Slow Day = Time to Post

Today I am not in Universal City. I am in Culver City at a business writing training class. Why? In short, my office has a contract with an educational/training group which allows CBRE’s employees to take classes on various topics until the office’s pre-purchased credits are consumed. Since my future roles at CB may include more writing, it was suggested hat I take this class (even though Communications was my major in college) and in truth, I thought I could learn something new or at the least get a good review out of it. So here I am today and it seems like a basic English composition I would have taken back in high school–the sad thing about this class is, according to the instructor, that what we would have considered high school level English even a few years ago is now too high for today’s youth. Due to the advent of IM’ing, shorter attention spans, and teachers with horrible English skills, the quality of written English coming from our proud nation is in a rapid decline… which is good for me because, as sad as it is, being capable of writing English well is fast becoming a commodity.

On a separate note, which has some sense of irony in it, he’s reiterated to us the rule of 80-20. For those of who who are unfamiliar with this, it breaks down to “20% of your work will yield 80% of your results”. So in a company, 20% of the company’s products/services will yield 80% of its profits. This is not a hard rule but it’s a relative truth. So, with that, I will listen to only 20% of the instructors’ talk an probably take away 80% of this class (I’m being optimistic). Anyway, on with my actual post…

So while it’s been over two weeks since my last post, not surprising, not much has happened that of any importance… so I will simply ramble for the next few paragraphs (I’m surprised my cat calls from Garbage Men post didn’t elicite more responses… maybe I’ve lost some readers since moving my blog location?)

Two weeks ago I went to Video Games Live at the Hollywood bowl with Bruce, Dave Ting and other geeks like myself. It was an ok concert and while I did enjoy it, I guess I was also a bit disappointed at the same time. I’m not sure I’d attend it again if it comes back next year unless I know in advance what the playlist includes. Why? Well, other than the classic video game medley and the Video Game Pianist’s solo, there was nothing new or impressive at the concert. All renditions were almost exactly the same as what you can get on a CD or online. I admit that this is a sensitive topic because sometimes the re-imagining of a musical piece may please some and not others, but sticking to the original is like a safe catch all. Next year, if they return, I hope they’ll play a wider variety of pieces that have not previously already been transcribed for a live orchestra. Do some work and not just reap profits from blind fanboys and freaking weird cos-players. The other complaint I would have for the concert would be this strange and long introduction tribute piece that was played before the concert started. If there’s going to be an opening act, please advertise them because I don’t want to hear them and I don’t want to get there on-time only to torture myself.

In contrast, last week I went with Jane and two of her friends to a John Mayer concert down in Irvine at the now Verizon Amphitheatre (previously know as Irvine Meadows). That was a good concert! All the acts had enthusiasm and you could feel the emotion in all the performances (Marjorie Fair opened, Sheryl Crow performed, and then John Mayer closed). Also, unlike VGL, even though I was familiar with almost all their songs, the artists still managed to change up their songs a bit to keep it entertaining and energetic. For some reason, to me at least, VGL felt very stale and almost hollow (with the exceptions again of the Olg Games Medley and the Video Game Pianist). I guess that’s what happens when you have people performing something they have no passion about and you don’t have the original composers changing up the score. Incidentally, on a side note, I wonder how much sponsorship Square-Enix gave VGL because they actually showed no footage from any of their games on screen and they only performed One-Winged Angel which is already too over-played.

Anyway, in non-concert related news, I picked up two new DS games last weekend. First is Megaman ZX, which is a classic side-scroller that is incredibly hard due to the control configuration on the DS. If I had this game on a SNES controller, I would rock it, but playing it on the small DS screen actually causes my hands to cramp up—DoublePlus NonGood I must say. The other game I picked up is Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis. This is more of a puzzle type game and is played entirely with the stylus. If I had to compare it to a similar title, it’s almost like Lemmings but not. In Lemmings, you can’t control the individuals but you do have to guide them to safety. In this game, you have to guide miniature mechanical Marios to safety but you do have a lot of control over each little robot. The hard part of the game is restricting yourself to not using all of the little robots movement features because it will lower your overall score and a large part of this game’s challenge is to pass each stage with a “Gold” score (as opposed to a silver or bronze level score). Of the two games, I prefer the March of the Minis to ZX. It’s a more relaxed game and my hand don’t hurt after each play session… I guess I’m getting old… really old… did I mention I’m starting to get eye strain after my DS sessions? Boo! Not good! Though I must add that my eye-strain sessions after the DS are nothing compared to the strain I get from playing on the PSP. OMG I get hour-long headaches from playing the PSP…