This is a very short follow-up to my rant a couple of weeks ago about an experience I had at Besy Buy. I was surfing the net yesterday and ran into this story on MS bCentral called “15 Customer Service no-nos”. It pretty much sums up all the problems I had plus many others. I have had nearly every single one of these happen to me and I’m sure most of you have ran into some of these. Anyway, it’s good for a quick read if your interested in this kind of stuff.
June 2004
QOTD: What is the meaning of life?
I thought about the Question of the Day today and I’ve kinda gotten a little philosophical about it, so I thought I’d share since it makes for a decent blog…
So what is the meaning of life?
Well, I saw several definitions of life on the QOTD answers section, but those really don’t tell you the meaning of life…only one definition of what life is.
There were also a couple of insightful answers like:
“Be good to others; enjoy your family and friends; enjoy yourself; do something at some point that benefits others.” – comoxbc
“to celebrate god’s creation and re-invent ourselves from start every new moment” – Anonymous
While these get closer to the answer to the question at hand, they still don’t quite get there. They give you what you should do during life, but not what it’s meaning is… The problem here is that this question cannot be answered by anyone that could post for the following reason:
Life is what you make of it. The way you live, the things you do and don’t do, the way you treat others, the things you place values on…everything you do while you are alive are actually part of your definition of what life is and the meaning behind it. Your period of existence as a living being will culminate in your unique answer that defines what the meaning of your life was. That’s the great thing about being alive…we are not governed by a preset restriction as to what the meaning of life it…defining the meaning of life for each of us IS the meaning of our lives.
How lifelike do you like your graphics?
I just read an interesting story over at the Slate. It was specifically talking about games, but I think this can be extended to any type of computer graphics. It basically talked about how people identify with and are drawn to characters that are more lifelike…but only up to a point. Once you reach a certain level, the characters become repulsive. I think this is part of the reason Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within wasn’t a very hot movie. People marveled at the graphics, but when it came down to it, the characters didn’t come off as living, breathing creatures that you could identify with. Anyway, I do agree with the author of the story, that going cartoony (like Zelda: Wind Waker) does make it easier to identify with characters and the ones that characters that push 99% realism are just freaky (100% may be just fine though, but since no one has done it yet, there isn’t any way to tell…). What do you think?