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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Whose side is time on, anyway?
So last week I promised our next little enemy spotlight, but that was before I realized that this past weekend was that delayed double-experience extravaganza in City of Heroes. (I could have checked a calendar, sure, but I assume they're a form of witchcraft.) Based on past experience, this week should be a recounting of my time in the magical land of double or nothing, right? Well, not so much. Due to a perfect storm of circumstances, I didn't get any significant leveling in, and this weekend is also coming before a dump of several new powers rather than just after. So unlike last time, this time I mostly just took part in other activities. (If you really have to know what I was doing, tune back in on Saturday.) So instead, I'm going to take the time to talk a little bit about Temporal Manipulation, partly because I'd like a bit of a do-over for the past weekend, and partly because I'm not sure if I like it just from reading about it. It strikes me as a set that could be very good, but in its own way that might be kind of a bad thing.
The Daily Grind: Do you share what you love?
Let's say you had a busy weekend in Final Fantasy XI. After a couple months of practice, your Dynamis group finally managed to down the Dynamis Lord, and you're understandably pretty pumped about that. Especially since you're also getting close to having another job at 75, which has taken you a while because you kept dying while running low-level shellmates through quests. When you go into work on Monday morning and someone asks you what you did, do you shuffle and stare at your feet while mumbling that it wasn't anything special? Or do they get to hear at least a brief description of what you accomplished? It's certainly a lot cooler than it used to be to enjoy video games, but some of us can still be reluctant to talk even briefly about our MMO hobbies with others. Sometimes we're afraid of embarassing ourselves, other times we just don't want to bother explaining, and at still other times we just don't think it's worth the effort. Where do you fall on the spectrum? Do your co-workers know that you enjoy frequent sharkish behavior in EVE Online, or do they think you spend most of your weekends and evenings in a catatonic state?
HP wants to be more like Apple
Computers, in general, are not cool. They are just silly machines, however, Apple manages to make theirs cool. Now, HP wants a little slice of the cool for themselves. They have hired a former Apple marketing exec to launch a revamped advertising campaign to get the kids thinking that HP is cool.I, for one, have always enjoyed HP's advertising. I think that for the most part their commercials are cool (and this finger soccer blog is lots of fun) but how many HP products do I own? One (I have an iPaq that I no longer use), and that's not too good for HP.Here's hoping they can get their cool commercials to give their products that 'lust factor' that Apple's have.Thanks, Shoaib.
