D0dN

We have a policy at my company: No cameras allowed.
It’s a pretty clear policy, fairly unambiguous: No cameras are allowed. If it is a camera, it’s not allowed. Because cameras, of any sort, aren’t allowed.

We got ourselves another noob today, some fellow from one of ours sister companies. Visiting until Friday, doing some research into some project or another. Nothing too major, but because he is who he is, and he’s working on what he’s working on, the powers that be thought it’d be a great idea to do whatever was needed to allow him to bring his company laptop with him, so he’d have something to work on.

Well, he did. He was just about to come on up, whens someone decided to ask him – one last time (making it a total of three times since he arrived on property) if he had any cameras, or camera phones. Well, no – but he did have a webcam in his company laptop.
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When the hell did this happen? When did we, as a society, decide to drop the “e” from the word axe? How the hell long has this been going on, and why was I not informed?

Ax? Really? Is that a word we actually want to use? It looks wrong, too short and, well, kind of silly.

I’m sorry, people, but I refuse to go along with this insanity.

Friday the 6th was my 30th birthday, and it was grand.

Nadia got me an awesome cake, a nice new blue dress shirt shirt, a great watch, a pac-man t-shirt and a cool laptop bag. Lots of great loot from my great and wonderful girl.

We had lunch together at [Insert Name of Restaurant Here], nice little Japanese place with great food, and later that night we had dinner with my folks at Tommy Bahamas, followed by watching The Vampires Apprentice – a surprisingly good movie.

The following morning we went to GameWorks with Rosenberg and Coldiron, and stayed there pretty much the whole day playing games, drinking beer, and harassing Sonic. We followed that up with a trip to The Yard House, for more beer, some shots, and good eats. Then we hit Borders, did some wandering and coffee drinking, and headed back home.

All told, it was a darn good birthday.

Sometimes I buy, and read, comics. I’m a bit of a geek, and this is a normal activity practiced by geeks for several generations. It could be said that reading comic books is a mainstay of geek heritage.

Superman, arguably, helped define both the modern comic book, and the modern superhero. He is also one of the most famous of the comic characters, and the most well known superheroes. His back story – in general – is pretty much known by everyone: Last(ish) survivor of the distant planet Krypton, he fights for truth, justice and the American way!

In other words, he’s an optimistic boyscout, embodying all that is good and right, mixing a child-like sense of trust and optimism with the powers of a god. Really, it’s no wonder he’s so damn popular.

Which makes the recently released Superman: Secret Origins a real bummer of a book. Read the rest of this entry →

An Open Letter to Gabe Newell

Dear Gabe Newell,

Hi, how are you? I’m fine. The weather is finally cooling off, which is nice – won’t have to run the AC as often, which in these harsh economic times means I might be able to save a bit of cash.

But, enough small talk – this isn’t a social call. No, I’m actually writing you (or pretending to write to you via my blog) in order to register a formal complaint on the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on the XBox 360.

This product is, sadly, buggy and not at all worth the seven dollars you are charging for it. Oh, I’ve read the sob story that Microsoft forced you into charging for the content, that you wanted it to be free but Microsoft made you charge for it… And that’s fine, that’s understandable, I suppose. They want you to charge for it, well… charge for it. But a whole seven bucks? For a level that takes less than half an hour to complete, and is full of bugs? I’d expect this from Bethesda, but not you. You made Portal, one of my favorite games of all time, and the Half-Life series of games, which are astounding.

And you also made… This. This pile of crap. Read the rest of this entry →