We Yell for You

Just showing off some of my awesome MS Paint skills.  You are all jealous.  Don’t lie.  The protagonist here is how we all generally feel.  At first, the other person was just going to be the random public at large that makes us all want to yell, but, in “honor” of M. Night Shyamalan, I thought I would go with the twist ending there.  He could probably use it for the plot of his next movie, it would make about as much sense.

 Click on the comic to load it where you can actually see it.  Once we find a different theme, we will be able to put comics in a better format.

I’ve never linked to anyone before, but this guy pretty much embodies everything we stand for here.  He does throw in a splash of what is good about things, which we will likely be doing soon, but for the most part, he really tells you why things (even things you think are good) stink:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/24-Call-of-Duty-4

You know, I said we were back, but heck, it has been ages since we posted anything!!  I promise we do have plans to come back. :)  It will be soon enough as there are lots of things out there to yell about!  Get ready for a new theme to the site, a possible comic, and a different perspective to what we do here.

Well, I’m back from a few days off that I took for the Christmas break and it is dang hard to get back in the “groove” of things.  It is so great to take some time off, not think of anything, relax, etc. etc., but it is almost cruel to come back!  I think that is one of the reasons that a lot of people end up not using all their vacation time.  I know I’m losing about 5 days this year that I should have taken.  Now, I’m losing it because I didn’t even know I had it till it was rather late in the year, but at the same time, taking that time off and coming back is just hard on a person.  I suppose that isn’t the real issue though, I’m back, I’m ready to go home, but I need to work.  My mind keeps drifting to those few days of relaxing that I had, but are suddenly snapped back to reality when an issue is brought to my attention.  I’m sure everyone knows where I’m coming from!

Gout makes me want to shout (pardon the cheesy rhyme)!  Seriously though, medical aliments that attack without warning are very uncool.  Being 27, sitting on the couch and then standing up to feel like you need a cane to walk is not a good feeling.  I understand that the gout will go away, eventually, much faster if I eat properly, and that many people have things that will never go away and are much more debilitating and I know you want to yell about those things.  Feel free to let it all out.  Yell until you feel better.  My foot is already starting to feel a bit better.

Since NES days, pressing start means you are pausing the game.  There are/were some exceptions to the rule, every now and then you would run into that rare game that didn’t want to pause with a press of the start button.  I suppose the believe it made it more challenging (which it does…).   My complaint today is very simple.  When you are playing one of the 99% of games that does support a pause function, it should pause the games internal clock as well.  For instance, I like to keep track of how long I’ve been playing a game.  Not only to see how long it takes to beat the game, but to make sure I don’t waste too much of my life playing videos games.  Well, it seems that the majority of RPG’s that I have played lately seem to let the internal clock run on when the game is paused.  Oblivion is the latest of such games.  This morning I played for a few minutes, then paused it while I ate breakfast and had some coffee.  Twenty minutes later, I come back to see that 20 minutes have actually passed on my game clock.  So not cool.  Fix it.

OK, so first things first, I was very fortunate to be given an Xbox 360 by my mother in law the other day as my Christmas present.  I did not think that I would own a 360 for a while simply because I was quite satisfied with my Wii and did not feel like spending the additional money.  One of the games it came with is Forza Motorsport 2, which is a pretty in-depth racing game similar to Gran Turismo.  So, long story short is you start up your racing career, buy an initial car, win some races, get cars, win cars, etc.  After every single race and just about every other action you do, you have to pause for about 3 or 4 seconds while the game is auto saved.  Someone might think this is a good feature, but, after about the 30th time it happens in the course of one sitting, it is VERY annoying.  All those little pauses add up and slow down the game play.  That isn’t the worst part about it though, if you do something you don’t intend to do/you want to do a few things to try them out (like buying a new car or upgrading your car to see how it runs), it auto saves and you cannot undo (or so I haven’t found) what is done.  In the other games like this I have played, you can experiment all you want, then load your old save game back up and you are good to go without the loss of in game money.  It is very frustrating to do something, only to have the auto save to kick in and, not only does it take 3 to 4 seconds from your life, whatever you just did cannot be undone!

Oh yeah, and speaking of Microsoft, you are doing it again, you are trying to restart my computer for me with a silly timer after a patch was applied.  STOP IT!

I hate the cold.  I live in area with usually cold to me winters.  Those people up north would probably think its summer here right now.  We had a bad ice storm come through on Sunday.  More than half a million people have lost electricity.  They are estimating anywhere from 2 to 10 days for everyone to have electricity again.  I lost electricity for about 30 hours.  It just came back on a little while ago.  This is the second ice storm that I have been effected by.  The first ice storm back in 2002.  I was out of electricity for about ten days.  With all your appliances being electric it is pretty rough.  It’s not the cold that gets me it’s the not having a hot shower and the boredom that really brings me down.

I moved two years ago and I’m still changing my address with people.  It is tax season coming up and I will need some tax info from a business that I have an account with.  So, I call them up to change my address.  When you enter there automated system it asks you to enter your social security number.  Then I had to go through three sets of menu to actually get to the option of changing my address.  An associate answers my call and asks me how he can help me.  I tell him I would like to change my address.  He asks what my old address is.  Heck I can’t remember that was two years ago and I only lived there for a year.  He then started playing the guessing game with me.  He asked me if I could tell him anything about the old address.  Well I told him the street, town, state, and zip code.  That was not good enough for him.  Apparently my social security number is not private enough.  You have to tell them you former address that is on junk mail and in a phone book to identify yourself.  He then asks about my former employer which is how I obtained this account.  He asks me various questions about the employer.  All of my answers still did not satisfy him.  The final question was what is your middle initial.  I tell him the answer and he lets me go ahead and change my address.  So, if you would like to change my address with these people just pick up some of my old junk mail that has all of the required info.

I believe this book is also called the Northern Lights in the UK, where it was first printed (and written for that matter).  I’m currently reading it and I intend on seeing the movie.  So, as you may have guessed, I’m not yelling about the book, I’m yelling about the people that are yelling about the book.  First things first, I’m a Christian, thus I believe in God, not to mention, I like (love) the books by C.S. Lewis.  With that said, I know that this book and the other books by Philip Pullman, who is a very outspoken atheist, are certainly not pro-religion.  I believe that he most likely wrote them to just have something, more or less, opposite to the Narnia series by Lewis.  That is fine.  He can write what he wants, we should not oppress views in books and it is driving me crazy to hear all these people trying to get everyone to boycott his movie, not read his books, etc.  If your children are influenced so much by movies and fictional books that they stop believing in whatever faith they happen to be, you have a lot bigger problems to worry about.  Perhaps you should spend less time spreading rumors and trying to get people to boycott a movie/books and spend more time with your children.  Even the Archbishop of Canterbury knows better (Wikipedia).