Week 34: Why EA Sports sucks

I’m disappointed this week.  Every year around this time a video game called Madden Football comes out.  And every year, like so many other millions of people, I buy it.  I wanted to have the game the day it came out and Amazon.com will usually make sure you get it the day it comes out if you pre-order a video game.  So I did pre-order it.

No one seemed to be sure of the release date, though.  Was it Tuesday, Friday, Saturday?  I was watching other people play the game on YouTube, but hadn’t received my copy yet.  But maybe those were just special copies for people on YouTube?  I didn’t know.  Apparently nobody knew.  And so I waited.  I was told I would receive my game on a Tuesday.  Then I was told I would get it on Saturday.  They the game didn’t show up and I was sent a message from Amazon that said they had attempted to deliver the game, but couldn’t.  Why couldn’t they deliver it?  What the hell?

I immediately emailed Amazon and they made sure the game was delivered that day.  Amazon always takes care of complaints, I think they’re a stellar company and have no complaints with them! 

So I finally had the game!  A lot of times people consider the Madden games just a “roster update”, but the football fans still buy them anyway.  I was looking forward to seeing how different the game was from last year’s game.  I “loaded” up the game, but couldn’t really play.  I used quotes there because the game never really seemed to load.  I couldn’t change the settings, or play anything accept a “play now” thing with the Falcons and the Patriots in the Super bowl.  Nothing else would work.  Every other game option said “installing”.  I began looking around and people said you just have to wait a bit for the other features to install.  I waited about five hours.  Nothing.  The game isn’t playable.

And so I went back and looked at some of the reviews on Amazon for Madden 18.  A lot of people weren’t happy.  Some of them were having the same problem I was having!  Others had paid for a download of the game instead of getting a hard disk like I did.  Their downloads didn’t work!  People were angry!

60% of reviews for the Playstation 4 version of the game are 1 star.  That’s pretty bad.  Now I’ve seen some companies that watch their reviews on Amazon and if a customer wasn’t satisfied, they were ready to send another product, or try and rectify the situation.  So far EA Sports hasn’t done anything.  No replies on Amazon, no offers to fix anything, nothing.  I’m very unhappy today!

We’ll see if things get fixed in the future with a patch or something.  Or maybe I’ll just have a worthless game?  Who knows?  Until next week, I’m sitting here asking myself why I paid money for this piece of crap!  Keep asking why!

Week 33: Why VHS?

Decades ago I had some of my long lost relatives take some home movies documenting family, things they did, and places they may have gone.  They did this on a very, very old type of camera.  I’m not even sure what the camera looked like, or where it is now.  They would have to mail the film off to have it developed and they would get back 8 millimeter film. 

I don’t even think they had sound for these home movies.  If I remember correctly, it was just video and nothing else.  I found a bunch of these movies as a teenager and also found the video projector that would show the 8 MM film.  I set it all up in my basement room and was watching the videos, fascinated by what I was seeing.  And then it all came to a crashing halt.

My mother walked into my room and saw what I was doing.  She went into hysterics yelling and screaming at me that I was ruining the home movies!  She took everything away and mailed it off somewhere so I couldn’t watch them anymore. 

Decades later I now find a bag of these home movies sitting on my living room floor.  I don’t know what to do with them.  Even if I could manage to watch them now, I would have absolutely no idea who any of the people in the movies were.  They would all be just strangers to me. 

I’m sure I could take these somewhere and have them put onto a DVD or something, but again I wouldn’t know who any of the people were, and it would be like watching strangers to me.  Moving on, I grew up in era when the VCR was invented.  It was a luxury item and everyone wanted one!  Eventually my family did get one and I absolutely loved it!  I could now record things on television and watch them whenever I wanted!  Eventually we ended up with cameras that could record onto VHS tapes!  This was wonderful and we could now have home movies with sound!  And we could watch them on our VCRs! 

That era seems like just yesterday to me.  We never seemed to have enough blank VCR tapes for what we wanted to record.  And we did plenty of recording, too!  Again, I have quite a few VCR tapes in my living room.  We no longer live in that era anymore, though.  I no longer have a VCR, or a camera that records onto VCR tapes.  So for a while I was looking at these things like I was looking at the 8MM reels, no knowing what to do with them.

The VHS tape I’m holding there isn’t labeled.  I have no idea what’s on it.  The only way to find out is to put the tape in a VCR and see.  I don’t have a VCR.  Thinking about it though, last Christmas I had spent about $120 on a gift for my brother.  It was a small thing that converts VHS tapes into digital media!  He tried using it once and the VCR he was using at the tape.  He was angry and hadn’t used it since.  I could go over and see if there was another VCR and maybe see what was on the tape!

So I did find a VCR that worked and did figure out how to convert the VHS tapes into digital files.  I can now play or edit them on a computer!  This was fantastic!  I had only taken 3 VCR tapes with me to check (who knew how well the conversion thing would work?), but after looking at what was on the VCR tapes, it wasn’t really anything that interested me.

And so another family member asked if I could maybe convert some VCR tapes for her.  No problem.  It became fun to plug in a tape and then start the conversion process ending with the video being moved to a computer and also one of my jump drives so I could take the videos home, too!  We converted some old VHS tapes that were purchased at Walt Disney World and Disneyland from way back when the VCR was king!  The earliest video I converted was from 1989 and was taken just after I had gotten out of the military.  My Dad and I drove around and did a video tour of Bullhead City, Arizona and Laughlin, Nevada.  In the video the cars now look so old!  You can see signs for a Steak and Lobster dinner for $6.99 and one for a steak and egg breakfast for $0.79!  That brought back such memories!

We converted a Walt Disney World trip planning video from 1993, a video about the Disney Hollywood Studios park from 1995, and a Disneyland vacation video from I’m not even sure when!  The Disneyland video still shows the Sky ride, so I’m sure it’s pretty old!  *chuckle*

I stayed up much later than I wanted to converting video and I plan to do more next week.  This is like a trip into the past for me, now being able to watch these old videos on my computer.  So why VHS?  Because the videos we made hold so many memories!  I may not know the people on the 8MM stuff, but I do remember the VHS folks!  Until next week, find an old VHS tape and show it some love!  And keep asking why!

Week 32: Why I went to Walmart

Usually on my days off I’ll make a trip to a grocery store called Winco.  Winco is a very nice place and usually has the groceries I need for the week.  I’m happy to go there and they usually have pretty good prices.  This week, I was relaxing, and tired, and figured I would instead go to Walmart and see what I could find.  Walmart usually has more expensive groceries, but they also occasionally get some odd things and I was in the mood for odd things.

For those of you reading this who don’t know what Walmart is, here’s a web site to show you a few photos from Walmarts around the US:

People of Walmart

Yes, it’s a bit low class, but there’s a fairly nice one a bit up the road from me.  I figured I could stop there and look around and then maybe go to Winco for the real groceries.  After getting to Walmart though, I felt a bit lazy and figured maybe I could just spend the few extra dollars and get all my groceries there for one stop.

First off, Walmart is full of screaming children.  This seems to be at all hours of the night too, because the place is open 24 hours a day.  I’ve been in there at 3am hearing kids screaming at the top of their lungs.  I don’t know what it is with people bringing screaming children out to shop!  There are usually one or two screaming kids at Winco, but not to the extent of Walmart!

Anyway, I begin looking around and stop at the egg section.  Eggs are a bit expensive here.  The brown eggs are REALLY expensive!  What the hell is so special about a brown chicken egg anyway?  I’ve never understood that?  Do they come from chocolate chickens or something?

I do need some eggs, but I don’t need eggs bad enough to pay for the brown ones.  Into the cart (or trolley, or basket, or whatever you want to call it) they go.  Next I end up in the frozen food section.  I come across this:

Deep Fried Chocolate Twinkies…that are also frozen.  Who the hell is buying this stuff?  Yes, that’s something somewhat new and original, but damn!  I won’t be paying for those.  As a matter of fact, I’m not certain I’d accept one if you tried to give it to me for free!  I don’t find regular Twinkies to be especially good, let alone chocolate, fried, and frozen ones!

There has to be better frozen stuff to try!  I go a bit further and find something else.  I was so stunned by the stuff I was looking at, I apparently forgot to take a photo!  It was Doritos Loaded Jalapeno & Cheese.  Not chips, but some kind of Doritos thing loaded with liquid cheese.  This I need to try.  It's a bit expensive, but what the hell!  There were actually a few flavors, but the Jalapeño and cheese looked good to me.  Into the cart they went!

Now as I’m walking around, I come across some new M&Ms.  I absolutely LOVE M&Ms!  These are new flavors, though.  The first one is called Pecan Pie.  I don’t think I’ve ever tried pecan pie before, so I’m not sure if I would like an M&M flavor that tastes like that.  I once bought some Vanilla Cupcake M&Ms and they tasted exactly like vanilla cupcakes, so I have to assume the pecan pie M&Ms taste exactly like pecan pie.  I’ll have to take a pass.  There’s also a White candy corn flavor, but if I wanted to eat candy corn, I would buy candy corn.  I can’t figure out why you would want M&Ms that taste like that.

Next I happened upon the chip aisle.  Now Lays is always trying out new chip flavors.  Some look good, and some look awful to me.  The good ones I’ll sometimes pay for and give them a shot.  Why not, it’s only a couple of dollars, right?  And so here we go, Fried Green Tomato wavy chips?  Or Bacon wrapped jalapeno popper chips.  Well, I’ve already got the Doritos molten cheese things in my cart, might as well try to Bacon wrapped chips.  Now to be clear, the chips aren’t actually wrapped in bacon, that’s just the flavor (supposedly).  It really would be neat to have bacon wrapped Lays chips, though!

Enough of Walmart!  Finally after getting a few other things I head for the check out counter.  They have one girl working and she’s obviously the slowest person they could hire.  I could have went to the self check-out registers, but they never have enough room to put all my stuff before I pay!  So I wait and wait and think about how my milk and ice cream are getting warm.  (Yes, I also bought some double chocolate Klondike bars.  YUMMY!)

On the drive home, I can hear this weird squeaking.  I start wondering if there’s a problem with my car.  Finally I realize it’s the damned egg carton that’s made of Styrofoam squeaking!  The eggs at Winco come in a cardboard kind of package.  I’m never buying eggs from Walmart again now!  That noise was driving me crazy for the whole drive home!  GAH!

So why did I go to Walmart this week?  I don’t know.  Actually, I do know.  It was to buy some more black socks.  I should have then went to Winco.  I’ll stay away from Walmart for a while now.  Until I make the mistake and go back anyway, keep asking why.

Week 31: Why is it time to publish?

Why is it time to publish?  Well, because I’m a writer, that’s why.  What would be the use of writing, but not putting your writing out for other people to read?  Now of course I’m certain to get a few reviews saying the writing is bad, and unrealistic, and things would never happen that way, but you have to put your stuff out there.  You have to suffer the jealous, negative people sometimes.  And maybe they’ll be good reviews, too!  I thought the story was pretty good.

So obviously I spent the weekend getting something ready to be published.  I’ll be publishing it as an “Indie”, or independent author.  That means I’ll publish it all by myself without the help of some publisher.  And doing that is much easier than you might think!

There is a web site called createspace.com.  They will publish and distribute your book for free.  That’s right, I said for free!  They have a cover creator feature to help you make your own covers.  You can even upload your own photos for the cover.  It’s quite a simple program, but I think it actually works damned well!  Here's the link to the web site:

createspace.com

Before going to createspace I wanted to copyright my work.  Now if you do a search for copyright you’ll come across all these companies that want to help you file for a copyright.  That’s bullshit!  Don’t use them!  You don’t need to pay $119 or more to file for a copyright!  Go right to the government web site itself.  The real link is right here:

U.S. Copyright

It’s a bit complicated to navigate through, but once you get everything uploaded, it will only cost you a $35 filing fee.  It’s not necessary to pay some shady company over $100 to do it for you!

Now if you’re from the United Kingdom, or somewhere in Europe you may be asking what the hell a copyright is.  It’s just an American thing that protects our work.  You don’t have to get one of these to publish a book, but it always makes me feel more comfortable when I get one.

Moving on, I went to the createspace web site.  Now maybe it is hard to go through these motions for your book after all because designing a cover yourself can be quite challenging!  What will the front of the cover look like?  What will the blurb on the back say?  Do you want an author photo on the back?  An author bio?  You have to make all these decisions!  They offer professional help for a fee, but where’s the fun in that?  Sometimes it’s more fun to design things all by yourself.  After several tries, my final cover looks like this:

I’ve got my blurb on the back (Which is of course very difficult to write!  How do you describe your story in a couple short paragraphs?  And the photo on the front is one I took myself so I’m not using someone else’s work. 

It’s been quite a weekend for me.  It took me around 18 months to write, edit, and work this story out.  That’s a year and a half!  So now I get to send my work out into the world and see how it does.  Hopefully it will do well!

So why is it time to publish?  Because my story is finished and that’s what you do when you’re a writer.  Until next week, keep asking why, and publish your own stuff!  Don’t be afraid to do this!  Get your stuff out there!