Better by design

This is an internal company video made by Microsoft to help energize their sales team for selling the, flagging, Microsoft Vista.  Now Rogers Wireless has some cheesy internal training stuff, as do most companies, but this has to take the cake.  It feels like it was made, I don't know when Born in the USA was released in 1984.

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It's been one of those weeks where being a sea otter would probably have been a lot cooler than being me.  I started off the week with an interview with a company that I've wanted to work for nearly my entire life and ended it not only not getting one of the 100+ jobs on offer, but also barely holding onto the job that I've got now. 

In a measured attempt not to get myself into any more trouble, or burn bridges or do anything silly, I'm keeping mum on things for a bit but I'll be offering some explanation soon.  Until then I can just wish that I were a sea otter, because let's face it that's gotta be a pretty sweet life.

Projector: Capitol Theatre in Westbank

I had a dream about threading film through the projector at the Uptown Theatre last night.  I had stopped in to say hello to Katie and everything was going to Hell because she had not threaded up properly and Rick had already gone home.  So seriously I dreamed of threading up the left projector at the now defunct Uptown for what seemed like half an hour. 

I'd get the film playing and get Katie to call everyone back to their seats and then the film would wrap and I'd have to go back through the entire process again to find where she had fucked it up. 

Now I wake up with a massive headache after that nightmare.  And it was a nightmare because I had to force myself awake just as I do when I have nightmares.  What a way to spend a night's sleep, working for free for Landmark.

Note:  This is a picture of the projector at the Capital Theatre in Westbank. The Uptown Theatre projectors were much older.

What was the worst job you ever had?
Submitted by salaryman.

I used to work at the Paramount Theatre in Kelowna.  I loved the job, but the pay was basically minimum wage.  The only time I got a raise was when the provincial NDP government gave me one.  Still the job was good, and I had fun for the most part.  For a month however I had the worst work experiance of my life.

The theatre and its sister theatre the Uptown were cleaned by an elderly Italian couple.  After the last show they would show up, generally around two in the morning, and work all night to have the theatre cleaned for the day.  Giovani and Lousia were their names and we rarely had any interaction with them but when we did it was generally accepted that Lousia was nice and Giovanni was not.  One year Lousia went on holidays to visit her relatives for a month and they needed to find someone to help Giovanni while she was gone.  I was asked, generally because I never said no to anything, and told that if I helped him out I'd make my minimum wage but it would be under the table so I'd save tax money.  It was the summer and I didn't have school so I agreed.

So I agreed and was told to arrive at the theatre at a one o'clock when we would begin.  Working late shifts your body adapts to the schedual and your day simply becomes the night.  The trouble was I was trying to keep the job from messing up my enjoyment of the summer holidays so I did not alter my schedual at all, except to sleep less.  So I would show up at work in the early hours and work until about noon, then I'd sleep maybe until five before getting up to go back to work.

The work too was unpleasent, not only because I just really did not like picking up after people and washing toliets but also because Giovanni would yell at me if he thought I wasn't going fast enough, or doing a good enough job.  Because of that I did not talk to him, he wasn't a talker anyway, and so for eight hours a day we'd work in silence. 

Halfway through my time I just gave up trying to have a social life, I was too tired all the time and so I would simply work and then go home and watch television and go to bed.  My whole life became cleaning the damn theatres, and eventually I started dreaming about it.  Now there was no escape, as even in my dreams the Italian janitor was shouting at me.

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In the world of retail Christmas is the season to be jolly, because the holiday rush makes up a major component of nearly every store's yearly revenue.  The holidays are when the dollars leave the wallet, and the customers leave ladden down with packages.  So why is my store so slow?

Oh there's been a slight increase in traffic into the store, but nothing like our summer months.  Sales are down, activations are generally down and most of the people who are coming into the store are either coming in with problems or just doing the regular daily business of owning cell phones.

The trouble with cell phones and Christmas is that they're kind of a shitty gift.  They're great if you're a parent buying you kid a phone, because you're going to be paying for their contract anyway, but for almost anyone else it's really bad.  Why?

First off most phones are hundreds of dollars cheaper on a contract than they are to just buy.  So why buy someone something for $500 that they can get for $75 on their own?  To get it at that cheaper price requires a contract but very few people want to be giving someone a three year comitment to a monthly payment plan. 

Santa: "Hello Timmy I got you a new cell phone.  It's just going to cost you $43 a month for the next three years."

Timmy: "Fuck you Santa."

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.

5) James Bond: Golden Eye - Nintendo 64

Putting this in the fifth position was hard, because I think it's might be my all time favorite video game.  The multi-player was great as was the single player.  I just loved the first level, and it was by far my favorite level ever in video games.  It was so nice to see the movie so closely replicated in a game.  This was pretty much the perfect first-person shooter.

4) NHL 2004 - Playstation 2

Delme, Cass and I must have spent an entire semester locked in Delme's basement playing EA's NHL series.  It's hard to pick one, but the 2004 was probably the best and the first of the last generation of video game systems.  It was mind blowing and such a step up from the Nintendo 64 games that I was used to.  Now I'd argue that NHL '07 is a better game, but it's not controlling my life anything near what it would have three years ago.

3) Football Manager - PC/Mac

I have lost months to Football Manager, formerly called Championship Manager.  It's a game that lets you manage a football (soccer) team.  There's little in the way of graphics, it's still all text based but it is way too involving.  I've managed Arsenal and taken them to the top of Europe and turned them into a dominant force in Europe.  I've built a team based on old warhorses and then raised a new generation of talent to carry the mantle. 

It's not a game, it's a lifestyle.

2) Marvel Ultimate Alliance - XBox 360

My reservation on putting this game so high rests only in that it's such a new game.  Less than a month has gone by since I picked it up, I've passed it and I'm playing again.  I enjoyed the online compatibility, though I've mainly played one player, and even now I'm looking to get home to continue on my second time through.  It's not a new style of game, it closely follows the gameplay used in the X-Men Legends games, but its fun and it captures the spirit and style of a lot of my favorite comic books.  It's the best comic book game out there, and thankfully it's not a Street Fighter style game but a good adventure one.

1) Super Mario Brothers 3 - Nintendo

It was hard to pick the best, or my favorite, but SMB3 is probably it.  I don't think I ever looked forward to a game as anxiously as I did the third Mario Brothers game, the idea that you could fly with a racoon hat was incredibly exciting.  I loved it and it might be the only Mario game I've ever bothered to complete.  It's still reall fun, though the old Nintendo games are quite unforgiving and harder than you'd expect.  I remember this game scaring my young cousin Kyle because of the skeleton turtles, and that was at least two years after we'd bought it which means we were still playing it.

Excellent game.