syntheticgerbil

Hah, wow you generous thumbs! I was going to ask if you could possibly borrow money from anyone because you will be getting a nice fat check later. Good to hear Miffy about embarking on the new job, sorry about the bureaucracy though!

Yeah pretty much what Thrik said. This sounds almost certainly like some kind of strange scam. http://www.scambook.com/blog/2013/01/10-tips-to-avoid-being-scammed-on-craigslist/ Also, I still have a Hotmail address, but it's left over from when I was in the fifth grade and pretty much involves everything to do with me buying on ebay or signing up for things that could possibly give me junk, if even news letters. Have to keep my Gmail account as virgin as I can! I think it's no longer possible to get a "@hotmail.com" account as of this year. It's kind of like an e-mail collector's item.

Look at that coy leg stance!

Oh, I have a PSN code for a download of Metal Gear Solid and VR Missions for the original Playstation if anyone wants it. It came with the Metal Gear Solid Legacy pack.

Thanks guys! I might have found this imagery way more hilarious than it should be, but I laughed out loud. I hate phone interviews too, I tend to talk too much if left in silence in those situations and I'll often speak over the other person when they have just started asking a question, continuously causing awkward conversation where we both stop talking and try to let the other person speak. It's so much easier in person because you can kind of take visual cues and tell when someone is about to talk or if they are becoming disinterested in what you have to say.

I made my first foray into the Metroid series and boy was it a doozy. I've owned every Metroid game for years, but just now is the guilt really starting to get to me. So I picked up and played the shit out of Zero Mission. Really my first run was the only enjoyable and real experience because I found up to 95% of the items all by myself and topped it off to 100% within the spectacularly bad time of 9 hours and 30 minutes. I also spent a couple of those hours incredibly frustrated with trying to do tricky shine sparking maneuvers to get the remaining items. Figuring out what to press and getting the hang of the timing of an ability that is not written anywhere in the manual was such a chore the first time. After that I felt determined to unlock the complete ending gallery for Zero Mission, so I went through the game four more times for all 8 endings (copying saves near the end to get a few of the variable endings). The 100% normal and hard runs under 2 hours, I completely used a guide, since there's no way I could figure out how to get 100 items in the most efficient order in that time limit. I had to keep learning each section from one save point to the next and practicing my time until I could confirm my run for that section was quick enough. Then the 15% run on normal was incredibly simple and I did not have much trouble. Hard mode 15% run wasn't even that much worse, just had to read some tips and check out the cheap ass way of killing mother brain. While it feels satisfying to have unlocked the complete gallery, I am relieved to know in all later Metroids that there are no low percent run requirements and the endings are either sorted out by getting 100% or beating the game fast enough, meaning 3 playthroughs at the most (Although from what I'm seeing a good 100% playthrough for all the 3D games is all that is required). Also I went ahead and played the NES Metroid since it was on the Zero Mission cart and didn't really have much fun. I never knew anyone who owned Metroid on NES growing up and so I somehow just completely missed anything about the game. The NES one wore on my patience and I just started using a map to tell me the general area of the items because I kept running in to copied rooms and the game was completely barren in general with many areas and secrets leading to nothing. It just didn't have the same feel of the first Legend of Zelda, released the same year, where the area was jam packed with secrets in well defined areas requiring revisits with upgrades to come collect the prize. I was a bit disappointed since Zero Mission did that and later Metroids become similar to Zelda in that respect. Also the game had really silly easy bosses with terrible AI (if any at all) and the only hard aspect seemed to be tediously collecting energy upon reloading your save. I just stopped turning off my GBA and left it on sleep mode so I wouldn't have to go through that shit again. After my first ending, which was somewhere between 3 and 5 hours, I used passwords online to start at Tourian to see the other endings. Samus in string bikini woo! Here's to hoping Metroid II is much better, because I honestly can't believe Nintendo continued with the franchise after that one. I have never finished Kid Icarus NES but I'm assuming it was more tightly designed based on what I remember, but the other 9-bit franchises from Nintendo all started with very strong games.

That was great. I don't think I've passed a legitimate arcade originating from the 70s and 80s in over ten years though. I've always kind of wanted my own cabinet one day if I were to have the money and space. The colors on this poster are making me feel nostalgic, but not because I have ever been to Iceland. I like it!

Well Austin requires you bring your own bags as of this year, but I've never had anyone ask first, they always start bagging as usual. I suppose I could try to speak up and say I don't need a bagger in the beginning. Oh man, if I'm ever under the maximum item number for self checkout, I'm home free!

When I go to the grocery store I get really annoyed when I can't bag my groceries myself. I don't really care about much except putting like things together by weight and like to stuff as much in a bag as I can unless it's bread and eggs. I am always relieved when I go grocery shopping at an odd time and there are no baggers available so that I can do it myself. When there is a bagger, I always seem to get some teenager talking to someone else, not paying attention and going really slow. Every time I secretly want to tell them to buzz off but I can't bring myself to be that rude. I also feel bad for the cashier because almost every time this occurs, I can see they are readily annoyed because their line is being held up by a slow bagger. However I have encountered lazy shoppers who refuse to bag their own groceries and buy a ton of shit and the cashier is forced to bag all of that crap for them because the baggers are not on shift, so I guess that's the flip side. Anyway, I don't think most countries even have baggers at their groceries stores. My only reasoning for this is because when I visited Paris for a week and purchased groceries, this is how it was. I was confused at first to see no baggers but ultimately was thrilled on how fast this made checkout. FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS MAN.

I did it, I won my unemployment appeal after 3 months of fighting this crap and doing all of my homework on labor code and what constitutes wrongful termination. Long story short, I did good work and was praised for it, employer didn't like that I made complaints last year about problems with the job and over time that ended up as a fiasco over nothing because they CEO likes to take you into his office and talk down to you until you back down and admit you are wrong. I never backed down but I was ultimately branded a troublemaker. Director there hires art director from another state friend above every artist there, we never get along, the dude is apathetic and lazy and I try my best to be continuously professional about it the last year even when making complaints about him impeding my work flow and causing over time, blah blah blah. I was fired finally because the dude called me a dick and I responded with "fuck off." Obviously what I did was wrong and I made a grave error by losing my cool but only I was fired without warning, not the art director. They fought my unemployment claim but I did some research on filing for benefits upon termination and found that my case would be classified under wrongful termination because I did not have any kind of warning ever given to me nor did I have any problems with any other team members. Did my research on precedents similar to my case, got statements from former coworkers, and called the company out on lack of having any kind of code of conduct or documentation of anything since they were trying to twist things and defame me for a bunch of reasons including suddenly stating that I had never done good work. Good thing I had copies of multiple e-mails praising me. The CEO also made the mistake to send a company wide e-mail about my firing which spoke highly of my work ethic even though I was fired. A former coworker then forwarded this to me. Ah, so I'm trying to keep this short, but I guess I failed. Finally I had my appeal hearing yesterday, which was done as a telephone conference with my former boss and the HR person I reported the incident to (yes I reported myself, it seemed to win me a bunch of brownie points with the hearing officer). I was nervous as fuck to hear his voice again and was hoping I wouldn't screw up the verbal part since I sent a bunch of documentation ahead of time to the hearing officer. Turns out the hearing officer read every bit carefully and I didn't have to lead or say much of anything. She grilled my former boss as he tried to twist so many things around and she was able to quickly poke holes in everything he was saying and did it all so eloquently. It was so great to listen to and I felt incredibly relieved. I feel like she really did me a favor to hear out my case since Texas is apparently very bad about giving unemployment for any reason unless it is just a regular lay off. So still, don't have a job which sucks, but now I have money to help my fiancee out with bills until I find one. Hopefully get a steady paycheck soon, as I hate being home all day. But either way, a small victory for me in life. I tried so hard for the unemployment appeal and feel proud of myself for sticking to it even though I wanted to give up so many times because of how taxing it was and how much fine print and bureaucracy I had to deal with. I mean my old boss can technically still appeal this verdict in the next two weeks, but he has to present new evidence to the next committee it goes to and then explain why they didn't have it in the first place. I kind of don't think it's happening but there is a possibility he may try to manufacture statements against me with the other friends he works with. But I hope finally I can now let go of the incredible unhappiness with that job. In the report I received in the mail today, the hearing officer wrote a long description about my case specifically pointing out the nepotism going on in the company and then supported me by citing a second unemployment claim precedent in addition to the one I had already found. She also explained that even if they had problems with my personality, they never made the effort to reprimand me but instead decided to continuously praise my work. Beaming right now.

Every time I see any of these I feel like they are the cheesiest things ever. It doesn't matter what decade they were produced in. I almost would prefer it if no one ever animated their production logo before any kind of movie or game. That said, I like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hraaJ_z7OvY

Well, he's your friend so you're going to care. I just think that the board game story is one of the stranger things I've heard to describing the overbearing type of partner. The scenario makes me think of something I might have done at a young age to keep my little sister from crying by purposefully losing, but it's strange to hear of adults doing the same among other adults. Also I would have purposefully never protected my little sister from losing because I was a very bad brother.

Heck yeah, my Dad used to fit 2-3 copied movies from video rentals on to one of his magical 6 hour tape. They deteriorated very quickly though. He also put all of our family home videos on the cheapo 6 hour recording, that also didn't work so well :/

Is this his first relationship in a decade? Ever?

Haha, it's okay, I used to bother Steve Purcell with all kinds of Sam and Max questions in elementary and middle school because I had his personal e-mail address and could abuse it. I sent him a very embarassing fan comic of Sam and Max. A few years ago I used the same e-mail to ask him about the backgrounds for Loom I think, to clarify if he did any of them, but I forgot the response or the matter at hand. It's somewhere on Lucasforums. Actually though, I am thrilled. I always assumed Steve Purcell did that animation. You can kind of see his style sometimes with the timing (the Last Crusade wrong grail death and LeChuck's explosion in MI1 are very similar), so it's usually safe to say for the early stuff something really dynamic or comical tends to be his.

Oh yeah, "God damn it," is my goto phrase for everything and it's more a habit from partly my dad's way of swearing with growing up and that lots of other people love to god damn it. I figured there's no point in stopping even though I'm not religious because I like the way, "GOD DAMN IT" rolls off the tongue. Also, Messiah is going to have the coolest fucking nick name: Mess.

Ahahaha, I love it, I knew what it was before even reading the description!

Haha, I wasn't serious, I suck at the jokes.

Where did you get that nazi's backstory? I don't remember reading these things in the manual.

Going on to say it's the publisher's job to continuously print copies is not part of what this controversy is about. It's a problem, but doesn't really apply here, because like it or not, limited printings of every kind of media good exists, no matter what. The fact that a retailer is potentially holding back stock of a limited good, assuming Nintendo isn't in cahoots here reprinting stuff for them (Where exactly are these Metroid Prime Trilogies coming from?), then they are taking advantage of the market. When big international corporate chains start pulling that shit, things get out of hand fast and I don't think it should shift blame to the publisher. What? Why would you price a game based on the the later resale price? Part of the issue I think you're missing is had Gamestop put out all of the stock they had in the first place (assuming there is no underhanded reprinting going on), more people would have been able to buy it at $50 new. This is in response to you thinking greed should have free reign on the production of luxury goods, not necessarily this case. There are probably minor ramifications here for the case of Xenoblade but I'm not an economist so I wouldn't know.

Damn Rodi, that sucks. I can agree with you that at least it happened within a month so that you didn't have to draw anything out that wasn't working. Just concentrate on that as much as you can. Someone else is sure to come along!

I guess that's where you and I differ. If you look at the any media market enough and are privy to the amount in the print run vs. popularity you can start making educated guesses. Definitely would not put a dent in their profit margin to say purchase a thousand or so copies of Xenoblade last year and make over triple of what they would have received (assuming the $12 cut of the first new copy is true). Some former employees on that Joystiq article claim that this has already been happening for years, citing a stock of Pikmin 2 selling new as used. Pikmin 2 has been commanding ridiculous prices in the United States up until the Wii rerelease. Because the price would have been inflated a bit higher (even if only $3) because they were sitting on a bunch of new copies to sell for a higher price later as the exclusive seller. Consumers miss out on a game that didn't have to be AS out of print and therefore people miss out on your product and initial sales figures drop. People do make a livelihood on games you know, even if they are not milk, bread, or eggs. It's not as easy as you think it is.

I did this really quick in Photoshop with the levels tool as I think the one Paintshop uses somehow doesn't retain the image quality as well from what I'm seeing, although it doesn't look too different.It's still in greyscale though. I think what is happening because you are saving it as a black and white image, which Photoshop apparently doesn't allow me to do, that is where your main image deterioration is coming from, so probably what you have is about as good as it's going to get since the only colors available are 100% black and 100% white.

I luckily was able to find it when Best Buy marked it down for $20 on a sale for one week. I had to drive to four different stores in Houston though. I'll probably never sell it.

I love that "vintage" titles are now things released in the past few years. Gamestop's defense is useless. They don't even address where the copies of Xenoblade came from or if they were in fact actually new games without shrinkwrap. Also I'd be curious where they suddenly stumbled upon these supplies of the Metroid Prime Trilogy that are no doubt going to sell for at least $80 and be new for all intents and purposes, because they sure as hell didn't just buy a bunch of unwrapped copies from big Nintendo fans all over the U.S.. I'm not sure what the legality here is with what a retailer can do with ripping open new games and reselling them as used, as some people in the article comments stated happens in Gamestop stores with corporate orders (usually for games that go for a lower price since they never sold well new). So of course no one here knows the exclusivity arrangement set up by Gamestop and Nintendo, but surely Gamestop purchased the complete stock of the game in advance (since they were the exclusive retailer) and held some back, otherwise buying new stock sitting in a warehouse and claiming they are used for the sake of inflating the price must be breaking some kind of trade law. Even without the legality, both situations are just absolutely sleazy. Yeah I get the capitalist manifesto a lot of people are citing where Gamestop can buy whatever stock they want and do what they want, free market man yeah man, but the precedent being set here is not good for the market or developers (at least boxed developers). Individual resellers already pull this bullshit (although they have an obligation to leave the shrinkwrap on), but when a major retailer does it on a large scale it means they could potentially fuck with any promising game that has a low print run and inflate the price ahead of time by making a chunk of the stock purposefully unavailable. This is a very easy thing to do, resellers do it all the time and typically you can just target any JRPG or fringe Japanese game published by Atlus or Xseed and see some returns later. Fans of these types of games already know this and generally secure copies on day 1. On top of that, we are living in the world of limited collector's edition bullshit right now, this will not be hard to do. I wonder if Nintendo has anything to say about this now, as the Metroid Prime Trilogy comment almost seemed like a taunt. So this is Nintendo's fault because they don't have an on demand DVD-R printing service like Amazon or Warner Bros. set up? Are there any boxed publishers who somehow print the disc and box materials on demand that we have all missed? Even if discs are easier to print than constructing a plastic cartridge, you have to take in to account the printsetting for the inlay and manuals as well as making sure you are not authoring your discs on cheapo plastic like Amazon, since these are games and they will spin way more than a DVD movie ever will.