It’s been exactly seven months since I started at the new hotel. I use this post to determine how long it’s been. At the time of that post I had worked my first day at the new hotel. I’ve decided to do a little write up on how things are at this new hotel seven months later. This will be a very simple write up. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good.

Number one right off the bat and this is a big one for me. The new hotel is not a shitty Ramada like the worst hotel ever is. It was a huge thing for me to get out of those red shirts.

Also very important to me is the owners of the hotel. And when compared to the “people” who own the worst hotel ever the people who own the new hotel are a definitely a good thing. I could write a whole post on how the two are different. For example though these new hotel owners upgrade their hotel. And they do it right. They do not hire retards who placed the lowest bid for the job.

A word or two also needs to be said about the front desk staff. I have no complaints what so ever. They are on time and know how to balance credit cards. There are no idiots here. Nor are there any half blind night auditors who work when I don’t. It really is quite a joy to be able to work with people that have their shit together. The Front Desk Manager I will only say this: He is not a pussy.

Last but not least under “good” are the guests who stay at the hotel. There is a huge difference in the quality of the guests this new hotel attracts. We do not get any bar time drunks. Nor do we get any of the general scum that the worst hotel ever seems to attract. Which is only echoed by the fact that I have yet to call the police on any of the people that stay at this new hotel.

The Bad

Just one here. Managers who can’t print folios. Now this may seem like a petty thing. But to me what does it say about the people who are supposedly above me if they can not print their own folios out when they do a transaction in the computer. I’ve often wondered why it is these managers do this. I’ve only ever been able to come up with two excuses.

1. They are lazy.
2. They are incompetent.

I just can’t peg which it is here at this new hotel. Lazy or Incompetent? And why does it always seem to be Sales people that do this?

The Ugly

Why is it I can’t find an employer who really cares about their employees? While these owners do take good care of the building and of the guests, I really feel they are very lacking when it comes to their employees.

I expect a few things from the people who employ me. Reviews and Raises. I expect that after a persons been at a hotel they get a review six months in. I like getting told how I’m doing now and then as it shows me that the managers/owners may actually give a shit about how the hotel is run. It seem like they (management) would want to evaluate the employees they have at least every now and then. The raise of course would be tied into the review. Now I’m not expecting a raise every six months. I personally would be happy with a raise every year.

I also expect medical insurance. I’m not getting any younger here. It’s just something I need now. These owners at this new hotel have seen fit to cancel medical insurance a few months ago. I don’t understand why they would cut the benefits of the employee. It should be the other way around. They should be adding to the benefits of the employee.

As it is I have absolutely no loyalty to these people as it is. Why should I? I drive 17 miles each way. If I can get a job in my immediate area I have no problem at all quiting this hotel for a local one. I need insurance. I need raises. These are things that I have to have to keep me being the employee that my employer wants to have around. Without these kinds of things I’m going to slowly turn back into the way I used to be at the worst hotel ever.

I made it to level 18 in Vanguard yesterday.

I get some new stuff to play with. For starters I can heal and cure poison and disease. I also get a pet and a damage buff. I’m still enjoying the game. I figured I would have got sick of it by now.

I made level 14 the other day. I’ve played everyday since I got the game. There is something about the way it echoes back to the old days of EverQuest that really makes me like it. I only dabbled with the original EQ back in day. But I’ve heard enough stories to know I missed out on lots of fun.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying Vanguard so much. And that I have no complaints, other than the 20 gig install size. Sure I could complain if I spent lots of time looking for things to complain about. I’m just having to much fun playing my ranger. Which really is a change of pace for me. Stealthing around mobs and being able to take out a mob with a ranged weapon.

I’m also like the fact that the game is a little riskier than current mmorpg’s. I like that it takes forever to go from point a to point b. I like that when I die I leave a body with my gear on it. I guess I got sick of how some of these games dumbed this things down so much that it made these activities trivial. Granted it’s not as bad as EQ in the beginning. You can recall to your bind spot once an hour (in game time) and you can bind items so that they stay on you when you respawn.

I just wish I could play this one at work like I used to do with Dark Age of Camelot. The significant system specs insure that won’t happen anytime in the future. Oh well.

I picked up a retail copy of Vanguard Saga of Heroes while checking out the new Wal-Mart in my area. I’m very happy that with the additional gig of ram and the new video card that the game is actually playable now. And I’m not kidding about being playable. In the beta with only 1 gig of ram the game was horrid. I maybe got 10-20 FPS in open areas and 1-10 in huge populated areas. Now I get an average of 25-64 FPS at a resolution of 1280×1024 with settings on balanced.

I’m playing a ranger, which is a first for me. It’s a nice change of pace to have a little stealth mixed in with a little ranged combat to go with my usual melee type class I go for. It’s started to dawn on me how old school the game is with it’s death penalty. Which you here in every review of the game. They also didn’t hide the fact the game was the way it is. It’s just not something I’m used to.

I died a few times not noticing the exp I lost each time I died. Then it slowly came to my realization that I was also leaving behind items on my corpse. There is an option to bind certain equipment so it stays with you when you die. But it’s makes whatever I do a more thought out process when I start to engage in combat. Something I don’t worry about in some of the other games in the mmorpg genre. Overall I am enjoying the game. Which does surprise me.

Late notice because I forget to post it until now.

Dear Customer,

This is a reminder that this maintenance is occurring today.

As we continually aim to provide a better experience for our customers, we will be performing a scheduled server maintenance on Saturday, March 10, 2007, from approximately 2:00pm Eastern until 9:00pm Eastern.

This scheduled maintenance is to reinstall the server’s RAID card, rebuild the server’s operating system, then restore your site from a backup that will be taken earlier in the day.

While the maintenance window allows for work all between 2:00pm and 9:00pm, we will being working close to 2:00pm and expect sites to be operational again within 2-3 hours.

Date: Saturday, March 10, 2007
Time: 2:00pm until 9:00pm Eastern
Server: pas-com.net (also known as pascomwebhosting.com)
Estimated Outage Time: 2-3 hours
Services effected: All

We appreciate your understanding during this maintenance, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact.

Thank you for your continued support.

PAS-COM, Inc.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

I ordered my new video card for my computer. It’s a Sapphire Radeon X1950 XT and with the ram I bought last week this will be the last upgrade I do to this PC. About the only thing I can upgrade now is the hard drive. Which I do have my eye on this 500 gig hard drive.

Because this video card I ordered is a huge bastard I had to get a new power supply just to be able to run it. The card is huge. It’s almost two pci cards long. And it takes up two slots in the case. It is my last hurrah to get this year old pc of mine into shape to be able to play Supreme Commander, Vanguard, Gothic 3, and all the other PC games coming out that need the extra horse power.

I really need to build a new computer again. Which I’m doing for a buddy of mine. Just picking the parts for him made me mad. He’s getting an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz system. All of which costs under thousand bucks. Just about the same amount I spent on my PC last year. How computers age. That’s just the way it is.

As long as this new card lets me play Supreme Commander at more than 10-15 frames per second I’ll be happy. I’m really doing all of this for this game. I could give a shit about Vanguard really or anything else. But the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation I’m willing to blow the dough on just to play it. Of course not that I have the cash on hand to buy the actual game. But that will be a purchase I make next check I guess.

Edit/Update

It turns out that the power supply I ordered is shit. The thing has way to many negative reviews about it dying. I don’t want to have to get it replaced in 1-6 months as many reviews say. So I’m going with this one, which I have in my second older PC and have had no problems at all.

It kinda pisses me off in two ways. First it pisses me off because it’s my own damn fault for not reading the reviews for that pos power supply. Secondly it pisses me off that Newegg can charge me right away, yet I have to wait 2-3 business days before I get a credit.

Well I’ve learned my lesson. Next time I’ll research the product out before I go and buy it. I’m just lucky I was able to catch it before Newegg shipped it out.

Since I got my Xbox 360 I’ve been letting my PC gather dust. The last four games I’ve bought have been for the 360. I picked up Rainbow Six Vegas, Dead Rising, Viva Pinata, and Crackdown. The last PC game I picked up was Star Trek Legacy.

Recently there has been a few PC games that just performed poorly on my PC. Gothic 3 and Vanguard are two I can name off of the top of my head. Both of which sounds like that unless you had two gigs of ram of more you would have trouble. So last week I ordered two gigs of ram from Newegg.com. The 2 sticks of Crucial Ballistix DDR 500 (PC 4000) Ram arrived on the 20th (the same day I picked up Crackdown). I have yet to put the ram in to my PC.

I really hope going from 1 gig to 2 gigs will give me that extra punch to play some of these PC games. Specifically I want to be able to play Supreme Commander without having to worry about turning down the graphics and still getting 10-15 FPS. I realize I may need to upgrade my ATI 1600 XT at some point to really get a performance increase. I think my next purchase will be the ATI 1950 Pro before I just go and build a new PC for myself.

Sometime later today I’m going to force myself to stop playing Crackdown and I’m going to install my ram. Then all I have to do is install Gothic 3 and see if I do get a performance boost. Which may lead me to buy Vanguard. And then theres always Supreme Commander.