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Spritenaut 32

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Posts posted by Spritenaut 32

  1. Watched Tomorrowland early this morning.  Meh.  Wasn't terrible, but not as fun as you'd expect given the concept.  Wanted to like it more than I actually did.  Needed more of a "sense of wonder".  More sharply defined character motivations and conflicts wouldn't have hurt either.

    Have watched the three Star Trek reboot movies over the past couple weeks.  Really liked the first one.  2nd one was good but not as fun for me.  Third movie was definitely a step down in quality but still enjoyable.  Chris Pine is perfectly cast as Kirk.  Zachary Quinto's Spock felt lightweight to me.  Think I would have preferred Abrams stay with this franchise (though i'm not a big fan of Star Wars or Star Trek).

  2. 34 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

    Ah, I see. In that context, what you're saying makes more sense. The GBA (and later, the DS) was really the only console that focused on 2D platformers during this era. 

    I'd suggest Mischief Makers on N64 if you've not played it yet, by the way. Dope game.

    If you like 2D platformers, though, you're missing out by not owning a modern console. 

    Yeah, Mischief Makers is great.   In general, I'm a big fan of Treasure.  They had some great platformers fall between the cracks (Dynamite Heddy, Silhouette Mirage, Stretch Panic for the PS2, etc.

    What later consoles/2D platform games should I be looking at?  I'm open to suggestions.  I've kinda mildly considered the Wii and/or Switch for the Mario Games, DK, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

    • Like 1
  3. On 9/10/2018 at 11:49 PM, Smelly McUgly said:

    There are a lot of open-world 3D platformers? Please name them. ?

    On the other hand, not a week goes by on the Switch eShop store with about eleventy-billion 2D platformers coming out.

    Lol, I've never looked at the Switch store.  I own 9 consoles, but nothing more recent than the original Xbox/PS2.  

    Right now, I'm deep into PS1 side scrollers.  The first Klonoa game, Oddworld, original Rayman, Skullmonkeys, etc.

    The are so many games from the 4th.  5th, 6th generation that I want to play or collect that I may never get to the 7th & 8th generations.

  4. 3 hours ago, RIPPA said:

    As with everything - the truth probably lives in the middle of all the stories

    There are stories she had heat with every single woman in the locker room at one point (complete with Lita throwing her out of the locker room at one point)

    There was her relationship with Batista which may or may not have been when her and Morrison were dating (and I can't remember if Batista was dating someone at the time)

    Plus she is injury prone

    Again - time heals all wounds. Remember no one though Maria would return to the WWE as long as the Bellas were around but she came back.

    Wasn't the stink about Melina-Batitsta that Dave was still married at the time and his wife was going through cancer treatments?

    And i think she was still with Morrison at the time.

  5. Actually I think I'm going to go out tonight and see about buying the Intern.  Like I said, it has it's flaws, but watching the leads interact was great and it was just a gentle slice-of-life dramedy.  More I think about it, more I like it.  

    I think the biggest flaw was running time.  It ran almost 2 hrs and there's not really that much plot.  I would probably have liked it better if they cut almost every scene with the supporting cast and trimmed the running time back to 90 or 100 min.  The stuff with the nebbish office workers was time-wasting, at best.  I kinda liked Deniro's romance with the masseuse and it took up very little screen time, but the scene where there first date is to a funeral was awfully contrived.

    The subplot with the husband's affair was alright and gave the story some needed oomph, but the actor playing her husband made almost no impression on me and the wife and I couldn't decide which was more far-fetched: that that dude would get Anne Hathaway, or that that dude's character would be able to hold onto to a workaholic company president (in the story, the husband gave up his career to become the caregiver for their young daughter so Hathaway's character could run her company.  In most of his scenes, he's kinda messy and wearing jeans and a shirt with food/paint/stains on it).

  6. Wife and I watched The Intern last night.  Not really a great movie, but we enjoyed it an awful lot.  It's works really well when Hathaway and Robert DeNiro are on-screen together, not so much when it separates them and gives time to the supporting cast.  Which is fine, because most of the movie is Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro playing scenes together.

    We loved the first hour, aside from some cornball old age jokes during DeNiro's character's job interview ("I see you went to Northwestern?  Do you remember what you majored in?"  Ugh).  Second hour gets off track with some uninteresting subplots that are probably only there to pad the running time.  The wacky hijinks with the four employees driving over to steal the mother's computer probably should have been in a different movie.  Tonally, it's way out of whack.

    Some of the plotting is contrived (the idea that an internet company that sells trendy young person clothes would suddenly decide to start an intern program for senior citizens seems really unlikely), but it was fun to watch the two stars.  And Hathaway is insanely likable (and gorgeous) in the movie.  

    Probably my favorite of DeNiro's recent 'old guy' roles.

    • Like 1
  7. Finally watched Baby Driver.  KInda hated it.  There comes a point in the movie where I wanted to punch Baby in the face for being such a passive idiot and causing so much carnage around him. I never had a lot of sympathy for him because he goes along with events so easily and seemed to mostly offer weak resistance.  Basically, he wreaks a lot of havoc by being passive.

    I kinda sympathized with Jon Hamm's character during the last 20-30 minutes.  Don't think that's what the writers were going for.

     

    • Like 2
  8. 4 hours ago, The Natural said:

    At the halfway mark of Batman: The Cult. It's one of the most unique Batman books. It's one for mature readers like The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

    The 1980s and 2006-2016 are my favourite years for Batman comic books.

    Dear God, I forgot the Cult was even a thing.  I really need to go back and reread it.  I remember liking it a great deal at the time, but I haven't read since the issues originally came out.

    I kinda miss prestige format.  Nice format and a steady stream of great books.

  9. Betsy, do you even know what i do for a living?

    I was going to have to work more closely to her.  On a project we haven't started yet.  We've never worked on the same project team otherwise.  Honestly, most of the time, I have minimal interaction with her unless I go out of my way to talk to her.

    I had to go out of my way to observe her this week.  She's been working at a client's for the past several weeks.  Typically, the audit team comes into (our) office in the morning, catches up on some of their other work, and at some point goes over to client's office, then they come back to the office to check in at end of day.  A different partner oversees the audit team and they check in with him at the end of the day, not me.  When I see the audit team members, i generally just ask generally "how's it going over there" or make small talk with them.  Not every member of the work team goes to the client's office every single day, and most of the time, they don't spend all day over there.  In most cases, we're doing work for more than one client simultaneously and the day gets split up between a couple assignments depending on deadlines, client availability, etc.  Even when my staff is working out of the building, I see plenty of them at the beginning and end of the day.  And I usually try to go out of my way to be available and visible when people are in the office.  Again, it's 30 people working on a bunch of different projects.  I'm not personally involved in every project.  Plenty of people in the firm technically work for me, but report to someone else.  Those people mostly see in the early AM and at the end of the day 

    I did see some of this stuff.  And I heard some things about going-ons at the client's office, but, honestly, I didn't think it was that big a problem.  I kinda thought it would sort itself out.  The client in question usually strikes me as fairly laid-back and the other members of the project team are good employees that don't need a partner hovering over them.  I'm not sure complaining about a woman being slow to get paperwork pulled together due to a death is that much different from turning around to read an email while a co-worker is sobbing about the death of her cat or being told a co-worker went to the ER and shrugging it off without asking why or if they're ok.  Except, of course, that stuff happened in our office, not a client's worksite.

    Zeidler's decided I'm the bad guy here.  Fair enough, though what I've typed her probably gives him about 5% knowledge of the issue.  I've probably handled the whole situation wrong.  Including coming on here to vent.  Lol, that's one mistake that's easily correctable.  I rarely come into Land of Confusion.  Guess I should stick to the other forums.  I'm actually thinking about trying to resolve the situation without anyone losing their job, but, if I do, I probably won't be back to post about it.

    Anyway, thanks for the input.  I did get some useful suggestions out of it.

    • Like 1
  10. She will most likely be fired next week,  Not by me.  Numerous people received an email yesterday from a major client.  The employee in question has been working at the client's office for the past several weeks as part of an audit team.  Basically, the client blasted the woman for being rude and obnoxious to his staff and questioned her professionalism and competence.  Apparently, the issue had been building for a couple weeks and hit a head when our employee got into an argument with one of his employees Friday.  His employee left work suddenly after learning of a death in the family.  His employee then came back at the end of the day to get the purse she left behind, and our employee took the opportunity to complain because the woman hadn't pulled together some records our employee had requested (she was aware of the death).  The client kinda implied that we should not only not send her back to his workplace, we should fire her.

    The email contained an impressively long list of complaints considering our employee has only been there a couple weeks.  Client sent the email to the three partners, the other members of her audit team, a few other employees, and several outside email addresses.  At least one of the outside email addresses belongs to another client.

    We're going to meet with her tomorrow, but I can't imagine she survives the meeting.  My partners have no tolerance for her and I'm skeptical there's much upside to me leaping to her defense.  For one thing, her co-workers seem to think she has worn out her welcome, so I feel like I should defer to their wishes.  It feels weird to not back one of my employees, though.  My instinct is usually to have my employee's back and hash out any problems privately.  This isn't the first time we've had to fire someone, but those were usually for more clear-cut reasons (poor work habits, lack of discretion with sensitive company info, etc.)

     

  11. Good luck.  Change is hard, but it can be done.

    I've gone out of my way this week to try to get to know the employee I talked about earlier - and observe her with her co-workers.  LOl, be careful what you wish for.  Now I'm sorta wondering if the person is just a bit of a jerk. She's not exactly unfriendly to her co-workers, more like oblivious.  People talk to her and she either just responds with some short answer that shuts down the conversation or she shows no empathy or interest in what the person said and the other person fidgets a bit and walks away.  She doesn't seem to do the little things that make social interactions work.  Or make other people want to make them work.

    At times, she seems very outgoing when she wants to be. But she turns it on and off like a light switch.   I can't figure out what the issue is.  She seems massively over-stressed.  So.... just a jerk, unhappy at work, or wound too tight and heading for a meltdown?

    The issue is more complicated now than it was a week ago.  The firm has around 30 employees and is co-owned by three partners - me and two other people.  I tend to handle a lot of human resources stuff because, of the partners, I'm probably most interested in employees being happy.  I definitely spend the most time talking to employees about things outside of work.  I left a pretty good job to start my own firm, and, as a boss, I'm one of those overly optimistic sorts that wants everyone to be satisfied with their job.  I didn't go out on my own to start a drudge factory where the workers trudge to work, then sadly trudge home and try to forget about the office for 12 hours or so.   I'm not thrilled this person doesn't seem to like me.  I'm less thrilled she doesn't seem to like her co-workers.  

    And the idea that she's so over-stressed by work that it's making her miserable really sucks because, ultimately, I'm kinda responsible for that.  If it's work that's making her like this, it's at least partially my responsibility to figure that out and fix it.   

    So, yeah, this now seems like it's becoming a work issue.  That probably means Zeidler is not going to approve of how I try to handle the situation.

     

     

     

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