I’ll take, “Things I’m Not Currently Practicing” for $200

Work. Sucks. We had a stretch for awhile, where things seemed to be going okay. Then one of my coworkers got fired for far less egregious things than a few others I could name–and we kept those people around longer. Which sucks, because I liked this one. And the bosses want to hold off on hiring anyone to replace her, because we’re having a system migration in July, and they don’t want to waste time training someone new in on the current software, only to have them have to start all over in a few weeks. Which, sensible. And that was fine; we were making do…for awhile.

Then someone in another department put in their two weeks’ notice, which was more of a month’s notice, to try and give us time to find a replacement. The bosses spent that entire month interviewing outside candidates, only to, this week, just hand the position to someone in my department. Which, again, is already understaffed. And just today, we had another one put in his two weeks’ (actually two weeks, this time), because he found a job somewhere else. So. We’re three people short from where we’re supposed to be, and the higher-ups still don’t want to fill any of the gaps until July. That means the rest of us have a month at least, where we’re just going to be pulled in three directions at once, trying to have coverage, while that system migration is looming on the horizon, and we’ll be short-staffed while dealing with people who are angry when things inevitably stop working the way they used to. Oh, and we have to be closed for at least a day at the start of July, because apparently this migration can only happen on the 1st of the month. You know, right before a holiday weekend, when shit’s going to be getting busy. *Deep breath* Which brings us to today’s word.

temperance, noun – the state of refraining from alcohol, self-restraint

Learned from: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen (Super Nintendo, mobile, Playstation, Sega Saturn)

Developed by Quest Corporation

Published by Quest Corporation (1993)

Ogre Battle was a good game, but it was also a game from a different era. It does have the occasional modern spiritual successor (like Unicorn Overlord, which I really need to get back to), but the distinction remains. Largely, because modern games have built-in tutorials. Back then, if you sat down to play a complex strategy RPG like this, and you didn’t have the instruction manual (like me), you were probably in for a confusing, if not bad, time. It was a storage issue, I’m sure–you can only fit so much on a 16-bit cartridge, and tutorials weren’t a priority, because manuals were a thing in the box.

A handful of things did get some explanation in the game, itself, like the fact that your units would do different things, depending on where you stuck them in a formation; and I think the Tarot cards you drew at the very beginning of the game. If you drew Temperance, you could use it to cure various status effects on your troops which, despite the stodgy, puritanical implications of a card named Temperance, was actually a pretty useful ability.

Didn’t help me not get the worst ending though, when I eventually worked my way through this game. There are a lot of subsystems at work beneath the surface, and if you don’t know how to utilize them, even if you win, you essentially lose. I respect that, in hindsight, but at the time I was just confused as to what I did wrong.

Behold! The opposite of Temperance: the Sour Monkey, which seems to be the card I drew for this work year.

Creepy stuff knows no season

I know Halloween was awhile ago, but recently on my way to work, I walked through a scene straight out of a horror movie. But first, today’s word.

eviscerate, verb – to disembowel; to remove the entrails

Learned from: Quake (PC, Mac, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, mobile)

Developed by id Software (PC), Lobotomy Software (Saturn), Midway Games (N64)

Published by GT Interactive (PC), MacSoft (Mac), Sega (Saturn), Midway Games (N64) (1996)

Quake had a lot of personality, from the Lovecraftian overtones, to the goading messages taunting you whenever you went to quit the game, to the death messages unique for every monster that could kill you. The most memorable one for me was, “You’ve been eviscerated by a fiend.”

At the time, the graphics were pretty much first-generation 3D. Character models were blocky, animations were stiff and jerky, and blood was just a spray of square red pixels. Obviously, they couldn’t effectively display every unique death with the technology of the time, but flavor text like this really lent a vivid level of detail as to exactly what happened to your character…and now, to continue the story.

So, I pass by a cemetery on my way to work, which is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. I’m going along like normal, until something catches my eye along the fence: a beachball-sized area of the fence itself, where it looked like something had been either pulverized against the side of the fence, or else staked on the spikes at the top. The main area was a bloody mess, with bits of hair and actual flesh still clinging to the posts. It had dripped down the fence, to a patch of grass the size of a coffee table–I should clarify, it had soaked a patch of grass the size of a coffee table. And as I followed it off the grass, I realized I was standing in a smear of blood that trailed all the way down the hill, occasionally meandering to the edge of the sidewalk and pooling. As if whatever it was had dragged itself as far as it could, before stopping periodically to regain a bit of strength, before forcing itself onward.

It was too late in the year to be a Halloween prank, and there was far too much blood for it to have been a bird that flew into the fence or something (and again, hair, not feathers was sticking to the metal). At the time, I was at a complete loss, but rather freaked out; after some consideration, the best explanation I have, is that a deer tried to jump the fence, and didn’t make it…yet managed to tear itself off the spikes, and continue on its way…which is pretty horrifying, in and of itself.

Quake seems downright tame, by comparison.

04a-fiend

Far less bloody than what I (literally) walked through.

Have fun storming the castle!

By now, you’ve likely heard about the…situation with Blizzard. If you haven’t, here’s the short version: Following a championship match of Hearthstone, one of the players used his post-game interview time to deliver a political statement advocating for the liberation of Hong Kong from China. Blizzard had a fit, took back his prize money, and banned him from competition for a year–and essentially fired the commentators that just so happened to be on the stream at the time, even though they tried to get off-camera when they realized what was happening. (These bans were later scaled back to six months, but still…) In the following days, things only got worse, as Blizzard delivered conflicting press releases to Western and Eastern audiences, failed to enact the same penalties to streamers who did the same thing (because they were on Western streams), went against one of their own company tenets that everyone should have a voice, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, and in general have just kept digging themselves a deeper hole.

And yeah, I get that they’re a company, and profits are quite literally the bottom line. And China is a huge market. But the undeniable message here, is that Blizzard (an American company, mind you), is fine with denying people freedom of speech, in favor of the promise of profits from an authoritarian regime. People are understandably angry about this, I’d say. You might even say that Blizzard is under siege by its own (former?) fans. Which brings us to today’s word.

ballista, noun – a medieval siege weapon in the shape of a large crossbow

Learned from: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (PC, Mac, Playstation, Sega Saturn)

Developed by Blizzard Entertainment

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (1995)

Once upon a time, Blizzard was a respectable company, making games full of heart, charm, and love of the medium. Warcraft II was a perfect example of this, with a ton of little details and Easter eggs (Christmas lights on the trees and buildings in the winter maps, units that would say funny things if you clicked on them a lot, etc.). And while the orcs and the humans had different looking units, most of them functioned the same. Goblin sappers and dwarven sappers both blew up the same amount of terrain; trolls threw axes and elves shot bows, but they had about the same range and damage; catapults and ballistae both flung heavy projectiles over about the same distance, etc. The handful of differences were in the magics wielded by each side, and that actually imbalanced the game pretty heavily in favor of the orcs, but it was still a fun game for its time…back when Blizzard actually cared about making things fun, instead of just profitable.

blizzard_china

I can’t take credit for this image, but it sums up the current situation quite nicely.