That whole airline thing

So, here's an opinion from a journalist that seems to echo my feelings from "The Great England Conspiracy".

This particular segment cracks me up:


As Nadeau points out in an e-mail, her family’s two carry-on bags had enough electronics in them to wire a missile: “a laptop, a portable DVD player, a sound-blaster adapter and headphones, two cell phones, four MP3 players with headphones, a BlackBerry, a brick of AA batteries and two hand-held video games.” The security woman paid them no attention. “She dug around the electronics, searching for juice. About three other moms nearby were going through the same harassment…”

All kinds of dangerous chemicals can be traced to the power supplies in those devices and the batteries kept on hand for them. To say nothing of the devices' inherent ability to activate such a cobbled together weapon.

But the screeners made certain the kids couldn't drink their Hi-C. Awesome. Just freakin' brilliant.

Why doesn't this surprise me?

This article, posted at The Register doesn't really surprise me.

I wonder how quickly we'll discover that this effort was a deliberate feint?

I'm not tired of your brats...

... I'm tired of you.

This is outrageous:

Growing Up Healthy: No Brats Allowed. Your children are your responsibility, not mine. I do not profess to be the greatest lover of children, quite the opposite, they confuse and frighten me. However, I'm respectful of their rights in this world, when they're respectful of mine.

For example, if I enter a store called "Pottery Barn, Kids", I expect it to be filled with children, their parents and the accompanying noise. However, if I go to an R-Rated film at 11:30pm on a weeknight, I do not believe I should have to tolerate shouting, crying children. I deliberately go to movies at that time specifically to avoid the children. They're entitled to visit the theater all day long and enjoy their experience. Just as I'm entitled to enjoy my experience. Seeing as they're the majority in entertainment cases, I attempt to mitigate the situation as much as possible.

The problem here isn't the children themselves. The problem is the self absorbed adults who pay no attention to their children. I cannot describe the number of times, at a restaurant, I have watched a mother ignore her infant while it wailed and struggled to feed itself. What the hell are you thinking? This is a child, here, it cannot do for itself, that is why humans tend to their children for years and years. Or did you miss that part of growing up?

I am so annoyed by this attitude that it's difficult to formulate coherent thoughts on the matter.

Simply put: The nasty, filthy, dirty, disgusting individual who keeps leaving their infant's dirty diapers in or around the parking spaces I use at the office proves this point to me more than I can document here.

Treating Fellow Gamers Like Grownups

The folks over at Tied The Leader were good enough to respond to my conundrum. Some of the community is speaking up, in responses, about their own experiences with deleveling (either doing it themselves or witnessing it).

I find some of the delevelers' reason thin:
A) "I delevel to help my friends gain experience."
B) "I delevel to gain a deceitful edge."

What?

(A)
Last time I checked, one could still bring a friend along, in a party, to any matchmade game. I've brought my brother along to my matchmaking sessions and he's currently only level 1. This makes no sense to me. All I can imagine is that these folks are trying to make themselves feel better in some form or fashion. I think they're pretty weird.

(B)
Am I the only one who thinks that's lame? I mean, who the hell remembers which player is what level in the middle of a firefight? All I deal with, when the game starts, is "That player's not the same color as me. I must prevent him from achieving his objective."

---

I don't think I'll ever understand these mentalities. Just like I'll never understand the hateful yelling and insults that fly around online gaming communities. It doesn't really seem to solve anything and it all seems childish.

Maybe I'm just too old to be cool. I don't know.

SQL> Create Table PlayersToIgnore As Select GamerTag From Delevelers;

XBox Live

My brother finally beefed up his XBox 360, by signing up for XBox Live. Unfortunately, during his initial days on the service my ISP was uncooperative (this is the most polite description I've applied to my frustration with RoadRunner over the situation). A technician finally heeded my opinions, last weekend, and corrected the error. A sturdy broadband connection means I can now slaughter my brother in Halo 2 to my heart's content.

Last night I played for a while in general MatchMaking, trying to better myself (I'm getting slaughtered in the level 12-16 range, which probably means I'll permanently reside there) before he got home from work. During that time I encountered on of the single most bizarre situations I've ever seen in online ranked gaming:

Someone purposely trying to decrease his skill level. Austensibly so he could gloat about defeating players at lower levels.

I don't get that. I don't know if it's very common, but it's bizarre, to say the least. Are there genuinely people in the world with such low self esteem that they must reverse engineer cheating so that they can make themselves feel better?

Isn't winning honestly a better rush than this?

Ugh.




That being said, I did have a great time playing against my brother and his coworker, Station. Yes, that would be Station of Station's Creation. I even got his copy of the Halo Graphic Novel autographed to Station. I'm so clever.

Neither of them play Halo 2 as much as I, so bragging about how well I did would be wrong. However, I do feel that I held my own pretty darn well against them. My brother typically embarasses me when we play Halo 2 split screened at our mother's house. I attribute the discrepency to his Controller-S units and the smaller screen, which I have trouble seeing. It's sounded like BS whining until he got on Live and I can play against him under the conditions to which I'm accustomed. That is, my old-school XBox controllers and my big screen TV. Now, I feel vindicated against him and his buddy.

I'm hoping he continues to dabble in Halo 2, from time to time, because I'd really like to learn to play freakin' CTF on Live. I simply suck at this type of play. I can do a decent job in team games lacking objective based play. But, man, for someone as objective oriented as I am, for the most part, I just can't cut the mustard in CTF or Bomb games.

SQL> Select Halo2_Stats From Bungie.net Where GamerTag_Link = 'Lit';