Game Review: Minecraft

Minecraft is an adventure/creative game created by the indie (not affiliated with the big video game companies) developer Mojang. Minecraft started out on the PC, but now has a smaller version both on the Xbox 360 and any Apple products. The story of Minecraft is this: You awake and find yourself on an abandoned island with no other humans left. You then make the world as you see fit. First you need to MINE raw materials, which starts as you punching a tree until a small wood block falls out. You then CRAFT this wood block into, say, a pickaxe  which you use to dig up cobblestone, which you use to make a furnace, and so on. Also in the world is a plethora of animals, which you have to kill to gain their items, like you have to slaughter a sheep to get wool to make a bed with, a cow to harvest leather to make armor with, and so on. The very first thing to do is to make a house. House construction can be made out of wood, stone, dirt, sand, really anything you want it to. Now you are probably saying "Where is the challenge in making a house?". Well, your best bet is to make one before dark. Because after dark, the creatures of the night begin to spawn. Zombies, Skeletons, giant Spiders, freaky Endermen, and the most nefarious enemy of them all: The Creeper. Now you are probably wondering why a creeper is so nefarious. These guys seem to have great pleasure in walking up to your newly constructed house, and deciding to blow themselves up, just because they can.

And this is what makes Minecraft so much fun. The ability to do whatever you feel like, coupled with the awesome music score and the constant fear of your beloved house falling victim to explosions makes this a game like no other.
Abbott Abacus: 

An Average Day as a Bagger at Foodlion

Life as a bagger at Foodlion is not as difficult as I say it is. It is actually pretty straightforward. I begin work by arriving at Foodlion usually before 4:00 pm. Once I clock in, I proceed to check everything in the store to see what the situation is. I check on the milk, eggs, sugar and water to see what I need to stock. Then, I go outside and get the carts.



I grab six carts and push them inside the building, and then I go back out to grab six more until either there are no more carts outside, or I just go and do something else. On a normal, not-so-busy day, I repeat this process about five to six times. But on a busy day? I literally roll six carts in, and the customers grab seven carts before I could do anything else.

After all the carts are in, it is time to restock the milk (and no, that is not a picture of me). I am responsible to restock the whole, 2%, 1% and skim of the Foodlion brand, My Essentials brand and the Lewes Dairy brand.  After the milk, I proceed to restock the eggs, sugar and water. The milk is my greatest enemy, because since it is one of the essentials to humanity, the shelves keep on running out of it, so I have to keep on stocking it.

I know what you are probably thinking. "Jonathan, why don't you bag groceries for people?" Well, I would love to, but I cannot bag for people unless the store is really busy. The cashiers do all of the bagging themselves. I know, it is a little weird, but I am only going to be a bagger till March, then Foodlion will remove the position of bagger from the company. Anyway, back to my list. I then proceed to do a combination of all these things, in addition to exchanging the customer's empty propane tanks with filled ones and cleaning something that our beloved customers dropped on the floor, until around 6:30, which is when I take my lunch for half an hour. Afterwards, it depends on the day. If I am working on a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday or Sunday, then I have to sweep the entire floor and push around this miniature Zamboni machine to clean the store. If I am working any other day of the week, Foodlion outsources to a floor crew. So, I then proceed to do the other things on my list, unless it is really, really, dead in the store. Then I usually hide out in the supply closet and play games on my phone until around 8:45. Then, it is time to clean the bathrooms.

Typically, the men's bathroom isn't that bad. I just wipe down everything, clean the mirrors, and that is it. The women's bathroom? It looks like a toxic waste dump. I exaggerate, but not by much. And it seems that every time that I am cleaning the women's bathroom, somebody just has to bust the door down and come right on in while I am still there cleaning it. I place about two to three wet floor signs in front of the door hoping that somebody would notice them. But no, they do not. Well, I try to clean the bathrooms as well as I can, and then I wipe down the break room. Then, I go outside at around 9:30 to grab every single cart from the parking lot and bring them inside the store. Finally, at 10:00, I clock out, and then I go home, feeling tired but satisfied that I made some money.

Game Review- Portal

I have had the pleasure of playing a very different video game called Portal. Made by Valve back in 2007, Portal was designed as a test to see if any of the gamers out there will actually like it. They did, and so, a few years ago, the sequel Portal 2 was released. Portal is a very unique game in that there is no guns or death involved, but is actually meant to stretch your brain by giving you problem solving challenges. Portal is available exclusively in The Orange Box, a collection of Valve's best games.

Portal begins with you being in a very clean and white walled room, with a robotic voice awakening you and telling you that you will be doing some test for her. The robot, GLaDOS, (picture on the right) is an artificial intelligence that seems very determined for you to die, even though she promises you cake if you survive till the end.. She then directs you into a room where you pick up the Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device, or Portal gun as it is commonly called. With this gun, you can shoot a blue portal on the wall or floor, and an orange portal on another surface, and then proceed to walk through the portals like walking through a doorway. With this you must open doors, activate buttons, and dodge little robots with machine guns. All the while GLaDOS is harassing you and taunting you, which turns out more comical than anything else.

The Verdict

I started Portal thinking that it would be boring and way to challenging. Boy was I wrong. Portal has a way of making things fun, easy and simple but also making you think outside the box. And to do it with absolutely no curse words or suggestive themes, well that is just great.

The Abbott Abacus: 

Dumb Questions People Ask Me At Work. Part 1

A little background information about me: I work at the Delmar Foodlion in Delmar, DE. For those of you who do not know what a Foodlion is; imagine Walmart, take away everything not food related, add friendlier  employees, and you have Foodlion. I have been working there about eleven months now, and i have heard some pretty stupid questions in my time. Here are just a few of the questions and my commentary on them.

1. "Where are the bathrooms at?" Ok look, at the back end of the store there is a big blue sign plastered against the wall that says 'restrooms'. You can see it from the front of the store as you walk in.
2. "How long do eggs last?" I don't know if you have ever bought eggs before, but there is a bunch of numbers on the side called the 'expiration date', and if you look around, those numbers are on a bunch of other food items in the store. 
3. "Where is the sugar at?" It might be under the the aisle marked under 'Sugar' but that is just a guess. 
4. "Where is the couscous at?" I have no idea what couscous is, let alone where it is.  

That is all I can think of at the moment, I am sure there is a lot more that I have forgotten. Be on the look out for part two.