The Tale of the Two Chocolate Pies

I am almost done with maybe half a dozen posts, but I am tired and haven’t finished any of them, so you get a Christmas vignette instead.

We were up at my father’s house for Christmas, which is about a 3 hour drive away, which is part of why I didn’t finish anything.  Six hours in the car will do that.  Also, I started playing RimWorld when we got home.  That will eat up time.  So here I am writing this on Boxing Day, with the cat watching me… from a box… I am serious.

A cat in a box watching me write on Boxing Day

Christmas dinner is a pretty stock standard tradition there, and the menu never varies.  My step-mother does the most well-done prime rib possible every year.  And by well-done I mean cooked so that the colors red or pink are nowhere visible.  The president would approve.  Whatever.  She’s coming up on 80 and will do what she damn well pleases.  The meat was still tender and enough horseradish sauce makes up for most sins.

Anyway, after dinner I was sitting at the kids table with my daughter and a few of my nieces to avoid the determined clean up operation gets set in motion the moment it appears people are done eating.  All evidence that there was ever a meal must be eliminated.  The first time my wife ever came to Christmas we went up the street for about 45 minutes to visit my grandmother and by the time we got back both dinner and desert had been served and cleaned away to oblivion.  We ended up eating Christmas cookies in the car on the way home we were so hungry.

My daughter and nieces range from 13 to 24, and two of them are involved in Hollywood so often have interesting tales.  But in the midst of a discussion which involved season five of BoJack Horseman and Ted Danson’s folding straw, my 19 year old nieces saw that desert was being put out on the counter and felt the need to point out that there were two chocolate pies.

Let me make that clear.  There were TWO chocolate pies.  This was significant.

This was important to her because last year, unbeknownst to me, she did not get ANY chocolate pie.  All of the chocolate pie had been eaten before she went to get any, so her chocolate pie aspirations had been thwarted.  Her brother, who has the last piece, declined to share his pie with her, which was no doubt the shocker of the century.

This situation last year was apparently intolerable because there were TWO chocolate pies on the counter.  I imagine my sister had heard enough of this that she just made sure nobody would lack for chocolate pie.

As we are not talking about any sort of extra special chocolate pie here.  This looked to be the stock standard, no-bake, pudding in a pie crust desert that is out every year with its siblings, the pumpkin and coconut pies.  Chocolate was just now 50% of the “pies currently on the counter” demographic.

My sister confirmed that there were a pair of chocolate pies for the reason stated, and did so with a weariness that comes from trying to balance the demands of three teens under her roof.

So when the time came to serve up some pie, I got up and got myself a slice of chocolate pie, just on the off chance there would be a rush for that particular flavor.  I mean, last year we ran out before my niece even got a slice.

I actually had two slices, and managed to get them both without depriving my niece of her slice.  I must admit that my sudden lust for chocolate pie was, in part, to see if we could eat it all again before she got any.  But there would be no pie denial melt-down of any sort.

There was enough chocolate pie for all who desired any.

As I stood in the kitchen by the trash, helping to hide all evidence that there was any desert served after the meal we had so successfully disappeared, my niece walked up to scrape the remains of her pie into the trash.  In her hands I saw a paper plate with a huge glop of chocolate pie filling, missing really only the crust.  The main essence of the chocolate pie, the actual chocolate bit, appeared mostly untouched and she was happily dumping it into the trash.

So I called out in a loud voice, “After all of that talk about chocolate pie, are you telling me that you don’t actually like chocolate pie?  That all you really wanted was the crust?”

My niece confirmed this in a mildly embarrassed voice.  I turned towards my sister and called to her, even louder, so that everybody in the room could clearly head, “Did you see your daughter’s plate?  She was so anxious that she get some chocolate pie that we have TWO chocolate pies, and she is even now scooping almost all of the chocolate from her slice into the trash, having only eaten the crust?”

My sister was willing to play along in some public shaming, but the look in her eyes was, “Welcome to my life.”

In the end, nobody even took a slice from the second chocolate pie.  All of the chocolate pie related needs, including my second slice, were met by the first pie.  The second pie was entirely superfluous.  But at least it got a mention here.  They also serve, who only sit and wait.

Remy – Violent Video Games

From ReasonTV, what happens when you play those horrible video games.

 

I’ve never thrown a turtle at another driver, but back in the day I used to feel tempted to take off across country in my car after driving a Humvee all over the map in the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.

Hat tip to Noizy who tweeted this.

Gallente Federation Endorses Fart Lighting

It pretty much said that the Gallente celebrate fart lighting in the launcher today.

Oh yeah, blue flames man!

Or maybe this is just a sign of my misspent youth, which occurred before we all had the internet to distract us.  Or encourage us.  I think farts get lit either way actually.

Still, “Blue Flames” brings a number of things to mind aside from flatulence ignition, including a rocket car  a Chevy engine, something half remembered about the temperature of flames, and Quafe ship SKINs.

When I think of the Gallente Federation itself, I tend to think of the color green.

Green, Steel, Rust, and the type of tacky Gold you see on Acura or Lexus emblems

But (heh, butt) if you want the Sapphire Sungazer SKINs despite this unfortunate association in the launcher, they are available now from the New Eden Store.  I’ll have to check them out, but somehow I doubt they’ll be better than the Quafe SKINs.

What Happens When They Buy EVE Online?

With the word that CCP may be for sale, I put together some speculation as to the results of certain companies buying the makers of EVE Online.

Worse case scenario?

(Above picture lifted from the Twitter of J3w3l/Eri of Healing the Masses)

Tencent – (My pick for likely candidate.)  Development moved to the west side of LA.  Runs mostly as usual.  Cash shop expanded.  Tournament play enhanced.  Alliance tournament winners paid in cash.  Able to straight up buy characters with skill packages (e.g. Avatar pilot, Amarr battleship pilot) for real world money.

Perfect World Entertainment – ZEN becomes the new RMT currency.  Officer drops only available via lockboxes.  Introduction of the Jovians with ships that look suspiciously like the Klingons in Star Treak Online.

Activision – Call of Duty: New Eden Combat becomes a thing.

Blizzard – Expansions now take more than two years, cost $50, and completely reset the combat meta with new modules you can only fit if you buy the update.  Scamming is banned.  High sec pilots are unattackable unless they flag PvP.  Faction grinds necessary again to even access empire stations.  Null sec space made much more colorful.  Fedo battle pets.  Chris Metzen comes back to do the lore.  Onyx renamed Onyxia.  Jovians turn out to be orcs.

Square Enix – Titans now wield giant swords.  Everything redone in soft focus.  Jovians discovered to be a race of hydrocephalic midgets. (That is a Lalafell joke right there.)

XL Games – Female space apparel now much more revealing.  Gallente ships now feature cleavage.  Avatar called out for what it actually modeled on.  You now have to pay rent to use the Captain’s quarters.

NCsoft – Whole thing gets moved to Austin and mostly ignored until revenue tanks and everything gets shut down in five years.

Daybreak – Expansions now only show up every November and cost $35, though there is a $140 collectors edition.  They mostly feature new incursions and missions.  Captain’s quarters now the 2 bedroom Freeport apartment with EQII avatars.  Corp housing available with ORE agents that will mine for you.  Minmatar ships begin to look more like gnomish clockwork and Antonia Bayle becomes Empress of Amarr.  Capsuleer Studio features player made ship SKINs and clothing.  As with other Daybreak games, the company gives the creators a cut of the sale price.  Rixx Javixx’s financial woes are solved.

Paradox Interactive – Game now moves faster than real time, but space travel is slowed to compensate.  Capsuleers no longer immortal, so you have to worry about your heirs.  Alliances now must be sealed by intermarriage between the families of corporation leaders.

Hello Games – Space is made infinite via procedural generation.  You can land on planets, but it is really boring so almost nobody bothers.  Later discovered that when you leave current New Eden space, the whole thing is just running locally on your own computer, which is why you never run into anybody else.

Cloud Imperium – Rebranded as Star Citizen: Strategic, the conversion of art assets begins to bring it into line with the Chris Roberts vision.  An Alpha version of the conversion is released two years later, but you still can still only look at all the ships you bought for it in an offline simulator.

Mojang –  “Players build everything” dream finally achieved, even if “everything” is now a lot more “blocky.”  Regions replace with biomes, space is now effectively infinite but really slow since it all runs in Java.  Llamas replace fedo.  NPC “creeper” drones now spawn at night… and it is always night in space… and blow up your shit.

Wargaming.net – Game rebranded as World of Spaceships and becomes a lobby based game where you start with corvettes/rookie ships and grind up for equipment upgrades and crew training through ten tiers of Alliance Tournament style fighting.

Microsoft – Excel integrated into the game, making it literally spreadsheets in space.  Buying a copy costs a lot more, but it comes pre-installed on your work machine and is on your IT department’s approved list.  The Caldari replace the Amarr as the focus of the in-game lore.

Electronic Arts – Second server opened with scamming banned, safe high sec, flagged PvP everywhere else.  Population of both servers fall below critical mass and the game is mostly ignored for three years, then EA closes the studio and shuts the whole thing down.  A few years later New Eden appears as the setting for a BioWare RPG while some art assets show up in a forgettable mobile game.

Any other likely candidates or scenarios?

If WoW Expansion Were Done Pokemon Style

Ideas that come unbidden in the night when you’ve been thinking about Pokemon and World of Warcraft too much.

What if Blizzard did World of Warcraft expansions the way Nintendo and Game Freak do new Pokemon titles or was simply influenced more by Pokemon than EverQuest?

This is where this ends up…

• Each expansion would be a complete 1-100 experience, but would require you to start at back as a new player each time.
• You get to create exactly one avatar per expansion copy.
• There would be two versions of each expansion, each with rewards not in the other, and the only way to obtain them would be through trading across expansions.
• Occasionally there would be a single expansion that was just the previous two merged together, slightly altered, and with a few more rewards.
• Every once in a while the two different versions would have completely different groups to fight, though the story and quest line would be essentially the same.
• Interaction with quest givers initiated solely by making eye contact.
• It would be a solo experience, where you created parties for dungeons and raids from the NPCs you captured while battling along the way.
• Party size is now six.
• You don’t level up, only the followers in your party do as they fight for you.
• Your followers can be different classes, which have a rock/paper/scissors dynamic to them.  There is no holy trinity.
• Draenor garrison-like need to collect all possible followers emphasized in the game.
• Only mounts: Roller skates and a bicycle.
• Flight points unlocked only after defeating a dungeon half way into the game.
• Dance contests!
• Geography of each expansion loosely based on a real world location.
• Blizzard offices cleverly hidden in each expansion, allowing you do rage at the devs through your avatar.
• At some point each expansion would require you to wake up a sleeping ogre that is blocking your progress.
• Defeating the story antagonists just lets you move on to your real goal; Defeating the final four and then the Azeroth League Champion.
• We still end up waiting at least two years between expansions

What other Pokemon tropes would likely infect Blizzard were this true?

And would any of this necessarily be a bad thing?

Google Tells Me Nearly All Games are Dead

There is a game you can play with Google… well, there are probably many, but this is one of them… where you enter the name of something, followed by “is” to see what pre-filled search suggestions come up.  These results are driven by what people have searched for previously.

As I was playing this game the other night instead of doing something important, I began to notice a trend in my searches.  It seemed like Google was declaring most everything dead.

Sure, sometimes that was apt.

Abe Vigoda, after being reported dead by mistake on multiple occasions over the years, does indeed now sleep with the fishes, having passed earlier this year.

And sometimes the result wasn’t so spot on:

I’m pretty sure somebody would have mentioned if he was dead… or a mack daddy.

I decided to see if that trend held for video games on my side bar.  First on the list was, of course, EVE Online:

Given that “EVE is dying…” is practically an meme at this point, that wasn’t too surprising.

Likewise, EverQuest, at 17 years of age got a similar result:

At least it wasn’t both “dead” and “dying” I suppose.  Of course, that last item lead me to World of Warcraft:

Three of those aren’t so good, “dead,” “dying,” and “boring.”  Even EVE Online didn’t get “boring” as a top result.  That lead to a series of other titles, all of which at least got dead as a result:

I had a whole run there where “dead” wasn’t just a result, but the top result.  Then I started branching out from MMOs:

I finally hit a game where “dead” wasn’t the top result, though I am not sure that was a good thing:

Even Minecraft got “dead” as a result, though at least it was in fourth position, which was practically an endorsement at this point:

Hey, “awesome” came before “dead!”

Landmark was odd, but I think it suffers from having a generic name:

Still, I think “dead” might be in there just for it.

Then, finally, I hit a game that wasn’t dead:

League of Legends is only “dying,” not “dead.”  Also, it is “gay,” which I think says more about the demographic that is searching for things about it.  Still, it is doing better than Heroes of the Storm:

“Dead,” “dying,” “bad,” and “free!”

Then at last, I hit a search where “dead” wasn’t even a result:

I’m not sure Hearthstone was really winning with that draw.  I mean sure, “dead” wasn’t on the list, but the rest was hardly an endorsement.

Quote of the Day – Your Name May Not Be a Name

Your user name may not be discriminating, unethical or otherwise offensive and may not contain a name.

-LEGO, on changes to their terms of service.

The fine people at The Lego Group dropped me a line to remind me that they have changed their terms of services.

They were concerned apparently because I had not yet read and accepted them.  Literal truth.

You are receiving this email because we have changed our user terms for your LEGO ID and we can see that you haven’t read and accepted them yet.

I haven’t read or accepted them because I haven’t logged on to anything LEGO or LEGO related in a while.  My daughter is now a teenager and far more interested in makeup, clothes, and what her friends are posting on Instagram than getting plastic blocks and building things.  She does occasionally get wistful when she  sees the LEGO minifigures… she keeps the golden C3P-0 on her desk… but not enough to actually dust them off and do something with them.  I should go do another minifigure roundup this year and drag her along.

Anyway, The Lego Group was kind enough to append a short list of the items that they felt were the most important of the changes to the terms.  Number one on the list is quoted at the top of this post, and it makes my head hurt.

I get “discriminating,” though through the quirkiness of the English language and custom, we tend to use that word to indicate a positive.  If you have “discriminating taste” it is a good thing, right?  So I might have phrased that differently… maybe “promotes discrimination” since “discrimination” is the usage that is always negative… but I get what they were shooting for.  Marketing and legal probably spent hours on that word alone.

I can also see “unethical.”  If you pick a user name that makes you look like an employee of The Lego Group, that would be well on the way towards “unethical,” though I still think you have to try and use it to misrepresent yourself intentionally before we get fully in the zone.  Whatever, I get it.

“Offensive” is a minefield in this day and age.  I dare anybody to come up with a workable definition of what “offensive” means in a world where people are offended that somebody has the last name “Lynch.”  But they have to cover themselves, and now they can site this statement if somebody complains about.  Yet again, I get it.

But then we get to the last phrase in that sentence (which should be separated with an Oxford comma dammit) and I start to think that they are trolling me.  My user name, the name with which I identify myself on the LEGO site, must not contain a NAME?

I might understand “must not contain your real name” or “must not include your surname” as stipulations, but they appear to be literally saying, “Your name… it may not be a name.”  That quote at the top, it is directly from the section of the terms to which the user is specifically required to agree.

If I go with all numbers, will that still be a name?  It all seems pretty silly to me.