Movies: I'm Hungry

Since Valve and Riot refuse to make any updates for their respective games, I've had to be more creative on what to entertain you kids about, so I thought of something I did a couple months ago, when I saw Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows back when it had just come out, so I thought back, and realized I saw The Hunger Games about a week ago, so I figured, why not put up my thoughts on that?

I know that this movie has been really quite popular, just another case of how Hollywood likes to cash in on poor, defenseless movies, and turn them into juggernauts, and put enough hype onto it that everyone, including people who didn't read the book, will want to come see it. Now, I'm not saying that it isn't a good strategy; Hollywood loves to make exorbitant amounts of money on books that are somewhat popular, look at what Brad Pitt's doing to World War-Z. Horrible. A love story with zombies in it? Come on, I don't know whether or not to be more disappointed that Max Brooks would allow it to happen, or that people will go see it. I will, just for the principle of reviewing, don't judge me.

So I don't spoil the story for the 15% of you out there who haven't seen it yet, here’s a synopsis:

"Based in a post-apocalyptic United States, now known as Panem, the Hunger Games follows Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers her district (district 12 out of the total of 13. District 13 however, was destroyed, after resisting the might of the Capital) after her sister gets chosen to be a tribute, to save her. As a tribute, she must go up against 2 kids from every other district in a bloody battle to the death, nationally televised, in a sadistic way of saying "We still have lost of power over you" by the Capital."

Now, for everyone else who is a man and saw it, hit the page break for our continued, interesting discussion on characters.

Nothing New Here, Boss.

You know you're bored when this is the funnest available option

I got to admit, I thought something fun, or interesting was going to happen this week, so I kind of waited on my last post of the week so I could report on it. Well, it’s now Sunday morning, and I don’t see anything cool happening. TF2 runs on Valve Time, so who knows when we’ll see something from Robin Walker, and Riot has been busy with PAX East, so nothing to report from them. Trading on TF2 has been hectic, so there isn’t much of an update there, either. But, I did get into something that I really did not expect. “Draw My Thing” is probably one of the “odd” games on the internet. Mean more to be played as an app on the iTouch or something, I found this game after a friend of mine linked it to me on steam. The game consists of drawing a word, and having people guess what it is. That’s right, it’s an online Pictionary, except everyone on there is bored, and don’t always draw what is meant to be drawn, bringing sometimes confusion, and even more often, mass hilarity.

If you’ve got a free moment go see it, it’ll kill an hour or two and keep you guessing as to why some people can’t even draw a sick man.

--Santa

Don't worry kids, I'm sure something a bit more interesting may happen next week, I hope.

Soapbox: Customer's In Need of Support

Installing means NOTHING to Microsoft

This blog post is going to need a bit of background before its completely understood, but here's a fairly long story shortened. At the time of writing this post I'm trying to install Microsoft Office 2010 (Professional Plus Edition!) on my laptop via the use of downloading through a computer. Upon completion of this 2 1/2 hour download, I launched the wizard and was confronted by the little bit of joy that you can see to your right. And so begins my epic quest of trying to install Word 2010 on my laptop, this is being written while in progress, so this is being written live.

So, naturally I decided that Microsoft Support, but that in itself took much longer than it should have. I started out by calling the old reference number, seeing that I was having problems getting the download to start in the first place, (yeah, I know, I'm pretty lazy) I went through the options to go to "download help" because I wasn’t having any luck launching the download. After 5 minutes of soft, classical music, I was greeted by the sound of my new helper, who I will code name as "Jessica." From there, and after giving my own name, phone number and prior number for assistance, I got the unfortunate news that I needed to be re-directed, and so my journey was sent off into a new perilous land, with a 10 minute wait.

I landed in Microsoft's land of Technical support, in other words, Jessica didn't want to help me because even though pushing "3" on my phone was supposed to be for downloads, I was patched through to sales. I gave my information, and now a case number to my new friend, "Bob." bob had a very heavy accent, and after about 10 minutes of going back and forth, we decided that it may be in my best interest to go to the installation part of Microsoft's help desk, because we know what'd happen if we had experts who could help customers in more than 1 field.

After another 5 minute wait period, I was patched through to my last helper, who I call "Frafrin." Telling me that my internet connection (which just so happens to be wireless when I’m using the laptop) is no good, and that I would need to spend another couple hours downloading the 650 megabytes again at my fantastic download speed at 150 kb/s (and that’s fast for me, folks) I tried to stay calm, which leads me to the point of what I started this post about.

I’ve heard that customer support is a pretty bad job to have, putting in the notion that you have to put up with idiots who don’t understand why their computer won’t turn on (and then will blame the person who they called to help them when it doesn’t work) and I can understand the customer. Americans can be stupidly independent, and I can say that as I am one. We don’t want to call support until we’ve tried every method we can think of and we’ve got veins popping out of our necks that we’re so mad. But, my biggest problem is that customer support isn’t good at helping. It would be one thing if they employed people with accents that weren’t thicker than Jell-O pudding, but in some cases, that isn’t always true. I try my best to be patient, and when I get the feeling that I’m not getting anywhere, then I may just ask to talk to a manager, or perhaps go cry myself to sleep.

If big companies could grasp the fact that people heavily prefer to talk to people (I’m talking about you, automated systems) and to people who don’t have a heavy accent (if I live in America, I’d like to talk to an American. It’s easier, (this isn’t knocking on foreigners, if they set up a customer support center in the UK or Australia, it would be just as stupid.) What always floors me is the wait time. I can understand that big corporations are greedy and don’t want to put in money to buying better support, but that’s a fundamental thing to capitalism and all, but if you release a product with flaws, or to the general public (who will find flaws, and get lost in said product) then you have to expect that they’ll need help, otherwise, companies miss the point of selling a product.

--Santa

LoL, TF2, Gifts, Homestuck and Hats. Who Had a good Break?

So, yeah, I should have been back a week ago, I know. Spring Break usually only lasts for about a week, but the powers that be have claimed that I didn't need to do it for another week (sorry kids, this blog is currently on the project stage, not of my own free will) so, I spent the week trading hats and making huge amounts of profits. doing all of my school work that needed to be completed. So, to start out the new month, I'll jump into a giant update session for all of you who don't actually look anything, this may not be complete news to all of you, but it might be a nice recap of some events.

 Team Fortress 2

To start of, we'll be diving into the wonderful world of hats, starting with updates, and trading afterwards. As you can see in the picture to the right, Valve has added a few new hats, which are rewards for possibly dumping money into the game. That's right, from right to left, dueling, giving igfts and buying/collecting stamps will now give you a hat! And if you did/won the most at any of those listed ideas, the you have just hit the motherlode! For about one day. Yeah, you get this incredibly rare, one-of-a-kind hat for one day, and then it gets passed onto the next sap who just so happened to give 17 gifts, or won 83 duels, or bought 19,845 stamps in one day. I got to admit, since TF2 went free-to-play, Valve has come up with some interesting ideas on how to get money, but I have no plans on spending money on getting another hat .

Trading and Gifts



Scrap Packs are Team Colored, this is for demonstration

I got to admit, this one surprised me.  A good friend of mine on TF2 decided that he no longer liked his money, so he decided to go and buy me some things. In all, I ended up with Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, CS:S and Shoot Many Robots, which ended up getting me an Ellis Cap, Frying Pan (from L4D2), and a Genuine Scrap Pack (From Shoot Many Robots) I got to say, I wasn't expecting the generosity, and thanks for all the loving, this shout-outs for you.

As for trading, I haven't been slacking off. My friend also bought around 10,000 keys, and went on a promo buying rampage. After some negotiating with him, I got another pair of earbuds, and with  just a bit of patience, I turned those earbuds and a vintage procedure mask into a Dragonborn Helm with Orbiting Planets. Needless to say, my friend wasn't too happy to find out I had gone spending his hard-earned earbuds willy-nilly, but when he found out which unusual I had, he got pretty excited.

And in an hour, I was on my way with 50 keys in pocket, with a small bit of profit made. Since then I've bought 2 earbuds, and I'm sitting on a good sum of expendable money, even with my trading of vintage hats that I use as my defaults for my classes, I'm getting to the point where I can settle down and get some of the miscellaneous items I've been wanting. I don't know if that'll mean something from a genuine El Jefe, or possibly a Service Medal, but who knows where the trading god will lead me next.

League of Legends

Back with a vengeance is a fast-coming update, a new champion, Heracrim, "The Shadow of War" promises to be a fine, fancy man who will promises to give you as many nightmares as Nocturne, with twice as much fun! In his upcoming update, we will see the transfer of holding of masteries to online, so all of the current masteries will be reset, but at least held in one central area. Another thing to quickly look at involves the picture to the right. Another new champion coming out soon, Varus, "The Arrow of Retribution" will involve shooting people, not the biggest surprise. however, a champion sneak peak written by Tycho from Penny Arcade was not quite as expected. I don't know if I'm the only one who enjoys the good background of an interesting lore, but I would suggest reading this one, Tycho is a cool guy, and you never know what might tickle your fancy.

If you're not a complete nerd like me, then you may be in for a treat with some other updates due in the Heracrim  patch.  New, easier-to-read text, newly changed colored damaged (white = true damage, green = healing, magic damage = purple and physical damage = red) there have also been improvements to the new-ish colorblind mode, so that may help out a few of you. Other improvements include the changing of text in the UI, optional movement of the experience gauge, and the new inclusion of showing your mana/ health regeneration on the respective bar as you heal/ regenerate, along with some updates to bots, and the inclusion of the brand new Sion bot, the new ability to add bots in Dominion bot games, and the new-found ability for bots to purchase elixirs makes bots a little more deadly, making this patch one of my all-time favorites. Good job, Riot.

For the bit on Homestuck, hit the jump to read on, if you're not up to date, don't read on.

--Santa