Zombie pay-for-play?

By | April 8, 2010
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I am going to link to a flash game that breaks my heart: Zombie Assault 2 – Insane Asylum.

This is zombie survival with guns and upgradable barriers. I”d rather like to know how the zombies manage to carry cash, and what agency it is that sells you barrier upgrades that you have to fix your own self. But anyway, it”s a rather bog-standard mix of frenetic shooting, base defense, and upgrading your offense and defense to survive upgrading waves of undead. It”s a good formula. The mix this time around is needing cash to add on to the map, to find… well, it”s not the weapons themselves, like I”d expect. It”s an outline of the weapon that lets you buy them from the shop. Like pieces of a picture-menu for a mute customer.

At first glance, it”s a horrid trade-off. You buy, essentially, an increasing number of ways for zombies to enter. Some do not even allow barricades. Fortunately, the undead are stupid and stick with their assigned doors, even walking past an already-smashed barrier to beat upon one that had caught their fancy. The number of undead in each wave is static. These two details mean that you have spread out the zombie problem, so your barriers should last a bit longer. The kitchen and adjacent… porch-y area give vital obstacles to run around, exposing flaws in zombie pathfinding I haven”t needed to exploit since Lode Runner. (look it up, whipper-snappers!)

The undead themselves are a fun mix of speeds, toughness, and special effects. Clowns which are nearly unkillable… save for their own detonations a few seconds after they run near you and root themselves in place. Big beefy meat-cleaver wielders that have a few mutant tapeworms to share with you on their death. And even some demon-y guy who likes to chuck eldritch fire at you. The best bit is that you have some warning. The game”s sound effects include screeches and chilling clown laughs to let you know what a given wave is about to throw at you. But not from which direction… so that you might decide if you are using a good weapon for the upcoming problem.

All that is to the good, believe it or not. Each element listed enhances the experience. Even the pathing issues, as the difficulty is high enough to where exploiting the AI isn”t any guarantee of victory… just a slight edge.

Difficulty, as in all of this class of game, comes from a simple source… you need to buy things, and you don”t know what will help you survive until it”s too late to spend the money elsewhere. As you are spending the exact same cash on expanding your living space that you do on weapons… it becomes even more of a challenge. It is simpler if you know which areas contain which… uh, weapon potentials? Menu items? So you simply do not get to know what”s even available on the first playthru, until you have unlocked the entire map.

You do start off with the ability to buy better barricades tho. Which are repaired to full health instantly, by walking up to one and tapping a key. However… upgrading this to the point where the barriers will damage the zombies that bash them costs as much as the mid-range weapons… and represents the game”s obvious tipping point. If you get the barricades to full, and the map unlocked, you can hold off quite a lot. A sentry gun or two would also make it possible to survive to the endgame.

This is also the point the game appears calibrated to leave slightly out of reach. I”m not saying it”s impossible… there”s bound to be some cryptic range of upgrading and ultimate zombiefighting that allows a human player to survive. But the difficulty of the game… even with health restored between waves, the bulk of players are going to be stymied just short of being able to balance themselves against the ever-steepening difficulty.

Which is where the game promptly decides to break my heart.

You can register yourself with the game”s handlers to unlock a persistant profile, so your XP and character perks don”t go away (the shop and inventory is reset every time tho. Sorry!). And you are given a couple “premium” items for free. Few extra grenades, a rifle that”s quite a bit better than the starter pistol… and this brings you to the bloody shop. Don”t get me wrong. I am not opposed to paying money for a game. Good games are awesome, and worth supporting. This game is playable for free… but you pay to unlock certain… perks. For real cash, you can lower the difficulty of the game. There”s weapons ranging from autoshotguns to proton オンライン カジノ packs. Permanent boosts to damage, armor, health regen, and bonus income from zombie kills. You can buy the whole set of upgrades for $10 or $15 if you”re getting them individually. Clever pricing scheme, since $5 is the minimum, and would give you the most critical upgrades. But for twice the price, you can have it all. Nice marketing.

Now, if they had made this a bit like shareware, so that I were unlocking, say, an end-game boss… I could dig it. The thing that sends me into a bit of disgust is not that they are charging for the games… they are charging for things that lower the difficulty. This disgusts me. Thoroughly.

Some of you don”t need this explained to you, so I”ll try to be brief. Games used to come with a range of difficulty. There would be an easy mode so that you could experience the bulk of the game, but you wouldn”t be trying very hard. There might be a hellfire and brimstone mode where it would take weeks of training to survive the game… maybe in order to get a different ending. The ending wouldn”t really be all that great, but the elation of finally getting there… to no longer be banging your head against a bit wall in a silicon prison… that would give a giddy rush and instant bragging rights. And anyone sane would have long since found that one guy who could beat it, and watch them do it, so they wouldn”t actually have to.

But you didn”t pay money to make the game easier.

MMOs spend countless hours trying to destroy the practice of “Gold Farming”, wherein real money is exchanged for in-game currency, to allow for purchases that the player hasn”t earned. Ostensibly, you are outsourcing the grinding of the game. Frankly, the games are a bit grind-tastic, and like to keep you from having “fun” as much as possible… but the efforts to stop this industry are due to very real issues of in-game inflation (which puts prices so high that new players cannot buy any upgrades with their hard-earned cash) and of the farming activities crowding out “legitimate” gamers from vital resources.

These are beside the point, but I cannot truly express the outrage I feel without giving them as perspective.

The actual practice of requiring a player to spend money on lowering the difficulty level, and increasing fun… goes against good game design. It”s also a hideous business practice. You end up with a paying customer base of gamers who may be obsessive, but certainly do not have the skill it takes to conquer your game without your little perks… so every single customer is going to be ultimately dissatisfied with the experience, because they will know they couldn”t have beaten the game on their own. They are paying to cheat themselves of the very illusion of victory these games use as a reward for playing.

From a business perspective, you are giving yourself customers who will be disillusioned by the very game they bought into… which can”t do future sales much good. From a game designer”s perspective, I look at this and feel that there was a lot of playtesting put into making the difficulty exactly right… so the game will be addicting but impossible without paying, for most customers. The gaming purist in me scoffs at spending money to gain an edge in a game. The smart shopper who once bought a gameshark figures the price point is WAY off for cheats (But not bad for buying a full game of this type). The casual gamer in me… is intrigued, but not going to spend money when I have a book I could be reading.

I”m not sure what the target market is for this experiment, but as a mutation of the old shareware model, I can”t help but think it”s headed down the old Darwinian path.

Freelance Whales – Weathervanes

By | March 30, 2010
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I’ve recently run into a band via the extremely awesome mog. This band is known as the Freelance Whales. I’ve heard the music described as orchestral indie rock, and it”s a fitting description. They play an oddly uplifting kind of sound on an eclectic mix of instruments.

They’ve recently released their first album, Weathervanes, which is now one of my all-time favorite albums. From the opening track to the closing, the album is soothing, heart-warming, inspiring, and entertaining. The songs aren’t wholly lyric-focused, merely incorporating the words as another instrument. It’s a nice touch that serves to distinguish the band from the crowds of others that just use the rest of the band as a way to keep the singer in tune and rhythm.

I strongly recommend the whole album, but I especially like the first track “Generator ^ First Floor”, and its companion track, “Generator ^ Second Floor”. Nods also go to “Hannah” (which has some of the best-written lyrics on the album), and “We Could be Friends”. It”s not available on CD yet, but it”s available in all good digital music stores.

Training the Player

By | March 20, 2010
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Hi. I play MMOs. At the moment, I”m going to take a bit of both our time to convey a concept about these colossal, yet awesome, timesinks. You have to learn how to play the game in order to excel at the game.

Right, points for the obvious, I know. Now, the usual method of training someone for doing well involves rewarding them for doing things right, and punishing them for doing things wrong. Right? Well… sort of. In order to actually learn, you would need to know what you did right, and what you had done wrong. If this were a sports game, you would see instant replay, and at the professional level, someone making more money than the average schoolteacher would patiently explain how someone on the team did something right in the heat of the moment, with imperfect information, and that the other guys weren”t ready for such a startling display of competence. MMOs lack this. Your random group of bored strangers may have simply succeeded on the 3rd try because one of the casters accidentally dispelled the enemy”s debuff… because he hit the wrong key at the right time. You did nothing different, so you don”t learn. Everybody thinks the other players game improved.

Now, it is possible to learn to play better… by listening to the advice of others. Sometimes this advice is actually good. Sometimes it is ranked slightly below frenching an electrical socket. I recall fondly my first serious group attempt in World of Warcraft, as a newbie warlock. I was repeatedly told 4 pieces of advice. I ignored half. One was to whip out the big ugly smoke pet I use as a tank when solo. I”m being told this by the tank. We have a tank and a healer. I can use my little imp to give everyone more stamina/hp, and set foes on fire. I ignore the advice.

I am told that I should not Fear an enemy in an instance. This makes sense. They run screaming for help, we get 5 guys in exchange for the 1 I sent packing. Bad news for the party. Good call. Instead, I use a power that prevents a foe from running. Curse of Recklessness. I”m told I should be using the mutually exclusive DPS power. I ignore this, because it”s a bad call. The foes aren”t living long enough to have a second tic of damage. And if they run, they tend to live just long enough to bring back grief.

The best advice I recieved was to “SS the healer”. SS turns out to mean “soulstone”. A bungee cord for the tunnel with the white light at the end. Brilliant! However, as a newb, it wasn”t “till a breather halfway down the dungeon when I was able to type out “WTF is SS?” and actually get a coherent answer. Acronyms are not your friends when you try to train another person. They are used between people who already know what they are doing. When I used the power in the most tactically advantageous method, to let the healer survive a total wipe, so she could restore all of our bleeding corpses to life… it saved us all a long walk. And I got to disappoint said healer, who hadn”t known it was only usable once every 30 min.

Now, in all of WoW, the game itself never actually tried to train me on the most effective uses of my powers. It just sat there being Darwin. If I got it right enough, I survived. If I didn”t, I got to hike back to my corpse.

These days… I play LOTRO. One thing I really love in this system are the deeds. If you”re only familiar with WoW, think of them like Talents… that don”t suck, there”s far fewer of them, and you have to earn each one before you can spec it. Earning them is the critical aspect. As a game designer, you can never truly anticipate what stratagems the player base is going to roll out to break your carefully crafted balance. This is a reason that it isn”t altogether simple to train a player in using his class effectively. Sure, in the prior example, the tactical significance of letting the player who can resurrect  the party rez himself is a bit obvious. But not using the damaging curse, or the biggest looking pet… is a bit less obvious.

LOTRO”s deed system encourages experimentation. Because it rewards experimentation directly. You don”t know which of your abilities will advance a deed until actually using it, once you”ve reached a high enough level for that particular deed. So, to unlock all of them, you must practice your abilities to see what must be done. Granted, they are all simply “use ability x a few hundred or thousand times over a few days.” There is still a mighty opportunity to learn from such rote practice. The Minstrel has one that is simply based on using healing abilities. A thousand times. No deeper meaning here, other than training the player to spam healing. The Lore-Master, however, has one for an ability that simply drains power from a foe into his own reserves. While it”s never a horrible thing to have a mid-battle recharge, running out of power is extremely rare in the early game. However, against foes with low reserves, it also functions to drain them to zero. Which denies them further use of their most powerful attacks. If I didn”t have gamer OCD towards such traits, I”d never have understood how useful this could be. I”d have saved it for long boss fights when I needed the boost. This system improved my competence in the game.

I”m quite curious what the next iteration of gaming is going to roll out to subtly train the player. Because this sort of stealth education is powerful, and molds a playerbase nicely… when it works. Now, if only we could use it to weed out side-conversations in movie theatres.

15 Things To Teach Your Kids As Young As Possible

By | March 8, 2010
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Heres an article I’ve been thinking of random bits and pieces for over the week, so I’ve decided to compile them and post them. So here it is – 15 things to teach your kid as young as possible – the 15 kinds of things that should never go untaught. Ever.

1) If it ends up in the toilet, its gone forever. FOR. EVER.
2) Don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you. Assume everything that isn’t yours is full of spiders and KEEP YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS OFF IT.
3) Walking barefoot in sand will get you hosed the fuck down. With ice cold water.
4) Throwing your food on the floor at home, or the bin at school will get you 1: belted and 2: starved in your room until the next day.
5) Touching a dog and then touching food/other people warrants a hosing down also.
6) The computer is more valuable than you are. Remember this forever.
7) Drinking daddy/mummy’s beer/wine/bourbon while they’re not looking will get you 5 across the eyes.
8 ) Assume every adult you see is a paedophile (except your family, of course).
9) Playing in the kitchen will get you belted. Hard.
10) Playing with the telephone, or a mobile phone will get you double-belted, especially if either of them suddenly disappear.
11) Touching a toilet in any way warrants instant hand washing – with SOAP. NO EXCUSES.
12) Trying to get daddy’s attention while he’s playing videogames/watching a movie will see you locked in your bedroom until the following day.
13) Liars always get found out. Being dishonest will eventually get you belted really hard. It’s much better to tell the truth and accept a small belting  up front, than getting found out in the future and being belted until sitting down brings tears to your eyes.
14) Hitting your mother will result in your father hitting you in a way that will teach you not to try that again.
15) Running amok in a shopping centre, or out in public where running amok is generally not acceptable, will result in you having the belting of a lifetime, which doubles in intensity per public outing you misbehave in. Wooden spoons may snap over your arse if belting intensity reaches certain heights.

Print these out and stick them on your fridge, or laminate them and give them to your kids. Make sure you follow through with the epic beltings though, or you’ll look soft, and everybody knows soft parents breed thugs, drug addicts, murderers and general scum!

Live (forever immortal): Pixelante’s “ImmorTall”

By | March 7, 2010
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I am not a hardcore gamer. I don’t play FPS games for fear of throwing up my soul, I’m no good at RTS games (I do <3 me some StarCraft though), and I have approximately 5 games for my PS2. I much prefer to watch someone else play long-form games unless it’s some sort of point-and-click puzzle/adventure or Killer7. It’s that Kon Smith. He’s so cool.

On the other hand, I spend a portion of nearly every day playing casual games. I love these things. They are great diversions, and occasionally I run across one that turns out to be much more than I had expected. The other day I was poking around Kongregate when I discovered a new game called ImmorTall. I’ve played Hunted Forever and Alter, other games by Pixelante and I was already in it just to see some more of this developer’s artistic style. I clicked, the music started, I was ready to find out what that extra “l” in the title is for.

True to Pixelante’s style, the art is gorgeous. It’s got a retro feel, not too detailed but looking instead like something from a retro-futuristic war poster. The coloring is mostly primary with black and white. I loved the sounds: guitar punctuates every game happening as well as providing a moody musical backdrop to the action.

You begin the game as a little inchwormy alien who has emerged from a crashed ship. Over the course of the next few minutes you meet people, get snacks, grow tall, and then become a human alien shield. There isn’t a lot to figure out and when you need to do something instructions appear on the screen to guide you. This could be said to be a linear game, in that there is a single ending which really cannot be prevented, only staved off. I won’t pull any punches here: I played this game several times to see how much I could influence the ending and I cried my eyes out every single time.

My impression of ImmorTall is that it’s a very well done tiny story about any number of things including our fear of the unknown, the ways humans are willing to harm one another “for their own good”, and -depending on the circumstances at the ending- sacrifice.

It’s brilliant in that there’s just enough there to nudge you toward some understanding of what the game means, though it might be very different from the interpretations of other players. It made me think, and according to Pixelante’s Twitter feed there are a lot of varying opinions as to its meaning. That is, I think, as it should be. Art is interpreted by the one who experiences it.

I recommend this game for anyone who’s got about 5 minutes and a little thought power to spare. From beginning to end it’s a tiny masterpiece and the newest of my favorites. It’s games like this that show me the strength of play as a vehicle for storytelling and inspire me to want to make my own.

cincos aranas de madres

Rated 5 momspiders – A perfect score

The Saboteur

By | March 7, 2010
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Yes, the videogame. Been playing around with this latest sandbox game. It does a lot of things right. And it looks pretty… but…

This is a game for killing Nazis from the point of view of an Irish race driver and mechanic helping out the french resistance. Seriously. You get to run around laying dynamite and evading patrols in a sort of reverse terrorism, because it’s to give the good people of France hope, restoring color to the world.

The actual gameplay is rather straightforward. It’s a GTA style game with wall-climbing, because that’s the new thing these days. In this environment, the Nazi army has established rather a large number of guard towers. You get to remove them with dynamite. It’s a bit of civic cleanup… rather literally, as the work is akin to picking up trash off the roadside.

Fortunately, once you clear the streets and rooftops of these eyesores, the game rewards you by not actually having any of them respawn. The major benefit is obvious! Uh… well, you get paid for it. A little. And when you run away from Nazi alerts, it’s easier to lose them in an area where you’ve destroyed all watchtowers.

About the only thing that’s really new here (since transforming a landscape’s color pattern is as fresh as Prince of Persia and as old as Q*Bert) is the “Perk” system. The game has a few skills and upgrades unlocked not by amassing loot and buying them, but by achievements. Each is a line of 3 tiers, unlocking the potential to finish the next, and giving progressively more game-changing rewards. In many cases, the work is really its own reward, as you can upgrade your ability to throw folks around in melee simply by throwing a few Nazis off their towers. Or not just getting some practice in with a sniper rifle, but by lining up shots where you cap 2 soldiers with one bullet. The abilities unlocked vary a bit from minimizing recoil to letting you summon a vehicle driven by a shopkeeper. Important, as, well, even with upgraded storage for multiple types of explosives, you are only one man, and you are trying to blow up several hundred structures.

Part of me really wants to enjoy this game, for the spectacle, and the unlockables. But I’m already most of the way through them, and… realizing about all the game has to offer from here is combat and sneaking around to eliminate a gigantic number of minor obstacles. Not that this is a bad thing, but I would be far more involved in the game itself if this realization had been delayed by another layer of accomplishments.

Playing this game on the PC of course provides another layer of fun in the form of crashes. Thank god for quicksave. That feature alone has made the game go from impossible to reasonable, due to a tendency to crash after 20-50 minutes playing at anything higher than minimum resolution. Whether this represents a holdover from the console editions or my computer’s shoddy design… the world may never know. I will, however, not forgive the game for having no quick way to access the full map. You can only enter the menu, select map, and then select Full Map. Which is ridiculous, because you only ever want the full map on that screen.
Most recently, in an event that probably sums up my impression of the game, I found a spot to drive downhill through a park, hitting a few ramps to jump the vehicle for profit. The game only requires that you get the car over the ramp, not to manage to land something you cannot adequately control. It is functional, and less frustrating than many GTAs, but a bit tedious for the rewards offered. Still, a bit of fun to take care of before moving on.

Are you perennial, or annual?

By | March 6, 2010
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There seem to be many people in life who live as if they were annual, they develop for a short period, spread their seed and die. Sometimes it is a slow death, waiting for death accelerated only by the toxins chosen. Sometimes the lack of growth prevents true strength, and they crumble and succumb to various pressures, and hasten their demise.

There also seem to be those who never stop their growth, through the years the fire they carry remains hot and vibrant. They never wait for death, death comes to them when it is time. To constantly grow is to have a certain degree of assuredness and an uncertain degree of doubt.

Like the tree, we have thick rings of great growth and thin rings of stagnation.

Unlike the tree, we can choose thick or thin. Which do you choose?

Living without social media

By | March 5, 2010
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So, as I am a catholic, I am (at least nominally) required to give something up for the forty days before Easter, also known as Lent. So, it came down to 11:00 or so on the night of Fat Tuesday, and i still hadn’t come up with anything. A few minutes after this thought floated on through my head, I thought about precisely how much time I wasted dicking around on the Internet. And thus, an Idea was born. Fairly quickly I realized it was pretty much impossible to avoid it completely in this day and age, so I revised my proscription to what I deem the Big 3 (twitter, Facebook, and IRC). So, about halfway through now, I’ve decided to post my findings.

1) I’m reading a LOT more. I’ve read more books in the past three weeks than I have in most of the past year.

2) I spend less time on the Internet in general. While I haven’t completely stopped Internet-dicking-about, it’s reduced to reading technology blogs.

3) I’m reading far less webcomics, which is a combination of several things, but partially due to the lack of comic-related chatter on IRC.

4) My grades have not significantly improved. This further supports my conclusion that teenagers will find ways to procrastinate, even without the major time-wasters on the internet.

5) I don’t suck at StarCraft anymore. This could be related, or it could not be. However, it is something I have realized as the days have gone by.

In light of all this, I don’t think I’ll be staying away permanently. i would guess I’ll spend less time on facebook,at least in the time immediately following Easter, but I get the feeling I’ll still spend hours on IRC as soon as I’m able to.

A Nice Little V-Day Rant…

By | February 15, 2010
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Valentine’s Day. Where to start? I’ve never liked this “holiday”. I never have, even when I was in a relationship for it. I don’t understand anything about this day really, other than the history behind it. Which makes me wish I could find the newspaper article I wrote my sophomore year in high school…

No, it’s not because I’m single that I despise it (so don’t even begin to judge based on that), and no it’s not that I’m bitter or heartless. It’s the fact that everyone gets so caught up in this ONE day to go out of their way to show affection or whatever the crap they’re trying to show. So those of you who are quick to judge and say , “it’s just the single people that hate this holiday,” think again. It has always been just another day in the year for me to enjoy as I normally would. I can find several other friends of mine who are in relationships who would say the same as I just did.

You see guys (or girls) at the store lined up to buy roses, or little teddy bears with hearts on them, chocolates, whatever. That may be for some people, but it’s never been for me. In fact, when I was still working at the mall a few years ago on February 14th a co-worker asked me nicely, “What are you doing today?” I responded, “absolutely nothing, it’s just another day.” Now keep in mind I did NOT sound angry about it or anything, I was just being honest about my plans. So he quickly and sharply responds with, “Wow someone’s single, or bitter!” Rude much? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

First off, any plants or flowers are just a bad idea for me. I DO NOT have a green thumb. I have normal skin colored ones, that don’t do anything except what thumbs are supposed to do unfortunately. I don’t remember to water plants. I don’t even remember that there are plants in my apartment if I buy them, which is why I don’t bother with spending money on them. What was brought to me in the hospital is an exception, although the dry air in there killed them pretty fast unfortunately. Hell, I don’t even remember to wear my glasses when I’m driving sometimes. I should considering I’m slightly nearsighted, and can’t see signs for where I need to get to when they are so far off in the distance (aka I won’t notice until I’m right about under that sign, and by then it’s too late). So I would feel bad if they died a few days after because I neglected them, and there’s about a 95% chance that WILL happen.

Second, I would lose something like a small teddy bear.I usually prefer gifts that are practical if I get anything at all, I love stuff that I can actually use, stuff that I can learn with, stuff that will actually entertain me, stuff that I can read…you get the point. Sure, it’s nice to get the random gifts every now and then that aren’t practical, but that stuff just ends up piling up, and becomes lost in the black hole in my apartment anyway after about a week.

Again, this is excluding the stuff I was given while in the hospital, because my mom was nice enough to create a space for them to sit on (thanks mom). Those are a completely different case because I was going through a hard time in the ICU when they were given to me. They have true meanings behind them rather than, “hey I just picked up this random thing for you from the store since i saw it on a shelf then remembered it was the 14th” type of deal.

Third, I don’t usually eat candy unless it’s around “that time of the month” or I am a bit stressed. I loved it when I was a kid, but now that I’m older I’m worn out on it (candy) for the most part, so I end up wasting it (which would make me feel guilty). If I go on a binge I’d end up eating the whole box, feeling guilty again, and feeling it in my pants in the next few days when I try to button them as I’m getting dressed. Then I’d feel self conscious, depressed that I allowed myself to do such a thing, and beat myself up in my mind for not having better control. Yet again, all candy brought to my room while I was in ICU is a different case. Trust me when I tell you that I ate almost ALL of what showed up. I am not kidding, and that was A LOT of candy!

So part of what I’m trying to say is; even if I had a significant other right now I would NOT want them to spend any money on me just because of this day. It would be a waste when their money could have gone toward something better. If someone I was involved with felt like they had to buy my love, I would instantly feel like something was wrong in the relationship. I’m a pretty independent 22 going on 23-year-old woman, and I absolutely hate to feel helpless. I love to help others in any way I can, but I never expect anything back. I’m not royalty, I don’t expect things bought for me, and I don’t expect things done for me. So please don’t treat me like I am something to just spend your money on, because honestly it makes me a tad uncomfortable, and it definitely makes me feel weird. If you absolutely can’t handle this & feel you absolutely have to spend ANY money on me, then pay my rent for the rest of the year! Kidding… but help with a phone bill, gas bill, electric bill, or internet bill would be something I could and would appreciate more. That kind of stuff is practical, and when I’m not behind on payments it runs less than 30 bucks (excluding cell phone).

Finally! On to what I really just wanted to get out there with this post! Yes, it may be the thought that counts, and yes I am grateful for ANY gifts I receive no matter how cheesy, cheap, expensive, weird, big, small, fat, tiny, or color they may be. Yes, I’m glad to know people do love & care about one another, me, or some random stranger in the world. However, the thing that bothers me the most about all this is the fact that it is only focused on for one day out of the year. Why? Shouldn’t we be loving each other every day? Isn’t that why people get into relationships, or get married in the first place? You know, because they have feelings or love for each other anyway? Shouldn’t you do a little something for your other half no matter what day it is, say just because you felt like it, or felt they deserved it for being so awesome?

It’s not that hard to do something special for someone outside of this day, like maybe pick up their favorite ice cream from the grocery store while you’re out, help them finish something they may have been struggling with, pick up something from the store that they wanted, but couldn’t buy at the time, or spend a day just hanging out doing whatever they want to do. You’re obviously with this person for a reason, show them you love them every chance you that you can even if it’s not with material objects!

Okay, I’m still going. I’m just about done though, I promise! So hang in there!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying , “be a total pushover, and let people walk all over you.” Things are bound to go wrong if a relationship becomes one person always being the giver, and one person always being the taker instead of it being as close to 50/50 as possible. Although for me, as long as I am on the giving end at least a little bit more than 50% of the time I am content, and tons more comfortable. Yes, that has brought me into some bad situations before, but thankfully as I get older I”m at least getting a bit wiser, and know when someone is using me.

Same goes toward showing your family love too, they will always be the ones who around when nobody else is… or even when other people are! They are the ones who put up with you through your toughest times, and your toughest years (sure there may be exceptions in some cases), but never forget to tell them you love them either no matter what the day may be. You never know what’s to come, so always show your appreciation for those you care about when you can. I suffered a stroke back in January due to the AVM in my brain bleeding, and I will never take anything for granted again like simply being able to tell my family members that I love them whether it’s in writing or in text. Speaking of which, I LOVE MY PARENTS, SIBLINGS, AND ALL OF MY FAMILY! <3 ! EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR!

Oh! I would also like to add I LOVE ALL OF MY FRIENDS TOO!

Why Windows is, and will remain, superior to OSX.

By | January 27, 2010
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To be fair, a 500 dollar dell is not going to be the same quality of hardware as a macbook. Where apple really dings you, however, is the high end. As far as I know, apple hasn’t released a core i7 system. Additionally, windows has A) a huge library of software going back twenty years (compared to OSX’s three, four at the most), B) real gaming support (mostly microsoft’s fault, but still), and C) I can install windows on whatever the fuck hardware I want. OSX I legally am not allowed to do that.

As to the virus issue, OSX is only mostly virus free because of its comparatively small market share. As that market share increases, more of the people who develop viruses will turn to developing them for OSX. Contrary to what apple may want you to think, OSX is no more secure than windows is. Additionally, anti-virus companies have a huge amount of experience combating windows viruses, and almost none combating OSX viruses, so when the time comes that it is popular to write OSX viruses, who do you think will be on top then?

Also: the leading anti-virus software on the market, both Kaspersky anti-virus and (my personal favorite) eset nod32, have a 90% plus detection rate. I’ll stick with windows.

And before some wiseass says that OSX has been around ten years, yes it has, however when apple switched from powerpc to intel, that rendered most of its previous software obsolete and incompatible.

(This is completely unedited from a facebook comment I made, I may edit for better blog-reading later. As it is, enjoy.)