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Paycheck

Reviews

I had wanted to see Paycheck in the theater, but somehow I kept missing it. It showed up from Netflix this week, so I finally got to see it.

The basic plot is this.. Ben Affleck plays a guy who excels at reverse engineering. He gets paid alot of money to reverse engineer a product and then design a product that is similar but better. And when he’s done the job, he has his memory of the time erased so that there is no proof that the reverse engineering (or technology theft) has occurred. Normally these jobs are up to 2 months in length, during which time he’s usually secluded so the only memory he loses is the time working. However, he takes an eight figure job that is going to be three years in length.

After the three years is erased, Ben’s character is broke, arrested, and his personal items have been switched. He manages to escape and realizes that he switched his own personal items, and this envelope of 20 things is going to lead him to what happened during the last three years, and exactly why someone is trying to kill him.

I had heard alot of bad things about this movie.. but honestly, it was good. I had fun watching it, considering the plot twists they avoided the clear cliches and plot holes it could have brought up, and the fight and chase scenes were excellent. Oh, I forgot to mention, John Woo directed it.

I give it a hearty two thumbs up. Its not a movie that will save the world, but its not a waste of time either.

The Mysteries of Mathematics

Random Thoughts

Now, I know that not every person in the world is good with math. I am good friends with people who aren’t. However, it stands to reason, that if your job encompasses some level of mathematics, that at least with that aspect you would be fairly decent with.

Enter Client X.

Client X asked me to design a report for him. This report involved a bunch of totalling and summarizing that he is going to use to support sales. This man is also responsible for setting all the standards for sales, and the price breaks, markups, and discounts. In his job he does a lot of number crunching, and he’s held this job, and others like it, for twenty years.

On this report, he wanted to see not only the base price and company standard markup, but several levels of markups and discounts, so he could easily see profit margins and work with his customers to get them the best deal to secure business without hurting his own company. A 5% discount, and markups of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. When I wrote this report, I used standard math principles: to get, for example, a 10% increase on a price you multiple the original amount by 1.10. This is a derived number, as follows:

X + (X * 10%)
10% is equal to 10/100 which reduces to 1/10 which is 0.10
X + (X * 0.10)
pull the X out
X * (1 + 0.10)
or
X * 1.10

This man argued with me, stating that multiplying by 1.10 was exactly the same as dividing by 0.90. He even tried to explain it with math… something like “dividing by the reciprocal is the same as multiplication”. Of course, 9/10 is not the reciprocal of 1/10, but that didn’t stop him. We went around and around until he finally brought in his boss who agreed that dividing by 0.90 was the same, and instructed me to use that method since it was their company standard. So I did.

A couple of weeks later, Client X calls to explain to me that my report is all wrong. “Our sales people are having to fudge the numbers to make them work,” he says. “The markups and discounts aren’t coming out right,” he continues. I wonder why that is? Client X now starts telling me my math must be wrong, he goes over how to do a 10% markup by dividing by 0.90, and I confirm that’s what the report is doing. “But then why are the numbers wrong?” he asks, puzzled. “Hmm, well, on your 10% numbers, are you off by about 1% or $1 every hundred?” “Yeah,” he says, “how did you know?”

How did I know?

100 * 1.10 = 110

100 / 0.90 = 111.111111111111…

I wonder…

Let me tell ya, there is just nothing sweeter than having someone force you to do something wrong only to be able to throw it in their faces later.

The Future of the Game

Gaming

I’ve probably ranted about this before… but of course that won’t stop me from doing it again.

What’s wrong with EverQuest?

Honestly, if you enjoy the game as it is, nothing. Sony has laid out a path of developement for their virtual world that they are progressing down, and if you enjoy the places it goes then EverQuest is a happy fun place. If you don’t though, EverQuest is, as the popular phrase among other ranters goes, dying.

The Real World, you know, the one we live in, is huge. It has a vastness that most people never bother to try to comprehend. But if you are one of those people who try, you’ve looked at this planet and seen what the 6 billion or so people on it have done. Cities, towns, farms, roads… there are really very few places that are truely barren of human life. Places in the Arctic and Antarctic come to mind, as do a number of deserts and other places. Now consider that 70% of the planet is water and has, realistically, no population of humans.

In the world of EverQuest, much of the game is like the oceans. If you run from Qeynos to Freeport, which is 6 to 8 zones, you’ll likely run into maybe a dozen people. These are zones that at one time housed a hundred or more. 10 to 20 people per zone, and on many servers with the East Commanlands Bazaar, 100 people without breaking a sweat. The game is empty.. at least until you get to level 65 and start raiding, then you have 500 people vying for the same 3 to 4 zones and encounters.

EverQuest has become a land of raiding and high end gaming. There is little place for the truely casual player anymore, the slow and steady explorer, the quiet dreamer. If you try to play the game that way now, starting at level 1, you’ll quit in 3 months, guaranteed. Its just… lifeless. Now, if you powerlevel, and race to 65, you may play for much much longer. This is where the “game” exists. However, step away from the dozen zones built for the “high end” game, and you’ll find it just as empty.

Sony has nurtured a game that has expanded with its players, but it hasn’t grown. Arathur in Qeynos still says the same things he said 5 years ago. The same quests are still there, some are even still broken. Sony had lived under the impression that the game is better off going to new lands than to dare alter the existing game. Its true, players get angry when content they either remember fondly or have yet to experience disappears, but these angry players don’t quit. Verant understood this. While they did give up the Kunark expansion that nearly doubled the size of the world, they also gave us “Bloody Kithicor” as the once benign Kithicor Forest turned into a place of vile evil once the sun has settled beneath the hills, changing a zone for levels 1-10 into a place filled with wandering level 30-40 undead. Ask any player who played during that time, and they’ll recall it. Ask any player who started in the year or so after and they’ll have heard of it. Only 2 or more years later is it possible for a player to play the game and not hear of “Bloody Kithicor”. Verant developed player lore: stories that lasted long beyond their occurance. Sony hasn’t done that.

In the history of game expansions, EverQuest was always expanding. From Kunark, to Velious, to Luclin, to the Planes of Power, to Broken Skull Rock, to the Lost Dungeons of Norrath, to the Gates of Discord, and looking forward toward the Omens of War, only one expansion didn’t add new lands. The Lost Dungeons of Norrath added camps to existing zones, and dungeons off those and more existing lands. You didn’t need a port, or to ride a boat. It was the old world brought to life again.

Right now, there are zones in EverQuest sitting empty that are a part of storylines gathering dust. All they would need to do is resurrect those stories, revamp a zone or two, add a zone or two, add a dozen instanced dungeons, and the players would come back to the old worlds. The travel paths of old would be alive again with the footfalls of adventurers. Mayong Mistmoore could return to power and take his seat in Castle Mistmoore evoking the resurgance of evil in the Faydark. The frogloks of old Sebilis could begin to rebuild their armies in earnest, gathering strength from the growing darkness in their halls. The gnolls of splitpaw might stumble on to an enormous power, strengthening them and spilling out into the Karanas.

Everything that Sony needs to revitalize the world of Norrath is within their grasp… but the catch is, you can’t revamp a zone for only the players who pay. If Mayong returns to power in his castle, you can’t have the new Mistmoore available only to those who buy the new box down at Besy Buy or who order it online for digital download. Free content seems to be a bad word at Sony. But free content could save them.

EverQuest has peaked. At this point, the only thing they can do is retain customers. New customers (true new customers, not someone’s second or third account) will be few and far between. Players entering Norrath now are presented with an enormous empty world. The social aspect is gone at the lower levels. So eiher you suffer in a world of silence, or you have a friend who helps you catch up to the “real game”. And many new players, and players new to gaming, don’t want that… they want to experience the game, not have it handed to them. The only way EverQuest will ever gain customers again… free content. A revamping of the world so that it isn’t so empty and lifeless below level 65.

City of Heroes, World of Warcraft… there is blood in the water, and they smell it. These games are making large worlds that are vast beyond their borders, designing games to be enjoyable and populated at all levels. In City of Heroes, for example, even when you are level 43, from time to time doing missions you’ll be forced to travel back to Atlas Park, the lowest level zone in the game, for a door mission, or to talk to a contact, keeping you connected to the rest of the world.

EverQuest needs to change, or it will, as they say, “die”.

I`m smarter than you!

Random Thoughts

Before continuing, and before you get offended, lets specify exactly who “you” is before I explain why I’m smarter.

I’m redesigning the layout for this page using CSS and DIVs to accomplish what tables do. Why? Because if you do it with DIVs and CSS instead of tables, later on you can move objects around your page using the CSS instead of redoing the entire godawful thing.

So, I want to have my page, which has 2 columns (the articles and the menu) to appear as though its on a white “stripe” down the page. I ran into a snag while doing it, and I searched all over the internet trying to find a solution to it only to find a large amount of people offering incorrect solutions and/or people saying it couldn’t be done. If you, the reader, fall into the group of someone who either provided an incorrect solution or told someone what I did could not be done, it is YOU who I am smarter than.

Now.. what did I do?

See, the snag I ran into was this… it looks simple. You just make a DIV with a white background position it absolutely, then put the content in it positioned relatively. Easy, right? No.

This is the snag. When you position the articles relative to the white box, when you try to position the menu, it positions relative to the articles, not the box. (Relative position means its relative to the last non-auto positioned object.) Since the articles are of variable length, I can’t use negative positioning to do it relative to the articles.

So, you say, the articles are always longer than the menu, just position the menu absolute and leave a margin on the side so it “appears” to be in the white. No.

Do me a favor, on the menu, click on Fiction, look at the page, then come back here.

Done?

Okay, see how it looked good? It didn’t when I did what you were just saying (and what almost every post out on the net suggested). See, Fiction one day may be longer than the menu, but for now the list of fiction on the site is not. So, when I did the suggested method, it resulted in the menu exceeding the length of white.

Surely, you say, there must be other solutions? Why not put the menu in a white DIV too and position them both? Well, you see, if you do the articles and the menu totally separate, you lose the ability to do a white “stripe”, as one will invariably be longer than the other.

Well, you now say (and many of you did, out on those help forums), why not use one of the many tricks to just place a white block that extends the full length of the page? That doesn’t work either. See, some browsers don’t (and according to the standard, shouldn’t) support a property of height: 100%. At least not how you might imagine. Sure, it goes to the bottom of the browser… but when you scroll down, the white has stopped.

Okay, you say, you give up, I’ve tried all your solutions and they all fail. But the page looks right, so, how did I do it?

The articles are in a div that has a white background, so that there will be white extended as far as the content goes. And the menu is positioned absolutely so that it appears in the white stripe. But wait, did I say that didn’t work? Yes, I did. By itself, this method does NOT work. However, before all the other DIVs on the page, there is one called whiteblock. This DIV has the same absolute position of the article content div, but it has a specified length of 1400px, which just so happens to be just larger than my menu. So when the content of articles isn’t longer than the menu, the whiteblock shows down to the length of the menu (its drawn first, so is logically on the bottom, only showing when nothing else is on top of it).

In theory, my menu won’t change too often, and when it does, I need only adjust the height of whiteblock to maintain the look of the site.

Voila. To all the people who said it couldn’t be done, or provided incorrect or incomplete answers… I’m smarter than you!

The Village

Reviews

M. Night Shyamalan makes slow movies. This should be a self evident fact if you have seen The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. He likes telling stories, even the "boring" parts.

The Village is about a bunch of people who live in a village, where they are all vegitarians and keep sheep for making wool clothing. Oh, and they have a perimeter of torches to keep the monsters in the woods out. The monsters are attracted to red, so the color isn’t used anywhere.

That, to me, ends up being one of the beautiful points of the film. The absense of red from almost every scene really causes your eyes to draw to it when it does show up.

Anyway, the main thrust of the story is that a very young child has died of illness. One the young men of the village, Lucius, who was very close to the boy decides that if he were allowed to travel through the woods to the other towns and get new medicines that must be available, tragedies like this could be avoided. But, these people left the towns because of bad elements there, and of course there are monsters in the woods who have killed the fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters of the village elders before the truce was made. And then, they find a skinned animal, a sign of intrusion by the monsters. Then another… and one night they enter the town and mark the doors of all the houses. Things are unravelling in their peace…

M. Night has succeeded again in setting a mood, creating characters and laying out the foundation for his story. His story, however, is admittedly light. Many people, having been tricked before, will be looking for the twist, and when they are looking so hard, its almost impossible to hide it. These people won’t be surprised and will likely be angry. The story is interesting, but admittedly, even though I liked the film, it could have been told quicker. But as I said before, he makes slow films, so he takes over an hour and forty-five minutes to tell it. And with his trademark lack of explosions, car chases, extravagent fight scenes, etc, its a quiet, almost silent, story telling.

The Village is a good movie, though I feel many people won’t agree,

People suck.

Random Thoughts

That’s is one phrase that I probably overuse. I’m just fond of saying that “people suck”. And every now and then, I consider stopping saying it, because maybe, just maybe, people don’t suck… and then I’m reminded that by and large, people do indeed suck.

Today I got a call from my credit card company. It seems that there was an unusual convenience check written against my account. Now, I use convenience checks all the time… see, I have this one credit card that has a 3.9% rate on transfers, with no fee, but it has a 16.9% rate for purchases… weird, I know, but I’ve learned to live with it. So, I buy stuff with other cards, and then transfer them over to the “better” card, basically giving myself 60 days to pay with no charge instead of 30.

Anyway, this one account however, I’ve never used a convenience check for, hence the reason they called. A $1000 check had been written to a “Tiffany Lane”, and signed by Jodi, my fiancee, who’s name is also on the credit card account. Well, Jodi never even sees the checks before I rip them up, so I was certain it wasn’t her. And of course, we don’t know any Tiffany Lane.

So, the process begins. They are going to close my account and issue me a new one. They will send me an affidavit to indicate which charges are not mine, and they will remove them from my account and start trying to get their money from the other direction.

When I got home today, I pulled out all my paperwork (which I’ve neatly filed ever since a previous landlord tried to double hit me with penalties I had already paid). Sure enough, I checked and this month’s statement should have reached me about a week or so ago. Some filthy scum-sucking piece of human waste stole my credit card statement out of the mail and was trying to use the convenience checks the credit card company happily provides.

Now I have to wait seven to ten days to get my new account, then go about redoing all my automatic transactions and stuff. Pain in my ass.

People suck.

A Number of Reviews

Reviews

Lets start with the beginning… Spider-man 2.

Oh my.

And I mean that, really. Its very rare… in fact, I’m not 100% I’ve ever encountered it… this sequel was better than the original. And when you consider how good the original was… damn. It was just simply awesome. I was amazed at the first film with how well they took Spidey from the comics to the screen, and with this film I’m just floored with how well they continued it. When Batman came out, one of the actors (I forget which) from the TV series said, "I would have gone to see Batman 2, and 3, and 4, and so on… but Batman Returns?" That’s how I felt about the Batman series, and when X2 came out, I had the same reservation. But X2 was as good as X-Men, so when hearing about Spidey 2, I thought "X-Men pulled it off… but…" I should never doubt Sam Raimi though. All my reservations vanished as the movie unfolded… I was literally on the edge of my seat at some points.

Rock on Sam Raimi… I’m in, Spider-man 3, and 4, and 5… I’m in.

Now, some quick NetFlix reviews…

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Not bad. It wasn’t like super totally mega awesome, and Jodi didn’t like the ending, but I’m satisfied. It ended how it had to end. Quality.

The School of Rock. Jack Black is god… a god of what, I’m not sure, but he’s got to be one. And the movie was good, but after seeing it, I don’t want to see it again. It wasn’t side-splittingly funny enough for me to want to own it. A thumbs up, but only one time.

Seabiscuit. I had no desire to see this movie in the theater. Horse racing? Bah! But there was buzz about it, Oscar nominations and stuff, so I was intrigued. Well, I finally saw it, and it was good. A very solid movie… a testament to the will of the person who will never give up, never quit. Two thumbs up.

Pieces of April. A good, oddly funny film about a disfunctional family at Thanksgiving. I enjoyed it. Oliver Platt is the man.

The Core. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Oh wait, its supposed to be an action thriller? … HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Man, oh man.. I couldn’t stop laughing at this movie. It was ridiculous, but fun.

Honey. For a movie about a dancer who gets into the music biz while trying not to leave her roots behind and open a dance program "for the kids", it wasn’t too bad. It helps that Jessica Alba is hot.

The Missing. This was good. I remember the previews. It came out at a time when there were a few horror movies out, and the preview, in its attempt not to give anything away, made it sound like a monster or ghost movie. But its not. I liked it. Ron Howard doesn’t disappoint.

And that’s all I can remember for now…

Sorry for the delay…

Random Thoughts

… mostly, I just haven’t felt like writing. Also, however, every time I would look at this page, I would see that the article on visiting my mother’s grave was at the bottom, and that anything I posted would shuffle it off the main page, and so I hestitated…

Back to our regularly schedule meandering…

It should be illegal…

Random Thoughts

So, a year ago, I bought a new computer. Rather than spend the effort building one, and the fact that I can’t really beat the prices of the pre-fab machines anymore unless I spend 3 months piecing it together, I went to Best Buy, saw a good price on a good system and bought it. They offered my a bunch of crap, to which I said no, just the system and the rebates, good-bye. Paid with my credit card, took it home, set it up, and mailed off my rebates. I was happy.

In January, I got my credit card statement, on it was a charge for $21.95 for Microsoft Online Services. Now, it being Christmas time and also floating a couple of charges for work on my card, I just nodded, said okay and filed the statement away.

I’m horrible about my credit cards. If I scan the charges and nothing leaps out at me like “Harold’s House of Fur Covered Fishing Poles” or something, I just nod and file it away after I write the check.

So, its June, and I’m looking at this month’s statement, and there is that Microsoft Online Services again. Only this time, I know I didn’t buy anything from them. I open up my budget program, ironically Microsoft Money, and sort the charges in my credit card statements. Sure enough, from January to June, 6 charges of $21.95.

I get on the net, find the phone number and call up MSN. They ask me my phone number, gave him all three, home and two cells… not on file. Name, gave him both mine and Jodi’s… not on file. Address… not on file. Seven email addresses… not on file. So I say, “Look, its billing my card, why I don’t I just give you the credit card number?” “Umm… sure,” he says, “that will work.”

I give him the number and… presto! Account found. Only, the name on it is “Best Buy Promotion”, the phone number is the number to the store, and the email address is listed as “notprovided@store.com”. But my credit card number and expiration date are correct, and they’ve billed me $131.70 for an account that I NEVER signed into.

I ask him, “How exactly do you justify billing me for an account I never activated?” He tells me that it was activated at the store on the date of purchase. “But, look at the account information, it looks fake. Don’t you guys audit these promotions?” No, he says. “What about account activity? It was activated, and then never used, not once.” There is this pause, a completely silent pause… I’ve worked in call centers, this is the silence of being put on mute while he asks someone else how he should respond.

“Sir, it is not our business to dictate to our users how they do or do not use our service. If they choose to activate it and hold the account as a backup for another provider, never logging in because their primary provider never fails, that is their choice. It is not our place to deactivate accounts in good standing for inactivity.”

I’m dumbfounded. But I ask for a refund. “Sure,” he says, “just let me, okay, its done, it should appear on your next statement as a credit, is there anything else I can do for your today?”

“No.”

“Have a great day and thank you for using MSN!”

And then he hung up before I could yell, “BUT I NEVER USED MSN!!”

Oh well…

So, to you out there, I say this… beware. MSN wants your money, and they love it best when you pay them to provide you with nothing. Watch your credit card statements closely, and when you purchase from Best Buy, even when you say no, they might just sign you up anyway.

Taking the “Bad” with the good.

Reviews

Recently, we (Jodi and I) came to the realization that we were paying our cable company a bunch of money to give us access to movie channels we never watched. I mean, we are avid DVD fanatics, and we buy any movie we love (read: watch more than 3 or 4 times), so these channels go unwatched. Mostly they go unwatched because they show the same crappy movies over and over again, and any original programming they have is either on at a time we are unable to watch it or we just assume at this point that its going to come out on DVD.

To that end, I called up the cable company and had them cancel all the premium movie channels. Saving me somewhere in the area of $30-$40 a month. I took some of that savings, and realizing that we still wanted to see movies, reinvested it into reactivating our subscription to NetFlix (there is a link over on the right side somewhere).

NetFlix rocks. For $20 a month, they mail us movies of our choosing, we watch them, mail them back, and they mail us more. We can have 3 out at a time, and with a distribution center really close to us, its a 2-3 day trip from when I drop a movie in the mail back to them to when we get the next movie.

That’s the good of the title of this article… Now on to the "Bad".

Its in quotes for a reason. We got "Bad Boys II" in the mail the other day. For the first time in a long time, you are going to see me say.. I was unimpressed.

Sure, it had some funny lines. Sure, it had chase scenes and cool explosions. But, to be honest, unlike the original Bad Boys, I didn’t care about any of the characters. They could have all died in this film and I would have shrugged it off. And when they go to Cuba… well, lets just say that believability isn’t just tossed out the window, its loaded onto a rocket and launched into space. Exactly.

Anyway, in the end, I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my time, and 5-6 days of my NetFlix life. Stuff blows up good, but the overall movie is bad.