Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Shuffle.

Random Thoughts

The boxes get packed, the boxes get moved, the boxes get unpacked.

And somehow when you unpack them, they contain more than you packed into them. The shelves aren’t big enough. There aren’t enough drawers. The closets are tiny. And then there is the pile of stuff you thought you had lost, and the pile of stuff thought lost that you wish still was because you don’t know what to do with it.

This is one of those moments. Somewhere between an end and a beginning. Neither, yet both. Its like playing a game of poker. Someone has just cleaned out the pot, and the next hand isn’t on the table yet. The time when you shuffle the deck, shake things up a bit. Throw a little extra random chance into the mix.

So when the boxes are gone, and all that remains is the beginning of something new, I wonder what kind of hand I’ll have been dealt.

Hey you!

Random Thoughts

Yeah, you.

I’m going to level with you.

I’m going to be honest with you in a way that none of your friends will.

Honest in a way that even your family has yet to attempt.

No matter how much money you spend, no matter what kind of tires, or head lights, or tail lights, or spoilers, or decals, or hub caps you put on. No matter what kind of stereo you put in. No matter how often you wash and detail it. No matter how much effort you put in. No matter how hard you try. You are still driving a 4 door Honda Civic.

You are not cool.

Quit lying to yourself.

This vehicular delusion intervention has been brought to you by probablynot.com, because frankly, we don’t like you.

Public Facilities.

Random Thoughts

Okay, enough with all the serious shit and on with some serious shit talk.

Nine times out of ten, I really have no problem with using a public restroom, but then there is always that one time…

First off, I realize that handicapped people need a little more room to manuver in the stall, but do they really need a stall that’s 3 times the size of the rest of the bathroom? You know the kind I’m talking about, where when you sit down it feels like you are on the crapper in the middle of a room and not behind a little locked door, where if the lock fails and someone starts to open it you have no chance in hell of being able to push it shut from where you are sitting, so you either wait for them to notice you sitting there, or you hop up and waddle with your pants at your ankles, one-eyed winky waving in the wind, and slam the door shut on their fingers. Sure, you could just yell, “Hey, someone’s in here!” but they don’t always listen.

Continuing with handicapped toilets, why are they so much taller? I’m 5’10” and normally when I sit down on the john my feet fit snugly on the floor, which is a good thing. I personally find that things work themselves out much more smoothly if I can apply a little pressure to the floor, much like driving (try it some time if you don’t drive stick, use your left foot and apply a little pressure to the floor with your heel, you’ll find that your right foot moves more accurately and quickly over the other pedals making driving and stopping just a bit easier). However, in a handicapped stall my heels hover about a half inch over the ground at maximum stretch. No leverage. Most times, if I walk into a bathroom and see that only the handicapped stall remains, I’ll leave. Sometimes though, the “special” stall is the only stall and one has no options.

Beyond those design flaws, most bathrooms are pretty nice. Paper, seat covers, soap, towls, sink, urinal, stalls (with locks on doors). Of course, men’s rooms typically lack the couches and free coffee that some women’s rooms have, but that’s the price we pay for being allowed to pee standing up I suppose.

What really makes most public facilities bad are the other patrons. Some men can’t aim. Or because they don’t want to wash their hands will try to piss “freestyle”. Sometimes this works, other times it works like any other hose. As a kid, we used to unhook the garden hose from the sprinkler then crank up the power from the faucet. It would fling around and spray everywhere and we’d run through it yelling and screaming. Thank god they finally invented that toy that sprayed water around like that, getting hit by the metal flying end fo the hose hurt! But the point is, freestylers tend to piss all over the place. The urinal, the floor, their shoes (don’t they care???), their pants, the divider between the urinals (if there is one). The only saving grace is that they usually don’t piss on the flush handle. Put a freestyler in a stall, however, and all bets are off. This is why most men flush with their foot. Automatic flushers were invented by men for just this reason.

And I won’t even get in to the guys who appearantly either eat whole cows or don’t shit for 2 weeks, and then follow that with 2 rolls of paper. Its not that they don’t flush, its that flushing, as this juncture, becomes moot.

And whatever happened to the shit house poet? I miss the days of amusing myself with the writing on the walls. The phone numbers, the dirty jokes, the crude pictures. Ahh, the good ole days….

Ah well, enough with my ranting…

Life…

Random Thoughts

Yesterday was my first real day on the new job. No more training, just go in, log in to the phones and start taking calls.

At almost the exact instant that I sat down at my desk and logged in, on the other end of the call center, a man slumped over at his desk.

A few people from the call center performed CPR until the paramedics arrived. The EMS team rushed him off to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Last I heard, there was still no known reason for his collapse. It has been attributed to a possible coronary arrest or aneurism, and in all likelihood probably something he was unaware he was in danger of having.

Life is short, Live it well.

The New Year…

Random Thoughts

A few years ago, I made a New Year’s Resolution: Not to make any more New Year’s Resolutions.

This wasn’t to be funny, or ironic. Its the basis of a simple belief against people requiring some landmark day just to get the motivation to better themselves, or to do something they should be doing anyway.

I still hold to this myself. But looking out at the world, I realize that people need these kinds of crutches to force themselves to stop eating the food they love but is turning them into a giant shambling mass on the couch in front of the TV.

Its not that I somehow view myself as better than anyone else, its just that I don’t need New Year’s Day… I have enough other crutches that I use to get the job done.

In with the New.

Random Thoughts

And now it is 2002…

In a couple of weeks I’ll be moving to a new apartment, and the new job is going… as well as expected (sucks). In any event, the page may not get updated as often in the next month as I settle things down a bit.

See you soon.

Out with the Old…

Random Thoughts

Its December 31st, 2001. In a few short hours we will be officially 1 year into the 21st Century. (There was no year 0, quit arguing, 2000 was important but the century began 1/1/2001)

2002.. its a mirror year (meaning you split it down the middle and it has the same numbers on both sides), the last one was 1991, and there won’t be another until 2112, and since I plan on being 137 years old at that time, I may or may not see it (come on immortallity!!).

Its New Year’s. Time to wipe the slate clean. Forgive and forget. Acknowledge and move on.

And party.

See you tomorrow folks.

The Holidays.

Random Thoughts

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Though I may complain about the expenditure, or the hassle, or a myriad other things, in the end, Christmas is always wonderful. Once the gifts have been opened, and the ham been sliced, and we sit around the table telling the same stories we tell every holiday, and almost every Sunday at the family dinner, there is a glow. Not of light, but a crackling warm emotion in the air, like you could just reach out and hug the world.

So, from everyone here at Squadleader.com (which is really just me), have a safe and happy Christmas and keep it going through the new year.

2002 is looking to be an interesting place.

Enjoy.

And see you next year.

Shadows of Luclin or Shit outta Luck?

Random Thoughts

Verant is at it again.

And I mean that in both the good and bad sense of the phrase.

The Good: They released Shadows of Luclin, an expansion for EverQuest – the game that keeps on kicking. New lands, a new race, a new class, new items featuring never before thought of properties, a new expanded skill system, and more. The world opens up again and for a while we can all explore something new and different. You won’t hear much bitching about this part of the game because people don’t complain when they are happy.

However…

The Bad: As usual, they introduced a large amount of bugs with the game release. Bards are, for lack of a better term, useless. They can’t sing anything that isn’t self only. Druids got a new line of group skin buffs to make them for desireable in groups, but group buffs, like group songs, don’t work (this may be fixed now, they patched twice already and the game has only been live 2 days). And while many of the armor textures look good, the character models… let’s just say they leave something to be desired.

Change is good, and change is bad.

The people wanted more in game content, and Verant provided. The new world and items, spells, class, race, all of it, a good idea and exactly what the customer wanted.

The new skill system is mostly good, except for the fact they made it level based again. I don’t think anyone would have complained if you had to be level 51 to get the new skills, but Verant decided that you get some skills made available to you at 51, some at 55, and some at 59. Basically, they made it so that no matter how hard you worked for these extra skill points (don’t through experience points just like levelling) you can’t get all the skills unless you are level 59. Here, in this one factor of the system, they missed the mark of what the average player wants. Most people would like to someday be level 60 and on top of the world, however, most realize that its a dream. Some people are in small guilds that don’t do gigantic raids, or don’t play often. These people might make level 55 and realize that 55 is all the level they need to do what they want in game. But now, in order to get the cool skills that would make them better, they have to level to 59. Lots of these skills have levels within them, 3 or 5. If Verant was determined to keep a level based system, they should have done 2 things: 1) make the skill tree more of a tree with prerequisites and order, and 2) take a skill with 3 “levels” and make the first attainable at 51, the second at 55 and the third at 59 so that you can have the skill at 51, but you can’t master it until 59.

Lastly, people like eye candy. And for the most part, the armor textures of Luclin are good. Plate armor LOOKS like plate armor instead of a solid steel t-shirt. But the character models themselves, especially the faces, have left most people dumbstruck. Some of the races look good, and for the most part all the females are decent although a bit heavy in the boobage department, but they destroyed faces. Every race/sex gets 8 faces, this has always been true. But where before Luclin the 8 faces were unique, the 8 new faces are very very very similar. If two humans pick the same hair and beard style and color, unless one of them picks the face with the eyepatch, get more than 10 feet away and you can’t tell them apart anymore. If you were one of the people who picked the “asian” human face, you are completely out of luck, it no longer exists. Verant made a leap here that they should not have. They redesigned the look of the player. Not just his armor, but his face. Rather than take the existing faces and modify them to fit the new models, they chose to make new faces altogether.

The end result of all this is.. once they get the bugs fixed, they have released an expansion that is 95% good. But that 5% bad is the worst possible 5% because its something that makes many players unhappy and they have to stare at that 5% every time they get into the game.

Rubbing the Lucky Nut.

Random Thoughts

Before I got my job at Toys “R” Us, I visited my parents and my mother pulled out a bag of buckeye nuts.

There isn’t much special about buckeyes. Unless you count this. It seems that my grandfather wasn’t making it up.

See, my father’s father lived in Jacksonville, Florida. We used to visit a couple times a year, except when we were living in Pennsylvania, until he passed on, and outside the house on the right side stood the Buckeye tree. He’d collect the ones that fell and hand them to the grandkids when we came telling us of the luck they held within. We usually were only lucky in losing or misplacing them. I’ve probably had over a hundred of these in my possession over the years, but right now I have only three. Two of these I retained from my younger years of visiting my grandpa. They managed to stay with me through the years and all the moving, mostly trapped in the drawers of my various desks. But the luck of these have probably worn out.

My mother opened the bag and I picked out a buckeye with a good thumb on it. My grandfather used to say that you should just keep it in your pocket and when you need luck just reach in and rub your thumb into the indent in the nut. I took a good one and put it in my pocket. It was for luck on a job interview.

Every day I kept it in my pocket and when my hand would brush against it, I’d reach in and give the nut a couple of rubs. It was in my pocket when I went to the interview and it was in my pocket when they called to tell me I got the job.

Thanks Grandpa Pace. I hope you are looking down at me now, and I hope you are proud at what you see.