HOLY CRAP!
Alright, so you’ve seen our house, right? It’s nothing to brag about and it’s hardly big. It’s a SMALL house. Well just got our gas bill for December. $182! Holy cow! And that’s with the furnace set at 65 and turning it maybe to 70 when we had guests over. That’s just insane. I know the old house isn’t very well insulated, but c’mon! Guess we’re going back to our electric heaters!
Gamespot takes a hit to their credibility.
From Penny-Arcade:
For those that aren’t familiar, Gamespot is a site dedicated mostly to reviewing video games before their release and passing those opinions on to consumers so they can make more informed decisions.
Apparently one of the editors, Jeff Gerstmann, gave a sub-par review to a game called Kane & Lynch for the XBox360. The developer of the game has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with Gamespot along advertising this one game. Coincidentally shortly after the review went live the video review was pulled and Gerstmann was promptly fired without reason. Say what you will but it looks like the stink of it is, you aren’t supposed to give a bad review to a game that is brining in lots of ad revenue.
I honestly hadn’t even heard of the Gerstmann fellow until this story came about. I just don’t run in the game editorial circles anymore I guess. Supposedly he’s had some pretty controversial reviews to high profile games in the past. Some people love him some people are glad to see him go. Fact of the matter is, this isn’t about Gerstmann. Its not even about the gaming industry alone. It’s about objectiveness in reviewing a product, be it a blender, or a new car. If an advertiser is able to pressure a company into fluffing a review in order to boost it’s sales of that product, and then the publisher in turn sells that review to the reader as an “objective” opinion, the review is nothing more than a long winded advertisement.
Its just another example of corporate mismanagement and bottom line thinking. You’re selling out the credibility of your publication if you fire the guy at all. And even IF you decide he must be fired, the timing has made the decision so transparent that you could have done more harm by letting the person go than if you hadn’t. Its long been a suspicion of readers that the people that review the products (or the publishing company) gets some sort of kickback, or incentive to paint a more colorful picture to the public. Unfortunately this event all but proves that it can and DOES happen.
11.25.07N “” key.
I’m ver at my buddy Justin’s huse. We’re just hanging ut prlly ging t play sme Guitar Her. I have t keep my ne pst a day up but his keybard has n “” key.
I guess yu never realize hw imprtant f a letter it is until yu can’t use it!
Trick or Treat-ing Vultures
So Halloween has come and gone this year. And the Scrooge that I am, I decided I didn’t want to hand out any Halloween candy this year. Its not that I don’t love the kids, its just that I didn’t really feel like sitting by the front door for 3 hours waiting for kids to show up. So I made sure when I got home I didn’t turn the porch light on so these Trick or Treaters didn’t get the wrong idea. After all, I didn’t even have any candy in the entire house to give away!
So I get home from work yesterday evening around 7:00 or so and head out back the let the dog out of her pen and run around a bit before I let her in the house. After I get settled in a bit I flip the back porch light on so I can go get the dog’s dishes and let the dog on. I grab the bowls and head back in to clean all the leaves out. No longer than 3 minutes later there’s a knock at the back door! Trick or Treaters!
“Are you handing out candy?” They ask.
“Uhh…well I didn’t think you’d see the back porch light,” I said, a little miffed that they had the audacity to even ask. Even these kids knew there was something a little off about going to someone’s back door asking for Halloween candy or else they wouldn’t even have had to ask. But with a smile on my face I just said, “I don’t have any candy but let me see what I can dig up.”
I recanted my childhood memories of digging through my Halloween candy knowing full well that every kid remembers exactly where they got the best treat that night, and the worst treat. I was bound and determined not to be the worst treat. Ritz crackers? No! That won’t work! Sugar, I need something with lots of sugar! The clock was ticking and the dog outside on her leash was getting more insane with each passing moment these strangers were on the back steps. Suddenly I spotted it. It might actually work! A box POP-TARTS®! Please, please, please let there be two pouches of pastry goodness inside the box... Victory! But what would the kids think about Pop-Tarts® as their treat? Wait a second…I don’t care, they shouldn’t have come knocking in the first place!
“Ohh COOL! Pop-Tarts®! Thanks!” they said.
Mission accomplished and lesson learned. If you don’t have something to give away, don’t let a single outside light burn on your house. Don’t even light a candle on a windy Halloween night outside your house, for the Trick or Treaters are waiting in the bushes for their chance to strike.
04.16.07
What does that even mean?
I’m just too damned white.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t run around in the “urban” circles. But people surely don’t talk like this casually do they? I mean, I see this ad, and I think that even the wanna be thugs have to laugh.
Obviously this is targeted towards the black audience. Because I don’t know a single white person that can pull off the phrase “Big things poppin’.” But then again, I don’t know any black people that would seriously use the phrase either! This almost strikes me as a white guy sitting at a photoshop screen saying to himself, “How would I make an ad that speaks to ‘the blacks’?”
At anyrate don’t be suprised if you never get to hear the ‘hot new track’ from T.I. vs TIP because this ad already scared everyone away who would actually listen to it.
Injustices
I’m not one to think I oogle and oogle over celebrites. My long time infatuation with Helen Hunt is well established and documented. However I’d like to think that given the opportunity to sit down and have a drink with Mrs. Hunt she’d still appear to be flesh and bone, and that I wouldn’t stare at her in wonderment the entire time. I’d much rather have a human like conversation with someone who leads a very different life than my own. So if I had the chance to meet a “celebrity” I hardly think I’d embarrass myself or those around me.
Hopefully you’re familiar with a show on the Discovery Channel called Mythbusters. Where they take old myths and put them to the test to determine how much truth they really have. Well they’re going to be doing a presentation at K-State McCain auditorium on Friday. They’re not filming an episode or anything, I believe they’re just going to be talking about the show. To be honest, I have no idea what they will be talking about. I am going to try my best to make it to the show, which hopefully isn’t sold out yet.
No injustices so far.
AFTER the show, a co-worker of mine who apparently knows some people who know some people, is going out for drinks with one of the cast members from the show, Kari. Who just so happens to be the coolest one out of them all! And I’ll just say I’m a little miffed that I wasn’t invited! I don’t want an autograph, or a picture sitting next to her. I just think it’d be cool to sit and chill with a cool person who does cool stuff for a living.
So even though I wasn’t invited, I do happen to know particulars. And I just might coincidentally be in the same place at the same time, enjoying a drink of my own. That’s not too stalkerish is it?
01.15.07Holy smokes!
Be careful carrying around that cell phone…because it just might BURST INTO FLAMES!
Are you kidding me? I’d say this lends credit to not pumping gas with your cell phone, but I think this is more in line with the rule, don’t pump gas with anything that could spontaniously combust.
In other news, this is expected to be one of the “hottest” new trends of 2007. FLASH TONES!
09.19.06Was Deal or No Deal Staged?
I was at home last night enjoying a frosty Miller Highlife watching one of the few shows on TV I can tolerate, Deal or No Deal. I’m a pretty analytical thinker, so I enjoy any games where you’re up against mathematical odds. And I’m here to say the final round on last nights Deal or No Deal beat so many odds that I’m convinced there’s no way that it could have happened without some sort of scripting.
First of all, I don’t think that the entire show is rigged. Just the last round of the show on Tuesday with “Matty” the teamster from New York. As I watched, I didn’t think much of it other than he was just another typical flamboyant contestant that frequented the show. But as the round went on, and it became more sensational with each chosen case, I began to become suspicious that something was amiss. That perhaps the entire round was staged to be as exciting as possible (while still being believable) to garner up ratings for the season premier.
First off, the guy pulls a Babe Ruth and calls his first case. Predicting that it will be the $0.01 case. Sure enough it is! He had less than a 4% chance of guessing one cent case correctly.
He goes on to choose other small cases with the occasional big amount mixed in leading to the largest 2nd, 3rd, and 4th offers in the history of the show. Now this can be somewhat explained that 3 million was on the board for the first time in the history of the show and would naturally drive up the bank offers as long as it was on the board.
At one point the bank offer is $400,000. Now the bank offer is calculated based on the known amounts left in the cases on the board, and the odds that the player has the highest possible dollar amount in the case they chose at the beginning of the round. So the bank offer can only be calculated from the cases that are remaining at any given time. In other words, you can’t predict the next bank offer until the player picks the next case.
So when the bank offer comes up as $400,000 the banker himself would only have known the offer for a few seconds. Yet two beautiful women bring out two cases full of $400,000 CASH. There wasn’t enough time to see the offer, fill the cases with cash and bring them out, if they didn’t know what the banker was going to offer before hand. So either they stuff the cases with a random amount of cash that they planned on bringing out regardless off the offer amount, or they knew what cases he would pick before he picked them. Either way, it was a planned attempt to sensationalize the show.
Everything about this guy was character-like. When they brought the cash out, he picked it up, sniffing it and scowling like some bookie that just got paid off after his thugs broke some legs. Also, you know how everyone is allowed to bring three people with them? Well gets four, two of them being his twin daughters. What do they count as one person or something!? Add that to the fact that he keeps saying “I’m good at this game” when there’s absolutly NO WAY that a person can be good at guessing random numbers. It’d be like saying I’m good at winning coin tosses. It’s just not something you can be “good” at!
As the round is nearing the end it becomes almost predictable. He whittles away at the cases until what remains? Only $1 and $1 million and $3 million! Oh what sensational television! He takes the offer of $600,000 or so, but come to find out, he had the three million dollar case all along! (Which he also called at the beginning of the game.) The odds of him picking the $3 million case first and then calling the one cent case like he predicted were 1 in 600.
It couldn’t have been a more exciting round, and it just so happened to be the show’s season premier, where you want to hook everybody for the rest of the season. Coincidence or not? You tell me.
09.10.06WHA!?
what the heck is this ?
edit changed link to save room
Some people go out and party….
On a Saturday night: We balance dice.
