Tag Archives: Tarot

January 5, 2026 · 16:25

The setting we hope for

That is a given, we all hope that certain settings come to play and I am no different. Part of it is banked on settings that are realistic and then there are those that are not that realistic. Before I start with this, one little update. I made mention of a new movie that would scare the nasty cloth out of the NSA (GCHQ too) and I just gotten the first few scenes out of the way. It makes me happy, but now I realise that it is not going to be a two hour event. At present I’m sitting on the first part, but the continuing story will not be a lot more than a short film some define this as under 40 minutes (including credits), That is what I am looking at. Perhaps a TV film? It wouldn’t be much longer and lets be clear. If you need two hours to scare the pants out of the NSA, your not doing a particular good job, but I might be wrong. So the script will be ready a lot sooner than I bargained for. 

So back to the matter at hand. Realistically the employment game is definitely changing because (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/oracles_new_aienhanced_support_portal/) we get told that ‘Oracle’s new AI-enhanced support portal leaves users fuming’ which was released just before Christmas, so I missed out on this initially, but we are given “Oracle’s new AI-powered support portal is frustrating customers and support engineers who are struggling to find the basics, such as old tickets, links to database patch programs and release schedules for current databases.” It works for me as I have worked my whole life in customer service and technical support. As such it seems my streak of bad luck is ending and when a company like Oracle gets it wrong, there is not much hope that the others are fairing better, which would work out well for me.

I miss customer service and I remember when I was ‘made redundant’ all whilst others were saying that the new technologies were making my job obsolete. And I have reason to smile. When I am shown “Greg Parikh, Oracle veep for information development and operations, said in a blog post that the MOS portal offers new features, including AI-powered interactions, streamlined navigation, improved search capabilities, and enhanced knowledge access.” And as I see it, those who live according to the sweet spot of cheap revenue now see that others aren’t having much luck either and they need to consider their sales track and how they can salvage what can be salvaged and now it turns out that they will need manpower as the most defining resource and that is good news for me. And as I see it (in case of Oracle) that looking at “Users pointed out IDs had completely changed, such that searching for 888.1 — the Primary Note for Database Proactive Patch Program — or 555.1 — database 19c Recommended One-off patches returns error message KA912 as the top result. “Links to other documents, which still reference the old IDs, are currently failing for me,” one user said.” Gives the indication that their knowledge base isn’t doing any better and if the programmers cannot make it work, their manpower setting will drastically change and this is just Oracle. As I see it, there are hundreds more firms who have that very same escalating problem, as such I expect that places like ADNOC (Abu Dhabi) might soon require their own corporate service division and their own technical support making short work of the available resources. I reckon that this works out nicely for me. 

So we have the realistic settings, and the dreamy station of a new movie, or at least whilst I am still applying for jobs, it will have to do and it keeps my but this creativity high, an undervalued ability in customer service. But this is merely one setting. Is it that bad? Well you judge, but a little over a year ago we were given ‘16 technical support tools to look out for in 2025’ (source:outsource accelerator) and some do work, but if didn’t grab the right one, the setting is a precautious one. Do you switch and take that chance or reinvest in your own knowledge base and that setting is dangerous, because you could lose a lot more than you bargained for. So whilst some went into combinations of SaaS, Paas or IaaS, your customers are in a tight setting where they demand service or they walk. Larger firms have even a more robust setting and in this age of fake AI, revenue lost is a large setting of shareholders giving up on you. That is the upside for me and as I see it, my time is not worth its weight in gold. 

So whilst we are given ‘IBM Is Laying Off Thousands of Employees as Its AI Business Surges’ they are also cutting a single digit percentage which in case of their 270,000-person global workforce which implies that up to 25,000 people are being laid off. Now consider where they are and that is not a given, but technical support requires certain people to stay in place and when that is messed with nearly anything can go wrong. Now IBM and Oracle are two of the big boys and they wold have their ships in place. And in that setting we see the Register giving us the setting above. 

So, who else and how much is being slid down the pipeline because some people think of their trolley and forget that other trolleys require assistance. It is in that setting that I think that the larger players need to hold one and rehire their old staff a lot faster before that knowledge goes somewhere else and in both these settings I get to win a better place in the work atmosphere.

Am I right? Am I wrong?

That is usually the question, but I personally believe that I am right because I never expected a player like Oracle getting that part wrong, as such things are looking up to the people who worked their lifetime in Technical Support and Customer Care. Even if it goes more towards a player like Zendesk. The knowledge that they have requires expansion because that knowledge is about to go the way of the Dodo. In other views, they are not the only one and the one who has the most diverse software takes over the others who are lacking. And as I see it, these systems are not enabling systems. They take it all and that is fine, but when we see the kind of failures that Oracle is showing the world, we see a growing set of barriers that could (merely a could here) define the needs for the next decade because all these cost crunchers require AI (which does not yet exist) and now that they are getting nervous, they need to concentrate on what works and what is merely bling for show. As such I feel vindicated is probably the best word. My knowledge is about to get a value upgrade, so I start 2026 feeling rather happy. And of course I could be wrong and I need to consider other venues. Time will tell.

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February 8, 2021 · 12:26

Evolution

We all have a setting that we want to switch off, I do too. Yet at this moment it is weirdly in overdrive. It is almost like it knows that the end is nigh, and if so, I need to make my 5G IP public, so that the next innovation wave will be a public domain driven one, inventions openly to be used for all. Yet we are not there yet. As such, I was watching a gameplay on Vampire Bloodlines 2 and my mind suddenly shifted to an old X-Men comic, in that we are confronted with a person named Tarot. That person can spring forth the tarot card revealed to him and make it a living entity. The comic book is decades old, but it crossed my mind as I was watching the game demo. I suddenly remembered the Vampire Jihad CCG and that is where the ideas started to cross. What if we do not always have the choice? We are trying to set the stage to what is the best solution, yet what happens if the player is limited to a CCG deck that he or she holds? So what happens when we are on a level and we see all the opposition, and the card we are offered is the Fool? It can be an area effect, or a selected effect, as such the meaning “having beginner’s luck, improvisation and believing in the universe” can be in a few ways, beginners luck implies we get get by this area unseen, things go bump at their end (beginners luck) and whenever the trot deck is used it needs time to recharge, also when we reshuffle again and again, luck runs out and bad luck falls upon us. The 22 cards are The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. Yet they have two meanings normal and upside down, so 44 options, and all that randomised. It makes for a very different game. 

In this we can be a gunslinger, a sneak or an illusionist, but the cards are wild. We cannot predict what we will set to next and when we consider that they are powerful, merely relying on our skills might not get the job done, so when do we go one way and when the other? 

A stage no one has ever faced before, we all remember Spiderman, yet who remembered Tarot or Tarantula (Marvel characters), yet the comic world is so much larger, beyond DC (Mad Hatter) and Dark Horse comics (Hellboy, Ghost). Instead of focussing on the character, consider the abilities that the characters had, most might remember Cloak and Dagger, yet who remembers Mayhem from the original comics? When we think back to Infamous: Second Son, it starts magnificent, the smoke ability really gave a good start, it was the linearity that drove it back to average, a real shame. Yet the setting is not merely on where, and who, but how we adapt to a new setting we never had before (hence the Tarot Mention). We set the skill list and power ability to what we think is the best solution for our gameplay, but what happens when we do not get a choice? What happens when interaction becomes the wheel of fate for us? As far as I can tell no game does that, not now and not in the past, but does that not create a much more satisfying feeling when we grow beyond that? We do get the option to tweak, yet we are not given a choice of what the powers are, I stated it in a much earlier story towards a version of Infamous 3, what happens when the parents push the solution from them into us? From father and mother and a stage where the gender decides how much of mum or dad resides within us, Gregor Mendel gave that premise in 1845. Is it so wrong to use the classical greats to set the story to some part we cannot influence? How can we grow our comfort zone in gaming when we tend to rely on where our strength is? Especially when we are entering a stage where the game replay becomes much more important, we need to set a new stage on how it is played. If we are set to a location (London, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Gotham, Metropolis), the one element we can influence and set outside of our reach is us, the player we control. We can in addition change the stage of what we can do by selecting through parentage what we can do and leave us to tweak the ability to the best of gameplay. We forgot the one rule that is natural, that is the inability to select what we are, we can merely shape ourselves to the best of what we have.

Look at the long list of games that are out there and you will find no titles that match this. When you consider that gaming will be set to $138,000,000,000 in this year alone, it will not be about those who make the best replica, it will be about true original gaming, they will take the larger slices, whether it is PC, consoles or a future setting of cloud gaming. 

I hope you had figured out that part, if not consider that the most anticipated games are some remakes of true originals, the rest are true original games. Some franchises will forever run, but some are running out of luck and options. I wonder who will fall to their knees in 2021 and 2022, because we need to realise that 2022 is as important as 2021 is, it gives view to what the developers think we want, it is a fair setting and some will make the cut, some will not but they all want a slice of that 138 billion and the most original games and most perfect games will get the bigger piece that is how it always was, and now that this cake is so big, they all want the largest slice, but it will be art designer that defines originality, not the business analyst. It is the simplest application of evolution, if the games do not truly evolve, the gamer will lose interest a lot sooner than the developer is ready for.

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