WalMart goes down!

Yeah, I wish, but this is a start. Disappointing sales on Black Friday is a sign that WalMart is beginning its path down to destruction. Keep on the boycotting of WalMart! Weeeeeee!

Waking up to Christmas

It's that time of year again. Time to go shopping. Time to drink egg nog. And certainly time to listen to christmas music. Yes, all the classics can be heard on the airwaves such as: Jingle Bells, First Noel, Christmas In Hollis. One of my fave newer ones is Trans Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)". I just love the newer sound to the classic song. While these are all nice to hear when you're fully awake, it's not something you want to listen to when you first wake up.

Right now, our clock alarm is set to 97.5 which used to be OK 95. In November, they switched to 97.9. That's all fine and dandy (please go listen to them, much better than 98.3 the Key and you can listen to them on the Internet through the above link). However, I'm to lazy to switch the radio station. Now that it's after thanksgiving, 97.5 is playing constant christmas music until christmas. Now, every morning when I use the alarm to wake up, I get an earfull of christmas music. That music makes me want to get up as fast as I can to turn it off. It works quite well actually.

Man, I think I hit a wall or something. I guess that's all I got right now. Remember, if you want to wake up in the morning, set your alarms to 97.5 and get Xmas music piped to your mind. Wakes you up like coffee.

What were we watching?

Sometimes, young boys and girls will be watching an innocent kids show. And sometimes, kids shows aren't so innocent like this show from the late 70s from the UK. Watch the clip, read the script. Giggle if you want. :)

DDR is the Devil!

My calves hurt. All for my love of DDR. Today we had a games day at WSU. I helped out. It was fun. I played DDR several times through the day. I continue to like the faster songs such as Candy. Today I tried doing it on standard. I did ok actually. I think I pulled down C's each time I did it. I'm happy I got my legs going in the directions they needed to go 70% of the time. But as I said above, my legs hurt up something fierce. I hope they will work tomorrow. heh

Anyway, that's it for now. Until next time.

Cosplay Supreme!

Eh, you know you're a anime whore when you want to dress up as characters from your favorite anime program. A lot of you know I'm a geek who loves his anime. I think I read somewhere that anime is like crack, but far more expensive. It's true. I really can't get enough. And now I want to dress up. *sigh*

I've been thinking of doing one of a few characters. Here's a list:

• Wario


• Inuyasha from Inuyasha


• Folken from Vision of Escaflowne

The theme for this next RadCon is villains. While Inuyasha would not fall into that category, I don't have any ideas for villains. Yes, there's Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and the rest of the Star Wars baddies. Star Wars is kind of late 70's to me now. As in it is showing its age. Other villains I have thought of include:

• The Ring Wraiths from LOTR


• Sauron from LOTR (I think that is right)


• Raistlin from Dragonlance books


• Megatron from Transformers

So, yeah. I can't think of anything else right now. I'm looking for a somewhat easy costume to do and in a fantasy realm. It doesn't have to be some character. I could be just some generic badass. heh I guess I should mention if you have an idea, please feel free to let me know about it in the comments.

Anyway, I'm tired now....can't sleep again...bah. So, until next time.

ah crap

So, lately my blog has been responding kind of slow. I chalked it up to technology. Actually, my blog has feelings and it errr...she was hurt. I missed our one year anniversary. Yes, I know. I'm a schmuck. I was more concerned about getting the 200th post than that special day we shared a year ago this month. I don't know what to do. I may be in the dog house for a long time. I guess time will heal this wound. I'll make it up to her on the 200th post. I promise, baby.

Something Evil, Update

It would appear that back in July, a class action lawsuit began against EA. This is good news, however the class part of it is still pending. More EA employees need to respond. Lets hope for cubicle revolt! Viva La Office!

Something Evil, this way comes

It's already here, actually. I just read this article by a spouse who's SO works at EA at some programming type job. I've always known about the longer hours that the games industry normally has compared to the 9 to 5 world of database programming, but this article really brings out an extreme case that doesn't seem to be the rare exception. It seems very much like the norm.

For those of you not in the know, EA is this huge publisher of games for a several different platforms including PC, XBox, PS2, and Gamecube. Their games range from the popular The Sims to the all the serial sports games. There's a splattering of other types of games in there too. I don't know them all right now, but I think I will start to make a list of all EA published/produced games for obvious reasons.

According to the article, the SO got a job at EA and started working normal 40 hour weeks. Then, what the management called "pre-crunch mode", he began to work a required 6 day, 8 hour/day work week. That was only the beginning. Pre-crunch turned to a heavy crunch mode of almost 90 hour weeks. It would appear in some version of the labor laws, software developers are exempt from getting overtime pay. So, the SO is only getting his normal salary for the extra 50 hours he puts in. And would you believe the xmas bonus is out of the question?

This is one of the many problems of working for a publicly traded game development company. The profits is all that matters and everybody below the executives bend over, like it, and always ask for more. This is probably the norm for other public companies as well, but I'd like to just stick with EA and their horrible unethical treatment of their assets.

In the comments of the source article, some people had called out for a boycott of EA games. Doing a search, I could not find an actual movement to hit EA where it would really hurt. Am I actually suggesting a boycott of EA? I don't know. I am torn between hurting the mechanical monster and, at the same time, hurting the innocents working within the machine. The games industry is a highly competitive section of entertainment filled with huge publishers who like nothing more to gobble up the smaller, innovated companies. The employees that EA would dump should they actually feel the effect of a boycott would have to merge into some other behemoth that would probably do the same thing to them. Or they live off some sort of unemployment. Neither doesn't sound good to me. Doing nothing is worse though.

From this, what I can do is stop buying games produced by EA until they change their practices. Though this won't ever hurt them. What I'm also going to do is start a list of EA produced products that I will maintain for the use of my readers to see which games EA has produced. It is up to you to buy them or not. If you simply must have this game and can with a clear conscience accept the fact the product you want was produced through 90 hour work weeks, go ahead and get it. Water off my back.

I really hope I don't have the chance to read more about this happening at other game publishers. I like playing games and I'd hate to be forced by their labor practices to make games for myself. Oh, I want to do that already. heh Really, think about it. This is just a step that we as consumers can control what we get instead of closing our eyes and offering our hands.

SWEET!

February is fast approaching. And you know what that means! Radcon time! That's right! Radcon, the premier geek fest for the Tri-Cities will be here in 3 short months. So, plans I'm a making.

Some of you remember my antics from last year, well earlier this year. How about me on mars? Or about my report from Radcon? Yeah, good times. Now I'm getting ready for the second wave of fun! This year I'm helping out on the Radcon website on the forum. I'm exicited about that. I've already done up some graphics for it. I rock! I'm thinking of doing a costume but that's still in an early stage. I may not do it.

Well, if you want to go to Radcon this year, drop me a note. It would be cool to have a whole posse to hang there. hah

Millions of voices crying out in pain...then suddenly silenced

What about 54 million american voters felt this week. Including myself. Damn, why does it always turn out this way? Why? Oh well...What the hell is anybody gonna do about it? Oh? What did you say? Call an impeachment for an illeagal invasion into a country that had mythical WMD? But then that would lead to the second worst guy in the america to be up. I wonder if we can get a two-for-one deal. Sounds like a plan.

I had another post about this topic, but the moment I clicked on Publish, the internet gave out and all I got was a lump of coal...not even a lump of coal. haha Oh well...I'll try to be more creative next time.