A few friends of mine are having women problems. As in they are flaky. The latest installment of this comes from a friend of mine who, honestly I’m comfortable enough in my own manhood to say that he’s an attractive guy with a killer sense of humor.

He’s been on a series of dates with Insert woman 1) 5-6 dates in, things are going spectacularly well. She sets up the next date, sets a time and a place. Promptly calls the next day and cancels saying that she doesn’t want to see him anymore. When he asked her why, what he did wrong she said that he’s not what she wants. So he asked her.”What do you want?”  Her response was “I don’t know.”

He went on a vent of a verbal frustration.

This is when I explained to him

Women don’t know what women want either. They have no idea. Tell me when she set up the date, did she ask you for ideas. Or what times? His answer was “yes” So she setup “your” date. She didn’t actually do it. You gave her the ideas and time frames and then told you that she set it up. Which is why it’s easy to ditch out or, or complain that you don’t care enough to do it yourself.

The fact is gentlemen; women don’t know what they want, they rarely do. It’s so rare to find a woman who actually knows what it is they want.

Ladies, When you ask your man “What do you want for dinner.” and his response is

“I don’t’ care”

He’s not being rude ignorant and flippant, he’s telling you the truth. As long as it’s edible, he not going to care. Don’t poison him and he’ll be happy to eat whatever that gets tossed his way. This is most men. I’m going to say most, because there those few that… eh well.  They’re more pansies then anything.  You know who I’m talking about. They are the “special kind” . Occasionally we have an opinion, and when we do, it gets overruled by you. Either you don’t want it, or it doesn’t sound good, or you had it for lunch.  Which that’s the other thing, we can have the same thing for 3 meals in two days and we’ll still eat it. We’re not picky.  But in the end we just learned to not give an option and not care because as soon as we do, you stomp on us.

This is evolution folks, this is where it has brought us. It’s like lions in the wild. The male stay with the pride and protect it. the women go out find food and bring it back. We’re still animals we’ll still eat almost anything.

but the difference and this is significant. The difference is that now we have a taste for Dijon or not

I dislike the clear lack of direction of what you’re supposed to be doing in Darksouls. (DKS) Yes, yes, Ring the bells of awakening. The one is in a tower the other is somewhere else. However, finding the direction to said location isn’t exactly easy. There isn’t a lot of direction. I finally went and found a guide in the wiki to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing or what to do next or just what’s available to me. This was after I wandered into Darkroot right after killing the gargoyles and getting annihilated. The coined term is “prepare to die” it’s very much apropos.

I have a few thoughts, things that I’d like to point out.

I like the adjusted endurance burden for rolling. 25% vrs 50% roll speed.

I like the more finely tuned PVP. Demons souls (DS) PVP did seem like more of an afterthought. Although the people who are PVP’ing in DKS I’m mixed on.

There was a code of Honor in DS. As an invader if you jumped into another world who’s already been invaded, you generally await the outcome. You wait for them to heal, you bow. They bow back and you duel fairly.  While most of the invaders I’ve dealt with in DKS I think are the new  players. (I like to claim that they are Xbox players as to discriminate or stereo type them, terrible of me.) They will come at you 2-3 at a time which is a rough fight. But this is not always the case. I had one instance where I got invaded 3 times in about 30 seconds while farming in the darkroot forest. One of the three invaders literally bowed at me while I was fighting and stood in the corner and waited. So I was only fighting two of the 3 that invaded me. When I killed one of the two remaining and the second took a fireball to the face which took him down to about 10% health; he Left – he seemed unwilling to go for a fair fight.

I had a clean fair fight with the one who waited. He followed the “code of honor” that I came to expect from Veteran DS players.  (and I still lost.)

But the point is the one that bailed. He Jumped ship the moment he realized that it was 1 on 1. He wasn’t looking for a fair fight. That irritates me.

I *LOVE* Anor Londo, and the Painted world. Absolutely gorgeous graphically very well done. My wife refuses to watch me play unless I’m in one of those two areas. The rest creep her out.

Upgrading armor and weapons is MUCH easier in DKS, no more hoping that the damn crystal lizard in 4-1 drops my pure darkmoon stone. I’ve killed it 30 times and nothing. Once you’ve run out of spawns of gecko’s they’re just gone and you get to start over.

I dislike the magic charge system, it makes sense in my head for limitations, but it feels wrong.  If you want to be able to survive everything character  ends up being a melee .

I’m mixed on the estus flasks.

I can sell stuff for souls! no more carrying around or discarding useless crap.

Encumbered limit; for how much you can carry has changed in a good way.

I don’t know if Parry ever existed in Demons souls, I never needed it. But I’m sure glad for it in DKS. I find the timing on it difficult to do, but when you can one shot a knight that would normally take you 3-4 backstabs to kill, it’s gratifying. It makes me want to stand up and scream “WHO ELSE WANTS SOME!”

Boss Diffaculty. DS Vrs DkS

Tower knight > Iron Giant

FlameLurker /Armor Spider> Quelaag

Man Eaters = Gargoyles

(and I’m told ) King Allant > 4 Kings

Many of the Significant bosses in DS were insanely more difficult, you could cheese kill many of them if you knew how, but the point is many of us didn’t for a long time.  Many didn’t until their second or third playthrough DS.

The Downward thrust when jumping off of a ledge is awesome.

In DS Black Phantoms were to be Feared at ANY level. Their power was insane.

Specific classes in Dark Souls is much more difficult than demon souls. A pure Wanderer/thief Dex Build is rough as hell. it’s a punishing act to level that way.

Pyromancer = Royal. Most things are weak to either fire or lighting; with exception of Quelaag, and the Ceaseless Discharge.

The catacombs are a bitch, Unless you are welding an upgraded Divine weapon. Which I spent the time to grind out the souls to upgrade one to take in with me. Watching the skeletons I just killed, re-assemble themselves, made my heart drop, and I had one of those “oh… @%*&” moments. This was a conscience decision I made at that point.

Snippet of conversation from DS vet Kahalachan As posted from the Atlus forums:

It’s also hard to say for sure if Dark Souls is harder. We know Demon’s Souls and developed a set of Demon’s Souls logic. So Dark Souls is probably easier for us than it would be the average person.

So while we may not have died as often on Dark Souls, we can recognize that had we never touched Demon’s Souls in our lives and jumped onto Dark Souls it would have given us more problems than Demon’s Souls ever did.

I am going to agree with Kahalachan on his thoughts. I think Dark souls is easier for DS vets than most new players because we started with Demons Souls. We developed logic for it and tactical thoughts around how to deal with bosses that most new dark souls players don’t develop until nearly the end.

When I asked a friend of mine who never played DS, but picked up DKS how he liked it. his only response was “&$* that game.” He’s not even made it to the gargoyles yet, he’s still trying to get past the gate. When I explained the simple way to do it he got really annoyed.

A veteran DS player I will say that I believe that  we do think and approach this game differently than most. Which creates some frustration when we struggle with something. But I think that our frustration is likely considerable less than what a new player would experience.

Overall I love this game, but there are certain aspects of Demons Souls, that I miss.

I was reading this  article yesterday, and it got me thinking about the group Anonymous. So far they’ve hit things that have not really hurt the public. In fact they took down another hacker group that did. I went looking for this to support my point here, and cannot find it now. I know it happened.

While The FBI and Scotland Yard may have arrested some members of anonymous, it only served to bolster their numbers, and they are not quiet about it. They’ve even been so bold as to outright warn Facebook that they are going down. Their reasons? Because Facebook sells your private information to corporate America. Because Mark Zuckerberg came out and said that Privacy is not important. Anonymous feels it is a direct violation of our own private rights as people regardless of country.

As I read the above article, some of their recent behavior struck me as strange. The basic content of the article is about whether or not Anonymous is padding Time Warner’s pockets. This turns out to be false when you do the math. This comes about because Anonymous uses the Guy Fawkes mask as their moniker. It is what, and how, they choose to identify themselves. The mask and the idea and the whole story is based off of a comic – most people know it as a movie called V for Vendetta. Which Time Warner owns the likeness to; however, as the writer of that story pointed out, While Time Warner owns the mask. Anonymous “OWNS” the mask, as it is, in its embodiment.

This is when it occurred to me. Anonymous will win. Anonymous isn’t the bad group here. They aren’t reckless vigilantes. They are showing us, what they feel, that we the people, have the right to see, to make our own government more transparent to us. Good, Bad, I’m not going to argue those points — that is totally based off your own point of view. My point of this particular blog is that Anonymous will win. They will win because, you cannot arrest, prosecute, execute, or assassinate an idea. You can however turn an idea into a Martyr.  People have already started to believe in what Anonymous stands for, if you attempt to kill that idea you’ll start a revolution. Scotland Yard, and the FBI made arrests, but from what I see only on the internet it only only served to bolster their numbers and increase their activity.

The snowball is moving down the hill.

History repeats, when people have built enough discontent for how they are treated people react and revolt, sometimes it just takes a couple hundred years.

If you do not believe me, do some research on American history and the civil war. We fought our way into freedom before, and it’ll happen again if things do not change.

But what surprises me, is not that people are surprised that I don’t like strawberries, it’s that people almost never ask what the bad experience was. It’s like they are afraid to find out. I think I’ve told this story, one time. This was because my wife poked fun at me for it at a public gathering, and someone else that I’m pretty sure was drunk and therefore had no cap on his mouth asked what the experience was. But aside from this single event I find this to be very strange. How many people have you heard say “No thanks I don’t like this fruit. I had a bad experience.”  Perhaps I should say “I had self inflicted traumatic experience which caused me years of agony and therapy.” Untrue but it would be interesting to see reaction.

But I’ve decided in recent weeks that I’ve got a handful of what I find to be amusing stories. These are things from my childhood that I should probably write down, for the sole purpose of writing them down. Maybe my kids will like them, maybe I’ll become some interesting and entertain semi-professional blogger. I have no idea. But here goes the Strawberry story.

Note: This is the long story, Much much much longer than the short short condensed versions which takes like 30 seconds to tell and still usually leaves people not wanting to eat their strawberry infested whatever that they have in front of them.

I grew up in a very small town. When I say small. I mean small, like a secluded used-to-be-a-farming-town-only-area. If you’ve read the Utah’s toilet Entry you know what I’m talking about. This being the case, there was little to no work for all of the teenagers who are coming of age and needs/want jobs to get out from under their parents roof to spend their hard earn minimum wage income on all of our ridiculously over priced merchandise you can get from the local shops and our ONE Movie Theater that only shows ONE movie at a time for two weeks. But I digress.

When I hit 16, I too was looking for a job. SOMETHING to bring in money I had needs needs to be cool that I could not do with a mullah. So I went into my local Job Service location. Job Service is now referred to as Department of Workforce Services… yes, that’s how old I am. I just dated myself. I put in some information asked for anything. I believe I even offered my services as a rent a grunt.

And I waited,

And waited,

And waited,

And Grunt work became available.

That July was one of the hottest summers for the country, records were breaking everywhere.

They called me and said a local Trucker needed some Grunt workers for an afternoon and if I had any friends to bring them

Faboo! So I called a Friend we met up and drove out to the house where we were meeting for our temporary employment. We got there and saw about 6-8 other teenager boys – most of them I knew by first name other I avoided, I was not looking forward to this already.

The trucker came in and had us follow him outside. He explained as he walked, that this truck with two trailers on it contains previously frozen strawberries. The truck and its trailers were en route to its delivery in Phoenix, AZ when its driver stopped at a truck stop — 20 minutes later he came out to find the truck and its trailers gone.

They found it 3 weeks later in Phoenix ; BLOCKS away from where it was supposed to deliver its now previously frozen goods. The truck sat in a different truck stop in the worst heat that AZ had seen in a decade with a freezer that had died. The trailers now contained 3 tons of rotting Strawberries. It was found when the owner of the truck stop called it into the police.

I think I could speak for everyone when we realized what we were doing everyone’s faces dropped into shock and horror… and abject horror that was not fully realized as we really had NO idea what we were truly in for.  He instructed us to follow him out to the landfill, he paid for gas.

We followed him out to the landfill which was 30 miles away in the middle of the Desert, in what seemed to be one of the hottest days I can recall.

He backed up the first trailer to the edge of the landfill, by the time we parked and reached him the smell of rot was in the air, and the door wasn’t open yet.

He looked at us and said “Hold your noses” and flung open the door. All of recoiled in horror. It took us all good minute to adjust to the smell. I forever have the scent of sweetly rotting fruit permanently stuck in my mind melted in forever with the heat. The trucker, just kind of smiled and half laughed and said “I’m going back to the cab I’ve got some work to do.” We surmised that he was going to go take a nap, and that’s when we realized that we were really on our own.

the truck was packed two palettes high, and two palettes wide. each palette was about 4-5 feet tall. Each Palette had cases of strawberries in layers, each layer had 9-12 cases in it.

After some debate it was decided to tear down the first one a few cases at a time until it’s light enough that we can pull it down and physically get up into the truck. One person had enough foresight to bring a knife which came in handy seeing that everything was wrapped in thick plastic. Two guys climbed up cut off the plastic and case by case started pulling them and flinging them behind him. Until it got to the point where they climbed on top and started kicking them out. Eventually it got to the point where we shoved it out with our feet. The Knife was pulled out again, and the next one as dispatched much more quickly.  We approached it the same way little by little  until both palettes on the top were pulled down and discarded. About 40 minutes later now that we were all  in the truck and the tactic had to change  someone had the bright idea of making this go quicker. Mostly because we were working with limited room at the moment. They selected the smallest guy (that would be me) To climb on top and cut off the plastic it off since that took the most time. while everyone else would grab 5-6 cases and walk them to the edge and toss them in the landfill.  The top palette would be pulled off when it was mostly empty because of the sheer weight, we didn’t want anyone to get crushed by it. The bottom palette when it was 1/4 to half empty we pushed off it the edge. The liquidized remains of strawberry juice while sticky worked as enough of a lubricant that it made it pushing them off possible.

This continued for over 5 hours. We didn’t even realize how hot it was in the truck until we got out to do the second trailer. It was almost cold outside in comparison The difference was we didn’t have the sun beating on us directly in trailer. The trucker thought it would have taken us much longer than it actually did.

We climbed into the second truck, and the owner made a comment that it smelt like wine. He left, and went back to the cab for another nap.

There was jokes about how this could be almost wine it was hot enough it was fermented. One of them said “REALLY?!” like this was BRILLIANT to get drunk and work. At 15. He reasoned that the trucker couldn’t get in trouble if he didn’t know, and it could be reasoned that it was the fumes. As the other guys continuously justified it for him he got brave and ate not just one but three. There was much goading and prodding to make him do it – and yes he vomited not 10 second later.

The smell got to the point where it was numbing. Everyone’s clothes were tinted pink and although it was insanely hot, smelly, sticky, and a two guys threw up at least twice. Everyone was in a decent mood.

When it was all done I think I walked away with $30 to show for it. Three showers later, I still felt sticky and dirty. I’ve not really been able to handle fresh strawberries since that day. It’s gotten easier over the years but I’m still just not interested. I probably never will like them again. But Then again, I don’t remember if I liked them before hand.

One thing remains consistent. Everywhere I go, I meet someone who has driven through Utah– more times than not I am asked if I grew up in Utah, I tell them yes, and they often ask where? I tell them “Fillmore” And 90-95% of the time the *FIRST* response I get is “Oh I’ve been there; I stopped to use the bathroom.” My follow up was “did you get gas as well?” Most of the time people say yes.

This is no exaggeration in that number. Yes 90-95% of you who’ve been to Utah have dropped the kids off at the pool at the Arby’s, Burger King, Del taco, or Larry’s Drive-in in Fillmore.

What amazes me about this is not only that so many people in so many remote corners of the country have not only been to Utah — but the only thing they have to say is “I’ve been to Fillmore, I used the toilet.” What does that proceed to tell you about how people think of the state?

Reno, Nevada has a sign that spans across the road that says  “Reno: The biggest little city in the world”

I think the city should Invest in a glowing neon sign that spans across I-15. It should proudly state “Fillmore: Welcome To Utah’s Toilet”

Me) “I love this customers name ‘Matt Damon’ I wonder how often he’s mistaken for the actor.”

Him) “Really? Matt Damon, that’s kind of funny.”

Me) “I had Robert smith earlier today.”

Him) “Robert smith?”

Me) “Yeah, do you know who that is?”

Him) “wasn’t he Joseph smith’s brother or some other Mormon thing?”

Me) “HAHAHAHAHA! No. He’s the lead singer of the cure.”

Him) “Who’s the cure”

Me) “It’s a band from the 80′s good music. I’ll get a picture.”

I then proceeded to find a picture of Robert Smith. I showed him the link below.

http://steveffisher.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/robert-smith-guy-style.jpg

Me) “I present to you Robert Smith”

Him) “… oh. I didn’t know he was Edward Scissor hands.”

Facebook won’t up and die, it might slowly fade into the background but it’ll stick around for at least another 2 years before it moves onward and people say “Mark Zuckerberg? Didn’t he do Napster with that Sean Penn guy?”

But unless google royally screws up, which I don’t see them doing, I don’t think I’ll be leaving G+ any time soon, although I don’t know I’ll completely abandon FB yet either. FB games are annoying as hell, the spam is re-rentless, and yes they’ve given us controls to stop it from showing up, point is we should have an option to have it NEVER show up.  The privacy controls that Zuckerberg sneaks in every few days and seems to randomly disable are annoying. Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to think that Privacy is relevant anymore. While, do a limited degree the man has a point, but that doesn’t mean he’s right. Anything that has ever been put on the internet will forever be on the internet.

Don’t believe me, just Google up “the way back machine.”  it has archives back to 2001. It’s frightening. There are things that I wish I could export, pictures and status’s conversations with friends. A search feature through my own wall feed would be epic, but it will never happen. He’s become disillusioned and short sighted and will slowly become irrelevant.  I do hope that to some degree that they put up a fight and attempt to compete with G+. Seeing that at first, Zuckerberg was one of the most followed people on G+ up until a few weeks ago when he either fully blocked or banned his own account – either way, it’s no longer viewable. Now Leaving those reigns of the most followed to William Shatner.

I only continue to use it to keep in contact with a few family members. Mainly my parents, because I cannot foresee them switching, older people find new media types to be overwhelming. In the end Facebook has been like going to work, starts out good, get lazy, Take a break, then listen to people on my wall bitch because it doesn’t fit their needs. FB  you BITCH! You’re lucky I showed up!

The child cried when they found that it had lost its email and G+ access. I keep referring the child to “it” because the parent wouldn’t give a gender specifically. Which brings into question of the Childs existence.

All the parent has to do is send in a paper that gives Google permissions to give services to the child — And the account would be re-instated. However the COPPA says that by doing this the parent acknowledges and accepts all legal repercussions and shall take “Full responsibility” of the internet activity of the child. The Parent in question is not willing to do this. If this issue is damn important to her then she should grow up and do the right thing, not get angry and threaten to sue Google for her being too lazy. The parent claims that by doing so you are just submitting to the control of the government. THEN MOVE lady. Don’t bitch because your feelbads are hurt because you cannot constantly distract the child allowing yourself to remain in a drunken stupor while your child surfs porn.

Take responsibility and be a parent, don’t be one of those that gives your child a computer and x-box then walk out and ignore them until they call you from Juvy. Because they were caught shoplifting a PS4. You are the type of parent that the rating system on games and movies were supplied for, you are the type of parent that needs be held responsible for your Childs actions or in actions due to neglect.
Don’t like the laws… MOVE otherwise stfu.

The Apple geeks argued with me. “The app store has more applications” I felt that was possibly some mis-informed information. Apple doesn’t release that information unless it wants to tell people how good it is. I asked to name an app that android didn’t have. They started listing off a ton, every one they listed, I checked the online market place through my browser. (something you can’t do with the appstore) And Android had them. then they pulled out the proprietary guns… and the android had the equivalent functionality. When they gave the argument that Itunes lets you manage your apps, your music your videos and uninstall and install applications. I introduced them to Doubletwist. Doubletwist gives Itunes like functionality, it’ll download pod casts and applications back up your phone and MP3′s. They retorted with “No way it has more.” Which was true when this particular argument occurred; the android marketplace didn’t have more. Not only that the difference in the number of apps that the marketplace and the appstore had was quiet staggering. 3 months later google is less than 50k apps behind. However, I felt the need to point that that obviously it had the ones that were important to THEM. The apple geeks. Which to me nullified the argument of the iPhone store “having more apps”. All arguments about the required use of Itunes was entirely ignored — which to me, is a huge, and valid point. I really dislike Itunes, it’s a memory hog that once it installs has several services that run in the background. Their response was “buy a mac” Uh no, I like to be able to use my machine. But the arguments continues on a regular basis. This has gone on weekly for months. so finally decided to do my own research.

First Android released October 22nd 2008

Market place went live on March 17th, 2009 with 2,300 apps Between the Google, and Amazon Market place they currently have an estimated 450,000 Unique apps (Unique because this is assumed they’ve removed apps that are in both places.) Applications can be posted without Google Approval.

Google (GOOG) announced its 4.5 billionth app download as of July 7th. 2011

First iPhone released on June 29, 2007.

Apple store launched summer 2008 with 80 apps and currently has 500,000 “approved” applications. These numbers are accurate as Apple released them when they have a reason to “toot their own horn”

Apple has a full TWO YEARS on Google and the Market place. Google is just 50k apps shy of catching up, at the current rate they will surpass Apple by the end of the year.

Now here are some interesting numbers

The android Marketplace On 17 March 2009, there were about 2,300 applications available for download from the Android Market. That number jumps to 80,000+ in August of 2009

As of May, 2011 Google announced the Android Market had 200,000 apps, whereas the Apple App Store had 381,062. In terms of growth, the Android market added 28,000 new apps in April 2011, whereas Apple added 11,000 new apps.

When apps are purchased from the iPhone appstore. 30% of revenue from the store go to Apple, and 70% go to the producer of the app. Apple has a 99$ fee to submit an app for approval in the app store. In addition to the $99 licensing charge to distribute the application (whether it’s a free or commercial app) companies seeking a proprietary solution will need to cough up another $200 ($299 total) for the ‘Enterprise programmer’. There were stories floating around my Facebook that people who submitted apps that were denied for “replication current phone functionality” Also never got their fee returned to them, I do not know if this is standard apple policy. This reason was the same one that Apple Gave to Google over the “Google voice” app which Google took Apple to Court to get approved. I had read once that it’s a $50 fee to get an update to an app approved. But I was unable to find any kind reliable source for that information.

With the android: Application developers receive 70% of the application price, with the remaining 30% distributed among carriers and payment processors (Google does not take a percentage) Google has a start up fee of 25$ for new developers, I have been unable to find any additional information on additional fees leveled to the developer for posting applications. The only apps that are removed contain pornographic and malicious content . That’s just common sense.

The difference, the open nature of the device.

iPhone:
To download an app to your iphone, download it through the marketplace or connect to Itunes. If the app is too big, (over 10 meg) the phone will not let you download it, over the carrier, wifi only. Over 50 meg you are not allowed to download it even over the wifi, you are required to use Itunes.

Android:
Download through one of two app stores, or go to the web format market place, from any computer log in with your Google account, find the app and push it to your device. Apps over 20 meg in size require wifi connection to download.

The significant difference? No Itunes. There is no proprietary software that you’re required to use. Doubletwist is there and people use it, but it doesn’t run in the background if you turn it off.

Google and the android is not that far behind in the terms of number of apps. The lack of downloads comes from the slow to adopt consumer base who are hesitant to swap because the iPhone is “easier”. Having owned both the difference to me is with apple I had to ask “What am I allowed to do?” With my android I’m asking “What can’t I do?” That question is the one that is overwhelming for most of the consumer public. Which, let’s face it they don’t want to have to learn anything new. they just want it to work.

That mentality makes us stupid, But that’s for a different rant.

The latest argument brought to the table, (again instigated by the Apple Geeks) is too pathetic to blog about, Which appstore/marketplace has more “fart “ apps. My only thought is. Who is more stupid? Someone willing to pay $25 to create and post 300 Fart Apps… or the people who pay $99 to submit a fart app to be approved to be put on the Apple Appstore? Which this argument proved that yes the appstore DOES have more… 1,500 more.