Traveling Thoughts

So last week was tough on The Apprentice, there were two lame project managers and only one was going to get fired.  Which meant that one team would still be under the guidance of one lame project manager.  Sadly enough, the only way to get rid of a lame project manager is to lose a task and overthrow them in the boardroom.  That’s what happened this week.

The task was simple.  Get people to sign up to win a trip from priceline.com (I think that’s what it was).  The team with the most signups wins.  So both teams get sent to different malls (at least I think they were different malls, logic says they had to have been different malls) to set up kiosks and get people to sign up.  Both teams essentially had the same idea, give away $1000 towards a trip made on priceline.com.  One team chose to draw every 20 minutes the other team chose to draw every 30 minutes…ok, whatever…that’s not what made or broke the deal…

The deal breaker was all in the language, and I’m not talking about business language/jargon vs everyday normal human language, I’m talking about english vs spanish.  The losing team didn’t have enough spanish speaking people to work with the spanish speaking population in the mall.

I think I remember something being said about over 50% of the shoppers at the mall spoke spanish, and the two people that had this knowledge didn’t reveal it to their PM which is very lame.  But at the same time, the project manager, Aimee, failed to open her eyes and see that most of the people in that mall were of Latino orgin.  Big strikes for all three of these people, Aimee, Derek and Jenn.  I do believe that Derek and Jenn had a responsibility to tell Aimee what they had learned while talking with the mall representative, but I also believe that Aimee as PM had a responsibility to look around. 

In the end, this team lost, but the good part about them losing is that Aimee got fired, she was a poor project manager last week and while she tried to improve upon her failures as a PM last week she didn’t do a good enough job this week.  Aimee should’ve been overthrown as PM this week.  I think mutiny among the team wouldn’t have been an issue since she did such a horrible job last week.  The only reason this team won last week is because the team pulled together in the final part of the task to get honey off the shelves and into customers baskets.  It was no doing of Aimee.

Kinetic is a strong team and while this is their second visit to the tents in the backyard, I don’t expect them to remain there long.  They’ll be back in the house next week.

And just a note about Tim and Nicole and their on television display of affection.  Your 14 week interview is not the time nor place to develop romantic relationships.  You need to be focused on doing what you need to do to earn a spot in Trump’s empire not earn a spot in some guy/girl’s life… 

Last night at Server Syde were the tryouts to make the Server Syde Counter Strike: Source team for Paglan X.  The turnout was amazing.  So many people thought they had what it took to make the team.  And many of them really did have what it took to make the team.  The problem is, in terms of being considered for the team, there was so much more to consider than just their frags/death ratio.  It really didn’t matter how good you were in the game, you could’ve had 20 frags and 2 deaths which screams “you’re gonna get pwned if I’m playing” but if you couldn’t play well with the team, communication was lacking, or your attitude sucked, your overall rating would drop.

For 4.5 hrs I watched people, in groups of ten, split into 2 teams of 5 battle it out.  It was amazing for me to see the dynamic of the various teams we randomly put together.  Some of them immeadiately pulled it together and organized a plan of who was doing what and who was covering what areas.  Many of them just played as individuals, doing their own thing while everyone else tried to work as a team.  Some teams split themselves because two leaders tried to rise.  1 leader would take half the team, the other leader the other half, and when it was all said an done and the team lost those two supposed leaders would yell at each other “well if you would listen to the communication that’s going on around you, well if you would learn to play better…”  That type of stuff was being watched for. 

The amount of yelling and stomping and pounding that went on when a player was killed was also being watched as well as for the yelling at their teammates for not covering their backs at the moment that they died.  It’s all in the attitude, attitude, attitude, attitude…

I watched people be pulled together into a team that had maybe never played with the other players and they pulled their acts together so quickly, “i’m yelling strats, i’ll cover this area, you cover this area, we need someone to cover that area” and then I watched teams, where I knew the players had played on teams together and they just couldn’t pull it together, they all wanted the same thing…to win…but they weren’t working towards that goal as one body…it’s all about teamwork…

When it was all said and done, I don’t think that a better team could’ve been pulled together.  Server Syde is going to do well with their CSS team because they can all play well, they all communicate well, they all work well in a team, and their attitudes in general are good.

So last week, the ending of Grey’s Anatomy was gloomy, this week it’s grim.  Last week we saw Meredith fall into Puget Sound.  This week we saw McDreamy rescue her, kindof.  I mean, what would’ve been worse, for her to drown, or for her to die on the table.  Which is basically where we’re at.  He pulled her out of Puget Sound in a state of hypothermia, having been in the water for how long we don’t know.  In real life, she would have swollowed water, it would’ve gone into her lungs and she would have become asphyxiated and drowned and eventually she would have floated to the top of Puget Sound.  Dead.  Instead, like I previously said, she’s in a state of hypothermia, and it looks to me like they’re giving her constant CPR…beating her heart for her…

At the end of the show this week, she flatlines…and credits roll…once again, there was no little thingy about people and their lives and the thing they do, a general recap…you know, the show always opens with Meredith talking about something and it usually ends with her talking about something…there’s been none of that for two weeks now…

Not to mention that she awoke in the dead people room of the hospital and Denny and Dylan were there.  Denny and Dylan died, Denny because Izzie tried to save him and Dylan because he took a bomb that had been removed from a person and it exploded…so there we are seeing dead people…and we think that Meredith is dead, but Meredith can’t be dead because without Meredith Grey there is no Grey’s Anatomy…

I mean come on, what are they going to do, rename the show, Steven’s Anatomy, Yang’s Anatomy…that’s not the way it works…when something big like this happens it’s like the shows finale, shows don’t get renamed when the main character dies which clearly means that Meredith can’t die…but then again, she’s already dead…

that if it was going to be cloudy it should snow…

Wouldn’t you know that 4 hrs later it was snowing…and that the next day (today) there was several inches of snow that once again brought Albuquerque to her knees because the Albuquerquians don’t know how to handle snow…After the last snow, the one we had in December, the big one that dumped like 5″ of snow on us for a couple of days in a row and had like the whole city closed, they supposedly made a contingency plan so that if something like that happened again (as it did last night, although not to the same degree) that it wouldn’t bring the city to its knees.  But wouldn’t you know that the roads weren’t even sanded this morning…where was that contingency plan this morning when it took me 2.25 hrs to get to school and the curb tried to jump out and take a bite out my car?  Where were all the sand trucks…the freeway wasn’t even sanded…

it’s like i’m in gradeschool again, although i’m sure it’s because of my gradeschool actions that she did this.  I was supposed to be doing homework (mind you I’m in college) but it’s lame homework, no challenge to it at all.  It’s mindless, and yes, I realize that it equates to an easy ‘A’ but I hate mindless work.  In the 2nd grade I don’t know how long I went without doing homework but when my teacher contacted my parents I had a 3 inch high stack of worksheets to do.  In the fifth grade, history repeated itself.  The difference was in the 2nd grade I simply got grounded (couldn’t have been for long as I really don’t recall the punishment), in the 5th grade, they took my gameboy, told me I couldn’t go on my hot air balloon ride, and grounded me for like a week (not to mention I had to do the homework).  I must have been ok in middle school and high school as nothing sticks out in my mind concerning homework.

Tonight however, I was supposed to be doing homework, but was I, no (for reasons previously explained).  I was reading instead.  I love the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evonovich, I can’t put them down.  They’re just too good.  So I had my feet up on my desk and was reclined in my chair when my mom came in (for the second time this evening) to make sure I was doing homework (that was actually due at noon today, but I didn’t feel like looking at my error for another moment, it was a damn space for gosh sakes, one that I’d had since Saturday).  Well, I wasn’t doing my homework.  I was reading, and she actually took my book away (almost before I could bookmark it) and told me I could have it back when I was done with my homework…

That action however, wasn’t quite enough to make me want to do my homework because it was about an hour later before I actually finished what would’ve taken me all of 15 minutes…

So, as I’ve previously blogged, I spent Friday night and about 7 hours Saturday (from the afternoon into the night) playing Titan Quest (TQ) at Server Syde.  But today when I was at Target I decided I need to look for the game and see what it was priced at.  Well, I found it, and the price was right $20 so I bought it.  Unfortunately for me, I didn’t buy a gaming computer when I bought my laptop and it doesn’t have the resources necessary to run TQ (darn graphics card).  Of course, this really isn’t of any suprise to me, I couldn’t run Rise Of Legends either, for exactly the same reason…so this is where I decide how badly addicted I am…the question becomes, how addicted am I that I go out and buy or build a computer that can play these games that I want to play…

It’s been a while since I’ve dedicated time to my blog…posting has become few and far between and my design, well, it has sucked since November when I changed the layout from black to blue…it just looked so much better black… At the end of December I started on a new layout, completely CSS.  The challenges were great but I overcame them and got the layout finished.  The next step became to impletement the wordpress code into it and I’ve not completely done that yet so there’s this lame layout still.  But have no fear, that new layout is coming, it will be here on Monday as per the agreement I have with Markus.  Along with that new design will be more frequent posting.  It’s not that I’ve got nothing to post about, it’s that I’ve become increasing lazy about completing and publishing them…But it’s a current goal to actually finish those things that I start in a timely manner and it starts on Monday…

I’m getting ready to graduate in May, and of course, with graduation comes my obligation to pay back that debt called student loans. I cringe at the thought of it. I can’t exactly recall how much in loans I’ve taken out but I suspect it to be about 30k. It gets worse though, the amount is split up over something like 3 companies. Which means when I have to start paying that I’ll have 3 payments. That’s completely worse than just 1 payment. Which means that I’m now looking at how to go about Student Loan Consolidation.

This whole having loans and having to consolidate them thing sucks, but at least there’s resources out there to help me. *sighs*

So, in the last 2 days, I’ve played about 10 hours of TQ (titan quest) at Server Syde.  I had started playing this game back in October I think and I had only made it as far as the beginning of Egypt.  When I started playing again last week, I tried to go back through Greece and complete side quests that I had previously failed to complete.  I still haven’t completed them.  But tonight, I made it though Egypt and on to the Oriental lands (or whatever it is) and am proud to say that I completed all the side quests that I had received in Egypt.

Last night I made the mistake of adding a second ability (earth) and became a summoner but prior to that I was a pyromancer, I like the sound of pyromancer much better than summoner, but oh well.  I have 2 summons so far, a big rock beast and the wolves, and after a few more levels up I’ll be able to summon some nymph chick…pretty cool if you ask me, but it’s getting more and more difficult to level up…

As if ‘getting paid to blog about the things you love’ wasn’t good enough, ppp (payperpost) has now given us the opportunity to get paid for people blogging about the posts we write that are in the ‘getting paid to blog about the things you love’ category. Of course, not only does this benefit those participating in this category, but it benefits ppp because it lures in people to their ad network and gets them to sign up in order for them to get paid for blogging about our post. It’s a pretty clever idea if you ask me. To entice us, their pre-existing posties, they talk about increasing our sphere of influence, and of course, if people are linking to us in this manner, it betters our pagerank. And bettering our pagerank increases our chances of being able to take opportunities that require a higher pagerank than what we may have, and of course, those opps are usually worth more than the ones we qualify for. This is like a mutually beneficial idea that ppp has come up with. Everyone benefits and not just on the earning cash part.

If I choose to do it, I benefit because I get paid for the post, I get paid for someone writing about my post, and I get links to my site thus increasing my pagerank. The person posting about me benefits because they get into the ppp network (which they may not have previously known about), they get paid to post about my post, and they have access to numerous other opps which they can get paid for. PPP benefits because they’re getting more posties to their site which can appeal to advertisers. It’s a win-win-win situation…

I think that there’s only one caveat to this and perhaps the only reason that I may not do it being that my blog doesn’t solely exist to make me cash. The earning cash part is a plus to my blog, and in general i’m picky about what I’ll choose to post about to make me cash. But putting an image on all my paid posts screams ‘make me money’…and that can cause me to loose readership. Not something I want to be doing….but then again, that is my personal take on this whole matter…despite this last thought, what ppp has offered is a good deal…