After some more drama which is part of my daily life anymore, I started thinking about some fundamental questions. The questions ranged greatly about kids, work, purpose, and the point of it all.
All these questions arose to one big one that I was surprised to answer myself.
"If you could control your own demise, and know for certain that everything were to be okay, kids would be taken care of, your spouse would stop grieving soon and move on with their life, your parent(s) wouldn't morn you very long, all bills and issues would be paid off and taken care of, would you continue living?"
It's a difficult question to be sure. One that can't obviously be answered properly because you can't know for certain that everyone would be okay. But behind the literal interpretation is a deeper one. If you could push the eject button on your life, and know for certain that everything would be okay, would you push it?
Maybe you believe in reincarnation and you will just come back as something or someone else. Maybe you are a traditional believer, this would get you into heaven much faster, and everyone is okay that you leave behind, so why not? You have to go eventually, so why not at a moment of your choosing?
My personal answer to this was met with resistance in my mind. Like two wrestlers in a cage match, the two extremes tossed and turned about, each side gaining the upper hand at various points.
The first round went like this -
You would stop working. No commute, people blaring their horns at you, riding your bumper, traffic jams, car wrecks, random freeway shutdowns. No overbearing bosses, tight deadlines, worrying about keeping your job, or just plain working at a job that in the grand scheme of things means absolutely nothing. Make no mistake, most jobs fall into this category. Just ask all those innovative people that did a bunch of stuff that you can't name in the 40's and 50's. Their life's work you can't even remember and the world has moved on since. The importance of what they thought was so important literally has no meaning less than 60 years later. Their impact on the world has been snuffed out and is lost forever, meaningless. The vast majority of people don't choose to work, they have to work. Being dead, you are done working.
I had a tough time coming up with a solid positive for working in this way. In the end none of what I do will ever be remembered longer than 25 years, most of the time much less than that.
Second round was about kids -
Kids seem like this great idea. They are a way to carry on your memory, and are your chance to shape a human being into this world the way it should be. They are joyous and fun to be around. Looking through the eyes of a child and how they see the world is so incredible.
The problem with this concept is it isn't true. I always felt my kids had a golden age where they loved me dearly, helped around the house, were grateful for the things I did for them, said please and thank you, didn't fuss much, and were generally just a joy to be around. When they arrive baby's cant do a damn thing. Changing shit, being shit and peed on, waking up every 2 hours while trying to catch enough sleep to function enough to not lose your job (and insurance) the next day, no sex with your partner for months because they just aren't ready, baby blues, and much more make that first 9 months pretty fucking awful.
After that kids start moving around requiring constant supervision. They could fall into a pool, walk out into the street, put a fork in a light socket, get into the Drano under the sink, choke to death while they feed themselves (you have to watch the entire time they eat), they literally have no freaking clue what the hell they are doing. Your job is to keep them safe and teach them not to put their hand on the stove while you are cooking dinner, less they burn themselves.
At 3 they think they pretty much got it, and will let you know every chance they get. Defiant, loud, pissy, combative, whiny, and more, they are extremely difficult to be around. Some parents don't even bother going out to eat because junior is just too stressful to take along. Imagine that you are doing all the work items above, and you can't even enjoy a meal out because of your kid's attitude.
Then the kids get a lot better. From about 4-10 things are just so amazing. Your kid learns to read, loses teeth, believes in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, helps you around the house, cares if you had a bad day or not, falls asleep in your arms, begs you to do things with them, and makes you feel like you are awesome. If kid's attitudes stayed the same at this age for the rest of their lives the world would be a magnificent place. Imagine a teenager that you paid for their car volunteering to vacuum the house, do the dishes, wants to go to the movies with you, and much more.
Instead, that's not what happens. It does feel like it is overnight, but probably it is not. From my perspective one day you become nothing more than a servant to a creature whose demands can never be met and satisfied to their liking. There will be no help. Further, the teenage child will make your house a disaster with the expectation that you will clean it up. It's your house after all, they just live there. You will constantly fight about a huge variety of topics which you will never win. They could be about grades, money, behavior, and hygiene. Teenagers love to smell like shit, then cover it up with gallons of perfume rather than shower. This only happens when someone is going to be around them whose opinion matters, which in case you are wondering, is not you.
When you finally do get kid free time it always is stressful. The guest bathroom generally is covered in hair, make up, dozens of hair bands, half spit out toothpaste, clothes on the floor, and much more. Generally the bathroom will be out of toilet paper. As a final touch, the trash can next to the toilet will be filled with maxi pads and tampons. All of this makes your adult friends not want to come over.
So on top of arranging to have your good for nothing kid go somewhere so you can finally be an adult for two hours (and paying your teenager money so they can get out of your hair for awhile), they leave every surface they touch a complete disaster. Smelly shoes will be everywhere. Wet towels will be on the carpet (hey you can dry that mold out anytime, servant)., every wrapper that the teenager ate out of will be in a variety of locations through out the entire house. You'll spend time frantically cleaning up your pig sty of a house, stressing yourself out and really not in the mood to entertain. Your food is late because your house needed cleaning. Your teenager knew that you weren't going to make them clean it, what were you going to do? Tell them they are grounded and keep them in the house while you try to have some adult time? That's right, teenagers one special gift is the amazing ability to jerk you over at every angle.
The late teenage years get even better, and much more expensive. Phones, cars, insurance, prom, fund raisers, extra curricular activities, boyfriends / girlfriends, college, car wrecks and tickets, and much more. By the time they are off the family payroll, you have spent 20+ years spending a crap load of money on this one human being. I read an article that said it is just over a quarter million dollars to raise one kid. That's before college, weddings, and honeymoons.
After all of this, your child just might move to the other side of the world, where you will see them at most once a year. Everything you did could more often than not result in a human being who doesn't really love you nearly as much as you love them. In fact, some might even cringe at the thought of spending more than a half a day with you. Kids most likely wont want to be around you very often when they become adults. Did you go hang with mom and dad everyday until they did? Of course not.
Let's take the word child / teenager out fort a second. Replace these words with "dead beat, abusive, moody, husband." That seem unfair? Examine what you get out of the child versus a dead beat husband who you footed his bill his entire life.
The two real differences are first off, as an adult child might take care of you when you get older or frail. This is highly unlikely though given how many people are just too busy to take care of their parents, leaving them to minimum wage workers in nursing homes where they are raped and abused.
The second difference is they might give you grandkids that you can spoil. But again, these grand kids will be seen once in a blue moon. Either that, or your teenager could decide that they are better off living with you all together and ditch the kids with you. Leaving you to repeat the process above while you are trying to figure out how to spend your last few years of healthy life that your kid just sucked out of you. Thanks kid!
The logic of why it sucks to be living was overwhelming. The rewards of seeing a kid twice a week at best, and once a year or less at worst, seemed not worthy of any effort. The "joy" of working and what it does to us, and more.
So far the winner was absolutely press that eject button now. Living sucks.
I'll write about other arguments about this concept later. For now, I have to attend to getting my kids in bed and doing some extra work tonight so I can be ready in the morning to get the kids up, make breakfast, take them to school, and then go to work ready to do a great job.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Land Lord Saga - How it Ended
I just realized I had not said how things ended with the landlord at our old house when we moved out in 2009. Not sure why I forgot to post, shameful on my part. Without further adieu, I give you the ending of the bitch landlady from hell. It all starts with a police report....
Police report -
I spoke to our insurance company and they said in order to file a claim we have to file a police report. They made it out like it would be easy, because they thought we were dealing with a normal police department. Little did they know....
The police department was very uncooperative in obtaining a police report. I had to call about 5 times on several different days before they agreed that stealing and damaging property isn't a "civil matter" as they had said so many times before.
What made them change their mind? Their main argument was that if someone can get in the house with a key, even if they aren't authorized, they are not actually stealing from inside the home. This quickly changed when I gave examples of walking into a police station and taking shotguns and computer equipment, since the precinct is unlocked during standard hours.
We got the police report finally, and of course that was the last we heard from the police. Thank you city of Bedford police department for re-affirming my opinion of your value to the tax paying community.
State Farm -
The report was sent to State Farm along with a list of items and values of property destroyed or stolen by our landlord from hell. They were shocked to hear the details and decided they were going to sue the landlord, and go ahead with processing our claim on our items. This was amazing news to us as we finally had someone who cared and wanted to do something to help us out.
There were some hurdles to getting it all paid for, because of how they process theft claim money. It's a long story, but basically you receive 50% of the value of the items up front, then as you replace them you send in receipts to get the other 50%. I assume its an anti-scam measure for fraudulent claims.
Deposit -
The landlord sent us a $54 check and nothing else from our deposit, two months after we moved out. She cited several hundred dollars of "lost showings" where she charged us over $100 each time she wasn't able to show the house. Further she charged for cleaning, and "tree trimming" at $120.
Knowing who we were dealing with, I took an abundance of pictures of the house when we left. I did some digging and can't find those pictures at the time of this writing. I'll see if I can find them at a later date.
At any rate, lets just say it was very clean. I steam cleaned, and we paid for a house cleaner to come in and really make it shine, and made sure everything was perfect.
But because she was so cash strapped and a poor financial planner, the landlord felt compelled to make up a story to retain $950 of the $1000 deposit.
I spoke to an attorney as part of a free consultation and two important items came out from the discussions. One, if the judge ruled in our favor we could hope for a judgement. This is painfully difficult to collect on in this case, as we would have to file a lien on the property. Because its a rent house, we would not get any money until she sold the house. There were some other options, but each one costs money in the form of time off of work spent in a courtroom and money for forms, filing fees and more.
The scarier part was that if you sued this lady, I would have to give my new address in the court records. Because of how close we are to my old house and the fact that they had already broke in once, I was not sure that the money I might never get was worth the worry about what the landlord would do. More specifically, her son was the one that destroyed our house before, what's to stop him from coming a few blocks and paying another house visit?
I decided it wasn't worth it. State Farm had more than paid for replacing all the items that were broken, with brand new items, and we had moved into a much better place with an amazing landlord.
We still stay in touch with our neighbor from the old house. So far there have been three tennants move into the house, with one of them going on a rent strike because the landlord would not fix certain items (this sounds familiar).
We have lived in our new home the entire time. We have had some things break and the landlord fixed them the same day, or the next day at the latest. We have a much bigger and nicer home, for less than we paid at the other home.
In short, all the pain, stress, and emotional drain that we went through ended up having a happy ending, at least for us. We replaced all our items, and everything has been wonderful.
So happy in fact that I forgot to write the ending to this story until almost four years later.
Police report -
I spoke to our insurance company and they said in order to file a claim we have to file a police report. They made it out like it would be easy, because they thought we were dealing with a normal police department. Little did they know....
The police department was very uncooperative in obtaining a police report. I had to call about 5 times on several different days before they agreed that stealing and damaging property isn't a "civil matter" as they had said so many times before.
What made them change their mind? Their main argument was that if someone can get in the house with a key, even if they aren't authorized, they are not actually stealing from inside the home. This quickly changed when I gave examples of walking into a police station and taking shotguns and computer equipment, since the precinct is unlocked during standard hours.
We got the police report finally, and of course that was the last we heard from the police. Thank you city of Bedford police department for re-affirming my opinion of your value to the tax paying community.
State Farm -
The report was sent to State Farm along with a list of items and values of property destroyed or stolen by our landlord from hell. They were shocked to hear the details and decided they were going to sue the landlord, and go ahead with processing our claim on our items. This was amazing news to us as we finally had someone who cared and wanted to do something to help us out.
There were some hurdles to getting it all paid for, because of how they process theft claim money. It's a long story, but basically you receive 50% of the value of the items up front, then as you replace them you send in receipts to get the other 50%. I assume its an anti-scam measure for fraudulent claims.
Deposit -
The landlord sent us a $54 check and nothing else from our deposit, two months after we moved out. She cited several hundred dollars of "lost showings" where she charged us over $100 each time she wasn't able to show the house. Further she charged for cleaning, and "tree trimming" at $120.
Knowing who we were dealing with, I took an abundance of pictures of the house when we left. I did some digging and can't find those pictures at the time of this writing. I'll see if I can find them at a later date.
At any rate, lets just say it was very clean. I steam cleaned, and we paid for a house cleaner to come in and really make it shine, and made sure everything was perfect.
But because she was so cash strapped and a poor financial planner, the landlord felt compelled to make up a story to retain $950 of the $1000 deposit.
I spoke to an attorney as part of a free consultation and two important items came out from the discussions. One, if the judge ruled in our favor we could hope for a judgement. This is painfully difficult to collect on in this case, as we would have to file a lien on the property. Because its a rent house, we would not get any money until she sold the house. There were some other options, but each one costs money in the form of time off of work spent in a courtroom and money for forms, filing fees and more.
The scarier part was that if you sued this lady, I would have to give my new address in the court records. Because of how close we are to my old house and the fact that they had already broke in once, I was not sure that the money I might never get was worth the worry about what the landlord would do. More specifically, her son was the one that destroyed our house before, what's to stop him from coming a few blocks and paying another house visit?
I decided it wasn't worth it. State Farm had more than paid for replacing all the items that were broken, with brand new items, and we had moved into a much better place with an amazing landlord.
We still stay in touch with our neighbor from the old house. So far there have been three tennants move into the house, with one of them going on a rent strike because the landlord would not fix certain items (this sounds familiar).
We have lived in our new home the entire time. We have had some things break and the landlord fixed them the same day, or the next day at the latest. We have a much bigger and nicer home, for less than we paid at the other home.
In short, all the pain, stress, and emotional drain that we went through ended up having a happy ending, at least for us. We replaced all our items, and everything has been wonderful.
So happy in fact that I forgot to write the ending to this story until almost four years later.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Game Retreat Recap
After much planning, coordinating, and several schedule changes we finally had our annual gaming retreat two weekends ago. I am including links to many of the games so you can check them out.
Wednesday The posse arrived and we started to get things rolling. We played Citadels (http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=31) . Citadels was very fun and easy to play. It's a card game with some interesting choosing mechanics similar to Puerto Rico or Twilight Imperium.
Then we played Wasabi (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/wasabi.htm). It was a complete beatdown, but I wrote a session report about it anyway, here -http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/510287/two-first-timers-new-strategy-attempted.
After that, we wrapped it up with some Castle Panic, which we won of course (http://www.firesidegames.com/castlepanic.html).
Thursday We started by making characters for Mutants and Masterminds. The character creation process was massive. M&M is by design very open and allows for an infinite number of super heroes, but at the expense of it being new user friendly. We spent too much time making characters, and still didn't finish by the self imposed deadline of 5:30.
Then I think we played Smallworld that night. I thought it was going to be a very boring game based on the description on the back. It ended up being our most enjoyable board game of the entire weekend. We craved to play it each day. I highly recommend it! http://www.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/
Friday We started the morning off by attempting to make it through level 50 on Gears of War 2. Last year we made it to level 49, but never made it to the final level. We tried for several hours last
year, but failed each and every time. To re-familiarize ourselves with the game we tried waves 1-26, then jumped to level 40. The monkey finally was off our back as we worked solidly as a team and the four of us trounced level 50. http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/AgeGate.htm We played M&M for a few hours after completing our characters. http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/
Saturday We played some various rock band games. Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero Van Halen, and finally a lot of songs on Rock Band 2.
After that it was time for Pandemic, which we ended up losing (http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/pandemic.htm).
We played Small World one more time. After that we went to my place and had a large dinner. We played Wits and Wagers and Formula D afterwords with about 10 people.
(http://www.northstargames.com/ and http://www.asmodee-us.com/index.html). Update - formula D might have issues at the website, try this BGG entry instead - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37904/formula-d
Sunday I decided that since one of our participants had never had me as a DM before I wanted to run a quick game for him and the others. We played the Goodman Games Zero level module, "Heroes are made, not born." http://www.goodman-games.com/5100preview.html I modified the module to end at the boss fight at the Ogre. I never liked the last part of the module and we only had 3 players so it made sense. The players had a highly effective tactic for taking out the Ogre. It worked perfectly with some excellent die rolling and just by its sheer design. After being beaten by Pandemic days before, we vowed a rematch, which we won soundly.
All in all pretty successful weekend. I am missing quite a bit of the things we did, but memory isn't as clear as it once was. :-)
Friday, February 12, 2010
Modern Warfare 2 Letdown
It's been just over 3 months since the highly anticipated release of Modern Warfare 2 (called MW2 for short). In this sequel Infinity Ward (IW) decided to not have a public beta test as they did in the first game. The reasoning was that they wouldn't need to do a tiresome public beta if an internal "professional tester" beta was deemed sufficient.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/101/1015777p1.html
Within a few short weeks issues started arising at an alarming rate. The host issue that plagued the first modern warfare was more apparent than ever. Unlike many other multiplayer games, Infinity Ward goes the less expensive route and does not have their own servers for players. As such, a certain Xbox live subscriber will be given host rights and therefore also given about a 2 second lead time ahead of everyone else.
This issue wasn't addressed and still plagues the game to this day. It's openly known that the host gets superior reaction times, damage output, wins in all tiebreakers, etc.
Even more troubling, players were only using certain equipment loadouts even though there are hundreds if not thousands of options. This points to an unbalanced game. First came the Dual 1887 shotguns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2IZd26F43I
Observe how the person doesn't even have to aim the guns in order to score instant kills. Just point in the general area and boom.
It's funny to think that not only could the Terminator not reload as fast as these guys are reloading two guns at the same time, but also humorous that in over 120 years of gun making technological improvements, the 1887 shotgun is better than any gun ever created in history.
After this slipped through the professional testing at IW, the cheaters stepped in. The first widely spread cheat was the javelin glitch. Essentially a player would arm himself like a suicide bomber and run around the board. When he would die a massive explosive would happen, killing people in a wide area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-nYVHyQWc
After a few weeks of this glitch ruining the integrity of the game, and a complete embarrassment for the quality control process at Infinity Ward, they managed to rush a patch through Microsoft.
Let's give IW a get out of jail free card for that, sometimes a few bugs make it through no matter what the testing process.
However, more cheats followed. Specifically the one that has ruined more games for more people is the care package glitch. With no one way to find out specifically who is actually performing the cheat, it is a major game changer the likes that has never been seen in multiplayer games before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Y6kuRHAqY
You can't tell who is performing it unless you see it for yourself, so reporting it is very difficult.
You might be able to tell by stats, but if the player is sharing all his care packages with his teammates, their stats go up and his do not. So, merely picking who is in first place doesn't really say who is cheating for certain. He could share some, and not others, and keep everyone relatively equal on the stats.
The other cheat is the unlimited emergency airdrop, which is also referenced on Youtube above. Four care packages at once, for as long as the match lasts.
The third cheat is the speed glitch when using certain care packages. This isn't the best video to show how fast you run, but it will do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQMNzTkw_vE
Notice at the 1:45 mark that not only does it make you run faster, you also are hunched over, making targeting you that much harder. Most users of this cheat will add commando pro and start the killing spree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxtXK6sYBcA
I am glad that IW is at least willing to address these issues with a patch. But after 90+ days of allowing cheaters to destroy the credibility of their game, stating that their QA process was superior to the previous testing methods, and much more, I have to admit I am done with this game. While I am a huge fan of IW and the Modern Warfare series, something has changed at Infinity Ward for the worse.
Apparently I am told a patch was pushed out today that addresses some but not all of these issues. For me, 3 months to fix obvious blatant cheating is too long for a game that sold 7 million copies its first day.
Modern Warfare 2 was widely successful because of the game play balance, graphics, pacing, and wealth of options from MW one (COD4). I won't be as naive for MW3. Infinity Ward is obviously a company that now has turned to making more of a profit from its fans at the expense of making quality games that are fair and balanced.
Lets say that even with all the various options chosen for MW2, night vision goggles, new Xboxes, etc, that there were "just" 60 a copy in revenue from MW2.
Before costs, sales of Modern Warfare 2 at that price accoung for 720,000,000. That's right, 720 million dollars. A company with that kind of revenue stream has no excuse to allow these types of cheats in their game, let alone have a quality control department that allowed them to slip through testing in the first place.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/101/1015777p1.html
Within a few short weeks issues started arising at an alarming rate. The host issue that plagued the first modern warfare was more apparent than ever. Unlike many other multiplayer games, Infinity Ward goes the less expensive route and does not have their own servers for players. As such, a certain Xbox live subscriber will be given host rights and therefore also given about a 2 second lead time ahead of everyone else.
This issue wasn't addressed and still plagues the game to this day. It's openly known that the host gets superior reaction times, damage output, wins in all tiebreakers, etc.
Even more troubling, players were only using certain equipment loadouts even though there are hundreds if not thousands of options. This points to an unbalanced game. First came the Dual 1887 shotguns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2IZd26F43I
Observe how the person doesn't even have to aim the guns in order to score instant kills. Just point in the general area and boom.
It's funny to think that not only could the Terminator not reload as fast as these guys are reloading two guns at the same time, but also humorous that in over 120 years of gun making technological improvements, the 1887 shotgun is better than any gun ever created in history.
After this slipped through the professional testing at IW, the cheaters stepped in. The first widely spread cheat was the javelin glitch. Essentially a player would arm himself like a suicide bomber and run around the board. When he would die a massive explosive would happen, killing people in a wide area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-nYVHyQWc
After a few weeks of this glitch ruining the integrity of the game, and a complete embarrassment for the quality control process at Infinity Ward, they managed to rush a patch through Microsoft.
Let's give IW a get out of jail free card for that, sometimes a few bugs make it through no matter what the testing process.
However, more cheats followed. Specifically the one that has ruined more games for more people is the care package glitch. With no one way to find out specifically who is actually performing the cheat, it is a major game changer the likes that has never been seen in multiplayer games before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Y6kuRHAqY
You can't tell who is performing it unless you see it for yourself, so reporting it is very difficult.
You might be able to tell by stats, but if the player is sharing all his care packages with his teammates, their stats go up and his do not. So, merely picking who is in first place doesn't really say who is cheating for certain. He could share some, and not others, and keep everyone relatively equal on the stats.
The other cheat is the unlimited emergency airdrop, which is also referenced on Youtube above. Four care packages at once, for as long as the match lasts.
The third cheat is the speed glitch when using certain care packages. This isn't the best video to show how fast you run, but it will do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQMNzTkw_vE
Notice at the 1:45 mark that not only does it make you run faster, you also are hunched over, making targeting you that much harder. Most users of this cheat will add commando pro and start the killing spree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxtXK6sYBcA
I am glad that IW is at least willing to address these issues with a patch. But after 90+ days of allowing cheaters to destroy the credibility of their game, stating that their QA process was superior to the previous testing methods, and much more, I have to admit I am done with this game. While I am a huge fan of IW and the Modern Warfare series, something has changed at Infinity Ward for the worse.
Apparently I am told a patch was pushed out today that addresses some but not all of these issues. For me, 3 months to fix obvious blatant cheating is too long for a game that sold 7 million copies its first day.
Modern Warfare 2 was widely successful because of the game play balance, graphics, pacing, and wealth of options from MW one (COD4). I won't be as naive for MW3. Infinity Ward is obviously a company that now has turned to making more of a profit from its fans at the expense of making quality games that are fair and balanced.
Lets say that even with all the various options chosen for MW2, night vision goggles, new Xboxes, etc, that there were "just" 60 a copy in revenue from MW2.
Before costs, sales of Modern Warfare 2 at that price accoung for 720,000,000. That's right, 720 million dollars. A company with that kind of revenue stream has no excuse to allow these types of cheats in their game, let alone have a quality control department that allowed them to slip through testing in the first place.
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