"LANappley"
In case Justin Blanton is reading the feed, I have more news: I went to the study session at Apple computer, again. A representative from the staffing service apple uses called me up and started describing this same position as if she'd never heard of me so I mentioned I had already been to a study session; news to her. So I ask if I can attend again, she says she'll get back to me. Three days later she calls again and again starts describing the position to me as if she'd never heard of me. So I tell her again I've already attended a session and that she'd already called me. Oh sure, now I'm suddenly familiar. I'm kind of losing confidence in this staffing service by this point.
So finally I go into the study session, having little to no faith the staffing service would even be able to keep track of my freakin' name anyway. But as it turns out there was only 5 of us that showed up (out of 6 anyway I think) so it wasn't too hard to go through it all. I did my little activity packet for OS 9 and OS X, took their stupid little quiz on Mac OS and finally at the end one of the people in charge walks me out and tells me they'd like to hear from me again. Isn't that great?
So I guess now I have to like...learn about Macintosh? Doh! Ah it won't be too bad. It'll be like hiding my non-liberalism at college. Or something. So I'm just really excited about this. If I make it past the next interview, which is tomorrow, I'll immediately go over and file the W4 form with the staffing service and I could start the orientation this Friday and start working Monday. Isn't that insane? Or is it just I? If I actually make it that far I'll have like a real job or whatever. And ironically the pay check from Apple will make any of number of PC-related company's stocks go up based on how much I'll be finally spending. At least I assume I'll spend more with my money given the amount I've been spending with no money. Or maybe I won't have time for all that. I'll be too tired maybe?
So that's the biggest thing I have right now. I also have a short 8-hour a week gig "advocating" a brand of soil at a local home improvement warehouse. On Sunday it was in the upper 80s and I was standing there, in the heat, for four hours straight. And there were little to no customers all aboot the gardening department. So I was bored as all hell, and hot, and dehydrated. I drank three liters of water in three hours. That was a lot even for a hot environment now.
Other stuff? Well I finished FarCry, and it's a really, really good game. Just a weak story, near-non-existent story is all. I just have way too much patience to be able to pass complete this game. Because the latter levels, on the second-to-easiest difficulty, are so damned ridiculously hard you may as well put it on the hardest level because it's just so hard. Get ready to play the same areas over...and over...and over...again. But the AI provides much entertainment. You can trick the AI enemies into the fighting each other instead of you the player, for instance. That's the one thing that kept me playing for all those repeating saves.
Then, in a brief irrational need to buy stuff I have no money to buy, I purchased the relatively old game Max Payne on account of I heard it was good and had a cool Matrix mod and it was only $10. Wow, what a short game! And very linear also. But still I think a really good story and well laid out, in a "graphic novel" sort of format. The only part I didn't like was the dream/drug trip sequences. I could have done without that, thanks. I just found that annoying as all hell.
I did finish it in a very short number of hours. Not sure how many exactly, but it's a very short game. There's both a "Kung Fu edition" mod and a Matrix mod. The thing about this game that makes it special is the ability to slow down the action in both "bullet dodge" and "bullet time", which is that famous effect made popular in the Matrix movies. So it's only natural someone eventually made the necessary modifications to make both special Kung Fu moves as well as the special air displacement bullet effect during the slow motion portion. Also in the Matrix mod are additional weapons and the ability to hold two of the special machine guns at once, which isn't available in the original game. And the bullet clips hold a lot more and you can carry more clips. It even has some of the same sound track during the slow motion sequence.
I also went to a LAN party up in my old hometown. Turns out they were all playing Unreal Tournament 2004 so I had to go buy it so I actually had something to play at this LAN party. Doesn't anyone play counter strike any more? I can't believe I bought that stupid game. But at least I had that one. So I bought Unreal 2k4 for $40, which isn't bad, played a few rounds of including one that just had the whole place in a stalemate for what must have been 90 minutes, which is really long for an Unreal match. Mostly it was pretty fun though, if not really repetitious.
