We first identify the study population (say, all iPhone 4′s in Canada) and parameters for attributes we are interested in (we will need θ to be the proportion of these iPhone 4′s which are faulty/defective pieces of lemonware—in other words, the chance that you will receive a catastrophic failure of an iPhone).

We start by assuming that the parameter θ has a certain reasonable value (like 0.001, which says, on average, we think 1 in 1000 iPhone 4′s are defective in the study population). You should note that any numbers here are just guesses I’m making for illustration’s sake. Nowhere am I claiming these values or figures are real or confirmed or even remotely representative of the actual failure rates. Don’t sue me, Apple. Your legal expenses will be greater than everything you’d get bankrupting me.

Anyway, say this is the case. Then let the random variable Y be “we get a working iPhone 4 on the k^th iPhone” where k = 1, 2, … (all positive integers). So then, the probability of the random variable Y taking on the realization of the plain integer y would be:

P (Y = k) = θ ^{k – 1} (1 – θ)

You may recognize this as the geometric distribution and indeed it is. What we are saying is, there will be (k – 1) catastrophic failures before the k^th iPhone is one that works. We also assume you’d stop driving all the way to the Apple Store to ask for and pick up replacements once you get a working one. I think this model is fair, as long as you stop replacing them eventually.

For example, if the first iPhone you get is fine, then k = 1 and we are done. The probability of this is P(Y = 1) = (1 – θ) (since θ to the power of 0 equals 1). Substituting the hypothesized value of θ in, you’d get that the chance of you getting a working iPhone 4 on the first try would be something like 999/1,000 or 99.9%.

Say your first one is a dud, but the replacement works out to be perfect. Then:

P(Y = 2) = (1/1,000)(999/1,000) << (the chance of a lemon) x (the chance of not a lemon)

= 999/1,000,000

= 0.000999

= 0.0999%

However, if you are me, then let k be greater than 2.

P(Y = k) = P(Y > 2) << strictly greater than 2

= 1 – [P(Y = 1) + P(Y = 2)] << this is the probability of everything (1) minus the prob’s of k = 1 and k = 2

= 1 – [999/1,000 + (1/1,000)(999/1,000)] << calculated above to be 0.999 + 0.000999

= 0.000001 << this is 1 in 1,000,000 if you don’t realize

That’s right folks. If the 1:1,000 failure rate is anywhere close to reality (and I’m not saying it is) then what I’ve gone through so far is one in a million. Of course, if the real rate is closer to 1% then it’d be like one in ten thousand, which is still really unlikely, though scaled back a bit.

Basically, the first iPhone 4 I received (after ordering on launch day and waiting three weeks for it to ship—nevermind the mishap where FedEx sent my iPhone to me, then to Vancouver, before sending it back to me) turned out to have a busted compass (GPS sensor was broken) and a busted gyroscope (a new sensor in the iPhone 4). I went to the Apple Store at Fairview yesterday to get it replaced—they didn’t have any stock so they had to order a replacement unit for me. I was told it would take three to five days to get there, but it arrived by 9 pm the same night. So, like a good boy, I drove down to the store again today to pick up the replacement. Just my luck: the replacement was another lemon! iTunes could not detect/connect to the replacement phone. Seriously. Two in a row, both lemons, when this phone is supposed to be of something really special/high-calibre.

Sidenote: you’d think someone at Apple would’ve thought of “let’s check these replacement units before they leave the door because it might make us look completely stupid if we replaced a lemon with another lemon”, but no. I can’t explain why (ask Apple, they might have a coherent reason, but I can’t think of any).

If I ever do get a working iPhone 4, it’ll be in the case where k > 2. If the next one works (i.e. the third one), then I think the probability of that (being a subset of k > 2) is something in the range of  0.000000999, or 9.99*10^-9 if we stick with the 1 in 1,000 assumption.

Anyway, fired off an email to Steve Jobs and I wonder if he’ll ever respond. I asked him to put a few of his engineers on the task of figuring out the exact probability of getting my package incorrectly sorted by FedEx, having two sensors arrive as broken in the same iPhone, and then getting a lemon replacement unit that can’t be detected by iTunes. I added a bonus question for them to predict the probability that my next replacement unit would actually work as advertised.

It wasn’t all sarcastic though—I did mention the fact that I’ve often stood up for Apple’s philosophy of making high-quality stuff that’s worth the extra money, provided it works, but the bullshit attitude of the “Genius” girl at the Fairview Apple Store today and the impotent store manager (who could only offer apologies and “explanations” like “Well as you can see there’s nothing I can do about anything ever”) really made a sizeable dent in my opinion of Apple. Sure there’s nothing you can do, but how about taking my suggestion of “check the replacements before they are shipped out, before you call me, and before I drive down here” seriously, rather than rolling eyes?

Anyway, back to the math: either I really am lucky enough to win the inverse lottery 5+ times (FedEx shipping, attenuation not fixed, Sensor 1, Sensor 2, Lemon Replacement, and probably something else to come)—I was fortunate enough to have, in my one experience, observed something unbelievably unlikely—or the failure rate for these components is actually a lot higher, making these kinds of problems a lot more common than Apple would like. Surely, it must cost more to be playing these cat and mouse games with replacement units than to just employ better quality controls. Then again, it costs Apple next to nothing when I’m the one taking time out of my day and gas out of my car (or bus tokens out of my pocket) to pick up hardware replacements (or in my case, get head-faked again).

Hopefully I get a response from Steve Jobs and I can post the results here. What I really want to see is some sort of “I will look into it” from him. I still love Apple’s stuff, I just really hate my luck and MAYBE I’m starting to hate their quality (controls) and hardware replacement process.

PS: To the “Genius” girl working at the Apple Store rolling your eyes when I mentioned “You can’t keep my signed replacement receipt if this phone doesn’t work, by the way”, FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU.

Here’s a follow-up email response I got from Sabrina Killingsworth at theplayerscove after I had tried to make nice and tell her that bigotry is wrong (emphasis mine):

Done Ebay 10 years. Dealt with HUNDREDS of Canadians as well as thousands of buyers across the globe.

Without hatefulness I can declare from sheer experience, The dumbest questions, dumbest answers, most problems,

Most time wasted, most stupid senseless complaints, lowest feedback, most issues of “buyer didn’t read auction description,

in general, came from Canadians. It got so bad,

I even ruled out shipping to Canada all together a few months.

My ex husband works overseas and has Canadians working for him as well as other nationalities.

He happen to have made the SAME experiences over the past 3 years.

Coincidence?

I have since actually tried to figure out why that is so and how it is possible and entire country is by average

Less bright then other folks and came to some conclusions:

Canadians are incredibly naïve, that can often lead to “dumb questions”

Canada was the country where England shipped all its criminals to and I actually suspect they may have also sent all their insane,

Especially since many criminals do have mental issues. Those that came voluntary were hill billies and country men

Not having started on the high end of intelligence either.

Even though done possibly secretly, England has produced a nation that had an uneven start.

Canadians may have had an incest problem in their early history as the country was large with relatively few people in it.

Same thing happened In Germany’s Bavaria where people lived in tiny mountain communities for centuries and nobody in

Germany argues that they are (on average) about as bright as a 10 watt light bulb.

So you see, I have actually wasted some thought on this over the years……

[end of first email]

Oh and I do whole heartedly agree with you concerning Americans being ignorant…

Love this country but yes of course, there are many things in American thinking that are “off” to an outsider.

“Police of the world and God to all” is what we used to call them in Germany already 20 years ago…

However, I actually truly based my opinions about Canadians on NOTHING but personal experience with plenty of

Data and control groups…..

[end of second email]

Cool example I will never forget:

I charged a Canadian lady international shipping ( a bit lower then for other countries but more then US shipping)

She got very upset and wrote me among other bright things :

“Am I the only one thinking of Canada as part of the US?”

[end of third email]

Yeah, seriously. I always wonder how people can be so obviously ignorant and still blind to it all. How is it these people get together and reproduce?!

Notes:

1. I’m not sure, but I think she was talking about Australia with respect to the criminals.
2. I wonder if she thinks that Canada, with such a huge proportion of the population being first or second generation immigrants, is still filled with people who are the products of incest.
3. Does anyone else find it ironic that this lady from Texas is telling me Canadians are descendants of hill-billies?
4. When Americans have stupid ideas, it just appears a little “off” to outsiders,  but when foreigners have stupid ideas, it is because they are the products of incest, criminal-babies, and hill-billy spawn.

Long and short of this story:

• theplayerscove has a great feedback history
• they shipped me an opened/unsealed pot of paint
• apparently this is standard practice and nothing unusual
• Sabrina Killingsworth is either incompetent with ebay’s auto-responder system, or is cheating it with her “I’m not here but I actually am if you try to get your money back”
• she denied the existence of all problems without evidence or consideration
• I have photographs and logs of the entire exchange

The full exchange and logs are after the cut. Will be lengthy and probably boring for most, but might be fun for those who like to read about examples of extremely stupid people saying excruciatingly stupid things and acting ridiculously childishly.

A little back story on what happened:

1. I purchased a pair of awesome satin chrome Zippos got off ebay (jagrfannj you rock).
2. I purchased a pot of Reaper Pro paint from ebay, from theplayerscove.
3. When the paint arrived, I assumed the best and gave theplayerscove a good feedback.
4. A day later, when I went to test the paint out, I opened the pot of paint only to discover that the seal on the inside of the lid had been broken.**** This isn’t really a huge issue, except that I had researched before and found that specifically Reaper Pro paints are great for metal surfaces and they are known for their reliability and quality. My concern with the opened paint was more to protect my investment in the expensive pair of Zippos (time searching and money spent) and not so much to rain justice down for a cheap little pot of paint. I don’t want any additives or tampered paint to have any reaction with my Zippos that might ultimately ruin the finish.
5. I went to ebay to try to contact the seller, and received the following email from ebay:
   —————————————————————–
   eBay sent this message to Carl Wong (xxxx.username.xxxx).
   Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay.
   Learn more at http://pages.ebay.ca/help/confidence/name-userid-emails.html
   —————————————————————–
   theplayerscove is out of the office
   —————————————————————–

   Hi xxxx.username.xxxx,

   theplayerscove is out of the office until 12/31/2010 and may not be able to
   respond to your message.

   Message from theplayerscove:
   Hi,

   Our weekends are often not Saturday and Sunday. Please allow 70 hours time for a response. Check the store’s FAQ ? policies page for some immediate answers on the most asked questions. Thank you.
   K. Killingsworth

6. Not to be dissuaded, I followed the link within ebay to go and dispute this/”resolve a problem”, which led me to Paypal where I could start a dispute about the case. I know from experience (with my credit card provider) that if you do not act immediately/within a short duration of time, the chances of you getting your money shrink exponentially, so I acted immediately. I certainly didn’t have 3+ months to wait around for a response.
7. I then got a message from this lady which apparently Paypal did not save, but it said something like “Why didn’t you ask me about this problem first before claiming a dispute? (NOTE: I did, and ebay told me no one would be home until year-end) Is this how they do it in Canada because here in America, we TALK TO EACH OTHER first.” It also included some sarcastic comments about how cute it was that I thought Paypal might disappear tomorrow. Possible, but unlikely obviously, but that timeframe for disputing charges could very well disappear tomorrow. So, score one for sound reasoning, zero for wannabe wise-cracking sarcasm.
8. Upon reading this, I first thought to myself “Um, this person seems to be confused because clearly they are not out of the office if they can immediately respond to a dispute. Also, I’m probably dealing with a teenage American with a bad temper and even worse people skills.” Turns out this is an adult woman with a husband and everything.
9. Anyway, I responded to this ridiculous and hostile snap at me by pasting in that same email that I had received from ebay (see above) into the dispute resolution messages on Paypal. The following was the rest of the exchange that Paypal did log (completely unedited and I only bolded the date-stamps, and just to clarify, I am the buyer and this Sabrina Killingsworth person is the seller):

• 8/24/2010 16:29 GMT-04:00 - Seller: Funny..did YOU YOURSELF just paste in my automated message that states :”Please allow 70 hours time for a response.” while you had to file a dispute right away anyway, even though there was NO HURRY for it whatsoever?I am not suppose to be hostile when someone files fraud charges and harms my standing with Ebay in a totally uncalled for dispute over a $2.50 buckst of paint I am being accused of being “unpure” because some seal was broken??
• 8/24/2010 19:03 GMT-04:00 - Buyer: I just pasted that message from whatever I got from ebay. You can read that little automatic ” I’ll take 70 hours to respond” all you want, but the email does say that you were supposed to be gone until December 31, 2010. If that’s not true, then maybe change your settings in ebay instead of making a fuss to someone who received an opened bucket of paint from you. Maybe you should get pissed at reaper or whoever you got this paint from instead of me because so far, all I’ve done is paid for something new, and received something opened. Sure you can feel like it’s dumb to question a $2.50 bucket of paint, but you’re not the one that needs to use it on an model worth a lot more than $2.50. Of course, you’ve already gotten my ebay seller feedback as good so why would you even care about how to make this right? Really, there’s not much I can do except file a dispute case because plenty of people all over ebay/Amazon won’t even reply to complaints until it’s too late for the consumer to claim the money back, and then they’ve already winked off with the money. It’s not my job to figure out what kind of character you’ve got or worry about how your standing with ebay looks. If you cared so much about your integrity or how ebay views these disputes, maybe you should’ve made sure the paint was sealed before it left your doors. You made me pay for the item and the shipping, so I think it’s fair for me to assume the item would leave your place as described, and that whatever shipping method you picked would be safe from any tampering on the way. Don’t throw a fit at me when I’m the one getting ripped off.
• 8/25/2010 22:49 GMT-04:00 - Seller: Maybe I would have cared if you had ASKED me instead of filing a dispute?Anyways, the paint IS NEW and UNUSED, “sealed” or not. Freaking paint pots don’t even HAVE a seal. Guess what, I just opened another THREE I got here to see what the heck you are even talking about and found no seal on either! NOR will anyone who receives these tell me they are “unsealed”. What the heck is your problem?
• 8/25/2010 22:51 GMT-04:00 - Seller: Paint was new as stated. 100′s of paint pots sold in the past few months. There is no SEAL on these pots. Paint comes straight from distributor who receives them directly from Reaper!
• 8/25/2010 22:51 GMT-04:00 - PayPal: Seller escalated this dispute to a Claim.

After all this back and forth, with me trying my best to be civil, it ended up being pushed to a claim. Yes I was pretty inflammatory at times but really, who can resist a perfect opportunity to turn someone as stubbornly ignorant and in denial completely on their head? I checked with Canada Post, and it’d cost me about $5.40 to send the item back to this Sabrina Killingsworth person for me to get my $5.79 back, meaning I’d be back at square one but down $5.40. This didn’t make much mathematical sense, so I decided I’d cancel the dispute, but not before I fired off a pretty pointed email assuring this woman in denial that I was in no way conceding the point, but just being smart about my cash. I also included this little number:

Here are some highlights from my email if you’re interested (I kept more or less all of it, except some restatements of facts):

Just so you know what I’m talking about and don’t get away with denying everything like a weasel, here’s
a photograph of the seal you are telling me “OMG DOES NOT EXIST”. And only know that I am cancelling the claim because postage to send you your little pot of paint would cost about the same as me just buying another pot, from a seller who actually knows what they are doing, and what they are selling. Please do not mistake my cancellation as any sort of concession on my part.

[...]

I mean, who wants to have the whole “I try to contact you, and ebay tells me you’re out of office, and then you magically get to respond immediately when there’s a problem, even though you’re supposed to be out of the office, and then you have to violently deny any wrong doing on your part and then I have to take a photo to prove to you either you’re bullshitting me or someone is bullshitting both of us and then finally the claim goes away simply because it’d cost too much to fix and not because you were completely in the wrong and shipped something that was not as described and you seem to have absolutely no clue about what you sell or how to talk to people”.

[...]

I will understand your manner of speaking and dealing with people if you are either 1) younger than 12 years old, or 2) an American. Apparently, you are for sure the latter (how’s the weather in Texas?), and probably the former as well. In that case, my condolences on your unfortunate lot in life. I’m almost sure being your kind of red-blooded American should excuse you from needing any sort of critical thinking, or reasonable conflict management skills. If you don’t understand something, surely you should just whine about it, ridicule all other parties, and when all else fails, ask “What the heck is your problem?” without ever once considering that maybe you’re in the wrong.

I hope the claim at Paypal really does have a negative impact on your ebay business and standing because, even if the paint wasn’t tampered with and the pots are supposed to have opened seals, your childish antics and obvious lack of people skills ought to rule you out from doing any sort of business (or reproducing) with anyone, ever. Obviously the world isn’t perfect and that’s why people like you are still selling things.

Enjoy being proven completely wrong and clueless by the attached photo as proof of my case. I’ve even labeled the parts for you, in case you have trouble understanding exactly what’s going on.

[next I had attached a copy of the photo above, showing the pot of paint and where the seal used to be]

Now, please try and tell me whether pots of paint have seals.

PS: Our entire exchange on Paypal and ebay may or may not appear on an online publication in the near future as an example of what not to do (and who not to buy from) so here’s a heads up.

Have not heard back from them, obviously, but since then the ebay user theplayerscove has changed their auto-response email to 1) read in German and 2) include a line saying “Hi, I am NOT gone until December. That is an error if you receive that message.” I have received no apology or “Oh yeah, I guess my email responder was wrong.” from this person, and would not expect any such thing ever. Another person to throw into the “stuck-up bitch who can’t admit fault” bin.

I say a pox on her and her kin for seven generations. May her loins never bear fruit, and if they already have, may her children resemble her in character as much as the night resembles the day. Let destruction and pestilence, gnashing of teeth and steadfast weeping be all that anyone will remember of her life and legacy. And in all things, may prosperity and happiness elude her house like the wind at one’s fingertips.

Aside: Maybe I need a book for these.

Notes: The original audio track was supposed to be Kaela Kimura’s “Level 42″ but because the folks at Columbia Music are dicks sticklers about people promoting their artists on their behalf for free illegal use of their “property” they wouldn’t let me use it on YouTube and the audio got nuked. I then used an audio-swap feature of YouTube’s to substitute a pre-licensed song (the “I’m Feeling Lucky” automatic song finder gave me Finger Eleven’s “Paralyzer” after two tries).

I hope you enjoy the video, without the original, nicely cut and faded audio. Thanks be to Karen for helping me with the cutting of the pages, and Amy for her genius idea on how to bind and seal the pages together. Oh, and thanks be to Columbia Music, just for being the kind of company they are. Please, continue to set this kind of precedent for all those in the music industry and do for your artists what only you can do, and I’m almost sure you will have a flourishing business model on your hands. That, or crash and burn like the bags of fecal matter in airplanes low on fuel that you so desperately wish to resemble.

Hate for petty and childish business models aside, I’m loving the phone and loved making the case. I have indeed been able to replicate the attenuation problem (to crush the dreams of all those who were hoping some magical fix had been implemented in the second batch of iPhones), but it seems that it is only an issue in inherently weak-signaled places, and I do think the reception overall is actually better on the iPhone 4. For example, I get 3 bars that will drop to none or 1 when applying the death-grip to Ulrich from within my condo. As a reference, I normally get zero/no reception at all with my previous handset in the same spot. This proves that attenuation is still a problem. However, the fact that the phone even gets any reception in that spot at all indicates that the antennae actually performs better if not being cheated.

To explain the image, I like building things. I very much enjoy designing badass stuff. I love the process of taking a bunch of raw materials, and infusing myself into them through work and application such that they take on form and function worth more than the sum of the parts. Contrast this affection with my falling out with “school” and all it stands for and you have a perfectly good reason to post a shot of my dear Phoebe’s nude body.

Back in high school (and even before), I played the role of a student rather readily and even enthusiastically. I enjoyed all my subjects and had great rapport with my teachers barring Olsheski the Unfit and to a much lesser extent, Quejada the Exiguous). I picked up  new information and facts, relationships and theories easily enough, and applied them as well as I could be expected to. And this was all fine and dandy, if not for the subject matter itself, then for the thrill of competition.

Now that I’m in university, now that I am a faceless user ID number in a grad-production factory, and now that I have outgrown the petty score keeping, grade school antics, what am I left with? As far as academia goes, I’ve a set of course requirements, and possibly a dean’s list to make. I don’t know anyone particularly well in my program (nor do I have any inclination to do so), so I have no close peers to compete with. I personally hold that I fall somewhere near the average (preferably on the slightly higher side), meaning I have no reason to compare my performance with the truly exceptional students (wow—some people are fast), and I am doing better than most of the cool kids I’d want to talk to (who, oddly enough, don’t seem to want to socialize). Everyone else that’s left around my neighbourhood of the spread is likely as level-headed and balanced as myself, meaning I might as well be racing myself.

I am not a fan of my program, and the people in it don’t help. Math, however elegant, lacks the grounded, practical side for the most part (I mean, there are badassedly useful stuff to be learned in computer science classes and advanced Calculus was beautiful, but in general, it’s all very abstract). It’s very hard to take ownership of a math solution and say “Yes, I made that,” especially if it’s all derivative work based on some dead guy’s theorem. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the business courses. These fall somewhere in between “useful but boring tidbits of information” and “excruciatingly detailed rehash of things anyone with common sense could deduce”.

All this leads me to the current situation that I am in. I know I probably ought to exert myself a lot harder if I want to do better than just “better than average”, but I don’t really see the value in that. Employers do not hire based on who has the biggest number on the page, but based on things like creative problem solving, critical thinking, people skills, and badassedness. I think I’ve got all these things in flying colours. Sure, I coast on nimbleness of intellect rather than dedicated memorization, and that leads me to do well enough. And I think that that’s enough. I’d rather spend my life doing what and being who I enjoy—and proving myself capable conforming, when I need to, to someone else’s definition of successful—rather than the other way around.

Aside: does anyone have an idea for a t-shirt that they want made?

Or, this is my mind trying to justify forgetting a summation sign on the formulation of a regression-based linear program in that midterm last night.

Note: I looked at the very last question on the midterm, and saw the solution right away (through some magic that I can’t explain), and then failed to show how to arrive at that correct answer via the “proper” algorithm. I just did a bunch of shit that makes sense, wrote my answer, and then made a list at the bottom entitled “The Proper Steps”. Have fun, paper-grader.

1. I never bought Modern Warfare 1, so this game isn’t a rehash cash-grab to me.
2. I own and enjoy Bad Company 2 too.

So I’ve been getting some rave reviews from other players that I happen upon randomly in Infinity Ward’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″. Half the people that play with me and contact me end up sending me friend requests, and the other half send me messages telling me how much they hate my funky fresh style, like this one:

danger close noob tube camping and oma means your a noob
- mbrooker91, spelling is terribad, but true to the message

doesn’t that mean you just went 0 and 6 with a noob?
- me the Awesome, my response to him

Note: For the record, I remember bombing this specific guy once as he ran right across the area in front of me, twice more when he was feebly hiding behind a dumpster in the distance, once as he was running straight at me down a tunnel, once when he tried to sneak up on me behind some barrels, and he ate a claymore in the face. I’m also pretty sure I called a precision airstrike right on his head, and shot him with a few howitzers out of an AC130 gunship. So, I mean, I can understand why he’d be pissed. I’d be angry too if I sucked that hard.

Bite me, mbrooker91.

Conclusion

I’m putting this at the start, so people who aren’t inclined to read the whole damn rant (there’s plenty of stuff that only matters to you if you play Modern Warfare 2) can still get my point. You can skip the rest of this rant if you don’t like reading about detailed nerdy stuff, but here are the main points:

• Haters gonna hate
• Some people are average at video games
• Some people are better than average at video games because they manipulate the game mechanics to do some neat/badass stuff
• Some average players hate on these players because their methods are difficult to play against with  illogical criticisms
• My opinion: tough luck, bitches—the scoreboard says it all
• I for one am not self-loathing enough to tell the guy who just killed me six times in a row that he sucks and doesn’t know how to play
• Some people are frustrated with sucking, as they should be, and take it out on the good players just looking to get some frags in
• If you don’t like losing, try getting better, playing differently, buying another game, blaming the developers, or smashing your controller into your face, but don’t come whining to me about your terrible skills
• Oh, and note that I don’t consider myself a pro at the game, but I just think it’s dumb to criticize other players on their styles—especially if they are kicking your ass, apparently

From the conclusion at the end of this post:

Point of the story is, don’t bitch about some guy who is creaming you just because he’s doing it with only one or two (really simple) tricks. Quality players adapt and change when things don’t seem to work. Stubborn/persistent players try the same thing again and again (usually to no avail), and little bitches cry and whine about how unfair the world is.

What a mbrooker91 looks like in real life.

This is true in life as well, from both points of view. For one, it’s just good sense to put forethought, critical thinking, and contingencies into your plans. Alternatively, when something doesn’t go your way, you can either avoid it, overcome the obstacle, stupidly attack it the same way every time, or lay down and die, bitching about it all way down.

Introduction

I think playing all those RPG and Pokémon games has made me a better Modern Warfare 2 player, at least in how I build my classes. Case in point, my “Soldier” class:

• Perk 1: One Man Army Pro
• Perk 2: Danger Close Pro
• Perk 3: Commando Pro
• Primary: ACR Assault Rifle @ Grenade Launcher
• Secondary: N/A (One Man Army limits you to only the primary weapon)
• Equipment: Claymore Mine
• Secondary Equipment: Flashbang Grenade

What does this mean?

The first perk (OMA) allows you to swap classes at any given point, and the penalty for doing so is a few seconds of waiting (approximately 2 seconds) where you can’t do anything except move around. The neat thing is that you can swap back into your existing class, refilling your ammo, equipment, etc… to full.

(from left: One Man Army Pro, Danger Close Pro, and Commando Pro emblems)

The second perk (DC) increases the damage you deal using explosive armaments (like frag grenades, rocket launchers, and yes, the grenade launcher). This makes explosive weapons a lot more powerful, as suddenly, splash damage is increased (I suspect the radius is enlarged too), making previously non-lethal hits much more likely to frag ass.

Commando Pro is the last perk. The non-pro version of Commando gives you a lunge that makes OHK knife attacks possible from farther away. The pro version is what I’m interested in, since it gives you zero falling damage, meaning you can (unrealistically) jump out from the top of the rafters and not die from the impact.

Any random assault rifle can have a grenade launcher attachment unlocked for it. I just like the ACR because it’s got so little recoil. The thing with the grenade launcher is that it can only carry two rounds, and after that, you’re pretty much dry. Ammo is gun + attachment specific so you can’t just run up and pick up a dead guy’s gun to refill your own gun’s ammo. There are also no ammo spawn boxes à la Quake or Unreal. The other equipment is pretty standard for me—mines to catch people coming to get me, and flashbangs if I need to dash.

Premise

Depending on the map, there might be one or two nice little spots for what I like to call “Operation Bomb-the-Crap-Out-of-Everyone”. The idea is to setup a safe-ish perimeter with the claymore mines, and then lob grenades out of the grenade launcher at people you see running around. You swap back into the same class to refill your grenade launcher ammo, and repeat. It’s not exactly complicated, but it seems to really give some particularly stubborn/stupid people trouble, when they are on the receiving end.

Location

Almost always, it’s an elevated position with a good view of all parts of the map, with a few predictable entrances. A good example would be a room with two perpendicular windows on the second floor of a house with only two doorway entrances.

Setup

Not much to this step. I put down a mine to cover one of the entrances, and then do a class swap back into my Soldier class. This refills my claymore (you can only carry one at a time) and I lay another one down to cover the other entrance. Pretty important, since, momentarily, people are really going to want you dead, and you can’t spend much time covering those doors while  hail-Mary-bombing everyone else.

Fun

So, now that you’re pretty much holed up in a high place with a great view, you start raining the pain. Now, this step was hard for me at first, since you have to get used to the distances between where you are, and where you see people unsuspectingly going about their lives. The grenades travel in a parabolic arc, so you need to compensate for the distance traveled + uneven terrain (if the ground happens to slope up/down) for your eggs of death to hit their mark. You need to get close, and let splash damage do the rest. I personally have gotten pretty damn good at calibrating my shots to get these exploding ball-sacks of fury into rooms across the whole map through the tiny windows and doors.

Actually, after you spend some time testing and figuring out how much higher above your target you need to aim to nail them from your spot, you’re set, because that distance will be the same every time as long as you’re in the same spot. I can pretty much always nail this one little corner that snipers think they are safe in from a random spot maybe 200 feet away. Yes, it’s hilarious. I personally always imagine if I was that person, running along seemingly safe and sound, minding my own business, when out of nowhere a baseball sized bomb whizzes in and explodes the lights out of me. Got to love it.

Results

Well, basically, if you do it right, your grenades will land on people far, far away and score some hilariously “WTF?!” kills for you. And obviously, someone who dies from a grenade to the head from 100 m away (yep, I’ve done it, although I can’t say it was on purpose) is probably going to try to get some revenge. If your careful surveillance of your perimeter doesn’t result in you nailing them again on their trip towards you, your mines will likely get them. When your claymores get set off, by the way, you should be replacing them with new ones but in slightly different spots to keep things unpredictable. And when you start getting your killstreaks? Well, basically, you keep the rain of pain coming. It’s really not too hard to get maybe 20 kills before dying using this kind of strategy—assuming no one on the other team actually plays smart and kills you while you’re swapping classes, or sneaks past all your claymores to shoot you in the back.

This is what that guy's head was like.

Reactions

Positive: Well, it’s no surprise that some people, seeing a teammate of theirs getting something like 20+ kills with less than 5 deaths after the ten-minute match, decide to befriend this clever little fox  (aka: me). It’s nice, I guess, but I usually don’t accept these requests. That’s me, y’know, down to earth, with a trigger-happy tendency toward blocking strangers.

Negative: Here’s where I get messages, sometimes mid-match, along the lines of “OMA + DC + grenade launcher means you’re a n00b” or “n00b camper” etc… Now, I’ve no problem with people getting frustrated when killed (I cuss quite a bit under my breath when I go on deathstreaks), but it bugs me when people whine about other people’s styles just because their own style is a terrible match up.

First off, what I explained above isn’t really camping. There’s plenty of moving around and scouting for new targets, and depending on the spot, I am relatively exposed to getting killed from a few directions if you know what you’re doing.

For your information, camping is usually when you sit in a room/sneaky spot, staring right at the one entrance or doorway, to “camp” the spot until someone walks in/by. You then shoot at any sign of movement hoping to catch someone unawares. In my opinion, I don’t mind these kinds of players much (mostly because it’s relatively easy to counter—toss in a grenade or flashbang, and take them out). That’s the weakness of camping: you pretty much trap yourself in a crap spot to gain the element of surprise (pretty bad trade off if you ask me). This works once or twice, but you’re pretty much dead if you don’t get out after that.

Secondly, I disagree with the “n00b” classification. I mean, statistically speaking, if I’m racking up huge amounts of kills with no one able to stop me, that sort of means I’m doing something right. Sure, I’m not running straight into the fray, all guns blazing, but that’s because I’m not suicidal. And it’s not like I’m using the wrong weapons for the job—see: shotgun sniping. I’d argue that it takes quite a bit of talent to be able to place a BFE pretty much anywhere I want on 80% of a map within a few seconds (including the time it takes to spot a target, aim the gun). And the whole backup plan that KILLS PEOPLE SNEAKING UP ON ME? That’s pretty badass too, if you ask me.

Noob Tubing: This Is Not It

Anyway, here’s what I think: there are two kinds of people that are hated in multiplayer video games. Cheaters, and campers. Cheaters break the rules to get an unfair advantage, and campers use crappy tactics to get a few cheap kills. Personally, if someone finds a game mechanic and manipulates it to set themselves head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, they shouldn’t have to put up with the whining of people who have failed to evolve or adapt. N00bs are new and don’t know how to play the game. This is almost the exact opposite of anyone who is able to

Options

If you don’t like people who play like me, here are a few ideas worth trying (instead of getting frustrated and stupid-mouthed:

• Don’t Come Back: If you go to a restaurant and hated the experience, you don’t go back. Likewise, if you get served (I think I just punned you in the face), and you didn’t like it, just stay in the 20% of the map that I can’t kill you in. I can’t kill you if you stop running around out in the open, maybe.
• Just Beat It: Every so often, I’ll play in matches where some badass decides he’s had enough of my ‘nade lobbing and they’ll come get me from some unpredictable direction and kill me! This is good. Just note that next time, there’s probably going to be a claymore with their name on it.
• Evolve and Re-evolve: Yeah, this one I hate. Because of the limitations of the class building system, I can’t really do much about snipers (unless I know which room they’re sniping me from). Basically, if your class sucks against my high-flying explosive balls, change to something that has a chance of countering, rather than wondering why trying the same thing six times gets you killed every time. If I remember, trying the same thing expecting different results is the official definition of insanity. Do something new and see if that works (probably won’t, but it’s worth a shot).
• Be Creative: Every setup out there has strengths and weaknesses (some more than others, making some better than others), but the point is, weaknesses exist for a reason. Case in point, by using Danger Close and Commando, I’m not immune to radar scans and heartbeat sensors (i.e. this puts a big red dot on my enemies’ maps, labeling exactly where I can be found).

Conclusion

Point of the story is, don’t bitch about some guy who is creaming you just because he’s doing it with only one or two (really simple) tricks. Quality players adapt and change when things don’t seem to work. Stubborn/persistent players try the same thing again and again (usually to no avail), and little bitches cry and whine about how unfair the world is.

I have yet to encounter an instance where a book I buy this term is actually still used by the same course the next term (regardless of what some WLU professors will tell you). This means there’s pretty much no resale value, and you’re stuck with a $100+ book per course, per term, that cannot be resold and generally won’t be looked at again anyway. If you are lucky enough to find someone willing to take on an older edition (i.e. someone who sees through the thin veil that says the course is completely incompatible with its materials 4 months prior), then you may not share the same concerns as most students.

Already people are struggling to pay just for tuition, but having course materials costing almost as much as half of your tuition some terms, you have to start wondering just how hard publishers have to lobby their books. In this respect, I have much respect for the University of Waterloo course coordinators (at least for my courses). So far, I’ve yet to encounter any course the requires a book costing more than $100 that wasn’t:

• also available for free and legally through an online version
• not mandatory

The “How to Design Programs” book for the PLT Scheme courses fits this description.

The only text that “breaks” this mold is the “Calculus: Early Transcendentals” used in first-year. The book was something like $120, but considering that it was used in both first and second Calculus and proved useful in the third Calculus course, this book cost maybe about $40 amortized per course.

All other courses so far have been based loosely on cheap books (around $20 – $60) and generally have not been mandatory. This is largely why I have actually failed to purchase any course packages, textbooks, or otherwise shameless cash-grabs after first term of first year. Sure some course notes are helpful, but it’s proven that people generally learn better and remember more when actually writing, with pen and paper, during lectures. This is what I do.

What’s better yet, the course I’m taking at the University of Waterloo offer their course notes online, for free, in eco-friendly PDF format for download by any student. This is way more efficient that telling students to find and buy an actual book. Plus, the university itself has full control over what content and terminology gets included and used, rather than being forced to adopt the terms and pick and choose from the content included by the publishers of the textbooks. This is good, if you believe your course coordinator genuinely knows more about the course than a random collection of people out there writing books to maybe fit your course, along with many other courses out there.

I can’t prove whether this happens, but I seriously wouldn’t put it past the fine business folk at WLU, or maybe any other university. I think it happens something like a lobbyist agreement. Some textbook company decides to “make a deal” with a university or a high-ranking person at the university, in exchange for promotion of that company’s books. Suddenly the newest edition (not being sold in the used book store) is mandatory in a core course, and they must be brought to class (as proof of purchase?) for “participation marks”. I get it, we need them for class activities, but then sharing a book between people would be fine. It’s not.

It’s apparently an act of academic and legal misconduct at WLU if you do not pay $30 for the course package for Organizational Behaviour, containing a whopping five (yes, countable on one hand) pages of white paper with some printing and “more materials to come later in the course”. It’s also illegal to photocopy those pages to split the ultra-low cost of $6 per sheet of paper between classmates. They never did come later in the course (sparing maybe four to five more single sheets), and of course I never paid for this sham. At what point do we start putting the intentions of the institutions we are customers of in doubt? I am told our professors are genuinely interested in our success—and I believe this for the most part. I just have to doubt whether the universities themselves or the people running them actually care about academia, knowledge, teaching, and improving society through their business, or if they are just here to make a quick buck off of their quality professors and trusting students? Cowardice and greed.

I’m sorry, I’d rather take a 10% hit to my grades rather than be coerced into buying a book I can readily substitute with free PDF alternative texts—plus, I want to sleep easy at night knowing I wasn’t being manipulated into paying for whatever “agreements” were made behind closed doors. I’m perfectly willing to earn participation marks by participating, but if you make my ability to do so contingent on whether I’ve got $140 lying around to feed your under-the-table agreements, you can bite me. Losing a few marks here and there because of poor course design, I can live with. I just wonder why I have to.

If my marks are reflective of my learning during a course, then what the fuck does my wallet have to do with it? I’m already paying for the teaching and marking staff, and upkeep of your buildings and even development of new facilities I won’t get to use, so why are you making me pay for books when the same knowledge could easily be captured more concisely and precisely by our own professors for our own courses? So I can hope to get above 90%? Dickless.

WLU: take a note from Dan Wolczuk and his course notes for Calculus III, or just about any other course at UW. They are always excellent, professionally made, and free to students who just want to learn things.**

Basically, I don’t think it’s fair to handicap students who see through the shitty business model of the university by docking 10% off the top. This favors the rich (and/or just naive) over the average and grades will reflect this—sure, no amount of 10% participation marks will turn a C student into an A student, but it doesn’t need to if your C’s can become B’s and your A’s drop to B’s.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that actual textbooks use a huge amount of paper, toxic inks, and non-renewable energies to produce and ship? They are also a pain in the ass to store and distribute (given the rate at which they expire and become obsolete). I’d take PDF over paper any day.

** The closest thing from WLU that I have seen is the Business 111 and 121 course notes, and to be honest, the books were huge and filled with useful stuff. However, these books cost ~$70 (one per term), weren’t available in PDF format, and were filled with information more or less identical to the previous “editions”. The only major changes came with the numbers in questions, making them—surprise surprise—useless for in-class discussions, activities, and getting that 10% participation mark.