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*sigh* I hope I figure this out soon.

On a different note, I’m glad the Winter Olympics are over so I can stop caring about things I don’t usually care about (anything related athleticism). I really enjoyed the P&G Mom commercials (see 1 & 2), and Apolo Ohno busting out of his PJs was probably the most amusing 5 seconds of Winter Olympics commercial time. However, my favorite commercial is most definitely The Human Chain by Nike:

New thing I learned today: The Canadian hockey team for this year’s Winter Olympics has four players from the San Jose Sharks, while the US team had one. The current San Jose Sharks roster has 13 Canadians and three Americans.

Re: USA vs. Canada hockey game… *sigh* again. Maybe in 2014?

Just wanted to let my Facebook friends know why there’ll be a bunch of link spamming to their news feeds from me. I’ve had the Wordbook app installed for a while, but it would only put my blog posts in one of the Facebook boxes and as activity on my wall. The latest version of the app now actively invades your feeds. It doesn’t seem to let you edit the format it posts on Facebook, so it looks like I’m just posting random links instead of explicitly saying it’s from my blog. I’ll have to go through the plug-in code and see if I can put “New blog post:” somewhere like WP-to-Twitter does for my Twitter posts.

So, if you don’t want me invading your Facebook feed with links to inane rambling, make sure to Hide either me or the Wordbook app. I’m still trying to keep up the 3-posts-a-week dealio (and I’ve been successful so far aside from the first week of February). Also, Wordbook still reposts updates, so any kind of editing I do on a post will show up on Facebook again.

New thing I learned today: Some figure skating jumps (axel, lutz, salchow) are named after the figure skaters who invented them.

I’m not sure what it is, but I can’t stop watching the Winter Olympics. Actually, that’s not true. I know what it is… I have non-CBS TV now.

I beat Uncharted last weekend (with Kelvin’s help… we did the trade-controller-on-death thing for whenever he felt like watching). Overall, an excellent game. Pretty graphics, great voice acting with well-developed (if completely cliched) characters. Gameplay was straightforward and very reminiscent of Tomb Raider, and the cutscenes were the right length and entertaining. While most of the game is good, it’s good enough that imperfections really stick out and can distract from the game. Here’s a few of the nitpicks I couldn’t quite get over:

1. Ridiculous jet ski segments – There are two vehicle sections where you use a jet ski with your buddy, and you control both the driving and the shooting at baddies on the shore with unlimited ammo. Driving and shooting at the same time BLOWS TURDS. Shooting and accelerating is on the same trigger side; that plus the left trigger aim and dual joystick moving confuses the hell out of my fingers.

You would also think the point of the a jet ski is to travel fast and zip through the water past your enemies, but NO! For some bizarre reason, there’s barrels of explosive stuff floating everywhere in the river, blocking your way. (Who the hell thinks to bring tons of explosives to an island in the middle of nowhere just to dump it in a river? Can’t they afford mines?) If you bump into them or an enemy shoots one near you, instant death. The first segment, you’re given a grenade launcher, and you can’t shoot and drive at the same time. So you have to stop every 5 seconds to shoot all the barrels in front of you. Time consuming, boring, and makes the jet ski totally useless. Why couldn’t I walk along the shore with this magical grenade launcher?

Damn litterbugs.

The second segment, you’re using a pistol that you can shoot and drive at the same time. It never needs reloading and has infinite ammo, so the entire section is just BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. There’s some auto-aiming, so this requires no skill. Controls still suck, so often times you’re running into rocks. You also drive up small waterfalls, which makes no sense.

BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM

2. Nathan’s inability to open doors – Is it really necessary to kick open every door or gate you run into? Why can’t he be a touch bit more subtle in jungle full of people trying to kill him?

3. Arbitrary puzzles – The main character, Nate, spends half of his game time hanging from his hands. Sure, inhuman feats are characteristic of video game characters, but some the grip jumps he makes are distractingly absurd. It reminds me a lot of God of War, where Kratos was always opening heavy doors with his strength. I always wondered how anybody who wasn’t Hercules got anywhere in Ancient Greece. Same in Uncharted. How does anyone get anywhere without being some mutant monkey man?

Every puzzle involves Nate scaling walls to perilous heights, long-jumping between ledges, hanging on edges by one hand… just to get to whatever random object you push/pull/break/lick to unlock whatever random passage you need to unlock. Why is there a pulley to move a hanging chain (with nothing on it) 90 degrees? Who the hell puts levers by the roof to open doors that have no path to get to them? Who uses a giant cavern to make a room full of red herring puzzles that looks like an MC Escher drawing? Apparently, the 16th century Spanish.

4. A small nation’s worth of bad guys – I don’t see why the villain is looking for treasure when he has enough money to fund a huge multi-ethnic army. There are SO MANY goons. And they’re everywhere you go. The island is deserted and not very big; how did they get all these people on there? There’s no airport or harbors (that aren’t ancient and dilapidated, anyway). Maybe they all swam there?

Once I kill the 10 people in here, 6 more will ambush me from behind

I hate 3D platforming, but I’d rather do more exploring (everything is so pretty!) and arbitrary puzzles than waste time with endless goons. And a lot of time is wasted on fighting goons.

5. What’s the point? – You spend all this time decrypting Sir Francis Drake’s doodles, climb walls, open secret passage ways, jump across decaying platforms, only to end up in front of a dozen goons. Seriously, how did these assholes get here already when I had to use some old book buried in the middle of the ocean to figure out how to open some secret door that no one has ever opened before and risk death trapezing over bottomless abysses just to get to the same point? Did the villain find some 400-year-old shortcut book? Why doesn’t Nate just use his ninja skills and follow these henchmen around? He’s obviously better at incessant murder than getting to anyplace before other people.

For example, in the last image, once you clear the area, 6 guys will ambush you from where you entered. However, you had to jump across rotting wooden planks on the side of a building in order to get to that entrance. Yet they somehow manage to efficiently get to the same spot and flank you. Stupid.

What’s even more retarded is that with half of these silly puzzles, you just end up where you started. You solve these ancient mysteries to basically go in a ginormous circle. At multiple points in the game, I looked above or below me and was like, “I was just up/down there an hour ago, wtf.”

—–

Outside of these points, I enjoyed the game and would easily recommend it. I’ve already started the second one, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m going to assume it will go well, as the game is winning all sorts of awards right now.

Also, apologies for the horrible screen shots. It’s literally just me holding a point & shoot camera at the TV while also trying to use the PS3 controller (so, basically a big blurry mess). If someone can recommend a good setup for getting good screenshots from my 360 or PS3 (both are using HDMI right now), let me know. Maybe I’ll implement it if I can ever find a source of monies again.

New thing I learned today: Simon Templeman voiced Kain in the Legacy of Kain series.

I haven’t played the Legacy of Kain series, but when I heard the villain in Uncharted, I was thinking, “Isn’t that Loghain?” And indeed it was! All voiced by Simon Templeman. After hearing Alistair and Morrigan again in the beginning of Uncharted 2 (their voice actors apparently play Nathan’s adventuring cohorts for the second game), I’m somewhat itching to play Dragon Age again.

I keep seeing these Subaru commercials now that I actually watch other channels besides CBS. I’m not sure how these commercials would make anyone want to buy or drive a Subaru unless you’re a hardcore dog person (I have slightly negative feelings towards the brand because, as a teenager, there was always a Subaru parked in the prime space next to my mom’s house), but I love these commercials. These doggies are totally the Bacardi & Cola of the dog world. The entire ad campaign is on Youtube.

The drive-thru one is probably my favorite, though the stolen parking spot is a pretty close second. I’m not a goggie expert, but it seems like all the animals are mutts because I can’t recognize any breeds. I think that sends a good message that you don’t need a purebred for a l33t pet. Extra points for the high maintenance dog to be hilariously weird-looking scrawny Ewok thing instead of your typical white and fluffy punt dog.

New thing I learned today: A Brussels Griffon is a toy dog breed that looks like an Ewok.

Okay, so maybe that high maintenance dog isn’t a mutt after all.

I didn’t realize any stores in this day and age only accept gift cards in-store and not on their website, but that’s what I get for not reading descriptions/fine print carefully and assuming a major retailer knows what decade we’re in.

Our apartment is in dire need of chairmats because our chairs are pulling fuzz bulls from the carpet our computer area. I have tons of points from my credit card, so I used it on a $100 gift card to Staples to purchase such chairmats. Chairmats, btw, are freaking expensive, so I bought a $25 off $75 online coupon off eBay for a couple bucks. I clicked referral links, applied for a Staples rewards card, and got ready to order my chairmat when I discovered there’s no place to put the gift card number under payment information. I looked in the FAQs, no info. At the Staples gift card page, you can check the balance online and buy gift cards no problem. I looked at the fine print on the card and it doesn’t say you can’t use it online… oh wait. “May be used only in Staples U.S. retail stores.”

I guess that means you can’t use it online? How can that be? In disbelief, I googled and found I’m not the first to find issue in this.

Why Can’t I Use Staples Gift Cards On Staples.com?
Staples Gift Card – that was easy
Staples.com Gift Cards Not Usable

But those were a while ago, so maybe they’ve fixed things by now? I called customer service. Maybe I could order with credit card, and then they could apply the gift card over the phone? Or maybe I could do an in-store delivery and pay with gift card there. In the past at other retailers, any features lacking on the website could be done over the phone through customer service. I called the number of the card. I’m guessing they get this sort of confusion a lot, because all the lady on the phone would tell me is that online doesn’t take gift cards and to call some number to complain. Any other question or suggestion resulted in the same repeated answer (and me getting increasingly pissy). Completely unhelpful.

I went back online to see if I could find which stores carry the chairmats I want. Looking at the website: “Delivery only.” *sigh* They have a chat customer service thing, so I used it to ask if there’s any way I can buy this damn chairmat with my gift card. Thankfully, this chat person was significantly more helpful and told me I can go an in-store kiosk and order the chairmat through them. I called the nearest store to verify this is true, and it is. I could even use my online coupon.

So, I did what the guy told me, and as it turns out, you CAN use gift cards for online orders… you just have to do your online order in an actual store. It makes NO sense. The “kiosk” is a desk with a computer on it, and you go through the exact same steps as you would ordering from your home computer. It’s the same website and everything. The only difference is that there’s an extra option to pay at the register. It takes online coupons and will ship directly to your home, just like it would if you ordered at home. When you finish your order, you get a print-out you take to the checkout register and pay there, with credit card, cash, or *dun dun dun* gift card. Service folks in store were nice and helpful, but I’m still overall miffed at Staples’ backwards attempt at getting people in their stores.

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I left the store reading the top of my receipt, which said “that was easy”.

Considering people have been complaining about this to them for years and I don’t know of a single store that still has this archaic gift card practice, Staples obviously doesn’t give a crap about making things easy, regardless of what their stupid button tries to tell me on TV. Outside of freebie gift cards, I’ll stick to Office Depot or Office Max for my future office supply needs. I can’t tell these stores apart anyway.

New thing I learned today: Staples is the world’s largest office supply retail chain. Also, Staples was going to merge with Office Depot in 1996, but the FTC wouldn’t allow it because of the potential for a monopoly.

I wonder if Staples and Office Depot had merged, if the new office supply supermonster would accept gift cards online. (Office Depot and OfficeMax both accept gift cards online.)