The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject:

http://www.nydailynews.com/features/maps/subways_nypd/
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dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:13 pm Post subject:

http://www.icedgame.com/

it crashes my browser so i have no idea if it's any good or not.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

The game itself is an .exe that you download. If you want I could send it to you.

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:13 pm Post subject:

no it'll probably just piss me off.

like arguing with people who get all their information from the daily show, "games for a cause" are an idea i love but whose application normally does little, if anything, for my mental health.

all i want is gunfire and regret.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:39 am Post subject:

i'm putting together the program for a conference my wife is participating in - 1/2 cheer for pro bono work - and some of the conference title have been illuminating, if weird.

for example, lgbt is now lgbtq (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and either "queer" or "questioning" depending on whose notes i'm working from).

panels on comic books are popular, as are films. which strikes me as a bit odd at a literature conference but they gotta pack in almost four days.

the TITLE: EXPLANATION trope is REALLY FUCKING TIRED. however, some of them are awesome - the women of color and trauma in literature panel had a great "save the drama for your mama: the something something of someone's booktitle" entry. there have been a few other gems, like "i can see queerly now" and "what guiding light taught my grandmother about gender," but most just follow that stupid format instead of just saying what needs to be said about the paper.

perhaps i notice this simply due to having to format the whole thing.

another issue is that no one can actually agree on what stuff means in the slightest. two panels about "queer pedagogy" are seemingly unrelated, though to be fair no one can agree on what queer pedagogy means in the outside world either.

frankly it sounds a bit close to "jewish science" for my tastes but such is the upside and downside of niche.
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boojiboy7 · Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:33 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:53 am Post subject:

i enjoy that game myself, it just seems unnecessary, and no way to stand out.

ebay drama:

sold that zelda gamecube game back in january 9. got payment on the 11th and shipped that day, priority. i did not get a tracking number (yes, this is dumb but i was mailing a lot of stuff out and missed it). sent out an email on the 18th to check up on receipt, never heard back, assumed all was good. (as were the other four packages i sent that day)

i get an email today from the kid (judging by type style and spelling) that the package was never received.

what now? if i read paypal correctly, i am at fault for not providing a tracking number. however, i have no way of knowing if this kid is careless, telling the truth, lives next to a sticky fingered usps station or is trying to rip me off.

2008 is a year of lessons, some of which include tracking numbers.
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dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

I got royally screwed by some psycho I sold a textbook to on half.com a little while back. Unlike ebay, the type of shipping you have to use is pre-decided (usually media mail), so there aren't any tracking numbers; though I used to sell 20-30 things a year on it and I rarely had any problems. I get an email about three weeks after I send the book from this woman who tells me she never received it, and she asks me for a tracking number or what have you. I tell her that neither she nor half.com paid me for one, and if she thinks the item is lost, she can contact half.com to file a claim. I don't hear anything about it for a few more weeks, then get a message from half.com that since I haven't followed up on the message they sent me about her claim, it's their policy to reach into my bank account and refund the woman's purchase price to her (this is a sneaky trick on their part: they send the request to your online message center without an email notice, so I didn't catch it in time). A month after all this, I get the package returned to me in the mail: the woman never claimed the book from the P.O. box address she had given me (either because she gave me the wrong address by accident didn't realize, or figured this out later and played dumb, or got the book some other way in the interim and didn't want to pay for mine, or whatever the hell happened).

So yeah, the moral here is always get a tracking number.

Also: it absolutely stone-cold sucks to have to file a claim with the USPS or any of the private carriers I've ever heard anyone had to deal with in a situation like this. I had a UPS manager once scream at me on the phone, call me a scam artist, and threaten to cut off service to my home on the grounds that it was an "unsafe delivery location" after I filed a claim for about $70 worth of books I'd purchased on amazon.com that never arrived. I was seventeen at the time. On advice from my father, I called him back and he folded pretty quick when I tried to get his name and supervisor's name so I could contact amazon and tell them about his office holding up my claim.

About a week after this, the box (which had already been tracked as "delivered") showed up mysteriously; either UPS had it all along (though I doubt it), or whoever the box had been accidentally delivered to (I'd already canvassed all of my close by neighbors to check this, so I have no idea who it could have been) had finally returned it.

It was sort of embarrassing when the delivery guy came by with the replacement shipment after that and I had to explain to him what happened.
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I never purchase delivery confirmation. I list it and insurance as optional in the auction, but they don't receive anything if they don't pay for it. Paypal and eBay take so much out in fees as it is that I don't want to pay another .60 out of my pocket; I tend to sale 3+ things at a time, and that quickly adds up.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

dhex · Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:48 am Post subject:

well, i haven't heard back from him yet and it definitely wasn't returned to me, so...yeah.

i will not ship without a tracking number ever again, i tells ya.

anyway, i was thinking about the witcher and sexism again today, and i think i can see the juvenile send-up in the persona of geralt. sterile, immune from disease (and thusly sexual - aka adult - responsibility for his actions) and nailing about 150 people an hour, including vampire triplets. this is definitely the testosterone vats up on high.
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dhex · Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:48 am Post subject:

so the kid says he got it now. i wonder where it was.

it is snowing in the city.
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dhex · Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:25 am Post subject:

http://reason.tv/roughcut/show/294.html

you can stop watching after the fan song. (2 minutes in)
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

i showed dracko that video the other day (just the music video)

he described it as the gayest thing he's ever seen
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

No, seriously, I'm fairly certain that headache was my brain trying to convince my internal organs not to shut down of their own accord.

That video is the reason why we shipped women to mental asylums just for looking at us funny back in the day.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 10:24 am Post subject:

one of these conference papers used the abbreviation lgbtqqa+

with no explanation. google returns two hits. we have applied for clarification.

in other news, why did no one tell me ong bak is the best fucking midnight movie since kickboxer?
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

dhex · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:32 pm Post subject:

i have failed to give credit where credit is due.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

those youtube links are dead. can i assume these two were included?
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:22 am Post subject:

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/11/why-mainstream-media-hates-the-internet-games-mmos-and-you

mountains constructed from molehills, etc.

i know this is the age of the victim and all, and everyone loves a good loser script - well, i don't but everyone else seems to think they're fine - but really...maybe yellow journalism was invented to keep the burgeoning amusement industry at bay. why read newspapers when you could go to the nickelodeon and gaze upon womens' ankles?
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dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:54 am Post subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/opinion/22conley.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:23 am Post subject:

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/02/21/7909

jim henley nails it like he's martin luther and conservatarians are the cathedral door.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:52 am Post subject:

an old reason interview with Imad A. Ahmad

very interesting.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry

pragmatism?

it rings true, if sad.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Definitely very game-theory. There's a truth there, in that her logic checks out, on the other hand, she's fighting against the One True Love theory, which is a hell of a monster.

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject:

well, love only gets you so far when building a partnership.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Right, which is her point, which is pretty much true.

On the other hand, I think that kind of thinking can be dangerous in the sense that where is the line drawn in terms of "settling"? Is a bad relationship better than no relationship? I wouldn't think so; then again, I've been in a relationship for a really long time.

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject:

i don't think she's quibbling over "bad" so much as "not ideal."

then again, i think of bad as being abusive or parasitic in nature, not just "she has hairy feet" or "he's a boor at parties."
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Yeah, "bad" is an interesting quantifier. I'm just wondering whether people are getting the distinction between "he's a boor at parties" versus "parasitic", especially considering that people seem to not want to recognize the latter when it occurs.

I wonder how much of my reaction to this is because I don't want to believe that Sex and the City is an accurate representation of how some people actually think.

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject:

and since we are, of course, able to eat without the use of safety utensils and plastic sheeting, we cannot succumb to the glorious temptation of marxism to label all thinking that's not our own as some flavor of "False Consciousness." employing the useful shorthand of RAW (blessed be his socks), the sumbunall category (some but not all) is a helpful way to break this down, as in "sumbunall women place a tremendous amount of importance on the status, income and health of their mates."

some folks might say this is shallow, but people make that kind of tradeoff all the time, using slightly different parameters. since you were a bezerkleyite, you know full well of the more-hardcore-than-thou school of picking up the chicks, where "hardcore" is some variation of outre behavioral marker. it's the way people work, and that's ok.

we are also dealing with some folks equating things like "he tells boring stories" with "he is abusive."

people don't always recognize parasitic behavior (i generally don't like the term in any context - too randian - but in terms of relationships it fits well) either because they don't want to see it or because they enjoy being a food source. by enjoy i don't mean "whee he's spent all the money on drugs again!" so much as a way to always ensure there's no striving, no challenges and no surprises because of poor self-esteem or an addiction to loser scripts or whatever.
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

On the same topic, from a more brief and theoretical look, Modal wives and why it is hard to marry well.

The "Marry Him" article is way too blah blah and "this happened to my friends!" for me to take very seriously, but in general, she's right. Americans--maybe more cultures, I don't know--tend to have an unrealistic view of love, even love researchers are captured. I'm not sure "settling" is the right way to frame it. Maybe "get your head out of the clouds" is better? Even if they're the exact same thing, I'd imagine a "settled" marriage would have some residue resentment and a "feet on the ground" marriage would foster more positive feelings.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject:

i believe in true love.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

"Unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith."

dhex · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:57 pm Post subject:

one sentence review of the witcher: "it's shocking how much of this game you can fuck."

it was pretty good, all things considered, yet had moments of really not good at all. it's strange to see a game that hits both highs and lows in rapid succession.

in a few months maybe we'll see what the expanded edition will do.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:02 am Post subject:

back on the subject at hand:
i like overcoming bias and all, but i can't help but think they're missing the point. you can't prove love any more than you can prove joy or transcendence. you can point to chemical releases in the brain when someone getting a CT looks upon the face of someone they're in love with, etc, but the mythic and poetic aren't about proof. proof is immaterial in this case.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Would you say the same about religious beliefs and all that they entail?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:00 am Post subject:

i've been given the preliminary go-ahead to start a market research project at work. whee!

one good thing about understaffed non profits is that there's plenty of room to swing your arms so long as you don't ask for too much money.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:56 am Post subject:

academic knife fight with a twist:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/education/21prof.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
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dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:10 pm Post subject:

http://www.videogamessuck.com/

i don't know if it's a joke or not - i'm leaning towards half-joke/half-serious - but some of the one-liners here are precious.

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:41 pm Post subject:

somewhat related to our discussion up top:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125175.html#922858

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:12 pm Post subject:

read the whole thing. (i.e. funny bad)

also i have been told i have bad taste in funny. everyone who has told me this is wrong and tended to like dicklicking signs of the apoclypse like seinfeld and curb your enthusiasm and other loser scripts responsible for the death of the true noble soul of mankind. they're nice people, just wrong and contributing to the apocalypse, like parents who send their kids to art school or guys.
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Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

So on "video games suck" is basically the logical extension of "angry gamer" and the like?
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:44 pm Post subject:

logical is a stretch.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:59 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:20 am Post subject:

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/02/25/7933

hate mail is awesome!
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dhex · Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:49 pm Post subject:

i didn't care for the titan quest demo, but this is really sad to read:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42663
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