8 posts tagged “qotd”
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.
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.
How many computers do you have in your house?
Submitted by Foomper.
I have three. Wait, no it's not that bad. Okay, it's a bit too many but hear me out here. I've got one that's a Powerbook 150 that I bought to take to France when I lived there. So that's from 1995, so it's pretty old and I just haven't thrown it away because I keep figuring that I'll find some way to use it for just plain old word processing.
Next I've got an iMac G5 which I sort of want to sell, but is currently acting as my media server since I can leave it on all the time to download podcasts, and I've got it plugged into an external hard drive for storing my music on. The last is my new black Macbook which is my main computer. I use that for writing, as well as graphic design, games and warming my bed up at night with it's hot hot base.
So three, but one is in a box and never used.
What food or drink do you love when it's cold out? (Recipes and recommendations, please!)
Oh dear, cold day food. Truth be told between living in Kelowna and Vancouver for most of my life I dont really remember what a cold day is like. I mean real cold like it was living in Edmonton where we'd get three feet of snow and still be expected to go to school on the bus the next day.
But from remembering what I enjoyed then, as well as my first few years in Kelowna when we'd go sledding, I'd have to go for the obvious answer of hot chocolate with marshmellows. That's right, it's not that original but it's the truth.
What's the last thing you crafted, constructed or created yourself?
I am the least crafty person in the world. I was actually thinking about this the other day, I used to do crafts in grade two and I was always terrible. After the first month of class my project would end up the teacher demo project so the teacher would help me out so that I could keep up with the rest of the class and end up with something other than a pile of clay when it was all said and done.
The last proper thing I've made was probably a key holder thing out of wood in shop class. Or actually the shark pillow I made in home economics. Both of those were in grade 8, so that would have been 1993 or so.
Go to one random page in Explore Audio. What CD do you see that you're most interested in listening to?
There is no CD currently out on the market that I'm interested in listening to that I haven't already. So my answer is going to have to be something that's yet to hit the store shelves, and in fact has yet to be recorded. I'm interested in whatever Matthew Good is going to do next, I think that all his stuff has been a very promising progression and now that he sort of feels that his first stage of his career is done and closed off with the release of his singles collection In A Coma: 1995 - 2005 it sounds like he's going to be willing to do a lot experimenting more than he's done in the past.
So yeah, what Matt Good's got in his head. That's the next CD I want to hear.
What or who is your favorite product mascot? Why?
The Flaming Lips. I want to love them, and their music makes me, but when you hear "Do You Realize" being used to sell cars then I have to wonder did the song actually mean as much to them as it does to fans? Sure I know it's hard out there to be pimpin' moderately successful indie / mainstream music to the masses but surely there has to be enough money to pay the hookers and coke bills to avoid being a corporate shill?
At least the Beatles have no control over where their music ends up after Michael Jackson sold all the rights to their songs to Sony in exchange for another ten years worth of a career.
Say what you will about U2 being corporate whores, but the only two commercials their music has ever appeared in was for the U2 iPod in which they did not get paid for but rather used it as a way to advertise their new album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and once for a third world charity whose name escapes me but again they recieved no money. Had they used "One" to sell dish washers, or "All I Want Is You" to shill mini vans to soccer moms then I'd be really disapointed.
As it is whenever I hear a song I really feel an emotional connection to in an ad I feel cheated. Like someone's taken something that used to belong to me and used it in a way I never wanted. I think artists should realize they can make music that's popular and is used in ads or they can make music that matters to people. It's not a two way street.
Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
I think I'd like to speak a language, probably either Japanese or Chinese because of the job oppertunities that would provide. Being able to play guitar would be cool, but would only result in me really wanting to be a rock and roll star.
