Investment Strategies, Video Games Edition

One of the many reasons I got rejected by the Ivy League

So I'm putzing around eBay while drunk (which, incidentally, is the primary reason I have so much useless shit in my apartment), looking for a decent copy of my favorite game of all-time, Final Fantasy III/VI. I don't care that it's perfect or anything, I just want a copy that doesn't look like it's been dragged around tied to the back of a car.

Much to my surprise, there are actually sellers with SEALED copies of the game, available now at the firesale price of $799. At first blush, that seems ludicrous, but let's not forget that a similarly sealed copy of Chrono Trigger sold for $1,217.

While acknowledging that nobody has yet purchased the game for 800 bucks, let's assume for a second that the real value of the game is such, especially considering the fact that it's about equally as rare (i.e., not notably rare) and equally as lauded as Chrono Trigger. I *think* the game was $70 at release, which would make the inflation-adjusted appreciation from 1994 to 2010 a tidy 697%!

By comparison, the S&P 500 has only increased by about 137% in the same period. My parents would have been better off putting their retirement savings into a stack of Super Nintendo games. Or old Transformer toys, for that matter.

Super Mario All-Stars for Wii: What a Lazy POS

Don't even bother opening it, this is as good as it'll get.

I just bought a copy of the 25th Anniversary edition of Super Mario All Stars for the Wii, and the nice, classy-looking embossed matte exterior box really belies the laziest anniversary game I have ever seen. I mean, this is beyond lazy. This is garbage.

First off, the games are not ports, nor are they really retro editions. It's an emulation of an SNES ROM, the already remade original Super Mario All-Stars (without Super Mario World). And man, is this bush league. They put so little thought into this Wii edition that they didn't even bother to change the pictures for the on-screen directions from an SNES controller. And maybe it's just me, but the controls just feel much more slippery than the originals, like Mario's constantly running on ice.

But whatever, I didn't really buy this because I am burning to play Super Mario 2 for hours again. Plus, you can buy all the games on Virtual Console anyway. It's sort of just a nostalgia thing, right? Thankfully, there's an extra disc case with a "Super Mario History" art book and a music CD. And I kid you not: they were even LAZIER with the extras than they were with the actual game. I didn't think it was even possible.

Open up the art book and you are treated to three tiny screenshots of each Mario game with one-sentence snippets of insight from Shigeru Miyamoto, Koji Kondo, and Takashi Tezuka for each. These earth-shattering insights include: "[Super Mario Galaxy] was released in South Korea as 'Super Mario Wii,'" and "When the player hops onto Yoshi, a cheery bit of percussion is added to the track."

Pop the audio CD in and things don't get any better. Half the damn CD is sound effects - the half-second coin noise is its own track! I would honestly have been less disappointed if Nintendo had just ripped some shit off of Overclocked Remix.

And finally, thanks, Nintendo, for requiring me to run a system firmware update to play a game from 1993.

How to Get the Best Recommendation From Your Professor

In my tenure as a university professor (and I apply the term "professor" to myself in the same manner as the WWE calls itself "wrestling"), I occasionally got requests for recommendations to various programs and institutions. With just one exception, I was always glad to do it; it gives me a fair amount of pleasure to give something back in a tangible way to students who work hard. Or even students who don't work hard but at least make me laugh once in while.

But it surprises me how frequently students fail to maximize this aspect of their applications. Granted, I doubt most recommendations carry that much weight, but it takes very little extra work to make sure that they are sterling testaments to your aptitude and work ethic.

1. Give Them Lots of Time: At LEAST three to four weeks. I once had a student ask me to write a recommendation that was due the next day. Sorry. It's one thing if, say, you just found a program you never knew existed and the due date just happens to be the next day...and I like you as a person. But sending an e-mail at 10 pm that reads something like "yo i wuz wonderin if u could rite me a recommendation its due 2morrow and i need someone who can rite one fast," and I don't even remember what you look like because you only attend enough classes to barely maintain your C- average, well, that's another thing altogether.

2. Be Courteous: Your recommenders are, naturally, on your side. But they'll be more on your side if you act as if they are doing you a favor, which they are. Say please, say thank you, and for God's sake, put a stamp on the mailing envelope!

3. Choose Your Recommender Wisely: I generally get the impression that the sole criterion for students in choosing a recommender pretty much boils down to determining who is the nicest professor you have. And that could be good, but it's usually not. Depending on the program, sometimes you should pick your most renowned professor, otherwise pick the person who will make you sound the best.

I know, obvious, but here's my take: if your grades are stellar, but you never talk in class and never speak to me personally, I can write you a pretty good recommendation. If your grades are okay but not top notch but you amaze the class with your wit and clarity of thought, I can write you a pretty good recommendation. If you combine both outstanding grades with insightful questions and thought-provoking comments, I can write you a dazzling recommendation that befits your stupendous intellectual achievements.

4. Make it Easy to Say Something Good About You: Finally, just like in resume-writing, examples rule. I hate having to write something like "Jill is really smart," because a) that's what everyone writes, and b) vague, unsupported statements just aren't that compelling. I like to write of specific things that students have said or done, especially the things that really surprised me (in a good way, of course). But sometimes, even when the aforementioned statement is really true, I don't have any examples, or I don't remember.

So when you're handing over the application guideline packet, throw in some other stuff too, like work you've done that you're really proud of, even if it's for other classes. Since it's material you've already completed, you don't lose a whole lot, even if none of it is read. But I would surmise that most of your professors would appreciate having something to refer to.

Why Not Black Wednesday?

And Tuesday and Thursday, for that matter?

Now let's get one thing straight - I doubt any retailer really waits until Thanksgiving to finally get "in the black" for the year. I certainly wouldn't buy shares in any such company that bleeds red ink all year and has to rely on Furby sales to turn profitable.

Who ever wanted this devilbirdrat?

But if the quintessential Black Friday "doorbuster" is extended to get people into stores, where they will presumably buy enough regularly priced crap to offset the discounts because, hey, they're at the store, so why not - and that is a revenue-generating phenomenon, then why not have Black Friday every day?

I should be running a company so I can drive it into the ground with exciting ideas that I spent 13 minutes thinking through.

It is my destiny.

All Right, I'll Say It: Gran Turismo is Boring.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: I love cars. I love driving them and I love tinkering with them. Naturally, I've bought all the Gran Turismo games since #3, including GT5 today. But something's been bugging me for a while, and I just have to get it off my chest. I enjoy collecting the cars and tuning them, but let's face it - the actual racing in the series is incredibly dull. There isn't really a great sense of speed and the physics of your car sort of approximate a giant block of lead in a bowl of pudding. You can ram another car at full speed and you both sort of just stop. And the new "damage" modeling is a joke; you crash into the wall at 100 MPH and the seam between your hood and chassis sort of widens a little. Winning a race isn't so much about making aggressive moves as it is driving cautiously and avoiding mistakes. Realistic, yeah, but if I want to drive at 40 MPH and avoid the guardrails, I can do that in my own damn car.

I think part of the reason GT5 is so underwhelming is because Forza has gotten so good. It has fewer cars but seems to be a little more fun and less stodgy and rigid about what you can and can't do. There are many more cars in GT but 99% of them are 8,000 variations of the Subaru Impreza or Honda Civic.

So why did I buy GT5? Because I *thought* it would have my car in it. It does have my car model, but only the hatchback version and not the sedan, which I have, because I hate hatchbacks. They look like toy cars.

From the Mouths of TV Announcers

I don't know who was doing the TV play-by-play at the Houston-Jacksonville game (Gus Johnson, maybe?), but that thing was a treasure trove of material.

But first, that closing Hail Mary play by David Garrard was one of the craziest plays I've ever seen, but I'm glad it worked, because coaches are far too willing to piss away 30 or 40 seconds at the ends of regulation play. What do you have to lose by throwing the ball into the end zone? Defenses are taught to bat the ball down so it's not like someone's going to pick it off and run it back for a touchdown. I was also disappointed that Cleveland didn't go for two at the end of regulation against the Jets, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, without further ado, here's this week's gem, from Gus Johnson or his partner. The context here is that they're discussing an infographic with the top scorers in the 2nd half of games leaguewide, led by Arian Foster, and how great Arian Foster is:

"And let's face it, the second half is the most important half."

Granted, the NFL rules are constantly changing, but last time I checked, touchdowns are worth the same number of points in the first half as they are in the second half.

Is a computer that speaks English too much to ask for?

About once or twice a year my computer goes on a BSOD crashing spree where I can't keep the machine running for even a day without at least one crash. Past some rudimentary software/driver troubleshooting, I'm too lazy to find out what's causing the crash, so I've always taken that opportunity to simply replace the innards of my computer. Problem solved! But lately, I've been more conscious of saving money (haven't we all?) and so I've kept my system mostly unchanged for a while. But now my machine is acting up again and I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue.

I prefer to replace only the component which is causing the problems, but unfortunately, when my computer crashes, it spits out incomprehensible shit like "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL," "The BIOS in this system is not ACPI compliant," or my favorite, "MEMORY_MANAGEMENT." You seriously might as well throw up an error that says "COMPUTER_WENT_DOWN_LIKE_$3_HOOKER," because that would be about equally helpful as what I normally get.

But seriously, what's so hard about making the messages more descriptive? Something like I WAS TRYING TO RETRIEVE SOMETHING FROM THE RAM MODULE AND IT SENT BACK A LOT OF FUCKED UP SHIT AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO SO I CRASHED MYSELF AND NEXT TIME SPEND MORE MONEY ON THAT PART YOU CHEAP FUCK

Now that's actionable!

The Most Valuable Pitcher Signed Out of Japan

Well, that's Hideo Nomo, at 4.9 WAR. A fine season by any measure. But I bet you can't guess who's the second-most valuable pitcher signed as a free agent out of Japan. It's not Ishii. it's not Sasaki. Dice-K? Get out of here. Hiroki Kuroda? Close, but no cigar.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, your WAR runner-up is...Colby Lewis at 4.4 WAR.

A Winner is You!

When I heard that Lewis--a onetime top prospect for the Rangers (he was the 38th pick in 1999)--was returning to the States after a stint in Japan, my interest was initially piqued for one reason only - I actually owned Lewis on my first fantasy baseball team ever, in 2004. He was decidedly mediocre, got injured, and I dropped him, and that was that. So I took his return as his opportunity to repay my initial faith in me, because he OWES me. Yeah, I kid, I kid.

But outside of that, he was intriguing because he utterly dominated Japanese hitters, leading the Central League in strikeouts both seasons he was there. He added a pitch to his repertoire (by some accounts a cutter, but it looks like a slider to me), got aggressive, and blew guys away like he'd never done before. So I went all-in on him this year, owning him in all of my leagues. It turned out to be one of the only good decisions I made all year.

Now granted, he got a teensy bit lucky this season. A flyball pitcher in Arlington usually yields light shows rivaling the 4th of July, but the strikeout rate is legit. His fastball is 3-4 MPH slower than he threw as a prospect, but he throws that new slider a whopping near-30% of the time. And boy, that pitch is filthy; worth 13.6 runs above average! By comparison, this year, Mariano Rivera's cutter was worth 16.7.

I think it's interesting how poorly major league teams have done scouting Japanese starters, though it's not like I myself would have guessed that Hiroki Kuroda would turn out to be a better pitcher than Dice-K. Perhaps we should temper our expectations for Yu Darvish?

An Ode to GameFan

As a founding member of the Nintendo Generation growing up in the barren era before the Internet, we relied SOLELY on magazines to whet our appetites for upcoming games. It still, to this day, blows my mind that people nowadays can load up video and gameplay previews on their computers in the comfort of their own homes. This is a travesty. You kids don't know how good you've got it - when we were that age, we would masturbate furiously over a 1-inch screenshot of Mortal Kombat II. Now get off my lawn!

So my favorite magazine, bar none, was GameFan. Now don't get me wrong; this magazine was a piece of shit. They apparently had no copy editor on staff (actual line, errors intact: "...if you're looking for some arcade style fun, Chiki Chiki boys comes highly recommended.!!") and every page looked like a blind high school student's first time using Photoshop:

But the paper...oh the paper. While competitors essentially used colored newsprint for their rags, GameFan was thick and glossy and the colors just popped out at you. It smelled wonderful. Most importantly, GF was special because it had a special focus on import games. There was something so appealingly exotic about Japanese games, and the snobby tone of the magazine (most of the later issues were nothing but complaints about how the pure Japanese software got mangled by American localization teams) made you feel like you were part of the cognoscenti, sort of like the jackass who always has to remind you that he was listening to Coldplay while they were still called Starfish and oh my god they are such corporate sellouts blah blah blah.

I was reminded of GameFan because today I bought a copy of Lunar: Eternal Blue for Sega CD. I had opened up an issue of the magazine 16 (!) years ago with a review of the game and decided that this was one I really wanted to play, only at the time I didn't have any of the necessary hardware. Or the money to buy the hardware. Or the money to buy the game, for that matter. I thought it would be a cool idea today to close the loop, so to speak, and track down a scan of that particular magazine and read the review again:

"The reason I harped so long on the translation is because I was a huge fan of the Japanese original, and I'm a hyper-purist. Even so, I can't think of a better way to end the Sega CD's brief, uneventful foray into the gaming world than with Lunar: Eternal Blue."

Ah, GameFan. You were written straight from the Purist Snob Mad Libs book, but I still love you.

Best Quote of Week 5

Apparently Troy Aikman has taken one too many concussive hits to the head, because during the Green Bay - Washington game today, he unleashed this gem after Mason Crosby missed a 53 yard field goal:

"Really a good kick, other than the fact that it didn't go in."

I wish this guy was my dad. Life would have been so much easier growing up...

"Your application to Harvard was really a good one, other than the fact that you didn't get in."

"That swing was a really good one, other than the fact that you missed the ball completely."

Bonus: Best quote of Week 4, Lions Edition:

Announcer 1: Jason Hanson - He's been one of their best draft picks, ever
Announcer 2: Yeah, which is part of the problem.

Right or Wrong?

As the end of every baseball season draws near (as does the fantasy baseball season), I take a look back at all the decisions I made, and invariably, many of them are wrong. But there are also always a handful where the outcome was poor, but I was not wrong, per se. It's a distinction that many people don't grasp--at least it seems that way any time a football coach goes for 2 at the end of the game when down by 1, judging by the uproar.

But the thing is, it is not the outcome that makes a decision right or wrong, it's the reasoning. It's like standing on a 20 in blackjack and the dealer draws a 21. Yeah, you lost, but standing on 20 is absolutely the right decision given the information that you have. In the same way, if the expected value of going for two at the end of a game is higher than kicking a PAT, you should go for two, no matter what the monday morning quarterbacks will say.

So I don't feel bad not acquiring someone like David Price, whose numbers belie his true talent level (high, but not THAT high), or the similar Clay Buchholz. Their true talent levels (measured by xFIP) are closer to 4.00 than 2.00, and more often than not, that's how they'll perform. But the dealer drew a 21 on them. Bummer, but no sleep lost.

But I was clearly wrong on Jose Bautista. Wow. There's not a whole lot to say about that, but one interesting thing about him that most people don't know is that of his 48 home runs to date, he has pulled EVERY SINGLE ONE:



The plot is from the wonderful Hittracker. You'd think pitchers would just throw everything low and outside to him, but I guessed they missed 48 times. Or maybe hitting to all fields is overrated.

All I Want For Christmas is Fluuuuu....Shots

Sometimes, when I go to an Asian barber (and it's always only the Asian ones, for some reason), they'll shave my neck and sideburns with an old-fashioned straight razor, and I've always loved the "cshhh" sound it makes as it slices through my hair and arteries. So lately, I've devoted myself to the religion of wetshaving - using an old-school double edge safety razor, applying the cream with the badger hair brush, etc. As an added benefit, after an initially expensive outlay, the cost per shave goes down immensely compared to the ridiculously overpriced 12-blade cartridge style razors.

I bought the brush and the cream a while ago, but it wasn't until today that I received my NOS 1970's Gillette Super Speed razor handle in the mail. I decided that I probably shouldn't use the 40 year old blades included in the package, so I dropped by Walgreens to pick up a set of their crappy generic blades, and I was met by this sign (yes I know I'm inside the store; it's the same on both sides):



Now look, I'm not an ingrate. My parents have shafted me out of so many gifts through the years that I really do appreciate anything. Socks, underwear, whatever. But even I have to admit that this one would really be a reach for me. "Merry Christmas Billy! It's a gift card for your flu shots! Why are you crying, Billy?"

I used to think a CVS gift card was the silliest idea conceived by man (again, not because I'm ungrateful, but if someone needs contact lens solution, just buy them contact lens solution); now I'm not so sure.

Anyway, I got my Walgreens razor blades and clamped one into my Super Speed and went to work - not without some trepidation, I might add. And boy, was it fantastic. It took a lot longer and you have to do it with the utmost care, lest you slice your carotid artery, but it felt great and gave me one of the closest shaves I've ever had. And there's just something so artisanal about it, like the difference between driving stick and driving an automatic. Most people will tell you that the first DE shave is going to be a mess, but I have a built-in advantage: I have about three facial hairs.

They're not even all in the same place, but patchily distributed everywhere. Ironically, I have to be MORE vigilant about shaving than someone who has densely distributed facial hair, because I don't grow a sexy 5 o'clock shadow. Mine grows like I'm a burn victim, one patch on my cheek, one patch under my nose, a patch on my neck, etc...not real attractive. When I let it grow out I look like a Mexican high school boy just starting puberty.

FINALLY

A Plea to Old Fogies

Please don't ever retire.

I'll come right out and say it - I hope Brett Favre plays another season. Two or three, even. Not because I particularly like him, but he's the last remaining skill position player in the NFL who was playing at the time that I really started following sports, around 1991 or 1992. Once the entire league turns over completely, I'll officially be old. And you know those annoying old guys who are always like, "Well in my opinion, nobody holds a candle to Otto Graham," and you kind of roll your eyes and regret that anyone ever invented Social Security? I've become that guy! The other day I was lamenting that I miss the days of less flashy, more fundamental basketball with Michael Jordan and John Stockton.

But as long as SOMEONE from 1992 is still playing, I still feel like I'm young. But these guys are dropping like flies.

MLB: We've got Jamie Moyer, Matt Stairs, Omar Vizquel (who is hitting .289!), Tim Wakefield and Jim Thome.
NFL: Favre (maybe), Matt Turk, John Kasay
NBA: Shaquille O'Neal
NHL: Mark Recchi, Mathieu Schneider, Teemu Selanne, Robert Lang, Doug Weight, Mike Modano, Adam Foote, and a whole bunch of other defensemen.

Now get off my lawn!

Stop Using Time Travel As a Plot Device!

Utterly preventable.

Of all the technologies that humanity has yet to perfect, time travel and seedless cherries have been particularly captivating to the imagination of the average person. That's presumably why every sci-fi television series has to have the requisite time travel episode, and also why the Back to the Future flicks have grossed nearly 1 billion dollars in aggregate. Trivia time: in Back to the Future II, the era with the flying cars, hoverboards, and self-fastening shoes is 2015, just 5 years from now. Did anyone in 1989 really think that we'd have flying cars in just 26 years? Sorry to disappoint you guys.

Due to the nature of the time travel, it is exceedingly difficult to craft a story that actually makes a modicum of sense whatsoever. To wit: in Back to the Future III, Marty sees Doc Brown's tombstone from 1885 and goes back in time to prevent his death, which he successfully does. But if that is the case, then the tombstone will never exist for Marty to see in the future, so he wouldn't go back in time to save him in the first place. It's a strange paradox.

But some movies make an even greater (and preventable) mockery of time travel and our intelligence. I recently re-watched Star Trek: Generations, for which, as a kid, I possessed unabashed love, but has now been attenuated down to mild tolerance. Basically, a scientist named Soran walks around on the Enterprise for a while, escapes and blows up a star system to redirect a stellar phenomenon called the Nexus right into his face. The Nexus, you see, is kind of like a space cocaine gateway into dreamworld. Picard gets caught up in it too and frantically recruits Captain Kirk to come back with him into real life and stop Soran. When they do decide to go back to reality, they can choose any time, because "time has no meaning in the Nexus," whatever the fuck that means. Let me reiterate. THEY CAN CHOOSE ANY TIME IN HISTORY TO RETURN TO, and they choose the few minutes right before Soran launches his space missile. Of course, there's a frantic struggle in which the protagonists almost fail and Kirk dies (spoiler alert). But none of that would have even been necessary if they had just gone back further in time to when Soran was putzing around on board the Enterprise with nary a care in the world. Or hell, go back even further and kill his parents, I dunno. Really disappointing. And who cares if you fail anyway? Just get back in the Nexus, go back in time and then try again.

The Great Equalizer

I have been, let's say...lackadaisical...in maintaining my level of fitness, which at one time was relatively high. It's especially easy for me to neglect my health because I don't ever gain weight, but I do sometimes worry that that only means that all the crap I eat is being deposited straight into my aorta. Anyway, I accepted a long time ago that I'm not the athlete that I used to be, but I always figured that I wasn't too far behind, maybe 75 or 80%.

Well, I was wrong, and today I hit a new all-time low. I want to preface this by saying that every time I played softball while I was in grad school and earlier, I never thought it was strenuous, ever. I once played five games in a row in law school. But today, after just four innings, I was so tired that I didn't even take a warm-up swing when I was on deck, to conserve energy. Then when I actually went up to bat, I swung at nothing and took the free pass because then I could walk to first base instead of putting the ball in play and having to run. I spent my time in the field praying that nobody would hit the ball to me so I wouldn't have to move. It was real sobering. If I was just fat, I could be on one of those maudlin Weight Watchers commercials.

Even worse, I actually do run on the treadmill occasionally, and I walk about 1.5 miles a day to and from the Metro. I thought that would be enough, but it's not even close. Everything takes so much longer now that I'm old. I really wonder if it's better to bust your ass every day trying to stay healthy, or enjoy life and high fructose corn syrup and accept that you'll only have 40 years of that. Me, I haven't decided yet.

New Show Pitch: Thin

I was watching TV the other day and I saw a commercial for a show ("Huge") devoted entirely to fatness. Is that really necessary? For a while I sympathized about the prejudices faced by fat people, but now I'm not sympathetic, because EVERYONE IS FAT NOW. A whopping 68% of Americans over 20 are either overweight or obese. So who exactly is prejudiced against you? That's like complaining about discrimination against white people in Iceland.

Now a show about being skinny, that's an idea that's just waiting to pop. Because being skinny isn't all rainbows and unicorns. It's hard to buy clothes that are cut for fat people. Contact sports at the collegiate level aren't really an option if you weigh under 150 pounds. I can't wear most watches because they look like sundials hanging off my wrist, which is frequently described as "dainty."

I did gain about 5 or 6 pounds in college from forcing myself to eat when I was already full and drinking liquid meals for snacks, but that got to be so burdensome that I went back to eating when I wanted to eat and I dropped back to my natural weight. The truth is, men are supposed to be fat, and every time someone tells me I need to eat more, I feel like less of one.

Well, There's No Nice Way to Say It: Radio Shack Sucks

All three of you who have been following my blog know that I've spent the last few weeks looking for that one perfect cell phone to get myself locked into for the next two years. Initially, I thought it might be the HTC Evo. Here is the sordid story.

Just prior to the Evo's release, you could only pre-order it at two retailers: Best Buy and Radio Shack. I opted for Radio Shack because it was near my workplace and because they were offering $20 off accessories with the pre-order. I went in and put down the required $50 deposit.

When I went in the next week to pick it up, the associate working with me was absolutely clueless about the whole thing, despite the launch being possibly the biggest thing to happen at Radio Shack ever. Initially she even insisted that my deposit towards the phone has to be used to purchase extra accessories. We argued back and forth until her co-worker confirmed that the deposit towards the phone can actually be used for the phone.

I filled out the paperwork, paid, and the associate proceeded to open the phone, at which point I stopped her and asked if I could take the phone now and open it and activate it myself. I was told that it HAD to be activated in the store. I understand that, but I don't see why they couldn't give it to me to do it myself. I winced as the girl pried open the plastic around the phone with a pair of scissors and did nothing except turn the phone on and declare it "activated." Okay.

Eventually, my Evo developed a patch of black pixels in the bottom corner of the screen, so I took it back to RS to exchange it. They told me that I could not return it or exchange it because I must have obviously dropped it. I hadn't, and there was no visible physical damage to the phone. I can understand that they can't be certain, but please, I'm not an idiot. If I really wanted to make a fraudulent return, I would have bricked the phone by unplugging it in the middle of a firmware update and claimed that it just stopped powering on. I called Sprint and they informed me that since I bought the phone at Radio Shack, they couldn't send me a replacement either. In fact, they are apparently powerless to do anything if you don't buy the phone directly from them.

I had purchased the insurance and I filed a claim, minus a $100 deductible, and I was shipped a brand new phone, which I didn't open. I went to take the new phone back to Radio Shack and cancel my service. If you don't return the handset to them after cancelling service, they charge you $200, but you know where this is going. They refused to take the new phone back because the serial number didn't match the one I'd originally bought from them. I understand the reasoning for that policy, so you don't buy a new phone and bring back an old, used one, but in this case, I was bringing back a NEW phone. Can we ONCE look past the letter of the policy and apply its principle instead? I called Sprint again and they were useless. I don't know why I bother. Honestly, if they care that little while I'm still in my evaluation period, I shudder to think what it will be like when I'm locked into a contract with them.

So now I'm selling the phone on eBay and eating RS's $200 fee. So enjoy my money, Radio Shack. I hope you go bankrupt.

Why I Fear Facetime

Of course it's never an Asian GUY and a white chick

One of the big selling points of the new iPhone 4 is the video chat program Facetime. Of course, everyone will assume that Apple invented video chat, which they most assuredly did not, but just like that thing about people only using ten percent of their brains or shaving hair makes it grow back thicker, the belief is going to take root and flourish anyway. I took my Evo into the iPhone line and people were positively amazed that it was already doing video chat. Poorly, yes, and maybe that's where Apple distinguishes itself, but everyone believed that video chat was an Apple innovation. In fact, people were really impressed with Sprint and the Evo, until our line advanced three steps forward and my 3G cut out, followed closely by my battery dying. Baby steps, I guess.

But anyway, I am dreading the day that everyone has an i4, because then I will be expected to video chat. You can't be like, "Yeah, I've got an iPhone 4, and you've got an iPhone 4, so let's have a regular phone conversation." No no no. I mean, I suppose it's cool if you're stationed in Iraq and you want to see your kid or something, but for everyday interactions, I prefer audio-only. That way I can mute the handset and use the bathroom or quickly Google a synopsis of a book I'm pretending to have read. But in this brave new world, it's all over. Flipping through a magazine? Out. Picking your nose? Verboten. Rolling your eyes? Offensive.

It's interesting how quickly social norms have been forced to evolve due to cellular technology; when I got my first cell phone, I just could not bring myself to converse over the phone in public, but now it feels pretty normal. And it was a weird feeling to be constantly "on call." I think that's the paradigm that's changed the most - people are always expected to be connected nowadays. Today, if you can't get in touch with someone for more than an hour, you can pretty much assume they're dead or ignoring you (or if it's me, I probably left my phone in my car or my office and since nobody ever calls me anyway, I didn't notice it was missing).

iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo 4G: Smackdown Edition

First of all, I want to say, for posterity, that I will never wait in line for an iPhone ever again. They can come out with a 12G dicksucking model next year for all I care - I'm never doing that again. I was in the RESERVE line and it still took 4 hours in 98 degree weather and probable skin cancer to pick up an ultimately defective phone. Four hours! For a phone! I really have lost my mind. For someone who owns so many of them, I don't even really like Apple products, almost solely due to the sealed batteries. Ugh.


Yes, I clicked "Agree" without reading any of the 45 pages of text

But, without further ado (and keeping in mind I've only been using the iPhone for 3 hours), let us commence the smackdown:

AESTHETICS:

Let's get it out of the way: the iPhone is drop-dead gorgeous. I don't need to rehash the specs, but suffice it to say, it looks like something that belongs in a museum. The glass/metal combination give it a classy look and confidence-inspiring heft. When I first handled the Evo, I thought it was pretty nice, but next to the iPhone, the Evo flat-out looks and feels like a cheap toy. That's not an indictment of the Evo - everything looks like a toy next the the iPhone.



Round: iPhone

ERGONOMICS:

Truth be told, I don't find either particularly comfortable to hold next to my ear, but I've felt that way about every wide, flat smartphone I've used. God, I miss the Samsung x105. The iPhone's new sharp edges, while beautiful, don't exactly melt into your fingers. On the other hand, the excessive size of the Evo makes it quite a bit unwieldy in my (admittedly girl-like) hands. I was on the Metro the other day trying to look up Phil Hughes' xFIP with my left hand, and I just couldn't do it because as my thumb was moving around the keyboard, the edge of my palm kept hitting the touch button on the bottom corner of the phone and continually booted me back out into the home screen. Not cool. The iPhone hasn't undergone the Metro test yet, but until then, I guess we can declare it the winner by default.


It's also much, much thinner

Round: iPhone

OS/INTERFACE:

Maybe it's the Windows user in me talking, or maybe I'm just tired of i[Phone]OS, but I prefer Android, hands-down. There's a lot to be said for customizability, and it's telling that it took four iterations of the iPhone before they allowed you to even change the background of your home screen. But it's not just that, it's the little things too. The onscreen keyboard has the symbols above the letters, so you can just hold down the letter to access that symbol, instead of having to hit a separate key to switch the whole keyboard out on the iPhone. More importantly, if you hate the default keyboard on Android, you can just download a new one.



I also really like the little Android guy.



Round: Evo

DISPLAY:

I'm pretty sure that all that "Retina Display" talk was a bunch of hot air, but there's no denying that the iPhone's IPS screen is stunning. It's the nicest screen I've ever seen on any handheld device, with the sharpest text and really eye-popping colors. That's not to say that the Evo's TFT screen is bad (it's certainly got a bit more real estate), but if you put them side-by-side, the difference is noticeable, if not glaring. I don't know if this is a problem with the lower resolution or the limited color palette of the Evo, but some graphics look awful and splotchy, like the blue areas below:



The iPhone renders the same area with slightly more...grace:



Round: iPhone

CALL QUALITY:

They both stink, but for different reasons. The iPhone's sound quality is great, but as I linked to earlier, I can make the phone drop a call by holding it in my left hand. The Evo connects just fine, but then I can't understand what the fuck anyone is saying. I was using it to call Apple support and since I couldn't make out what the guy was trying to say, I basically stopped trying, said "yes" a lot, and when I thought the guy was laughing, I laughed too. That was not a productive call.

Round: Draw

FEATURE SET:

This is where the Evo, whose feature set reads like a trade show tech demo, blows the iPhone out of the water. Facetime wifi video chat? Psh. Please. The Evo does video chat over the CELLULAR network. I hate the idea of video chat anyway because I like attending conference calls in my boxers, but that's neither here nor there. It's got WiMAX 4G (or 3.5G, I should say), and any text input field can be filled in via voice recognition. Not that it works that well all the time, but I appreciate any progress towards the voice-activated computer in Star Trek. Throw in tighter integration with social media and Google cloud services, and the Evo's got more "Ooh" moments. The trade-off is that the battery lasts just a smidge over seventeen seconds, but that's the price of progress. Also, 4G coverage sucks. You can be getting 4G and then walk three steps and then it's gone. But it's cool when it works.

Round: Evo

BATTERY LIFE:

No comparison.

Round: iPhone

APP STORE:

There is little doubt in my mind that given enough time, most of the differences in the respective app stores will eventually even out. But at this juncture, it's hard to argue against the superiority of Apple's offering, especially if you're really into games. Fortunately, my favorite game, Homerun Battle 3D, is available on both iPhone and Android. I bought it twice. For some reason, the game is smoother and faster but with more jagged graphics on iPhone, and choppier, but more anti-aliased on Android.

Round: iPhone

So what is that, 5-2? As much as I'm pulling for the Evo and other assorted Android devices, the iPhone is just a really polished, really slick device, and sad as I am to admit it, at this point I am willing to trade off a little bit of customization ability and get locked into Apple's draconian app requirements for the sake of predictable battery life.

How Much is Time Really Worth?

As the iPhone's retail launch approaches and eBay listings are already rocketing through the stratosphere, I've been thinking about all the people who stand in line for hours and hours and I wonder how much money I personally would be willing to pay online to be able to skip the line (assuming I didn't have a preorder). Probably a lot, I hate waiting in lines.

If your college econ professors are to be believed, you should take your hourly wage and multiply it by however many hours you'd be waiting and that's how much your time is worth. I was delighted with this revelation in college; I think through some absurd reduction of that concept, I even saw an argument that some rich celebrities could pay thousands of dollars to some kid to mow the lawn and they'd still come out on top versus mowing the lawn themselves, because they made more money than that per hour. So if you make $10,000 per hour working but spend an hour mowing the lawn instead, you've essentially lost $10,000 or something like that.

While the concept makes sense, that's just an absurd assertion, as if someone is standing there with a checkbook in hand waiting to pay you your hourly rate for any time you do decide to work. Anyway, I digress.

The real point of this rambling diatribe is to express my frustration (and I don't know why I'm thinking about this now) with the annual March Madness story that invariably comes out and says something like "March Madness Costs Companies $356 Quadrillion in Lost Productivity," and all it does is calculate all the hours that workers will be watching basketball games and multiplies it by their average pay, as if these workers do nothing but work every minute of every day all year long until March Madness rolls around. Usually, if you haven't been fired yet, it's because you get your work done. And if you spend the excess time watching basketball instead of puttering around on Facebook or chatting in the break room, companies aren't actually losing any productivity that they had before. Not that any waste of time should necessarily be condoned, and not that March Madness has no effect, but the stated effects are invariably overstated - by several orders of magnitude.

HTC Evo 4G Longer-Term Impressions

Okay, I've now been using the Evo for almost two weeks now, and at this point I feel like I've put in enough time to confidently say that I'm both impressed and appalled by this phone.

First of all, I have both the screen separation and unresponsive touchscreen problems. My unit has also developed a black spot on the bottom right corner of the screen, and Radio Shack refuses to take it back because they assume it was from dropping the phone, which it isn't, but they won't take my word for it even despite the absence of any physical damage. Sprint won't help me because I bought it at Radio Shack (which, for the record, was one of only two places where you could pre-order in the first place). I had to file an insurance claim for a replacement, but I doubt it will even arrive before my Sprint early cancellation deadline. I'll probably have to unload the replacement on eBay, but I digress.

It amazes me that a phone can get so much right and still get so much head-scratchingly wrong. There are little touches that are really cool, like the proximity sensor that turns off the screen while you're talking on it, and automatically turns it back on when you're done. But most of the time, it doesn't feel like anybody ever spent more than a couple of hours testing its usability. There's a long list of things that I think could have been easily solved:

- There is no bezel surrounding the screen and the row of touch buttons along the bottom are way too close to the edge. If I'm not carefully and gingerly turning the screen from portrait to landscape or vice versa, I ALWAYS hit one of them. Anytime I'm playing a game, I usually hit one while just readjusting my hand. They should have placed them further away or just made them hard buttons.

- The power button is too small and too flush with the casing of the phone.

- When I grip it in landscape mode, my fingers cover up the back speaker.

- The battery is so bad that when I forget to bring the charger to work, I feel the same anxiety I feel when I forget my wallet. I know you can improve battery life somewhat by turning everything off and changing the notification settings to update less frequently, but let's be honest...if I want to manually check my RSS feed every 6 hours, I can do it at a real, actual computer. A phone, I feel, only justifies a premium subscription rate because it can push content to me immediately.

Anyway, I reserved an iPhone. I'm hoping that I can have both at the same time for an old-fashioned smackdown.

Why Armando Galarraga Got Hosed

I've thought a lot about Jim Joyce's blown call on Galarraga's perfect game, and while I think that both have shown incredible grace and class, Bud Selig (surprise!) dropped the ball in his reasoning for refusing to overturn it:

"In this job, precedence [sic] is very important," Selig said. "A lot of people don't really understand that. But it is important. And while you can say, 'This was really aberrational,' there are a lot of situations -- I've had clubs call me and say, 'What about that game I lost, why didn't you think about doing that?' And they were serious."

No, Bud, it is YOU who don't understand precedent, because anybody who brings forth such an argument based on the "precedent" and "slippery slope" it would create has a poor grasp of both logic and baseball history. That is a patently absurd argument.

One of the most common logical fallacies is the argument from precedent, wherein one argues that we cannot make correct decision X because we'd have to also apply the same process in situation Y, because X and Y seem the same. Namely, "we can't overturn this Galarraga call, because then we'd have to overturn every incorrect call ever made!"

Hogwash.

The precedent would only apply to circumstances that are fundamentally THE SAME - when the essential circumstances of X are identical to the essential circumstances of Y. So yes, if you overturned the Galarraga call, you'd have to overturn every other call in which a perfect game was lost on a blown 3rd out call which had no bearing on the outcome of the game. But that's where it ends. Overturning this one doesn't mean jackshit for some random blown call in a Twins game, or even Jeffrey Maier, as much as it pains me to admit. I daresay that its precedential impact on baseball history would be minimal. And besides, why is it better to be wrong in every situation rather than correct in this one and wrong in all the others? Quoth Ralph Waldo Emerson: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

But even setting aside my criticism of this middle school debate tactic, Selig ignores that there already is a precedent, and that precedent is that yes, calls are overturned after the fact. Have we already forgotten the Pine Tar incident? At least now we know where Bud's values lie - being wrong is okay, as long as you're consistently wrong. That must explain the Brewers' closer situation.

At any rate, let's expand instant replay. Better yet, let's replace the home plate ump with K-Zone. We can even program it to eject Milton Bradley at random intervals for added realism.

My, How You've Grown

Everyone's favorite [alleged]* serial rapist quarterback is in the headlines again - but this time for his inevitable interview where he puts on clothes that even I can afford and talks about how much he respects the game and how a subpar upbringing lead to alcohol abuse - maybe even shed a tear or two.

So most of the interview was pretty standard fare, but one line was really surprising:

"I've wanted to apologize to them [fans] for so many things. For being immature, for being dumb, for being young, for not knowing any better."

Fair enough, we are all young and immature at one point, and I still would be, if I was young. But I can accept that through years of life experience, one comes to appreciate his own obligations to society, like paying an honest tax assessment and not raping people. Wait, when was his latest alleged sexual assault?

Oh yeah, MARCH 5TH. Three months ago - when he was young and immature.

*Now I think Ben Roethlisberger's legal team can't sue me. But I dropped out of law school, so fuck if I know for sure.

HTC Evo 4G Impressions

Well, after two years of suffering through Windows Mobile, my cell contract is finally up and I have jumped ship. To Sprint, of all places. The phone that convinced me to sign on (at least for the 30 day evaluation period) is the positively gargantuan but feature-packed HTC Evo 4G.

This is easily the biggest phone I've ever handled, but it's all screen and tapers in the back, so it fits nicely in the hand. The back panel is rubberized and feels very nice, though the plastic trim looks a little bit cheap. The ginormous screen is unlike that of any phone I've ever used before; it makes browsing the web a whole new (and more usable) experience. For the first time, I can load real pc-formatted pages (versus the mobile counterparts) and the experience feels very natural.

It is slim enough to fit into a pocket, but the size does have one drawback - it's very difficult to operate the phone completely one-handed when you have to use the same thumb to press keys on opposite corners of the screen. The back of the phone reveals a most curious design decision by HTC - the camera lens is NOT flush with the back panel, but protrudes by about a millimeter or so. That means that when you set the phone down on its back, it actually rests on the edge of the lens. I am not entirely comfortable with that.


Testing out the 4G, web pages loaded fast - very fast. I'm not sure ten times as quickly, as they claim, but certainly noticeably quicker. The Sense UI "wrapper" is similarly snappy, though it really irritates me that the only way to wake the unit from standby is to press the power button and slide the touch panel down. I understand why they implemented the hard button requirement, to keep your pocket from turning the phone on, but I wish that they had given me the choice to deactivate it when I want to. It's supremely annoying when you're waiting for a video to load and in that time, the phone goes to sleep and you have to press the power button and slide the control to turn it back on.

Other than that, I really like Android and the variety of cool apps in the Android Market, many of them free. That's one of the myriad things I hated about Windows Mobile - there's a tiny library of software, most of it stinks, and they all cost money.



Alas, as many have said before me, the battery is slightly subpar. And by slightly subpar, I mean super power guzzlingly piss-poor. I took the phone off the charger at noon today and got the 15% low battery warning at 7:00. Granted, I was playing around with it a lot and testing all the features, but it was on standby for a large portion of that time (no voice either), and even conservatively, it may be a struggle to hit more than 10 hours in regular usage. I could go two days without plugging in my old smartphone with very light usage. We shall see how it holds up. At the very least, the phone lets you swap out the battery. Kudos also for a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

Overall, I'm very impressed. This is not a phone they'll need to trick anyone into buying by paying a million dollars to shoehorn it into every scene of 24. Prior to its release I was torn between the dreamy spec sheet of the Evo and the upcoming iPhone of indeterminate capability but assured droolworthiness. Frankly, I sort of expected that I would test-drive the Evo for a month and then tire of its annoying quirks and get the iPhone in the end, but now I'm not so sure. It's not as polished or as sexy as the iPhone will be, but I'll say this: it made me smile...more than once. And I never smile.

Oh Those Crazy Asians!

Now, as someone who is outwardly Asian, I will be the first to admit that Asians have some of the most terrible ideas, like eating dogs or using chopsticks instead of a fork. But one thing I think they got right: taking off your shoes when you enter someone's house.

I just don't get how it's okay to wear your shoes inside. You know what kind of shit people step in while they're walking around outside? Dog shit. Bird shit. Mud. Chewing gum. Dried crusty vomit. Puddles of urine pooled underneath the urinal. Oftentimes, this is unavoidable, and I understand that. But how did it become acceptable to track all the detritus you've collected under the sole of your shoe right onto the carpet? This ass-backwards society freaks out when someone dips their chip into the cheese twice in a row but thinks nothing of smearing fucking dog shit right where I stick my head when I'm looking under the couch for the chinchilla when he's escaped.

So I don't understand why people look so perplexed when I take off my shoes at the door. It's not an Asian thing--it's a common sense thing.

HULK SMASH

As for this thing about Ken Griffey Jr. sleeping in the clubhouse during a game, I don't see what the big deal is. I think that Griffey was doing his team a favor by dozing in his chair - that way he can't actually be put into a game and hurt the team by getting himself out, like he usually does. So I'm willing to see his little nap as him just being a good team player.

But not Mike Sweeney! Mike Sweeney is mad. He's mad that the reporter lied--LIED--about the two young players who ratted Junior out. It was made up, they don't exist, he says. And how does he know that? Through rigorous interviewing and deductive reasoning? Closed-circuit camera footage? No no no. Mike Sweeney needs no such evidence, for he is apparently Chuck Norris:

"We don't think there are two players who said that (about Griffey sleeping)," Sweeney told FOXSports.com. "I challenged anybody in that room if they said it to stand up and fight me. No one stood up."

What saddens me the most is that Sweeney will never go to law school and will never have a chance to test out this innovative new evidentiary technique. "Your honor, obviously my client is innocent, as he did not stand up when the plaintiff challenged the room to a fight."

The Psychology of Fantasy Baseball

In one of my Yahoo fantasy leagues, I thought and behaved in a way that, in retrospect, was very odd, and quite irrational.

I needed to pick up a catcher, as my C slot was vacant, and Geovany Soto had just become available on the waiver wire. The problem was, I didn't know who I was going to drop. Everyone else on my roster was too good. The weakest link was probably Jay Bruce. But I just couldn't bring myself to drop Bruce and pick up Soto, and I never pulled the trigger. Of course, somebody else picked up Soto, and out of sheer indecision, I played the whole week without a catcher.

Then, the guy who picked up Soto offered him to me in a trade. For Jay Bruce. Which I happily accepted.

This is head-spinningly irrational; ultimately, the outcome would have been exactly the same if I had just dropped Bruce and picked up Soto. But it would have felt like I was LOSING Bruce. Soto was free; if I didn't have Bruce on my roster at all, I could still pick up Soto, so it didn't feel like I was gaining anything in EXCHANGE for Bruce. But when Soto is on someone else's team, he's not free anymore, so it felt okay to trade Bruce, because I was getting value. It was value for value, see? That is in contrast to dropping value to pick up something completely free. Funny how that works, but it's been well established that people are more strongly motivated by losses than they are by gains of the same magnitude. Doesn't change the fact that it's exceedingly senseless and illogical, but there you go. I KNOW that and I still can't help feeling that way.

In other news (Dallas Braden notwithstanding), I think the most incredible feat of the young baseball season belongs to a certain David Eckstein, who as of this moment has struck out TWO TIMES in 119 plate appearances. I don't expect him to sustain that kind of contact, but if he did, he would surpass even the peerless Tony Gwynn, who in 1995 struck out an incredible 15 times in 577 plate appearances. Mark Reynolds, on the other hand, can barely go 40 at-bats without striking out 15 times.

Best NFL Draft Analysis of 2010

Apparently, after the first round, NFL teams begin picking robots for quarterbacks, because according to the analyst at Fox, only 13% of quarterbacks picked after the first round are real, live players:

Yes, Print is Dead

And I'm not upset at all, seeing as to how I've been waiting 10 weeks for my ESPN Magazine subscription to arrive at my apartment. Why does it take so long for you to get your first issue of a magazine? Good riddance.

But I digress. The reason print is dead is because news is even more of a commodity now than it was before the advent of tools like Twitter. When is the last time you read a game recap story in the newspaper? By the time it's written up in the paper, I already know exactly what happened and who scored what. If I'm looking at live game scores and a player gets taken out, I can search Twitter for injury updates immediately, instead of waiting for a wire update. Newspapers should focus on the one thing they do well - investigative stories that I wouldn't have known to look for.

Will You Guys Stop Getting So Fat? Thanks.

Everyone who has ever seen me knows that I am fairly skinny. Or wiry, if you must be precise. I used to be able to get by with buying size "Medium" clothes, which usually fit pretty well. But just like in women's clothing, where some manufacturers will make their size "2" the equivalent of another manufacturer's size "4" to make women feel better about themselves, today's "Medium" is yesterday's "Large." I've had to start buying size small, because medium has gotten so huge. And that's worked pretty well for the last year or so.

So the other day I bought the most awesome shirt I'd ever seen, a team shirt for the minor league Richmond Flying Squirrels:

Awesome, right? Too bad even though it's a size small, it looks like a fucking nightgown on me! And I may be skinny, but I'm 5'10" and it still goes down to the middle of my thighs. Size small!

So America, please stop getting so fat. I'd like to be able to buy clothes that fit once in a while.

MLB 10: The Show Impressions

As someone who has played the Show franchises for probably a thousand hours, I should be given a job just reviewing those games. The 2010 iteration has improved, but it's not perfect. Also, I should note that I didn't buy 2009; I skipped from 2008 to 2010.

The good:

-It's much harder to check your swing.

-The pitch selection is much more realistic; you can be pretty sure that you won't get an 0-2 pitch anywhere near the strike zone.

-Stealing bases is a lot more difficult and dependent on reaction time, versus simply loading a "steal" command and just letting your speed rating dictate your success (or lack).

-You get Road to the Show career points for more types of fielding plays.

-Graphics and animation are top-notch.

The bad:

-When you get on base in RTTS mode, it takes FOREVER for the batter to finish his AB. They foul off pitches ad nauseum until the count goes to 3-2, and then they strike out. I hate waiting for them to finish and I'd usually skip ahead by getting myself intentionally thrown out on the basepath, but this year they get angry at you and bench you.

-They took away that cool camera perspective shift when you hit a no-doubter home run.

-I don't know why they haven't given you the ability to import RTTS players from year to year.

-There is ALWAYS some kind of bug in the team rank splash screens; this year, the problem is that it doesn't calculate the ranks correctly. So you might see 52 HR, 1st in League, and the opposing team would be displayed as 57 HR, 16th in League.

-The game gives you stupid goals that you can't achieve, and then subtracts career points when you fail. It might tell you that they're putting on the hit-and-run and that you have to put the ball in play, but even if the pitcher throws a pitchout and you can't swing, they still count that as a "failure."

-It pisses me off that EVERY pitcher in the minor leagues has 5 pitches, all of which can be precisely thrown for strikes off the corners of the plate. How many pitchers in real life throw knuckleballs? If you're going by this game, at least 40% of them.

-Some of the stats are just wonky and unrealistic. Case in point:

148 pitches, really?

Why Glenn Beck is a Genius

Now, let me be clear...I don't think what he says is genius-level discourse, but what he does, wow. I wish I'd thought of it first.

In business, we always say that you should find a need and fill it. Well, there was a clear need -a need to give a voice to all the ignorant, illogical, slightly racist, overly histrionic tinfoil-clad conspiracy theorists in America, which my ass scientifically estimates to comprise 43% of the population. That's a LOT of people who just want to be able to nod their heads in agreement with someone on the moving picture box, something they can never do while watching eminently reasonable people like Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart.

So Mr. Beck goes to work, rants his head off with ludicrous statements about how the president hates white people, that Al Gore's global warming campaign is like Hitler rounding up Jews, and Obama is trying to create an "Oligarhy" because he has deciphered the hidden code (Obama + Left + Internationalist + Graft + ACORN-Style Organizations + Revolutionaries + Hidden Agendas).

Commentators rip Beck and the blogosphere cackles as cable modems all across America's basements-where millions of unemployed college graduates wait to hear back on their internship applications-buzz with connections to digg.com to register the purest form of white-hot Internet outrage. And they're all right.

But you know what? At the end of the day, Glenn Beck comes home to this. As degrading as it might be lying and spewing nonsense all day, I've realized that it's no less degrading making Powerpoints for your bosses, and for a shitload less money. And my principles aren't paying my credit card bills. I know that's a cynical, money-centric valuation of life, but let's be real here, you're not going to be finding a lot of "love" or "fulfillment" out there if you're homeless. So what if you have to agree with crazy people all day? I already do that at my job. So what if half of America hates you? If you're a minority, gay, religious, atheist, Republican, or Democrat, half of America already hates you.

Okay, obviously, I don't really think Glenn Beck is a genius. And I don't, in fact, think money should be one's monolithic life goal. But it genuinely irritates me when people who do really believe that money is the most important thing in life still excoriate him. Judge everyone by their money or judge everyone by their principles. Don't judge Beck by his principles and me by how much money I have.

Games That Are Still Fun

Now that Sonic the Hedgehog is coming back to 2D--something I've longed for since suffering through the fishing levels in Sonic Adventure--I dusted off the Genesis and plugged in my old Sonic carts (I have 1-3, but not Sonic and Knuckles). Much to my surprise, they sucked - I used to love those games. But then again, I used to love Vanilla Ice too.

I think that as time goes by and game design progresses, the bar is subconsciously raised as your expectations change. When I was young, I didn't mind trial-and-error gameplay, because I had shitloads of free time on my hands, and frankly, everything back then was trial-and-error. That's how they turned a 15 minute game into a 2-hour one, by killing you unexpectedly every 2 minutes. Ever play Ghosts and Goblins for the NES? What a monolithic flaming turd of game design. Nowadays, I expect to be able to finish a game without dying, provided I am skilled enough. I'm not, but the point is, I don't feel I should be blindsided by a death that is unavoidable unless you already know it's coming.

But notwithstanding the ravages of time on games that were good only because the competition was worse, some games are actually still fun to play today. And I really mean fun, no nostalgia garbage picks like Pong or Spacewar.

Baseball Stars (NES) - Granted, this game is most fun when you play as the American Dreams and win games 10-0, and the repetitive music loop is going to make you want to kill yourself. But as one of the few NES sports games with a battery backup, once you get into franchise play, the game really gets addictive.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out (NES) - Pure twitch game that will show you how far your neuromuscular ability has deteriorated with age. I finally defeated Mike Tyson at the age of 23, during a Torts class. Needless to say, I did not fare as well against the Torts exam.

NBA Jam (SNES/GEN) - Sure, the rosters are old, but the gameplay is timeless. And you've gotta appreciate a game that is so over-the-top that even Mike Iuzzolino can dunk.

NHL '94 (GEN) - I guess this is really NHL '94 to NHL '97, because they were all pretty much identical. I've owned all the next-gen hockey games, and for some reason I still like these the best. It just feels so much more satisfying and monumental to score a goal in the older games. Maybe that's because all your players handle like a boat with one oar floating in a sea of melted cheese.

Tetris (GB) - Only the original Game Boy version counts for purists like me, before they added the infernal ability to indefinitely spin your piece in place. I never paid attention to my score, only the maximum number of lines I could form. My record? 187. My goal was to get to 200, but then I accidentally sold the game on eBay.

Why PC Gaming Deserves to Die

Let me start by saying that PC game publishers should love a guy like me. I upgrade my computer yearly out of sheer boredom, and dump hundreds of dollars into technology that I don't really need, and then look to buy games I may not have bought otherwise, if only to justify my frequent hardware purchases. I'm not rich by any means, but at this point in my life, $50 every couple of months is not that big a deal so I don't even bother pirating games.

In fact, if a particular game is on both a console and PC, I usually opt for the PC version, even considering the hit I take in resale value, because I find mouse/keyboard control to be more precise and more comfortable. Plus, my monitor is only 5" smaller than my TV, and seems even bigger when it's a foot away from my face.

But with that said, PC game publishers are going absolutely batshit insane with regard to digital rights management. We're talking online activation, install limits, the whole nine yards. Here is a list of games I would have bought for the PC if not for draconian drm that sometimes cannot even be uninstalled:

Bioshock 2
Spore
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Dawn of War II
Company of Heroes
Mass Effect 2

Instead, they got none of my money. And since they all got cracked anyway, people who were intending to pirate them still pirated them.

But Ubisoft deserves special mention for being at the vanguard of this dubious movement towards digital assrape. They recently announced that Assassin's Creed 2 will require CONSTANT ACCESS TO THE INTERNET, and if the connection drops at any time, the game will shut itself off. Putting aside my initial objection to being treated like a criminal 24/7, from a logistical standpoint, this is a problem, because my Internet connection frequently goes down like a cheap hooker for a few minutes to a couple of hours. And seriously, that's precisely what games are for! To entertain you when you can't access porn because the Internet is down.

Furthermore, as consumers vote with their wallets and sales drop, publishers continue to blame piracy and implement even more onerous DRM schemes. It's a cycle that will eventually sound the death knell for the entire industry. I, for one, won't shed a tear. After all, it will finally give me a chance to play through Final Fantasy XII.

Unemployment: Not as Bad as the Figures Say

As the East Coast "braces" for the proceeding snowstorm by buying out all the milk and bread from the grocery store (ZOMG WE CAN'T SURVIVE WITHOUT BREAD AND MILK FOR AS MUCH AS TWO DAYS), the media have a disturbing tendency to give the snowstorm a name. "Snowpacolypse," not creative, but eh. "Snowmageddon," bordering on cheesy. But NBC 4 took it to heights I never thought were achievable. Take a look at this masterpiece:

I mean, really? Snowtorious B.I.G.? If somebody can fart out that travesty and not lose his/her job, the labor situation is not as bleak as they say it is.

Your Greatest Enemy

First of all, I am proud to say that if you Google "eBay insertion fees scam," the first listing is my old blog post about their 5 Free Insertion Fees bullshit. Of all the worthless drivel I have spouted, that one remains the most popular--by far. You can even Google "Eugene is an arrogant douchebag" and not stumble onto ANY posts in this blog, which shocked the hell out of me. Anyway, I have never wished bankruptcy as fervently on any company as I do eBay. But that's a story for another day.

When people learn that I work in the financial sector (albeit only peripherally), they always ask me financial questions about which I am not qualified to answer. Of course, that doesn't stop me from making half-accurate shit up. My favorite thing to say used to be that you could guarantee yourself almost 20% returns on your investments by just paying off your credit card bills. But alas, in today's operating environment, you should put your money into a "rainy day" account instead. The reasoning, of course, is that you never know when you might lose your job--and you won't be able to count on your credit cards bailing you out, because credit card companies are slashing credit limits down to your outstanding balance. These are truly unprecedented times.

With that said, your real long-term enemy is inflation. Very few people truly realize the impact that inflation has on your earning power. But think about it this way...your great grandfather could have bought an entire dinner with $1 in 1900. But if he had stuffed it under his mattress like a moron to give to you, today, you wouldn't even be able to buy a candy bar with that meager chickenshit. So where should you park the $3 you have left after you buy your iPad and iPhone and MacBook? Caveat: Don't construe any of this as real actual advice. After all, I am drunk right now.

1. Treasury Inflated Protected Securities (TIPS) - The principal is adjusted to the CPI, so you won't lose money. You won't make a lot either, but that's good enough for my dad.

2. Precious metals - Always a haven for investors worried about inflation, precious metals are...very sparkly. Still, gold is trading for over $1000 per ounce, which is more expensive than sex. ALWAYS be wary of anything that's more expensive than sex.

3. Borrow like hell! - If you have a FICO score of 850 and can even qualify for financing, borrow everything you can now. During your repayment period, as the principal remains unchanged, your money will lose more and more earning power. So essentially, you'll be repaying pre-inflation debts with post-inflation money.

Que Sera, Sera

When I was a kid I used to read through car magazines religiously. I spent hours thinking about what my first car was going to be, and at one point I decided it was going to be the Toyota Sera. Pretty slick for 1988, no?

Unfortunately, that was the last time I really coveted a Toyota. I'm a sucker for stylish, sporty cars, and most Toyotas don't really fit the bill. Reliable, yes, stylish, no. So when Toyotas start accelerating randomly and uncontrollably, what's going to keep customers coming back to the dealerships? Probably nothing. But people will forget. They always do. If Tylenol can go back to being the market leader in OTC pain relievers after the cyanide scare, then anything can happen. Let's not forget that the perpetrator was never actually caught--he could be lacing my hamburger meat with cyanide right now!

Anyway, just like Johnson & Johnson's mass recall back in 1982 (and the genesis of the now-ubiquitious tamper-proof seals), suspending sales of the affected models is such a drastic measure that I think that in the future, people will adopt a fairly favorable view of Toyota. It'll pass. People always forget these things.

With that said, I don't know why it's so hard to just shift the car into neutral. I can understand that if your car accelerates unexpectedly while you're rounding a bend on the PCH, maybe you'll go over a cliff and die. But in one of the incidents, there was enough time for a passenger to get out his phone, dial 911, and say: “We're in a Lexus ... we're going north (state Route) 125 and our accelerator is stuck. We're going 120 (mph)! Mission Gorge! We're in trouble – we can't – there's no brakes, MissionGorge ... end freeway half mile.”

Neutral, folks. Neutral.

2009 MLB Prediction Scorecard

Now that the 2010 baseball season is fast approaching, it's time to look over my 2009 predictions, which I neglected to do at the end of the season because I am lazy.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

5. World Series Champion - New York Yankees. This kills me, it really does. As for the NL? Surprise! The LA Dodgers.

Unfortunately, I was right about the Yankees and wrong about the Dodgers.

4. Biggest Surprise - Dare I say it? Cincinnati Reds

If by "surprise" I meant "2-game improvement," I think we can call this a rousing victory. Blah.

3. Cy Young - Brandon Webb/Josh Beckett

Not only did these two assholes NOT win the Cy Young award, neither of them could even keep their ERA under 3.8.

2. World Baseball Classic Winner - Japan

Hit!

And since I have to get at least one right:
1. AL Hits Leader - Ichiro

Money in the bank.

So there it is, 3/7. Not even a passing grade in middle school.

Quote of the day:

From Mike Bacsik's Twitter page, upon accusations that he grooved the pitch that Barry Bonds hit out of the park for his record-breaking 756th homer:

"...I didn't try to give up the homerun. I was crappy enough to do it without trying."

Talking About the Past

By now everyone has heard Mark McGwire's tearful-yet-perplexing confession to steroid use. I do have to take issue with his contention that PEDs didn't really help him hit--I will agree that it doesn't help your hand-eye coordination, but if a) the ball goes further when you DO make contact, and b) your improved strength translates to greater bat speed, helping you make contact by allowing you to sit on a pitch longer before beginning your swing, then yeah, I have to question your career numbers. So I don't buy that he didn't gain any advantage outside of rehabilitating from injuries.

But what's puzzled me even more is the chatter of sportswriters when it comes to discussion of McGwire's Hall of Fame merits (or lack thereof). I frequently see them (yes, Jayson Stark and Buster Olney, I mean you) make a statement that I just can't understand: "Since we don't know who was using steroids and who wasn't, you either have to let them all in or none of them in."

Baloney. That's like a policeman bringing in a criminal but then reasoning, "Well, I know this guy was selling crack, but there are a lot of guys right now selling crack who are running around free who I can't ever catch, so it's not fair to incarcerate just this one dude here. We should arrest them all or let them all go free, that's the only way to be fair."

I don't see what's wrong with using the metric, "If you got caught, no Hall of Fame for you." Yes, that means that some steroid users who didn't get caught might be elected to the Hall. But how is it better to have twenty cheaters in the Hall than ten? Isn't some societal good done when the police incarcerate the criminals they DO catch, even if they can't catch them all?