In Season 13, Episode 2 of Top Gear (staring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May), the trio each buy and insure cars for £2500, with the catch that they have to do so under the guise that they’re 17 year olds. Hilarity obviously ensues, and along the way Clarkson and Hammond replace James’ Bach CD with…something else…and glue his stereo controls so he can’t do anything about it. Later in the episode, we see that James has apparently grown to enjoy this new style of music.
Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll confirm that I’m absolutely nuts about Portal 2. As such, here’s a quick wallpaper with one of my favourite quotes from the game (Cave Johnson’s “Don’t Make Lemonade” speech).
(Updated – fixed a typo)
(Portal 2 is copyright Valve software. Quote and ‘Portal’ image used without permission. I call it Fair Use. If anyone disagrees, I would like you to note that I don’t make any money from this, and am too poor to be worth suing.)
My day job has me doing a wide variety of tasks, from desktop publishing to web development to systems and network administration. Occasionally, I get called on by other managers to consult on projects they’re working on and review things from a technical perspective. It was on one of these consulting gigs where I came across the ultimate anti-sales-pitch.
The project itself was a type of community portal focused on local businesses, and had been in operation for a few months. Things were going swimmingly and the site was starting to take off with nearly a thousand local businesses registered. This got the attention of two local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firms who desperately needed work (or at least, that’s how they ended up coming across). The salesman from the first firm was offensive to the point where the project manager simply refused to repeat the conversation they had and will only reference them by referring to them with a nickname. The second one, though, I got to hear the story of.
Mid-afternoon, the project manager gets a phone call from (as we’ll call her) Diane. Diane gets straight to the point. “I don’t want to offend you,” she starts, already oozing marketing slime through the phone, “but I don’t like your site. It’s going straight to search engine hell.”
Here’s a Pro Tip for those of you in the marketing/sales industry: If you have to start off by saying “I don’t mean to offend”, you’re going to, and the potential customer won’t appreciate it.
“See, when I search for <name of our region>, you’re nowhere near the first page on Google. With my help, you can be for local and global searches! I don’t know who made the site, but they screwed up, and we want the contract!”
Another Pro Tip: Research, research, research! The name of the developer is plastered all over the site, and was featured prominently during a news spot on the local news a few days prior, so if they had bothered to even look at the site they would have know who to call out. Secondly, had they bothered to look a little further in to the purpose of the site, they would have seen that global positioning of the site on search engines wouldn’t be a priority anyways, as the primary means of driving people to the site is via local advertising or by searching for keywords/the name of the business and the region, which already results in first-page rankings for the businesses in the directory.
The rest of the conversation went downhill from there. She attacked branding, overall design, and basically made an ass of herself. When the project manager finally got her off the phone and came to ask me if there was any merit to the criticisms. I did a quick review of the site, did some sample searches, and showed that the site lived up to all of the expectations and that the designers followed proper SEO techniques when building the site.
The SEO lady eventually sent a few followup emails which, thanks to her ‘marketing techniques’ were moved immediately to the trash.
So, for those of you who are tempted to start out a sales call by pointing out each-and-every flaw in the potential customers product: Stop. Don’t “don’t mean to offend”. And research. Then, if you are nice enough and craft your pitch well enough, you just may be able to skip the “???” step and jump right to “Profit!”.
I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends for years, but in our latest campaign we decided to try something different. Our DM added in the Trauma system from the Palladium-based Robotech RPG. What this meant for the story portion of the game was that when a player comes close to death (or actually dies, and is then raised/resurrected) they have to roll 1d20 – a roll of 1-8 (if your health drops below 0, but you are saved – otherwise a roll or 1-10 if you actually die and come back) means you then need to roll a percentile die (or, rather, 1d100 + 1d10) and match the result to the Trauma table from the Robotech player’s handbook.
I last night’s game, my character (a Lawful Good Paladin played to the tune of a Whitecloak from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series) nearly died in combat. As such, I rolled a 1d20 with a result of 2. As such, I rolled the percentile and came with with a 5. From the Trauma Table (which I can’t reproduce here due to copyright restrictions), a 5 resulted in an Alignment Reversal. My Lawful Good Paladin became (after a short side trip) a Chaotic Evil Blackguard.
The Trauma Table doesn’t come in to play that often, but the result can be small (my friend Mike’s character can’t stand to be around music) or game changing.
When Valve was first leaking details about Steam for Mac, they released a series of images parodying ‘classic’ Apple ads. This was one:
I get what they’re trying to say – the PC is boxy and old-fashioned while the Mac is shiny and new. The unintentional humour is that while the Portal turret does it’s job adequately in its game, it’s easily defeated. The PC (or Team Fortress 2 turret) on the other hand starts out small and meek, but can be easily upgraded in to a massive powerhouse. That said, which would you rather have? Effective but locked down, or less-than-pretty but easily customizable?
Of course, I could just be reading too much in to things again.
A friend and I went to see the A-Team movie with very low expectations. Both of us are under 30, and therefore obviously didn’t watch the TV series when it aired. In fact, I didn’t really experience the A-Team until only a few years ago, and my friend just started watching the series. After the movie ended, we both agreed that it was far better than we expected it would be — I’d rate it ‘good’ to ‘very good’.
However, as we were leaving (after watching the ‘after-the-credits’ parts), another patron commented to us that he hated the movie — “fucking terrible” was pretty close to what he called it. He then proceeded to explain that he watched the original series when it aired, and this didn’t stand up to it. What this guy was experiencing was classic ‘Star Wars Syndrome’.
Star Wars Syndrome is a different way of saying that someone is looking at something through rose coloured glasses. When the ‘new trilogy’ of Star Wars movies came out, fans of the original series were quick to say that the new episodes were complete crap and didn’t hold up against the originals. But really, the original movies weren’t that great. The effects were overdone, the acting wasn’t anything to write home about, and there were plot holes and cock-ups all around in the writing. But when the series was just out in theaters, it was excellent, and that’s how people who experienced it in theaters remember it.
However, for ‘kids’ who only saw the original trilogy a few years before the new movies (like myself), they didn’t have that gap in time between them to tint their views. As such, the new movies look just like the old ones, only with modern effects and updated writing styles to reflect current world states and views. A good summary of this theory is represented in this PVP Online comic.
But enough about Star Wars.
The guy who told us that the A-Team movie was terrible was simply going through the same thing. He watched and admired the A-Team when he was younger, around my age, but the years since have changed his own personal views. He remembers the A-Team as being good, but now due to these changes in his mindset, it just isn’t the same. So, when he watches the new movie, even though it holds true to the original, he sees it as being inferior.
I have to admit, I suffer from Star Wars Syndrome when it comes to ‘Transformers’. I grew up watching the Transformers and loved it. Then I watched the ‘Beast Wars/Machines’ series, and loved that. But, when I try to watch the original Transformers now, I can’t stand it. I remember loving it, but times have changed, and I look at it from another point of view.
So was the A-Team movie really any good? I say yes, and others say no. Will you like it? Probably the best way to answer that is, were you a fan of the original series, and if so, when was the last time you watched it?
While sitting in the theater the other night, waiting for Iron Man 2 to begin, and holding four extra seats for some friends, I had time to contemplate the fine art of Seat Selection.
It’s interesting to watch how people choose where to sit when the theater is empty. Some immediately go for the seats in the furthest back. Others will go to the least populated section. Myself? I try to get as close to the middle of the theater as possible, or at least the middle of a row (to avoid watching on an angle).
Much like the basic rules that go in to using a urinal, there are a few general guidelines for choosing your seat in a theater when it starts to fill up.
It was really fun to watch these guidelines in action the other night – it kind of gives me hope because for the last few years going to see a show hasn’t always been the most enjoyable experience. Now, if only they could makes these in to actual rules, punishable by a beating with a sack of sweet Valencia oranges….
Wow. I’ve got quite a long history with Tim Hortons, but for some reason I keep going back (probably because of Roll Up The Rim). This morning at the drive-through was about par for the course.
Her: Welcome to Tim Hortons, how can I help you?
Me: Hi. Can I please get an extra-large tea, with two milk and two sugar?
Her: <several seconds of silence> Ummm, so you want a decaf tea?
Me: Actually, I just want a regular tea.
Her: Okay. Do you want anything in it?
Me: Yes. Two milk, and two sugar.
Her: <several seconds more of silence>. So two cream, and one sweetener?
Me (trying not to sound frustrated): No. Two milk. <pause> And two sugar.
Her: Oh! Okay!
I’m surprised that I didn’t end up with a Double-Double instead, as has been known to happen before.
Manager: Laslow, I need some Zap Straps. Do you have any?
Me: Yep, they’re in that cupboard.
Manager: *Pulls out half-a-dozen* Are these the longest you have?
Me: Ya, but you can just link them together if you need longer.
Manager: *Scratches head* How do you do that?
Me: …
I’ll leave you to figure it out on your own.
