Finishing Crooked Little Vein left me in the mood for hard boiled detectives. Raymond Chandler‘s Philip Marlowe is my favorite. Now I dig the Bogart Big Sleep movie. But Bogie just isn’t Marlowe to me. The perfect Marlowe is the 80’s HBO show staring Powers Boothe. A show which I vaguely recall as being this perfect translation of Chandler’s stories.

I found it on Amazon, Phillip Marlowe, Private Investigator. A New York Times article from back then seems to back up what I think I remember.

Although he should perhaps look a bit more lean and hungry, Mr. Boothe creates an emotionally convincing Marlowe. His private eye prefers to be an objective observer rather than a soiled participant but, when pushed, he leaves no doubt about who is in charge. Dark, dour, almost sullen but not quite sour, this Marlowe would have had Raymond Chandler’s approval.

It’s also set in the right period. I hate when they try to set it in the present. Marlowe’s time and place was the 1940’s Los Angeles. I really hope the show is as good as I remember.

So it’s been exactly one year ago that I would have been fired for the second time from the worst hotel ever. I say this only because I ruined the sheriff’s chance to personally fire me by checking the schedule the day before and then calling him to ask what was going on. To celebrate the day I submit for everyone’s listening approval the unedited version of that call:

[audio:ramada-fired-james-one-year-ago.mp3]
Played [drain file 48 hits] Times

In ten days I will also be celebrating my one year anniversary at the new hotel. Which is a nice place to work. With any luck in another year the worst hotel ever will finally be dead. What a happy day that will be.

Got a new poll going. One year later exactly since the last poll. The new poll is game related. I’m interested in how many people fell for the hype machine that is Halo 3.

Did you buy Halo 3?

• Yes
• No
• Don't care at all

View Results

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Incidentally this is my one year anniversary working at the new hotel.

Honestly I hadn’t planned on getting it. But I did. And I’m glad I did. With Halo 3 I had low expectations. With one feature in particular it has me really liking the game. That is the Theater mode. In theater mode you can replay saved films. In these saved films you can take screenshots. Screenshots that can be uploaded onto the net. It maybe a minor thing to some. But I happen to love taking screens of the games I’m playing. You can see a total of 33 screens here in my gallery.

Now if they would enhance these features. It’s a pain in the ass to use the file share to upload one picture at a time. I should be able to upload the entire lot. Or at the least flag shots I want to upload. Further negatives about all this, the default file share max is six slots. For replays, screenshots, game modes, etc, etc. You can pay 750 Microsoft Points to increase the file share to a total of 24 slots. That’s per month by the way. Hopefully this is something that more console games will enable players to do.

In response to the post Hotel Watch Day 7 I was able to get someone from inside the worst hotel ever to comment on just what happened.

The flooding took out the water boilers in the basement. the executive wing is open because it has a separate boiler. And yes the paper does not say all the problems, you know how the owners are at this place…

I know the owners believe me. I asked a few questions. So what is morale like in the hotel for the regular employees? What is the situation with the latest gm leaving? This is the answer I got back:

I would say 70% of the employees quit. thats managers too. theres no GM, no F&B, no director of operations, and of course no one knows anything thats happening for the future or has a specific time when they will get the hotel working again. but I’m sure they will find someway to try and get around not having to do things properly to get the hotel going.

This of course paints a very grim picture of what things are like inside the worst hotel ever. Which is great news. If possible I will try to get more info from this Hotel Insider.

Here is my chat with the Hotel Insider. We cover a few topics of interest regarding the worst hotel ever. What happened when the cops came to talk to me. What the hotel is like now. The newb auditor turned into a front desk supervisor. And a shared dislike for the biggest douche bag in the universe.

[3:31] Turk: you work at the desk?
[3:32] Hotel Insider: no
[3:32] Hotel Insider: I did do night audit before though at another hotel
[3:32] Turk: how did you find out about my site?
[3:32] Hotel Insider: back when you were fired and they were all investigating you etc
[3:32] Hotel Insider: actually when I seen your site
[3:32] Hotel Insider: I was like.. “man wish I could of met that guy he sounds pretty cool”
[3:33] Turk: wow did they make a big deal out of it?
[3:33] Hotel Insider: cause of the the idiots who stole crap from regal beloit
[3:33] Turk: oh
[3:33] Turk: right that shit
[3:33] Turk: heh
[3:33] Hotel Insider: well, we had just got regal beloit again for banquets
[3:33] Hotel Insider: and they were doing like meetings for this new program they paid a mil for or something for managers
[3:34] Hotel Insider: well these 3 people that use to work there I’m pretty sure stole this like big chest that they would keep there laptops in for the trainees
[3:34] Turk: yeah
[3:34] Hotel Insider: and they were watching you and seeing what you were posting etc seeing if maybe you were the one who did it

(more…)

Hellgate: London just went gold. Me and Gawain had been playing the beta. The nda has been lifted now that it’s gone gold. First let’s take a look at one of my favorite bugs from the beta. The goddamn portals. Jesus they were everywhere. They did eventually fix this one. But there are so many more.

Here is a movie of the portals. Keep in mind this is footage from a beta build. Also keep in mind supposedly the beta build players played was not the up to date build the developers had. Why one would have people test an old build of the game still baffles me.

[drain file 50 show]

And on top of retarded bugs like the above the performance is shit on my pc at times. You can find more screens shots from this old beta here. And then some newer old beta shots can be found here.

The best bug yet though has to be one Gawain has been suffering since we started playing this game. His chat window is fucking broken, patch after patch and new builds came and gone nothing ever fixing his problem.

He couldn’t even get one dev to reply about the problem. If you have beta access you can see his forum post right here. The game is a train wreck if you want to play over the net with a friend. The single player is supposedey in better shape. I don’t know myself because I saw that the just released demo has adware built in. And on top of everything else wrong with this game they finally announced what you get if you pay the ten bucks a month (cut and pasted from VE3D):

• Elite Mode – Tougher mobs, tougher all round
• Hardcore Mode – Perma-death mode for your character
• Themed events and items – First begins on day of release, Halloween
• Guild Creation – What it says on the tin!
• Achievements – Slay 6,000 zombies, get a pat on the back, and maybe a bonus item too
• Extra Character Slots – 24 for you, 3 for non-subscribers
• Larger Stash – Twice the space as non-subscribers
• Name Color – Get a colored name, wooo!
• Forum Icon – Makes you stand out on the official forums when bitching about the in-game ads

And that is it. What a great deal. Pass on the game and pass on the cheap ass shit you get for ten bucks a month. I’ll look at this one again in a years time. Just to see if it lasted and is finally playable.