On April 7, 2008, I posted a blog called The Sims Online is Back, and it’s Free This Time. I was excited about this, because I loved The Sims Online. Unfortunately, EA executives weren’t behind EA Land to begin with, and the service will be closing. I guess they thought they’d let their developers play with it and bring it back online to see what they could do. It’s a great world to play in for gamers, but it’s obviously not the money generating monster EA wants it to be. God forbid they provide something that’s free.

When the Playstation was hot, I was poor. I couldn’t afford the system or the games. On weekends, me and the 3 guys I lived with would occasionally rent a Playstation from Blockbuster along with several sports titles and have a blast. Over the last few years though, Blockbuster has been lacking in their game offerings, and they haven’t offered console rentals at all.

Blockbuster is looking to change that now though, as they expand their game offerings. They are offering consoles and a wider variety of games for rental as they try to provide consumers with other options than movies, which Netflix is killing them on.

It’s nice to have other options for game rentals since the other video chains such as Hollywood suck at it. GameFly is an option, but it’s expensive and when I want to play a game, I want it now. I don’t want to have to wait 3 days to receive it. With the new options, it looks like I will have to give Blockbuster another chance to win my business back.

OK people. You all need to settle down. Actually, maybe not so much the people, but the media in general. Everybody’s making a big deal about this Miley Cyrus dealie. She’s showing her back people! No boobies and really, not all that much flesh at all. It’s also Vanity Fair, not Playboy or even Maxim.

People are acting like young girls posing sexy in magazines is new thing. Miley has plenty of company when it comes to girls under 18 posing with skin showing. Hell, Britney Spears made an entire career out of it.

Oh but I get it. She’s embarrassed by it. So is that the story? She’s embarrassed by it? Ooo, very interesting! How about we spend our resources on stories like the election or the war?

As a computer tech, I spend most of my day just finding settings for users. The Microsoft Office product has become so filled with features and settings, I never can memorize them all myself. Let along the typical user. I often have to Google it before I can figure out where the setting that I need is in the software. The Office 2007 ribbon is a great improvement, making all the settings available anytime you need them. Still it can be frustrating at times figuring out which tab the setting is under. That’s why Microsoft is testing a new feature where you can search for Office commands.

Imagine being able to figure out how to turn auto capitalization off in Word by just typing in ‘capital’. Or being able to figure out how to add a Personal Folder in Outlook by typing ‘personal folder’. That would be genius! A similar feature, the Start Search bar is already popular in Windows Vista. Time will only tell how well Microsoft will implement this in Office though. They could jack it up like they do everything else.

I love simulation games. Especially sports related simulations. Baseball Mogul is by far the best one out there. Before I had settled for the baseball games on the PS2, but they are too slow. I want to make executive decisions on my team and run simulations on them.  Baseball Mogul has always been good at providing this experience, but I noticed they added a feature that takes it even further. You can now be a manager of a team and make pitch-by-pitch managerial decisions. Shift your fielders to guard the lines or pull the infield in. Tell your hitter to hit to the right-side or bunt. It’s simply an awesome game for those with a strategic mind. This simulation doesn’t leave anything out. Real professional players, both major and minor league. It also keeps very accurate stats, unlike other baseball games (Example: Pitchers not getting credit for a save when they pitch the last 3 innings of a blow-out).

Don’t care for baseball?  They make football and basketball versions also. Free demos are available of each version. Check it out at sportsmogul.com

Calling Tech Support? Need immediate help solving a Windows error message? You didn’t write down the error message when the problem occurred? That’s OK, just make one up. The tech should be able to figure it out if you state any general error such as “dll error”. No need to be specific here. We’re psychic and can figure things out without complete information.

Then sigh into the phone if I ask you to recreate the issue so that I can get the actual error message. It’s totally acceptable to feel burdened by having to click your mouse a few times so that I can help you. Sighing and being sarcastic helps with the troubleshooting process also, and makes me want to help you more.

We have a new jackass at my company that constantly has to send out everything he finds. I think that he believes he’s far more advanced than everybody else just because he uses Digg. He finds these links, then emails them. I see the email appear. I ignore it. I’m workin’ here! You know? Doing what I’m paid to do. As I worked for a few more minutes, I knew it was coming. He just couldn’t contain himself anymore. His head sprung up over the cubicle wall. “Did you get that thing I sent you?”

Since I didn’t see his fascinating clip of a skateboarder taking a spill yet, the jackass smiles as he walks over to my cubicle and orders me to look at it now. Then he stands over me and waits. I’m way to nice to tell him that I’m busy. So I endure watching the clip. It’s not funny, but I put on a fake laugh. Now it’s time to act like I have to go to the bathroom so that I can get away from him. As I turn around, my boss is standing right there. The breath completely left my lungs.  There is no way to explain yourself out of a situation like that. I look worse than the other guy since I was watching it on my screen. My fault though for not simply saying “I’m busy right now.”

People that send things… you must stop! If you want to share links with others, please let them watch on their own time. No more having to show people now. I understand you enjoy laughing with somebody else, but you are annoying. Just stop. OK? Now I’m off to watch that clip of the monkey whizzing in it’s own mouth. Priceless!

In continuing my rant about dumb people calling me on the computer support line, this morning I experienced another situation I get regularly. Customers sometimes call and ask me a question, then I answer the question with 100% certainty. The customer then proceeds to disagree with my answer. OK? If you already know the answer, then why are you calling the support line?

Suddenly the customer becomes an ‘expert’ on your product. They start telling you how the product YOU support works. The product that YOU have been trained on. The product that is made by the company YOU work for. Funny how they would know more than YOU. In my case this morning the customer wanted to talk to somebody else. I’ve been with my company for years and welcomed him to call back in if he wished.

I understand that some customers really do know more at times. They actually use the software so they may know more about the actual functionality than I do. I am fine with accepting when a customer knows more than me. I like to think of when a customer calls as the start of teamwork. Me and them working to find the solution together, no matter who knows more. However, I get more people calling me that know nothing about computers, and do nothing but argue with me when I try to help them.

These are the same people that call every day for every little issue they encounter. They are the reason free tech support is becoming a thing of the past. The reason companies outsource so they don’t have to spend as much money supporting these people. The reason we all have to suffer with poor, underpaid, under-experienced support reps when the rest of us call with real problems.

I was in a Best Buy shopping for Vacuum cleaner bags recently. I saw a couple come in and look at the Dyson vacuum cleaners. They were fascinated by every model on the floor. Hypnotized by the commercials Dyson runs on TV constantly, they overlooked all of the other models available on the floor, despite the tremendous price difference.

Had these people bothered to test out each vacuum cleaner, or do some online research, they may be shocked to see that the $150 Eureka Boss performs a great deal better than the any of the expensive Dyson models. I felt like saying something to these people, but I know they would probably wonder why I considered myself the authority on vacuum cleaners. They had made up their minds already anyway.

Dyson sells people on their ‘new technology’ that supposedly cleans better. The less sexy Eureka Boss on the other hand uses older technology and requires a bag. People overlook which model actually does the job better, which really should be the deciding factor if you asked me. I own 2 Eureka Boss vacuum cleaners, and I’ve owned a Dyson as well. The Dyson broke not long after I started using it. I’m very happy I didn’t throw more of my money away by replacing it with another one. The Dyson is now only good at looking sexy in the corner of my living room. It never cleaned well when it was working. The large, clunky looking Eureka however, will slurp up everything and anything off my floor.

Even with all the information available at our hands these days, people still fall for the classic sales pitch and advertising.  If people would learn to research the products they choose instead, they would end up with way better products and spend way less money.

There is a moment when you’re in the DVD section of your favorite store and your brain thinks “Miss Congeniality 2 would be a good addition to my DVD collection.” It happens almost every time I go to buy movies. It’s a fact that 1 out of 3 DVDs purchased will never make it out of the shrink wrap. 1 out of 6 will end up on eBay within a year. 90% of statistics are just made up too! Here are a few DVDs I still own and don’t know why.

Vanilla Sky

It was $3 at Wal-Mart. It sits in my DVD collection still in shrink wrap. I was unfortunate to have to sit through this flick in the theater. It was long, disturbing, and uncomfortable to watch once, let alone more than once on a DVD.

Family Guy

I think this show is on every channel on my cable network. Pretty much anytime I want to see this show, I can just flip in on Fox, TBS, or Cartoon Network. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the DVDs.

Million Dollar Baby

With that ending, nobody wants to watch this movie again. It’s not that it was a bad movie, it’s just not one of those movies you need to see more than once. Kind of like Black Hawk Down. Good, but the mood is not one I want to experience too much.

Baseketball

For some reason, when I saw this movie in the movie theater, I remember it being hilarious. I had to get the DVD on Amazon when it became available. I watched it once at home and now I wonder how in the world I thought this movie was ever funny. I guess I’ve actually matured.

The Matrix 2 and 3

I fell for it. These were ‘must have’ DVDs because the first movie was so cool. After people took a step back and realized the sequels were crap, the DVDs ended up in bargain bins everywhere. Parts 2 and 3 along with a few crappy video games under the Matrix name ruined this franchise for good.

Star Wars: Episode 2

Everybody said they got it right this time around. They didn’t! It was better than Phantom Menace, but still not worthy of a DVD purchase. The only entertainment I get out of this movie is watching it with a Rifftrax.