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A Pallet Swap Too Far?

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Check out this picture from Getty Images:

Ahh the legend of the attractive woman in the data center. This picture gets a lot of play, for reasons I figure have to do with playing on tech nerd fantasies (with said tech nerds associating themselves with one of the guys in the back)*. However, the picture gets SO much play that it’s lost whatever effectiveness it may have once had. Here’s just the woman on the banner for one of Microsoft’s virtualization sites:

Here she is shilling something on CDW’s page:

IBM also used the photo with their Director product, but they pallet swapped the shirt to change it up:

And here’s the picture being used in a print ad for PC Connection where they pallet swapped…uh oh:

For reasons unknown to me they also sloppily threw on a dress shirt and tie on the guy in the back. I guess they figured he was disrepectin‘ da honies by wearing just that white shirt.

* Though to be fair, the pictures use may have more to do with price than anything. Use of the photo can be had for a couple bucks, while similar pictures (like this one)require negotiating a price for their commercial use.

Exchange Student Notes

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    • Our Exchange student starts school today and I’m hoping for the best. I’ve gotten the impression that she’s sick and tired of sitting around the house and would rather be anywhere else; if nothing else than to take her mind off of her home sickness.
    • I can now feel my brother-in-laws pain with his new daughter. How does a dad treat his daughter? If you’re like me, you treat your daughter like a different kind of son. For instance, a good boy gift might be some fancy bacon, and a good girl gift would be….maple flavored fancy bacon. I came to this realization when I was sitting through ‘Twilight’* with Mrs. Sandmich and ‘Sally’. They were both glued to the screen while I played ‘God of War’ in my head to try and escape the pain of the two hour long teen-angst-athon. I’d never think to get that movie for anyone I know, ever.
    • Mrs. Sandmich went clothes shopping with Sally a couple of times and after she related the experiences I’ve come to the conclusion (again) that American girls dress like whores. JCPenny, Macy’s, Walmart, it matters not. For instance, when I was in Walmart last night they sold girl skirts that looked like they were part of a Japanese stripper school girl Halloween costume.
    • Speaking of Walmart, they were packed last night with parents and kids buying school supplies for the school year that was to start in less than twelve hours.
    • Chinese exchange student food hits: Chicken, rice, Japanese BBQ sauce. Misses: Mexican, drinks other than water.
  • It’s been tough to reign in my normally un-PC self. We have a cat that meows pretty loud when he wants someone to check his food bowl, I affectionately would refer to him as our ‘Chinese opera puss cat’. As well, it’s now an American past time to refer to substandard household goods as ‘Chinese made crap’, I’ve had to catch myself a few times on that. I’ve also had to take it easier on the pet eating ‘jokes’.

It’s rough dropping her off for her first day of school, at a school that our own son doesn’t go to out of quality concerns. I’ve never cared so much about the quality of the local schools but in some ways it’s worse to be completely entrusted with the care of someone else’s child. Parents know the acceptable shortcuts with their own kids, but there’s some pressure to not let down her very trusting parents who I will never meet. If it makes them feel any better I share their concerns.

I should point out that when we were awaiting our student I was expecting some type A ass. This would be someone who got too big for their own country and had to go to a completely different country to find room for their ego, someone who we couldn’t stand to be around and vice versa. I couldn’t figure out how else a teenager could undergo such a trial. I went to a boarding school, but I could at least assuage myself with the fact that I’d see my family every six to eight weeks. However, in what I’ve found to be the best hypothesis, I couldn’t foresee a student from a well-to-do family who’s only ‘in’ for higher education for their child was a forced (in a career sense) sojourn to the U.S.**

In a magazine put out by a missionary organization that I occasionally keep track of, a priest said that teenagers are teenagers the world round. So it is with Sally. She’s just a normal,reserved, modest, and respectful teen stuck in extraordinary circumstances.

*Kid Sandmich ran out when the movie was being turned on saying that he “wasn’t going to watch any chick flick”. “Silly boy”, I thought “it has vampires in it, how can it be a chick flick?”. Needless to say, the joke was on me.

**Sally’s sister has undergone the same trial I take it (?), and her sister now attends the university of Arkansas.

Psychonauts

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One would think that video games would be immune to ‘critic pump’ like many other mediums. For example I remember looking at reviews in the back of Rolling Stone back when I was in high school and I learned pretty quick that if the reviewer gave a music album five stars it was probably unlistenable bilge. Unfortunately video games are another art medium and as such are susceptible to the same faults. For example there’s one game that reviewers constantly chide gamers over not buying, but it’s a game that just doesn’t look very fun (though I confess to judging the book by it’s cover).

Another game that’s a sore spot for video game reviewers is Psychonauts. Developed by Tim Schafer, whose largest claim to fame is developing the original Monkey Island, the game shows promise but can never seem to escape the mediocre gameplay that glues the package together.

When I first started playing the game I ran into two technical faults that were somewhat beyond the foresight of the developers. The first is that the game runs too slowly to play under the PS3’s PS2 emulator. There’s some other games that do this, but oddly graphics power hogs like Final Fantasy XII and God of War II have no issues (maybe a reliance on some PS1 hardware functionality within the PS2? I kinda doubt it, but…). The other technical issue is that the artwork for the game was often too dark, and I mean too dark to see anything. A lot of games of that time didn’t come with a gamma correct, but many did (though the examples that come to mind are all from flat panel obsessed Japan). My hope at the time would be that the game would reward me for squinting at the screen while tethered to my PS2 via the controller cable.

It started out well enough. It was clear from the onset that the game had clever writing, memorable (if a bit generic) characters and a mildly unique art style. Once the gameplay started in earnest annoyances started to surface. Several of the ‘super powers’ had an intentional delay to keep them from being too ‘super’ and targeting enemies was iffy (a kind of hybrid auto-target that always seemed to target the wrong enemy). Later in the game when you’re sporting a bevy of super powers there’s no easy way to access them if you find the need to switch between them rapidly.

On top of that the inconsistent platforming and different-though-similar areas made the game start to feel more like a Spyro game that was put out for the original PlayStation*. The ever mounting number of collectibles seemed more like padding and busy work than actual game play elements (unlike Jak 3 which dared players to see if they had the mad skills to get the collectibles). The art and platforming elements also got old and I couldn’t escape the feeling that everything Tim Schafer was trying to do had been done better in the game Alice** (which looks better and was released five years before Psychonauts).

Another nagging fault included a health system that feels half play tested. You can carry health power ups but only three at a time, my first thought was that the damage dealt should have been modified so that there wasn’t one more piece of crap that you had to carry around. If you did happen to ‘die’ a certain number of times in a level you were kicked out of the level, and when you went back in you were…right back where you were when you were kicked out. What was that supposed to accomplish besides punishing players with the omnipresent extended load screen?

Towards the end of my playthrough I began to feel cheated. It’s one thing to waste two hours sitting through what’s supposed to be a great movie that’s actually a dud, but quite another to log 20+ hours into a very well reviewed, dog of game. Well that’s not fair, the game itself is OK, but nowhere near the quality of its hype. I must admit though that I got about 70% of the way through the game before deciding that it was a royal waste of my time and I was unable to force myself to play another minute of it***.

*Original 3D PlayStation games exhibited the same ‘wonky’, Tim Burton-esque art style though unintentionally due to the very limited capabilities of the hardware. I’d read somewhere that the PS1 didn’t actually support floating point math, which I find hard to believe, but I can’t find a corroborating source.

**American McGee’s Alice is an odd duck of game. I wanted to dislike it’s whacked out art for whacked out art’s sake, but the final weapon and the closing cut scene make the game worth sitting through.

***The whole experience reminded me of Grim Fandango, which happens to be another Tim Schafer game