A glimmering of thought

I've been watching a few different streamers of late play various games. Mainly cute girls. Unfortunately, I'm quickly running into the same problem I always have, which is one of frustration. I play a lot of games, and have since childhood, as have many others, so I am well aware of how basic game mechanics work. What annoys the crap out of me is how many gamers, even life-long ones such as I, can be so absolutely %&*$ing retarded. Now, I admit that many of the games I watch others play are, in fact, games I am well acquainted with, and know many of the secrets and tricks. It is frustrating watching others completely miss things that I know, but I can't blame them for that. I can, however, get bad-traffic-pissed when they ignore very obvious instructions or prompts and waste large chunks of time going in circles. If you're a brand new player to games, that's another thing entirely, but nearly every single person I've watched have been gaming for years and should know how things work in the game. Especially with the newer games that very clearly highlight things for you.

If you've played any number of games made in the past decade, you should know that something glowing is usually important and/or can be interacted with. A glowing rope or ledge means they can be climbed, while an item on the ground is to be picked up. Whenever a text box pops up, particularly early on, STOP AND READ THE DAMN THING. Whenever a game gives you some new gimmick, especially one that changes visuals, such as Batman's detective vision or Horizon New Dawn's analyzer, USE IT FREQUENTLY. I just watched a bit of a HZD playthrough by a particularly captivating woman, but had to eventually rage-quit because she kept making so many dumb decisions. She is clearly rather intelligent, but the constant overlooking of very obvious on-screen prompts royally pissed me off. I realize that different people have different styles and ways of looking at the world, but when you ignore even very basic tutorial stuff while simultaneously stating that you don't want to miss anything, I rage hard. There is a difference between being a newb and a n00b.

I'm reminded of watching a former roommate play through Fallout 4 while completely ignoring crafting of any kind, other than some building. The first few hours you can get by without improving your weapons and armor, but pretty quickly you start to fall behind, and that's exactly what started happening. I told him repeatedly that he was ignoring a rather important and critical aspect of the game, but he kept insisting that it was fine. And then he kept getting slaughtered by enemies. And getting very, very angry. He would lividly rage at the screen over how cheap enemies were. I was equally pissed at the utter stupidity. I think it took several weeks before I convinced him to improve his gear, and suddenly he thought it was great. I was like, dude, they clearly meant for this to be an integral part of the game from the very the outset, and you deliberately ignored it, then got angry when the game didn't work right. It's exactly the meme where the guy riding the bike sticks a stick through the spokes of his own tires. It's the willful, stubborn ignorance that so enrages me.

To be sure, when playing a new game, there are always a few things that give me difficulty in figuring out, but not many, and not for lack of reading every bit of instruction I can get my hands on. I've known so many people who will skip the introductory tutorials for a game, and then get frustrated when they can't figure out simple tricks the game taught IN THE TUTORIAL! It's like, what is wrong with people? I have decades of experience gaming, and that makes me ever more aware of needing instructions, not less. When I watch someone stream a game I've never played, and can tell in two seconds what the player should do, and they continue to miss it for minutes or hours, I become ever so annoyed, nay, pissed. I just don't understand how so many others don't, or can't, seem to learn basic things. Needless to say, I cannot watch play streams often, which is sad.

There are too many stories. Mainly I am referring to movies and tv. I read recently someone briefly expound on how our culture as a whole is fragmenting itself due to the glut of shared experiences. Thinking on it, I have to agree. We have certain memes and movies such that a large portion of society can share them, but how many shows/movies/games are there now compared to even a few decades ago? Throughout history, you would still have your share of in-jokes and memes, but there's never been a time of so many all at once, compounding, as we have more and more that are available to view at will. No more is there the shared moments of many millions watching a show or event because they'll only ever see it once. Well, mostly.

There are certainly shows more common of which most people are aware, like the Office or Friends, but fandoms continue to fragment. Some kids watch this streamer, or that. Some watch these shows or that, and all have complete control over what they watch and when. Gone (mostly) is the forced time slot that everyone has to watch at the same time. More, little remains of the boredom of waiting for another show to come on and watching something else in the meantime, potentially finding something new, or at least sharing an experience that others might have.

How many books, outside of Harry Potter and Shades of Grey, do people have in common as having read? Twilight and Percy Jackson maybe, but that's still a pretty low number.

This is not to say that there aren't many amazing stories. It is instead that there are too many for there to be universal, shared experiences to bring people together. Hmm.

I always agonize over subject lines. It's crazy difficult to go back and look for something you once wrote if they're all blank.

Been starting to get burned out at work again. I was right on the verge of seriously looking for a new job prior to Christmas time, but then we got this new system in, and all that faded away while I had the joys of learning something new. Figuring something out seems to make me really come alive at times, and this was definitely a great time. Boss actually took the time to let some of us sit down and just figure everything out. We had to, as while the company bought the thing, no one bothered to learn or teach the damn thing. They would just foist it off on one center, then a second, and really never even passed on half the things they did learn. Hell, I figured out how to do things in the first week that no one from the centers who'd had it for months did.

Honestly, being given the time to explore absolutely made a huge difference. Gave us the chance to tinker and figure out what we could and couldn't do. And when we run into problems, I still go exploring for better solutions. Sadly, now the honeymoon period has ended. Especially as what we can do has slammed into the wall of bureaucracy. The little fiefdom that is tech has started throwing walls into our path, going so far as to telling us that one of the most important, pivotal controls we can use to actually do our job is not allowed. All they would say, and tech is a group of the most terse, laconic people I've ever met, was that someone screwed something up once. Once. It didn't matter that I took the time to understand how to do it, that it's a basic and very simple process you only have to do once, or that it even has a wizard that does it all for you, noooooo. Thankfully my complaining about the stupidity of it reached receptive ears with my boss, and he's been pushing back to allow us some limited return of these controls, but damn.

I'm just really starting to chafe horribly under the numerous retarded restrictions of my job. Not to mention the stress of having too many jobs going at once, too much to do, too little control, too much responsibility without any of the authority that is supposed to accompany it, and so much endless bullshit that is ass-covering and needless bureaucracy. Blech, I hate corporate America. Every aspect of my company from the top down seems to be about blame shifting. Our company lets all of these client companies make insane, unreasonable, sometimes literally impossible jobs, and then the rest of us spend our days desperately attempting to make the bullshit happen, and getting in trouble when we can't. You ever try treating people like simple numbers to be manipulated en-mass? Good effing luck. And yet, somehow, every day we are unreasonably pressured, from the guys on the phones trying to get completed surveys, to the floor managers and supervisors trying to juggle people and completes, to QA trying to keep people from having a personality, to we in the back room trying to squeeze blood from the stones we are provided, to our boss who has to protect us from the higher ups who always want to fire everyone at the drop of a hat. Makes me want to spit.

I have, many times, spent hours after my jobs have finished for the day, simply writing up the same damn reports, explaining why the bullshit job we were given is not our fault for being bullshit. Oh sure, you gave us 50k numbers to call, but a quarter were bad (disconnected, wrong, fax, what have you), young people never answer their phones, certain states contain a lot of very dickish people, maybe there was a game on, and every quota that closes takes another chunk. Yeah, of those 50k, by the end of the day, we may only have like 100 to get those last few completes, and that's usually in the groups that are impossible to get. Couldn't get enough young hispanic males in this one area? Well now we're running out of time and it's all we can dial. Oh, and when our numbers take a dive, because trying hard things is hard, we then have to worry about how much money we're making. I don't swear a lot, but this job is definitely bringing it out of me frequently of late. And then when it's all over, and you start sighing with relief and wanting a drink even though you don't drink, then come the hour or so of daily reports. One everyone has to do, with ever increasing requirements, and then an additional one for every. single. job. that didn't do well. And they never do well. The harder your day, the longer the reports.

And we can never just say, hey, this job is exactly as bad as every single day prior, for the same exact reasons, and I refuse to rub more salt into these wounds any more. Nope. Those reports for poor results get seen by the clients and their intermediaries, and we can't ever effing tell them the truth, because they're bloody snowflakes who can't handle us telling them that their survey is garbage. Or, hey, maybe we just had a bad day where most folks in the center weren't feeling it and couldn't knock it out. Good luck not getting written up for saying we weren't magically awesome today. I have had so many reports when the real reason we did terribly was because the client gave us a garbage survey: opinionated, slanted, highly partisan, trying to force opinions, poorly written, long as shit, and usually frustrating. I think the most I've gotten away with is saying that the survey was problematic and was hindering some people from completing surveys. Even that got my boss to have to call me up and demand to know what I meant because they would have to explain in the daily company call that there might actually be something wrong. It's like, seriously?! The higher ups absolutely need to know this shit! How are we ever going to fix anything if they think all problems are our fault?

End rant...for now.

Why do people of late think that the government is the answer to everything? Starting with the founding fathers, there have been many generations of people who believed that limited federal government was the best way to go. One of the main reasons for the war with England was because the king was too controlling, taxing the people to death and requiring ridiculous things like the housing of soldiers. Yet, what do we find as the popular train of thought today? We want the government to handle everything for us. People have griped for years about how absolutely incompetent the government can be in handling things, from building things, to distributing money efficiently. And we want to give them more?! You know, there's a damn good reason for the second amendment to exist, and it's not because of hunting. It is there specifically so that the common people will always have the means of defending themselves against the government, should it ever become a bad one. I'm not saying our government is there yet, but I sure as hell don't want to help it get there by just handing every part of our lives over to them to control. That's just not a great idea.

Why you got to be like that, radio? So, like most people, I have a handful of favorite radio stations that I listen to in my day to day driving. Until just the other day, one of my top favorites was the station playing classical music. It was what I listened to when I couldn't take any more lyrics, or just wanted to calm. A few days ago, they suddenly stopped, and now all it seems to be is some sort of news channel. *weeps* I want my classical back!


* Okay, so I looked up the radio station, and it looks like they split into classical music and news, and the news gets the old radio address and the classical gets a new spot on the dial. Only, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it now or not, as they acknowledge that many people may not be able to hear it anymore. Bastards. I want music, not more damn news!

Slashdot linked to a rather interesting article (which itself links to another article, woo), regarding the state of the modern intellect and the effect the internet has had on our cognitive processes. Mostly it's a guy commenting, but he brought up some interesting points, and the conversation threads on Slashdot regarding said article has given me much to think about.

The basic argument a lot of people make is that while our general memorization skills have dramatically dwindled, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because the internet now gives us instant access to most any knowledge we could ever want. In essence, the internet has become the extension to our memory. Thus, the new form of intelligence is not necessarily focus on how much you can recall, but how well you can process and sort knowledge coming in from the internet. I disagree with this argument to an extent, and try to remember every bit of information that I can. However, I do agree that the ability to process is now a highly important skill to basic functioning.

However, there is a very large problem with this whole idea. The problem is that most people are actually using these enormous quantities of information in any sort of intelligent manner. They are not learning even the basic methods of sifting and sorting. If anything, this instant access to knowledge has made people far lazier and more stupid than ever before. It's as if the very possibility of accessing the knowledge is enough for people. I realize I'm generalizing, but it's a generalization based on my observations of many friends. And what I see is a distinct lack of interest in learning, or even finding things out. It's already out there, so they figure it's not important for them to look it up themselves. So not only do people not bother to learn the new skills, they don't even have the same amount of personally learned information that people used to have.

What the net has done is to make people lazy and complacent, and that is a terrible place to be in, especially when our connection is so very tenuous. If you've ever had the net cut out unexpectedly, you know just how much basic information you suddenly lose. You forget how to do even simple things because you can find it all online, so when it's gone, you suddenly find a number of tasks that you can't remember how to do anymore. So what happens if a large group of people suddenly lose this connection? Nothing but empty heads, bumping into each other...

I am thoroughly disgusted by the Palestinian/arab/muslim/terrorist mindset. I just read about an attack by a lone gunman on a Jewish seminary school in Jerusalem. The *expletive* opened fire on a dining room full of young men, killing 8 and wounding 8, before being killed himself. Now, that in of itself is terrible, as we all know from the school shootings we've had in this country; but it is not the worst part. The worst part is that when they heard the news in Palestine, they effing celebrated! They were passing out candy in the streets! I just want to swear a lot whenever I hear about this kind of mindset. When Israel retaliates for some attack, they are always super, super careful to have as few, if any, innocent casualties as possible. But those freaking terrorist bastards do nothing but aim for the innocents, the noncombatants, and the harmless. They revel in the pain, anguish and misery caused to innocent civilians. There will be much to account for on the day they face God, and it won't be the paradise they've been expecting, I can guarantee that.

Okay, so I get absolutely, furiously annoyed every time John Mayer's song Waiting On the World to Change starts to play. I used to think it was a pretty song, and I guess it still kind of is, but I simply cannot listen to its inane, and utterly retarded lyrics anymore. I don't really have the proper adjectives to describe just how foolish and empty-headed the message is. Does he know nothing of history? How can you not even notice what happened in the sixties, when massive changes occurred because the people would not sit back and wait? Waiting on the world to change? Give me a break. Hardly anything in this world ever gets better by waiting for it. It is the nature of most all systems to degrade without energy or effort put into it. It is as much true of physics as it is of social systems. Most all of the world's best changes have come about as a direct result of some small group of people, with often little power, who stood up and took a stand. How can you not realize that sitting back and waiting only ends with something worse than when you started? We have many examples from our very own history, such as black rights and womens' rights specifically because people, who felt as if they had no power to change things, didn't care and kept on moving until they did change things. Oh John Mayer, how could you know so little. He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

I dearly love what Orson Scott Card has to say about homework and its lack of usefulness. He even explains how studies done have shown that there is no noticeable connection between lots of homework and improved learning. Having gone through a pretty average public schooling, I have to agree with what he has to say about the current state of homework. Honestly, I was the guy who never missed a single homework assignment going through school, and I did fairly well on my tests, but I can honestly say that only a small fraction of the homework I did ever taught me anything.

In fact, I have learned more geography and history from cartoons and personal reading than anything ever taught or assigned in school. I learned more math from a few problems done in class than I ever did doing hundreds for homework. I may have learned a tiny bit, but it no where was worth the amount that I had to do. I remember struggling for hours every evening, trying to do a handful of AP physics problems, and never really understanding a whole lot better. Yet, in ten minutes of class, I could understand at least half of them due to some simple explanation. What's worse, homework never taught me how to learn and recall information. It only taught me how to look up specific words or phrases and to regurgitate it back for a test, never actually keeping more than a fraction of it. I'm paying for that now, coming out of 16-17 years of schooling and not recalling much of anything.

Although, I have to say I also have a problem with the way they sometimes teach in classes as well. I have a decently large vocabulary with absolutely no thanks whatsoever to school. Any knowledge of the intricacies of the language, such as parts of speech and grammar, I learned accidentally through all my reading. My education in proper grammatical structure and parts of speech I vaguely recall as being covered for a few minutes a day for like a week, back in middle school. That was it. I have friends in college who still can barely read. I honestly think we need to go back to the older ways of learning, such as by rote, song, and mnemonic devices. I mean, honestly, would anyone remember the color scale arrangement if it weren't for ROY G BIV? I've learned the majority of the countries of the world thanks to an old Animaniacs song. I remember Magellan because of them as well. I can remember nursery rhymes from when I was like seven easier than I can remember what I learned in high school, or heck, last year.

My long-winded two cents. Five cents or so, given inflation.

So I was flipping channels this afternoon during lunch, when I came across some channel with a sort of semi-documentary trip with Ashley Judd going to Africa to document the widespread terror that is AIDS. VH1 I believe. Anyway, it was rather interesting at times, but there was moment where Ashley Judd was reading this script for a commercial or speech she was going to give about AIDS (she speaks impeccable french btw, which I find unbelievably sexy) that I was rather struck by an annoying bit of irony. The irony being that she was reading/rehearsing the bit that talked about abstinence, about how kids should wait for marriage. This, of course, is not only absolutely true, and if done by everyone, would greatly wipe out, or decrease, the number of AIDS cases in Africa. There was no crap about condoms making it safe, because come on, they really aren't all that safe when it comes to AIDS/HIV.

What I found terribly hypocritical though, was that when people go to, or are in Africa, they realize that abstinence really does matter, and that maybe it's something worth considering. I've heard of various college campuses in Africa where thousands of students show up to pledge abstinence, because they've seen first-hand the devestation that AIDS has caused. The hypocricy lies in that such ideas are completely scoffed at here in the US, and that some of the very celebrities speaking up at its virtues over there, come back here only to make another movie or show involving lots of casual sex, sending the exact opposite message of what they said elsewhere. It's not like we're somehow different here. The number of STD cases percentage-wise in this country is astounding. The number one STD, which affects nearly half of all sexually active people (47% to be precise), can be transmitted simply through contact with the the affected region, and has become the number one cause of cervical cancer. But I digress. I'm just annoyed at the difference in messages and reactions to said messages we get.