Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare... Or more proof I'm weird.

A while ago I played Red Dead Redemption and, though I admittedly spent more time playing poker and wandering around the wilderness looking for stuff than playing the actual missions, I thought it was one of the better games I had played in a long time. However, far more important, I felt it was one of the best stories that any video game has ever tried to tell with a main character that was very well fleshed out. Possibly the best fleshed out video game character ever.

Why do I say this? John Marston, a former outlaw, forced to hunt his old old gang members to be reunited with his family, was more than just a 3D polygonal thing for me to drive around in a video game. From the very beginning of the game, the personality of John, a very tough man with a softer side that shone through from time to time, was very clear. John was a hard man, vicious when he had to be, but honest and loyal, turning down the offers from prostitutes with a polite but firm, "I'm a married man, ma'am". He wasn't hunting his old friends for any reason but because he had no choice. John would do anything for his family, that was made quite clear.

As the game progressed, John grew beyond the basic shell of a character he started with. He was a hard man, but he had motivations beyond the "save my family" standard, and he made friendships and relationships with the strangest of bedfellows work through a combination of his unerring blunt honesty and his harsh and demanding attitude. He worked with the ranch owner that saved his life (who clearly grew sweet on him over time), grave robbers, snake oil salesmen, sheriffs, marshals, corrupt government officials, and more, never changing in his determination to save his family. As I played the game I grew not only to like John, but to respect him. He was never shy about his past, but had clearly worked hard to become something more. Now he was fighting, tooth and nail, to be sure he could have that back.

Eventually the game did end, and I had played poker and looked for stupid freaking weeds for long enough, so I bid the game adieu and moved on to other frontiers. Still, I was sad to put the game down. I really liked the game, especially the story, and it's hard to not want more of that.

Time passed, then I heard about this new Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare thing, I thought, "Oh cool! Zombies and Red Dead! Could be fun!" And in as much as that, I was dead on. But there was something surprising for me.

Playing the game, hearing John's voice, seeing him interact with his family, brought back a rush of feelings. I realized that, in seeing this video game character, a written fake person, that I had quite literally missed him. That seeing him again, hearing him talk and interact with his family and others, truly brought out a feeling of seeing an old friend again. I'm dead serious, after putting down RDD and thinking I'd never see him again, getting one last real time to see John Marston in action a completely unexpected treat.

It may signal that I'm really insane, but I think it shows just how good the writers were for this game. I missed John Marston, I missed hearing his voice, I missed his aggressive manner of handling his less honest companions, I missed watching him tease his wife and clumsily try to be a good father to his son. I missed his attitude, his smile, and his unending efforts to be a good man in a world out of control.

Now that I've beaten Undead Nightmare I am sad that it's over. I'm losing a friend again. I'm losing John Marsten, and the second time is harder because I really now know what I'm going to miss. John isn't a real person, I can't go find him, or drop him an email. All I can hope is that somehow Rockstar makes another game with John as the main character without screwing everything up, as usually happens.

Goodbye John. I will miss you.

Oh, right, the actual game. As zombie games go, I enjoyed it. Things get really hectic and annoying when zombies get all up in your business, and the first level is a desperate dash to try to find ammunition, but you're blasting away the undead in a myriad of fun settings, you have the opportunity to catch and ride the Four Horses of the apocalypse, and you get to visit, and sometimes kill, all those characters you loved from RDD. It's a great add on to a great game. Visiting with John is just the kind of perk I get worked up about.

Vaccines... Government / Big Pharma conspiracy?

I have heard this particular line of nonsense before, usually from anti-vaxers, but occasionally from well meaning if misinformed people. I mean, really, who doesn't want to mistrust the government? Buncha taxing jerks, and they're in bed with the Big Pharma jerks who want to poke us with expensive needles, right?

First, look at this from the view of the greedy government types. They get money from us via taxes, and boy howdy do they get our money. But that one important prerequisite of getting that money? The people they are taxing have to not only be alive, but live long enough to get some serious cash. And the higher quality of life those people have, the longer they live, the more taxes they pay. So in the view of the greedy government, those vaccines better work really well. Therefore, in this case, it is in the government's best interests to make sure Big Pharma is getting those vaccines to everyone they can.

Now, Big Pharma is clearly in it for the money, right? So they're charging thousands of dollars per dose of vaccine, right? Well, actually, no. If you really want to squeeze all the money you can out of not only America but indeed the entire world, you have to make that vaccine as cheap as possible. A $5 injection is a tiny deal here, but in poverty ridden Africa? If we are really going to reach those millions of potential customers then those vaccines have to be as cheap as humanly possible. And if one pharma company puts out a vaccine cheaper than yours, you scramble to find a cheaper way to get your vaccine made.

Oh no! Cutting corners is a clear sign of shoddy and even dangerous vaccines, right? Did you forget about the greedy government? They want their people alive and taxable, and Big Pharma damn well better keep people alive or the government will remove your funding and give it to the other guys making the cheap yet still effective vaccines. On top of that, cheaper vaccines mean more Americans to tax, so the government is pushing on Big Pharma to cut costs as well.

How does that big pharma government conspiracy sound now? Two huge greedy groups who both benefit from cheaper and more effective vaccines. They may be greedy jerks, but there's no money to be made unless the vaccines work and are affordable.

Again with the personal anecdote ending... My old Capoeira instructor, Gorilla, don't ask, got his PhD in micro biology, or something similar, and got a job with a pharmaceuticaal company shortly thereafter. His job was to find a way to reduce an already cheap vaccine to less than $.05 a dose. Big Pharma reducing costs, not at government behest, but in an effort to make the vaccine so affordable that they could help prevent that disease in as many people as possible. Making money? No. Helping people acoss the globe. That is what the real goal is: saving lives by preventing horrible diseases. You can take that to the bank.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4

It's Vaccine Awareness Week!

Hopefully you've either never heard or this or at least heard about it from either sciencebasedmedicine.org or scienceblogs.com/insolence/. See what's going on is there's this Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Science, trying to be polite here, person by the name of Joe Mercola (to whom I will not link for fear of speading his lies) who has dubbed this week the title above in an attempt to bombard the Internet with his misinformation and falsehoods regarding the dangers and efficacy of vaccines. The doctors at SBM and Respectful Insolence decided to mirror that... Guy's idea by trying to spread as much truth about vaccines this week. While I am aware that like three people actually read this blog, I'm still going to throw my hat in the pro-science/pro-evidence side of this little online tussle.

Vaccines work. Want proof? Find me a case of Smallpox. Go ahead and look! I'll wait... Note how the only Smallpox on the planet is frozen in researcher's labs under high security? That there is proof that vaccines work. There's other evidence, but it doesn't get better than Smallpox, a horrifying disease that was completely eradicated by vaccines. If you insist on more proof, SMB and RI both have dozens if not hundreds of posts on vaccine efficacy that you can check out.

Don't vaccines cause autism or something? No, they don't, but if you've heard this there's a good chance it's because of Mercola or Jenny McCarthy by way of Oprah. Not only is this false, but it's the most pernicious attack on science, relying on emotion fueled rants from parents who believe their children were thusly affected by vaccination. Science and studies don't make these parents feel better, and all the evidence in the world won't change the mind of a parent who "knows" what really happened. That Mercola and his ilk use these poor people's tragedies to fuel their weapons is deplorable. Vaccines do not cause autism. Parents beliefs aside, the evidence clearly shows this. Again, SBM and RI have all the information you need.

I implore you to read the evidence about vaccines. Not just from the shrieking people, but also the calm doctors and medical professionals who really are helping people and aren't the "big pharma" schills they are being made out to be.

As a final point, a personal anecdote. My father is having some health issues and can't afford a bout with the flu because he might die from it. Because of this, for the first time in my life, I am getting a flu vaccination. I'm doing this because it might save my father's life. Does this seem reasonable to you? I sure hope so.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4

I was wrong again...

A couple posts back I said I'd found and researched the drifting in neutral vs drifting in gear thing and found the latter to be more fuel efficient. Since that post in July I have been testing what i suggested. I went into hypermilling mode and tested using drifting in gear and found that it was good when engine breaking was appropriate, but annoying all the rest of the time because I kept having to hit the gas to maintain speed when normally I would not. Still I stuck with it and got 34.14 MPG after a full tank of gas. Then I switched to drifting in neutral using all the same driving techniques I had before. When I finally got through that tank, found my MPG had improved to 34.94. I'll grant you there isn't any statistical rigor here and any number of influences might have affected my results, but nearly a full MPG more says a lot to me. So I have to say that while technically the drifting in gear is more fuel efficient, in practice you may find it to either not make much difference, or even make your overall performance worse. I'm going to stick with my tried and true thank you.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.8

A delicious mistake

So after running out of the lovely tea/care package from my beloved friends in Boston, I bit the damn bullet and went to Teavana. A clever salesperson upsold the shit out of me, and I spent way more money than I wanted too. But the tea! I got several types of tea, but far and away the best is the Oolong tea.

You may never heard of this, but there is a type of Oolong tea that is collected from tall trees by trained monkeys. Really. It's called monkey picked Oolong. Really. It's supposed to be great, but it sounded really stupid to me.

Then I tried some. Holy crap was I wrong. This tea is just fantastic. The aroma, the flavor, everything is amazing. Is it worth the money I spent? That's arguable, but was it a good mistake? Yes. A great mistake. And because of that clever salesperson, I won't run out of this stuff for at least a year. Yum.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.3.1

The Ballad of Drinking Tea at Work

As you may or may not know, I am a tea drinker. I really dislike coffee, and I don't care if you think me weird for it. Be it black, green, oolong, white, or something in the middle, I like most teas. Obviously this should be my drink of choice at work then, and it is, but there is, as always, a snag.
Everyone knows that tea bags are how you drink tea. In this country. In more civilized countries, people make their teas from loose leaf tea, which is, to any tongue, far superior to tea bags, known as "tampon tea" by the Brits. I, having tasted both, can say with great certainty that loose leaf is better... Provided it is brewed correctly.
How hard can it be to brew tea? Pour hot water over leaves, steep, drink! Right.
Nerd powers engage!
Tea, depending on style, likes to be brewed at a specific temperature. Each tea may have some wiggle room on temp, but black tea likes water just off a boil and green tea likes water closer to 175 degrees. Easy enough, right? Well, the only access to hot water I have is the crappy coffee machine at work, and while I haven't been so nerdy as to bring an instant read in to find the exact temp of the water, I know it's much shy of boiling. For green tea, that's fine. For black, not so much.
Why not bring in an electric kettle? Because that's a fire hazard and I couldn't leave it in the break room anyway since someone would definitely steal it.
So here's what I'm stuck with: draw water from coffee hot water tap, place chopstick in water to prevent superheating water, place mug in microwave, heat for 2 minutes or until boiling, put loose leaf tea into French press, pour water over tea, steep 3-4 minutes, sugar to taste, enjoy tea. I do this three times a day, sometimes more. And let's not forget that oolong tea, a favorite of mine, likes water a couple minutes off a boil, so that becomes more complicated.
The more tea astute of you might also note that using the water from the coffee machine might not be the optimum choice since some of the oxygen has been boiled out of the water. To you I say what Teddy Rosevelt may have once said, "You do the best you can with what you got where you are."
Getting a decent cup of tea might be annoying, but dammit, a good cuppa is the best way to start the day.
Today's post brought to you by the Corporation for Stuff You Probably Don't Care About.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.8

An error old...

I'm not obsessed with hypermilling lately, what with gas being semi reasonably priced and all, but I am obsessed with making sure I at least know what's going on with hypermilling, and beause of this I am forced to make a correction about my previous hypermilling post.
In my post I said that coasting in neutral can save you gas in some situatuons. It turns out that I was wrong. Logically it makes sense that if your car is idling rather than in gear that your car has lower RPMs and is therefore saving gas. However, after some research, I have determined that to be wrong.
The truth is that when in gear and going down a hill in a fuel injected, stick shift car your engine senses the throttle position and RPMs and put your engine into an extremely low fuel injecting state, one that is, oddly enough, using less gas than just being in idle. Rolling down a hill in gear without using the throttle is therefore more fuel efficient than coasting in neutral.
Frankly this sounds very counter intuitive to me, but I checked a dozen or so sources, and while a lot of people believe that coasting in neutral is better, the only people with actual proof are the gear heads who say otherwise.
So I was wrong! I don't know how much difference in terms of MPG this is, but I can say for certain that it is greater than zero, so it could be worth while.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.8

OMFG GO SEE INCEPTION

Dealing with my depressing life nonsense over the past few weeks has included me going to the movies. A lot. Obviously explaining my Shamwow post. I also went to see Predators, meh, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, pretty good, and then Inception.

HolEEEEEEEEE shit!

Not since Memento have I seen a movie this... Awesome. And I don't mean, dude, sweet, awesome. I mean the original meaning of awesome: that which inspires awe. To watch this movie, to watch all the twists, the turns, the layers in layers in layers in... Just trust me. You aren't going to see a movie like this anywhere ever. Christopher Nolan is clearly an incredible director and I will follow him anywhere after this one.

It's over

She ended our brief relationship today. I may not like it, but better that she end it now than drag it out and end up making things worse. I had to say goodbye today. It was not easy nor remotely nice to do, but it was the right thing to do. It hurts, but it will fade. I am again single, but at least I know that if I can score someone as amazing as her, then I can do it again.

All I need to get started is pack of cigarettes and a fifth of burbon followed closely by getting the fuck out of DE. All of these shall occur very soon.

Fate keeps to her status quo

I made little mention of is here, for I am lazy and shiftless, but sometime not so long ago I met a lady, a woman, whom I was most impressed by, even intimidated by. She was described by a friend as "perfect on paper", and while I shy from calling anything or anyone perfect, things were going well. I was pleased with her and she with I.

Clearly it was here that Fate decided to step in and fuck things up.

For reasons that I will not go into here because they are not my reasons to make public, things took an unexpected turn for the worse. This is no one's fault. I did nothing wrong, she did nothing wrong, this is just a shitty situation that there was no preparing for and hurts all the more for it being just plain unfair.

I have not spoken to her in nearly two weeks. For the first week, I was just plain, old-fashioned depressed. A case of the blues made no better by my insistence on listening to the actual blues all week. No appetite, little joy found in anything save a good book and a little Zero Punctuation.

It's now the second week. I intend to send out a sitrep request soon, but I will give it a bit more time. Rushing this can only make things worse. Still, I am much better this week. It feels good to back in my own self again. If things go badly from here, I will be ok. Not happy, but ok. I can't ask for much more.

I hope that things will go well, but they don't have to. If this goes well and then goes badly again or takes a different turn for the worse, it likely will be more than a week to recover.

Regardless, in the face of this uncertainty, I say wholeheartedly: Bring your shit, Fate. Bring your biggest disappointments, your harshest turns, and your most crushing defeats. I will endure them and I will live on, no matter what you throw at me. If things turn for the worse, I will sing songs and tell tales of the time I did have with her, for every second I had with her was worth the pain I feel now.

Of those seconds, may there be more.

Fuck you M. Knight Shamwow

I'm not gonna lie. I love Avatar. The series on Nick, not the over-hyped piece of soft-core, blue-person porn that James Cameron put out. It was a brilliant show: clever, funny, fun, excellently crafted, with characters that grew, evolved, and learned. It was both ridiculously funny and incredibly epic, and without hyperbole it is one of the best shows ever made.

Though Nick did its usual thing and screwed around with schedules, nearly took the show off the air without finishing it, and generally did a bad job, it still ended up being spectacular. Beloved by all the show ended its run on Nick as one of its most popular shows.

Realizing that they could try to squeeze blood from the Avatar stone, and figuring that they could rely on a big name director, they turned to M. Night Shyamalan, who shall forever be referred to as M. Night Shamwow, as their guy. In typical Shamwow style, he promised the world.

He delivered a steaming pile of shit.

Ok, you have a show with millions of fans. They know the series from beginning to end, they love the characters, they want to see this series converted into a move befitting the show. You have the entire series as a guide. Clearly you can't do everything the show did, but keeping to the spirit of the show should not be difficult.

Step one: If a character named Aang is pronounced like "bang", then you do not decide to have Aang pronounced like "bong". Neither do you decide to have almost every single name in the movie pronounced differently from it was in the series. You are going from a TV show to a movie! This isn't a book! There is no question of how to pronounce the name! It's already been done! Changing this is fucking retarded!

Step two: If a character like Aang is a goofy, funny, fun little kid who loves nothing more than to play, then don't make him into a dour, boring, little bastard that no one could like. In fact, keep the personalities of all the characters as close to what they were as possible, because that's what the characters are supposed to be like!

Step three: If a character with a dark past has a huge burn scar on his face that no one could possibly miss, don't replace it with what may as well be a shaving cut.

Step four: If a character is a jolly old, short, fat guy, do not replace him with a goddamn tall, muscular, and serious guy!

Step five: If a show is, by and large, funny, then your movie should be funny! If it's dull, slow, and utterly without humor, then you've done something very wrong.

If you're worried about spoilers, don't, because all of that shit happens in the first five minutes of the fucking movie. There's a whole hour and a half left to fuck up.

I could go on, and Jesus I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Shamwow, by my guess, probably never saw more than bits of the series when his kids watched it and raved about it. He then read the text synopsis of like six episodes and changed whatever he felt like so he could make the series conform to his opinion of how the show should have been.

If Shamwow was to throw a rock and his target was the entire planet Earth he couldn't have missed the target worse if he had thrown the rock directly into the fucking Sun! Shamwow now joins Uwe Boll on the list of people who should be banned from making movies.

One last thing. Repeat after me: "3-D is a gimmick." It was a gimmick in the '50s and today it is a more technologically advanced gimmick. Until we get true 3-D movies, and I mean holographic movies, I'm going to save the money and see the 2-D versions.

I had a good weekend

First, I bought a new car. I did some pretty good wheeling and dealing, and got a very good price on my new '06 Honda Civic LX coupe, took advantage of a couple of deals, and now have an almost ridiculously low monthly payment. Booyah.

What made the buying process very funny was that I had a date very shortly after closing on the car, and I let my sales dude know that. They then rushed me through the process quickly and I was off to meet my date in Phily.

This was a first date with a person I'd met on OkCupid, always slightly scary, but part of the dating world I live in. I was anxious as always, not the least of which was because she was considerably older and I thought she might meet me and think "pff, young idiot, pass".

As it turns out, I didn't have to worry. We hit it off immediately, talked for hours, and without going into any lurid details, had a great time. So great, in fact, we set a second date for two days later. Alls I gots left to say about that is, so far so good. :)

Music

I like music. I like lots of music. I tell people that I like all kinds of music. Yet, even with such warnings, when I mention that I like something that seems so out of character, say Owl City, I get questioned who I am and what have I done with me. Never mind that I like everything from the growliest of death metal all the way to post rock indie love fests, never mind that I love dance music, and weird atonal techno music, and obscure British women singing. Seriously, there isn't a genre of music I've ever met, ever, that I haven't been able to find an example of that I like. This even includes country and hardcore rap. So why are people so consistently surprised when I like music? It's weird. Yes, I probably listen to more wimpy music that most people would say is a sign that I'm very gay than even gay people listen to. But so what? I like what I like, and isn't that what music is about? So if I want to listen to Owl City, or Imogen Heap, or Lily Allen, or Sigur Rós, or Röyksopp, or Cascada, or Lightning Hopkins, or Chopin, or any other thing you can think of that seems bizarre, so what? I guarantee whoever you are you have a musical guilty pleasure, because everyone does. Except me, because I never feel guilty for loving music. You shouldn't either, even if Achy Breaky Heart is your thing.

And just so we're clear that I'm not losing my touch, three of my favorite bands right now are Arch Enemy, As I Lay Dying, and Five Finger Death Punch. Death metal, metalcore, and heavy metal. Booyah.

Swell

Just put the final retouches on the final pages of my fourth book and before I could back them up to my flash drive, my computer won't boot into Windows. Great timing. Now I'm running fixer programs hoping to get the thing running again long enough to save some files, before looking into a new laptop. Convenient that nearly every electronic thing I own broke nearly simultaneously. Stupid coincidences.

Hooray!

My XBox has returned! And, much to my surprise, the repair was under warranty! Free but for the cost of mailing the fucker to them! So I got a repaired game system for about $10 and a couple of weeks. I give Microsoft a lot of shit for being a shitty company, but as of right now, I'm pretty well please with them.

Just the XBox part though. Their software still sucks.

The following is an accurate portrayal of my past few days...

hack hack cough cough wheeze... sniffle... sniffle... sniff-blow nose... hack hack... check for fever... cough cough cough COUGH augh bletch... sniff... sniff... SNIFF... sniff sigh blow nose... sniff cough sniff hack sniff cough while blowing nose... yuck.

The moral of todays post is: if I take care of my sick parents they infect me with the plague.

This brain addled post brought to you by me on no cold medication whatsoever.

The Car Saga

After the pair of snow storms here (Stormageddon, and Stormageddon II: The Omen) I was very pleased to have finally gotten my first snow days with this company ever. I dug my car out carefully and completely, ready for work on Friday. So, on Friday, of course, my car wouldn't start. I had to call out, which was bad considering how much work I had to do (and still do), but my choices were limited. After much help from my father, we decided a new battery might help. One battery later, no, that didn't help. Without other options, it was time to get my car towed. Many calls later I had a potential tow in the morning, so I went to sleep at least confident that my car would be on its way soon. Next morning, many hours late, I called the tow company only to find that they had forgotten me and couldn't reschedule till Sunday. Fuckbeans. Many towing companies later, I finally found one that would tow me that day. That finally taken care of, I went to rent a car. All the rental places were closed! Great. Thankfully the online app was still up, so I was able to schedule a rental for Monday morning. So when I woke up, ready to be picked up, the tagline of the damn company, they said they wouldn't be able to pick me up for an hour at best. Given limited choices, I walked my ass to the stupid rental place. I got my car, little more than an engine and CD player with wheels in my mind, and after taking the full insurance option, I went to work. More snow this morning, no big deal, till I was nearly in an accident when I discovered that the car had no ABS or traction control. Brilliant! Now I am almost afraid to leave work in my many dollar a day deathtrap. Thank Christ my car is fixed. I just have to figure out how to get my damn car back before my rental gets me killed.

I has a girlfriend now

I believe the subject doth eloquently get my point across. I am happy to say that things seem to be going well so far. Don't worry, there's plenty of time for things to go down in flames yet.

I has a girlfriend now

I believe the subject doth eloquently get my point across. I am happy to say that things seem to be going well so far. Don't worry, there's plenty of time for things to go down in flames yet.

I am... Batman!

Or so I am told by one of my morning meeting cohorts. Apparently when I whisked myself down a flight of stairs in front of her my trench coat billowed out behind me and it looked cool enough that she had to comment. Which is funny since normally people view my trench as creepy or at least offputting. So, for today anyway... I'm BATMAN!

the inevitable

Since everything known to man was blocked by those ... people I now work for this blog has seen littie love. However, all dumb things can be overcome with the appropriate application of high explosives. In this case it was more the application of my new phone, the DROID. This phone rules. You can keep your iPhones, the DROID is heavy, sleek black, the equivalent of several old mainframe computers, and not an Apple product. Also, it's finally a return to a phone that does absolutely everything I want and several things I actually like as bonuses. There's also stuff I probably won't use, like the Facebook app, but better to have everything and more than to find it lacking. The Internet is once again my friend. I may even post here again from time to time...