The Long Road

Archives: October 2005

Sunday, October 30, 2005

I wish I had somethign fun to say right now, because i really am quite drunk. and cold. friggen cold. I turned off the heat a couple of days ago, and no one has turned it one since. I am sitting here in my jacket after having gotten home. I am cold and drunk. And also typing pretty good, errr..I mean well. There are a lot of things running through my head. Confessions about this or that, thoughts about various things related to errmmm..many things.

I'm currently talking to zamir. He's playing Civ4. That sorta reminds me of the time I was talking to Hate and she told me that I "lost points" because I was playing Moo2 obsessively. I just couldn't let go of until I was able to beat it on the hardest difficultly leve, y'know? Was she really keeping points? Did I have points with her? Have I recovered said points now? The mind bogles.

Currently talking to zamir. I find that i have a lot in common with him. I thank him every day for having introduced met o GAF (well, not EVERY day, but I'm thankful). It's funny when I think about it, in Ottawa, there is only my brother and maybe Kim (who I never really get to see anyways) who are into the whole internet-geek scene. forgive me, I'm not sure what else to call it, but basically no one I know in Ottawa knows what Vobsub is except for Phong. SAD!!

what else did i want to talk about... oh yes!! THere's the semi-annual (twice a year, not to be confused with bi-annual - once every two years, which some people do) ottawa comic book exposition tomorrow. It's a pretty sad and small affair but maybe I'll find some goood deals to spend a couple of hundred on. Gosia's roomate might be there. Although she SOUNDS like the perfect girl for me, I have it on Gosia's good authority that it would be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway. Yes, I just wanted to use that phrase. Sorry.

I guess this is all for now. Maybe some of you will be lukcy enough to see this post before I delete it! Maybe I wont' delete it who knows. i should talk baout hate some more..but nah. not drunk enough1!

Posted by Rayne @ 02:31 AM EST [Link] [10 comments]

Friday, October 28, 2005

As some of you are aware, there was a recent controversy with Jack Thompson. You can check out these links at penny arcade for all the details if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

PA’s semi-final word on the issue is simply that Jack Thompson is not worth fighting, that we’re lucky to have a loon as our enemy instead of eloquent, sane, and respectable opposition. That is pure cop-out. If you believe in something, then you should be willing to defend it; whether you’re enemy is a raving lunatic or not, you should take them all on. There seemed to be some level of expectation from PA’s fans that they would take serious counter measures against Jack but in the end they decided to do nothing. They simply either did not have the resources (unlikely) or the will to fight this battle.

Instead they advocated the most predictable action possible, following the footsteps of every other group of people who have ever been given a derogatory label, by wearing Thompson-Coined word “Pixelante” with pride. There is no quicker way to legitimize a man than to embrace his vernacular.

Jack Thompson is fighting a PR war against the video game industry; he provides the media with extremely quotable sound bites and colourful metaphors, and they eat it up. When talking to gamers he drags the level of discourse into elementary school yard territory with insults, threats, and grandstanding. We can't ignore him for the simple fact that the media doesn't. He gets his message out, we don't. The sooner he is discredited and removed from the public eye, the sooner video gaming will become an understood and accepted form of entertainment.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:31 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Wednesday night's 6/49 jackpot is 40 Million dollars. Unless I'm wrong, there are only 49 Choose 6 possible combinations in the lottery, more specifically: 13 983 816 choices.

You know what this means? If you buy all possible 13 983 816 combinations, you are guaranteed to win the jackpot! At 2 dollars per game, thats 27 967 632$ needed to make a profit of 12 032 368$.

Lets do this people!! Between all the readers of this site, I'm sure we can collectively come up with 28 M by the end of tomorrow. I've already bought 4 games. The rest is up to you, faithful reader!

(someone please play the Lost numbers)

Posted by Rayne @ 12:12 AM EST [Link] [18 comments]

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

When came time to sign the contract, instead of reading 603, it said 603.96$. Asked why the price was higher, the salesperson couldn’t really tell and went to ask the Bad Cop who told him it was for “self locking rim nuts” which are essential in such a car. Big Lie.

Phong had told me about this previously. Once the deal has been made, and price agreed upon, dealerships will try to make you pay for more. They figure that you’ve gone through all this trouble and have finally found the vehicle you want at the price you wanted it at that they can push you around a little bit at the end and you wont put up a fight because you don’t want to redo all this work. Well, this is where all my preparation, observational powers, and aloofness as a person…failed. I was completely in the mindset described above and I even realized it. It was a similar case to "I hate it when I know that something bad is going to happen, that I could and should stop it, but yet take the opposite action of the one I should and get screwed in the process", as discussed in the poker post. I should have put my foot down, threatened to leave, anything. Instead it was a complete deer in the headlights moment. Unforgivable. This will never happen again!

In the end, the car came to 603.67$ (it went down a few cents between the initial signing and the second signing??). No regrets in choice of vehicle, as it’s just a simply beautiful car, engineered the hell out of, and handles like a dream. I do, however, wonder if I could have gotten a lower price. For the 3, we went from 535$ to 486.5$, a difference of 2910$ (!!) while for the Accord, it was from 637$ to 603.67$ or a total of 1999.80$. Respectable but there’s a nagging feeling that I could have gotten away with more. Although, I hear Honda dealers are notoriously difficult to get discounts from and this was for a 2006 that had just come out.

One fun anecdote: I picked up the car on Thursday, the guy forgot to get a blank check from me and still has not called about it. Free car!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:02 PM EST [Link] [8 comments]

Friday, October 21, 2005

After the fiasco with the 3, we had pretty much lied to and walked out on every Mazda dealership in the city. Thoughts turned to other cars. Some of the models that came up for consideration included the Solara (2-doors = expensive insurance), Civic (I hate how curvy and squished the 2006 models are), Camry (ugly), and the Accord. After a quick look through the internet, I decided on the Accord.

The first person I went to see was the woman who sold a civic to one of my parents’ employees. On Tuesday, we went for a test drive, checked out the different packages, what was left in 2005s, and decided on a 2006 S(pecial)E(dition). When it came to pricing, she opened with 635$/month. I asked her for a more realistic number and she tells me no dice, they already have several people waiting for Civics, etc. She basically gave me the impression that there was no room for bargaining at all. In a city with something like 5 Honda dealerships, I’m pretty sure that there would be room for negotiating unless they all decided to collude. So we leave, telling her we might be back on Saturday.

On Thursday, we visit another Honda dealership. The guy quotes 616$ with them paying for half of freight (roughly 600$). We tell him that the Honda website actually gives a number of 602$. “hmmm” he thinks. After some math, he figures that we accidentally priced a manual Accord since there’s no way that an auto could go for 602 right off the bat. This brings up my first point. All dealerships have spreadsheets that they show you when you’re pricing out a car, and this spreadsheet is arranged in such a way to make it look like there is absolutely no profit to be made in selling you this vehicle. Every dollar is accounted for under a different cost, and nothing under “profit” (that’d be way too easy). These spreadsheets are somewhat intimidating as they really give the impression that every dollar you get off your car is a dollar that the dealership loses in COST. Obviously that’s not true at all; from the 3 experience, everything beyond the manufacturer price for the car is fair game. After we’re convinced that 602 is actually the price for a manual (try the Honda site, it’s so slow, it’s easy to make that mistake) we tell him that we’re rather attached to that number, he says he can probably get close to it and he’ll “go to bat” for us and get close but not exactly there. So we leave, telling him we might be back on Saturday.

We head to a third dealership telling the new guy to beat 602. He says he can likely do it if we come on Saturday when the more relaxed weekend manager is there, but the Thursday guy would probably refuse. We chat about this and that for a while, then tell him we’ll come on Saturday.

Between this guy’s “weekend manager” statement and the previous one’s “go to bat for you”, I realized that they were totally playing a game of good cop/bad cop. The guy you are dealing with is the good cop; if the manager refuses your offer, the dealer is only the messenger, but if the manager accepts your offer, then the dealer seems like he did you a favour by convincing the manager to take it. The bad cop is some guy you never see, never talk to, and can be angry with without affecting your relationship with the salesperson. The good cop can be completely positive the whole time, the decision is not up to them and you can’t direct ill will at them for anything. This puts us, the customer, in a fairly difficult position since the salesperson takes the position of being our friend but we have to be both the good cop and bad cop. This means sometimes being disagreeable to someone who is not only powerless but is trying his hardest to help you out. Of course, it is all an act, but that’s the position they put you in and that’s the position you have to take yourself out of if you want to bargain.

At home, Phong checks the Honda website and it was indeed a manual that is at 602, the automatic comes up to 628; the lady who quoted us 635 was obviously being unrealistic. Saturday comes and we head out to dealer #3 (economics class I should have spent at least 1 more day shopping around though). The guy tells us he can get us a discount of 1100 for sure, but it’d be more difficult to convince of the manager of 1200$. A 1200$ discount brings the car to 603.55$, I say to ask for 1225$ which would be a nice 603.00$. The dealer then asks me if we have a deal if the manager agrees to this number (it seems like if they bother to ask you this, then it will definitely happen) so I say yes. Guy leaves for a while, comes back, and says “congratulations, you’ve got a deal”.

This entry is getting a bit long so be here later on for the epic Senses Shattering Epilogue!!!

Posted by Rayne @ 12:58 PM EST [Link] [7 comments]

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

So there's an athletic apparel brand called Sugoi. They do everything from biking gloves to underwear. Phong and I were joking around that it would be amazing if a girl were taking off your pants, saw the Sugoi underwear and exclaimed “Sugoi!”

Honestly, if that ever happened, I’d forget what I was doing and laugh uncontrollably for minutes. Maybe.

Posted by Rayne @ 11:45 AM EST [Link] [6 comments]

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

This happened 3-4 months ago, so some of the details might be off or they might even be outrageous lies. U-Decide!

My brother and I went around shopping for a Mazda 3. The first dealer we went to together gave us an opening price of 535$/month based on a 60 month financing plan. Phong told him that was more than we were ready to pay so he asked how much that would be. Phong gave him a ridiculously low number, 450$ or thereabouts. The guy scoffs at this, way too low. We eventually agree on 490$, by all indications (car buying guides) this was an excellent price.

(Tangenially, a guy who was with a salesman in a neighbouring cubicle kept refusing to name his price until the dealer gave him a number first. It was a continual back and forth of “what is the lowest price you are willing to give me this car for” and “at what price would you be willing to buy this car from me today”. I think we all know that the dealer is not going to give you the lowest price possible just for the asking, throw him a really low number or do some research!)

So we go back to this first dealer the next day so that my mom can sign the papers etc., but he backs out of the 490$ and wants a quite bit more. It turns out that he can’t give us 490$ since it’s “cost” and he made a mistake when he quoted that to us. So whatever, we hightail it out of there.

We shop around at the other Mazda dealers in the area telling them that we had an offer of 490$ (technically true!) and we get numbers like 489.50$. So I assume that, yes, the guy accidentally gave us the “cost” number (where cost = universally agreed on lowest price they’re willing to sell at while still making a profit). But remember that every dollar off of your monthly payments is equal to 60$ off of the overall price of the car. So while it may seem silly to argue over a buck or two, it does mean big savings in the long run.

The lowest price we had gotten was 486.50$, but when we went to sign the next day the guy said it had to be a couple dollars more than that (this has become such a regular experience for me that I can state that if you show up to the same guy twice, he’s going to jack up his price since he assumes that you’ve shopped around and are ready to buy from him). Again, we walk out and while we’re driving, the guy calls and says that he’ll give it to us for 486.50$ if we come back. My mom decides it’s too late and doesn’t want to put up with this.

So no 3. Be here later this week for the exciting conclusion in “Car Shopping: Part 2”!

Posted by Rayne @ 04:38 PM EST [Link] [16 comments]

Thursday, October 13, 2005

As I sit here drinking my hot mug of coffee I just can’t help but think of how great it feels to sit and drink a hot mug of coffee. I love how you can have coffee in any number of ways, black, sugar, cream, chocolate powder, cinnamon stick, COLD. It’s delicious no matter what! Like most people, I enjoy a hot cup in the morning at the office. There’s nothing quite like enjoying the aroma of coffee while looking at the morning’s barrage of email before any real work gets done.

The thing about coffee is that it is comforting. Sort of like a hug from a big chested girl. Coffee also reminds me of the good old days of University where we’d go out to Tim’s at midnight and come back to sit around the dinner table and talk smack about school. All of us: Stephen, Dennis, Mike, Shawn, Jerome, Ryan, Lachlan, their girlfriends, siblings, parents, and pets. It’s the kind of memory you cherish when you realize that the midnight-Tim’s-with-all-your-friends lifestyle is very unlikely to ever return.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:17 PM EST [Link] [19 comments]

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

I hate it when I know that something bad is going to happen, that I could and should stop it, but yet take the opposite action of the one I should and get screwed in the process. What am I talking about?

Poker, of course!

When I’m playing and I KNOW that the opponent has better cards (sometimes because my cards are only so-so, sometimes because the other player only ever plays very strong cards, sometimes because they are betting like they can’t be stopped, etc) and there’re only 2 cards in the whole deck that could help me (or worse yet, none!) but I still persist in the betting and the calling hoping that that one card will come out, no matter how unlikely.

It’s terrible. It is basically a conflict between the rational mind knowing and saying that it’s already over and to fold before accumulating higher losses versus the irrational self that has the need to see things through while hoping that fortune favours the bold.

I think the “I have to bet” mentality has definitely hurt me more than not. Take this somewhat extreme example: of 5 cards on deck, there are four diamonds, you hold a very low diamond card (say a two), and the other player is betting very high (he’s either got you beat with a higher flush or is downright bluffing). For me, this is completely a “you have to bet” scenario because there’s no way I can fold a flush even if it’s the lowest one possible. But yet, it just seems obvious that I’ve been beaten.

This is another example of the main theme of my last Soc class: duality. It’s playing the game according to the “rules” I’ve read against playing it on instinct and feeling.

Posted by Rayne @ 01:41 PM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Thursday, October 6, 2005

You know that feeling when you're reading mainstream press about something you're passionate about? The whole "god, how dumb is this writer? he doesn't get it at all." Sometimes, it's obvious that the writer is, in fact, part of the mainstream public and dosen't really know what s/he's talking about. They're just covering a press conference or something.

But even when we have a member of Teh Hardcore as a journalist, it all depends on who they are writing for. Mainstream press has certain beats and guidelines to it that you can pick up after reading enough of it. For example, you can't assume that the reader knows anything about what you're writing about. It seems to me that most mainstream articles are written as if it were possibly the first time a reader has read on the topic. Another point I've noticed is that you have to pepper information throughout your article instead of assaulting your reader with it. You can't have a sentence that's information-full like "Frank Miller is the 44 year-old writer of seminal works like Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One; he is currently working on a sequel to last year's sleeper theatrical hit Sin City". sentences have to remain simple and only convey 1 piece of information each. (I have no idea how old Frank Miller is).

Because of these writing conventions, we have lines like this particular excerpt from today's NYTimes: "Id has been associated with PC gaming rather than with game consoles that plug into a television, like the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 from Sony." As a member of Teh Hardcore, that previous sentence just seems like a waste of words to me since it could have ended after "game consoles", but everything after it has to be inserted to make it accessible to those dozen or so people who do not know what a game console is.

Trying to explain things to the uninitiated can also lead to that "he doesn't get it at all" feeling. Putting the difference between cell-shaded, sprite based, rendered, and polygonal (see? I can't even think of a good word for this) graphics can lead someone to sound pretty dumb even if they know exactly what the difference is. An easily accessible, well written definition of those terms can be difficult to come up with for someone who "just knows". Similarily, anything that tries to describe the artistic difference between "manga" and "comics" just comes off as sounding hopelessly confused.

Another problem is that articles are too detached. We never get the sense that the writer is "one of us". All sentences and statements are in a third person voice, like this: "Gamers enjoy Grand Theft Auto not because it is violent and graphic, but because RockStar has offered the most immersive and interactive world since the one created by God." This creates a sense of being under a magnifying glass; having your experiences distilled into a few words for the general public leads to a slight sense of resentment.

I think some of us are just too harsh on the mainstream press when they cover specific areas that we are passionate about. They write for the uninitiated, there are conventions that have to be met, and the news is certainly not the place to go for exceptional prose and word play.

But for the love of Xenu, I wish they sometimes didn't send ignorant techonophobes to events like E3.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:12 PM EST [Link] [8 comments]

Monday, October 3, 2005

Things look good for the month of September in terms of trying to save money. The 700$ total is well under the 1000$ mark and under the 800$ mark I had set for myself last month. The biggest changes were for comics, entertainment, and eating out. A lot of these reduced expenses have to do with NOT having gone to Wonderland and still reading all the comics and watching the DVDs I had obtained in August. Thus, I predict October will be an expensive comics month. Obviously, September wasn't a good month at all for poker since I didn't win once. Terrible compared to August. Also, the Shadow Raiders DVDs have been refunded due to "not for sale in canada" so the figure of 115.93 will be much lower when the refund goes through.

A lot less was also spent on "misc" since I'm done buying stuff for my bed/room; in fact, the only significant spending in that column was my brother's Happy 9-11 present. It's unlikely that I'll have another 300$ misc month for a while...maybe x-mas (when everyone will know how much I spent on them). Like eating out, less was spent on groceries in September, does that mean I ate less overall?? Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings of anorexia!!

The Katrina fueled rise in gas made a 30$ difference this month compared to last. That sucks. I had to buy soap and shampoo this month which made the 20$ difference in the "maintenance" column (can someone suggest a better name?).

All in all, a pretty good month, nothing that's too excessive maybe except the number of times I buy lunch and the previously mentioned DVDs (which I didn't need to buy, really). Eating Out, Comics, Entertainment, and Alcohol amount to $320.71 and are the only expenses that could really be trimmed down. If I had no interests, nor any desire to hang out with people, I could probably reduce those to zero. I'd like to be able to save even more of my paychecks but I also enjoy having a life. And some expenses really just are unavoidable.

I encourage everyone to keep track of their expenses! It's super-awesome! This month's goal: I will try to bring more lunches to work!

Posted by Rayne @ 04:26 PM EST [Link] [17 comments]

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