Blizzard North (smaller half of Blizzard, made Diablo) has 3 fully stocked kitchens including lozza "junk food". they also buy several copies of every computer game that comes out, and employees can even take them home to use. companies treating employees like people is cool ^^ (economically sound too).

sources: 1 and 2

i like this a lot

i can't remember if i linked this poem before. reading it again won't hurt you anyway. it's very good.

you might find the articles here interesting. they're mostly about education but by a computer science guy and with comp sci themes.

okie, worst romance story ever explanation. here's a link to the entry for reference

here's some correspondence from when i wrote it, to someone who liked the story(!)

the real goal was to give the characters absolutely no personality of any sort. the exception being the pot thing. i give no motivations for them liking each other, refuse to detail what they talk about, and just appeal to stereotypes for everything.

Another point is I wrote the entire story without planning ahead, and with no intention to have a plot. Just following stereotypes. I think that's a bit scary.

pot was important cause it made the story less boring to write. this was removed from the political thriller, which is otherwise *exactly the same story* except in a diff genre and w/ 2 guys. the political story is intended to demonstrate to someone who thinks the romance story wasn't bad, that the content of the story really was.

btw this is not to say that the events the story detailed were a bad thing in the romance story. (note they obviuosly aren't bad in the "thriller"). on the whole, i'd say the events were good for eric and jane. but that doesn't redeem the *story*; it still has no contingent details or anything else of interest. oh also, although i took this to a greater extreme than any stories i've read, many stories are super super light on contingent details. now i admit they are hard to write, but i also claim they are what make stories good. just as we shouldn't live out stereotypes, reading them shouldn't be interesting as a story (although it could be to learn about them, Know Thy Enemy kinda deal).

btw i'm a big roleplaying fan. and i'm perfectly willing to roleplay stereotypes, cause it's a great way to learn more about them. however, i of course can't RP the same stereotype too much w/out getting totally bored. similarly, reading too many stereotype only stories ought to be hella dull. ought to....

oh also one use of stereotypes is to facilliate ppl interacting smoothly w/out knowing each other well. just follow some stereotype roles u both know and *boom* u get along. can be good for RPing heroes that work 2gether (in games where the main focus is no inter-party interaction). however, in real life, this no way to conduct relationships (where the focus *is* interacting with the other *person*, not interacting w/ a stereotype) (this is one of the bad things the story illustrates). i suppose u could legitly use stereotyped interactions IRL if u had some other goal, like if u wanna be on a sports team, and get along w/ ppl despite being anti-social, so u can get ppl to warm-up w/ u and give u advice, u might try a stereotyped personality, since it's easier than designing one and u already have lozza experience w/ various stereotypes.

given this entry is a bit lacking in the thesis/direction part, ummm, feel free to bug me to expand on some point or other.

IMAO quotes Jonah Goldberg who says:

"Affirmative action is based upon the assumption that blacks cannot compete with whites. But if I say that blacks can't compete with whites, I'm a racist."

^^

so i was reading this newspaper article on economics, and it was ok, a little scary how stupid it says most ppl are, but anyway, it mentions the broken window fallacy (if you break a window, it creates a job to fix the window, so you helped the economy *ahem*). and it just has to give the example this way: "Some teenagers, being the little beasts they are, toss a brick through a bakery window." grrrrr

i used to work for a store
it was such a bore
now i'm a whore
i get paid more

I'm such the poet!