schlagging.com

BWW FTL

Posted on April 25th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: random.

Last night, I competed in the final round of a Rock Band competition at Buffalo Wild Wings in Gilbert (1475 W. Elliot Road
Gilbert, AZ 85233).

We didn’t win. I feel like we got hosed, and that things were kinda rigged against us. Here’s an email I am sending to Buffalo Wild Wings corporate. Maybe they’ll do something about it… maybe not. Either way, I feel better for getting it off my chest. It was quite frustrating last night.

Long story short:

This BWW location ran a free Rock Band promotion over the past month, in conjunction I believe with a beer company who fronted a cash prize. Winners from each week qualified for the final round, which took place last night.

My team won last week, and we arrived last night to some strange news. The qualifying rounds were played on medium difficulty. The final round ended up being played on hard difficulty. I later asked other bands if they knew about this, and none of them knew prior to arriving that night - except for one band.

This one band that knew happened to have a member who not only worked at this BWW location, but was running these competitions each week. I asked him if he knew about the difficulty change for the final round, and he told me he had known about it for a few weeks. He had no answer for me when I asked him why other teams were not told this information.

Whether this information was kept from other teams on purpose, or if it was just a poor oversight by those running the competition - this is the reason that employees should not take part in a contest their company is putting on.

I do not know if your company has a corporate policy regarding such promotions, but if you don’t - I would highly recommend making such a policy. As a customer, I feel that the team with the employee had an unfair advantage in knowing information that the other customer only teams did not.

Oh, and that team with the employee won the overall prize.

If I hear anything back, I’ll be sure to post it here.

0 comments.

Black Knight, Big Momma’s House..

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: movies.

I just realized something. Martin Lawrence is the black Rob Schneider of comedy movies.

0 comments.

I swear, I did not kick a puppy

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: random.

Usually when I’m at the office, I run across the street to AJ’s to grab lunch from their salad bar. Recently, I’ve been all over the balsamic dressing. I’ve always known ranch dressing is counter-intuitive to eating a salad, but I just never did anything about it.

Well, today, there was no balsamic dressing at the salad bar. Teh horrors! I wasn’t terribly distraught, but another lady was. So much so, that she asked the manager if they had any, but it just wasn’t out for some reason. Turns out they didn’t, but he was very willing to go grab a bottle off the shelves and leave it for us. When he left it, he took off the wrapping, and for some reason unscrewed the top. He then placed the bottle down, and put the top on the bottle - but did not screw it on.

The other lady tells me to go ahead, so I do. I pick up the bottle, and start to shake it - you know, balsamic dressing, what with the mix of oils, could use a good shake before pouring. Well, I clearly didn’t see the guy not screw the cap on. Balsamic dressing all over the place, but mostly on me. The manager offered to pay for dry cleaning next door, which I gave a polite smile and nod to. Truth be told, I could care less about the shirt, and the pants were already on their way to the trash, as I had managed to drop some super glue onto them earlier. So… whatever. I got a new TBC shirt at the office, and the day moves along.

Oh, but one other thing… walking back from AJ’s, the sprinklers are on, and watering the sidewalk as much as the grass. This happens at my apartment complex, and usually I’m able to kick the top a bit and turn the sprinkler heads. Well, guess what happened when I tried that? Whoosh! Water starts gushing up… a miniature urban geyser on Camelback Rd. Awesome. Cue myself aimlessly looking around and whistling as I walk in the opposite direction.

See what I mean, though? This just isn’t my day. But at least I can laugh at myself.

0 comments.

Dear David Stern

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

There is something wrong with the National Basketball Association.

Sometime in the late nineties, I stopped watching pro hoops. I was sick of watching a disturbing trend. It wasn’t a new thing, but it finally wore on me enough that I couldn’t take it anymore. What am I talking about? Flopping. If you’ve watched Sam Cassell play, or if you’ve seen a Spurs game this decade, you should know what I’m talking about. It’s the practice of playing the game to take advantage of the rules. The rules should keep a game from getting out of hand. They shouldn’t let a game get out of hand in the opposite direction. But they do.

Professional soccer organizations across the globe and NCAA hockey are two examples of leagues that have it right. If you are clearly trying to draw a foul and are over exaggerating your motions and flops - you can get penalized for it. I feel like it should be a form of technical foul in the NBA, to the referees’ discretion. Maybe they won’t always get it right, but sometimes it’s just too obvious to overlook. And right now, refs have no choice but call the foul and let the lame asses take their free throw attempts.

Please take this to heart, and propose the new rule to the owners. The Spurs may object heavily, but I have a feeling most of the league would be in agreeal.

(As a side note, I am not blaming the Suns most recent two losses on flops. They need to play some better ball. It’s just frustrating to see them lose to a team that relies heavily on such tactics.)

Unformatted and Nonsensical Bibliography: Micah Zahler’s email to the masses. Matt Ennis’s soccer wisdom.

2 comments.

Windows…

Posted on April 9th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: technology.

Is like an 8 year old kid.

You tell it not to do something, but it goes it anyway, and then is proud of it.

I have told my computer to download updates, but let me decide when to install them. Instead of doing what I say, it downloads the updates, waits a while, and if I don’t tell it to within x amount of time - it does it anyway.

AND then it restarts itself, with no regard to any reasons I may have for keeping my computer on. So guess whose secondary alarm doesn’t go off this morning because the computer is waiting at the sign on screen? Yeah. Awesome.

Further, when it does start back up, it gives me a friendly message in the corner telling me what just happened. How nice. Now go to your room, and stop doing that, dammit.

1 comment.

Lions FTMFW

Posted on March 7th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: random.

I had a revelation today, so I thought I would share:

schlagdogg (1:23:05 PM): if you were an animal, i think you would be best suited as a lion
Auto Response from schlaggers33 (1:23:08 PM): sex and violence
schlagdogg (1:23:24 PM): male lions sit around all day while the females hunt, and then when something gets killed they jump in and eat up
schlagdogg (1:23:33 PM): hell, i’ll take that
schlagdogg (1:23:46 PM): on top of that, they also get to do it with any of the female lions in the pride
schlagdogg (1:23:51 PM): lions = awesome
schlagdogg (1:23:54 PM): the end

0 comments.

Shaq Diesel comes to PHX

Posted on February 7th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

My dad sent me this email the other day:

Has Suns management lost their minds? An old at the end of his career player, who hasn’t played hardly all season for 2 key players (Marion & Banks) in the middle of the season? Guess they want to lose season ticket holders again!!! What do you think?
Dad

Here’s my response:

my take on the whole thing..

in the first hour or so after hearing the news that it was very likely going to happen, i went through a roller coaster of reactions

at first, i was in disbelief

then, i was in a state of denial, and i too thought it was a horrible idea

then i thought about it some more, and realized that kerr isn’t an idiot. he must know what’s up. he must have a game plan in mind with d’antoni to make this work

then i read up on some espn and azcentral articles, and they made some good points. losing marion and banks, and adding shaq could be a really good thing for team chemistry. things between matrix and stat had become, well.. awkward. and we all know about marion’s recent history with the team and trade talks. and we know about banks’ complaints about play time

on top of that the money isn’t too different. there’s about a 3 million dollar difference to add shaq and lose the other two - banks was set to make a good chunk of change that he wasn’t really earning

aaaanyway. so what about shaq’s ability to add to our team? well, when it comes down to it, i wanted to believe that the suns could do it all with their team. but frankly, it was hard to convince myself. and i dont think there are many suns fans who would feel otherwise. it’s the same as the past two years pretty much, so why would we suddenly be able to take down teams like the spurs? i dont think it would have happened

but with shaq on board, we finally have someone to match up with the big men on teams like the lakers (they’re scary now), the spurs, the mavs, and the jazz

he won’t be playing big minutes (at least, i don’t think) - especially not early on - and he will be needed a lot more come playoff time, which gives some time to not only get to 100% health wise but also become acclimated to the suns team and allow the coaching staff to figure out what to do with him

in the end, i may be becoming a steve kerr apologist. i’m okay with that. he’s my uofa boy. i really want this to work out for him, and i hope the shaq move is praised come june. only time will tell, and i think suns fans can only support the team at this point and not be too critical unless the big man gives us reason to criticize

2 comments.

Pack it up, Packers

Posted on January 20th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

The Packers don’t deserve to play in the Super Bowl this year, based on how they played the Giants tonight.

If you know me, you’ll know that things like this can get me quite worked up. And I was definitely worked up for probably about 15 minutes.

But then it hit me - if someone could tell me for sure at the beginning of the season that the Packers would make it to the NFC Championship game, I would have been thrilled to hear it.

It’s a bummer that they won’t be making the trip to Lambeau West.

Good things this year, though - and a lot of progress. I sincerely hope Brett returns yet again to lead a young but maturing team to another championship run next season.

1 comment.

Racists and a-holes

Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: politics, internet.

Have you ever been to azcentral.com?

It’s a local news site, run by the local NBC station and The Arizona Republic.

I like the site, so that I can keep up with local happenings. But man oh man, do I loathe their commenting system.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice commenting system. The people, however, ruin it.

My first indications occurred some time ago when I noticed the flame wars between fans on any UA or ASU related article. Mostly, the comments had to do with calling Tucson “Northern Nogales” and their desire to “send it back to Mexico”. Oh, and the altering of Wildcats to “Mild Rats” is oh so clever, too. Whatever.

Stupid sports bickering is one thing. But I DARE you to find me an article that doesn’t have comments from someone, somehow relating the article back to illegal immigration - NO MATTER what the article is about. For instance, this weather report.

The internet is such a stupid place, sometimes.

2 comments.

Mass Effect = Porn?

Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: games, movies, music, politics.

The “Sex-Box” Race for President

This has got to be one of the most biased, uninformed articles I’ve ever read about video games. Dare I say, this guy is on par with Jack Thompson.

He makes assumptions about a game he has neither played nor seen (Mass Effect = virtual sex game? What??? Where?). He then goes on to berate the gaming industry, which has given this game the equivalent of a movie’s R rating. Why doesn’t he spend the same effort going after the MPAA, then, for their movie rating system. It clearly must be inadequate.

Why don’t these people understand that when it comes down to it, you can’t put this responsibility solely on the sources of our entertainment. They do their part, in placing ratings and warnings on their products. It is down to each individual parent to take the responsibility to watch what their kids are doing and to figure out what their kids are listening to, watching, and playing.

Simple as that.

0 comments.

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