Play with kids...

So I was playing this MMORPG called Anarchy Online. After we (I was in a team at the time) killed some big uber-boss, a guy who had been fighting the boss with us, but was not in our team messaged me: "You're really dumb, aren't you?"

I play a big strong stupid hunk with a hammer about the size of a compact car. So, staying in character, I replied "Huh? What?"
"I'm gonna report you, they'll terminate your account, just you wait!"
"I don't understand."
"This'll be the last time you ever played this game"

And so on. I tried to find out what I had done to aggravate him so much, but he only continued his infantile ranting.

That's it. We didn't reach a solution, and I stopped trying after a while. I'm sad to say that this was on a German server, and that I find it typical of some German players. Not a lot - nine out of ten are great fun to play with - but this one did not even tell me what he thought I had done wrong.

The thing of it is, I could not get that stupid brat out of my head all day. Call me a sissy if you like, but it gets to me how much some people lack conflict resolution skills and just start insulting you right away. And, what's worse, never get to a point where any wrong that may or may not have been committed can be addressed.

As the wise man said, well fuck that. chip79, you just made my list. Along with that guy (this time from an English server), who called someone a "GAY RUSSIAN BASTARD" (his caps), and proceeded to explain "No way I'm not racist, they really are bad. They always steal things and stuff."

Assholes

The Tobias G. Klüpfel Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Being a Nuisance And a Prime Pain in the Ass 2005 goes to

http://www.auskunft.de-a1.de/

A totally innoccent google search for Ti-38 Plus led me to this page, which has the most mind-numbingly stupid mass-produced advertisement text in a long series of mind-numbingly stupid mass-produced advertisement texts that I've seen yet:

"Sie sind auf der Suche nach Ti Plus? Dann sind Sie hier genau richtig, wenn Sie auf der Suche nach Ti Plus sind.
Günstige Angebote im Bereich Ti Plus sind oft nicht einfach zu finden im doch sehr grossen Internet, deshalb möchten wir Ihnen gerne behilflich dabei sein."

Translation: "You are looking for Ti Plus? Then, you have come to exactly the right place if you are looking for Ti Plus.
Cheap offers in the field of Ti Plus are often hard to find, in the internet which is, after all, rather big, which is why we would like to be of service."

Reminds me of a guy who tried to sell me a fake carton of cigarettes in turkey.

P.S. Oh yes, the google hit that brought me to the page: www.shop58.de/de/ti83_plus_texas.htm .

Sitting in Judgement

I've been doing tests all week the whole day long - tests with people, which are part of my diploma thesis. I'm exhausted.

What I conducted was a 'comparative test'. Say you have a way of doing things, a method A, and a method B, which you want to compare. So you get teams of two and have them use method A or B, in equal numbers, and then see which one does better.

In our case, method A was ours, and so we have a vested interest in seeing it do better. We don't let that influence us.

Now there was this guy. From the moment we started, he rubbed me the wrong way. He wasn't taking this seriously at all. I mean, a little levity is OK, but he was just too much. He forgot the instructions as fast as I told them, didn't pay attention, and accordingly did horribly in the test.

I was really aggravated at the guy. I felt that he had treated me with extreme disrespect by botching it up so badly. Did I mention that he was assigned to method A? I imagined myself saying to him "next time we do this, I'll know better to assign you to the side of the test that's supposed to come out worse" and got even angrier.

A night's worth of tossing and turning later, I was driving to my university and as I thought about the day before I found myself imagining not telling him what I'd had in mind. And I felt better, because I found out that I had something far more sinister and more powerful than disrespect, or distractedness.

I had an opinion.

And nobody could take that away from me. With a warm fuzzy feeling I drove to my university, toward another day of watching people doing brilliantly on method B and like cave men on A.