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In Good Company

Reviews

I have a problem with the business world… it has become cold. Mantras like “It’s just business.” have become the defacto for meaning “I’m going to destroy your life and I refuse to feel the slightest bit of guilt for it.” Companies are sold and bought, people are downsized, reintroduced to the market, and let go. And more and more I hate dealing with them in any fasion.

When I call a help desk… excuse me, a call center with a problem, I want someone to listen to me and assist me in finding a solution. Instead these days I get my “data” collected and I’m entered into the system. I can’t remember the last time someone said they would call me back and they actually did so. Instead I’m left calling them back in a few days and re-entering the system, starting over.

When I go into a store or talk to any salesman, I never get the feeling that they want to actually sell me a product. I do get the feeling that that want to take my money. When was the last time you heard a salesman say, “You know, I don’t think this product is really the right one for you. Perhaps you should look into a …” without it being a disparaging remark about your social status but an honest assessment of your needs and the capabilities of the items they sell.

I knew going in to see the movie ‘In Good Company’ I was going to like it. Its the story of a good business, a sports magazine, whose head of sales actually cares about his product and his clients, that is bought by one of those global conglomerates who emphasize numbers and profit, and couldn’t care less about the people who work for them and their lives.

I really don’t want to talk about the movie too much, only to say that its excellent, as long as you aren’t on the side of the global conglomerates.

The Duality of `Doo`

Reviews

Let me begin by saying that neither ‘Scooby Doo: The Movie’ nor ‘Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed’ are real winners. Neither is going to win any awards, and neither is really going to stand the test of time and become a classic in twenty or so years.

However…

These two movies wind up being perfect partners. The first Doo is an attempt to take the cartoon characters and put them in the ‘real world’. They give them real problems and make them deal with them, while telling a story thats mildly interesting and moderately funny. The second Doo is a live action cartoon, complete with ‘running in place over an empty pit’ and the goofy ‘sneaky big step walking quietly’ they always do. Its story is pretty much exactly out of the old cartoon, and the humor is actually better simultaneously comically paying homage and sending up the original.

** SPOILERS AHEAD **

If you just missed it, I’m about to tell some specifics of each movie, so stop reading if you don’t want things to be ruined.

I mean it. This is your last warning for the spoilers. If you keep reading and get mad because of spoilers, you are an idiot.

Now, on to the spoilers…

In the first Doo the biggest laughs really came in the Scrappy Doo scenes. Admit it, you hated him too. EVERYONE hated Scrappy. He totally ruined the Shaggy/Scooby & Fred/Velma/Daphne formula of the show that made it as enjoyable as it was. So when they show a flashback of Scrappy Doo being an ass, peeing on everything and then getting left in the middle of the desert I was literally cheering. YEAH!! Then at the end, when the villain turns out to BE Scrappy in a robot-human suit, I was rolling on the floor laughing and having trouble breathing. Sure, the movie had some other funny scenes, but the flashback and the end were head and hands above the rest of the film and made it worth watching.

The second Doo movie was overall more enjoyable. I was snickering and laughing through the whole thing because it was just like the old cartoon only with bad actors too. There is one scene, Shaggy and Scooby are running from the Black Knight Ghost and are piling items up on a door to block it, and I’m already laughing, I see it coming. The Ghost comes in through a secret door and starts handing items to them, Shaggy says ‘Thanks’ then put the item on the barricade, pauses, looks back the ghost, says ‘Zoinks!’ and he and Scooby freak out! Classic Doo. Then in a send up of it, Fred comes in with a shield, says ‘Bring it!’ and the Knight bangs the shield about a dozen times rattling Fred’s noggin, he stands dazed for a second, says ‘He brought it’ and passes out on the floor. There is even a bar where all the ‘unmasked’ villains go to hang out and share their hatred of all things Mystery, Inc. called ‘the Faux Ghost’. They ring a doorbell and get a voice warning saying to ‘Go Away, or Else!’, Shaggy says they shouldn’t ring it, Fred asks ‘What could possibly happen?’, and when he rings it again a trap door opens and they all fall, one at a time, and Scooby runs in place for a couple of seconds before doing so. And the ghosts… the Black Knight Ghost, the Thousand Watt Ghost, the Tar Ghost, the one-eyed skeleton ghosts, Miner Forty-Niner… hehe, pure Scooby Doo.

** SPOILERS DONE **

Yeah, whatever, you read the spoilers anyway…

The only other thing I have to say, besides the fact that these movies are worth watching at least once, is that Matthew Lillard is a horrible horrible actor… however, he is perfectly cast as Shaggy. Perhaps if they keep making enjoyable Scooby Doo movies, we can keep him from making anything else.

Crossing the Great Divide

Random Thoughts

There is a joke I love to tell… “One of the worst things while driving is when some guy gets right up on your bumper, you know, right in your tail pipe, and he just stays there. You are driving over the speed limit already but this guy is right on your ass. Burns me up. Worse than that though are those people who drive so slow, I mean, you have to get right up on their bumper to get them to move!”

The funniest thing about that joke is that everyone laughs, and at the same time a good 75% or better of your audience is only laughing to cover up the fact that they know they are guilty.

Because of jokes like that, and my desire to avoid as much irony in my personal life as I can… hey, irony is great when you catch other people, but being caught in an ironic situation yourself just blows most of the time… I try to avoid tailgating people, people who tailgate and other like situations while driving.

One that I cannot avoid though are the people who block intersections. First off, when you take the driver’s exam, one of the rules you study and one of the questions you have to answer covers this. Don’t block intersections. Now, the main reason for this is if an ambulance, fire truck, or police car need to go through and you are blocking it… well, lets just say you wouldn’t like to get to heaven and find out that the reason you died was because some schmuck blocked an intersection and delayed EMS in reaching you in time… nor would you like to die and go to hell and find out that you are there because you causes the death of some very nice people because you needed to get to the mall 30 seconds sooner than if you had just waited through the next light.

And that’s the crux of what I don’t get… most traffic could be avoided if people just stopped thinking about themselves and thought about the bigger picture. Traffic sucks, but its a fact of driving. By blocking the intersection all you are doing is making it suck more because while you hang there all the cross traffic can’t go. You might think to yourself, “This traffic sucks so I need to take every advantage I can to get where I’m going.” But do you know why the traffic sucks? Its because other schmucks are blocking other intersections.

So, to rectify the situation… step 1, learn your car. Is your car 10 feet long? 20? step 2, learn to spot length from a distance. You know, you don’t have to be spot on, but if your car is 20 feet long and there is only 6 inches of space on the other side of the intersection, 20 feet clearly does not fit into 6 inches. step 3, don’t pull into the intersection until there is enough room or traffic movement to accommodate your car. It’s actually pretty simple, if the cars aren’t moving and there isn’t enough room, don’t go. If there is enough room, go. If the room is a bit short but you can clearly see cars moving and the light is green, go. And just because the car in front of you can make it doesn’t mean you can. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose… and sometimes you have to wait a whole minute for the next light. Turn up the radio and enjoy the wait.

All was quiet…

Random Thoughts

… on New Year’s Day.

2004 is over. Time to put it on the shelf.

So what did we learn?

Well, I learned that life does, indeed, go on. A year after my mother’s death and I’m still here. It still hurts, but the days are getting easier.

I learned that parking downtown is, in fact, dangerous. I really need to just stop believing in the kindness of strangers. Not only did my car get broken into twice and my stereo stolen, but a man who claimed to see it happen fled the scene when I asked him to stay and describe the perpatrator to the cops. The roadside emergency kit I carry in the back of my car was stolen in my own parking lot when the door got left unlocked.

On the other hand, I did learn that some people can be nice, even though they might be stupid. I ordered a gift for Jodi for Christmas. It was very close to the holiday and it was going to be risky getting it in time. Now, lets say I live in an apartment who’s number is 9921… the FedEx driver tried to deliver it to 9291. Those people weren’t home. Instead of taking the package back to the distribution center, he decided to give it to my (their) neighbor in 9290. I guess he was trying to be nice… but see, I live in building 99, and building 92 it 7 buildings away, those people don’t know me… and appearantly are too stupid to read the address. When she gave it to the people in 9291, they read it and didn’t open it… but they also made no attempt to get it to me. The FedEx website listed that the package was delivered to the front office and my signature was on file… of course, he never actually went to the office. Meanwhile, I’m going to war with the front office accusing them of losing my gift (which wasn’t exactly cheap). I apologized to them once a non-idiot at FedEx customer service told me that the website was wrong and told me where my package was (9290). After that it was just a matter of tracking people down. In the end, I got the package… three days after Christmas. I guess you could say I learned that FedEx blows and that stupid people, while nice, are in fact stupid.

I learned that I buy too much crap and have put a stop to it.

And I suppose that’s about it… Not a very fruitful year I guess… mostly it is what in business would call a “rebuilding year” … 2005, here I come.

The Night Before…

Random Thoughts

You know… usually this time of year I put up special Christmas logos and decorations on the site, but I’ve been so busy with work, family, and actually doing stuff for and of the season I just haven’t had time.

Its Christmas Eve, and I’m about to head over to my father’s house to spend a few hours with my family. Jodi and I will return home tonight, and spend some time together, then tomorrow she’ll work, I’ll clean house and run other errands, and then we’ll return to my father’s for Christmas Day.

Tonight, I hope that each and every person out there has someone… a husband, a wife, a friend, a lover, a father, a mother, a daughter or son… someone to share the night with… and to everyone, whether they have someone or not, Merry Christmas.

I will choose free will.

Random Thoughts

Again on the topic of religion…

I believe in the concept of free will, that as a human being, I am destined for nothing. I am, in part, the sum of my experiences, but every step that I take forward (or backward or left or right) is my own to choose.

When it comes to God, many people believe him to be omniscient, all knowing. However, this doesn’t jive with free will. If God knows what you are going to do, then its in his plan, and your will is not free. If you change your mind, God knew you were going to change your mind, and planned for it.

I believe that God WAS omniscient. In giving humans free will, however, he flawed himself in that he no longer knows what humans will do. That was the price.

Free will, when you boil it down from that perspective is simply the ability to defy God’s will. And if you believe in the Great Flood, then you believe that humans abused free will, defied God and he wiped them out.

This, to me, is where Jesus comes in. God has this gaping hole in his knowledge, humans defy him and he doesn’t understand why. So he has a son, Jesus, who is mortal, and hence has free will. Of course, he’s also divine, so he’s less likely to defy God and do whatever he wants. Jesus walks the earth, doing good deeds and stuff, like that guy from Kung Fu. Some people don’t like him and what he says, so they decide to kill him. This is when Jesus finally understands free will. Sometimes, people defy God out of spite or because they are evil. However, there are times where people defy God out of ignorance, a failure to understand God’s will. Humans learn by making mistakes and understanding their failure. Humans are NOT all knowing, they can’t see the mistake before it happens, only after. Jesus asks God to spare us, to forgive us, because we are ignorant.

Jesus is a teacher. Divinely born of God and woman, yes, but a man, mortal and understanding of our will, free will. Through him, we can learn to not be ignorant, and hopefully defy God’s will as little as possible.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Counting Blue Cars

Random Thoughts

An ongoing thread on a messageboard I frequent has brought up thoughts on religion, and mostly I just need somewhere to pour out my brain so that the words are somewhere other than in my head. As I often do, I’ve chosen here.

A long time ago, I separated from religion. Questions on the validity of the beliefs, most likely due to an increasing interest in mathematics and science, caused me to cast doubt on some of the core fundamentals of my upbringing in regards to the church. In my days I have attended a number of church, most often as a guest, but to some of them as a member of the congregation. To those that I belonged, either by my own right or by my parents, they have largely been of the protestant or reformed faiths.

After a number of years of turning my back on all things God related, I came to a realization that it was not God that I doubted or disliked, but the church. It was the organizations, the buildings of wood and stone, and the corporate like hierarchy of their ministers that were the source of my unease. It was then that I came back to God, but not the church.

Another of the major issues that I have with the established religions is in their handbook… you know, the Bible. I feel that far too many of them view the book as the written word of God, as if he inhabitted the bodies of the authors and guided their hands divinely, crafting each word, and in turn possessed the spirits of each translator throughout history to ensure that nothing was lost. And I just don’t think this is so. My personal belief is that the Bible is a collection of historical fact, oral tradition and moral tales written and bound to be used as a guide to emphasis the qualities of that which should be a “good” life. The reason I cannot believe in the Bible as being the absolute word of God is that there are things in there that actually support the idea that God doesn’t care. The Book of Job, for example. God allows Satan to kill Job’s children and their families in order to prove that Job’s faith is absolute. But what about the faith of those children? Am I to believe that God will, on a whim, decide to end my life just to test the faith of someone else? Or to end the lives of others just to test mine? Setting aside that, however, the Book of Job is a good example of maintaining ones principles through hardship, which is a good thing to teach.

The last major issue that I have with the organized religions is that none of them believe what I feel is true. The major tenet of Christianity is the Holy Trinity, the three that are one, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. I feel that Christianity has latched onto this idea largely to avoid being a polytheistic religion and to maintain their monotheistic outlook on spirituality, to avoid Jesus worship spinning off a sect away from God worship. They force Jesus and God to be the same so that worshipping one is worshipping the other and vice versa. While I can fully grasp the idea that you could have multiple aspects of a single being be the same whole being, my problem is that if God and Jesus are the same, then the sacrifice of Jesus means nothing. If God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, and Jesus is God, then Jesus is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. The moment he “died”, he would be release from any mortal constraints and be God again. His descending into hell holds no meaning because he is omnipotent, snaps his fingers and he’s out. If, however, you believe only so far as that Jesus is the mortal son of God (with the ability to perform miracles), then the sacrifice takes on a whole new light… what Jesus says as they crucify him becomes half a conversation. God says to Jesus, and no one else can hear, “Son, I can smite them. I can wipe the earth clean and start again like I did before. I can save you this pain. Just say the word and it will be done.” To which Jesus relies aloud, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” All the sudden, Jesus’s sacrifice means everything. He gives his mortal life in order to stay God’s hand, because in us, the flawed creation of God, he sees hope, he sees the ability of us to overcome what we do in ignorance. And then, knowing that by the rules of his own universe that he created Jesus will descend into hell and he won’t be able to help, God lets his son die, and forgives us. That has weight and meaning.

In the end though, the sum of my beliefs can be found here: “I believe in God, and God believes in me, and that’s enough.” With so many religions out there with such core difference in their worship and their organization, this has to be true, because its about the only thing they all hold in common. And if its wrong, that’s alot of people going to hell because God won’t just come out and tell us the truth. Unless God enjoys people killing each other under his various pseudonyms… If I were God, that would make me angry, and I would make them stop. Just show up and say, “Hi, I’m God. These guys are half right, and these guys are about a quarter right, and those guys over there are insane, but be nice to them anyway. Now shut up and build spaceships already, I didn’t create infinity for you just to have a twinkling sky at night.”

You go long.

Random Thoughts

It weird sometimes when you realize that you see or understand something that other people don’t. Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life is a team game. Most maps, you and your team protect your flag or key or base, while trying to take the other team’s flag or key or base. Pretty simple.

So I hop into a game, and I’m assigned to the blue team. Before I spawned, I had to do a couple of things (clean up my desk a little, stuff like that). While I’m sitting in limbo I’m listening to the game. “The enemy has your flag.” “Your team has the enemy flag.” “The enemy has captured your flag.” “Your team has captured the enemy flag.” These four lines repeating over and over. I sit back down at the PC and before picking my class I see that the other team has five people and we have five people (including me, not yet spawned). So I choose soldier, and the map is 2fort so I take up residence in the ramp room. The map has 3 choke points inside the base: the ramp room, the basement, and the flag room. By choke point I mean only that it is a room you HAVE to go through in order to get the flag. The flag room is a poor spot to sit, mostly because if a scout gets your flag and you don’t drop him with the first shot you don’t get a second chance, you can’t keep up. The basement is almost as bad, the two entrances are on opposite ends and its so narrow that if you blink you might miss the enemy running through. The ramp room is where its at. Two entrances on the lower floor, two ramps up, two exits on the top. This room offers the best opportunity to stop the enemy AND allows you to have a shot at recovering if they do happen to get your flag.

One of the great things about TFC over the original TF is the footsteps. You can hear people running. In the ramp room, if you are on the upper level, the entrances to the room are below you, so you can hear people coming. You hear them coming, prime a grenade, then when they come in you attack them with grenades and rockets. You even have a resupply room right near by (just make sure to pop a nail grenade before you go so you can hear hasty enemies getting hurt while you are away).

Anyway, I’m in the ramp room and I start killing enemies. I tell my team to avoid the ramp room, so whenever I see a “friendly” face, I know its a spy and blow them up. And just like that, the enemy stops taking our flag. Sure, they get me every now and then, even make it to the flag room once in a while, but I always stop them at the top of the stairs.

I guess I’m not as rusty as I thought I was going to be.

Story of Heroes

Gaming

City of Heroes is about to do something that, unless I’m mistaken, is nearly unheard of in the world of MMOs. They are going to advance the story.

No, not just some expansion that tacks on a dozen new zones and makes an additional story you can explore, but actually taking the existing story and moving it forward. The only other game I know of that has done this is Asheron’s Call… and it makes sense once you know that some of the top guys at Cryptic were once the top guys at Turbine, makers of Asheron’s Call.

If you have been playing the game, or buy it right now and play, one of the villain groups you will fight are the 5th Column. These are a hold over from WWII, rooted in the Nazi Party but since separated into their own goals and headed by a man from another dimension, an alternate Earth when Germany won WWII. In a month or so (or less, I hope), you won’t be able to do this. In fact, if you join the test server now, you’ll find that the 5th Column are gone, and a new group, The Council, have risen up to take their place, destroying and devouring them from within. In a few months time, except for the odd plaque and the memories of older heroes, the 5th Column will vanish from the game.

One of the problems with other games on the market, is that they are, for all their lore and diversity, static. In EverQuest, if you buy an account right now and start from scratch, I can point you to quests and monster spawns that have remained unchanged for more than five years. The story in EverQuest has expanded, they’ve added new continents and worlds, alternate planes. They’ve added new lore and stories, new arcs of history and adventure, but they have remained reluctant to remove the old ones… The Paladins of Marr and the Freeport Militia are at the same tense standoff for control that they have had for five years. Wait, that’s five “real” years, but since 72 real minutes = a Norrath day, then you have 20 Norrath days per real day, which means that its been over 100 Norrath years. Beyond simple storytelling, EQ would have benefitted from adjusting its game in other ways… as time went on they developed more and more high level content, because thats where the bulk of people were, but they also took away none of the low level content, so the decreasing number of players turned into empty underpopulated zones and loss of social activity. In its beginning, people met in EQ because they were in the same places… now, until you get up to the later 50’s in level, there just simply aren’t enough people to fill the world to make for meaningful interaction between players.

This whole thing with City of Heroes gives me hope. I’ll be keeping my eye on the future of World of Warcraft to see if they follow suit, and even though I have no interest in playing EQ2, I’ll keep an eye on them to see if they have learned from their past. I’d love to see more worlds, more stories, instead of giant online gaming habitats.