I'm going to do some ratings for things I've encountered this week a la The Book of Ratings. I don't give letter grades, though. I consider a scale of -5 to +5 to be much more illuminating.
Toast with vegan margarine and peanut butter: -5 Tasted good at first, in a disgustingly salty and gooey sort of way, then made me feel sick. Thoroughly inappropriate behavior for a breakfast food. Notes: whole wheat bread, Earth Balance, Whole Foods 365 peanut butter. Avoid this combination at all costs.
Kingdom of Loathing: +5 Jesus Christ, I'm in love. I'm a level 2 accordion thief (that's Mariachi Larcenist, to you) wearing knob goblin pants and brandishing a razor-sharp trash can lid given to me by Michele. I've also got the Dolphin King's crown and a nice big stack of meat. I'm saving for a meatsmithing hammer, because I'm ambitious that way.
Amateur electronics repair: both +4 and -4 Jacob was mocking me last night for cutting apart the cord on my beloved headphones and being unable to splice it back together properly. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get strange and arcane filaments to connect with one another, using methods including fire, knives, pouting and lots of electrical tape (it's because they're lacquered wires, by the way, not because I'm incompetent). 11:30 last night saw them working perfectly at last, to my great triumph; 8:45 this morning saw them cutting in and out as my connections failed, to my eternal shame.
Elastica: +5 Thanks to my moment of electronics glory and the resulting half-hour of perfectly good headphone sound reproduction, I was listening to Elastica's self-titled album this morning on BART. What the hell was I thinking, forgetting about this and letting it languish unlistened for 3 years? It's fucking fantastic. They're masters (mistresses?) of song-craft. They collectively hold the high honor of being the creators of the absolute best song about car sex ever written. Plus, they're British. I think I'd marry them all if it were legal.
Outsourced architectural services: -3 We got a fax this morning from an architectural engineering company in New Delhi, offering us the benefit of their additional manpower, in full communication with our US team, working while we sleep and all at very reasonable prices. They offer drafting, rendering, modeling, construction detailing, architectural design and planning... in short, all of the same services we offer. I've seen the rate sheets we attach to client contracts and know that our principal architect's work costs around $150 an hour; our project managers and assorted draftspeople range from $60 on up. Theirs start at $6 an hour and top out at $18. I can't slice that any way to make it look good. Maybe it's exchange rates, maybe it's cost of living, I hope it's not quality of life. $6 an hour can't be a living wage for a skilled professional without something being rotten somewhere along the line. It's disturbing.
Posted by dianna at July 28, 2004 09:32 AMthrow that lid at the aspargus before it asparagustabs you! or at that bum-rushing bum. damn dirty alley with large spiders larger than the spider you may or may not have already fought with.
fuck, i love this game.
Posted by: michele at July 28, 2004 11:18 AMOutsourcing rarely, if ever, results in anything but communication headaches, chain-of-command headaches, legal disputes, shoddy work, and/or massive transition/transaction costs. Add to that a foreign country thousands of miles away, and you've got yourself a perfect little slice of hell on earth.
And yet...
My dad's new company (same job, but outsourced!) having been a thorn in his old company's side for several years now, has decided to outsource the services they provide to his old company.
They will now be literally nothing more than a services-pimp, a middle man that does nothing but cause problems and jack up the price.
Somewhere, Marx and Kafka are playing synchronized DDR in their graves.
Posted by: poot at July 28, 2004 12:06 PMi am level 4! there is a tavern now and many places to get my ass kicked!
be warned, people. level 4 is no place for wussies.
Posted by: didofoot at July 28, 2004 12:08 PMi am still level 3 on all 3 of my little guys! but soon, soon i will be a non-wussy somewhere.
Posted by: michele at July 28, 2004 12:31 PMHey, no abusing multis, missy. Didn't you read the rules and answer the trivia question?
I got that damn trivia question wrong. Stupid.
Posted by: Dianna at July 28, 2004 01:20 PMyou can have multiple characters. you just can't use them as meat gatherers and then collect all the meat to one character. or use them to make your clan bigger. so i'm not doing either of those things and it's ok. and it means i get to have muscle, moxie, and mystical little guys. yes. one of each!
Posted by: michele at July 28, 2004 01:50 PMme too! me too! didofop and didoboot! i like playing the different ways so i did one each of muscle moxie and magic. but there will be a strict no-sharing policy among my guys.
Posted by: didofoot at July 28, 2004 01:51 PMi'm so tempted to get some more little guys just to make the day go by faster. i could just delete them at the end of the day. it could just be for fun. sigh.
i gave those designer peeps $10. i feel like i've contributed to this cause. i could have a seal clubber and a accordion guy.
Posted by: michele at July 28, 2004 02:11 PMholy shit!
you'll get a mr. accessory for donating!
i'll trade you for it
anything you want
i know! i got a mr. accessory. he's sweet and upped all my thingies. why don't you just donate $10 yourself to get one? totally worth it in my book just because of the enjoyment i've gotten out of this game in the last 3 days. i'm not sure if there's anything i want enough to trade him.
Posted by: michele at July 28, 2004 09:16 PM