Sad ‘Cause It’s True of the Day: It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and Jimmy Kimmel’s gift to educators across the country was an opportunity to give their students’ parents a piece of their minds.
My mom teaches kindergarten, and I am continually amazed by the amount of shit she has to put up with.
While eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg (purchased at a deep post-Easter discount!) just now, I had an epiphany about why I don’t like them nearly as much as I like regular ol’ Peanut Butter Cups.
You see, Cups are distinguished by their crimped outer ring, which lends them a pleasing taste/texture juxtaposition: soft chocolate-and-peanut-butter innards vs. harder chocolate-only outer ring.
You’re welcome.
I’ve been getting a lot of BSODs on my three-year-old Asus X83Vb-X2 laptop lately. Like, multiple times per day. Yesterday was the worst: I could barely use the computer for an hour at a time before every program would start to hang, and then Windows would crash. I ran chkdsk.exe overnight because it also seemed like there might have been some errors with the hard drive. It hasn’t crashed yet today, which is great, since I might not have been able to make it through the writing of this post yesterday.
I’m running 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium on this thing, which has all the same specs as when I bought it new (listed here), except that I replaced the 250 GB (5400 rpm) hard drive with a brand-new 750 GB (7200 rpm) drive last year.
I did some investigating of my own — looking at Windows’ Event Viewer and even downloading debugging tools from the Windows SDK so I could analyze the crash dumps — and as far as I can tell, a power failure is causing the crashes. It seems like people who were having this issue in desktops eventually found out that their power supply wasn’t sufficient for the components they had in their tower.
I’ve thought about replacing the power supply for my laptop. But I have two questions, assuming that I’m making the right assumptions regarding the cause:
1) Could the culprit be the new hard drive? Like, would the increased power demand of a 7200 rpm HDD over a 5400 rpm drive be enough to overdraw my laptop’s power supply?
2) Would replacing the laptop’s battery and/or power cable (i.e., the AC adapter) help at all, or would I just be wasting money?
I was really hoping that this machine would last a few more months. For one thing, I can’t afford to buy a new laptop right now. But I wouldn’t do so even if I did have the money, since I’m waiting for this fall’s Ivy Bridge ultrabooks (and I’m cautiously optimistic about Windows 8).
It’s my first-ever freelance piece, and for print, no less! The article is a four-page preview of Assassin’s Creed III; the folks at Future US sent over a PDF of the finished product today, and it looks amazing. I’m ecstatic about this, and I can’t wait for you folks to see it. (In case you were unaware, @GAMER is Best Buy’s in-house gaming magazine.)
The issue hits on April 8th, but subscribers will get it a little earlier. You should all pick it up when it’s out!
My very first Destructoid article, a 570-word piece containing my impressions of the MLB 08 The Show demo, went up on February 22, 2008. It’s actually not as embarrassingly bad as I’d anticipated it would be.
This is a big personal milestone. Not just because of the amount of time involved, but because of what’s transpired in the interim — specifically, how much my life has changed since then, and how different I am today. You do a lot of growing up between the ages of 21 and 25.
Some things haven’t changed, of course; I’m still broke, and I’m still living at home. (OK… I guess, technically, I was dorming at Columbia four years ago.) But I don’t feel like a directionless kid anymore; writing about videogames is the career I want, and I hope I can really make that happen this year. (I better, because once December rolls around, I won’t be able to get health insurance as a dependent anymore!)
(No, seriously, does someone want to hire me and give me a salary + benefits? That’d be great. I write good about them sporty games.)
Last week, at an EA event in New York, I played about half an hour of the second mission of Mass Effect 3. I don’t know much about Mass Effect, but according to BioWare, you don’t need to have played either of the first two games in order to enjoy the third. They insist that they’ve written and designed ME3 to be accessible to newcomers, without sacrificing anything for die-hard series fans.
I wrote up my thoughts on Destructoid. Check out the full preview, won’t you?
I write for a videogame website (it’s called Destructoid; you should check it out some time). But yesterday, I received a non-videogame-related press release. It’s not a rare occurrence, and I almost always delete them with the quickness.
But I’m keeping this one. The title? Breaking // 900 Pounds Of Butterfingers as Gift To Wes Welker Delivered to Copley Square [photo here]
Yep, I’m gonna savor that for a long, long time.
On Thursday night, the New York Videogame Critics Circle had a coming-out party of sorts: its first awards show, a classy affair that was the antithesis of the Spike Video Game Awards in just about every way. I attended the show, and was lucky enough to be able to present an award as well. It was a lot of fun! Check out my recap at Destructoid, which includes the full list of winners as well as a video recording of one of the show’s two live performances of songs from the Bastion soundtrack.
I reviewed EA’s revival of Midway’s arcade football classic, NFL Blitz, for Destructoid. Aside from the exclusion of late hits, which is sad but unsurprising, it plays pretty much like the Blitz you know and love. Plus, there’s a lot of content for $15, especially when you dig into the robust online package.
Check out the full review at Destructoid!
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.
On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public.
Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all. In fact, recharging is absolutely crucial for Introverts.Myth #6 – Introverts always want to be alone.
Introverts are perfectly comfortable with their own thoughts. They think a lot. They daydream. They like to have problems to work on, puzzles to solve. But they can also get incredibly lonely if they don’t have anyone to share their discoveries with. They crave an authentic and sincere connection with ONE PERSON at a time.Myth #7 – Introverts are weird.
Introverts are often individualists. They don’t follow the crowd. They’d prefer to be valued for their novel ways of living. They think for themselves and because of that, they often challenge the norm. They don’t make most decisions based on what is popular or trendy.Myth #8 – Introverts are aloof nerds.
Introverts are people who primarily look inward, paying close attention to their thoughts and emotions. It’s not that they are incapable of paying attention to what is going on around them, it’s just that their inner world is much more stimulating and rewarding to them.Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun.
Introverts typically relax at home or in nature, not in busy public places. Introverts are not thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. If there is too much talking and noise going on, they shut down. Their brains are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Introverts and Extroverts have different dominant neuro-pathways. Just look it up.Myth #10 – Introverts can fix themselves and become Extroverts.
Introverts cannot “fix themselves” and deserve respect for their natural temperament and contributions to the human race. In fact, one study (Silverman, 1986) showed that the percentage of Introverts increases with IQ.This list was inspired by the book The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Laney.
Yeah, this pretty much describes me perfectly.
(Source: carlkingcreative.com)
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I’m Samit Sarkar, an Associate Editor at Destructoid.com. It’s pretty much the greatest job in the world, though the common misconception is that I simply get to play video games all day. It doesn’t quite work that way — but it’s still awesome. (If you want to check out all the posts I’ve written, head here.)
I’m a stickler for proper English — grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. — so if you see any mistakes in my writing, let me know. And if you see mistakes elsewhere, let me know, because I’ll want to point them out here and laugh (à la English Fail Blog). I might even put some on The Grammar Nazi, a Tumblr that I contribute to.
You can contact me at samit [dot] sarkar [at] gmail [dot] com for personal stuff, at samit [at] destructoid [dot] com for Destructoid-related inquiries, or on Twitter (see below). I’m also on Facebook.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, I’m 25 and I live in Long Island. But it’s so much easier to just say New York — I’m only an hour east of Manhattan.
Also, I am a HUGE fan of the 27-time World Champion New York Yankees.
