December 13, 2001

Ok, the latest in the resignation saga? :p I’ve been told that my review was sent to HR (Human Resources :p) some time last week and that I should get it within a week and that my boss’s boss will ensure that this does not happen in the future and that reviews for everybody will be done in a timely manner. We came out of the meeting with the agreement that I would stay but now I realize that it is basically back to the same old thing :p I have to wait for the review and of course, a week can turn into two and two to four and so on and everybody has a perfect excuse – it’s the holiday season <g> So I’ve decided to wait out my two week’s period of notice and see how things go and if I do receive my review, I also want to see how much it is for and then make a final decision as to what I’m going to do … Don’t you hate it when you have to make decisions and live in indecision? :p

I’m working from home again today since my car is in the body shop and they tell me that they are waiting for parts! They are the ones who wanted me to bring my car in and I would think that they’d get the necessary parts before they asked me to come in but no, that’s not the way it works! Of course, I did get a rental (this was on Monday BTW) but when I call my insurance company about the rental coverage, they tell me that they will be paying only $10 (whereas the rental costs $25) per day and that they will not pay out if it was for an unduly long time period – meaning that if it took more than the estimated two days. Since the car has already been in the body shop for three days, I’ve decided to return the rental car and save myself some money. Of course, people tell me that the insurance company is “obligated” to pay for 30 days of rental coverage but I’ll still end up paying more 3/5 of the cost and if the insurance company refuses to pay, what the heck am I going to do? Take them to court? Such is life …

Speaking of life and the general frustration with service organizations, I was waiting for quite a long time for my copy of “Azurik: Rise of Perathia” from Amazon.com but finally gave up :p I wrote to them day before yesterday and at least their customer service is good because I heard back from them within a couple of hours – they said that they were sorry that I hadn’t received my order yet and that they would refund me the money and that I could let them know if I did ever receive the order. I waited another day till yesterday and since there was still no game, I went to the local KMart and bought a copy. I played the game last evening and it was pretty good! It’s not really up to the standard of “Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee” but the graphics are OK (though not superlative like in Munch :p) and the gameplay so far has been interesting. One thing I find irritating though is the fact that you cannot save anywhere in the game and the fact that you can have only one save game – so you can’t have several save games at different points in case you want to start a bit further back in the game. I guess it makes sense given that you can go back and forth all over the world in the game and so there might not be anything you might miss and can’t get back to – at least I haven’t had a situation like that so far.

One thing that I do notice however is that the XBox games seem considerably easier than console games – I’ve never been into action games because I just don’t have the skill and coordination necessary. Either I have improved vastly in the last few years (which I don’t think is possible <g>) or the games are easier on the XBox – and I like that! I’ve played first Munch’s Oddysee and now Azurik and both of them are basically action games but I’ve enjoyed both pretty much, whereas I played “Dark Cloud” on the PS2, found it to be an action adventure and hated it because it just was too hard. I guess die-hard gamers might disagree with me about easy games being good but my vote is (once again :p) for the XBox!

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Posted by Fahim at 6:13 am  |  No Comments