Oddball Update

Egad! I’ve said “Christmas”! That means I’m being religiously insensitive to the needs of others, such as those who belong to the Church of the God of the Toilet Paper and People Who Worship Total and Utter Ignorance! But since the Oddball Update has never been about catering to the masses—I believe “Screw the Lowest Common Denominator” used to be one of our slogans around here, at least during a former life—I couldn’t care less about that, so let’s just pretend nobody ever brought it up.

Anyway, welcome to a very special Oddball Update. “Special” because I haven’t posted anything here in far too long so I’m packing all of this crap into a single entry, which is really quite ridiculous. So maybe I should call it a very ridiculous Oddball Update instead. Whatever.

Already my wife and I have received one really cool Christmas gift this year. My grandmother (at the suggestion of my parents) got us a 12-month gift subscription to Netflix, that service where you can rent DVDs by mail with no due dates. My wife had the idea to get my dad the same thing for his birthday a few months ago, and ever since then, both he and my mom have been loving it. Hearing them talk about it, I secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly, once you take into account the hints I started dropping) wished we could get in on the Netflix fun too. Well now we can. Last night my wife and I added a whole bunch of movies to our queue. And finally, I’m about to see the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because I’m a closeted dork who never likes to buy into the hype when it’s popular, but rather, prefers to sneak off and enjoy the mainstream crap later after everyone else has forgotten about it. (But I’ve still never seen Titanic, and I swear to God I never will.)

Seeee-cret raiiiders…who will neutralize! Soon as theyyyyy arrive (hit the site)! Uh…whoa. Sorry. The M.A.S.K. theme just pops up now and again. I’ve tried to suppress it, but really…but really!

I’m feeling a bit psycho today. I dunno…it’s a good day. I haven’t had a real, honest-to-God good day in a while, so it’s like being amped up on narco-stims. The result is a whole bunch of random babblage that makes no sense. As such I’ve checked the “Off the Cuff” category from the selection box. It wasn’t there originally. Honest it wasn’t. But this update sort of…changed, you see.

Let’s see. It’s what…Wednesday? That means tomorrow night is our company Christmas party. Ohhhh boy. Well, unlike the nice, quiet, casual little shindig we had last year at the boss’ community clubhouse, this year we’re having a “major, full-out thing” (sorry, that’s a stupid little expression I coined one day in 1993 and which hasn’t let go of my conscious memory since) at the nearby La Playa club. Or community. Or resort. Honestly, I don’t know what La Playa is, except to say that it’s very hoity-toity and expensive. There’s even going to be live entertainment, although it’s apparently a secret who this entertainment is. Additionally, the dress code is quite formal. Which is really a joke, considering that about half of our employees typically wear stuff like jogging shorts and ripped T-shirts to work.

I don’t really like formal affairs. Unfortunately I had the poor sense to sign right up for the occasion before I heard the details. Honestly I don’t think it’s going to be bad or anything, it’s just that after most days at the office, there’s nothing I want more than to go home and do stuff that’s about as informal as possible. But I noticed the official “schedule” for the party this year is only from 7 to 10 p.m., so apparently La Playa charges by the hour or something, so it’s not going to be an extended outing. I might even get home in time to play some Doom Doomy Doom. Yes, I dusted off Doom 3 over the weekend, since I never finished it. I mean, I went to hell and everything, and never bothered to see old Flynn Taggart back out. (I believe Flynn Taggart was the name given to the original Doom marine back in the nineties, in the little-read series of Doom novels. Does anyone care? I doubt it.)

So, Doom. Yes, I started playing again. After Half-Life 2, the whole vibe was really weird. The game was just totally different. I also thought it was much more irritating than before. I mean, monsters just flying at you, jumping out of nonsensical places, spawning both in front of and behind you…basically just “annoy the shit out of you” tactics. Now that I’ve made it back from Hell and returned to the Delta Complex, I’ve got Archviles and those “tentacle bags” flying at me, not to mention a whole shitload of little spiders that like to fly at you from across the map. It’s also way too frigging dark, even when I play with all the lights off and the SuperBright mode of my monitor activated. Maybe it’s the new ATI drivers. I’ve decided that ATI’s drivers are only optimized for one game at any one time. Want to play Doom? Use the 4.9’s. Want to play Half-Life 2? Use the 4.12’s. Want to play KOTOR? Buy an nVidia card, because ATI breaks something different about KOTOR every damn time they release a new set of drivers. Anyway, I find that I’m still really digging the atmosphere of Doom 3, which is good. But I miss the ultra-realism and the nice framerates of HL2. Yes, I said nice framerates. With antialiasing on, even! Now if I could just get HL2 to crash as often as Doom…read, never. We’d have the perfect game then.

LAAAAAAAAA da daaaaaa…oh, God. Another ancient reference. That awful singing I just had in my head was one of the RemoteRidicule sounds from Rise of the Triad, believe that or not. Shit. When is Duke Nukem Forever going to come out? It’s been far too long since somebody made a game with RemoteRidicule. (Funny, though—RemoteRidicule is hardly necessary anymore in this day and age, where we can just strap on a headset and talk live to the people we’re playing against. How many other anachronisms are there in the very features of Duke3D, I wonder?)

Shortly after Christmas, my parents are driving down from Detroit to hang out here for a little while. My dad may not know it yet, but I have a little automotive project I’d like to ask for his help in. My ‘89 Formula needs some new taillights, bad. The silly “CANDY-LIKE!” taillights they put on the base Firebirds and Formulas after 1986 leave a lot to be desired—in fact, my wife would prefer I not drive the car during the day, because it’s that hard to tell when your lights are on. The sun has a way of just lighting up the whole rear lamp bar, so if your third brake light does not function (as mine doesn’t), it’s not terribly obvious that you’re stopping. Combine that with some dude behind you who isn’t paying attention, and you got problems.

So anyway, the project is to swap the taillights out for a set of smoked Trans Am lamps from 1982. I have the lamps themselves as well as three ‘82 wiring harnesses (although only one harness is complete; the rest have been hacked up and cannibalized piecemeal for reasons I can only begin to fathom). The goal is to remove the existing lamps and harness, and pop in the old ones—but because the lamp configuration is different, some minor rewiring needs to be done. Most complex will be the fact that I have to cut off two of the running light sockets from the old harness and splice in two larger (dual-filament) sockets in their place. The first order of business will be to pick up a 12-volt AC-to-DC power supply so I can actually test the flippin’ thing before I hack up my car. But the wiring doesn’t look terribly fun so I’m hoping my dad can provide some insight (and maybe even some assistance in making a few old fashioned Western Union pigtails).

I don’t know what’s going on with this year, but December is going by just way too fast. I’ve still gotta get a few more Christmas gifts. Then there’s the people at work…should I buy some gifts for some of them? I’m losing control, because there’s practically no money left in the budget and I don’t know what to buy for these folks anyway. ARRRRRRRRRR. I don’t want to be a scrooge. Maybe some nice gift certificates to some local shops. That sounds like a good idea. Everybody likes McDonald’s McGift McCertificates, right? (Just kidding. I do have at least some class.)

It’s chilly here lately. For south Florida, at least. It was about 35-40 degrees early this morning. I’m not sure what it is now, but I hear it’s in the low fifties. Inside my office, however, it’s about 20 degrees. I swear to Christ it is freezing in here. The stupid sods have the A/C on full blast and it took me about four hours this morning before I could even feel my fingers. It’s actually warmer outside than it is in here. I actually had to kick on our furnace this morning, because I was freezing my ass off in bed. Had to stay rooted to one spot underneath the blanket, because if you moved your foot an inch to the left, you’d hit this FRIGID sheet which would turn your blood into ice. Of course, part of this could be because we had the window cracked slightly. No more of that overnight! Of course, my computer is loving this. I leave the window open in the computer room and the thing idles nearly 7 degrees (Celsius) cooler than usual. It’s like a nice cold air induction on your car. Good for performance.

The mood at work has been a rollercoaster lately. Some days you want to take a dive off the roof. Other days (like today) everything is spiffing and you’re getting a lot done. The Project o’ The Week has been the company Christmas card. This year we’re sending an email around to all of our clients (in addition to sending real, hand-addressed cards) wishing them a happy holiday. The CEO’s idea was to take a group picture of all our employees (there’s only like 30 of us) and include it in the email. I swear I have spent a week on this photo. Some people did not show up on picture day, and still others showed up in clothes that I wouldn’t be seen wearing in the local Big Lots. I bet you can guess what’s coming, right? I had to Photoshop all these people into the picture. But that wasn’t all.

First, you have to understand that the people in my company absolutely DESPISE having their picture taken. I imagine this is not far from the usual behavior of employees at your average company. The women are all self-conscious and try to hide behind each other, and the men think it’s stupid and spend most of the time making silly faces and chuckling like goofwads. Then there’s always one (non gender specific) employee who WILL NOT leave his desk, so he must be chastised, cajoled and eventually dragged from his seat. So when you can actually get like 80% of the people in the frame and settled down enough to photograph, you wail on the shutter as fast as you can—and take as many shots as you can grab—before the whole group explodes from the unbearable friction of actually not screwing around for five seconds. The end result was that, of course, there were some people missing from the photo, or making weird faces, or squinting.

I had to begin by adding one of our most beloved customer service reps to the photo digitally, because she was on a client call when we took the picture. Did that. Then the chief sales guy comes to the realization that he isn’t in the photo because he wasn’t in the office that day, so he’s gotta be added. Then we have to add two of our developers who didn’t make it either. And lastly, the CEO comes in and says he doesn’t like how this one tarball from the operations department is sitting right up front in his manky T-shirt and flip-flops, with his hairy legs reflecting every bit of luminosity from the camera flash. The boss says, “Can you put some pants on that guy? Oh, and some shoes. And a collar shirt maybe?” Uhhh…okay. How about this instead—I take a picture of the chief of finance, who also wasn’t around that day, and just drop her in in place of MankyMan? Sounds good. Let’s do it.

So I take individual photos of each of these missing people, then magically add them to the picture. Of course, it didn’t all happen in one fell swoop. I received the instruction to do each of these people one after the other. Oh, we gotta add her. Okay, did it. Cool, right? No wait—we gotta add this guy. Okay, did it. Looks awesome. WAAAAIT! This guy’s missing! Can we add him in? …And so on. I’ve been going around and around with this thing all week. I’ve widened the canvas on the damn photo because the frame wasn’t big enough to fit all these additional bodies. But finally, I finished it all up, and I must say, it is a masterpiece of Photoshoppery. You can’t even tell these people were added. Of course, you know what they say—give an inch, take a mile, right? So once people saw that I could do this stuff with such precision, they started asking me to remove their fat lines, or the wrinkles from their shirt, or enhance their boobs. Okay, just kidding. Nobody asked for a digital boob job. But it was about the only request I didn’t hear.

The “Christmas photo escapade” had me stressing out for most of the week, but in the end I’m very pleased with the work I accomplished. The “photo director” chick was so happy with how everything turned out that she bought me a big jar of M&Ms. That was really cool! Of course, it’s so damn cold in here, the M&Ms are hard as rocks and they feel like ice cubes when you bite down on them. I think I’ll save them for later. (I just gotta remember to hide them, or people will be coming by and stealing them.)

Oh—last night was the 2004 Video Game Awards on SpikeTV, wasn’t it? I didn’t watch them. I originally thought I might, but in my heart it was only because I wanted to see if Pontiac would run a new commercial for the 2005 GTO. In the end I figured all the rappers and wrestlers and shizz wasn’t worth my time. They’re rerunning the event on Saturday anyway. But I’m curious now, so I’m going to go see who won. I actually voted, because I was bored one day, so I know there are a lot of categories. Maybe I’ll pick some of the choice highlights from the results here. Let’s see.

Game of the Year: GTA San Andreas. Yeah, that’s cool.

Cyber Vixen of the Year: BloodRayne from BloodRayne 2. I knew this was going to happen. She appeared topless in Playboy, for God’s sake. Yes, let me say that again in case you didn’t catch me the first time. A VIDEO GAME BABE APPEARED TOPLESS IN PLAYBOY. A big-boobed (well, what other kind of video game babe is there), red-headed vampire topless babe who likes to kill Nazis, in fact. Now that’s…unique.

Pontiac GTO Best Driving Game: Somehow, Burnout 3 won this. I voted for Need For Speed: Underground 2, which also, ironically, happens to be the only game the Pontiac GTO was actually in. I’ve also played Burnout 3 (it’s an Xbox game), and returned it after a couple hours’ play. Yeah.

Designer of the Year: Jason Jones of Halo 2. The entire Halo design team is just a bunch of really awesome dudes, so I’m pleased to see this.

Best First Person Action: Halo 2. Wow…I’m actually blown away. This was up against Doom 3, HL2, Far Cry and a couple others. Halo 2 is a great game—and part of an even greater fictional universe—but I haven’t spent nearly as much time on it as I have Doom and HL2. But then I’m a PC gamer at heart.

Best PC Game: Half-Life 2. Of the choices presented, I’d have to agree. Even if it bites my balls that the damn thing crashes on me quite regularly, and that Steam has got to be the worst implementation of a content delivery system that I’ve ever seen. HL2 also took top honors for Best Graphics.

Okay, so those are my mini-highlights of the Spike video game awards. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Deep Space Nine.

Wow, it’s almost four o’clock. I want to leave the office in a major way. Tonight is going to be game night, I think. I’ll see if I can get back into Doom. I was getting a bit discouraged last night because everything kept KILLING ME, big time. It’s obvious I’ve gotten a bit rusty. I’m thinking of going back to the beginning of the game and starting over so as to more properly get back into the mood.

All right, time for me to wrap this up!

Categorized as Life