__________________________________________________________________________________________________ "It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style" 2009/12/07 08:52 ++ It's almost Christmas, and winter weather is finally starting to kick in. November was quite warm I think but I supposed I shouldn't complain about that. Last week Carlin and I went to an Andrea Bocelli concert. It was sort of a Christmas/cd release concert with a few very good guests including David Foster and Ana Maria Martinez. The concert was incredible and we got to see some of our favorite songs live as well as a good 40 minutes of Christmas songs from his new CD. We had a really good time and it was a great way to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit for this year, very nice way to end such an eventful year. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Check the airways" 2009/11/26 8:52 ++ I just learned today that SI will be restarting all FML servers in March. I've mentioned here before about a new game I started to play, an MMO called Football Manager Live. Well much like any MMO the main point of the game is progression in some way or another, and lately my team has been doing quite well. I was getting really into the game too. Having said that, today they announced that there will be a general reset of the game, meaning everyone in FML will have all their teams, skills, stadiums and everything we've worked on improving so far, ERASED. Clearly, anyone that knows anything about MMOs knows that they tend to have a very opinionated forum population, and as expected this is already causing people to go wild on the forums, with plenty of reasons. Now that I've introduced the issue, I am ready to do my rant. ++ Much like most MMOs I've played, I tend to stick to long term strategies with the most sustainability. Well, since I haven't been playing the game for too too long I have not even reached the full effect of my initial decisions. I have now built my stadium so that it holds 30k fans which is significant. This cost me basically over half of all the resources I've had for the entire time I've been playing FML. So SI is taking away all this effort and time I spent in getting all that ready, just as I am ready to make full use of it. Not only that, but a few seasons ago I started investing heavily on scouting for young players, a few of my star players are just turning 17 and 18 now. This means that in March when the server restarts these players will disappear with 20-21 years of age. Meaning all this effort in picking great future players was a waste of my remaining resources and of course my time looking through databases and making formulas to look for the best buys. These are my two main issues with the whole thing, but by reading the forums, losing skills is probably another one of the biggest concerns people have. ++ I believe this was a terrible business move, and I really have my concerns on whether FML will survive such a drastic blow to their fan base. Let me remind that FML has been trying to recruit more subscribers for some time now, and one of their biggest campaigns was the "play 21 days for free" which is how I decided to try out the game. I have noticed that this campaign has been steadily been less and less effective with each season, bringing in less new members every time, while losing current members steadily. My GW shrunk about 40-50% since I've joined it, which honestly hasn't really bothered me much. I don't have any business training, but my impression is that anyone in business knows that it is priority to maintain current customers while trying to get new customers. SI for some reasons decided that it would be a great idea to slap all the loyal customers in the face in an attempt to fix a problem. This will result in a lot of subscription canceling, and I have to say I will probably be one of those cancellations. If this happened once, I have a feeling it could happen again. I don't see SI coming with a plan that will completely revamp the game to avoid this problem again, so using a Band-Aid solution on such a major problem, causing most of the fan base to be upset is certainly as dumb of a move as it was to launch the game prematurely. Now, to be fair I will also acknowledge all the people in the forums that support what SI is doing (this is perhaps about 5-10% of the subscribers, for the most part new managers that will benefit from this). I can understand that SI is only taking these measures to resolve an inevitable issue, and I also understand this is aimed to maintain a healthy future for FML. Well, let me say this, why the hell would we be paying for a beta version of FML then? If this game has not been thoroughly planned before they started charging subscribers, then basically we have been paying for a beta version. I really enjoy FML and I think that the idea behind it is great. However, it did not have proper planing behind it, and by taking such drastic steps to fix some fundamental issue with the game they have to be fully expecting to lose a solid portion of their fanbase. It is a terrible move and I am 100% sure if this had happened on any MMO it would have disastrous consequences. There will be no "bailout" for SI for making mistakes, so FML may take the fall. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "You Lie" 09/27/2009 01:41 ++ I'm sure everyone has been hearing a lot about Obama's health care reform in the US, but I feel that most of what we get in Canadian news is about how republicans are relying on propaganda and confusion to try and disrupt this idea from moving forward. What we don't hear much is what this reform really means. Well, it really isn't a surprise for most people, but the US spends the highest amount of money per capita in health care in the world. By this I mean that on average, every year, Americans pay over 70% more on health care than any other industrialized country. The part that doesn't make sense, is that the US are the industrialized country with the worst health care records, being on the same level as countries such as Albania and Puerto Rico when it comes to numbers like life expectancy and infant mortality. Not only that, but there are over 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance (roughly 14% of the population), and portion of the people that do have find themselves in trouble at times when they need the most help. A popular example was the woman who was denied a mastectomy because she had not divulged to her insurance company that she had acne during her adolescence, so it does seem like there is a problem there. Personally I think it's wrong to have a system in place where people's health is a means for profit, after all it's called health"care", but leaving that aside, what Obama wants can at least mean an improvement for Americans in general. But what exactly does he want? ++ Obama isn't actually the person writing the proposals, he basically is leaving that up to Congress, however, they do have to meet a few of his principles for reform which include: - Provide every american with affordable health coverage - Remove restrictions and obstacles for people with pre-existing conditions trying to get health insurance - Keep people covered even if they are unemployed - Prevent bankruptcies related to health for families - Maintain Americans their freedom to chose their doctors and coverage plans - Prevent further increases in costs related to health care - Improve its quality - Invest in preventive care ++ Now what will really come out of all of these is still unknown. I think one of the biggest concerns at the moment is the possibility of having a public option. For some odd reasons a reasonable portion of Americans feel that by creating a public option for health insurance is like moving their country towards what countries like Canada have, and this is supposedly really bad. Apparently there is a circulating idea (*clears throat* Propaganda) that making a public option is a step towards communism and a blow to the free market mentality Americans have, despite not living in a free market economy. What is really strange to me, is that creating public options for other services in the US such as postal service and Universities did not cause the same type of polemic we see with health care. The other weird part of the arguments you hear is the fact they people are against giving Americans a public OPTION. I don't understand, if you don't want the public insurance just don't get that particular insurance. Now putting the stupid arguments aside, there is one issue with the public option that could be a source of problem, especially during a recession. I'm talking about the cost of this public option. What has been said is that the goal is to have this public option be a financially self sustaining service, which would provide affordable care creating competition for private insurance companies. I don't know, to me it does sound like a step up from what Americans have at the moment. It's not as good as it could be, but then again, we'll have to wait and see what really comes out of all this discussion. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" 09/22/2009 01:21 ++ Carlin and I just started watching "The Sopranos", we were talking about picking up the show for a while and I'm not sure why but last week we had the time and just watched a few episodes. I'm glad we did, it is a really good show and we're really enjoying it so far. A few of our favorite shows are now also coming back with new seasons, including "Big Bang Theory" and one of my favorite shows "Dexter". I've actually seen the premier for Dexter already a couple of weeks ago, somehow it got leaked, and I have to say it was a great first episode, it looks like there is potential for this season, maybe even as good as last season. ++ On a different subject, after a really long time waiting for good games to come out for PC I think I finally have a few to look forward to now. I'm not sure of the date but Modern Warfare 2 is coming out in the near future which is great since the first one was amazingly fun to play single player and multiplayer. Not only that but SI's new Football Manager 2010 is also coming out in the end of October, I absolutely can't wait for that. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "New Land of Cattan" 09/09/2009 18:39 ++ Well the last part of our west coast adventure took place in Victoria. After leaving Parksville, where Brent's mom lives (who was a great host), we drove south to Victoria where my sister lives. Victoria is definitely very different from Vancouver, it has a small town feel to it and it's a lot more relaxed. In Victoria we saw Royal Roads University, which is where my sister works and it has a beautiful campus, with a few gardens that are just stunning to look at. One of the main buildings in her school is also the school for mutants from the X-men movies as well as the Luthor Mansion from smallville. It's a very nice castle, and we were even fortunate enough to get a tour. ++ In Victoria we also went to a few other cool places, you know some touristy stuff. We watched District 9 one night as well which was sort of a neat movie. We also spent a good amount of hours during the night playing a game my sister had just bought called "Settlers of Cattan". It's a board game that as Brent described "was just like playing age of empires with a dice". The game is a lot of fun and it didn't take us long to get addicted to it. Really great game, one which I hope to get here and find some people interested in playing with me and Carlin. Anyway, that is a brief summary of our trip to British Columbia. I also took some pictures and hope my sister will send me the ones she took. When that happens I'll make sure to post them here. I've already posted some on Facebook, but I'll post more when I have them. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The quartet" 2009/09/09 18:18 ++ Very well, so we got to Nanaimo where my sister and her boyfriend Brent had left their car. We then drove to his mom's house in a town called Parksville. The area was definitely very nice and we spent 2 days there, which made a trip to Tofino much easier. So on that Tuesday we went to Tofino, it was probably the day with the worst weather we had the whole week, except we got barely any rain and it wasn't even that cold (we're lucky). Tofino was beautiful and the rain forest there was very interesting, nothing I had ever seen before. Very unique and dense vegetation. Carlin and Brent at one point even went down to the ocean for a dip, but it was cold enough for me and my sister to know better and avoid it. Canadians are nuts when it comes to going into the water. At the end of the day we were treated by Brent's mom with a dinner at the Wickaninnish Inn resort in Tofino, which I have to add was very fancy and very nice. The restaurant was amazing with a sunset view over the rocky shore and the ocean. The view alone was enough to win me over, however the food was the best part of it. I had a succulent Halibut on a green curry creamy sauce (the sauce was amazing), Carlin had the salmon which was probably the best salmon I've ever tried. My sister had the pork which came with 3 different cuts of pork and it looked just perfect and fatty, while Brent had a great looking lamb dish. The desert seldomly is the highlight for me, but I ordered the best creme brule I have ever tried. It was a creme brule quartet, which included chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and saffron. All flavours were good, but strawberry and chocolate were just amazing, it was a memorable dessert. ++ That was pretty much it for that Tuesday, on the way back we got stuck in the highway for a couple of hours because of a head on collision between a Range Rover and transport truck, it looked pretty ugly, but despite us being the first car in a long line waiting for the highway to open, we still didn't know exactly what happened. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Topo da montanha" 2009/09/09 13:53 ++ Hello Everyone, I just came back from a trip to BC this last Saturday. Carlin and I went to Vancouver and Victoria to visit my sister and took advantage of the trip to see a bit of the West coast. The trip overall was amazing, we got there on the 29th around noon, so we had enough time to check out the B&B we stayed at and go see Lynn Canyon Park and its respective suspension bridge. It was a very nice start to our trip despite the fact that the city was extremely busy that day. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called "Pacific Spirit Sidehouse" if I'm not mistaken, and it was simply great. The house was spacious, rooms were very nice and the service impeccable. Our first breakfast was very good too, with a lot of local fruits and delicious Scones, our second breakfast wasn't as good as the first but still had a lot of tasty items, if I'm allowed to make any complaint I just wish there were more savory items. Overall the place was very much worth the price. ++ On the second day there we had planned to climb Grouse Mountain, on the so called "Grouse Grind". I have to say it was likely the hardest climb I've been too, it was a solid 1:30 hour of steep trails and rocks. There were points where our group was getting tired but we made it up top in the end, the view up there was definitely worth the grind. Once we got up there we had lunch and walked around to see the different exhibits they had there. That's not all though, I had previously arranged with my sister so that I would sneak in a bottle of champagne in my backpack and I would separate from my sister and her boyfriend for a little bit. So Carlin and I ended up taking a chairlift to the very top of the mountain. The ride up there was just gorgeous with a spectacular view. When we got to the top and found a more private place, I proposed to Carlin, which was my big surprise for her. Despite her previous suspicions and my slight nervousness at the chair lift, I think I successfully surprised her. It was all very nice and I think we both enjoyed that day very much. To close up the day we had some take out sushi, which was surprisingly cheap and much better than sushi in Ontario. It really makes a huge difference when you have access to fresh fish/shrimp. ++ Our last day in Vancouver was a bit less eventful, we just drove around Vancouver a bit and eventually took the ferry to Nanaimo where the next part of our BC trip was to take place. (to be continued...) __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Rehab is for quitters" 08/21/2009 14:45 ++ It has been a while since I last posted, and I must admit I miss it a little. A few things have happened lately and I would like to mention one in particular, which will likely not matter much to most people reading this post, but hopefully I'll have a few extra readers that will care later on. After a long 4 year journey I am going to stop playing World of Warcraft. It was not the easiest of decisions but my free time has just not been enough and with a few major things comming up in life I really feel like this is the time to stop. So I figured I'd share a bit about what these 4 years in Azeroth were like. ++ I basically started off with my paladin in the summer of my second year of university. I basically decided to try WoW after reading so many good things about the game and after finally giving a true chance to RPG games (Morrowind was the one that converted me). I picked a paladin mostly due to their versatility as a multiple role class as well as their resillience. I played my character as a retribution paladin for pretty much my whole time playing "vanilla". During that period I did meet a lot of nice folks and played in a guild which lasted a very long time called "Alliance of Trinity". I ended up becomming the GM of the guild for most of its life. Once The first expansion came out and my guild needed healers desperately I decided to switch to Holy and started learning how to heal. Well I think it was a great move as I really enjoyed healing and I especially liked being such an important part of any sucessful team. After some time I decided to go to a raiding guild since AoT was no longer allowing me to see new content, that's when I joined MoF. ++ It's been great in MoF and not too long after I joined back in the summer of 2006 I became the leader in the healing team. I've been dedicating many hours every week to keep my team in shape and helping out the guild in other ways. We've accomplished a lot during this period and we even became #2 alliance guild in our server, as well as being one of the oldest and most consistent raiding guilds in AP. However, as I mentioned, I feel like I can no longer dedicate so much time to the game. I feel like I did learn quite a bit from my experiences in this game and I met a lot of great people as well. I hope some of them keep in touch and keep checking my blog in the future, and I'll try to do the same. A few notable folks I enjoyed playing with and would like to mention are: Aegiro, Krackalakin, Soupy, Aurar, Delphia, Kathlyn, Rostam, Liiris, Thorngold, Ellwyntar, Kemistry, Dominique, Magecarin, Jeb (Miluchra), Perceo, Lyressa, Okissaki, Panda, Homelessbum (Strangewoman), Zorena, Loadcoil, Sanchopearl, Shrike, Taterlee, Tetsushima, Mysterymeat, turning. I am sure I forgot some folks but there are just too many people I've come across in the last 4 years. I wish you all the best of luck and who knows, maybe I'll see some of you in another MMO in the future. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Mourinho and me" 08/01/2009 18:52 ++ Recently I've gotten back to playing a game I retired a while back, Football Manager 2009. For those not familiar, it is just a strategy type game where you manage a football (soccer) club of your choosing. You don't actually play the soccer in it, all that is done by the AI. May sound a bit boring but it is tons of fun for anyone that enjoy strategy games, and even more if you are a soccer fan. It' a bit difficult to get into, but very rewarding in the long term. ++ well since I was in the mood for FM I also decided to try out a newer game from SI, football manage live. Which in a way is similar to fm09. The differences are in the fact that the game is played online similarly to an MMO. The other big difference is the fact that you don't chose from real life teams, instead you create a team and are given money to sign real life players. The game ends up having a very different type of strategy involved since you are only playing real managers. Its quite challenging to balance the financial part of the game with the quality of your team. I'm still quite new to the game so I'll get a better sense of the game once I finish my first season. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "A difference that makes no difference, is no difference" 08/01/2009 18:25 ++ This is the first post I am writting a post from a bus. I just go a tad bored being here without Carlin. I haven't posted in a little while. This is mostly out of lazyness and perhaps I have been a bit busy. At work I have been doing quite a few interesting experiments. We just finished a fairly long feeding study so things have been a bit more calm. So I have been doing a lot of work with nicotine. For the past little while I have been giving a group of rats nicotine in order to sensitize the to the drug. By now they are actually quite used to their daily dose, probably even a bit addicted. We are now testing some potential anti drug compounds. Due to the nature of the study and confidentiality I probably shouldn't give too many details about the compound. This study couldn't come at a more opportune time. Last month the FDA just blacklisted two of the most used anti smoking drugs. Xantix and zyban, which have been in the market for a while have been linked to complications involving patients with psychological problems like depression. Apparently a lot of these subjects have developed suicidal behaviour and other detrimental psychological imbalances. So this study may turn out to be very important depending on our result. So we'll see what happens.