Originally published @ Bite My Review on Sep 15, 2009

First off let’s get the disclaimer out-of-the-way. I’m fairly new to Aion, having only participated in the last two closed beta events. These tests required a legacy invitation from an earlier event or a confirmed pre-order key. Based on my experience I can say that the closed environment was able to produce a superior quality of play and an honest feeling of cooperation among those involved. The players in the CB events genuinely seemed to care about making the game more fun and even *GASP* finding/fixing the odd bug or three. Never a question was uttered without a helpful response. Communications between players were limited to useful information or the occasional humorous quip. As one progressed into the adolescent/elder (read: PvP) game and associated zones discussions of strategy or attack alerts were the norm. Read the rest of this entry »

Kids are idiots.

That in and of itself should be a sufficient post, really. So much said in so few words…

But that’s hardly my style now is it?

I was in a local Best Buy browsing what passes for their PC game section and this noxious wave overtakes me. I turn around to find the source it was this lumbering oaf of a child. He was, at best, 18 and easily 6′ high. As is the style of the times, his pants were a hair’s breath above his ankles, which is an entirely different rant.

So there’s this giant smelly cloud of child lumbering down the aisle oblivious to the presence of others. He apparently was pleading with his companion (a tiny, TINY girl I recognized as an employee of the aforementioned BBY) to trade him something for something and something so he could get some shitty game.

Anyway, I’m trying to read the back of some crap game that escapes me and he “bumped” into me not once, not twice, but FOUR times. How the fuck? I realize I’m not Gigantor the gigantic giant, but damnation, boy! Watch the fuck out!

And take a shower.

And pull up your pants!

Just for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that April Fool’s day “stories” on the internets were funny at one point. No matter how generous your definition of that date may be it’s still “a long fucking time ago”.

You are all idiots. Shut up idiots.

That is all.

What scares me? These people actually get a vote. The problem with democracy isn’t the politicians. It’s people like the ones in that video. Here are some helpful tips, from me to you, o’ people of the video.

1) Catholic doctors and Catholic hospitals are allowed to have all the moral objections to abortions or penicillin or anything else that sticks in their craws. What they are NOT allowed is to deny legal treatment to patients. Here, try this for some light reading. I know fitting the time in for intelligence is tough, what with a full day of demagoguery and dunking witches in the river, but give it a fucking shot, eh? Oh, and nice touch with the triple-peck on your baby. Why won’t those evil Democracts PLEASE think of the children?!

2) The tenets of Socialism, morally, are a beautiful thing. The belief that people should contribute to society based upon what they are able to contribute and should receive the full sum of benefits that they require from society is pretty god damned idyllic. That doesn’t make me or Obama a Socialist. Social programs in this country allow millions of good, honest and hard-working American’s to provide enough to eat for their families and to keep a roof over their heads and the lights on. But hey, it’s not you, right? So fuck poor people. Fuck people with disabilities or who are just down on their luck. The measure of a society is how it cares for the least among them. I don’t believe in hand-outs for the sake of hand-outs. I don’t believe in punishing people for being rich or successful. If a penny from me, a penny from you, and pennies from everyone in this country can feed a child in poverty or keep the fucking lights on so some single mother in Peoria can study for her GED before heading out to her 2nd job? Money. Well. Spent. I wish every fuckwit who bashes social programs could get put on a biiiiig list and then summarily denied access to each and every one of them. I wonder what that old goat says if his Social Security check is a day late?

3) There is no far-left agenda. We can’t agree on ANYTHING, let alone a fucking agenda. I realize that’s not a rebuttal, but it informs point number two – Barrack Obama isn’t far-left. With a few exceptions Senator Obama is a moderate Democrat. Liberal, for sure, but just like Senator McCain he’s nowhere near the outskirts of his party. Oh, and not for nothing, but the last 8 years have been the far right’s agenda being forced upon the country. A country, I might add, who is repeatedly demonstrated that they are MODERATES. The vast majority of people in America have opinions on both sides of the aisle. Even moreso in recent years as the traditional values of the major parties have gotten so murky. We’re currently experiencing the worst economic downturn since the great depression. After 8 years of fiscally responsible growth and prosperity under a “tax-n-spend” liberal this is hardly the crowning achievement for the party of fiscal conservatives, no?

Inspired by ComputerWorld, courtesy of membox

As someone in the industry who would be considered a techie vs a business analyst or other “soft” role I LOVE hearing how unimportant my existence is to any given project. I LOVE hearing how I need to be more flexible and that I need to learn how to make the system fit the user and not vice versa. Of course they’re absolutely right – computers and technology at large must, ultimately, serve the needs of the user. This is what one would call the “No shit, Sherlock” principle. That said, you have to know how to use/fix/change the shit in the first place in order to properly and effectively mold it into something useful.

There is much more emphasis on the business domain and on project management skills than on the technical skills,” says Kate Kaiser, an associate professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. In September 2005, Kaiser led a Society for Information Management (SIM) study of 104 CIOs to determine their skills needs through 2008. She expects the top 10 skills identified to remain in the top 12 by 2010.

er… yeah. Because CIO’s are well-known to be intelligent, tech-savvy, forward-thinking people and not just the only person in Senior Management who can make a pivot table in Excel.

IT professionals who will survive and perhaps thrive in 2010 will expand their knowledge base and stretch beyond their comfort zones. Those who don’t will find job opportunities in niche areas.

I concur. Assuming you define niche as “any job that requires knowledge of technology or the implementation thereof.”

The ComputerWorld article even lists what will be the hot and cold career paths for budding technolites in their slack-jawed little world of tomorrow. Among their “hot” jobs are Systems and Network Design – both of which are skill-intensive careers assuming your goal is to, you know, be good at your job. I don’t disagree that those particular jobs will be in great(er) demand in the future, but keep in mind the premise of the article. Either they have no clue what those jobs actually entail or they just contradicted themselves. The incongruities don’t end there, mind you, they list programming (twice), QA, Support/Help Desk and a nebulous “operations” career in the cold category. I’m not sure, exactly, how they think organizations are going to operate in this magical future, but it obviously doesn’t rely on people who are experts in servers, workstations, hardware or software.

… Revelation! That must be the point of their little ego stroke masquerading as journalism. There’s some amazing new technology that will become mainstream between now and 2010 that will completely eliminate computers, software and the people who know how to make them work!

If only that was the joke.

These are the same small-minded “big thinkers” that brought the ruin that is dot.bomb on the industry. I’m sure they truly believe that there’s some one size fits all solution to every computing task ever. It’s the same kind of dogmatic bullshit you find with Apple and Linux die hards that extol the cure-all virtues of their particular cult.

Don’t get me wrong – business acumen isn’t a BAD thing to have, nor are business people the red menace threatening the very lives of the skilled professional. I take offense to the slant of the article and I firmly believe the conclusions drawn and the experts considered in its writing to be off their rockers. You know what actually will be the hot employee of the future? People who can tear down and rebuild a standard PC (or mac, as they’re almost interchangeable now), cap a CAT5 line correctly AND explain those processes to a layperson with a complete transfer of knowledge.

That’s less business-skill and more people-skill. Knowing everything is great – being able to teach someone else everything? That’s pretty much the greatest thing ever.