those meats were less than 20 minutes and they tasted totally awesome. The BluPnutMM couple provided a delectable chocolate fondue for dessert. People started to invite their friends and we went from a party of 9 or so to more than 15. We ended up playing Mafia for quite a long time and surprisingly, the villagers won the majority of the games. As people started to leave, the remaining people chatted about...very..."interesting" topics all the way until 3am!

Maid on Demand plus a TV

Woke up early this morning to BlupnutMM couple calling me up to let me know they would be coming to my house soon. Not exactly of how sure "soon" would be, I quickly got dressed and was walking down the stairs to get some breakfast when they arrived. Apparently, Caxiya had come with them and they hadn't had any sleep for over 24 hours. They left at 12 midnight to catch some of the deals at San Marcos. Supposedly, the line off the highway to the parking lot was a 1 hour wait. The BBQ is a potluck of sorts and everyone was instructed to bring something to share with the rest. Unfortunately, Caxiya didn't bring anything so she volunteered to clean the floor....sweeeeet! My cleaning equipment at the house wasn't even of magical quality so we had to go to Walmart to pick up one of those Legendary space age mops. It JUST so happened that they had LCD TVs for sale. 42'' LCDs for $798! Couldn't pass up this chance. So now I have a new TV to play around with and the mop was so 1337 that Caxiya even included the restrooms at no extra charge!! So Awesome!

Time to grill

Last Sunday, while just making random conversation, SourTom mentioned that he hadn't grilled in a while and would love to do some BBQing. Seeing as how I still had the "borrowed" grill from Veg Out 2, I just decided on the spot to have a post Thanksgiving grilling thingie. Unfortunately, lots of preparation work this time round as the grill appears to be in pretty bad shape. Since I am totally the workaholic when it comes to chores, the grill has basically sat out there for the past 10 months, soaking up nature's goodness. The general grill appears okay, except the actual racks have a healthy amount of rust on them. I remember the propane tank was also getting low at the time. While everyone can always use a bit more iron in their diets, I fear that the rust may give the meat an unpleasant taste. So the plan is to scrap the racks, fill the tank, and give it a test go on thursday to make sure it still works. Weather is supposed to be pretty crappy on friday though, with wind and rain and temperatures in the mid 40s.

Brought to you by Gillette

BlupnutMM's wedding is fast approaching and I got the sudden news last Saturday that I was going to be the Best Man. While the prospect of writting a speech is exciting and annoying to a slight degree, I am less enthusiastic about being under the fashion policing of a certain demanding bride to be. I think the first things that were mentioned was "okay, friday, I want all of you to go try out tuxes. I want them all to match with cumberbuns and cufflinks and yada yada yada yada." To be fair though, this is the most important day of their lives, so I suppose it's normal....right?

Hellgate Weapon Modifications

From this post, it seems like there are two types of attacks for the same element. Damage and Special effect strength. The post does a good job of explaining, but in summary.

Elements add both damage, and ability to proc special effect:
Physical - Stun
Toxic - Poison
Fire - Ignite
Electric - Shock
Spectral - Phase

Assume you have a sword that does 100 Physical damage with 100 Physical Attack Strength.

If it has 4 mod slots and you put in:
+10% Toxic
+10% Fire
+10% Electric
+10% Spectral, you now have a sword that does:

100 Physical damage, 100 Physical Attack Strength
10 Toxic damage, 0 Toxic Attack Strength
10 Fire damage, 0 Fire Attack Strength
10 Electrical damage, 0 Electric Attack Strength
10 Spectral Damage, 0 Spectral Attack Strength

So basically, against some monster with 100 resistance to all elements. You have a decent chance to stun, and basically 0 chance to poison, shock, ignite, or phase. But you still do the elemental damage.

But what if you add a mod that increased Elemental Attack Strength but the weapon doesn't actually do Elemental Damage of the same category?

Like If I put a +100 Fire Attack Strength mod into the base sword, will it have a decent chance to both stun and ignite? Or do you have to actually do fire damage as well to proc the special effect?

Hellgate Mechanics

Being a stats freak, I had been very curious about the mechanics of partying in Hellgate.

So far from this post, it seems as if the level difference between party members does not affect the experience in any way. Only the player level vs. Monster level is checked.

So Monster A is level 2 and gives 10 exp.
Player 1 is lvl 2
Player 2 is lvl 2
Player 3 is lvl 45

Not in group:
P1 solo kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp
P2 solo kill A -> P2 gets 10 exp
P3 solo kill A -> P3 gets 0 exp (level too high)

P1 and P2 are now in a group:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 20 exp, P2 gets 10 exp
P2 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 20 exp

P1 and P3 are now in a group:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 20 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P3 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp

P1, P2, P3 are now in a group:
Extrapolating exp?:
P1 kill A -> P1 gets 30 exp, P2 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P2 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 30 exp, P3 gets 0 exp
P3 kill A -> P1 gets 10 exp, P2 gets 10 exp, P3 gets 0 exp

Now, I am interested in doing some testing as to if the party member actually needs to be in the zone for these changes to occur or simply being in the party will do. If this is the case, then just partying with people even while soloing will yield greater exp than just soloing. Of course monsters will have more hp and take slightly longer to kill.

Also, a more indepth look into the augmenatrix is featured here.
So in order to try to get the mods listed, you have to pay for that level of the mod

White Mod -> Pay for Normal Mod
Blue Mod -> Pay for Rare Mod
Orange Mod -> Pay for Legendary Mod

Dave and Busters

Today, Accenture is hosting a community meeting at Dave and Busters. They have these events 4 times a year. Supposedly, there is going to be around 500 Houston based employees invited. I have never actually been to a Dave and Buster's before and research/commercials seem to indicate it's like a grown up version of Chucky Cheese. I totally hope they have a grown-up ball pit!

I need Bao Zi!!! STAT!!!

So tomorrow is our annual Thanksgiving potluck lunch at the office. It's supposed to be this giant event where people stuff themselves with food and coma it up the rest of the day at the office. What a fantastic tradition!! Anyways, I signed up to bring some Bao Zi (Chinese buns) to the event. I figured, 40 should be enough to give most people a sample. I checked on Saturday at the local Shan Dong Mian Guan (山东面馆)and they had these wonderful rows upon rows of baozi in batches of 6. I SHOULD have bought them then, but I decided I should wait until Monday so they would be more fresh for tomorrow.

I get there today after work....and IT'S CLOSED!!!! I am so screwed! But wait!! George to the rescue! Now, George is the owner of a huge chinese supermarket but is an elusive person to track down as he changes cell numbers almost every week. After much sleuthing around on the cellphone while driving recklessly, I finally was able to contact him. Emergency order of 40 baozi STAT!!!! He asked me when I needed them by, and I told him tonight as it's a matter of life and death. He said he would talk to his people about it and 10 minutes later, I got the phone call! They would be ready by 8pm he said..come alone, bring cash. I R SAVED!!

TeH WINNAR!!

First place:

Those of you who are lawyers or are in any sort of tech related job should know how annoying SOX compliance is, so I can totally see why it won.

Second Place:

Nothing says spirit of Halloween like being mugged while Trick'or'treating.

Third Place:

I have no clue what the heck the pumpkin is supposed to depict. Supposedly it is a portrait of the CEO...ummmm right...

Halloween Party

Ahh, Halloween, the day of ghouls and ghosts. The holiday obviously invented by Dentists to keep their wallets full. Entire company is hosting a Pumpkin Carving/Costume party on wednesday to celebrate this day. Supposedly, some of the designs are awesome so it should be a good show. Hopefully can get some pictures of uber pumpkins. I am so tempted to enter just so I can carve a =VGI= pumpkin.

See you in Hell...gate?

Anyone know insider information on how this game will play out? From what I have read so far, it seems like a freelancer type game but with a big coop storyline instead of just random missions. Could be fun to try.

Required Training

Accenture requires all new hires to take these core "training" courses within 60 days of hiring date. Work and "work" had kept me pretty busy and so I had basically forgotten about them until this week. With the deadline already past, I had to take them all or be in non-compliance. These training courses were mostly on stuff like harassment and ethics. It's like learning what I already knew but over 3 hours of painfully bad acting with choice nuggets like "There is a form of harassment that workers feel can create a hostile work environment, we call it 'Hostile Work Environment Harassment." OMGWTFBBQ, I totally didn't see that one coming, that's oscar caliber screenwriting right there. Later on, there was "Wow, Allison looks really down today, I'll cheer her up with this awesome sex joke I heard this morning." Wow, great idea! When someone is feeling down, obviously that's the most logical way to cheer them up.

But, thanks to this training. I now know that I shouldn't harass anyone and that Robin Hood was actuallly violating the ancient code of Ethics. After all, how much did he REALLY give to the poor huh?? How was he able to fund his merry band of men when he was giving it all to the poor?

Buttons and Barndoors!

Even though Grapes has been vehemently warning me about NWN2 and the horrible UI/Camera issues it had, I just could not resist that craving for a good D&D based rpg. Gave in and bought NWN2 and the Expansion for $45. Guess we will see if this is just more self torture, or if this game will turn out alright.

BF3?

Possible leak for BF3? I think this game will be awesome by 2011 when all the patching is completed.

VarChair(2)

Ever since starting work, I have noticed that the office chairs here are so much more comfortable and relaxing to sit in. They are ultra adjustable, built extremely well, and just feel sturdy when sat in. I have been trying to get one to use at home since I spend the majority of my time in front of the computer.

I went to OfficeMax over the weekend to try some chairs, but all of them were made of cheap plastic and didn't feel all that comfortable. Asking a attendant there, I was given a recommendation to visit Hon to find my ideal chair and come back since OfficeMax can get me a 40% to 70% discount off the price of a Hon chair. So far, I think this one looks to be pretty good. Any suggestions on other places to look?

Too bad BF2 doesn't have plasma grenades...

Catnipped sent me this awesome video of the BEST plasma grenade stick evah in Halo 3. BF2 would be so cool if you could stick C4 to enemy soldiers. I could totally see sticking a squad leader, waiting for his squad members to spawn, then BOOM!

All Hallow's Eve

Had a interesting discussion here at work concerning Halloween and dispersal of candy. While I generally always give out candy to the trick'or'treaters, many people around the office don't give out candy at all. What do you all do? Keep the Dentists of America paid? or do you deprive little kids of the joy of getting candy...those poor children, someone please think of the children (note, demon myspace hellspawn do not count as I don't think they technically count as human!)

Forward, down, down-forward, + punch

Had a small open house at the office today to celebrate the team's acquisition of...a table. Really it was just an excuse to have a small office party. Somehow, the conversation went to kungfu. Apparently, all asian people know kungfu. I was actually asked "So, what style of kungfu do you know? Praying Mantis? Monkey? Drunken Monkey?" Well, since I didn't know any of them, I was asked what were my top ten kungfu movies. Hmmmm, need some help here!!!

E. Olah Virus

I tried to resist it as much as I could, even sleeping for 12 hours on friday night hoping to fight off it's unwavering hold. Too bad all that sleep was just setting me up for the all nighter that was to follow. My friend Norm was back in Houston for a couple days attending his 10 year HS reunion...(Has it been THAT long already???!!!!!). He had some spare time on saturday and much like old times, we decided to spend that time catching up. I brought the E. Olah virus along, thinking maybe we can just spend a little bit of time playing it before his reunion. Well....the virus was much more infectious that I thought and even with reunion time coming around, Norm only took a brief moment to get dressed...before coming back for more. It didn't end there, as after his reunion, he came over at 2 am in the morning, and Catnipped, he, and I tried a couple of more rounds. Catnipped couldn't handle it and had to sleep. This would have been a good time to stop, but we kept going until 7:30 am....then I woke up at 11:30 and kept going. Damn you Bungie and MS!!!!

Almost as good

While the winners of the tailgate contest got these nice shiny trophies, I got something infinitely more practical. The CIO was so impressed by our performance, that he decided to buy all team members a $15 Starbucks certificate... Seeing as how I don't drink coffee, I am not particularly sure what I will get. Even if I did drink it, I don't think $15 is enough to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks. What's it at now? Your left kidney for a coffee?

Tired? Sleepy? Grab yourself some PowerMax®

Today was the tailgating contest and Team PowerMax totally dominated.



Our food menu consisted of steak fajitas, chicken taquitos, and cream cheese tortilla rolls. The gimic was the meat and tortillas were all red in color to match our theme. Our secret weapon was PowerMax® brand drink. It was this awesome mysterious red drink which we claimed "Gives you energy for the whole day." We used plastic shot glasses with the selling slogan being "Here, Give it a Shot!" Some common questions asked when approached to try out PowerMax®.

Q: What is this stuff?
A: It's PowerMax®

Q: What is in it?
A: Power to the Max

Q: No really, what's in it?
A: Some Brazillian stuff.

At this point, usually they get curious and take a drink. I was manning the PowerMax® station and noticed several people sneaking multiple shots. Alas, we did not win. We lost the food contest to this team that had shrimp cocktail and a chocolate fountain. Who the heck brings a chocolate fountain to a TAILGATING party!!!?? On the plus side, they did have this really cute asian girl in a referee costume... We lost the theme contest to people dressed like pirates. Well, the costumes really weren't pirate costumes. They basically wore something more like linen with cutlass props. They didn't EVEN talk like pirates. But today being National Talk like a Pirate Day, I suppose it was destiny or something.

I think next year, our theme will be ninjas, and we will just eliminate all the other teams before the competition begins. We can claim it was merely "following our theme" Our food can consist of rice balls that poison people, leading to easy stealth kills.

Tech discussion?

Had a Tech discussion session today as a part of some requirement. I thought it was one of these serious talks where someone actually has a presentation about data security or some stuff like that. I was about to take my portfolio, since it was padded and could masquerade as a pillow in that darkened room. When I got there, there wasn't a discussion at all... Just a bunch of ice cream lying around for people to eat. So everyone just grabbed some ice cream, chatted about the Texans/life/kids/etc etc, and went back to their offices. Dang, why can't all meetings just turn out to be excuses for everyone to eat ice cream.

Team PowerMax

Next Wednesday, the company is having a Tailgating competition. While traditionally, this is an activity conducted outdoors involving numerous BBQ pits, the tailgating for this event will be done indoors. Our team was "voluntarily" signed up by the new team lead who believes this is an excellent teambuilding event. Apparently, he and some other team members agnonized for weeks to come up with a name and appropriate theme. One especially interesting one was team Hurricane. We planned to have giant fans and mist machines to simulate a small hurricane at our booth. Someone also suggested we all dress up like Katrina refugees....Luckily, that idea fell through in favor of a more politically correct, yet equally as "interesting" concept. Our new team name?? Team PowerMax. I should have suggest Team: Solarixx or something...Did I mention that our official decal is going to be this tachometer displaying the needle in the red section with a motto : To The Max!!!

Our theme color is Red because it's totally to the max. I mockingly suggested I should bring in some pig's blood with tofu since it's also red, but they took me seriously!! After convincing them that I actually had no clue how to make it, I was given the task of buying enough red tortillas to feed 300 people. Totally to the max.

Upgrading

While I wish I could have just awakened my old computer to make it more powerful, the prospect of its wanting to eat human guts outweighed the benefits. So, I got a new computer. Most of you already know, but for those who don't, here are the specs:

CPU:Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz: Pretty good CPU, not the top of the line, but it's pretty close.

Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF67-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI: Originally, I had chosen an Intel board, but it does not support SLI (does support crossfire).

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800: My previous machine only had 1 gig of ram. It took forever to "verify client data' during BF2 matches, easily meaning the difference between successfully taking airfield and being farmed by J-10s. This deal was too good to pass up, 2 gigs of ram for $71.00 ($40 mail in rebate)!!

Video Cards: 2x MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC GeForce 8600GTS 256MB: This is probably going overboard, but I just wanted to try out SLI. Ever since I heard about it, I was curious as to how much better it was over 1 card. Time to find out!

Hard Drive: SAMSUNG SpinPoint 400GB 7200RPM SATA: 400 gigs should be more than enough for whatever I need.

Case: Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA Black Aluminum ATX: I originally had chosen a Lian-Li case but Lemon had some doubts as to if there was enough room in it to fit 2 video cards so I upgraded. I really like this case, it comes with screwless drive rails, and backplates. Almost every part detaches for ease of installation. On nitpick is that the motherboard tray doesn't come out but it didn't make the installation any tougher.

Power Supply: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W PS: With SLI, I was pretty sure I needed something greater than 500. This one wasn't as expensive as the other power supplies, but it received very favorable reviews.

Monitors: 2x ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD: While I may have had a semi-legitimate reason for SLI, these 2 monitors were just completely frivolous. I really have no excuse as to why I got 2, other than the fact that I like 2 monitors.

Other random stuff: Generic Floppy, Black NEC DVDR

The total price tag including shipping came out to be just a bit under $1,700. Assuming I get all my mail in rebates ($200), the total price is: $1,500. I probably could have gotten some items cheaper if I shopped around a bit more, but I think it's not too bad. My hope is that this computer will last another 4 years or so like my last one.

Wanna buy a JSF?

Fire Sale of USMC goods!! Get your JSF today!

The only truly effective weapon against Chopperwhores

SRAW? Stinger? IGLA? These are merely distracts for the dedicated BF2 chopperwhore. How can these fiendish beings be stopped? Is there no hope for the ground-pounders? Our wishes have come true!!

Only you can prevent maximo fires

To the smart aleck who designed Maximo and made the field sizes non-editable without some use of an expensive tool. I hope you spend an eternity in hell trying to resize a stupid window from 8 to 15 characters!!!

Take me out to the Ballgame

Take me out to the fire? Today was supposed to be the company Astros game. Dynegy bought out this huge section of tickets and we were all supposed to leave at 12 noon to go to the game. We did a password change on our main production server last night, simple right? Nope, some morons who wrote the reports decided to hardcode in the passwords because apparently, passwords NEVER change. Long story short, about 90% of the reports (~320) stopped working and our team has to spend rest of day removing all of the hardcoded passwords while the rest of the office heads out to the game. Woot!

Veg Out 2 Final

Day 5: Monday
Relaxed for the first half of the day and ate the leftovers from SiChuan and Purple Dot for lunch. We then went out to the Locks to observe some of the history of Seattle, however, we also learned some intimate details about the migratory habits of salmon. Normally, salmon have to jump out of the water upstream in order to reach their spawning grounds. Apparently, these domesticated salmon have grown lazy and are now spoiled by a series of fish ladders that serve as an escalator of sorts to help the salmon reach the top.
After a dinner of Korean BBQ with Snoopy, our newly dubbed "Asian Persuasion" team participated in Trivia night at a local Irish/Cajun Pub. The categories ranged form Tom Hanks to animals that start with "I" (I'll never forget Night of the Iguana for sure...). I swear "Who killed Grandma" is just a synonym for "The Ladykillers!!!" They even had a question about the song "Me and Bobby McGee," a song that we NEVER EVER sang but just so happened to be on Karaoke Revolution. I remember BluPnuMM making some snide remark when she got that song for her random last performance during a knockout round. Can't believe that came back to haunt us. Asian Persuasion sadly came in second to last. Some guy played a one man team and got last place JUST to deny us of our $1 pitcher of beer.

Overall Veg Out II was an awesome experience. We even managed to plan out Veg Out III. A New Years rendezvous in Whistler, BC, CAN for some skiing. This time round, Grapes, mysteriously absent from Veg Outs I and II, will be joining us as well as Catnipped's friend Snoopy.

Veg Out 2 Cont.

Day 3: Saturday
Saturday started with our going on the Experience Music Project (EMP). They had special stations where you could learn to play different instruments, mix in your own effects, and even create your own music CD. My awesome hip-hop version of Chopsticks will surely live forever in the annals of music history. They also had this exhibit where you pretend that you are a band and played on stage in front of a huge audience. Our song of choice was Wild Thing. I feel we roxxored their boxxors and made the $60 admission fee well worth it for the audience. After a quick lunch of mostly fish and chips, we made our way back to PAX for Lemon's Guitar Hero 2 tournament. Apparently, this tournament was huge as they probably had 225 people signed up to play in it. Lemon had to wait in a huge long line just to play. While Lemon waited, the rest of us decided to check out some more of the booths in the exhibition hall. I had a small run-in with a lady at the American Army booth, so we decided to wait in the Rock Band line to get a shot at playing on stage. We were almost at the end of the line when we got a call from Lemon saying he was knocked out of the tournament. This ended up being a good thing, as without Lemon, our performance would have been lackluster at best. Our rendition of Wanted: Dead or Alive was so awesome that we got the entire crowd singing along! This is mostly because Lemon was totally awesome and carried the whole band with his singing!! After our second performance of the day, they Veggie crew took in some random PC free-play (World in Conflict seems really fun) and also learned that the BF2 team that had beaten us the previous night came in second place. After Lemon owned us all at Castle Crashers and took our Axes AND the Princess, we retired from PAX to have dinner at Z'Tejas. This place has the best corn bread and I think our entire dinner consisted of 3 appetizers and about 4 whole cornbread cakes. I actually ordered a fifth one just to take home! I think there was also some wailing to Karaoke Revolution afterwards, leading to no sleep for the neighbors, I am sure.

Day 4: Sunday
Today was a relax day. In the morning, we played some 2v3 tennis. Lemon seemed to have a strange affinity for the tennis ball as no matter where he stood, the ball just had a knack of finding him. Afterwards, we had lunch at a SiChuan Chinese place specializing in spicy cuisine. We ordered 4 spicy dishes at medium spice, and 1 non-spicy vegetable dish. Even at medium, the food still required the consumption of massive amounts of rice to drown out the spiciness. The food was very good although we ended up with a lot of leftovers again. After lunch, there was a visit to Sees Candies where jOrange picked up some boxed chocolates, and both Catnipped and Kira joined the "Dark Side." jOrange had to leave to go back home later in the afternoon.
Later that night, we hosted a poker night since Lemon had brought a nice poker set with real ceramic chips and all. Catnipped invited 3 of her friends to join but one of them had to work because deadlines were coming up. Min's friend, Snoopy, was incredibly lucky thanks to a fortune cookie that said something like "Good fortune will find you, a promotion will follow." She was absolutely ruthless and after proclaiming to Catnipped that she "helped her with everything," she took all of Catnipped's chips! Yes...helped myself to her chips is more like it! It was just downhill from there as the Veggies were knocked out one after another with Lemon making a valiant last stand.

Veg Out 2

Veg Out 2 was awesome. We did a smorgasbord of different activities and had a great time.

Day 1: Thursday
Today, Kira and I flew into Seattle. Lemon and Jorange went camping earlier and so were already at Catnipped's house. After a conveyor sushi lunch, we proceeded to the Underground Tour and Pike's Fish Market. It didn't really seem like many people were actually buying fish; rather, they were all doing touristy things. One rogue crawfish managed to give his own rendition of Homeward Bound, but he was quickly snatched up by a worker and returned to the holding pen. Dinner was at Saltys, a pretty upscale seafood restaurant with an awesome view. The waiter there seemed not so attentive and tried to mask his ineptitude by giving a long, bloated description of what they had on the menu even though by this time, we had all made our choices. I also almost choked to death on a seed in the lemonade. Good times!

Day 2: Friday
First day of PAX! Catnipped had to drop off M at the airport. M was evicted by Catnipped for the weekend so there would be enough space around the house for us to board. Afterwards, we hurried to PAX. We caught a quick lunch at Subway and picked up our PAX gift bags. Our first order of duty afterwards was to sign up for the two tournaments we would partake in: 6v6 Battlefield 2 and Guitar Hero 2 solo play. Guitar Hero 2 was done very easily as they started the console sign-ups about 15 min before they opened the doors to the public. The PC sign-up proved much more difficult because for some reason, we had to gain entrance to PAX first before we could sign up. We eventually had to wait in the LONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG line of about 30,000 people to get into PAX. The theme of PAX seemed to be waiting in line as most of the good booths/panels had huge long lines. The sign-up for the BF2 tournament required full 6-member teams but we only had 4. Luckily, we found two people who were also looking to participate (Thank you Mike and Brian!) and signed up with them as Team Um... We were able to sign up for our tournament, take in a bit of the exhibition hall, check out the keynote speaker, and take in the Tycho/Gabe panel. The keynote speaker was Wil Wheaton and he had an amazing speech that got the whole crowd of about 8,000 people cheering. We wanted to get some pizza for dinner, but because of the vast amount of people, the restaurant had no pizza left by the time we were in line. Luckily, there was a little cafe around the corner with some fresh sandwiches. The time for the BF2 tournament came around and after a delay of about 1.5 hours to get everyone situated and Ventrilo working, the tournament finally started. The first map up was 16-player Dragon Valley After an intense first battle with our first opponent (W17-0), we completely steamrolled them the second game (W81-0). Second map was 16-player Dalian plant. This totally sucked for us as we ran into the team that had won the event the past 2 years AND we had no reliable chopper team. We lost both games rather embarrassingly without even pushing them the slightest bit. However, we can extrapolate and say that since we made the semi-quarter finals, we were at least better than half the people in the whole world at BF2!!
The day ended with our dining at a Chinese restaurant called Purple Dot. Catnipped referred to this place as having a picture of "Yoshi" on the front although it looked nothing like it. They gave out rather large portions, and we had a huge amount of leftovers. All in all, a great day!

Claypedia

Lots of cool information on Claymore on wiki. There are some spoilers revealed on what happens during the northern expedition and stuff as well as background on the abyssal ones.

Best Place Evah!!!

Today saw the demonstration of Accenture's 6 core values. The presenters today were a lot more energetic than the ones yesterday, and there were many more group activities which made the day pass by much faster. The first presenter set the stage by going over One Global Network and explained how he has worked at many places including Da Lian. Ahh, the joys of Dalian Plant in BF2. So many tanks, annoying jets, helicopters...a great place for infantry. That set the tone for the rest of the day.

Accenture is the Best Place

Today was the first day of Accenture Orientation. I went in with the sense that perhaps there would be some corporate coercion afoot but I wasn't fully prepared for it all. First sign was that all the books and periodicals available for reading in the waiting room were all Accenturefied. They had the annotated history of Accenture, Accenture stock reports, and some other magazines. I finally see a copy of Newsweek, ah, something pure. But I notice that the cover is conveniently covered up by a special Accenture cover featuring Tiger Woods. I flip through it and every other page was an ad for Accenture. The orientation lady came in and I halfway expected her to ask "So, How Awesome is Accenture??"

We went into the conference room and they started going over all the important stuff like the history of Accenture and how awesome the founders were followed by a description of Accenture's Vision and Mission. It would have been all over for me, except I noticed the presenter's name was Hyman! Instantly I started thinking about BF2 and assaulting the TV station on Sharqi Peninsula with the overpowered MEC chopper. Ahh, good old BF2, you came through again!

The rest of the day passed by with various presentations on benefits/PTO/401K/Business Ethics. The ethics part was the best as they presented us with several ludicrously easy scenarios to discuss. I suggested taking the bribe, double charging the plane ticket, and making illegal stock transactions but was shouted down by my fellow coworkers. Obviously, they need to play more BF2!!!!

Overall, Accenture seems like a very good company to work at and despite the sarcastic post, I think it's a good fit.

Resistance is Futile

So, checked out Facebook today out of curiosity. Big mistake....

The world is doomed

I AM
92%
OPTIMUS PRIME

I don't get it, I even farted on the plane!

Politics

At my old company, there was no such thing as office politics or office drama because well...there were only 5 people there in total. My team here already has 8 people and another 5 or 6 supporting people. Recently, we got two new people. The first one is a ex-marine who tells all kinds of stories about his time travelling in multiple different countries. For instance, he told us about his travels in Nigeria with his own roving band of bodyguards.

These Nigerian bodyguards were merciless. Supposedly, once when he was stuck in traffic, his bodyguards got out, ran to the front to see what the problem was, and very soon after, traffic was moving quickly again. How did they get the traffic moving? According to the marine, they had went to the front, found out who was causing it, shot the people responsible, then directed the traffic to get it moving again. Also, arguments don't end until one of the parties is dead. That's how they settled things in Nigeria. He was also showing us videos of this minigun mount on the back of a suburban. Just imagine how much less annoying morning rush hour would be.

The second guy is totally different. He's just this normal guy, mostly an intellectual and not at all as outspoken as the ex-marine. These two have basically by jostling all week and sizing each other up. Office drama, here we come!!

Office Birthdays Part: 2

Today was the monthly birthday celebration here. Remember that last time, it was pretty cheesy with only a handful of people showing up to get some pretzels. Well, this time, the head HR person decided that instead of providing the food, they would hold a dessert taste-off. Basically, anyone who wanted to enter would bring their favorite dessert to share while 3 mysterious judges would decide on who wins. The first thought in my mind was, dang, they are so cheap, instead of providing the food for the birthday, they will just make the office people bring in food in the disguise of some contest.

2 o'clock rolled around and I head to the room not really expecting to be surprised. Well...I was totally surprised. There were SOOOO many yummy dessert things on display. From bite-sized chocolates, to custard pie, to strawberry cheesecake, to this strange cottage cheese mix, everything was home made! There were enough desserts to fill up an entire conference table. HR provided some default chocolate cake and some rice crispies squares just in case no one brought anything. My personal favorite has to be the bite sized pretzels. They had a little bit of caramel used to hold a chocolate covered pecan in place on the pretzel. The biggest question running through my head was, how would Faalena's cookies stack up to these others?? I have tasted the rest, but the taste of the cookies seem to be fading from my mind. I think I need a refresher!! Shameless attempt to extort some cookies!!!

Update: Seems like the chocolate cheesecake was the winner. The pretzel things (known as Poor man's Turtle) was a runner up.

Back to China

Dropped Mom off at airport this morning. She's off to China for a while then probably back to the US to go job hunting again. Yesterday evening, we went to eat at the local Razoo's Cajun kitchen. The food was good, but nothing specifically extraordinary until dessert. Normally, I never order dessert, but this time, I had to try their "Zydeco Dancer." This thing was possibly the most awesome dessert I have ever tried. It's like strawberry cheesecake, but served on a graham cracker/walnut bedding. It wasn't thick cheesecake filling either, it was fairly light and fluffy. Except for the fact that it was probably about 1000000000000000000000000 calories, It was perfect.

In other random news, I read an article this morning about this Spanish bank robber who thinks of himself like Robin Hood. He's fighting back against the evil corporate institution that is banking and was about to start attacking insurance agencies too. Sounds good? Well the little footnote at the end says "Citing police, Spanish media reported he kept the money he stole, depositing it in several different bank accounts." Ummm, so he's stealing money from banks, just to redeposit them into banks?...It's like stealing friendly engineer's mines and placing them in the exact same spot just so you get the kills instead of the other engineer!!! So Noble.

I can totally see Eastwood with this!!

Just imagine Clint pointing a pistol at some bandit, pulling the trigger, then puffing on his electronic nicotine atomizer. What's amusing is this thing even has a red LED at the end to give the illusion that the person is actually smoking. What's next? E-drinking maybe?

New BF2 Map

EA has just announced a new expansion map for BF2. Set in the African savanna, this map features all 3 factions battling for dominance: Battle at Kruger. The US War machine, having righteous cause, has thundered it's way down to Africa to liberate the oil fields of Nigeria. Unfortunately, because South Africa had the word Africa, Bush sent the USMC advance force there. MEC and PLA have no idea how they ended up there, but thanks to large bags of "laundry" from EA, they have decided to stay and fight. This map also features all new artwork done with facelifts to all three original factions.

Lion: USMC
Water Buffalo: PLA
Crocodile: MEC

Why Spec Ops rule!

Ahh, Spec Ops, those sneaky, annoying, beret-wearing, little bundles of death and destruction. They get an amazing gun, grenades, anti-armor capabilities all in 1 package!! But what makes them unique is C4. Sure, they can use it to blow up stuff, but there are far more important usages of C4. For instance: "Because C-4 burns slowly if simply ignited with a flame, rather than detonated with a primary explosive, soldiers would sometimes use small amounts of C-4 as a fuel for heating rations "

This is totally awesome, airfield going down, but hunger pangs getting to ya? Just whip out some C4, shoot down a few coconuts and have a BBQ.

Have you ever had one of those days where you JUST don't want to go to work? Well, never fear because: "a soldier would occasionally ingest C-4 ... in order to be sent on sick leave." Everyone would have C4 around just for doing this.

Why.....

Why Hollywood...WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MESSING WITH THE CLASSICS!!!! Before they totally destroy the legacy that is this movie, watch it here on Youtube.

The Growing VGI Family

Our nightly adventures of BF2 have attracted the interest of another lost soul in search of ruthlessly slaughter! Lemon's roommate recently ordered the Deluxe version of BF2 and will hopefully join us soon on the fields of battle. Lemon is tremendously awesome at coming up with names. He can now add TheDragOnfruitS to his list of creations along with eLemonator and jOrange. Pspmator will be in Guyana for a year so DOS's arrival is at an opportune time.

A minor Skirmish

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

Well, I was a little bit too hasty in my assessment that my computer was unscathed. It seems something DID get on it although it didn't really infect my system. Friday night, my Norton started detecting this program: w32.sillyfdc, that was trying to execute a .exe in one of my temporary internet file directories. With Catnipped's help, I went through a whole long list of instructions on how to remove this worm. After 3 hours, I finally figured out that the virus hadn't actually infected my system yet. It was just that temporary file that needed to be deleted. A quick restart in safe mode, a quick delete, and my computer is healthy again. +2 revive points, with +1 assist to Catnipped.

Chipotle 2: Burrito Combat

After many months of hearing how amazing this Chipotle place was, I finally had a chance to go today. There were many previous failed attempts caused mostly by the unwillingness of my coworkers to walk about 1/2 mile to the location. I had heard many stories about the fabled "Chipotle Burrito" and was quite eager to see how my encounter with it would go. I went with the chicken fajita burrito with no beans. This burrito truly is massive in size, and tasted pretty good. Next time, I think I will skip out on the guacamole as the taste of it was a bit too strong. Overall, Chipotle was a great experience. While the burrito there is definitely good, it didn't really present itself as unique outside of it's size. It could be the fact that good Mexican restaurants are in ample supply in Houston.

They won the battle, I won the war..sorta

After surviving a fierce barrage of Myspace and Runescape, I have managed to reclaim the computer. Scans only revealed 2 tracking cookies so my computer has survived relatively unscathed from this experience. While I would like to claim that I fiercely defeated the oppressors and freed my machine at the end, what really happened was they simply left...to go home to Nigeria. Kinda like in BF2 when you shoot at a plane with IGLAs and claim victory as it flies away....it actually left because it was out of ammo.

The only sure thing in life

The house guests are finally leaving today, thereby leaving my computer in peace. While this is a semi-joyous occasion, there is also a great bit of sadness mixed in.

Last night, I received a phone call from my uncle in China telling me that my grandmother had passed away that morning. She went peacefully and without much suffering so there is solace in that. She was actually the one who raised me until I was 2 and 1/2 years old in Shanghai. Even though because of medical malpractice she was confined to a walker/wheelchair for almost half her life, she remained a very strong and kind woman, never becoming one of those old, bitter, grouchy hags. Because of the time differences, she actually passed away on the morning of 8/1 which is a bit chilling as this is exactly around the same time my father passed away.

Death of a Ninja

My ninja died a horrible death. Not in battle or during the course of a mission, but by the most grotesque, most foul entity known to man. Yes, I speak of poor software design. I had just completed the last mission and wanted to try a female avatar to see all the cool clothing. I swear, half the fun is dressing up your ninja in various kinds of interesting things like eyepatchs, parrots, frogs, even a machine gun. But anyways, after creating a new ninja and selecting all the different features, the game just automatically saved over my existing file, didn't prompt me to create a new file or give me a warning. I found out later after reading the boards that it was because autosave was on and the game only allows 1 save slot per profile. Why the heck does it only allow 1 freaking save file per profile? It has 10.3 gigs of HD space and yet, the designers didn't think to add the option to save "in another slot?"

On the bright side, I think a lot of the clothing looks better on a female avatar, plus I get a chance to play all the missions again. This must be the way that the developers thought of to increase replayability.

Overall, I think Tenchu Z was great fun. I really think a higher penalty for being detected would be nice. It is so easy to get Ninja 5 rankings in missions that it definitely takes away some of that satisfaction after a perfect run of a level. The Xbox Live coop certainly adds a higher degree of difficulty since if your partner screws up, and you are close by, you will get spotted as well. Here's to looking forward to more Coop wackiness.

On the computer side of things: The packing company is coming today to pack up all the stuff our house guests bought. My dining room looks like a miniature Sam's Club with all the bulk quantity items in there. Hopefully, this signals that they will be leaving soon. I didn't mind the 10-year old and was actually kinda starting to like him, but I certainly wish some ninjas would SK the 13-year old. I hope to regain control of my computer sometime this coming week.

Computer breaking

It seems like I have finally computer broken the 10 year old. He plays whatever he wants while I am not home, but when I get home from work, he knows that his time is up and that I can kick him off the computer at any time. When I do kick him off, he doesn't go into emo mode and start ranting and complaining like the 13 year old. He just walks away and goes to play Xbox.

While using the computer, he loves to play runescape. I had read about the fierce rivalry between WoW and Runescape and how the two communities hate each other, but I don't really see how people can like Runescape. The graphics are so horrible and the combat so boring. He whacked this goblin for 15 minutes before finally killing it. 90% of the time, both he and the goblin were hitting each other for 0 damage.

The most amusing thing was that some other player, let's call him Snal, had told the kid that he could customize armor. Being completely naive, the kid gave his armor to Snal, who promptly ran off with it. Ahh, brings back memories.

I am a spider!!

Catnipped had been telling me about Tenchu Z and how exciting and satisfying it was to pull off these amazing stealth kills. This brought back fond memories of Hitman 2 and pulling off "Silent Assassin" rankings on all the missions. The allure of the cooperative multiplayer (all 50 levels in the game!!) through Xbox live was the icing on the cake.

After a failed attempt at acquiring it from walmart, I was able to pick it up from the local Gamestop. I popped the disc in with illusions of being the ultimate silent assassin, blending in with the shadows, and all that other cool ninja stuff. Sadly, that was quickly shattered as I screwed up on the training mission with the VERY FIRST guy. He even had his back turned. Instead of actually pulling off a stealth kill, I decided to sneak very quietly up to the guy and proceed to make menacing slicing noises behind him without actually hitting him. Of course this alerted him to my presence and I had to run away as that "I am a spider" thing totally didn't work.

The next part of training was supposed to teach me how to use the grappling hook. Now, this would seem like a piece of cake but because my TV was so small, I couldn't read the instructions given on the screen. After finally figuring out how to shoot the damn thing, I decided to do my first ultracool ninja type thing. The plan was to grapple onto the ceiling, then leap into the middle of these three patrolling archers and quickly stealth kill them in rapid succession. The attempt went well enough at the start as I was able to quickly grapple onto the celing; however, I forgot to take into the account that the ceiling was a little too high and so instead of landing gracefully, I ended up falling face first onto the mat right in the middle of the group.

The next part of the training was about how to quietly move through the water. The instructions said to press the green button to "roll quietly into the water." What it failed to mention was that if you press it while you are ALREADY IN the water, your ninja does this amazing high jump out of the water and then proceeds to do a cannonball back into it causing a huge amount of noise.

After going 0/3 on steath kill attempts, I made it to the last part of the training which was doing rapid chain stealth kills. The guys were lined up perfectly for the attempt: backs turned, unaware, never turning. I crouched forward towards the first guy and just when it looked like I might actually pull this off, instead of kiling him with a cool move, my ninja decided to choke hold the guy, creating a lot of noise and alerting the entire room. I figured out that this was because I did not have my sword drawn when attempting to execute a stealth kill. So this time, I snuck up quietly to the group again, and then drew my sword.....which instantly caused all of them to turn around again because the act of drawing a sword causes noise which they can hear.

DunX5 Tourney

Since there was talk of team VGI participating at the PAX 6-man team BF2 tournament, KiraTomato and I have been trying out the 16 player versions of the maps against bots. This makes even the most boring maps into fierce infantry CQC maps. All the 16 player maps are also Double Assault so no side has a uncappable (except Karkand, where USMC has a uncap). We put the bots up to max difficulty and while they do provide a fair challenge in terms of shoot-outs (they actually aim pretty well), their sense of tactics was severely underwhelming. Oftentimes they would just sit there and not do anything when near a enemy flag even if the point was undefended.

Hopefully with some practice, Team VGI can make a good showing and pwn some other teams there. If not, then real life C4 maybe be needed to "auto-balance" the teams =)

Sweet Reprieve

The kids are staying with some other friends for the weekend, so I can actually use my computer!! Of course, let the little kid use the other computer for 3 days, and he breaks it. I am not sure WHAT he was doing, but the 10 year old has managed to destroy the hard drive on the old computer. I really wish I had some C4 right now.

Set for Life

Bless the people who developed this. Now, whenever I have kids, I will never have to worry about doing chores again!! Kabitzin is a noob!!, I already have a level 70 toiletmaster, 70 laundrylord, 70 Dark Vacuum, 70 Carpeteer, and currently leveling a 64 Lawntamer. Just 74 more gold until I can afford my epic.

Karaoke Television

The new string of Karaoke game shows are great and all. They certainly try to make it VERY suspenseful by taking well timed commercial breaks. But....since you can just Google the lyrics, kinda takes the edge off.

Happy...Birthday?

Apparently, birthdays in a corporate environment are a little different from birthdays elsewhere. Today was the designated "birthday" for people born in July. There was much talk from my officemates about how awesome the company birthdays were so I was curious as to what it was all about. 2 pm rolls around and it's time to attend this birthday. I was expecting some decoration, some festivities, maybe a song or two.

I was sadly mistaken. The entire "party" consisted of our going there, taking a birthday...pretzel? (actually quite good) and leaving without even uttering a "happy birthday" or making any small talk with the sparse crowd that had gathered. What a way to age another year!

Totally Organic Experience

Ate at this little restaurant called the Field of Green's today. It came highly recommended by another family friend (with whom the owner bought insurance) who was treating us and our house guests. It's a restaurant that specializes in organic food and vegetables. The overall experience was pretty nice considering I came in with extremely low expectations. The strawberry banana smoothie was actually quite good. It had no extra sweetening and the natural flavoring made it very tasty.

Many different things were served, I personally enjoyed the Salmon steak hamburger and the wild pita pocket the most. The salmon burger was arguably better than a regular beef burger. The salmon was seasoned just right and was nice and juicy. The wild pita pocket had some soy "chicken" and pieces of seasoned tofu which mixed together very well. The house special is the eggplant sandwich, but according to the owner (and chef), the other cooks didn't cook it to her specification and so she decided not to serve it to us.

While the rest of us were busy enjoying the foods that the owner recommended, the two children had other ideas of fun. The 13 year old girl ordered this ginormous Greek salad that must have had 10 lbs of beans and rice in it. I was equally shocked when she actually ate the entire thing. The 10 year old boy was too busy playing with his Pokemon cards to eat, but when he was finally hungry, he ordered.....French Fries. I think he totally missed the mantra of the restaurant.

The meal ended with a dessert of chocolate granola pie. This was an interesting concept as the chocolate was supposed sweetened with maple syrup instead of processed sugar. Instead of pie dough, the bed of the pie was made with granola. It was pretty good..if a bit thick in texture.

Your Space? NO!! MYSPACE!!

I don't quite understand the allure of myspace and how someone can spend 25/8/366 on it. Out of curiosity, I asked the resident addict just what was so important that she couldn't leave my computer. Her response was that "it would be rude not to reply to the comments on her myspace." When asked to consider that it may also be rude to hijack another person's computer without permission, her reply was "psssh, whatever!!" A strong rebuttal indeed.

However, during dinner with our house guests last night, she revealed a critical weakness that may be exploited to rescue my computer from the depths of spyware. The Harry Potter book release! Her parents will not allow her to go to the midnight premiere nor will they get up early the next morning to get a copy. My plan is to get a copy of this fabled book, then slowly tear pages out of it one at a time in front of her until she caves in and abandons my computer. Harsh? yes. Necessary? absolutely!

Wanna buy some knives?

Both Catnipped and I have experienced the awesomeness that comes with selling Cutco Brand knives. We were both duped into attending their "interviews" where the only requirement to get the job is a working car. Even though the whole recruiting process was a bit sketchy, apparently the knives themselves are quite awesome.

The house guests came by and while casually ransacking the home, came across the Cutco Super Shears that I had bought as part of my demo kit a long time ago. They were also one of the first families that I sold some knives too. They went on to rave for 30 minutes about how good the knives were, how awesome those scissors were, and how everyone that uses them immediately want a set of their own. They have been using them for over 8 years now and and are quite satisfied. Certainly makes me feel better about taking their money.

Woe is me...

My computer is no longer safe. The house guests' 13 year old daughter is a devoted myspace addict.. This may be the last transmission before impending doom....h...e..l....p

Simpsons MMORPG

Never saw this episode until now... it's pretty funny.

The Adventures of Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th, woooooo, how scary is it? So Scary! Anyways, I am not superstitious at all and didn't really care, however, my mom seems to have had some interesting adventures. Started yesterday when she wanted to swap cars with me so that she can get the oil changed in my car. After telling her that the steering wheel has some problems and asking if she was really sure she wanted to swap, I finally agreed.

Woke up this morning, drove to the park and ride and all was normal. Around noon time, I get a hysterical call from mom stating she had locked herself out of the house. What happened was, the garage door opener was kinda flaky and didn't open the garage when she pushed it, as she went to manually open the garage, she somehow managed to lock the garage from the inside instead of opening it. For some strange reason, she didn't have the key to the front door and the backyard door had that extra cross-bolt on. Because of the steering problems, she didn't want to drive to downtown either but the bus I took to get home apparently doesn't run until 3 pm!!

However, my mom was much more crafty than I thought as she was able to convince a nearby Nissan dealership that she wanted to have her car "fixed." As a result, she was able to use the showroom to get some free food, tea, and AC. She even snuck the groceries she bought inside and hid them underneath the sofa so they didn't spoil in the sun. Good stuff!

Jury Duty

Yay, my second official summons for jury duty. Last time I got one, I couldn't make it because I was at Cornell. This time however, I am not sure if I will be able to get an excuse not to go. Now before any of you recommend saying really dumb things at the hearing to get out of it, it did not work for this guy....

Return of the Mom

Mom's back in Houston for a month. Looking forward to some good food and lots and lots of nagging! Yay! =) So glad to be employed...

Keep the Change!!

So today, I went to buy a monthly metro pass since I figure I would be taking public transportation for all my commuting needs. The lady calculated the total and it came out to be $74?? I was thinking, 2 bucks per round trip, 20ish days a month that I will be commuting, which comes out to be about $40 bucks. How the heck is a monthly pass more expensive than just paying per day? Well, it turns out that the ACTUAL fare is supposed to be $2.50 per trip, so $5 for the round trip. Seems like I accidentally underpaid metro last time round...Funny how the driver didn't even bother to tell me.

So How Awesome is Houston Metro?

Sooo awesome. No rain today, even though the weather guy predicted a 80% chance for rain. This allowed my trying out Houston Metro. I basically go to my local "park and ride" and take 1 bus all the way downtown. It was super smooth and I arrived downtown even faster than if I had driven. Plus parking is free and the bus fee is only 1 dollar to and from downtown resulting in a massive transportation expense of 2 bucks. The best part is that Accenture allocates $100 per month for taking Houston Metro while only giving out $50 for parking.

The First Day

Had my first day of work today. It turned out to be pretty much your average first day of work as I was bombarded by about 50 billion different bits of information that I am still trying to grasp.

The day didn't start out too well as it was absolutely pouring rain in the morning. Plans to take the bus were soon scrapped as I didn't really feel like walking half a mile in wind-blown rain. I decided to drive there as it seemed safer. Thank goodness I left 1 hour earlier because the traffic was inevitably horrible because of accidents caused by the rain.

The last time I went to downtown, I had no clue where to park and ended up with a $18 parking fee for 5 hours of parking time. This time though, I was prepared as the nice folks at Accenture had drawn a map of downtown showing all the one-way streets and all the cheap parking garages. There was one slight problem though, they had marked all the one-way streets as going in the opposite direction as what they actually went. With 15 min to spare, I arrived at downtown, but thanks to the ludicrously wrong map, it took 10 minutes to find parking. The lot marked as only $6 bucks a day for the "early bird special" (arrival before 9 am) turned out to be $13. Damn, obviously these birds have taken the Latrell Sprewell path to financial freedom and need that extra 116% to feed their families.

The rest of the day turned out pretty well with nothing particularly disastrous happening. Hopefully tomorrow, the rain will let up a little and allow me to take public transportation.

On a slightly irritating note, it's pretty apparent that Roger Ebert really didn't do much research before writing his review of Transformers.

Transformers?

Who needs special effects when you have good old fashioned human imagination!

Tales of the Abyss

While waiting for people to come back from vacation and between sending out resumes, I was able to finish Tales of the Abyss for PS2. Some interesting points:

1. Although there was no Japanese language option, the voice acting for the characters were done quite well. After hearing some of the Japanese voices, I think that some of the English voices were a lot less annoying than the high pitched Japanese voices. The jokes the characters make are genuinely funny and often times I was LOLing.

2. The fighting system is awesome and improves upon the already fun Tales system. Tales of the Abyss uses the new Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System (FR-LMBS). Aside from sounding like a BF2 assault rifle, the system allows the player to move around a fully 3D arena with ease and makes comboing enemies all the more amusing.

3. The story was superb. It never really slows down and it alternates between seriousness and comic relief. It all plays out in the end and every loose end is tied up.

4. The character development is also done very nicely. The main character is soooo annoying at the beginning of the game that you really don't feel bad for him when everyone (except 2 people) ditch him halfway through the game. But then after a while, he becomes more likable and eventually, you see his progression from teenage angst to something a bit more mature. Of course all the other characters have mysterious pasts and they are all revealed as the game passes.

5. The game was very challenging. Especially the boss fights. I decided to play it through on the "Hard" difficulty the first time through (Beating it once unlocks "Very Hard" and Unknown" difficulties) and many of bosses were pretty rough, taking quite a few tries to beat.

All in all, Tales of the Abyss was a great game, and I look forward to the next Tales game.

Waiting finally over

After 2 and 1/2 years, Accenture's HR department finally had enough people return from vacation to process my paperwork. I will be starting this coming Monday. Ironically, my manager, Bru Three is going on vacation today and won't be back until Tuesday. I look forward to taking lots of vacations once I start working if the hiring process is any indication...

The waiting game

This must be a particular hobby for companies as this is the 4th time I have been told to wait for the "final decision." While the recruiter keeps telling me to hang in there, I am pretty fed up with this crap. I think I will just schedule my tickets and if it happens to be in conflict with anything, too bad. Luckily, there are some other interviews on the horizon just in case Accenture is playing the dog on the leash game with me.

So...I guess they DO look at it

Got a phone call this morning from a background checking service for Accenture saying that they could not verify my employment at Shell Technology and Service Center. I let them know that it was a contracted position through BluWare and gave them their number. Hopefully it will get resolved. Now, I used to think that companies didn't really verify this information and just took it for granted. I am glad I didn't put something like First Sergeant in the USMC!! While this wouldn't have been entirely "untrue", I think forcing them to look through the military ranks for a certain "Cucumbernator" probably would have pissed them off further. Hmmm.....I hope they don't find out about that harem I used to run...

Goodbye to WoW

After more than a year of playing World of Warcraft. I decided to step away from this game for an extended period of time. While the social aspect of the game was still very awesome and I enjoyed the company, the game itself was getting rather repetitive and boring to some degree. Here's to exploring new challenges and to my friends still visiting Azeroth on a daily basis: Pleasant Journeys and may all your loot by phat!

Bird rescue

The BlupnutMM couple were walking their dog, when all of a sudden, they found a baby chick that had fallen from it's nest. After a bit of convincing, I was swindled into simply picking up this baby chick and putting it into the nest. Sounds simple? Not really, since after I had picked up this bird, BlupnutMM informed me that she had no idea where the nest was.... So okay, after wandering around a bit looking for a nest, a decision was made: Let the bird die, or attempt to save this bird by taking it to an animal hospital. After little deliberation, it was decided to take the bird to the animal hospital. When we got there, I was informed that they did not accept birds, and that the local wildlife shelter did. So after another 30 minute drive, we managed to get the bird to the right people. The bird turned out to be a dove, and apparently was only a couple of weeks old. Consider it my little contribution to world peace.

MisBehavior

Just finished up the Behavioral Interview. It went very well and I think that's the last step in the process. I called the recruiter afterwards and she told me an offer should be made on Thursday if all goes well. I would really like to thank Moonfleck for the excellent links to the behavioral interview questions as all of the questions asked were listed on the page, some even word for word. Almost makes up for her C4ing my LAV last night!!

Misconduct

Accenture has scheduled a "Behavioral" interview for me tomorrow. I am not sure exactly what kind of interview this is gonna be, but the recruiter told me that it's going to be scenario based. So something like, angry customer calls regarding something, how do you react. I am pretty sure that "Convince them to give Lans all their gold" isn't the best answer.

Dog Days of Summer

The BlupnutMM couple are crashing over at my place for this weekend. Of course, they had to bring their lovable dog, Teddy. Being a pretty laid back lazy person, I have never really wanted a pet. There was a brief brush with insanity where I almost got 2 kittens at once, but thankfully I recovered just in time.

I try to ignore this dog as much as I can, as I just really don't want to play with it, get slobbered on, etc etc, but he seems to have some kind of power with those eyes of his. Must... resist.....gah, have to go walk it...or something, randomly barking at door.....

Okay, so this dog seems to want to go out, it goes out, sits on the grass for 2 min, then immediately wants to go back in....what the heck...isn't it supposed to pee or something???

Judgement Day

Went for the Accenture interview today. I believe the interview went very well. Met the members of the team and they were all pretty enthusiastic about having me on board. The project lead was also quite happy with how the entire thing went. I also had lunch with the team and it felt like I was a member of the team. There are still 2 more candidates after me and since I don't know who they are, I cannot send my ninjas.

Update: Apparently, just the mere thought of sending ninjas has discouraged my other competitors and the Accenture recruiter has informed me that they will be extending an offer next week! yay!

Sweet...

Which Programming Language are You?

Completely unrelated note, ahh fond memories.

Basketball at it's Best

Awesome article about flopping in the NBA. Big Shot Brob takes one for the team, but the BEST flop evah has to be this one....he wasn't EVEN touched.

2nd Interview

The recruiter told me that I have an on-site interview with Accenture this coming Friday. Time to prepare for this interview!

BasketCrawl

Ran full court basketball for the first time tonight in about 4 months. All I can say is that man, I need to do more cardio instead of just weight training. I was so winded at 5-5, I am not sure how I managed to survive to the end. Also, the things I used to be able to do, I couldn't pull off. The shooting...well let's just say if I hit the rim, I counted it as a moral victory. Luckily, this has given me new perspective and I look forward to doing a lot more cardio and playing a lot more ball this summer.

On the non-outdoory note, Papaya's brother recently picked up BF2 and is having a blast. This stirred some very fond memories of =VGI= turning many a tide of battle. The thrill of parachuting out of the Blackhawk on Wake 2007, and our awesome moments of domination. Who can forget Ender's famous "Go get that tank".... Soo, anyone interested in picking this thing up again?

Not so impossible after all

Kolaap recently posted about what a Mario Bros. level would be like if I designed it. Well, perhaps it's not so hard after all, as here is a video of a speedrun through it.

Curses!!

Today, had lunch with Papaya, Frank, and some Russian guy from Frank's work place. Apparently, this Russian guy is trying to learn Chinese and Frank had been "teaching" him choice phrases. Well, these phrases turn out to be cuss words. This lead to an interesting question being asked. Does Mandarin have many cuss words/phrases? Or is it just a few choice ones and people recycle them with random additions?

Tonight, we dine in HELL!

Awesome video of a Doom3 speedrun on nightmare difficulty. If you are bored and have nothing to do, check it out.

Kung, this one's for you!

Kung loves his Elite Beat Agents. These people go around, singing and dancing to help cheer up people in need. Apparently, there is a line they won't cross.

PAX

Those of you interested in the brouhaha in Seattle during PAX, March 31 is the last day to register for the discounted 3 day pass ($40). Of course, if you register afterwards, it's only $45...so not THAT big of a change, but still 5 bucks is 5 bucks.

This is.. SPARTA!!!

Finally saw 300 over the weekend. I went into this film expecting a bloodbath of epic proportions. While I was not disappointed at the amount of killing, I was quite surprised by the quality of the acting. Sure some of the roles came off stiff, but these are killing machines, bred for battle. Probably not much time for sensitivity training. The choreography in the fight scenes were superb. The fluid motions of block/parry/stab in one motion was cool enough, but watching the entire Spartan force do it was just awesome. I was also surprised at how historically accurate the portrayal of Spartan society was. All in all, great movie. Makes me want to build a bottomless pit of my own so I have a way to deal with wandering mormons/salesman/etc etc.

Mormon: Hello sir, how are you doing today?
Me: This is STAFFORD!!!!!!! *KICK

The Hunt Continues

The job hunt continues. Had an interview on monday, but it turned out to be one of those "group" interviews where everyone gets into a huge room, then the "interviewer" proceeds to make a sales presentation instead of an actual interview. Ended up costing me 4 bucks parking since I parked for 1 hour and 32 min which pushed me into the 4 dollar bracket. While the product was this identity theft shield/pre-paid legal service, it actually seemed pretty useful to have a lawyer on call 24/7. Not that I would need a lawyer....for anything....of course.

Veggie invasion of PAX?

The Penny Arade Expo (PAX) will be on August 24th to 26th of this year. I think it would be a good time for the Veggies to meet up again, much like the one held on New Years. Catnipped, being the gracious host she is, has decided that we can crash at her place and has offered to pay for all of our tickets (okay maybe not quite, but vicious rumors is what I do best!). What say all you Veggies?

The Hunt continues

Been pretty busy signing up for all different kinds of job searching services and such. So far, I have tried Monster, Robert Haff, Texas workforce commission, and working on getting the Houston Chronicle for the classifieds. Anyone else have some other strategies to share? On the lighter side of things, I believe this is a good example of how to motivate a geek to work out.

Second worst day of my life

Well, as of tonight, I am officially unemployed. I was let go today from my company because I "didn't fit in" the company. When I joined, they had just received a very big project and needed the extra help. Now that the project is completed, they no longer have ample work for me to do. At least that was the basic explanation.

Obviously, now lies two paths to follow:

1. Go to business school: This option is available to some degree as my boss did say he would still be a reference should I decide to choose this route. However, this is not the most financially reasonable option.

2. Find another job: This is probably the most likely route I will take if I cannot get any major grants for business school since as it stands I can hardly afford even a single semester at a reasonably ranked business school.

Although I must admit, I was not particularly enjoying my job as a programmer there and I certainly did feel like I was on the outside looking in the entire time. Here's to rolling with the punches

Chinese New Year!

This past Chinese New Year, I went over to the BluPnutMM couple's house. The food was great, but the highlight of the night was playing Taiko Drum Master. It's just really really fun banging to great classical hits like Beethoven, Hungarian Dance, and William Tell Overture. What's interesting is there were actually some relatively recent songs like "Toxic".

And speaking of rhythm and beats games, check out this guy playing Freebird on his...keyboard? I didn't even know Freebird existed as a DDR song. While obviously not as exciting as my epic duel with Kung in Karaoke Revolution, this contains quite a bit of drama. Just when you think it's over....it's not

Don't like playing the default songs? Put in your own songs!! Full Song here.

If you had a succession technique..

What would it be? Well, find out here!

FC on Freebird?

This is a very interesting video of a 100% FC of Freebird on expert. Some say he used the hyperspeed "cheat" but meh, it's still pretty damn amazing.

What is Love?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more... donedone donedone donedonedone donedone donedonedone donedone donedonedone..

Seriously though, very interesting study about the brain activity of people in love and of people who have had their hearts broken.

On another note, my faith in humanity was increased a bit more today.

And today during lunch...

Lunch with the BlupnutMM couple always leads to interesting topics of discussion. There has been a huge increase in the number of rhythm and beats games lately. Games like Guitar Hero/Karaoke Revolution/some kinda Drum game so this got us to thinking about possible new games in the same genre.

Chef Hero: The main prop for this game would be a cutting board and knife with fake left/right hand. As you chop your vegetables, it measures how thin your slices are. You have to hold the left/right hand on the food as you chop so if you accidently chop off a piece of the fake hand, you get points deducted. Sounds like a winner to me.

Vaccum Hero: Ahh, it's impossible to get children (and adults) to vaccum the floor. So why not make it fun and exciting. The prop for this game would be an actual vaccum and you get points on how much dirt you collect using the vacuum. The more you suck, the more you rock. Maybe some kinda star power mode where your vacuum goes into overdrive and tears the carpet from the floor.

Harp/Piano Hero: While having the same mechanics as the other music games, it just forces you to purchase a larger and more expensive prop. $$$ for the win.

Best Around

So the local radio station I listened to had a contest to give away some Gwen Stefani tickets. The game they happened to be playing was movie trivia. The DJs give out some hints about a movie and two listeners have to guess the title. They take turns and whoever has the most at the end wins. So anyways, today was "Favorites" day as the DJs got the favorite movie of everyone in the studio and used those as the movies. Let's see if anyone can guess these:

1. Scrawny neighbor boy learns martial arts from an old hermit to defeat local bullies and gets the girl at the end.

2. Grizzled Vietnam Widower leads neighbor kid to success over the local gang

3. A troubled boy learns lessons in life through painting houses, washing cars, and sanding patios

4. Inspirational tale of the fight of one individual against the oppression from many through the help of an elderly hermit who likes to cut Banzai trees.

5. So and So DJ's favorite song is from this movie: "You're the Best!! Arrrrrouuuuuunnd.."

The sad thing is, neither of the women participating in this game knew what any of these movies were. You would think they would catch onto the pattern after the first couple...