Zombies Invading the Workplace
If you have ever done any gardening in your life and felt like it didn’t work our, then you really need to check our Plants vs Zombies. You’re not just planting some delicious leafy greens, but also saving the world from the apocalyptic zombie invasion.
At work we sometimes have a little downtime and many of the people at my office choose to use their free time on a little Plants vs Zombies. The premise behind the game is pretty simple. It’s a new variation on defend your castle with a twist: you use awesome plants to launch lethal peas, watermelons and other variations of vegetation at an incoming onslaught of mindless Zombies trying to reach your house to eat your brains. This game is sweet, I mean it starts you out on a checkerboard style level with the zombies coming at you from the right side and you have to defend your house on the left. Your arsenal includes a pea shooter, a cabbage launcher, potato mines and sunflowers to help you gather up extra sunlight for even faster planting.
Plants vs Zombies gets 5 stars for its insane graphics. I mean Crisis on half graphics was good, but the zombie animations are so real and horrifying that I often wake up in a cold sweat at night. Aside from the rapid speed of growth the plant animations are very realistic with their swaying and bobbing in the wind. The epic plant battles at the end of each level are so gruesome 
that this game is not at all recommended for those with less than adequate stomach capacities. The other great thing about this game is that if it isn’t enough for you to slay zombies using your impressive green thumb skills, you can actually play as the zombies and try to attack the plants.
If that still isn’t enough to entice you to buy you defiantly ought to check out the “vase breaker” mode where you break a bunch of vases on your lawn… Yeah, I know, it actually is this awesome.
So if you’re looking for a good project to turn your mind into a pool of gray drivel then you should definitely pick up a copy of Plants vs Zombies. This game gets the full 5 out of 5 stars on my book and will surely change your life.
So here is our office top Stats. (I know there are probably higher scores out there, but a lot of people have been using cheats and such.)
Unlimited: 112 Flags – Dave
Vasebraker: level 37 – Haven
iZombie: Unknown
If you have a high score please send it to me so i can put you on the board.
A Support “House”
For those of you who don’t know, I work for a company in tech support dealing with customers who have issues with their tax software. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it probably is the most exciting job from sea to sea. The other day I was talking to one of my co-workers about how the customers are always lying to us. I don’t know if they think that lying to us will get us to give them a top level of support or if they are completely ignorant.
Example, I asked a customer if they were running the application on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or gave him the option if he didn’t know. Now, the easy answer is “I don’t know”, because I would just walk him through the process of looking up his OS. The customer gave the wrong answer and said he was on XP. After about 20 minutes of troubleshooting and setting up remote tools I logged in to find that, surprise, he was using a Windows 7 computer which was not supported. From the beginning the easy answer would have been “not supported” which means it won’t work which would have saved 20 minuets of time. The amazing thing is that knew all along that it was Windows 7, but just wanted to get that top level support to get his software running. The important lesson here is always assume that the customer is lying.
I was thinking someone should make a whole TV series about it, but then I was watching TV last night and realized that they already have… House. A whole TV show about patients lying to their doctor as he is trying to fix their very severe and life threatening problems. Then I realized, “Oh wait we do have that person where I work.” We’ll just call him Math McNeeley. Math is extremely smart and good at what he does, even if he doesn’t really know the answer to something he has a way of explaining it to make you feel like he just gave you a valid answer. He has the ability to talk around things and then give you 3 or 4 plausible scenarios that could be the answer to your question. The first thing I really remember about Math was that he was speaking to a customer, trying to tell them that they were lying. I really don’t remember if he actually used the words “I think you are lying,” but the jist of the argument was crystal clear. He selectively chooses his words like “I don’t believe that,” or “That’s not right”. I often find myself imagining some of my customers having the same conversation with Math.
“Yes Math, I can’t get my software to work.”
“Well are you using Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7?”
“Windows XP”
“Well that can’t be right, I don’t believe that. Are you sure you aren’t on Windows 7? Let’s check real quick.”
The other thing about Math is that much like his TV counterpart, he doesn’t like to talk to people outside his inner circle of doctors. He is always wearing earphones or pretending to be on the phone just to avoid talking to people. Sometimes I find myself poking him in the shoulder to get his attention. My life as an episode of House is astoundingly accurate, and, short of the addiction to pain killers I think we have our cast. The premise used in House is pretty widespread I’m sure, but if FOX ever decides to air the I.T. version of House, I hope that I’ll get at least a small percentage for finding the star… nothing huge, only like 8 million.
DT From T1
Hello, this is Dave Toronto from Tier 1, the one and only. If you’re here to learn or glean valuable and useful nuggets of knowledge to fill you head with happy thoughts, you should probably click the little x up there in the upper right hand corner of your screen. Although this web page does not have an official purpose of any sort at this point I’m quite sure that it will develop over the upcoming months and years into a broad spectrum of surprises.