AirPods: The Review

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Back in December Apple released wireless Earpods, aka Airpods. I immediately wanted a pair, but the available stock sold out pretty much instantly. Foolishly, I spent two months waiting on them to become generally available, thinking I’d just pick them up at Best Buy. By the end of February, when the people in Best Buy still showed me packs of wired Earpods when I asked if they had Apple’s new wireless headphones in stock, I finally did what I should have done back in December:

I bought a pair on apple.com and waited 6 weeks (the lead time since the initial batch sold out has been, and remains, at 6 weeks) for them to ship.

A few weeks ago a co-worker told me www.att.com had them in stock, and since they were in stock with free shipping and my Apple order was 4 weeks out I decided to order a second pair from AT&T and I could get them the next week and cancel the Apple order if my wife didn’t want the second pair (or eBay them for fun & profit).

As it turned out, the Apple Airpods shipped the day after the set from AT&T shipped out. :-/

Two hundred words in, lets start the actual review!

Imagine the wired Apple Earpods we’ve had for a few years now. Now imagine how they sound and how they fit in your ears. Are you happy with how they sound and how they feel? I’ve used and liked the Earpods that ship with iPhones for a long time, so I expected to at the very least like the Airpods as much as the wired version. If you like/love the wired Apple headphones, the Airpods are no different. If you hate the feel or the sound of the ones that ship with the iPhone, you’ll hate these as well.

It turns out removing the wires makes a HUGE difference in day to day usage (yeah, I know….welcome to Bluetooth tech and 2012). Any worries I had about the Airpods falling out of my ear was completely unfounded. Without the wire to pull on them and get snagged on things, I’ve never had one fall out accidentally in a couple weeks of use. They sound identical (to my ears) as the wired version. If you are happy with how they sound, you’ll like the Airpods’ sound quality as well. The battery life has been great, the storage case keeps them charged up and I simply charge the case every other day during my commute.

Really the only issue is the loss of the volume adjustment that is on the wired version. I don’t know how you’d address that in a version 2 of the Airpods, but Apple wants you to use Siri to change the volume (a quick double tap of the Airpods activates Siri by default). As you might imagine, that’s an awful solution. The first thing I did was change that setting to play/pause the headphones. I’ve just settled on changing the volume via the volume buttons on my phone. Not great, but not the end of the world either.

 

I was thinking the other day, now that I’ve used them for a few weeks……would I buy them again? I would. In fact, I really wish I had ordered them back in December so I could have been using them since February.

9/10 – Would buy again (which I technically did by accident)

 

The Lost Art of Syndication: First 5 Shows to Randomly Watch

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Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I feel like I was witness to the golden age in rerun television.  At any point during the day you could flip on the TV and immediately be pulled into a random sitcom or detective show.  In this day and age there is programming of all genres available at your fingertips whenever you want it.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s a good thing and in no way want to return to the 13 channels of basic cable programming available to me in my formative years.  But at the same time, I feel like modern TV shows have lost the simple pleasures I found in syndicated reruns because of the oversaturation and availability of entire seasons that you get with streaming services.

With a good rerun, outside of the dreaded “To Be Continued” episode, there is really no need for a backstory or any understanding of previous episodes.  There are not many overarching story lines that you need to know about in order to understand what you are watching.  The main characters need to stay pretty consistent throughout all seasons so that you don’t have good and bad seasons because of the cast.  How annoying would it be to tune in to Walker, Texas Ranger expecting to see the stunning Chuck Norris only to find out for the last couple seasons of the show they cast Steven Segal in the lead role?

There is a time and place for binge watching shows with overly complicated plots that stretch across multiple seasons but this list is only for shows that you can keep in a list of favorites, picking up an episode here and there for amusement and stress relief.  With that said, here are the first 5 shows in my rerun rolodex of good times:

 

The Rockford Files – Need I say more?  Quite possibly the greatest show ever produced, The Rockford Files was on for 6 seasons through the 70’s.  It stars James Garner as the main character and his sweet Firebird as the most notable reoccurring co-star.  The plots are all pretty similar with the main theme being a hard luck private detective comes out on top and catches the bad guy after first encountering some issues.  Anytime you combine James Garner, a Firebird and frequent breakfast tacos you might as well go ahead and sign me up.

 

 

 

Seinfeld – While I was in college, TBS would run two episodes of Seinfeld every afternoon/evening.  That means by the time I graduated I had probably seen every episode at least 8 times.  Even though I know each episode like the back of my hand, I can still laugh along as if it was the first time I watched it.  The cast stayed pretty much the same throughout the shows run and the storylines were all reset at the end of each episode.  The stories for each show were so unique that the episodes could be shuffled and the show would still have the same effect.

 

 

 

Matlock – Andy Griffith was close to making this list twice but I chose this show in particular because its cast didn’t contain Warren the replacement deputy.  Seriously though, this show is a consistent watch.  His lead investigator changed a couple times and his female co-attorney seemed to come and go but the storylines for this show were all basically a reset.  Every episode would start with a bad guy committing a crime, Ben Matlock playing the role of a fool, a lot of noisy eating scenes with hot dogs and eventually Matlock winning the case.  Did he ever lose a case?

 

 

 

Cheers – I’ve watched this show through a couple times and I still find it pretty funny.  There is some turnover in characters with Coach dying/being replaced by Woody (Harrelson) and Diane (Shelly Long) being replaced by Rebecca (Kirstie Alley).  The core characters that come and go in the bar though pretty much stayed throughout its run.  Sam, Norm, Cliff and Carla are enough to keep a good synergy and plot line going that keeps the show watchable from beginning to end.  The atmosphere of the bar and the way it comes across as a big family is what sells the show.

 

 

Murder, She Wrote – Angela Lansbury is the equivalent of a female James Garner basically.  I couldn’t imagine the role of Jessica Fletcher being played by anyone else.  There was some turnover in the other cast members and the location of the episodes changed frequently, but for the most part the plots were pretty consistent.   Every episode someone would drop dead and it was up to Jessica to solve it because law enforcement was clueless.  Even though she was a mystery writer, she somehow got a crazy amount of access to open cases.  How come she was never suspected of the crimes?  Everywhere she went, people were giving up the ghost left and right.

 

Close but no cigar (and the reasons why):  

The Andy Griffith Show (After Barney left, the show was never the same.  If a Warren episode comes on I might just put my foot through my TV)

The Dukes of Hazzard (The Coy & Vance years)

Law & Order (The cast had a lot of turnover and some down years)

The Office (Without Michael Scott the show suffered.  It even had an awkward season with Will Ferrell)

Magnum P.I. (Tom Selleck is no James Garner)

 

Leave a comment and let me know how your top five mindless rerun favorites compare…

 

Movie Review: Suicide Squad

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(Caution: this review contains spoilers.  It will spoil things.  Much like this movie spoiled a perfectly good Sunday afternoon for me.)

Let me first start this review by clarifying a couple points:  First, I am not a comic book connoisseur or super hero mega fan.  I am aware of their popularity, enjoy their stories, movies or video games, but I usually don’t go too far down the rabbit hole in that general direction.  Second, I have a very high tolerance when it comes to movie quality.  While I enjoy many of the accepted classics, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, Psycho to name a few, I am also happy to point out that Mr. Mom easily ranks within my personal all-time top 5 movies.  My point is, I am neither a super hero purist or terribly hard to please when it comes to watching a movie.  Heck, I once took a date to see Fatal Instinct.  (It’s not the one you’re thinking of right now, trust me.)  Please bear these two facts in mind as you continue through my review.

If you thought Michael Keaton was great as Batman, check him out as an unemployed former auto worker and Detroit Lions fan.

I first saw trailers for Suicide Squad in early 2016 and thought that it looked surprisingly interesting to me especially given the fact that I had no previous awareness of the franchise at all.  I do remember Harley Quinn, with her “puddin” and “Mistah J,” from Batman the Animated Series in my younger days.  Other than that I really had no idea who the rest of these characters were.  The combining of several ne’er do wells into a fighting squad seemed like a good concept for a movie and I’ve always been a sucker for the anti-hero premise as well.  In retrospect, I can now see that trailers truly are a marketing tool and can be very misleading when it comes to the actual quality of the movie itself.  When the movie came out in August of 2016 I did not actually see it in theaters.  Instead I only recently watched it on a streaming service at home.  I cannot imagine, however, that seeing it on a theater screen would’ve remedied any of the issues I found within the film itself.  Here now are my pros and cons in bullet point, stream of consciousness form.

 

Pros

Margot Robbie was very good as Harley Quinn.  Her faux-Brooklyn accent kind of came and went, but overall she was probably the most fleshed-out character in the movie.  Her flashbacks to the developing relationship with the Joker provided some needed depth in a movie full of thin, cardboard characters.  It was nothing surprising, but it did cover the story arc of their relationship and played into the main story pretty well.  I’ll stop short of saying Robbie was “born to play this part” but she did fit the role pretty well.  She’s nice to look at, exudes a certain toughness, does crazy very, very well and still lets you know that down deep Ms. Quinn is an irreparably broken individual.

The first couple of crime in Gotham City. (And in my opinion the only two characters surviving this train wreck for any hope of a sequel.)

Jared Leto was good as The Joker.  I’ll admit I’ve always been fascinated by the Joker character in the Batman movies.  I think they’ve always been portrayed very well by a very good set of actors.  Jack Nicholson was superb in the 1989 film.  Heath Ledger was off the charts in the Dark Knight.  Even Cesar Romero was full tilt as the more cartoon-y Clown Prince of Crime way back when.  The character itself has always been interesting to me.  Most villains are either crazy or brilliant, but what do you do with a villain who is both.  His plans are intricate and well thought out and yet he’s willing to do absolutely anything, and I mean anything in his quest for victory over Batman.  It’s a very enduring character and one that can be taken in many directions.  Fortunately for this film, Leto brings the same crazy/genius energy to the character.  His shock of green hair and silver teeth.  Tattoos and trademark psychotic laugh.  I wouldn’t say it outshines Ledger or Nicholson, but it can easily be talked about in that conversation.  In fact, I think the only reason it may not be quite up to that level is that he spends a relatively small amount of time on screen in Suicide Squad.  Going forward, I think Leto would be a solid choice to continue “this Joker” if the filmmakers were so inclined.

The CGI, music, and other “movie” stuff were fine.  Each of the super villain’s power was portrayed in a believable and effective way.  They all looked pretty good on screen.  Killer Croc was particularly cool to look at.  

 

And that’s about it for the good…

 

Cons

“Daddy, I want you to stop killing people…and maybe dress a little less like a 1970’s pimp. OK?”

Where to begin, where to begin…I guess we’ll start with the biggest for me which was the imbalance in backstory detail between the characters.  You get a sort of run down from the very beginning from Amanda Waller, the government bureaucrat who wants to put the team together and some scenes at the high security prison where most of the squad has been incarcerated.  It’s all very boilerplate “team assembly” montage stuff with some DC heroes sprinkled in for effect, but it really doesn’t do much more than give you a name for most of the folks involved.  While we get to see some thorough backstory on Deadshot, his daughter and his apprehension by Batman, we only get a second or two on Captain Boomerang (not that I’d want much anyway, but more on that later).

Also, the background on the Enchantress character and her relationship with Rick Flag is woefully underserved in relation to her importance in the overall story.  (Hint:  She eventually becomes the main bad guy and is the whole reason the team is called into action.  We really need a little more information on her if we’re going to give a crap!  How about a little less snark from dopey Ike Barinholtz at the beginning and a little more info on how the Enchantress ended up in that cave and why she wants to take over the world.)

The best example I can give you of the imbalance is poor old Slipknot.  Those of you who’ve seen the movie know exactly where I’m going with this.  This poor mamma jamma shows up just as the team is embarking on its mission a

I have no idea how this poor SOB even made it into the promotional spots for this film. Maybe he has a larger role in the Blu-Ray extras. I dunno…

nd all we know about him is that he doesn’t like mouthy law enforcement agents and that, according to Flag, “He can climb anything.”  That’s it.  Ten minutes later he’s dead.  And he’s on most of the promotional marketing for this movie.  It’s insane.

 

Rick Flag.  The actor who plays Rick Flag is either the worst actor I’ve ever seen or his character was the most poorly written character ever, I’m not sure.  Maybe both.  Had I been hired to play this role, I would’ve just stopped mid-production and demanded a rewrite.  Flag is supposed to be a highly decorated Army specialist that chews shrapnel and pees excellence, but in this movie he is either a mouthy little punk or a whiny complainer.  He spends almost the entire movie either questioning the “villains” of the Suicide Squad about their dedication to the mission or begging them for their help.  What?  For a decorated Army specialist, he is maybe the single least physically imposing specimen I’ve ever seen.  I’m not saying we had to have Dave Batista playing the role, but this guy looks like me during my junior year of high school.  His little in and out “southern” accent is annoying as well. The sad thing is, by the end of the movie, you want him to assume command of the squad.  This is because you’d rather see anyone in charge besides Amanda Waller.

Worst character/actor combo. Ever. Ever…

Evil Oprah was one of the worst things about this movie. That’s really saying something in this case.

Amanda Waller.  I love it when you have a know it all, pushy, faux tough, bossy, smart mouthed team leader who is eventually shown to be evil and gets his or her comeuppance.  What’s that?  There’s no comeuppance?  No turning tables?  No repercussions?  Are we sure?  Oh.  Well, that sucks.  There you have it.  Amanda Waller.  The smartest thing Deadshot said the entire movie was when she appeared after the final battle and he remarked “How are you not dead?”  How indeed, Will Smith.  How indeed.

Deadshot.  The character is actually not that bad.  He’s a master at any and all firearms and is said to have never missed a shot.  Will Smith, however, is just doing typical Will Smith in this movie.  It’s the scowling anti-hero with the heart of gold.  Sound familiar for the not-so-Fresh Prince?  Smith hasn’t done anything this bad since he helped make Jaden and Willow.

Captain Boomerang looks confused. I guess I’d look confused too if I was in this movie.

Diablo gazes into the flame wondering why he didn’t just self immolate about 20 minutes into the picture.

Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang & Diablo.  I grouped these three together because none of the three are really worthy of a bullet point of their own.  They are all very shallow, two-dimensional characters that play into stereotypes in the worst way.  Captain Boomerang seems to always have a cold one in his hand, a thick Aussie accent and he throws boomerangs for crying out loud!  I can forgive the last one, but in this movie there’s nothing else about him to grab onto.  The character never really advances past being a drunken lout from down under.  Diablo is a latino gang-banger with over the top flame abilities.  His backstory is a little deeper than Captain Boomerang, but is still along the tried and true lines of “I hurt someone I love.  I’ll never use my powers again.  Oh wait, you really need my help, I guess I’ll go ahead and break my vow.”  Even his attempt at a heart to heart with Deadshot and the other members of the squad near the end doesn’t really add much to our interest in him.  Killer Croc, for my money, is the most underused member of the team.  They offer a few little nuggets of information on him, but we’re mostly just supposed to be in awe of his appearance and ferocity.  He’s tasked with a side mission near the end that calls for him to use his special abilities, but it’s pretty predictable on the whole.  When told he has to return to prison at the end of the movie, he says he will but only if they get him BET in his cell. Stereotypes, stereotypes everywhere.

 

Weren’t you in Kill Bill Vol. 1? No? Really?

Katana.  Katana just seems like she was thrown in at the last minute to fill a quota for overall team diversity.  Even though Rick Flag has an app on his wrist that will pop an explosive capsule in the neck of each of the team members if they step out of line (Thank you Escape from New York!), for some reason he still brings in Katana “to watch his back.”  Huh?  You can literally blow the heads off these guys at any time and you still need back up.  What for?  Oh we need an Asian chick with a soul capturing sword?  Okay.  Whatever.  There is also a laughable scene prior to the main showdown where Katana is tearfully talking to her dead Husband’s spirit in advance of the fight.  Via subtitles we can see that she will be happy to die in battle because that means she will get to join him in the afterlife.  One of the other members of the team asks Flag what she’s doing.  He explains that she’s talking directly to her husbands soul as it has been captured by the very sword she uses in battle!  However, Flag says this with the same enthusiasm and emphasis that you’d give to a request to go to the bathroom before the big fight.  It’s just typical of this movie trying to cram too much plot in some areas while cramming too little in others.

Miscellaneous.  If Enchantress can magically teleport to Tehran and get a book of secret plans then why the heck do they need anyone else on this team at all?  Can we not just have her pretty much use her infinite powers and do whatever the heck we need?

What is that? We don’t know. Why does it have an axe? We don’t know that either. What do we know? Very, very little.

Is a meta-human technically a mutant?  If DC continues to toss that phrase around in all their movies, do you think Marvel will sue?  

So what were the alien-like soldiers in this movie?  We really didn’t get any details other than seeing one of the Army officers turned into one by Enchantress.  Shouldn’t they have spent maybe a minute or two more on that since they spent a good chunk of the movie killing those things?

Anybody know where the heck we’re going?

Didn’t it seem like it took them forever to walk through the city?  I know it was intended to provide a backdrop to the witty banter between team members but for a good while there it was just them walking around.

How did Joker survive that helicopter crash?  

Hi, I’m Killer Croc. I’ve got an impenetrable layer of thick skin all over my body and the ability to swim like crazy. But yeah, you regular humans go ahead and set the underwater bomb at the end of the movie. I’ll just fight off some guys while you do it.

Did the regular human Army Rangers that helped to set that bomb at the end of the movie really die?  It seemed like the one Ranger was kinda right there when they set it off.  Did he have time to escape?  Why didn’t they let Killer Croc do all of that and then say that his super powers allowed him to escape harm?  

Can we really trust anyone in charge of these movies if they let Ben Affleck play Batman?  I mean really.  Name one movie that is actually better because Ben Affleck was in it.  I bet you can’t.  Any movie you can name with Ben Affleck, I can tell you someone who would’ve done a better job in that role.  Any movie.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait………………………………………………. Couldn’t do it could you?  

Was SlipKnot a Native American or Latino?  It doesn’t matter really, but if he was Native American it would make the team really, really diverse, huh?  I mean, think about it.  You’ve got an Aussie, a black guy, a white woman, an asian lady, a latino, a native american and a crocodile thing that likes BET.  Really?  That doesn’t seem odd to anyone else?  It’s like the diversity all stars or something.  

Is it just me or was Will Smith in this movie a straight up combination of his characters in pretty much all of his other movies? And what about Deadshot’s mask?  Sometimes he wears it, sometimes he doesn’t?  Does it do anything in particular or what? Seems kind of important don’t you think?

Quick is this from Suicide Squad or Ali? Trick question, it’s actually from Men In Black.

This is serious Will Smith. Or maybe it’s confused Will Smith. Or perhaps sad Will Smith. You never can tell.

When Deadshot talked about wanting to be with his daughter in this movie, he actually grew a thicker mustache and a soul patch. Talk about super powers!

I am a stone faced killer, with a sniper rifle patrolling the remnants of a destroyed city. I Am Legend. I Am Deadshot. I Am pretty much the same character every time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This movie was both written and directed by the same man.  Do you think that gives too much power to one person?  I mean in certain cases it can be great (Quentin Tarantino), but don’t you think those cases are the exception rather than the rule.  I know everyone wants creative freedom and all, but what if you suck and no one is there to tell you that you suck?

Enchantress was basically a one woman team. Which is why she decided to go ahead and try to take over the world I guess.

Finally, does anyone else find it funny that Enchantress tries to destroy the world within seconds of Amanda Waller getting approval to put this dumb team together?  It’s like the whole reason for the movie.

Waller:  I need to put a team of villains together to help defend us from threats.

 

Everyone else:  That seems wildly unsafe and poorly thought out.

 

Waller:  But look, Enchantress can do tricks!

 

Everyone else:  Oh well, what the heck.  It’s fine.  Get that team together.

 

**Enchantress tries to destroy the planet**

 

Everyone else:  Good thing we have this team, huh?

 

Me:  What the…?

 

At an rate, that’s my quick and dirty review of the film, Suicide Squad.  When I heard the reviews last year for the film, I just assumed that the negativity was based on purists or fanboys made because the crease in Deadshot’s costume wasn’t just right or Diablo should’ve been taller.  I figured it couldn’t have been too bad.  I guess I was wrong.  I hate to pile on, but I really do think this movie was a huge swing and miss.  I’d like to say it could’ve been so much more, but given the logistics of a large squad of superheroes and limited time, maybe it couldn’t really be helped.  Either way, I think you’d have to be a pretty dedicated super hero fan to really enjoy this one.  Let me know what you think.   

 

Things You May Not Have Heard About Backyard Chickens

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As a frequenter of social media, I often times see people talking about the benefits of raising a small number of chickens at your own home.  It is apparently a movement that has become pretty popular among people in my area.  After doing some reading and consulting with my wife, I decided last spring to take the plunge and try out the farming life.  I bought a book off Amazon about raising backyard chickens and did a lot of research before coming to this decision.  Now with the benefit of a year of hindsight here are a few things I have learned along the way in this process, many of which surprisingly no one mentioned in the literature I consulted.

 

The first thing that I was surprised about was the initial cost.  In online reading, the cost was usually estimated at $2-$5 per chick depending on the breed and whether they were straight run or not.  For those of you that are not familiar with that term, through selective breeding many types of chickens can be broken up by sex at a very young age based on characteristics of their gender.  These are usually more expensive because you get to determine which sex of chick you want to purchase up front.  Since I have always been a little afraid of roosters, we went with already sexed chicks and chose 3 hens. What I hadn’t budgeted for was how high spay and neuter fees were at this location.  I’m not sure if it was just this particular site but they said it was there policy to not let anyone take the animals home until they were fixed.  I had no idea chicken population control was that big of an issue but I didn’t make waves and after $100 dollars in fees and expenses, I was able to take my 3 new hens home with me.

Prior to making my purchase of the chicks, I went to the local Tractor Supply and picked up all the items I would need for new chicks.  I bought a heat lamp, a feeder and water dispenser.  From the reviews on the heat lamp I purchased, everyone saw positive results.  In my experience though my chicks didn’t respond well to the heat lamp.  Often times it was almost like they didn’t like the light and heat, so much so that they just tried to get away from it.  It got so bad that I stopped using it within a couple days.  I also purchased some special formula “grower” food specifically made for young chicks.  They were reluctant at first and were much more interested in a bowl of milk as opposed to the grain.  In all of the resources that I could find, no one suggested milk for young chicks but it was a lifesaver and really helped their growth.

One concern I had going into this experiment was the reading I had done about how stinky and messy raising chickens can be.  Surprisingly with our 3 hens, they were very clean animals.  I didn’t even have to clean out their coop very often because they were perfectly fine using a litter box.  From stories and guides I had read, many people said you need to clean out their coops every couple of weeks to keep it sanitary and to prevent common diseases.  There were many times that our adolescent chicks would lay in the sun, self-grooming.  Honestly, I was very pleased with this because it made less work for me.  Another concern, that I have now realized to be unfounded, was keeping them in my backyard coop in close proximity of my neighbors for fear of the noise factor with them crowing in the early morning hours.  Our chickens, even now, make very little noise.  Every now and then when they are spooked or hungry they might make a slight whimpering, almost meowing, noise but nothing like the crowing I expected.  This may be a result of not getting our chickens to really take to roosting in our coop.  No matter how many poles or posts I added to the coop, they would never roost on them.  Maybe roosting and crowing go hand in hand for chickens?

There were some unanticipated benefits to owning chickens.  Our chickens have been very good at killing rodents and pests.  Sometimes we let them out to graze in our yard and 9 times out of 10, one of our chickens will kill a mouse and place it by the backdoor.  Who knew that chickens could be so good at pest control?  They are also very affectionate to my kids.  They are almost like indoor pets.  Our two older kids are pretty good with them and the chickens will come up to them and walk back and forth between their legs, rubbing against them.  It’s really cute to listen to the purring sounds.  Our youngest though is pretty rough with them and doesn’t know how to handle them.  The chickens have pretty sharp talons and will scratch her when she tries to pick them up and carry them.

At the end of this year long experiment, I have to say I have been pretty pleased.  Many of my early concerns, brought up from months of research, turned out to be false for us.  Everything from eating habits to cleanliness turned out to be unforeseen positives.  I have to say though given our initial cost and the fact they will only eat cans of Fancy Feast, they have not been real cost effective to this point.  We are actually still waiting on our first egg to be laid and it’s been over a year.  Maybe next time I’ll go with something other than calico.

 

Commenter’s Companion vol 1

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It can be a challenge to read comments online.  To be honest, you should probably just not do it. Unless you want to be totally cool like me and spend way too much time feeling like you can change the world.  If so, here are some rules to remember and a database of commonly used phrases and communication patterns and what they really mean.

Rules:

  1. It’s not personal.  It can’t be, you don’t know the other person.  I’m 100% sure that the other person is red faced mad, but they are mad at the concept of you, not the actual you.  So, never back down.
  2. It’s not serious.  It’s important to remember that while a serious concern of yours has made you start posting, by the time the message has gotten to your fingers to type it out, the game has become an online version of “my dad is better.”  Because, while you may be capable of a rational discussion, rest of the internet certainly is not.  Go ahead, sink to their level.  They’re so stupid they won’t even know what you’re doing.
  3. It’s not language.  What even is that they are trying to type at you?  Google translate doesn’t help.  Just draw a penis back at them.
  4. There must be a winner.  This is the most vital rule of all. While discussions in real life can end with mutual respect for and from all parties involved, internet discussions can not. The one small catch is, nobody really agrees on how you win. Making popular statements seems to work, but so does self-righteous indignation from people who just don’t know when to stay down because you’ve got 84 likes and they only have 1.  Stubborn bastards.

Helpful Glossary

Code of Bold

Most comment boxes don’t let you use pesky italics or bold, so some posters like to capitalize whole words.  Most of the time you will be able to understand what is going on, but sometimes you will see something like this:

i was just going TO my house the OTHER day, and my neighbor had already STOCKED my pantry with all the foods i luv.  i was so happy WITH her that i don’t even know what I’M saying?

Meaning: This person has just had a stroke.  If you are able to assist, please do so.  Possibly it’s the start of a treasure hunt.  Combine the capitalized words in many ways to determine where the poster is trying to send you for the next clue.  Maybe you need to look at THE uncapitalized words???

TLDR;

Some posters will reply to lengthy comments with “Too long, didn’t read,” Or TLDR for short. If you are a hacker, add the semi colon.  This tells everyone that you know the codez. You can get inside Zion, and you have to tell Smith how.

Meaning: “I’m proudly too impatient and stupid to parse even tree lines of consecutive text. Good day, sir.”

Wow

It’s common to express speechlessness in an overt and exaggerated fashion.  We abide no stoics on the internet.  If someone says “Wow.” to you, they mean for you to shut up and reconsider all of your life choices because you probably drowned a baby at some point; you might not even remember. That might have been ten babies ago.

Meaning: “I’m not really emotionally or intellectually committed to this conversation, though my emotion is snarling at you through the bars of the cage I’m keeping it in.  Boy, if I ever let it out. You just watch yourself.”

Patient Gamer – NBA2K17

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The idea behind the patient gamer category was originally to review Xbox Live “Games with Gold” but I have trouble following guidelines.  Plus, not only does a gold membership give you access to free games, it also allows you to have a free play weekend.  You can download a full game, give it a try for the weekend, and then determine if you really want to buy it the following week.  For me, this is a terrible trap to which I am constantly trying not to fall.

A couple of months ago, I saw that NBA2K17 was available for a free weekend trial.  I downloaded it on a Friday and, by Sunday, I had already played through a full season with my beloved Philadelphia 76ers.  Since it is one of the few places you will actually see the Sixers win a game recently, I was immediately drawn in.  By Monday, I loaded the game and was in shock when it took me to the Xbox Store to prompt me for purchase.  After reluctantly forking over $60, I spent the next couple months weighing my decision.  I’ll try to break down some of my thoughts into pros and cons and we can all decide for ourselves the quality of this purchase.

Pros:

  • Overall graphics and attention to detail – After taking a few years off from sports games, I was pleasantly surprised by the realism and beauty of this game. The arenas are well done with realistic looking crowds, courts and scoreboards.  This may seem like a petty observation but there were many times that friends or family couldn’t tell whether I was playing NBA2K17 or watching a live basketball game.The player models were also very well done with each player having their own unique look and playing style.  The details, even down to their exact shooting form, was captured perfectly for most players.  It’s fun to randomly pull up an exhibition game between some retro teams and watch Magic Johnson dribble around with exaggerated high knees or Larry Bird hitting threes with his arms raised well above his head on release.

Draymond Green works up a sweat punching guys in the junk.

  • Control modes – Often times when you play a sports game, the buttons take a 9 week course to master most of them. In this game for every control, there is a simple or complex button choice.  For instance to shoot the ball, you can either hold down the X button or use the stick.  The stick gives you more control but is harder to get the hang of than just a simple button click.  This was appealing to me because while I was trying to get the hang of more complex button combinations, I was able to still use the simple controls to get by.  It wasn’t like some games (UFC, WWE, etc) where until you get a firm understanding of the exact combinations you are going to get throttled, repeatedly.
  • Career mode – Outside of just your standard play now modes, there are some other pretty interesting game modes. I’m usually not a big fan of online modes, so when I play games like this I am usually looking to sink time into modes that don’t force me into online play (this will be covered in more detail in future con items, I assure you) without a decent local play mode.  Career mode allows you to create your own character and starting with a couple college games, character build to your heart’s content.It also has a neat feature that allows you to take pictures with your smartphone and upload them to your career mode.  It takes your selfies and models them around your player model.

    When you have a face like this, who wouldn’t want to look at it as much as possible.

    Career mode allows you to take control of the day to day life of an NBA player.  You start with a generic player model and design everything about them.  You choose your position and what type of player you want to be.  As you play games, you are rewarded with points for how well you do.  You take the points and redeem them for leveling up different aspects of your player’s game.  There are several abilities, like free throw shooting, that you can only level up through practice.

    During the day, there are periods of time where the gym is open and you can go practice.  You can work on your shot or as other NPC’s come and go in the gym, play pickup games.  The experience earned in practices allows you to improve on things you couldn’t otherwise do by buying skill levels.As you play through the season, you can receive player awards, participate in all-star games, or attract new fans by hanging out with past and present NBA players.

    For gamers with a thing for leveling up characters, this would be your mode.

Cons:

  • Endless loading screens – As in most other sports games, NBA2K17 is made up of about 78% loading screens. When you turn on the game, the initial splash screen is discreetly a loading screen.  You can skip the intro video, which will then drop you to the main menu screen and another progress bar.  I think at this point behind this loading screen it’s going out to 2k servers to check for updates.  When that finishes, you will probably be awoken from your slumber by horribly loud hip hop music.  This is your cue to choose the menu that will advance you to your next loading screen.  If you choose an offline mode of gameplay, the update it previously was searching for will be downloaded at your next convenient load screen.Let’s say you want to play career mode and blow off some steam.  To get to an actual game play (you know, the actual point of turning the game on), you have to wait through two additional load screens and an additional load screen disguised as a pregame show to get there.  If you are counting at home, that’s a total of 5-6 load screens to get to actual game play in career mode.  You sit down, turn on your Xbox to play a little basketball and before you know it, it’s baseball season.
  • Updates – As previously mentioned, 2k is thrilled to pump out daily updates for this game. This would please most online gamers, but for me, it’s just one more thing to wait on in a loading screen that I have yet to see a return on investment with.  The updates won’t attempt to download unless you are in an offline game mode.  This means that if you bring up play now, GM or season mode, you are going to have an extra long wait time at your initial load screen whether you want the update or not.Another fun benefit of the daily updates being pushed down your throat is the game often time gets confused and the update will hang the game at unexpected points with no notice whatsoever.My favorite of these is when it occurs at the initial game launch.  You load the game up, some sweet hip hop music greets you and it plays a beautiful video of your favorite stars.  Without warning, Chris Paul stops moving and the music stops.  There are no error messages and no indication that the game is still alive.  You can attempt to resuscitate it by launching the game again but 2k is persistent.  They want you to have this update, no matter the cost.  When this fun issue arises, the only way that I’ve been able to resolve it is to clear the reserved game cache for NBA2K17 on the console.  This forces it to pull down the latest version (with a longer than usual load screen) and install fresh.  Try googling the phrase “NBA2K17 freezes” to see how big of an issue this is for users.Any game developer that can’t even properly push out an update without requiring its users to basically clear the game’s cache manually prior to updating doesn’t deserve my money.

Get used to playing games with this banner unless you want to quit everything you are doing and drop back to the main menu to install your daily update.

  • Feeling alienated – I realize that the NBA has doubled down on targeting a younger market to which demographically I don’t belong for several reasons. To say this in the nicest way possible, I don’t really care much for hip hop or rap music.  I’m not much of a fan of street ball either.  Does that mean I can’t be a fan of NBA basketball now?  Why is it not in the NBA’s and 2K’s best interest to open their doors to fans from all walks of life?I guess I’m just a little disgruntled as a 33 year old, un-athletic, lifelong video game player and fan of the NBA, to so obviously be the antithesis of this games’ target audience.  Oh, and get off my lawn while you’re at it!

 

Scorecard:

I’ve developed a scoring system to determine if you will like this game or not.  Add up your scores and I’ll let you know where you fall:

A:  (# of JayZ Songs You Know) – (# of Kids You Have)

B:  (# of Lebron Jerseys You Own) – (# of Hank Williams Jr Songs You Know)

C:  (# of Hours Daily You Play Online Console Games) – (# of the ’89 Pistons You Can Name)

A + B + C = Your Score

If your score is greater than zero, you’ll probably enjoy this game.  My score is a sweet -13 by the way.  Oh, and don’t make me tell you to get off my lawn again!

 

Looking at Lyrics: Eye of the Tiger

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I randomly heard Eye of the Tiger today, and every time I hear that song I get embattled again with the eternal struggle of whether the lyric is “thrill” or “cream” of the fight.

It seems today the “thrill” crowd is winning, because “dude, cream makes no sense.” Except cream does make sense, and thrill is grammatically incorrect.

Full lyric:

It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s

the thrill/cream of the fight

Rising up to the challenge of our rival

And the last known survivor

stalks his prey in the night

And he’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger

‘The eye of the tiger’ is a concept representing the spirit of the fight in all of us. ‘Rising up to the challenge of our rival’ explains what that spirit is doing. ‘And the last known survivor’ speaks of the last of a group of someones or somethings, stalking its prey, biding its time, taking its revenge, expressing the animal nature and pure qualities in the spirit of the fight.  This is confirmed as it’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger. This reinforces that eye of the tiger is an abstract concept and the second half of the lyric is concrete.

Now, given all that:

<abstract personal characteristic> it’s the thrill of the fight.

A person or thing experiences a thrill. Watching a fight can give you a “thrill” but the thing that gave you the thrill is a thriller, not just a thrill. If fighting gives you a thrill, the fight itself is the thriller.  The above sentence works if it instead said,

“It’s my eyes growing wider, it’s the thrill of the fight.”

This is:

<abstract effect on me>, it’s the trill of the fight.

The second part reinforces the first part. Now take:

<abstract personal characteristic> it’s the cream of the fight.

Given that we expect the second half to reinforce the first, it’s the cream of the fight should be a personal characteristic. As some sites explain, this is a play on “cream of the crop.” Or, the best of some set of things. Cream of the fight => the best of the fight in all of us. Eye of the tiger => the spirit of fight

It’s the spirit of fight, it’s our best fighting effort,

rising up to the challenge of our rivals.

And the last known survivor

stalks his prey in the night

And he’s watching us all with spirit of the fight

vs

It’s the spirit of fight, it’s the fight feeling aroused,

rising up to the challenge of our rivals.

And the last known survivor

stalks his prey in the night

And he’s watching us all with spirit of the fight

Conclusion: most people don’t think this much about song lyrics, so they think thrill makes more sense, which makes my world sad and lonely. But whatever, #teamcream

The Miracle of Flight

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I sometimes wonder if the Wright brothers knew the magnitude of their contribution to our world as they stood ankle deep in those chilly sand dunes in December 1903.  Did they know their newly crafted controls would allow flight to be experienced in nearly every corner of the globe?  Did they see the ever-expanding family of aircraft through the next century?  From warplanes to rescue crafts, jets to puddle-jumpers, did they really understand the wave of invention and exploration they had unleashed?  Would they truly understand that their simple few seconds in the air would revolutionize how millions travel every day?  Perhaps my greatest question though is, could they peer through the years far enough to see me strapped into a rickety metal seat by a ragged belt, sweating profusely, eyes bulged, attempting, with white knuckles, to hold an airliner up in the sky by the sheer force of my own will.  I doubt it.

Thanks a lot Orville and Wilbur.

As you may have guessed, I am not a big fan of flying.  My wife will attest to this fact.  That is, if you can get her to stop rolling her eyes and cursing me under her breath whenever the subject is mentioned.  In fact, flying helped me realize when the honeymoon was truly over for us and the hard work of marriage had begun.

I had agreed to accompany my wife on our honeymoon (I felt it was the least I could do) to a nice spot in the Bahamas.  Of course, this would require that we fly from Pittsburgh to Charlotte and then from Charlotte to Nassau.  At the time, I attributed my going along with this decision to the fact that I was “in love.”  Looking back, I now attribute the decision to the fact that I am an idiot.

My wife, for her part, was very supportive during both flights down to the island, one lasting 50 minutes, the other just slightly longer.  She loves to fly and has travelled extensively throughout Europe and Russia.  She would see my discomfort, pat my hand, look lovingly into my eyes and ask if there was anything she could do to help.  Would I like to read her magazine for a while?  Use her headphones? Did I want a drink?

“Just relax and close your eyes” she would whisper lovingly.  Then she would gently grasp my hand and assure me that everything would be fine.

We did indeed survive the two flights to Nassau.  As I “de-planed,” I resolved to enjoy the time with my new bride on the beach and not think about the return trip home.  We spent the next several days enjoying the sights and sounds of this wonderful little slice of the Caribbean.  

As the end of the week approached, I would awake each morning to the familiar pangs of anxiety about the flight home.  It was nothing major, just your typical sense of impending doom.  As we drove to the airport on the last day, I tried to concentrate on the new part of my life that was now stretching out in front of me, not the vast expanse of ocean that would soon be stretching out beneath our plane.  My wife seemed to be in good spirits and ready to help me through this little annoyance at the start of our life together.  

The flights back home, it should be noted, were not going to be the same as the ones that brought us to the Bahamas.  Instead of two moderately long flights, this trip would start with a two hour and twenty minute marathon of sheer terror to Philadelphia.  Then a quick twenty five minute flight back to Pittsburgh.  Some people have told me that it is safer, and therefore better, to have one long flight instead of several shorter ones.  A nod to the myriad of problems that could occur with every landing and takeoff no doubt.  I don’t share their view, however, and would much rather have a few shorter flights.  Shorter flights, it seems to me, always have something going on to pass the time;  first we take off, then we ascend, then the drinks come out, then the nuts come out, then the nuts are strapped back into their seats and the pretzels are served.  Before you know it, the captain is coming on talking about the weather forecast in your destination city, which is now just a couple minutes away.  I definitely prefer short flights.  Actually, if I’m totally honest, I prefer no flights.  Can we just get the plane to cruise along the ground at that same high speed it achieves just before take off until we arrive at our desired destination?  Sound okay?  No?  Oh well…

If you look closely you can see my screaming face pressed against one of the windows near the rear of the plane.

The first thirty minutes of the flight to Philly were fine.  I simply engaged in some tried and true time-passing techniques I had picked up over the years.  I tried to break up the monotony of thinking about the left wing and engine falling off the plane by worrying about the right wing and engine.  The variation seemed to help.  I was able to refrain from shrieks of terror and rarely did my anxious displays rise above the level of gentle sobbing.

The final part of the journey into Philadelphia seemed to take just short of forever and was accompanied by some turbulence as we made our way up the east coast.  With every bump and bounce I felt as if the plane was going to drop nose first out of the sky dragging my screaming form with it.  Most of these feelings I kept to myself, but on occasion I would ask my wife if she felt the plane lurch or wiggle.  My wife claims those “occasions” numbered in the hundreds, but I think her number is inflated.  Seething rage has a way of playing tricks on the mind.  

 During the last portion of the flight I felt the plane drop in altitude abruptly in what I perceived to be the same manner as a carnival ride gone haywire.  I turned to my wife and quietly remarked “Good gosh almighty!! Did you feel that?!  That can’t be normal!”

My new bride, the woman who had held my hand so gently just days earlier, who had just shared a wonderful honeymoon with me in the Bahamas, who would be the mother to my children and lifelong companion said: “I wish you’d just shut up and not breath another word until we get there!  If you don’t, I swear…” It got a little blurry after that, but I think she went on to pose some serious questions about my lineage, the legitimacy of my parents marriage, and my intellect, or lack thereof.  I couldn’t really make out most of it.  It’s hard to hear when someone is trying to stuff you headfirst into the overhead compartment.

The flight to Pittsburgh was somewhat less eventful, but no less terrifying.  After sitting on the runway for an hour to let a storm pass over the Pittsburgh airport we began our ascent.  The captain gave his usual mumbled briefing about our flight.  He said we’d be in the air for about 25 minutes and that we’d be cruising at around 30,000 feet to our destination.  My keen senses trained on each movement of our plane, I noticed that we’d been ascending for quite a long time.  The reason for this was made known when the pilot returned to the microphone to announce that we were currently cruising at around 50,000 feet and were doing so to fly over the storm now making its way from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.  For good measure, he mentioned that if the passengers on the left side of the plane looked out their windows they could see the rare sight of a massive storm front from above.  I reacted to this announcement with the scientific curiosity that would’ve been displayed by any college-educated 24 year old in that situation:  I yelled out “For the love of God and all that’s holy don’t everyone look at once!  You’ll tip the plane!”

As three flight attendants, two passengers and my new wife wrestled me back into my seat, I tried to explain my reasoning.  If the pilot can’t be trusted to tell the truth about the cruising altitude of our flight, what other secrets or misdirections was he planning.  I was grateful for the assistance back to my seat given me by the crew and passengers, but I felt the repeated blows to the head and upper body were a bit much for that situation.  The troubling part is that I’m 80% sure the damage was done by my wife.

She isn’t the only victim of my fear of flying.  My brother, Matthew, has been forced to endure air travel with me.  He soldiered through these experiences with the same caring demeanor and positive attitude displayed by my “better half.”  Once, on a bumpy flight to Toronto, he told me that if I touched his leg again when grasping the arm rest or asked if he felt the plane move just once more, he was going to kill me.  He smiled as he made this threat.  The kind of smile that makes you think he may be joking. On the other hand, it was also the smile of a person who has not only arrived at how he’s going to kill you, but has also determined where to dispose of the body.

Matthew also played a part in another flight-related incident.  At one point in my struggle with air travel, I took a prescription anti-anxiety medication prior to flights to help with the abject fear of the trip.  The medication did take the edge off, so to speak, but the underlying issue was still there.  It made it manageable, but it also made me so “relaxed” that I was essentially useless for a few hours after touching down.  I would be alert and could tolerate the flight, but when that fearful stimulus was out of the picture, the medicine seemed to take a strong hold on other parts of my person, namely basic motor functions and rational thought.

Ah, the Vegas Strip. I’ve been there. At least I’m pretty sure I’ve been there. That Ativan is a heckuva drug.

Matthew had flown with me to Las Vegas for a pharmacy convention (sounds fun, right?) because my wife was pregnant at the time and elected not to accompany me.  It was a five hour flight to Vegas and I’d taken a dose of medication prior to departure.  To ride out the grueling trip across the country I decided to take another dose during the flight.  By the time our plane touched down, I was very, very relaxed.  We landed, picked up our luggage and were waiting in line for a taxi outside the airport.  I just remember thinking how good I felt at that point.  Just really, really good.  Everything was good.  Good.  Our taxi took us to our hotel where we waited in line to check in.  My company had set up the reservations and paid for the room, we just needed to confirm our information and get the keys.  As the line thinned out, I finally stepped ahead of Matthew and up to the counter and began the check in process.  After confirming my identity the receptionist at the front desk asked some more detailed questions about our room.

“Smoking or non?”, she asked.

“Non.”

“Would you like a view facing the strip?”

“Sure,” I replied.  Who wouldn’t want to see that, right?

“Will you be using the mini bar?”

“No.”

At that point, I was as chemically altered as I cared to be.

“Would you like twin beds or king size?”

As I stood there, with my brother standing slightly behind me, but still close enough to be recognized as the other member of my party, my mind tossed the question around for a moment.  I thought, “What could be better than a king size bed facing the strip?”  Seemed like the way to go.

“King size.”

“Wha..?” said Matthew.

The receptionist responded with an inquisitive, furrowed brow and a shake of the head.  I just stood there with, what I have to assume, was the biggest, dopiest grin anyone’s ever had on their face ever.  

Matthew didn’t say much the rest of the week, but I have to assume that two grown men spooning in a king sized bed was not his idea of a wonderful trip, even if we were in Las Vegas.  Enough time has finally passed so that he and I can share a good laugh about the whole ordeal.  I’m not sure if it’s a related issue or not, but he still won’t sit beside me at Thanksgiving dinner.

My last encounter with flying happened about six years ago when I decided at the gate not to board a flight to Las Vegas for another pharmacy convention.  My wife had come along this time and did everything she could to get me to get on the plane.  I was having none of it and decided to remain earthbound.  I haven’t flown since.  I would share more details, but my lawyer advises me it’s best not to discuss an ongoing case.  He feels it could hurt my defense in my wife’s filing to have me committed.  Yes, whatever the Wright Brothers hath wrought, I just know it’s all wrong for me.

Nerdstalgia: The Legend of Zelda

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If I had to guess, I’d say that the biggest thing in gaming right now is the new Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Since that game is less than a month old, it’s hardly appropriate for a Nerdstalgia or Patient Gamer review. So, let’s take a look at the game that started it all, The Legend of Zelda. The Legend of Zelda was released in 1987. I was in third or fourth grade at that point, and I really doubt I actually had a Nintendo Entertainment System yet, so I didn’t really play it. My introduction to the series was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and even that I played only in small bits and pieces at a friend’s house. My first real experience with Link, Zelda, and Ganon was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Still, I think it’s best to start at the beginning of a series for these retrospectives, at least where I can.

I think remakes of the game probably cleaned up the translation some.

If I’m being completely honest, I really didn’t expect to like The Legend of Zelda that much, because I remember disliking The Adventure of Link. I started playing it for this post primarily because it’s a historically significant game, as not only the first entry in a classic video game series, but also possibly the first console RPG ever. I expected to play it and appreciate it for that fact, much as I can appreciate the movie Casablanca. I was actually surprised at how much fun I’ve been having.

The story is pretty simple. Ganon, the Prince of Darkness, has captured the Triforce of Power and was attempting to get his hands on the Triforce of Wisdom. Princess Zelda managed to split the Triforce of Wisdom into eight parts and scattered them around the world, but she was subsequently captured by Ganon. Now, the hero, Link, must reassemble the Triforce of Wisdom, infiltrate Ganon’s castle, defeat him, and save Zelda. This entire back story is shared in a quick prologue screen before you start your journey.

This may be one of the most famous screenshots/quotes in gaming.

That’s pretty much it for explanation. Games of this era had very little in the way of tutorials (since it was assumed you had the manual, which was a pretty stupid assumption for an industry that was marketed toward kids who had a tendency to lose everything they touched, but I digress…). You’re dumped into a field next to a cave, and you’re expected to find your way from there. If you go into the cave, you’ll be given a sword, and then you’re off to figure out how to make your way in the world, find the pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, and save the Princess 1.

Once the game has started, you really are given no hints about where to go. Since this is an NES-era game, the “map” is pretty woeful, consisting of a grey screen with a green square indicating which square of the map you’re in. That’s something, but it means you’re in for a lot of wandering. It’s very easy to find yourself in an area that you’re not quite ready for, and the game is pretty unforgiving about that. It’s difficult in any sense, and not quite being certain whether the next screen will bring up enemies you can’t handle makes it even more so.

I love Link to the Past, and there are lots of places in this game where the link between these games is practically screaming at you, moreso than between The Adventure of Link and Link to the Past. The dungeon doors look similar, and most of the enemies are familiar, in a way that I have to compare, again, to watching a classic movie and seeing the origin of a lot of the tropes that now seem almost cliched.

The Legend of Zelda doesn’t hold up to modern games graphically, but there’s a lot to love with its simple depiction of Link and his enemies. Especially if you’re familiar with the enemies from later games, it’s easy to fill in the gaps of the crude graphics to see what the designers were going for (and what the enemies will evolve into).

If you enjoy the later Zelda games but haven’t played this one, I absolutely recommend picking it up. You should try it just to respect the series’ roots, but I think you may be pleasantly surprised by how fun this game is, even after thirty years.

The Legend of Zelda is available on Virtual Console for both 3DS and Wii U. Screenshots all come from the 3DS.

PSA: New Games With Gold

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Public Service Announcement: As of 3/16, Evolve (Xbox One) and Heavy Weapon (Xbox 360, but available on One with Backward Compatibility) are free with Games with Gold if you have an Xbox Live Gold membership.  Games with Gold are only free for a month, but if you get them during the month, they are yours for good as long as you maintain your membership.

To buy the games if you are away from your Xbox, you can go to Games with Gold on Xbox.com and queue them for your Xbox One.