More Baby Pictures

Dozing in Daddy's arms...



More dozing...



Older sister meets younger sister...



Although you don't see it in this picture, Breanna was actually saying "Sister pretty!" and "I like sister!" when I was taking this.

So far, Ansley (yes I keep butchering the spelling of her name) seems a lot more laid back than Breanna was. If you put something cold on her (like a nurse with a thermometer...) she'll let out a shriek and then she'll just go right back to sleep or start looking around again. Breanna would gripe for a while before she finally stopped crying when she was that age.

We think they're starting to look different too now that some of the swelling has gone down and whatnot. I think one of my next blog posts, I'll show Breanna's progression over the first three years of her life (since her b-day is coming up) just to illustrate how much and fast they change.

Introducing...

Anslee Brook Sona!

Six pounds, nine and a half ounce baby girl.

Nineteen and a 3/4 inches long.






She looks exactly like her older sister born 3 years ago.

Comparison shots:





Sister and baby are both fine and cranky. I'll post better shots in a day or so.

A Shantotto Ascension (Part 1?)

The third and final mini-expansion is here. Given the improvements of A Moogle Kupo d'Etat over A Crystalline Prophecy, I had some rather high hopes for A Shantotto Ascension.

Boy did Square-Enix crush those right from the getgo.

I'm not talking your regular old head shot either. I'm talking a testicle-stomping followed up by your heart being ripped out and then shot in the head while while you're staring at your own heart.

I really dislike fetch quests. I bitched about them to no end in ACP. MKE was better than ACP because you didn't really have to fight for level 20 critters that don't have a great drop rate on what you need. Yes, I know the mining/harvesting/logging stuff wasn't the most fun in the world, but at least you could fill up your inventory and still get the key item anyway w/o having to kill someone else's chance.

Going into ASA, I expected that it wouldn't be any worse than ACP. Even though I had a hard time tolerating the fetch quests in that one, I still trudged through it because I wanted that damn body piece. SE couldn't possibly make something that's worse than that, right?

Right?

Not only did they make something worse, they made something worse than what they made worse. Not only do you get to the fetch quests, now you get to park your ass in Gusgen Mines and Ordelle's Cave and collect MULTIPLE drops for this kit you have to synth together. You need 5 drops total.

Wait synth?

No biggie, I got every craft maxed. I expect the usual price jacking to occur since the materials you need for said synths are 2x Bast Parchment, 2x Parchment, 2x Black Ink.

Bast Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Elm Log.
Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Sheep Leather.
Black Ink Synth - Bust. Lost Gigant Squid.
Fine Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Pumice Stone. (YAY BACK TO THE FUCKING MINES AGAIN!)
Enfeebling Kit: Blindness Synth - Bust. Nothing lost except sanity.

Keeping score?

I have every craft at 60. I have Bonecraft at 100. Yet I failed that list of synths. There's seriously something broken about the crafting system (which is usually the case after the servers go down). A quick rundown of BG shows crit-breaks of the kit synth itself all over the place along with an entire plethora of breaks involving the fetch items.

In short:

- SE gives us more fetch quests.
- SE gives us fetch quests that make you farm up more than one of each item.
- SE gives us fetch quests that have non-Rare/EX items. Gogo 50k Pumice Stones from money grubbers.
- SE forces everyone to start synthing. While the caps for the various items are unknown (like 5 or below), SE thought it would apparently be funny to toss in a 50% break formula for all synths.
- And to top it all off. You can't have a friend make the final kit for you. Really fucking awesome of SE to make every one of the ingredients tradeable, but not the final product.

AND THIS IS THE FIRST GODDAMN QUEST IN THIS FUCKING EXPANSION.

I get that once the madness to get it completed dies down, it won't be as trivial to go farm up the materials for this. I also get (for the SE loyalists out there) that I paid for the content and SE is likely taking that as a sign that I actually LIKE wasting my time doing this sort of shit.

Let's get one thing really clear. I paid for this expansion (and the monthly service fees) for bits and pieces of content. I realize there are going to be things that I won't like and that the things I do like are the reasons I keep paying, but how in the bloody hell do the designers of this pathetic piece of shit expansion (thusfar) think that the conditions they have created for us to "enjoy" are actually enjoyable? You can't fucking sum up something like this with "Well you're paying for it, so you must enjoy all of it." I don't expect perfection. Doing so means I'm ultimately let down.

But even this pitiful excuse for an expansion lets down my already low expectations.

You're fucking better than this SE.

Dear Square-Enix,

Why do you think making 2000+ people camp 31 level 25 crawlers for an item with a shitty drop rate is fun?

Sincerely,

Q.

Rather Stark Realization...

My playing time is looking like it's going to be drastically reduced for the next few months. Here's a run down of what's going to be happening:

• My sister is due to have a c-section on the 16th. Who knows what it'll be or what the schedule will be like (although I suspect my sister will be saying GTFO! a lot to various people...)
  
• Kay's coming to visit Nov. 21st-Dec 1st for Thanksgiving.
  
• In that same time period that Kay is here, 6 b-days will happen. (Won't be parties for them all, but visitations, etc will eat up time)
• I'll be spending Dec 2nd-Dec 18th working as hard as I can to build up money because...
• Dec 19th-Jan 3rd, I'll be at a combination of Kay's and Kay's parents for Christmas/New Year's stuff.
• Jan-Mar is generally the busiest time of year for me business-wise (tax season). While I'm obviously uncertain at how this time period will play out, it's entirely possible I'll be MIA for long periods of time in this time frame.

Funny how you make plans and then all of a sudden, all of your plans seem to come bumrushing you when you least expect it...

I'll still be in game, just expect a Qtipus with a lot more AFK time. :)

Evolith System

So we have some new update news today...

The Latest Evolution in Equipment—Announcing the Evolith System! (11/04/2009)

We're pleased to announce a new system that promises to offer adventurers unprecedented customization options for their equipment! Named the "Evolith" system for the curious stones whose powers must be harnessed to reap the benefits, it will be introduced in a version update coming as early as late November.

Introducing Evolith

Little more than nondescript rocks at first glance, the substance known as evolith has long escaped the notice of the inhabitants of Vana'diel. Closer investigation, however, has revealed that these ancient stones harbor elemental power to rival that of crystals. With advances in the emerging discipline of synergy*, the time has come that their latent potential may at long last be tapped...

*Synergy is a new form of synthesis conducted using a "synergy furnace."
This system will be introduced in detail in a future Topics article.

With each piece of evolith possessing unique properties (*see example screenshots), adventurers may mix and match them in various combinations to bolster compatible equipment with the exact combination of attributes they desire.



*Development screenshot—subject to change.


Evolith 101
Adventurers may enhance their equipment with evolith through the following procedure:


1. Acquire evolith
- Evolith can be obtained by completing new NM hunting regimes accessible from "Hunt Registries" that will be introduced to certain areas alongside the Evolith system.
- Note that each piece of evolith is defined by a unique shape, size and elemental affinity.


2. Choose the base equipment you wish to enhance
- A vast assortment of equipment will support evolith, from several hundred existing items spanning a wide range of levels to new equipment slated to be introduced alongside the Evolith system.
- You may check whether or not a particular piece of equipment supports evolith by trading it to one of the "Synergy Engineer" NPCs that will be dispatched to certain cities.

3. Prepare your equipment
- A maximum of three evolith-holding "slots" may be etched into a given piece of equipment via synergy.
Note that each slot will have its own shape, size, and elemental affinity, to correspond with the evolith itself.
- The etching process will require the use of dedicated items.
- Similar to augmented items, etching evolith slots into a piece of equipment will render it untradeable and unauctionable.

4. Confirm compatibility
- Ensure that the slot is of the same shape and elemental affinity, and is large enough to hold the piece of evolith you wish to attach.

5. Attach evolith
- Evolith may be attached to a compatible piece of equipment via synergy.
- It is possible to outfit a piece of equipment with as many pieces of evolith as slots it contains.



*Development screenshot—subject to change.

The Finished Product

Should your synergy be successful, congratulations! The help window for your newly evolith-enhanced equipment will appear like this:



*Development screenshot—subject to change.

- Evolith Replacement and Slot Removal
Should you wish to replace an attached piece of evolith with one offering different benefits, this may be done at time via synergy. It is also possible to remove evolith slots entirely—thereby returning the equipment to its original state—through synergy using a dedicated item. Note that in both cases, the previously attached piece of evolith will be lost.

With countless varieties of evolith in existence, the possibilities are endless. Seek out the combination that best suits your playing style, and the equipment of your dreams can be yours!

This looks interesting, but like most things SE releases, I'm going to take the "wait and see" approach.

My initial take on it is that it looks like Augments V2.0. I never really got into the augmenting system as I've had other things to invest my gil into. I know there are some rather fantastic augments out there (re: Izman's Acc+6 Forager's Mantle and...Izman's INT+6 Weskit), but the notion of throwing semi-expensive items out the window more or less wasn't something I felt compelled to do.

That's not saying I think the augmenting system is bad. I think it's a neat spin on a lot of different things and this Evolith system is looking pretty similar.

So the questions I have to ask are this:

1. How much of a pain in the ass is it going to be to pick up the Evoliths?

2. Will the "augments" on these rocks be randomly chosen or will they have set patterns?

3. Is this going to make the FoV augmenting system obsolete?

The answer to those questions at the moment we "We don't know."

I like that they've made this so you can remove evoliths from pieces of gear. This essentially means, as long as your rock matches the shape and elemental property, you can keep upgrading rather infinitely. Which is nice.

It seems like every update we get, there's a little gem that pops up like this one that initially looks like a great idea and ends up being really horrible or really cool.

The other thing that I want to point out is this:

The past few updates, we've seen some sort of new "system" put into place. We've gone from ZNM to ANNM to SCNM to FoV to Augments and now apparently to Evoliths. While the updates themselves are things some would consider too little, too late, I have to say SE has seemingly been giving us a lot of new stuff to play with over the course of the past 1-2 years while they're working on FFXIV. I'm not naive enough to believe this will continue as they ramp up for the release of XIV, but I just feel this needed to be pointed out whether you like the systems or not.

Outside of that...did anyone else think of this when you saw this update?

Qtipus vs. Apple Call Center

We all know the stereotype that applies to a tech support call center. They usually don't speak your language very well. In this case, English.

Three days ago, my "boss" brought in a Power Mac G4 that he says has $10,000 worth of software on it that he uses for video/audio recording and editing. The problem?

It won't power up.

That's usually a very cut and dry case. Most of the time, it's a power supply. Otherwise, it's almost always the mainboard. It's pretty rare to run into something like a stick of RAM or a hard drive that's shorting it out and preventing it from turning on completely.

So I start digging around for replacement power supplies on the web. The machine is old, so I'm not exactly expecting a difficult time finding a replacement.

For those of you that don't know, the G4 power supplies used a 22-pin, ATX brick instead of a standard 20 or 24-pin ATX brick that's used in normal desktop PC's. The odd thing about this is that the moulding for the first 20 pins on this power supply are exactly the same as the desktop PC power supply. They're wired differently though, so a standard desktop one isn't going to work.

Anyway, searching around, I find these power supplies "new" ranging from $100-$350...for the same wattage.

Easy enough right? Buy the $100 and be done with it.

Not so fast.

Y'see...experience has shown me that if you have a part with a humongous price range like that, the ones on the lower and upper ends are probably not going to be what you're looking for.

Ok, still easy. Buy the middle of the road one and be done with it.

Not so fast again...

Seeing this price range pretty much made me start dreading what was next.

I had to call Apple and find out for sure. Usually a manufacturer's price on a part is a good indication of where third party manufacturers are going to fall in terms of price. Apple's website is useless when it comes to hardware support. They want to speak to you via telephone and troubleshoot your issues. You can't just call to get a price on something apparently unless you call one of their retail stores.

Unlucky for me, all of their retail stores don't open until I'm already tied up doing a ton of other things.

I make an appointment for an apple rep to call me between 10:30-10:45AM yesterday morning. 11:45 rolls around and still no call. I leave here for the day to do the work for my business and I come in this morning to a message from an Apple Rep that was left at 3:45 yesterday afternoon.

The message stated:

Hi, this is Amber from Apple calling you regarding case #: #########. I understand you are having issues getting the machine to turn on. If you wouldn't mind, can you please unseat and re-seat the memory in the machine, then call us back at the number provided in your case email please? Thank you and have a great day.

/facepalm

Not because the suggestion wasn't a legit one, but because that's not what I was asking for.

For the type of issue, I selected "Other" and proceeded to explain that I was not looking for technical support, I simply wanted to know the price of the power supply for this computer itself.

So...calling them back this morning, I probably should have just told my "boss" to get a new mac.

The lady I got this morning apparently failed english. Horribly.

She was by far the worst tech support rep I've ever spoken to and I've been doing computer repair services for over 12 years. I can't begin to illustrate how bad her english was through text, so for the following conversation, just assume she's very hard to understand. Also understand this conversation went on for a LOT longer than the text will imply. I literally had to ask her to repeat herself 3-4 times each time she spoke.

Apple Rep(AR): Thank you for calling Apple, may I have your case ID please?
Q: #########

(What was the point of putting the case number in to an automated service if I was just going to have to say it again?)

AR: Ok, one moment while I look up your information.
Q: Ok
AR: Ok, I see you cannot get the machine to turn on.
Q: Right. I need to know the price of the power supply.
AR: Did you re-seat the memory?
Q: Yes. I need to know the price of the power supply. It's Apple P/N is: ###-####.
AR: The machine still will not turn on?
Q: No. I've already done all the troubleshooting, I know it's the power supply.
AR: I'm sorry, can you clarify which part again?
Q: Power supply.
AR: Did you try a different power cable?
Q: Yes.
AR: When you say 'power source', are you referring to the wall socket?

...

Q: I did not say 'source', I said 'supply'. The internal box with all the cables that plug into the various parts of the computer.
AR: Are you referring to the part the power cable plugs into?
Q: Yes.
AR: Did you try a different power source?
Q: Yes, I tried a different power supply and it fired up.
AR: Ok, let me put you on hold while I find out some more information.

5 minutes later.

AR: Ok, sorry for the hold. I am still unclear what you are needing. You need another power source?
Q: I need the internal power supply. Emphasis on, 'internal'.
AR: I'm sorry, if it works with a different power source, you should leave it plugged into that power source.
Q: That power supply belongs to another computer.
AR: I'm sorry, we do not sell wall socket supplies.

........... x infinity

Q: THIS FIVE YEAR OLD POWER MAC G4 HAS A BAD POWER SUPPLY - POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY - IN IT. I NEED TO KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS FOR A REPLACEMENT!
AR: I'm so---
Q: I'M NOT DUMB ENOUGH TO CALL A TECH SUPPORT CENTER OVER A BUSTED WALL OUTLET. DID YOU HAPPEN TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE PART NUMBER I GAVE YOU? DID YOU HAPPEN TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE PHRASE "I'VE USED ANOTHER POWER SUPPLY"
AR: Excu---
Q: IT'S THE SILVER BOX ON THE INSIDE - NOT OUTSIDE IN A WALL OR NOT OUTSIDE REFERRING TO A BLACK CABLE - INSIDE THE COMPUTER ITSELF THAT HAS A LOT OF LITTLE RED, YELLOW, ORANGE, AND BLACK CABLES COMING OUT OF IT.
AR: Oh, the internal P.S.U.

(Deep Breath...keep it together Q...)

Q: Yes.
AR: I'm sorry, we do not sell those directly to the public.
Q: Can I speak to your manager?
AR: One moment please.

(Five minutes later)

Apple Call Center Manager: May I help you?
Q: Fire her.

/hangup.

Good lord.

So yeah. At some point in the near future, I'll blurb about where I ended up actually getting the power supply.

Leadership Decisions

A conversation happening late last night in Obsidian got me to thinking about the general cycle of a linkshell's life. Given the exodus of players to other MMO's like Aion recently along with FFXIV being on the horizon and various other real life circumstances that usually prevent people from dedicating as much time as they had previously to XI, a lot of linkshells are faced with their own end game.

When someone takes up a position of leadership, they're taking on an obligation to ensure the people that choose to follow them have an event to do. Expecting scheduling perfection of leadership is out of the question from a member's standpoint, but at the same time...habitually rescheduling or canceling events isn't fair to these members.

This puts leaders in a precarious position. Before I get into that though, understand that people come and people go. It's a natural part of a community's life. A guild in EQ, a linkshell in FFXI, a clan in WoW etc are all subject to this. The idea behind creating a community is obvious. They're created mostly for the social aspect of the game, but also to achieve common goals. The vast majority of the time unfortunately though, these start to crumble as members get what they want.

It's a matter of perception. The drive to pick up an item or achieve a goal often times blinds a player to exactly how much time they're investing in the game. When they finally get or achieve it, they "wake up" and either find something else to achieve or move on to something else. Does this make a person selfish? Not necessarily, but it does open the person up to that sort of questioning.

Did they really care about the community to begin with?
Did they only care as an ends to their means?
Are they willing to continue to contribute after the fact?

To the subject of these questions, it's hurtful. There are other people who benefited from their contributions along the way to their achieving their goals. It's hard to fault a person when this is the case, especially if you're not dealing with a black and white situation. If someone shows up, gets a piece of not-so-coveted gear within 2-3 events and leaves, that's black and white. If someone has literally poured years of their life into a community, that's gray.

What does leadership do then when vets aren't contributing as much time? What role to the vets have to play if they aren't contributing as much time?

In the conversation last night, Brizzy described LB's current membership scenario and it resonated a bit with me in terms of how it compared to Obsidian's. The way I understood it, rules were being changed that didn't sit too well with the vets and the vets griped/bitched to no end or left the shell altogether citing they didn't want to go through a rebuilding process.

(I've been in that situation before...it's not fun.)

This gets us back to the post title. This whole scenario of rebuilding and leadership having to make the decision to rebuild is tough. Especially when you have vets, who are largely responsible for the rebuilding having to take place to begin with through their level of inactivity, griping about it. It's almost as if vets who contributed a ton of time feel entitled to keep the status quo and just let the linkshell die rather than try to let leadership fulfill their obligations to the people who still haven't achieved their goals yet.

I've spoken at length in a couple of previous posts about the lack of dynamis attendance. Reading Brizzy's comments about LB got me to thinking about how our crew would react if a couple of the scenarios that are running through my head to bolster attendance played out.

When a linkshell's memberbase starts to wane or show disinterest in various events, leadership is faced with one of two options:

1. Thank everyone for their time and contributions and break the shell.

or

2. Find new members.

Option 2, at least in terms of FFXI, can be achieved in a number of ways, but no matter what, a leader is in a lose-lose situation.

Leadership can start advertising via shouts and forums that the linkshell is openly recruiting again.

Pros: Probably will pick up at least half a dozen people.
Cons: Probably will pick up at least half a dozen people who suck.

Leadership could start talking to other shells in similar attendance situations about absorbtion or merging.

Pros: Will pick up a lot of people.
Cons: Will probably have to form an entirely new shell and have everyone start from scratch or figure out a conversion method for the points standing and have "new" members essentially start in the same place they were in their old shell.

With either one of those scenarios, there are likely rule changes that will come about. The make up of the linkshell changed. This doesn't mean leadership will go changing rules for the sake of changing rules. It's too common for a rule to be changed to favor leadership in scenarios like this as a lot of leaders feel the need to either wave the power sword or try to accelerate the time needed to get what they want specifically. A good leader will avoid this if at all possible, but again, members have to understand that with new people generally come new challenges and those challenges have to be met head on.

Unfortunately, new people + new rules = disgruntled vets.

If any of these scenarios ever played out in Obsidian, I would bet Gungnir on the fact that there would be an uproar and the most vocal members would be the ones who have been to an average of one run per month in the past year. I can't help but feel this is probably the case with LB based on Brizzy's descriptions (I do wish LB's leadership the best of luck in the rebuilding process). Their leadership has apparently made the decision to keep things going, but are finding cockblocks all over the place from the very people that forced them to make that decision to begin with.

Vets have to realize time and place. If you had perfect attendance in Obsidian from 2005-2006, congratulations. If you show up in 2009-2010 and criticize a decision leadership has made in the 2-3 years you've been missing, STFU. Get back in touch with the reality of the shell, then make your opinions known. Let leadership do their job and if you have an opinion, express it with the understanding of your recent level of contribution to the shell as a whole. Ask why that decision is being made. Understand leadership is going to feel somewhat betrayed and that you're open to the aforementioned 'selfish' line of questioning. They're building a community. Again, community members come and go, but you don't go eat from the soup kitchen for two years, then go eat from the hamburger joint up the road for two years, then come back to the soup kitchen and bitch because they aren't serving vegetable soup 3 days a week anymore.

This is where I get irritated the most. Being a leader is a thankless job. A normal member of a linkshell gets to spend time getting some supplies and show up to an event. A leader gets to organize it, make decisions (some easy, some hard), perform the admin tasks associated with it and then...maybe gets to enjoy the event itself outside of all that shit. Members normally do not realize this is the case. I do appreciate the ones who do and make a point of thanking leaders, but these people are few and far between as a whole. I've always realized I'm there to serve and direct the people who want to join the community I'm helping to build, but when faced with a scenario like this, I'm almost floored by the fact that there are veterans out there who believe leadership should just let a linkshell die.

God forbid that linkshell exist and be successful without them.

In Obsidian's case, I don't believe we're at the membership crisis point yet. We're approaching it, but I feel like we've still got some time to make some tweaks to bolster our dynamis attendance a bit again. Ideally, I'd like to see 30+ for each run rather than the 25ish we've been seeing. The reason I don't believe we're at that crisis point yet is based solely off our Einherjar attendance.

Yes I get that Einherjar is 30 minutes vs. 2-4 hours in dynamis.

However, the Einherjar numbers tell me that our memberbase is still very large and very active.

It might be time to truly start enforcing that "Do 1-2 Dynamis runs/month or no Einherjar for you" rule.

Dr. Q Tip Us and Sexist-Card Playing Successful Woman

So Monday morning, I'm greeted with the following email to my business email address...

Chad,

I need you to come up today to do the work I've been requesting of you for the past 3 months. I'm getting sick of having you disrespect me because of your innate fear of successful women. I find it sickening that I have to ask you so many times to do what amounts to simple tasks like getting Outlook installed and my {proprietary work software name} working. I've spoken to my bosses about this issue and they assured me they would take the appropriate action necessary. I expect to see you no later than 1PM this afternoon.

Sincerely,

Sexist-Card Playing Successful Woman

(Name's obviously edited to protect identity...)

Ok...so as most of you know, I own a computer repair business. From time to time, I'm prone to run into crazy people. I can't give a ton of details here about the business SCPSW works for, but I can tell you exactly where the miscommunication happened that caused SCPSW to flip out and send me this email.

About 4 months ago, I changed the server at said business.

Actually to make this easier, we'll call this business "LMAO".

Anyway, I changed the server at LMAO due to their rapid growth. They went from a basicaly, peer to peer, 5 PC network to a 15 PC network with a Domain Controller spread across 30 square miles.

(Yes, tech speak, STFU and stay with me...)

So once I put this new server in, some of the peripheral devices that the employees used didn't work with the network anymore. Things like...

...SCPSW's laptop.

As a tech, it's impossible to know every single thing an employee is going to want to do. You pretty much have to take it day to day. I knew this laptop wasn't going to work with their company's software unless I actually put it on the new domain. I've explained to her the ramifications of doing so as she'd end up with a local profile and a network profile. I feel like I've pretty much gone over every single thing that was going to happen if I put her laptop on the domain, but to no avail.

Her mentioning of Outlook is something else that's been a point of contention between she and I. That particular version of Outlook is something she's already installed and activated on a different machine. It's license is for one machine, yet she wants me to install it and try to circumvent the activation process. I've told her repeatedly that her saving $300 is not worth risking my business and potentially getting sued by Microsoft for software piracy.

On top of that, there are three people up there that are authorized to say "Yes, we'll spend money on Chad coming up to fix your issues" and SCPSW is not one of them. So naturally, this email came as a bit of a shock.

At first, I was a little miffed, but then I found it funny. Why?

Well look at it's contents. First, she's pissed about something she's wanted me to do for 3 months. Something she's not authorized to get me to do. Second, the stuff she's saying she's wanted me to do is stuff I've gone out of my way to explain to her, but she hasn't actually responded in a manner (until this email) that would lead me to believe she understood. Third, the stuff she's wanting to use her laptop for is stuff she's got the ability to access her desktop remotely to do as long as she has internet access (remote web workplace...).

And last...but not least...

Did she really pull out the sexist card?

Really? In 2009?

When she knows my girlfriend is a successful attorney?

When 2 of the 3 people authorized to bring me to her place of employment are successful women?

When I've actually had a conversation with her and congratulated her about her level of success and the hardships she's had to go through to get to where she is?

Part of me understands why she'd have a tendency to play that card. The work environment she's in on a day to day basis is mostly men. It's a construction-based business model. Not that women can't do the construction work, you just typically don't see them doing it. This will also sound like I'm stereotyping construction workers (and to an extent I am...), but they aren't exactly known for having the capacity to treat everyone equally. There are some on that staff up there that truly do believe women shouldn't be allowed to vote, read, write, etc.

(Yes, I make jokes about that from time to time...)

(Ok...I make jokes about that all the time at Invy's expense....)

(Erm...Ok I make jokes about that all the time at the expense of most women. And ethnicities. And Nationalities. And religions. And...well...pretty much anything that should piss people off if I were serious, but all joking aside, they're made because of the sheer stupidity of the mentality.)

Still, that card being played. On the computer guy. Someone who hasn't made those jokes to anyone on a professional level.

Pay attention folks. A lesson is about to be served.

I called her boss. I asked Bossman about the conversation he had with SCPSW referenced in the email. The conversation went something like this:

Q: SCPSW is pissed at me eh?
BM: Yeah, she was upset.
Q: She name anything specific I've said or done that lead her to believe I'm sexist?
BM: No. She mostly just made it sound like you've been ignoring her for 3 months.
Q: I can send you email correspondence between she and I for the past 3 months.
BM: You don't have to worry about your standing with me. I know my employees and their tendencies and you're safe.

Ok, whew. Deconstructed one pillar of support.

Then I called her other boss. We'll call her Bosswoman.

Q: SCPSW is pissed at me eh?
BW: I heard your conversation with BM

(Oh yeah...they're married)

Q: Oh yeah, marriage...etc.
BW: She's had a bad week.
Q: So she took it out on the computer guy?
BW: Looks that way.

Second pillar of support deconstructed.

Now it's just SCPSW vs. me.

I drove an hour to LMAO.

I walked into the building.

I walked into her office.

I closed her door.

I locked it.

I sat in the chair directly across her desk from her.

I made eye contact and forced myself not to break it.

(This is really setting up like some trashy romance novel as I type this out...)

Q: Tell me. What exactly have I done the past 3 months that has made you believe I'm intimidated by your success or your gender?

SCPSW: <.<
SCPSW: >.>

(I'm following her eyes around trying to force her to see that I'm not going to look away until I have a straight answer.)

Q: You send me an email scathing me about my level of service and what you perceive to be my level of morality in relation to your gender and success. Again, what have I done to give you that impression?

SCPSW: I don't know, I was pissed when I sent that email at a lot of different things.

Q: So you're saying you basically accused me of something I could easily lose my business over because you were pissed at a lot of things other than me?

SCPSW: No, I'm pissed that it's taken 3 months for you to do this.

Q: Let's get a couple things straight. I take orders from 3 people here, you're not one of them. I've also got a paper trial of conversations I've had with you over the issue you're pissed about and you've left me without an impression up until that email about which way you wanted to go.

SCPSW: ...

Q: I'm the computer repair man. I'm not your verbal whipping post. You have issues, you take them out on the people that they need to be taken out on. You have issues with me, you come to me with why you're pissed and without the baseless accusations. We'll get along much better that way.

SCPSW: ...

Q: If you really think I'm intimidated by your success, you need to understand there are people I work for all over this state who make a lot more money than you do and are female. Two of which make more in a year than I would make in 10. You don't intimidate me. You don't scare me. I have nothing but good wishes for your success because your success means this business is successful which means, as long as I keep your bosses happy, I have a customer.

SCPSW: ...

Q: Now if you'll excuse me, I have other work to do here before I get to your requests. Take 3 deep breaths before you send me another email like that.

Then I went to a different office.

About 15 minutes later, the last authorized person there sees me as I'm walking through a hallway and stops me...

(We'll call her SubBossWoman.)

SBW: What'd you say to SCPSW?

Q: Should remain between she and I.

SBW: Whatever you said pissed her off even more. She stormed out of here.

Q: Really?

SBW: Not going to pry, but if you pissed her off that bad, it's been a long time coming. Bosses don't want to fire her cause she's so good at what she does, but she's horrible from a workplace chemistry standpoint.

Q: ...that's really your business to handle. I'm not so sure you should be telling me this stuff.

SBW: Oh no worries, it's common knowledge. I know about the email she sent you this morning. I figured you'd open your mouth about that.

Q: Yeah. Major pet peeve of mine are baseless accusations.

SBW: On another note...how pissed off were you to get here in 40 minutes when it normally takes 60.

Yeah...

ANYWAY!! (hope no policemen are reading this...)

Moral of the Story:

I hate bigots. While I'm perfectly aware the jokes I make will offend some, the vast majority of the people I make them to understand they're made in jest and I will roll with jokes at my expense as well. When I offend someone, I hope they are truly human enough to actually tell me they're offended so that I can actually try to avoid offending them later, but unfortunately, they aren't. I'm completely intolerable of people who truly believe one gender, race, nationality, etc is superior to another and am one of the first people to mouth off about it if I see someone being victimized by it. Understand, however, that as human beings, we have to be able to laugh at ourselves about pretty much anything.

There are always exceptions and lines not to cross, but those are so serious in nature, that one would hope it was ingrained in all of us not to cross those lines. Some of the universal ones would be a permanent physical ailment, personal appearance (self-deprecation is not a signal to pile on), or the epitome of an emotional disaster.

In the case of Sexist-Card Playing Successful Woman, I'm accused of said bigotry and completely without merit as I haven't made any jokes. When I'm around customers, I tend to maintain an air of professionalism that's led most of my customers to believe I actually have no sense of humor.

Unless they do something truly stupid with their computers and I just can't help myself...like the lady that literally melted the front of her computer with a space heater. Man did I have a field day with that one.

Whoops, digressed.

Anyway, SCPSW called me as I was on my way home later and apologized. She offered to take me out to lunch to make up for it, which I politely declined. People are allowed to mess up and as long as they own up to it and don't make the same mistakes repeatedly, I'm willing to forgive and forget.

This has been Dr. Q Tip Us and I'm glad I could help. :)

Crisis Core and Final Fantasy VII Stuff

A lot of you in Obsidian with me have probably already seen me talk about Crisis Core. Before I really get into that, I need to point out that since FFXI came out in Oct 2003 (NA), I haven't really played many other video games. I used to find something new to play every couple weeks.

When FFVII came out, my buddy Troy and I were pretty much standing in line to get it. I was less than a year out of high school starting college as a music education major. (YAY BAND GEEK!~) It had been 3 years since any form of an FF game had been released and, with the huge marketing buildup, we were both eagerly waiting for this to hit the shelves.

As most fans of the FF series will probably attest to, VII had a ton of impactful moments. The most notable of which was Aerith's death scene. Over the years, Square has given us a lot of characters that were memorable. Some by name only cause they're in nearly every game (Cid, Biggs, Wedge) and others because they did such a wonderful job developing the character itself that it's almost impossible to forget them. Especially if you can relate to them.

Aerith herself didn't really leave me with the impression of fitting this superbly developed character until her death scene. As a matter of fact, I barely used her the first time I went through VII. I mostly stuck with Cloud, Tifa and Red XIII. What actually stuck with me the most after her untimely death in VII was her music/theme. Even playing through a 2nd and 3rd time back then didn't get me attached to her character, but her death scene was brutal (for the time) and her music was awesome enough that she stuck with me.

I'm not a huge contemporary music fan. As a matter of fact, most contemporary music just pisses me off. I'm the guy that will buy the score to the movie rather than the soundtrack. You get me listening to some very well arranged/written orchestral piece though and that's the sort of stuff that moves me. SE managed to develop Aerith into a legend mostly due to how well Nobuo Uematsu developed her character through music.

If you think about it, how many characters from the FF series do you remember because of their music? Celes, Aerith, Rinoa, Sephiroth, and Kefka just to name a few. Well, Kefka likely due to his laugh moreso than his music, but you get the point. Most people probably don't realize it at the time the character is being developed, but later on down the road, they hear the music and go "Oh shit! That's Sephiroth's music!" rather than calling it by it's appropriate title.

Anyway, back to VII for a moment. One of the things that always bugged me about VII was the plot. It's the typical 'save the world' plot, but the depth of character development that Square went to in this game often times made me confused and pretty much to led to me mashing buttons from one battle to the next trying to get to the next CGI scene. Because of that, when I picked up Crisis Core, my memory of VII's events was rather...old and not very clear.

I knew who Zack was when I got the game. I remembered him being killed off in a flashback sequence, so playing through the game, there's the knowledge that all this time you spend making Zack a hero is going to ultimately end up in his death. With Advent Children having been released a couple years prior to this game and showing off Zack and Aerith at the end, I felt that there wasn't any real way SE could top the impact VII had and some of the showstopping footage they had put together in AC (story aside, the CGI was gorgeous).

But...

I found the game for $10 new at Toys R' Us and couldn't pass it up.

Turns out this game had me wrapped up in Zack's character pretty much from the getgo. SE capitalized on many of the musical themes from VII along with some new stuff. They also capitalized on implementing some of the same CGI sequences that made AC such a hit. Hidden beneath all of that is a very well thought out story showing Sephiroth's downhill spiral, Zack's ascension to being a hero and the beginnings of what made Cloud who he is and...most importantly I felt, putting the actual character into Aerith outside of her music. The relationship developed between Aerith and Zack certainly make for a lot of "Awww..." moments and a lot of Zack's thoughts, musings and actions after he meets Aerith revolve around her. It's clear though that this story is about Zack, not Aerith, but SE managed to do a wonderful job with her nonetheless. They even managed to make Sephiroth into a bit of a sympathetic figure as he descends into madness.

=======SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT========

The story for Crisis Core itself is rather short, but the game is long if you play through all the side missions. Pretty much from Chapter 8 on, prepare to be blown away by the events as they unfold. Some of the events you already know about through VII (Nibelheim), but the way SE presents them in CC freshens them up completely. The ending to this game is what really got me though. More on that later.

The game starts off with Sephiroth in place as Midgar's hero. Everyone wants to be him. Angeal (Zack's mentor), Genesis and Sephiroth are among the elite of the elite SOLDIER 1st Classes. Genesis goes missing, taking a number of SOLDIER members with him and Angeal, Zack and Sephiroth are sent to figure out why. As the story unfolds, cutscenes like this one take place:



Note the use of "One-Winged Angel". Once we get some answers to Genesis' disappearance, we learn the origin of the whole One-Wing thing as it's a trademark of the scientific experiments on various early SOLDIERs.

What about Aerith? How is she introduced? Like this:



Again, notice the use of the music. There are several more cutscenes like this one (very few CGI movies with Aerith in them in this game, mostly scenes rendered with the game engine itself) developing their relationship. The irony in their meeting the same way Cloud meets Aerith is a nice touch too.

What about Cloud? Where does he come in? Well, Cloud and Zack formed a friendship after their helicopter crashed in the mountains while chasing information related to Genesis:



While the story doesn't do much to show all of the various interactions between Zack and Cloud until they're in Nibelheim, once they get to this point, you start to understand why Cloud's memories are f***ed up in VII so badly. The true recounting of the events at Nibelheim take place here:



Biggest thing to keep in mind here is that Cloud pulls off the seemingly bad-assness BEFORE he's infused with Mako. Shortly after this battle takes place, Zack and Cloud are captured by Shin-Ra and given to Hojo to experiment on. Hojo sees something valuable in Cloud. Four years later, Zack manages to escape his experiment tube, frees Cloud and is now considered an escaped fugitive. Zack isn't aware of the amount of time that's passed and immediately works to keep Cloud safe and figure out what to do with Genesis.

After Zack finishes "saving Genesis", he continues to be pursued by Shin-Ra soldiers as a fugitive. Shin-Ra has unleashed a full-scale military assault in an attempt to find Zack and Cloud. The Turks meanwhile, are trying to apprehend Zack to save his life. (Vid below).



This is the first time Cloud has shown any major sign of consciousness for the past 5 years. Almost as if he knew something bad was about to happen. In the ensuing fight, Zack inevitably ends up losing. After collapsing, a Shin-Ra soldier blasts Zack in the head and leads us to this:



That near 7 minutes of footage there is literally some of SE's best work ever. Obviously it's along the same lines as Advent Children, but in AC, the characters already had an established development and there wasn't much else SE could do to further them. Here in Crisis Core however, SE gets to tell Cloud's history entirely along with Aerith's, Sephiroth's and a few others. Most notably though, Zack.

An ending like this is nowhere near as impactful unless you actually make a connection with the character itself. Throughout the entire game, Zack is developed as a bit of an over-enthusiastic, gullible man hellbent on becoming a hero and inadvertently becomes one when all of his own heroes fall from grace. The story of this ascension draws you in completely and, again even though you know what's going to happen to Zack, you literally want to sit back and enjoy the ride while you can.

The ending made me cry. I'll admit it. The gunshot to the head started the waterworks (especially when they start showing Aerith's realization of what's happening) and it ultimately peaked at the image of Cloud's face stained with Zack's blood yelling at the heavens. My only gripe though...

...I wish they had shown Tifa finding Cloud, but that's neither here nor there.

I was asked by Lect the other day why Cloud didn't know who Aerith was when they met since Cloud absorbed/shared Zack's memories and confused them with his own. The only logical answer I can come up with to an entirely illogical situation is that Zack had forgotten who Aerith was as he was being worn down. Part of the ending sequence not shown in those videos is that as Zack is fighting, he's starting to forget the important people in his life as he's inching closer to death. It's only after his becoming one with the life-stream again that he remembers Aerith's name.

Bottom line is, if you have a PSP, go buy this game. Especially now since it's on clearance for $10 in most places. There's a ton of story packed into this game. I'm hoping SE decides to redo FF7 using this game engine since they seem to be in the mood for redoing the series with the better technology out there.