So I recently discovered Firefly. Now I realize that it’s a case of too little too late. Firefly being the Josh “Buffy” Whedon sci-fi show that just melds the western genre so well into it’s science fiction setting. I only watched maybe one or two episodes when it was on tv. It’s one of those shows that just clicked for me. The movie was also very good. But the ending has left me feeling a little down as demonstrated by this chat with Gawain:

[05:08] Turk: now that I got it on dvd
[05:09] Turk: I’m going to end up writing a long ass post on how wrong it was to kill wash
[05:09] Turk: so wrong
[05:09] Turk: poor wash
[05:10] Gawain: jesus why don’t you write some fanfic about him coming back to life in some kind of bizarre alternate reality. Or better yet, have picard bring him through some kind of rift in space to TNG.
[05:10] Gawain: fanboy.
[05:10] Turk: I just may
[05:10] Gawain: lol

I am of course talking about Hoban Washburne the pilot of the Serenity. One can only mourn him in their own way. A moment of silence please. I’m really bummed over it. A great character from a great show. I mourn the show even more. Add it to the list of sci-fi shows canceled before they should have been.

It should be mentioned that I dug this show so much after watching it that I had to go out and buy the actual dvd’s of the tv show and movie. I felt that downloading this one from a torrent was sort of dirty. It really is worth the purchase if your a fan of science fiction. Now that moment of silence in honor of poor Wash.

So I was going to password protect the last entry. I did for about 2 hours. I took it down even for another few hours. And then I said fuck it. The damage has been done already. If they fire me I’m going to move in with Gawain and his awesome Wife (a Firefly fan!). See as it turns out the wireless internet is coming back. So that makes me a happy employee. I’m not so crazy about getting fired again. As long as I have a good isp to use I’m content.

Although it should be mentioned they still suck. You know when you check into a hotel and the desk clerk swipes your credit card? We can do that. But there will be no authorization done. So in effect we have no idea if a credit card is good or not. We are flying blind. Can you guess why we don’t get authorizations? That’s right. No pay, no play. The credit card authorization company switched us off yesterday. How did I find out this? The fine young foolish lady who works at MSI told me so. Talk about a case of need to know information. Next time honey hold that shit for the fucking manager/sheriff/head of operations type guy ok?

That also means I will be delaying the “My Boss Is A Pussy” t-shirt design. I had even come up with a nifty graphic and all that jazz. In the meantime feel free to buy my old boring t-shirt.

The hotel sucks so bad. How bad? I’m glad you asked. Where to start?

Paying bills. They don’t. Well they do only after they have put it off for as long as they possibly can. They dodge phone calls of people looking for money. They get faxes wanting bills payed. It goes so much farther than that unfortunately. When you check in your given a key. The key comes in this little red key holder. Inside this little guy they list 5 bullet points. The big one is:

• High speed wireless internet

This is one of those features every hotel really must have to please the business traveler guest. It took the shithole forever to get it. It lasted a month. The local cable company had to pull the plug because (can anyone guess?) the hotel didn’t pay the bill. Which on a related subject I’m glad that it wasn’t that they had caught on to me playing City of Villains at work.

And I could go on and on about these fucking deadbeats that run/own this hotel. But I would rather talk about the amazing person I call the sheriff. The sheriff is now the head of operations of the shithole. This douche bag gets a promotion for not doing dick? Hurray for the sheriff! Honestly what in the name of whatever god you worship has this person done to deserve this promotion?

I tell you what the sheriff hasn’t done. Well nothing. Besides being the biggest pussy to hold the job this person does none of the duties as I see they should. Yeah it’s all my opinion here people. But as I see it the issues with the idiot desk clerk one should have been handled a long time ago. Only at this hotel can you come into work everyday and not get in trouble. But it so much worse than that. The sheriff also likes to shirk their responsibilities to actually come into work. One of the good employees (one of two) had to work sixteen hours yesterday. Because of idiot two not coming in when it had been agreed that certain schedule changes would be made.

The sheriff also didn’t come in on a day he was scheduled (yesterday) which would have helped the good employee if he had came in to work. Which it is a very amusing coincidence that the pool is closed over the weekend (broken pipe never going to be fixed) and no guest were told when they checked in over the weekend. Who did a lot of the checking in? The sheriff. So is it a big surprise when the sheriff doesn’t come in on sunday when all of these pissed off people checked out? I think not.

And I’m afraid it’s much worse than that. The hotel is getting split up. So the rooms, restaurant, and banquet hall are going to be separate entities. Which to my mind is just nothing but bad. It means that the place can start to be sold off bit by bit. Rumors have it that this has already happened to the restaurant and banquet hall. How much longer before the hotel end of things is sold or closed even? I say the time is good to be getting. That everyone who has any sense should start looking elsewhere for a job. I know I am.

This subject just manges to confuse and irritate me to no end. But it’s something that I feel needs to be explored. It’s something of a phenomenon now I have decided. Maybe akin to some sort of sci-fi mumble jumble about time warps? I’m talking about the three time zones that manage to inhabit this one hotel.

First there is real time, followed by hotel time, and finally there is the strange thing I call idiot time. At the top of the page you will find a real time example of what I’m talking about.

See I had grown to understand that real time and hotel time is different. It was just one of those things. It was something I could deal with. What’s a five minute addition? But the addition of idiot time is just to much for me to take. Adding a generous additional 5 minutes to the hotel time means it’s ten more minutes until I can get out of the shithole. It’s unforgivable that this kind of thing is allowed.

It also make one question what exactly does the sheriff do at the hotel? He doesn’t seem to want to do his job that is clear. And I am getting really fucking sick of this bullshit. I have to wait extra because this stupid bitch can not make it to work on time? Is that fair? Every fucking day this chick is late. And does this supposed manager do a goddamn thing? No. It makes me wonder what it is exactly the people in charge saw in this guy to pick him over me to be the front desk manager.

If it was me it would have been real simple. The idiot is late every day? Well guess what? That bitch is fired. Simple as that. And then since I’m not a fucking pussy I would have worked the additional time until I could find a new person. I would have been happy to work in the idiots place. Since in this scenario I would have been the boss and that is just the kind of things bosses do. But not this boss. Not the sheriff.

I have made it my goal in life to see this bitch shit canned one way or another. I also make it a point to be to work on time when I know the idiot will relieve me in the morning. Now if the sheriff doesn’t mind this idiot being late every goddamn day, I’m betting he may have a problem with the overtime I accumulate because of her. An additional 5-10 minutes a day isn’t anything to ignore when the hotels primary goal is to cut costs and maximize profits.

I only mention all of this just for the fact that here it is 7:00 am in the morning. It’s all relative of the timezone you happen to keep track of. So far the idiot isn’t here yet. It’s really complicated to figure out if she’s 5 minutes late or 10 minutes late or shit she maybe right on time when she finally manages to get her dumb ass into work. Of course if she happens to come in at 7:00 am real time does that make her any where from 5-10 minutes early to work? It really just gives me a headache.

Imagine a good Star Wars rts for a moment. Imagine a rts with 3d accelerated graphics that didn’t have fucked up camera control and many other problems. Push back the bad memories of that other one and pretend that this time it will be different. Star Wars Empire at War will be different. The demo is out right now and you can get it at the usual places.

The game is exactly what you would expect. No tricky camera angles and 360 degrees of freedom in the space battles. Which is not a bad thing at all. This is a real time strategy game that has a pedigree that is hard to over look. Empire at War is being made for LucasArts by a developer called Petroglyph. Take a look at the companies about us page to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

The demo lets you try out the set of tutorials and a sort of skirmish mode. You will want to go through the tutorials just to get used to the games way of doing things. The full game will also come with some sort of campaign when it ships in February. It looks good and plays good. It is quite a beast if you try to run everything on high and you don’t have an up to date system. But it does allow you to tweak quite a bit of the details so you can get the game to run good even on the older systems. The readme.txt has all of the details if your interested in the actual system requirements.

Nothing like getting your ass kicked first thing in the morning. I get home wait for the servers to go up and I get to have my ass kicked by someone 20 levels above me named Pyrrhus! You just can’t understand how excited it makes me feel about the PvP in City of Villains. This roleplaying fuck named Pyrrhus was having himself a field day pounding the shit out of us lower level types. Check his bio and list of powers. His goddamn list of badges goes off the screen.

For an example of some ass kicking in the game be sure to check out Gawain’s video:

(Right Click and Save As)

It also should be mentioned that me and Gawain have joined the Penny Arcade guild Power’s Allegory/Affliction. This being the second guild I’ve been a member of outside of the Acolytes of Destruction. So far they appear to be a nice bunch and I think we will fit in.

Hurray! A quick poke over to the official Doctor Who web site shows that sometimes it’s better late than never for us Americans viewers. The Sci-Fi channel will be broadcasting the Christopher Eccleston episodes starting in march.

Of course we will have to wait for god only knows how long to get the second series. And when I say wait I of course mean getting it anyways via file sharing. Hurray for torrents!