Tag Archive for rant

Rants!

Diablo III Errors and Paying to be a Beta Tester

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d3

I love the Diablo series, it brings back a lot of memories, I remember the first one and the second one but I won’t be getting the third one any time soon. Why? because I refuse to pay to be a beta tester.

Yep that’s all we as gamers and consumers seem to be doing lately, paying to be a beta tester. The whole Skyrim PS3 thing was just ridiculous, I bought the game on launch day and couldn’t play it due to lag for about five months. That’s sickening making people who paid for a product to wait that many months to be able to actually use the product as it was intended.

I refuse to buy games anymore when they first come out. I will wait until I see the patches are out to fix the issues with the games and by that time I’m sure the price will drop anyway. I still don’t think we should be paying $50 – $60 for a game either, especially ones that have single player sections that only last an hour or so. I’m a single player type of guy, I’m just not into the multiplayer thing and that’s pretty much what you’re paying for with most games. Sure people like multiplayer, I get that, but most of my experiences have been dealing with little brats and their attitudes. I’m 40 years old, I have three kids, I play games to get away from life, to relax and enjoy myself not to deal with little kids and their nasty language and threats.

I’d love to know where these kids parents are that they’re allowed to say the stuff they do online over voice or just text chat. So of it is just disturbing really.

Anyway, back to the point. Why are us gamers dealing with paying to be a beta tester? That’s what we’re doing really. We pay for a basically buggy and unfinished game and then we have to wait until they fix it for us and who know how long that’s going to take. Skyrim is a big example of that, I had to wait almost five months to play it on the PS3. It’s gone, I got rid of it and got the PC version recently. I can play the game and enjoy it with decent FPS and no locking or freezing. I;’m seeing the same thing with Diablo III now, bugs and errors and problems. I want the game, yes I want Diablo III but I’m not going to buy it right now as I want to be able to play it when I want to play it and how I want to play it.

I just don’t get why more people don’t see what is going on here with these companies and these games not working correctly when they launch. Plain and simple we’re paying to be a beta tester for them. They have our money so what real hurry is there to fix things. There’s no incentive really. Sure some bad publicity maybe, but again, they have our money so what the hell do they care if it gets fixed or not?!

Then of course there’s the whole DLC thing but that could be another rant post in itself I’m sure..

Rants!

Chase update, yes they’re still incompetent!

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WOW… 

so as of now I’ve spent over 3 hours and about 22 minutes in total on the phone with Chase banking over the last three days

I’ve spoke to 25 people as of today, and I finally made my car payment…

it shouldn’t be that hard to give them my money…

The best part about it is that none of them seem to know what the other is talking about.. 25 times now I’ve had to give them my account information, and it seems there’s no notes at all in my account as to the situation, so 25 times I had to explain the problem to these people…

How do they stay in business with such poor customer service?!?!

I literally have been trying to make my car payment since the 12th, and today I can finally do it, the day before it’s due….

and the account is still messed up as it says I still owe for last month as well, but I paid it, and what it says I owe them is actually less than my payment is and no one can tell me why or what it is?!?!

… at least I finally made the payment right?!?!

morons…. all of them…

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Texting and Driving needs to be illegal everywhere.

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The other day I’m driving and I look in my mirror and I see this car right behind me swerving back and forth into the next lane and into the oncoming traffic lane. It’s woman as I found out when we came to the stop light, but then I see she texting, she’s holding the phone on top of her steering wheel and typing. If I didn’t know what she was doing I would have thought she was drunk by the way she was driving, she was behind me for about a mile, but thankfully I had to turn off. She came very close to hitting me several times at stop lights and stop signs, and I watched as she would just sit there still typing as the rest of the traffic continued on when the light changed green. The cars behind her would beep and she’d go and speed up of course. The point is though that she was blatantly texting while driving and she could have caused a very bad accident, and maybe she did, I don’t know as I said I turned off to my destination, but what is so important that you’ve got to endanger your life and the lives of other people around you?

I hate texting, I hate talking on the phone while I’m driving, when I’m in the car I always have my Bluetooth headset on to answer any calls, and I’ll never make a call while I’m driving. If I need to make a call my passenger, if I have one, can dial my phone, if I’m by myself I’ll wait till I get to where I’m going. Usually though there’s no one that I need to talk to that can’t wait a few minutes..

There’s enough I’ve got to pay attention to like people running red lights and going through stop signs, and any phone call I’ve got to make can wait until I get to my destination.

None of you are that important that you must have a phone glued to your head at all times, and surely you’re not that important that you must text while driving..

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Driving…

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So I drive quite a bit, not like I drive many miles, but I spend a lot of time dropping kids off, picking them up and going to the store etc. The majority of my driving is city type, with lots of red lights and stop signs. I’ve noticed a new trend lately, something that was happening a bit, but now it’s almost as if it has become a law. What I mean is turning on red, yes we’re allowed to make a right turn on red if there’s not a sign saying you can’t. What I’m talking about is those one or two and sometimes three or four cars that blatantly just go through the red light, left or right turns and even if it says no turn on red.

What is with this? Did a new law go into effect stating we’re allowed to go through red lights if we’re in a hurry or on the phone? Did I miss something? In my drive I see it all of the time, it’s to the point now that if I’m first at the intersection I will not go when the light turns green, I’ll wait to make sure these morons are done. I’ve watched people actually stop for the red light, and then just decide to go on through, and it’s not just turning, it’s going straight as well..

Most times I’ve got my kids in the car with me when I’m driving, I’d have to beat the crap out of the person who did this and harmed one of my kids in the process. What is SO important that you’ve got to run through a red light and endanger  the lives of other people? Are you really that important that you must be on the phone at all times and just not pay attention?

And that’s something else too, I WISH my state would enact a hands free law for cellphones. I hate following behind someone only to have them hit the brakes and turn or park their car without signaling, 99% of the time they are on the phone. I’ve also almost been hit many times by people turning from the opposite direction and me thinking that they’re going straight because they couldn’t use a turn signal because they were on the phone.

What the hell is wrong with people these days? It seems everyone is just so self-absorbed that they could care less about the rest of the world. It seems that they think they’re the most important people in the world and no one else matters except for them.’

Stop signs are good for this as well, I almost got into a wreck yesterday, goofy chick just blew right through the stop sign because of course she was on the phone. It’s not like it was the old ‘slow and go’ either, she blatantly just drove right on through, never even slowing down at all. If I hadn’t been paying attention I’d probably be in the hospital right now as she was going faster than the speed limit and she would have hit the driver side of my car. Luckily I pay attention, I saw her coming up and was about to pull out, but then noticed that she was not slowing down for the stop sign..

I don’t get it, where are the police when you need them? I could point out intersections to them where they could nab many, many drivers for going through red lights. The city could be making quite a bit of money on these morons instead of raising our taxes yet again…

Oh well…. I guess all we can do is pay attention..

Articles/Editorials, Product Previews/Reviews, Rants!

Being a reviewer…

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Being a product reviewer can be an odd and sometimes frustrating thing to be.

I’ve been told that I’ve got one of the greatest jobs in the world, and I’ve been told I’m ‘envied’ by some, it’s odd to hear that really, but whatever, guess I’m just modest..

Actually getting products for review can be fairly difficult, at least the new stuff. The idea of course is to get it first, early, before anyone else.

The new Zune HD comes out tomorrow and of course I hit up my contact to try and get one, but I was turned down. Why? I’m not sure, I got the canned, general response that you get instead of just NO, it basically says they don’t have enough units and you’ll be added to the list, that means you won’t be getting one, plain and simple.

My last Zune review of the Gears of War2 Special Edition 120gb version is still on the first page of Google search results. You can just put ‘Gears of War Zune’ in the search box and it’s there, near the bottom # 10 actually if you count the ads etc. If you knock out the ads it’s number 8. That rank isn’t too bad for a review that I posted almost one year ago, November 12th 2008 to be exact.

In fact a lot of my reviews are in the top ten search results, which is an achievement in itself I would think. Some of them were actually above the company product page for quite a while before dropping below the official page, but still they are there, a year later, in the top ten search results.

Another thing that bugs me, and one I’ve yet to understand is the what qualifies as a loaner product or a product that you can keep. I’ve kept products that sell for upwards of $800, and I’ve had to send back products that sell for $50… There’s no standard there at all when it comes to trying to figure it out.

I also can’t quite understand why a company would request a product be reviewed, and then never mention that it needs to be sent back, only to have the product arrive and find a shipping label inside of it to send it back..

This job is fun though, don’t get me wrong, it’s great, it’s awesome being on the ‘cutting edge’ of new products, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be really. It truly is a whole lot of work, and like anything, you can never please everyone, everyone as in the readers. You’ll also find someone to disagree with you about what you wrote or how you did or didn’t test something, or how you did the pictures or how you did the videos. For the most part though, the good people outweigh the bad, it’s the nature of the internet though, you’re always going to have ‘trolls’, people that just like to insult others and people that have nothing better to do than attack people they are jealous of.

The majority of the insults don’t bother me too much, I laugh them off and maybe I’ll have fun with them, the ones that really piss me off are the ones that accuse me of getting paid by the company for the review. I’ve never, and will never accept payment from a company for a good review. I post or publish my objective views, and of course toss in my thoughts, experiences and feelings as well. If those don’t correspond to someone else’s experiences that’s not my fault, it’s just my experience with it.

It might sound bad, but there’s another thing I do like about it, I appreciate the ‘Thank You’ that I get from people, it does make me feel good, like I am appreciated and that’s all we could ask for really, do the job to the best of your ability and have your work appreciated.

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Rant: All these Fees Suck!

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So far this month I’ve racked up $28.80 in fees from Paypal for receiving payments…

we know Paypal is ridiculous with their fees… but this is adding up quickly now…

It costs me $2.50 to withdraw money from my Paypal account at an ATM, but then Paypal charge me $1 on top of that.. so it costs me $3.50 to get my own money?!?!

and I thought it was free to get money if I bought something with my Paypal card, y’know if I buy something and get cash back.. but apparently it’s not, they charge $1 for that as well…

But…

I paid my Electric Bill yesterday over the phone and it cost me $5.95

I paid my car today over the phone and it cost me $10 ?!?!

Stupid Chase Auto Finance doesn’t have an online payment system in my state.. I don’t quite understand that though, what exaclty does the state have to do with online payments?

-my last car was through Chrysler and I could easily pay them on the web every month, the fee was 50 cents but I’d take 50 cents over $10 anyday obviously..

Seriously, WTF?!  Why do I have to pay to give them my money?

I mean, you want my money, but I have to pay you to give it to you.. how does that work?!?

I wonder if all of these fees are tax deductible?

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

I hate people….

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So last week the 9th, my wife went to pick kids up from daycare, my 2yr old son, opened the car door a bit farther than my wife had opened it and it touched the car next to ours, it left a scuff mark that could be rubbed out with your finger.. big deal right?

Not a f*cking chance, I just got a phone call from my insurance company that these people filed a claim and that there’s a huge dent in their car…

how much damage could a 2yr old do really?

The thing that bugs me the most is of coruse that I wasn’t there to see this, but what really intrigues me is that the car itself has not been there since this incident so I can’t even look to see the damage of take pictures..

The lady was rude and ignorant and sceamed at my wife, my wife came home upset and crying because of this stupid lady…

My wife says it’s an older car anyway with numerous dents and dings in it, but still though how much damage could a 2yr old do in like two feet of space between the cars…

Also what bothers me is that the lady said she was going to talk to her husband and see if he could possibly do something bout it, now I don’t think this guy is an autobody expert, so I’m suspicious that this guy may have done more damge when he tried to ‘fix’ it..

it was a scuff, you could have rubbed it off with your finger, there’s no work that was needed to fix it…

I’m tired of being nice, I’m sick of it, no one else is so why should I be right?!?

I’ve got numerous dents and dings in my car from that parking lot, the first was when my car was only two months old, I was dropping off ky kids and wasn’t even in there for 10 minutes, it’s a very large mark on my bumper where even the paint is missing, but of course  NO ONE claimed it or apologized for it….