Archive for January, 2008

Piratesonline.com. Grrrr.

Published
by
Keith
on January 27, 2008
in Charlie and Everyday Rambling
. 2 Comments

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been seeing commercials for the NEW Pirates of the Caribbean online game from Disney. The big push in the commercial is that you can play for FREE!

I decided to go ahead and sign Charlie up so he could play it today. I knew there would be a catch with the “play FREE” thing. I know they HAVE to make money somehow, so I wasn’t surprised when I found out they had different levels of play.  Basically, the more you pay, the more advanced features you get. The FREE version is a “light” version of the game.  No problem, Charlie is only 6, he’s probably just going to walk in circles and hit everything he can find with a sword. It’s not like he’s going to get into the whole Multi-Player/Community facet of the game yet.

After I signed up, downloaded and ran the game I figured out the REAL catch to trying to play the game for FREE. Turns out that if you don’t pay for access, you get thrown into the “FREE BASIC ACCESS QUEUE.” This is the equivalent of being forced to sit at the back of the bus. I’ve been sitting in the Queue for over 2 hours so far staring at the intro screen to the game. My bet is I never see the actual game (maybe if i sign in at 3am!).

How do I know this is the catch? right on the intro screens they put this link:

“Don’t Want to Wait? Upgrade to Unlimited Access”

Pirates Online Intro Screen

Personally, I think they should have been a little more honest and used this as their link text:

“Thanks for getting conned by our multi-million dollar ad campaign stating that you can play our fantastic new Pirate Game for FREE. We are glad you appreciate how carefully we crafted our campaign to target your children. Obviously it’s a pretty hollow offer, so now that you have your child begging you to let them play the cool game that they saw on the TV commercial, just suck it up and give us our $9.95 per month. We’ll also be happy to accept a yearly payment for the bargain price of $79.95. Again, thanks for getting sucked into yet another commercial scam!”

I suppose their text is a little shorter.

In short, if you are going to advertise a GAME to KIDS that they can play for FREE,  make sure they can really play for FREE. Throwing out bait like this, and then switching to an entirely different setup at the last second just pisses off the consumer - ME.

What is even more upsetting than not getting to play the game as promised, is that this immoral corporate marketing tactic is probably working, and Disney is raking in the cash hand over fist.

But, who would want to listen to what I have to say. After all, I’m just sitting at the back of the bus.

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K2 Theme for Wordpress.

Published
by
Keith
on January 26, 2008
in Blogging and Everyday Rambling
. 0 Comments

I love the new K2 Theme for Wordpress.

I have one major annoyance though. The “pages” that you create in wordpress automatically appear as tabs in the header of the website. I REALLY don’t want them there but there is no way to remove them through the admin interface. I’ve searched around quite a bit and the only solution I’ve found to the problem is to edit the PHP code. I found the offensive code and edited it so the “pages” no longer appear as tabs at the top of my website.

Here is the fix I used to knock out the “pages” from the header.

I am running the “K2 Release Candidate 4″ version.

1. Find the header.php file. It should be located in this directory:
“wp-content/themes/k2″

2. Towards the bottom of the file you should find this line of code:
<?php wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=’); ?>

I have a completely UNMODIFIED version of the theme. This is my first modification. In my header.php file it is on line #137

3. To completely remove the pages from the header all you have to do is comment out the php line by adding two “//” characters right after the beginning of opening php tag. The completed line will look like this:
<?php //wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=’); ?>
^^ see the change! :-)

4. I could have just deleted the entire line but I always like to leave the original code in case I ever need to refer back to it later.

5. Congratulations! You just deleted your “pages” from the header of your site!

Now, you may still want to display your pages somewhere on your site, I did! Here’s what I did so I could still view my pages as a sidebar module.

1. Log into your wordpress admin account and goto the “K2 Sidebar Manager” under the Presentation tab.

2. Add a new module to one of your sidebars using the “Text, HTML, and PHP” module.

3. Add this code to the module:

<ul>
<li>
<?php wp_list_pages(’title_li=’ ); ?>
</li>
</ul>

4. Viola! You now have your “pages” as a sidebar module!

I decided to kill the tab that either says “Register” or “Site Admin” that appears in the header also.

Basically just follow the steps to remove the “Pages” from the header, except you are going to change this line:
<?php wp_register(’<li class=”admintab”>’,'</li>’); ?>

to this:
<?php //wp_register(’<li class=”admintab”>’,'</li>’); ?>

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Dumb.

Published
by
Keith
on January 16, 2008
in Everyday Rambling
. 2 Comments

I slammed the door closed to the Explorer last night.

Somehow I managed to hit myself in the head.

So, essentially I slammed my head in the car door.

Dumb car door.

Oh yeah, it hurt too.

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Catch Me.

Published
by
Keith
on January 14, 2008
in Everyday Rambling
. 0 Comments

SlipperyI headed out to pick up a 32 ounce coke from the gas station tonight. I decided to cut across the freshly snow covered yard to the drivers door of the car. About half way there, I slipped and started windmilling across the yard toward the car door.

The good news? I made it to the car without falling.

The bad news? My slipping and sliding came to a sudden halt when I collided with the car. Once I hit the car, I promptly fell backward and hit the ground. As I hit the ground, I kicked my left leg up under the car slamming my shin into the metal car frame.

Damn that hurt.

I quickly picked myself up and scanned up and down the street. Whew, no body was around to see me in action. I opened the door and jumped in the car. Ignoring the increasing pain in my shin, I slipped the key into the ignition. As the car started I was blown back in my seat by the volume of the radio. Yeah, I had it cranked up listening to some old 80’s classic on the way home earlier.

As my senses adjusted, I realized what song was on the radio: “Catch Me I’m Falling.”

Evidently God really does have a sense of humor.

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I’ve Moved!

Published
by
Keith
on January 9, 2008
in Blogging and Everyday Rambling
. 0 Comments

Monkeyjack.com is now KeithCramer.com.

At least for now.

Let’s see who can find me!

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Dan.

Published
by
Keith
on January 3, 2008
in Everyday Rambling
. 11 Comments

What would you do if a half-naked skinny white guy named Dan knocked on your door at 5:30 AM when it was 8 degrees outside and the ground was covered by several inches of snow?

Well, he was only wearing a pair of boxers, and maybe some socks. It was 8 degrees outside, but according to the wind-chill, it’s supposed to feel more like -3 degrees.

After letting my two Rottweiler-Shepherd’s say hello through the window of the door, I cracked the door open just enough to say “Dude, what’s going on??” The whole time letting Eko and Cheyenne poke their noses through the crack in the door.

At this point, I realized that this guy was starting to take on a nice shade of blue, and probably was shaking from a combination of the early stages of hypothermia and fear that he was going to be devoured by a couple of unhappy sleep deprived 90 pound dogs.

After realizing that maybe he knocked on the wrong door at 5:30 in the morning, he asked “ummm, can I borrow your phone? I need to call a friend.”

“What happened??” I asked.

“I got jumped down the street. Do you have a shirt I can borrow?”

“What’s your name?”

After a bit of a pause, he answered “Dan.”

So, I told “Dan” to hang on a second.

Of course, I already had the phone in hand. As I was dialing 911, I rushed to the closet and grabbed a towel that he could wrap around himself.

I made sure the door was closed and locked, and the dogs were keeping him company at the window.

I would love to hear the recording of my emergency call, because I think it sounded something like this:

First, there would be a lot of barking in the background of the call.

“This is the operator, where is the emergency?”

“Um, hi, yeah, um, it’s at (enter my home address here). umm, there’s a skinny-white guy standing on my porch wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He’s asking to use my phone to call a friend. I’m not giving him my phone, and I’m definitely not leaving some half naked guy in my house. Can you send someone over here right away to help me out.”

“What’s his name?”

“Umm, he says it’s Dan.”

“Is he wearing any shoes??”

“I don’t know! It’s dark outside!”

I would have preferred the operator say something like “Help is on the WAY!” but no, I get “Is he wearing shoes?” WTF??

So, by now I’m back at the door giving “Dan” a towel that really isn’t going to do him a damn bit of good. It’s 8 degrees outside, and I’ve just handed him a 3 X 4 foot towel that seems a bit thin. It always seemed plenty big when I would hop out of the shower to dry off, but somehow it seemed a little lacking when it was being used to cover up a nearly 6 foot tall half-naked skinny guy who was slowly freezing to death.

Sucks to be him.

He looked at me and said “thanks” and then asked if he could use the phone again, which he can clearly see that I am talking on.

I told him “no worries, I am getting you some help.”

He then asked me “Do you know Dan Tyler?”

“Is your name Dan Tyler?” I asked back. I think I got a nod to this one, so I told the guy on the emergency line.

Then he asked “Can I come in?” obviously his sanity is starting to slip at this point, because my dogs are still trying to say hello with all of the barking and jumping and trying to get through the crack of the door to “greet him.”

I give him a simple “umm, I don’t think that’s a good idea, my dogs wouldn’t like it much.”

He gave me what looked like a disappointed nod. Obviously being half naked wearing nothing but boxers and crappy little towel in what feels like -3 degrees outside will start to conquer your fear of big dogs.

At some point, he actually realized that I was talking to someone on the phone. “Who are you talking to?”

“I’m just getting you some help.” I told him.

I think there was a little bit more idle chit chat at this point while I was praying for the police to get here. I’m pretty sure he asked me for a shirt again too. It was starting to worry me that he was willing to brave the dogs to get out of the cold.

Luckily within another minute or so, I saw a squad car roll by the house. Then I noticed several people on the street heading our way, including a K9 patrol. I closed the door again, and ran back and locked the dogs in the hallway. I was back to the door in under 30 seconds and the guy was gone. I peered through the window and could see him squatting down on the porch hunched into a ball trying to warm up, and maybe hide. I’m not sure. Right then the police threw a spotlight on him and asked him to step down from the porch, hands on their weapons, and K9 ready to jump. He slowly walked down the steps and was put into the back of a squad car.

Then I heard the emergency operator mumble something about them looking for someone and if they had him in hand, he would hang up now. Which was fine, since at this point I had forgotten I was even on the phone. Then I heard one of the officers say something outside about how he must have been hiding on my porch.

Little did I know, but there was a man-hunt for a half-naked skinny white guy going on in my neighborhood, and I got to be a part of it. That explains how 4 squad cars and 2 ominous looking black SUV’s appeared in front of my house in under 5 minutes.

I think I deserve some kind of award. Maybe a little trophy of a frozen white guy with ice-cycles hanging off his…anyway, what a great way to wake up.

Oh yeah, the dude stole my towel too.

2008 is going to be an strange year.

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