d T c : detoxicate life

Now I haven’t read any articles but the developers of candy crush have got skills. They modified the popular game of bejeweled into an even more addicting game by adding one thing: the +skill factor. The players of the game have the idea that they’re progressing through a game and that they’re using some kind of thinking skill to go through it. 

Hardly. The human mind cannot predict what candies are going to fall out from the columns. And actually, even before the game starts, you can’t predict how the candies are packaged (where they’re placed). Of course, random appearances are normal but are they really random. The people who make games have algorithms that create these and they can probably adjust the difficulty of that randomness. So the first 10 levels, you beat and take a while and after a while it gets more difficult. Gee, I wonder why that’s happening. Is it because of the additional difficulties (caged candies, jelly to crush, walls to blockade, malformed levels, self-creating walls, etc.)? No, that’s just a way to trick the players into thinking that’s the only difficult part.   The creators themselves can easily make you fail the first few levels (or randomly fail) by placing candy and newly created candy into the worst possible scenarios. You would never notice it and you would just fail until that succeed one of the times (and sometimes it’s early) so maybe you think no, I’m sure it takes some skill.

Haha, no it really doesn’t. For one thing, you’ll encounter newer levels (like past the 60’s) where you get a level in which candies will only dip to the bottom through the middle. No human mind, even autistic geniuses (or maybe they can but with trouble) would be able to read how the candies fall in those cases. And you would still think even with random candies being cleared, new ones pop out but they are still part of what the game creators made. And man, they made a good one. Such a popular game with so many levels (over 200) and new ones being added with updates.

Candy crush is devious and genius, deluding players into enjoying the satisifaction of their stupidity. I was also a victim and I still am (because I’m lacking with more interesting games on my phone lol). And I would even say bejeweled takes more skill. It’s more based on time and how good your visual skills are at capturing those patterns whereas candy crush deludes you into thinking the manner of your astute placement matters for shit (it hardly does). 

Of course, some of the stuff I mentioned could be wrong and pure delusion on my part. It doesn’t really matter. If I was wrong about the developers forcing you to fail over time, you still have to beat the issue of the ridiculous and random unbeatable placements. A true game would   let us know that there is always a possibility for every level. For candy crush, there sometimes clearly isn’t. In any case, they built a nice game that has everyone addicted to it (they could work on the guy who does the creepy voice. If it were Japan, they would’ve put some high-pitched joyous voice which would probably fit candy crush better)

I was driving my car to a restaurant with a close-friend and a semi-friend in SD. Then, from what I remember, we were later leaving some kind of museum or park. While walking, for some reason, my right foot was hooked onto a skateboard and my left was free so I was dragging the foot while skateboarding on a wooden bridge. When we made a left turn, I heard my friend freak out and then when I looked to the sky, it was dark and deep red like hell like nothing I’d ever seen before. A huge hellish totem pole reaching the top of the sky of the earth and about the width of a huge city building started falling down and dropping before it hit the bridge we were on… and… I woke up. 

one of the people on my fb friend’s list who i dont really talk to, did try to talk to but the other person makes it difficult and awkward to continue the conversation, is friends with some of my friends.

she posts pictures of her brushing her teeth and her in n out fries. 

man, social media and attention grabbing, i just don’t get this shit. next thing you know, she’s gonna be releasing vods of herself sleeping lol wut.

It’s been almost 1 year since I found my first job and I’ve already had so many doubts in my head. They’ve disappeared in the beginning but new ones have grown over time. When the work first started, it’s been the following:

1. Are you guys really a startup?
2. Do they trust my knowledge?
3. Am I going to learn a lot here?
4. Was this the best choice?
5. Don’t I deserve more?

I feel like I kind of got tricked on the first question. They told me they were a startup. I was wrong. They were a startup’s startup. A startup is where a company actually creates a product and works on it. I was doing contracting work with other people… not really your typical startup. But this always bothers me when I think of what I could be doing in an actual startup. There’s nothing more bothersome than doing contracting work  in some old code that’s been crapping out and layering on top of crap over and over. 

Second question has faded over time. I can tell they finally “trust” me. Okay…I’m still bothered by this. I understand the need to ask and double-check what I’m doing but there are certain situations where you just don’t have to babysit and review what I just did. So one of the co-founders, my boss, tells me to send him over my code and explain to him what I did. Explaining to him is already a headache because he’s not a computer science major and I’ve already been diving into the work more than he has since he’s doing all the business “planning” for it. And even after he goes through my code, he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on and has to disagree with me half the time. Pretty annoying, that’s why the fact that I feel trusted goes out the window. They say they trust me but their actions tell me otherwise. 

Third question, I have no doubt learned a great amount. I feel so confident in my abilities now that I could take on anything from web development, game development, to any kind of coding if I just spend time on it. Problem is I feel like I’ve already learned everything to the near max within less than a few months. There’s no doubt I’m still learning as I go but it’s now in trickling amounts and not like the huge impacting amount when you first start. In fact, I feel so confident of my abilities that it’s time to leave and look for a new job. 

Fourth question… actually I think this was a really good choice. At least it was a small amount of people and I was able to constantly collaborate with other people. But then, I start to think “Oh, I’m working with people barely a few years older than me, two of the three who have not even worked under experienced people in the field.” I had to take this choice because no one else was wanted to hire me but unfortunately, I want to learn from the best.

Fifth question. Based on my earlier thoughts, it’s obvious I feel like I deserve more. In fact, from the very beginning, I asked them if I was going to take part in their meetings (I haven’t). It’s understandable that I didn’t take part in understanding how they wanted to run the company. But when it came to things like how to deal with the contracting work, I didn’t get to play a part in the planning. And a few months ago, I swear I would have already quit if they hadn’t told me I would be a part of their new product.

And I thought that meant a lot… so I’ve stayed… But even while working towards the new product, I feel like I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s felt like slave work to me (since they don’t put me in the planning process). It hasn’t made sense to me that they don’t put a developer in the planning process because the one reading the code, writing the code, touching the code all the time knows what the fuck is up. And then it’s like I said in question 2, where’s the trust with what I’m doing? You’re not even touching the code so why does your planning mean so much more than if I did it?

Black people have made some of the best music of our time. Actually, they were the reason for the birth of great music. Yet, as they drive by me day in and day out, they listen to the shittiest music possible. 

I always hated the fact that I had a poorly constructed Asian name (because it doesn’t follow the alphabetic sound by its pronunciation in Mandarin) but enjoyed the fact that it’s a unique name. That’s why even though I have the name David, it wasn’t official till I got my citizenship recently in which I decided to make David my middle name. “David Chen”. Can we say most fucking common Asian name in the world? (Maybe there’s also Kevin Chen I guess but I’ve hardly heard that one. Last week, some black kid thought my name was Kevin and was surprised it was David)

Anyways, I’ve always enjoyed making acronyms for my name to keep a nice identity tag for myself: DTC.

Meaningful

• don’t take crack (it’s what I’ve used as a few of my screen names. I think it’s good advice)
• DeToxiCate (kind of a word indicating rebirth of my life since my accident in 2011 but it’s also one I live by when I come into contact with people of this earth)
• d

Hi

• down to chat (sorry brian, you always asked if I knew girls that were dtf. I only knew dtc ones lol)
• don’t they care? did they care? (no, they really don’t)
• diddly twat crap (if my friends actually read this, they could probably call me this)
• dirty tomato corpus 
• dandelion tutu celebration
• do thyroids contract? (i don’t even know what a thyroid is)
• dude taste cakes

Ok, game of thrones finished downloading. Byebye

I was on facebook, relaxing and I occasionally enjoy reading the articles my friends throw up. Nothing’s more interesting than something mentioning your race so I went to see this article: http://takimag.com/article/tackling_asian_privilege_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz2MjCquXZL.

Wow, it frightens me some of the comments I saw in response to that article, giving absolute praise to an article that seemed to represent Asians as a secret race representing the higher order of America. Note: this article is a satire. I wasn’t sure, honestly, because of the comments. And viewing his twitter, you know, I can’t really read sarcasm or jokes online, it’s very difficult to perceive. But why I can’t find it funny at all isn’t because I’m Asian. It’s because none of it is logical enough. I’m sure the intent of satire is blowing up the truth but there really is no truth in his statement and nothing funny about the remarks he makes (and I do love negative humor). 

I’m just curious about this Gavin’s background with the Asian culture because he throws out so many strange slanders at Asians. I wasn’t offended while reading this…. I was just… confused. Small statements like “An Asian can listen to rap music very loudly on a boom box while riding the New York subway without anyone wondering if they’re going to get stabbed.” I know he lives in NY and I’m guessing he saw an Asian listening to rap music very loudly but that isn’t your typical Asian. That’s probably your “ghetto Asian” who tries to imitate “black toughness” or someone who just really loves rap music and doesn’t care what others around him think. If anything, that quote actually counters his whole article because the kind of people who do that lack respect for others and usually consist of the lower-income people. 

But the main focus of Gavin’s article is our privilege. He says we’re overprivileged. Now, I understand and think I can explain the racist belief that Asians are “smarter”, that we are “too cheap and like to save money.” This is why Gavin believes Asians are overrepresented, that statistically we have so many advantages in terms of the higher income and better living.

Here’s the reason:

We’re immigrants to the country called the US. It’s not easy to just fly into the US. A lot of the people who came in from outside the country (like Europeans) have the money and the education to survive in the new environment. People who move to other countries are usually more educated in the first place. But there are also poor people who go to other countries with the bare minimum. Gavin would probably counter my point by talking about Mexicans but the truth is, they’re so close and that’s why they’re usually poor and come into the US as well.

But Asians also have poor people. And this is a part of why Gavin’s article is so ridiculous and lacks explanation. He mentions that Asians “need to recognize they got to where they are not by the virtue of hard work.” You gotta be kidding me Gavin. If you want to know any stereotypical fact about Asians, it’s that they work too hard. (Just do a study on Japanese culture and ask how much they work) The whole article, Gavin talks about our “privileges” but doesn’t explain where they came from. It’s like Asians magically held this power over American society. Uhh, excuse me, it’s a society full of white people (your people, Gavin) and if you want more Asians to be doctors, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because you thought we were the higher race And it’s not like white people are blind about it like Gavin mention (wow, how ironic, you make your own people sound stupid). Whites have a lot of smart people too. They just happen to like most of us and we happen to represent a small portion of the population) 

The guy doesn’t make any logical explanations for why Asians are “overprivileged” and the article just seems to be a nonsensical hate statement towards Asians. Gavin just sounds like someone who is completely jealous of where Asians have landed in terms of education and wealth. 

In terms of offensiveness, I feel bad for Japanese people who encountered his article. Gavin mentions Hiroshima and Nagasaki like they’re heavenly rebuilt cities due to American bombings. I felt like that was really offensive and ignorant. The struggles of cities like Detroit come from both cultural and economic issues. He shouldn’t be mentioning tragic bombings of Asian cities. He should be questioning why LA and the city of NY he lives in are so great compared to Detroit instead. I think in this regard, he should apologize to Japanese people. 

When other people mention cars to me, I always say that I know even less about cars than most girls do. I really don’t even recognize the proper brands that pop out other than the ones I’ve driven. 

Heh, so why are guys so interested in cars? Why is anyone so interested in cars? They want the speed, the want the horsepower, the torque, and the thrill of that combination. The roar of the engine and shiny flair might add more speed, power, and beauty to all of that. But when do you get to use that?

Never.

At least not around where I am: Los Angeles (well actually, I’m in San Diego now). But what can you do with a flashy, powerful car in LA? Nothing, there’s a shitload of traffic. Wait, what can you do with that speed in all of the populous, full cities of the US? Nothing, there’s a little something called traffic laws that few people wish to obey but still limit themselves within certain boundaries.

“speed limit 30? i know i can go 5 above that, maybe 10 if the street’s open. speed limit 65 on the freeway? I know 70 to maybe 80, i see people going 80 all the time so that’s safe to go”

Even at the speed of 80-100, you’re not getting anywhere close to where that amazing car can take you. My point is, everyone’s interest in cars is close to moot. You focus so much of your interest and desire on a glorified, expensive piece of junk.

It’s like as if you were a child, thinking you were president and could have all that power and control over the nation, but you don’t have that complete, absolute power in a democracy. Or becoming a billionaire, you really wouldn’t know what to do with all that money (Ok, maybe you can do something with most of it). I can’t really make a good metaphor with this one because I make efficient use of the stuff I get and even if it’s not efficient, I use what I bought it for. You’re never gonna buy a ferrari and get to drive it over 300 mph. All you can do is show it off during good days and then drive it safely back to your garage or get it ruined by the nasty parts of LA. 

And then there’s the leading cause of death: car accidents. It really frightens me (ok it doesn’t, but I can imagine what will happen) when I’m the road and I see people doing unreasonable things like curving at super high speeds or not noticing when other cars are getting in front of them. I kind of imagine these people driving cars like they’re walking in front of people and not driving. If you’ve ever been in the crowded areas of Asia, people will bump one another and not give it notice. This is what I foresee when I see these unreasonable people drive. It’s way too easy to get a license. And ironically, it’s way too easy to get a ticket even for people who can drive properly. 

So I ask again. Yes, you, reading this p.o.s. post that doesn’t show cars enough respect. Why do you like cars?

We all wanted to watch this for two reasons: action and the mix of espionage/recklessness with the new bond (Got any other reason? Then that has little to do with actual Bond meaning you don’t like the movie either). Action was pretty good until he got shot in the beginning. The action died with the lack of plot logic. If you don’t have a plot working, then honestly the action for the most part is pointless. 

The main issue was the plot. Strange, eerie, homosexual antagonist with mommy issues dominates the whole Mi6 and has everything under control and only loses to Bond because he gives it away? It happens like 3 times where he has Bond hopeless, shows up, lets him continue to follow him. And then at the end when they finally meet up near the end, he whines in front of the chief and then just gives Bond free opportunity to finally kill him. Not to mention, the female chief died and Bond failed the mission anyways and there was no positive gain in the end. 

Stupid. Either they promoted it too well with awesome reviews or people are too stuck in love with Bond. I even fell asleep in the previous one because I couldn’t follow the plot and fell asleep. I only liked Casino Royale. 

So how do you feel about fate and destiny?

I don’t believe in it, you know. IF there IS a fate and destiny, then there’s really a, you know, lack of special feeling in life. And really, why would certain negative events even happen, you know? You know, I…

No, I don’t fucking know. Stop saying you know. I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you. 

After graduating from college and during the free time of recovering from a brain hemorrhage, I ended up having too much free time. Even though I actually tried my best using most of that free time to be productive, it was still hard to get rid of that free time (Yeah, right? I’m so miserable with all my free time). But the thing is, it ruined my sleep. With all my free time, I ended up sleeping later at like 2am and waking up at 10AM. Seems normal but then I would do whatever I want and sleep again early afternoon. Sometimes at night I would sleep at 10, wake up at 4, and then sleep again at 7. Overall I just had a sleep-whenever schedule and rather than appreciating sleep, I found myself waking up and not being able to sleep. 

Now, I got a job a month ago. And every night since then, I’ve been dozing off like a baby. Now, I just yearn for sleep and it feels so good. Just shows you really need to have a good balance with free time and working.

On the side note, it always bothered me to hear people say how bored they were. Life is so fascinating and even just staying at home on the Internet, I’m finding new discoveries all the time. If you’re ever too bored or have too much free time doing the same thing, you really need to start giving yourself some kind of productive work to do. Makes sleep enjoyable and tells you that you’re accomplishing something, two birds with one stone. 

Finally getting a job

In the end of November, I was finally offered a job as a Junior Web Developer in San Diego. Once I got hired, I realized the fruits of my self-motivation and labor finally got me what I deserved even though my achievements of what I did on my own time were so little. What I mean is I spent so much time trying to look into what kind of work I could do that I jumped around from one project to another and never got much done.

But I did put what I could on my resume: 

• a ghetto camera-focused zombie-killing game with only the basics of movement with arrows and spacebar shooting and no map design (Slick2D and Java)
• a very basic user-based dictionary in which you could submit words (Python, Django, and little very little HTML) and your own definitions for those words

For those two projects that I put on my resume, I definitely feel like I could’ve done so much more but for some reason, it’s so much harder without experience and any support. But it just goes to show you, if you can put yourself in the same mindset that I did of everyday 30-40% relaxing and 60-70% telling myself I have to try to get something done to get my resume looked at, then you can get one… a job that is.

The Learning Process

Before I describe my thoughts, here’s a description of my position and the company. It’s a small start-up with only 3 founders, myself, and an intern. They built it as a company to expand their contracting work and soon, we’re probably going to try to begin our own product. And the cool thing is I’m their first hired full-time employee. In all my search, I probably couldn’t have found a better place to start than a start-up as my first job. AND to be the first employee. Wow!

So my mentor threw me into a small Django database relationship practice and I quickly went through it even though I did forget some of the syntax and structure. In any case, it showed how useful my own personal work was to speed up the process. And I quickly learned the git process, exactly what I wanted since these are basics any software engineer needs to learn. 

After the first two weeks, I started jumping into the project we were working on and attempting to solve bugs. Along with that, there was all this javascript and jQuery, tons of it, that I had never seen before. I had to google through events and how to “Inspect element” on the web page but I feel like after 3-4 weeks, I’ve already gotten pretty comfortable with finding out how to dissect and fix bugs. And it wasn’t an easy task, having to learn about an out-dated celery and finding out there was no way to breakpoint my way thorugh that. 

My Interesting Thoughts

I saw so much ugly code it could make anyone feel uncomfortable. This project has been going on for a few years and my company had just jumped into it for at least a year. It was actually pretty well-structured but I’ve now seen hands-on what code can turn into when manipulated by many different people. It becomes many uneasy blobs that I could criticize. And this is coming from an amateur developer.

I haven’t read those books yet on “Clean Code” or “Pragmatic Programmer.” They were so highly rated and suggested I purchased them but honestly, you don’t need them, at least I don’t. I bet they’re useful but as I started reading through the first chapter of the programming books, they looked like one of those articles like “Top 10 ways to Make Yourself a Better Person” except for programmers. When I think of those, it’s like self-help advice that I see as common sense. But I guess most people need them. 

My main point is that I already don’t feel like staying on this project for long. And it’s only been almost 2 months of my first job. I’m pretty quick to make these thoughts and decisions. (Side note: I quit my first hired job within 4 days. There was also another position I got hired for but never was able to enter. You could say that’s quitting in 0 days. I’m on a fuckin roll)

I just can’t wait till we get started on a new project, or OUR OWN project. While there have been times when I’ve done a lot of thinking on my own, some of the work has been set up straightforward for me by my mentor/founder. Why can’t I do these on my own? There’s several reasons. I’m new, that’s an obvious one. Another is I’m just doing what I’m told because I have no interaction with the people asking what’s to be done.

And just doing what is told is one of the parts I dislike about the job. A lot of the times I’m doing the work and trying to fix the bug and I have contradictory thoughts with what they actually want.

The reason for the contradictory thoughts is some of the plans are half-assed and it ends up like “oh, they’ll be okay with it for now.” or “It’s not worth the time to fix that. So let’s just add this” (even though I spent so much time on something else). I feel like that first quote delays the process because you’re just waiting for the bugs you know are gonna come. And I see that second quote as the source of those ugly blobs of code I mentioned earlier from many different people. They think someone else did a poor job on it and the whole project is so huge that they just want to add a small piece to it. This adds and adds and suddenly,you’re dealing with many twisted branches with an inappropriate coding design. 

So basically overall, I’m liking the job but I’m starting to learn why software development is so hard and how ugly it can get, especially with jumping from contractor to contractor. That first design is so important.

I can’t wait for us to start on our own project and see how things go from there! (Work hard towards the job you seek and something will happen)

Normally, there’s post-apocalyptic or zombie-infested worlds in movies and TV shows. This time, I dreamt of a bug-infested world by huge, oversized bugs. Humans were the bugs and I was trying to find a safe haven. I was searching and searching, only to find myself deeper and more underground towards a huge bug hive…

Random: I’m packing my stuff to move to SD for my first job! One of the cups I’m moving is a D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) cup I got back in elementary school.  

(_̅_̅_̅(̲̲(̅_̅_̲̅м̲̅a̲̅я̲̅i̲̅j­­­­u̲̅a̲̅n̲̅a̲̅_̅_̅_̅()ڪے~

If I never learned about DARE as an elementary school student, I wouldn’t have ever heard of drugs and I would’ve feared stepping upon it. I wouldn’t have dared to try marijuana. But I did and it’s not a bad thing. Thank you DARE!

Here’s my piece of DARE advice:

Marijuana isn’t bad only if you are strong enough to will yourself to doing what you have to do. If you’re naturally lazy, a delinquent, or just lack self-motivation, I suggest you stay away from it. 

Feel free to skip down to where I write about what makes a game great if you’re not interested in Diablo 3’s faults. 

Honestly, I don’t know much about the gaming industry and how they do business or develop games. But I do know what you need in games to intrigue people and gain popularity. People like different gaming categories (action, fps, MMO, etc.) but it all comes down to certain principles in each of those gaming categories. I’m going to first mention Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 Did Not Meet Expectations.

A lot of people say it was overhyped. Well, yeah, that’s why it did not meet expectations lol. And that was Blizzard’s own fault for doing the following:

1. Taking too long for the game release.
2. Not meeting the expectations for the game.

For #1, you have big fans who really want a game to come out so Blizzard, I’m guessing, is willing to delay since they have made such a big name for themselves. But then #2 stakes become higher. And even if they didn’t delay the release, I think it still would’ve been equally upsetting. 

And some people say with the number of games sold, it didn’t fail. It still did. With their big name and the fact that people already wanted to buy it, then it is going to sell a large amount no matter how bad it is. I’m not going to say it “FAILED” but in my eyes it did was a huge disappointment. I’ll explain why. 

Main Faults of Diablo 3

• Overly focused on art and game design
• Failure to recognize what intrigued players to continue to play Diablo 2
• Basic principles on what makes a game intriguing

No one is going to complain about the art and the design. It’s fantastic and art, graphics, and rendering has always been improving. But guess what? We really liked the old games with shitty graphics for other reasons. I don’t know if Blizzard just spent too much time on the art but in gaming, art is an extra. What’s the point of having a game if it doesn’t run as a game? Then it’s just art. A major mishap with Diablo 3 was the devotion to the art. 

Another mistake was not realizing what made Diablo 2 so fun. It was repetitive in certain ways but it was still flexible enough to make me want to play it over and over. But the elements that intrigued me were parts the game-makers did not originally implement in the game:

• rushes and leveling quicker
• skipping quests
• real-money trading system
• variety of skill sets to choose from

The players loved the fact that we could rush and there were certain shortcuts to leveling quicker. In the early days, your current level could go straight to 80 just by staying in hell but they eventually changed it so that you had to level with monsters around your difficulty level. But even then, players wanted to be able to speed this up (by using high level chant and having a higher level support them). 

What Diablo 3 should’ve implemented was something involving a new quest system.

I had a few ideas (thought up in less than 10 seconds). One is to create a benefit or rewards system for people who rush other people through quests. Another is to change the quest system. The only reason people wanted to go through quests is to improve their skill level. Then apply the importance of quests (not just gold and experience) to some other part of the gameplay, something like improving their item set. And while doing that, make quests challenging rather than just rushing through and doing the same thing over (which I will mention later)

Okay, so they did implement a real-money trading system. That really intrigued me but I got so bored of the game that I didn’t even make any money and didn’t have any desire to. 

The forced skill set system was a major loss. People enjoyed having their own skills chosen but if you create a system in which you must have certain skills be chosen for you, then people don’t get as interested, especially when those skills are just given extra addons as you level up. 

So What Makes a Game Great?

1. A varied game (allowing players more freedom and creativity)
2. Challenging (Either problem-solving for puzzles or strategic thinking)
3. A great story

1. Some people love the story, some people love the art, action packed, strategy, etc. Everyone has different feel towards certain games. But there are still basic principles the silly human mind gets stuck to. And one thing is we don’t like repetition. So in a game like Diablo 2 and today’s MMO’s, you want to stay away from pure grinding. For Diablo 2, finding items and competing your way to the top was one way to remove that. And there were challenging aspects for the gameplay with different builds you could test out. So a varied game that allows players to explore and test ideas is a big factor.

2. You need challenge in a game otherwise people will start getting bored or falling asleep. It happens in watching games like basketball or tennis all the time. A lot of my friends and I don’t want to watch certain Basketball games because of the lack of intensity or competition with low-rated teams. Diablo 2 was mostly not challenging. But the hardcore mode was. And for Diablo 3 development, so much could’ve been added on that side. The combat system could’ve been less focused on massive amounts of monster and more on strategic ways to fight the monsters. And softcore, hardcore, maybe more modes?

3. Did you like the Diablo story? I didn’t care one bit about it. Most people just followed the gameplay and ignored the story. Sorry to the diehard fans who also love the story but that captured very little interest for most of the players. But a lot of good games will have a really well-designed story to it. Because a good story is what makes people read books, watch movies, etc. A good story is an emotion-driving roller coaster that people just want to continue to ride. 

So many things could’ve been done for this game… And I have similar complaints to Guild Wars 2 about the art and lack of strategy

Side note (What’s fun about games):

So I barely learned how to chess so far but it’s got some parts to it I like. It’s definitely a lot better than the popular games that I waited for but got majorly disappointed: Guild Wars 3 and Diablo 3 being two of them. Both of them, I’m like what the hell, what happened to thought process during games? It was just a lot of button mashing and simple disorder. (I’ll do a future post on this)

So I been learning a bit about chess for a while and though I still can’t beat the simple computers (they think too fast and I’m still learning), I decided to play with random people once in a while. 

And then I get my first piece of trash talk. It was a fulfilling game for me. I put a lot of thinking into it and ended up destroying him in the end. 

NEW GAME (364280292) - deeteecee vs. catscroat(30 0 rated) (win: 41, draw: 3, loss: -36)

catscroat has joined the chat.

catscroat: nice try

catscroat: you will lose

deeteecee: thanks

deeteecee: prick

deeteecee: lol

catscroat: ha hah ha ha

catscroat: you’re done

catscroat: quit now

deeteecee: y u so mean

catscroat: I’d be nicer if you weren’t so slow

catscroat: it’s ok you’ll get better

deeteecee: ur only 4 minutes ahead

deeteecee: douche

catscroat: i see your checkmate

catscroat: close

catscroat: not close enough

deeteecee: i never saw it

deeteecee: lol

deeteecee: i have no idea what im doing

deeteecee: im just flowing

catscroat: not bad kid

GAME OVER - deeteecee vs. catscroat - deeteecee won by resignation (+41). Your new standard rating is 1076.

GAME ANALYSIS - Analyze this game - with your opponent | alone

deeteecee: you have a pretty big mouth

deeteecee: FAIL

deeteecee: LOL

catscroat has left the chat.

Job search e-mail response:

Dear So-and-so

Thank you for submitting your resume, we appreciate your interest in us. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your experience does not match our current needs.  We will keep your resume on file and contact you should our needs change in the future. Thank you again for your interest, and we wish you luck in your search.

Best,

Company

What they really mean:

Thanks for submitting your resume. No, not really, you’re resume took up some of our time when we had more amazing candidates around. After hardly any consideration, only a short phone discussion in which we asked you either a brain teaser that doesn’t really test your thinking skills or a crappy abstract behavioral interview process in which we expect you to have concrete answers, we are glad that you are not a part of us. We will keep your resume in our file to make sure that if you submit a new one, we will not look at it again. Nice try. Try harder. 

Explanation:

A lot of companies respond differently but I can tell without even being there. It’s like getting used to a certain social experience. You know how certain people, especially friends, act in different situations.

My job response translation is most accurate with bigger companies where so many candidates submit and just get rejected. But in any case, interviews in general, are so full of bullshit. Here are their faults (for me as a computer engineering major at least) :

Note: #1-4 are all tied in sync together if you think about it in the long run

1. Brain teaser questions and Problem-solving
2. Behavioral question expectations
3. Recruitment order (Personality or Technical test first?)
4. Recruiter (either HR or other company) contact

1. They apply certain standards and want certain responses followed by certain rules. On my most recent phone interview, they ask me the typical egg drop from 100-story building brain teaser. I accidentally answered wrong. But I didn’t freak out (which is one thing they don’t want), I just answered wrong. It takes me 5 minutes to think further into a better description afterwards. But in any case, I didn’t answer in the right manner in a very specific brain teaser. These things don’t exactly test your brain, especially when they’re common-placed. 

2. I got asked the question “What motivates you?” There’s two possible answers for me in that case: People and sources of inspiration. For people, I basically described that I motivate myself and move myself forward. But we want to provide work-related answers so I took the non-people route and stated the reason I chose my major. That motivates me. The stupid recruiter goes “That doesn’t answer my question.” But it does. Obviously, it’s a little indirect so I responded I answered that it was a little off and then went to the first source of motivation: myself. The recruiter then passes off to the next question and they do this sometimes because they don’t think you answered the first one right. Such bullshit considering recruiters are supposed to know how to comfortably be social with people in general. You can’t take a SLIGHTLY abstract answer and mold that into your understanding of personality? Then I really could not consider you to be a qualified recruiter. 

3. So which should we choose? Behavioral interview or Slight technical first? I would go with slight technical because that’s the easiest to spot when asking these questions. Even if people cheated on the technical test, most shouldn’t be able to answer it naturally. But I get behavioral interviews first sometimes. This bothers me over the phone for two reasons. 

• It’s an initial contact. Gonna possibly be uncomfortable.
• You can already experience behavioral testing during the technical interview. So do it after the technical and you’ll get a stronger sense of their behavior

4. As a college graduate, this frustrates me a little. I just finished the interview and realize, damn I really messed this one up. What happened? The recruiter asked me what I know about technical portions of the background but he doesn’t understand my background. I would be asked about what I’ve done and when I explain it along with the technical jargon, I ask myself if what they’re writing and conveying is what I actually said. (I had some clearcut examples but I can’t remember exactly what was said.. :( )

Suggestions:

I have none, the interview is a bullshit process. There really is no way to fix this. We are all cogs in a machine, a bunch of papers where GPA, grades, scores, and certain accomplishments mean everything. YES, things like GPA do have some measure of importance. But there’s limits and different situations for everyone. There’s amazing people out there, I just think more companies should open up to take more risk otherwise it’s a lose-lose situation and they’re closing off opportunities for both the company itself and the job-seekers.