One Of Those Days Again
Jul. 27th, 2011 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianI'm beginning to get a handle on just how messed up this place actually is. Frankly, no wonder the NHS is teetering the way it is if this herding-stoned-cats way of dealing with things is the norm. And I swear, it is driving me in the general direction of a stress-related grave.
See, I work in this hospital, and this hospital specialises in neurology and neurosurgery stuff. On the premises, there are technically two establishments in a variety of buildings; the hospital and the Institute. These two things are not the same. They do not have the same staff, payroll, infrastructure, anything. Well. I say 'anything'. They do share some things. Administration buildings, for instance. And a need to get onto the hospital computerised document record system and the electronic patient record. But, because they are not hospital staff, they do not have access to the hospital's computerised document record system or the electronic patient record. This ... presents a problem. They can't get onto the system to look up who they want to invite to join in clinical studies (which is more or less the remit of the Institute), they can't book the patient notes they 'borrow' back to medical records, they can't do much of anything. So what do they do? They get hospital staff to do it. Despite the fact that technically the hospital staff is not being paid to do so. Which is why I've got a psychologist cluttering up my office looking up patient letters (and watching shit on YouTube) with my login codes, and an admin in the next bit of office who's asked me to book several dozen sets of notes back to medical records because she's "sick of looking at them" (and who has also stolen my hole punch without so much as asking, even though she had to lean directly over my left shoulder to do it). In other news, I am apparently the only person who ever takes any post to the post room, medical records hasn't picked up any of the notes we've booked back to them in the last month, a total stranger called me 'Princess' in the most condescending way possible this morning, the nurse specialists cannot get "patient requires transport" through their thick skulls and I hate the security managers with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
To summarise the summary: I. Want. To. Set. This. Place. On. Fire.
So I bought the shiny new Dragon Age 2 DLC. And it is shiny ... for varying definitions. The story is a little ... erm ... well, look at it this way: I started the whole thing by rolling my eyes and grumbling, "Yeah, we get it, Hawke is speshul, whatever" ... and then there was just a lot of "........oh shit". Some of it was the laughing, "I do not believe they just said that" kind of 'oh-shit' (the dialogue. It was awesome. Varric can, at one point during the final battle, be heard to say, "If this guy pulls a dragon out of his ass, I'm leaving!"); yet more of it was the "this is going to come back to bite me in the arse, isn't it?" kind of 'oh-shit'. (Relevant icon is relevant.) Some of the decision pivot points are ... a little weird, mostly because they're trying to be so climactic and revelatory when frankly, if Hawke had the brains the Maker gave an amoeba s/he'd have figured out that particular 'plot twist' in the first half-hour of gameplay, but on the whole it's a pretty good game. Though it's kind of sad when you realise that it looks for all the world like they paid more attention to backdrop and level design for this one piece of DLC than they did for DA2 itself. Apparently someone listened when the fans complained about the same four or five layouts repeated over and over and over again.
Know what I didn't like? The 'new breeds of darkspawn'. Actually, I have issues with them advertising them as 'new breeds of darkspawn'. For one thing? Genlocks are not new. Genlock alphas are not new. Hurlock alphas are not new. Most of us played Origins. We know from freakin' genlocks, okay? Second of all ... hey Bioware? Sorry to break it to you, but ... genlocks: UR DOIN IT RONG. It would be nice if the breed of darkspawn you get at least vaguely resembles the species of female that was Broodmothered to spawn them. Xref your own canon, guys - you taint a female dwarf, you get a Broodmother that breeds genlocks. You taint a female human, the resultant Broodmother breeds hurlocks. Elves? Shrieks. Qunari? Ogres. Okay, you kind of bit your own canon in the arse when you gave us magic-capable genlocks when dwarves aren't supposed to be able to use magic, but you've also said that dwarves are resistant to magic, which they're so very not, and that they cannot enter the Fade, which ... well, that's clearly about nine different kinds of bullshit. And then there's Sandal. Still, having the DA2 genlocks look like the product of a mating between a bronto and an orangutan? Nnnnnnnot working for me.
In addition, combat was a bitch and I was playing on Easy. And this was after endgame. I pity the poor morons who play on Nightmare. Still, for all that, it was fun enough, I'd play it again and it wasn't expensive so I'm not exactly thinking that it was a total waste of money. Which is about all I could really ask of a bit of DLC after some of the crap they gave us for Origins. I know that's as damning-with-faint-praise as 'it's better than anything else on TV right now', but it's what we've got.
*sigh* Right, back to the salt mines. Some total moo in patient records apparently feels that digging through piles of notes is beneath her so I have to go fish notes out of piles. Thankfully I know where at least some of them are off the top of my head. There's one, though ... well. I'll manage. I hope.
See, I work in this hospital, and this hospital specialises in neurology and neurosurgery stuff. On the premises, there are technically two establishments in a variety of buildings; the hospital and the Institute. These two things are not the same. They do not have the same staff, payroll, infrastructure, anything. Well. I say 'anything'. They do share some things. Administration buildings, for instance. And a need to get onto the hospital computerised document record system and the electronic patient record. But, because they are not hospital staff, they do not have access to the hospital's computerised document record system or the electronic patient record. This ... presents a problem. They can't get onto the system to look up who they want to invite to join in clinical studies (which is more or less the remit of the Institute), they can't book the patient notes they 'borrow' back to medical records, they can't do much of anything. So what do they do? They get hospital staff to do it. Despite the fact that technically the hospital staff is not being paid to do so. Which is why I've got a psychologist cluttering up my office looking up patient letters (and watching shit on YouTube) with my login codes, and an admin in the next bit of office who's asked me to book several dozen sets of notes back to medical records because she's "sick of looking at them" (and who has also stolen my hole punch without so much as asking, even though she had to lean directly over my left shoulder to do it). In other news, I am apparently the only person who ever takes any post to the post room, medical records hasn't picked up any of the notes we've booked back to them in the last month, a total stranger called me 'Princess' in the most condescending way possible this morning, the nurse specialists cannot get "patient requires transport" through their thick skulls and I hate the security managers with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
To summarise the summary: I. Want. To. Set. This. Place. On. Fire.
So I bought the shiny new Dragon Age 2 DLC. And it is shiny ... for varying definitions. The story is a little ... erm ... well, look at it this way: I started the whole thing by rolling my eyes and grumbling, "Yeah, we get it, Hawke is speshul, whatever" ... and then there was just a lot of "........oh shit". Some of it was the laughing, "I do not believe they just said that" kind of 'oh-shit' (the dialogue. It was awesome. Varric can, at one point during the final battle, be heard to say, "If this guy pulls a dragon out of his ass, I'm leaving!"); yet more of it was the "this is going to come back to bite me in the arse, isn't it?" kind of 'oh-shit'. (Relevant icon is relevant.) Some of the decision pivot points are ... a little weird, mostly because they're trying to be so climactic and revelatory when frankly, if Hawke had the brains the Maker gave an amoeba s/he'd have figured out that particular 'plot twist' in the first half-hour of gameplay, but on the whole it's a pretty good game. Though it's kind of sad when you realise that it looks for all the world like they paid more attention to backdrop and level design for this one piece of DLC than they did for DA2 itself. Apparently someone listened when the fans complained about the same four or five layouts repeated over and over and over again.
Know what I didn't like? The 'new breeds of darkspawn'. Actually, I have issues with them advertising them as 'new breeds of darkspawn'. For one thing? Genlocks are not new. Genlock alphas are not new. Hurlock alphas are not new. Most of us played Origins. We know from freakin' genlocks, okay? Second of all ... hey Bioware? Sorry to break it to you, but ... genlocks: UR DOIN IT RONG. It would be nice if the breed of darkspawn you get at least vaguely resembles the species of female that was Broodmothered to spawn them. Xref your own canon, guys - you taint a female dwarf, you get a Broodmother that breeds genlocks. You taint a female human, the resultant Broodmother breeds hurlocks. Elves? Shrieks. Qunari? Ogres. Okay, you kind of bit your own canon in the arse when you gave us magic-capable genlocks when dwarves aren't supposed to be able to use magic, but you've also said that dwarves are resistant to magic, which they're so very not, and that they cannot enter the Fade, which ... well, that's clearly about nine different kinds of bullshit. And then there's Sandal. Still, having the DA2 genlocks look like the product of a mating between a bronto and an orangutan? Nnnnnnnot working for me.
In addition, combat was a bitch and I was playing on Easy. And this was after endgame. I pity the poor morons who play on Nightmare. Still, for all that, it was fun enough, I'd play it again and it wasn't expensive so I'm not exactly thinking that it was a total waste of money. Which is about all I could really ask of a bit of DLC after some of the crap they gave us for Origins. I know that's as damning-with-faint-praise as 'it's better than anything else on TV right now', but it's what we've got.
*sigh* Right, back to the salt mines. Some total moo in patient records apparently feels that digging through piles of notes is beneath her so I have to go fish notes out of piles. Thankfully I know where at least some of them are off the top of my head. There's one, though ... well. I'll manage. I hope.