Garden Party

Friday.  For some of you it's the ending of the work week.  For me?  Another day off.  Of course we have some delightful precipitation outside, which seems to becoming the normal.  If we had a bit of a wind, that breeze would stripping the leaves from the trees.  The air is still, however, they're going to have to rely on gravity.  Because we had a fairly wet summer, there are lots of leaves that will need to be raked.  The two previous years I didn't have to worry.  This year is different.

Yesterday was hectic at work.  One of my associates kept disappearing, so I needed to keep paging for assistance.  At one point, while I was designing blinds for a German woman, she mentioned 'your reclusive' associate.  I laughed, since the person in question isn't reclusive, just lazy.

One of my favorite game series is Mass Effect (except for the ending of the 3rd installment).  They studio came out with a 'legendary' edition, where they made some updates.  They put out a 4th installment called Andromeda, which didn't do well, so they put the game on hiatus for a few years.  Then suddenly 2 years ago there was a teaser trailer and the gaming world gasped in surprise at the glimpse of popular characters returning.  A few days ago, on November 7 (the day before my birthday) Bioware released a poster and the gaming world is a chatter.  Like many, I had to blow it up way out of proportion to scavenge for details.

A few interesting tidbits:  Among Americans, the only group who doesn't see climate change as serious are Republicans.  A lot of this is greed.  It's more important to make money than worry about the climate.  A lot of it is the effect of Loser #45, who many want to enshrine.  But a lot of it is also that they are stupid.  This group hates science.  They do not understand there is no way to maintain the 1950's status quo they so dearly love.  This group is going to be responsible for so much pain and suffering.

Another interesting bit is about Evangelicals.  Oh, wait, let me correct that to read White Evangelicals.  In case you haven't realized it, they proportionately dominate the Republican Party.  This group does not believe in systemic racism, since blame would fall mostly on their shoulders.  In their mind, their beliefs make them special.  They think their faith was chosen, as was their color.  If this group ever got into power, they would make the Spanish Inquisition look like a Garden Party.

The truth about Heels

 Friday and this is a day off from work.  I stayed up playing Mass Effect 2, clearing out some of the side quests.  They're rather mindless.  There's nothing wrong with spending short periods of time in a vegetative state.  Since this is a 2nd playthrough, there's a lot less of a challenge.  Sometimes this is a good thing.

This song been a recent addition to my playlist.  Every time I hear it I think:  why couldn't Milky Chance put this out while I was writing The Body in the Well?  It's called Colorado.  I think they maybe could have thrown a couple of snakes in the video to make it interesting.

Something I've discovered about my back the shoes I wear have an effect.  I've been wearing a pair of old running shoes that are flat soled, no heel, and that helps my alignment. Shoes that have a slightly raised heel create a wobble when I walk which puts stress on my vertebrae.  Wouldn't it bite big time if this period of aggravation were the result of my buying a flashy pair of running shoes that had a 3/4 inch heel?

I see where Chicarelli (sp), the New Jersey governor wannabe, has torn a page from Loser #45's playbook.  He hasn't started shrieking about voter fraud, but you know those words are on the tip of his tongue.  There are only 2 ways to make this go away.  Beat the Republican candidate by overwhelming numbers, as in the California recall, or take a baseball bat to every single one of their legal challenges.  That's seems to be what's happening to Trump in his failing attempt to keep his January documents under lock and key.  Damn, this guy just can't stop losing.  I mean, Youngkin never mentioned him publicly while campaigning, that's practically a snub from Hell.  In a way, I guess, you could say he spiked that heel.

Explaining Everything

When I took out the garbage this morning, I saw we had received another dusting of snow.  The temps are supposed to climb into the mid 30's (F), so I'm not expecting it to last past noon.  If the forecasters are correct, next week, when I'm on vacation, however, the temps will not rise above freezing.  This is winter.  The dogs go out and come back in when it's that cold.

I do go into work today.  It's inventory day, of course I'm not involved.  This is so much nicer than when I was in management and practically lived at the store in the weeks prior to Regis' purple vested associates swarming over the aisles.  Who knows what changes Covid has wrought on the inventory process.  One thing that's nice this year, with the snow we've had, the store should be fairly customer free.

Yesterday, Electronic Arts announced the release of Mass Effect, The Legendary Edition.  Mass Effect was one of the main reasons I got into gaming.  This was the first game which allowed the player to select their gender, you could play as either male or female.  Social Conservatives went crazy.  Choices you made during the story effected the ending; there were multiple endings, some were good and some were bad.  Oh, and did I mention you could have same sex relationships?  Choices.  Think about that.  A set of games where the decisions you make effect the outcome of so many things.  Here's the trailer.

And if you haven't been paying attention, the Republican party is continuing to self-destruct.  Dimwits, like Ronna Romney McDaniel, are screeching that they need to put the party first.  Which Party?  She's telling the moderates that if they continue changing their affiliations they will never win back the House, or the Senate, or the Presidency.  In other words, she's telling them to just shut up and vote straight Republican, no matter how much you hate the direction the party is taking.  She doesn't even want compromise in her own party.  Oh, and in case you didn't know, it was under her watch that Republicans lost the House, and the Senate, and the Presidency.  Ronna's a big supporter of the failed president. Oh, you say, that explains everything.

 

N7

 Saturday... ahhhh, the prelude to my long weekend.  Four days, jam packed with chores that needs to be done.  The temps here in Central PA will be in the low to mid 70's (F), if the weather forecasts hold true.  Wednesday, my final day off, we should be having rain... Eta, I believe.  

Yesterday the store was busy.  Lots of people were spending money.  Not too many flooring sales, but appliances?  Busy with a capital B.  Since nothing else has been normal this year, our Black Friday has been mutated.  We're now having a Black Friday Event... which has already begun.  This means we are filling our aisles with lost cost, high mark-up merchandise geared for the impulse shopper, buyers who believe the deal is a real steal... when it isn't.    Always remember:  buy cheap... get cheap.  Quality does have cost.

Another thing I will be looking forward to over the next few days is not having to do my daily health check before going to work.  Not that taking my temperature and filling out an online survey is complicated, but doing so is a constant reminder of what's happening out there.  Our heartland is on fire with the virus, as is our nation's administration.  I saw where Mark Meadows is now infected.  And people are beginning to wonder where Mike Pence is.  Evidently he hasn't shown his face in 3 days.  Is he simply lying low while trying to find a life preserver as his boat ride to a future in politics sinks?  Or could there be some other ulterior reason?

Business Insider reported that his aides had to school their leader on vote counting, how stopping the count would guarantee his loss.  Why is it this doesn't surprise me?

Biden is now winning Georgia by over 7,000 votes.  The higher, the better since it eliminates and surprises in their recount.

I don't watch any of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda outlets, but according the The Guardian they are turning on the Idiot Jerk in the White House, telling to accept defeat with grace.  For those who are expecting him to concede, forget it.  That will never happen.   They are telling him his legacy will be that of making the courts conservative.  However, the minute Amy Coney-Cumquat evokes her religious beliefs in a ruling, she becomes a political hack.  In fact, this is the same reason the Supreme Court is going to maintain a very safe distant from the decision making process of this election.  

And finally, today is N7 day.  For those who don't know, and there are many of you, N7 is the yearly celebration of one of the most popular, groundbreaking game franchises of all time.  Mass Effect.  You could play the main character, Sheperd, as either male or female, that choice was up to you.  You could make him black, or brown, or white, with tattoos or without, you could make him look which ever way you wanted. And you could have same sex relationships.  Social Conservatives shrieked loudly in anger... to no avail.  The expectation is that today Bioware is going to announce a remastered edition, updated, and with some changes.  The gaming world is... excited.  Here is Commander Shepard.

Manilow, more Bannon, and Andromeda

So, I see Barry Manilow finally came out of the closet... at 73.  The LA Times had a silly headline about how he was worried he'd disappoint his fans, but in the end he 'made it.'  Give me a break!  I really get tired of aging pop stars and celebrities (like Richard Chamberlain) who come out in their later years and use that terrible excuse.  They're fans.  As though they suffered in silence to keep their fans happy.  The truth is he didn't just stay in the closet, he made homophobic comments.  And those fan's loyalty is pretty cheap if they're going to desert because of your orientation.  Don't these people know it would be much better if they were honest, admit to being terribly insecure individuals who are simply terrified of publicly saying "I'm gay."  I'd rather that than this 'I'm old and they're old, so it doesn't really make any difference now,' excuse.
And then there's Steve'o, and not the one who used a staple gun on himself, though this Steve'o's just as crazy.  You know, the Alt-Right Svengali who managed to have himself declared the Idiot's 'right hand man.'  Didn't take long for the turf between those two to get muddy, did it?  All sorts of shit hitting that fan, like this from Breitbart.  If Steve'o thought he was going to be the Brain Behind the Idiot, he was wrong, and while he's not yet cleaning the White House shitters, that move might be just around the corner.  And you can bet this is fueling the flames of hatred in the America Haters who just 'love' Breitbart.
And then there's Andromeda...

Reviews have not been... kind.  And, the game does have some issues.  In fact, Andromeda has so many issues there was an update on day one, and another patch is coming today, 16 days after it was released.  If you go the Mass Effect Andromeda website there is a whole laundry list of things today's patch is supposed to start to fix, including more same sex relationships.  I'm not worried, things will get fixed at Bioware's expense, of course the game I'm playing now will not be the game I would be playing 6 months from now.  That's not a very good thing to have to say.

Mass Effect - Andromeda revealed

E3 2015 is going on right now out in Los Angeles.  For those who don't know, E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo and is The Show where studios talk about new games.  Also, for those of you who don't know, worldwide gaming makes $101.62 billion dollars.  Yepper, you read that right.  That makes E3 very, very important.  The big guns come out.  Now I know a lot of your are saying that's a lot of money for kids to be spending... well, it isn't kids.  Surprisingly, 26% of all gamers are over the age of 50.  I'm in that group.  I started playing because of hand / eye coordination, not that I had any problems, I just want to keep them in tune as long as possible.  All games use different button controls on the controller so you're constantly learning new moves.
The trilogy of Mass Effect games are my favorites by far.  I've played them through several times on different difficulty levels as well as with different characters.  You can even play as a female, should you want.  Mass Effect 3 was the first game to offer same sex relationships.  That's a biggie, believe me because anyone playing the game, whether as a male or a female, can have a same sex relationship.
The last Mass Effect game came out in 2012 so it's about time for another and everyone was hoping for some thing.  No one was not let down.  This is all CGI.  It's all done 'in engine' which means this is what it will probably look like on your television or computer screen.  Video games have come a long way.

Here is the teaser trailer for Bioware's Mass Effect - Andromeda.

Now all I have to do is wait until Christmas of 2016.

Seven days and counting and Black Friday looms

Yepper, this is the last day in one of my 7 day weeks.  Except for Monday I've had closing shifts.  This suits me find.  I get many more chores done on this shift.  I hate the opening shifts because I have to get up around 0330.  That's right.  I usually don't feel like doing much of anything when I get home, except for taking a nap.  The nap bit isn't always successful since I have two Boxers who've been sleeping most of the day, so they're well rested and ready to play.

The big political news is that the Republican Party is once again has the majority in the House and the Senate.  I chortled when I saw the headlines "for the first time in 8 years."  That sounds better then saying since Bush was in the White House.  Isn't it interesting they didn't try and make that connection.  Now let's hope that they learned something in those 8 years.

For all of you gamers and Mass Effect fans out there, tomorrow is N7 day.  The Bioware Forums are a flutter with expectations.  Me, I'm going to sit back and wait.  The game will probably not be out until sometime in 2016.  Mean while, Assassin's Creed Unity gets released on 11/11, three days after my birthday - think French Revolution in Paris.  I'm excited.

Work has been pretty much the same.  We set our Pre-Black Friday - that's right, there's not only a Black Friday sale, there's a Pre-Black Friday and a Post-Black Friday.  I actually don't mind working on Black Friday.  You haven't seen anything until you've seen big, burly men with beards, running like 12 year-old girls towards the 'half off' Shop Vacs.

Mass Effect failure of Bioware

I like playing video games, they are one of the ways I work off the stress of a hectic day at the store.  One of my all time favorite franchises is the Mass Effect group.  I liked the fact that I could customize Shepherd - I made mine real hunky.  Mass Effect 3 was the first game I played in which the main character could have a gay relationship, which was really neat.  I liked it so much I played through all 3 games a second time while waiting for Shadow of Mordor to arrive.   It's a shame Bioware chose to give the franchise such a rotten ending - Shepherd dies.  There are actually three endings and they are all terrible.  The main idea behind a franchise is to keep growing it, not kill it off.  One of the golden rules of any form of entertainment, be it games, literature, movies, what ever, is don't piss off your customer base.  Don't let them play for 30 hours and hand them a plate of shit, they need to be given some sort of reward.  About a week after Mass Effect 3's initial release, Bioware gave the world additional content - for free, to try and explain the ending.  No one was satisfied.

Where's the % of players they pissed off?

And now, because they killed off Shepherd instead of retiring him, Bioware has quite a task ahead of them.  You see they're working on Mass Effect 4, and have been some time.  I'm sure they remember, however, that they did piss off a lot of people with the ending of Mass Effect 3.  This means they will need to kiss a lot of ass to get back all of those unhappy customers.  What reason is there for me to buy it?  The character I invested so much time in ended up getting incinerated.  I can't even conceive of what exactly was going through their minds when they approved that type of ending.  Bioware, and Electronic Arts, the company which released the game, are not going to get my buckos when the new game comes out.  Don't expect me to eat a plate of shit just because you hand it to me.
 

Mass Effect 2

Since I've already played Mass Effect 3 I figured I might as well play the two previous parts of the trilogy, which it isn't since there is DLC on the way for ME3.  I already owned the first part but I can definitely remember popping it into the xbox and thinking "this music sucks."  It sounded like some guy had been locked away in a teeny, tiny little room with a Casio keyboard for way too long a time.  Needless to say, I popped that baby out of the xbox.  Last week I was reading in one of the gamer magazines I get on my notebook that ME 2 was the best game of all time (maybe it was Gamestop).  This decision, they claimed, had been reached by a common consensus of universal game players.  So, I ordered a copy from Amazon.

Due in 3-5 days

And, of course, I'm trying to wade through the first installment.  Besides the shitty music, I find it amazing at how far graphics have come. You have to wonder how it became so popular they decided to use it to launch a trilogy (which isn't really a trilogy since there's more DLC on the way).  Now you know what I'll be doing instead of watching the closing ceremonies.  Someone said the Spice Girls are going to be performing.  Isn't that enough to make you want to vomit.

Mass Effect 3 DLC / What? No fantasy TDF?

I finally watched the Mass Effect 3 DLC on Youtube.  Boring.  They said there was going to be some added filler to enlighten gamers as to what actually happens in the end.  The answer is a boring 'nothing much.'  You still end up with, of all things, a 2 second clip of someone laying in the rubble on Earth, someone who may or may not be Shepherd.  Like I said before, in 2 or 3 years Bioware is going to put another Mass Effect game, though who knows what they might call it, maybe Mass Effect Resurrection because Shepherd will rise from the rubble.

To be continued?

Next on the agenda - Cycling, the kind you do on a bicycle.  The Tour de France starts Sunday and I can't wait.  I've watched it on Versus for years.  At some point in time NBC purchased Versus and for the most part they've kept pretty true to previous years' telecast.

There is, however, one exception.  I've been going to the NBC Sports website daily to see if they were going to be running a Fantasy Cycling Challenge or at least a link to one.  So far?  Nothing.  Thousands of people used to participate and I used to be one of them.  I never expected to win and never did, but there was still a lot of fun in creating my own team, usually a team that did not include all of the "superstars" of cycling.  Remember, it's how you play the game; if you play it well and you win, well that's stupendous, if you play it well and lose, well, that's life, deal with it - it didn't cost anything.  But not this year, so far no link has been published.  I did go online to see if there were any listed and there are, but they cost money.  There's one in the UK which is free for the first 7 stages but after that you need to pay 10.5 Pounds Sterling, or about $25 per stage.  Give me a break!  Not out of my bank account.  So, this year, I will most likely just watch.  Oh, and I will not be signing up to watch the live broadcast from my tablet.  My employer would not be thrilled to find me sitting at my desk watch the race live.