James Chamberlin

Just to see what the old Ensemble guys were up to nowadays I decided to check out Bonfire Studios and Robot Entertainment and I was surprised to learn that Age of Empires Online was announced just this past week.

I’m definitely intrigued. I miss the ’90s. There were some great strategy games. Whatever happened to them? Sigh…

I’ve been using TeamViewer to connect to a friend’s PC and all of a sudden it doesn’t work. We’ve both updated our versions to the latest and still I can’t connect to him. He can connect to me. It’s inconvenient that I have to wait for him to be online at the same time because our schedules are completely different.

I wasn’t able to find much info on the web as far as support goes. The WaitforConnectFailed message doesn’t generate very many results on Google and the official TeamViewer site doesn’t have any help on it whatsoever.

After hurting my back a few weeks ago, I decided to return to the gym and see how things would go. It turned out to be one of the hottest days thus far this summer. Even though the gym has air conditioning, the owner doesn’t seem to have it turned up very high… or low, depending on how you want to look at it. The humidity and temperature were only slightly below what it was outside.

I pushed myself a little harder than I intended and I’m paying for it the day after. My chest and triceps are sore today, but I don’t regret hitting the gym like I did.

I need to get back to going regularly, however. I have done a poor job with my attendance. I haven’t lost any weight this year because of it. My time on the treadmill yesterday was miserable. I didn’t go nearly as far as I used to be able to and I have to stop every few minutes to catch my breath and take a drink. Part of that was the heat, but I’d chalk it up mostly to my poor conditioning. I’m determined to get back to my old routine and get things going in a positive direction again.

The last couple of days has been miserable. It’s been unseasonably warm for May. It’s been 93 degrees most of the afternoon and I’m absolutely tired of it. It sucks the life right out of you.

The rest of the week is going to be anywhere from 79 degrees to 88 degrees. It’s somewhat of a relief, but it’s not much.

The job market’s rough. There are a lot of people out of work and a lot of competition for every opening out there. I’ve had four job interviews and I’d have to say the last was the worst. Well, it wasn’t really the interview that went poorly, it was something that happened at the end.

I went in for a position with Sears. I’ve always loved Sears and I thought the entry level job was a good way to get into a brand I’ve always liked. The interview went okay, but at the end, the woman interviewing me said I’d be told at the end of the week or the beginning of the following week if I got the job or not. She was going to present my resume and the notes she took during the interview to the other staff members in the end-of-the-week staff meeting.

I said “okay, thank you” and left.

When I got home, I received a rejection email. What?! Not 15 minutes after I left Sears I was rejected! What happened to consulting with her fellow staff members?

My previously high opinion of Sears took a bit hit last week. I don’t know why they would hire someone who would lie straight to a potential employee’s face like that. I wish the people at Sears would do a review of the local Sears human resource office.

Here are the pictures I promised the other day:

The young man is explaining some design ideas for a ride to a man was told is a new employee, when in fact he’s actually the company’s CEO. In this instance, the CEO is Joel Manby, President and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment. I believe this was at Silver Dollar City, a park I haven’t been to since I was a child.

I watched a little bit of tonight’s new episode of the reality series Undercover Boss on CBS and was shocked by what I saw. One of the employees of an amusement park showed another employee some ideas he had for a ride and he didn’t pull out a sheet of paper and pen. He pulled out his laptop and on it was RollerCoaster Tycoon.

I haven’t played that game in a long time. Even when I was running RCT Station, I only played the game for a few years. I haven’t had it installed or playing in at least three years. I couldn’t help but be shocked and somewhat overjoyed to see that old game show up on television.

I’ll have screenshots up in the morning.

A week has passed since my sale of DVDs and I’m glad to see each and every one of them has sold. I had 17 auctions and I look to bring in a little over $400 from them all. I could use the money right now. Now I just need to get the winners to pay…

Kudos to eBay for lowering listing prices lately. They’ve had 3-4 sales in the last two months and it really helps. I find myself more likely to list something if I can do either for free or for a reduced price. eBay still gets you when something sells, of course, but every penny I can save is a win for me.

I put up over 20 DVDs today in order to get rid of stuff I wasn’t watching and to bring in some much needed money.

I haven’t had any success with my job search. The job with IGN is still there, but with the economy the way it is, my responsibilities and paycheck have been cut back substantially. I envy those of you with full-time jobs.

I don’t usually blog about movies, but I figured I’d share some quick opinions on the latest box office hit, Avatar. I’ve liked James Cameron’s past work, but I just couldn’t get behind Avatar.

The promos never impressed me and after seeing the movie, this movie reminded me of what’s wrong with the video game industry. So much emphasis is put into stunning graphics that the producers don’t put any work on the story. Almost every reasonably successful PC game now is some pointless first person shooter and the success of Cameron’s latest film reminded me of it.

There’s no question that Avatar looked stunning, but it doesn’t make up for a relatively mediocre story. The love story was worse than most made-for-TV garbage. The militaristic approach to dealing with a pesky a native population story was so cliche-ridden I wanted to vomit.

I lost interest in the film a lot earlier than I suppose I should have. There should be more to a movie than pretty graphics.