CHEWY STORIES

I was talking with a wonderful friend the other day about some of my favorite books and mentioned how the one non-church book I had taken with me on my mission was Neuromancer by William Gibson. This was is 1989 but I had just recently discovered this book first published in 1984 and subsequently winning the Hugo, Nebula and Phillip K. Dick awards.

Neuromancer was for me, a ground breaking book. I had read a great deal of science fiction and fantasy up to that point in my life but this book had such a different feel than what I had read before. The scenery descriptions were very wordy and elaborate. The characters were believable and easily imagined and yet they seemed sparse as if there were hidden depths to them that were merely hinted at. The mythos of cyberpunk created an atmosphere was moody and disturbing and yet not completely hopeless for me.

That was my first exposure to cyberpunk and it’s still my favorite example of the genre. For a time there were quite a few cyberpunk like stories being published but that has since slowed or stopped. Some of my favorite cyberpunk style authors are the aforementioned Gibson, of course, and Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Neal Stephenson, George Alex Effinger, and Phillip K. Dick. Some of L.E. Modesett Jrs future books have a cyberpunk undertone to them and the influence of the genre can be found in many modern Sci-Fi stories although often without the darker view of the future that characterizes most cyberpunk.

One of the most appealing things to me that this style of story had to me was how “chewy” the stories were. These were not light, happy, and goofy stories but they were serious and dark. They often showed individuals with a profound lack of control over their lives struggling to find peace with their external realities and find a measure of control or safety. Not that there weren’t moments that weren’t laugh out loud funny but that the feel of the story was heavier.

The first anime series that I’ve ever really liked (many others were OK or pleasant to watch but this one is compelling and induces a desire to rapidly promote the next disk up my Netflix queue after each viewing) is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has a definite cyberpunk flavor to it. This series is feeding my need for chewy stories lately.

Funny enough, thinking about the other books I’ve liked in the light of these musing on cyberpunk reminded me of the fictional detective stories of Phillip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler. Those stories were also heavy on the descriptions and hinted at complex and imperfect heroes. Those stories also had a protagonist who was searching for his own measure of peace and control in a world that was hard to understand – leaving him somewhat jaded.

While I love all sorts of stories and read voraciously I often find my favorites to be the flavorful and chewy stories like the ones I discovered when I found cyberpunk.

RISO-HUDSON

A few years ago I was introduced to the Enneagram method of personality testing. This is a fascinating construct of personality types created by Don Riso and Russ Hudson. Its premise is that there are nine major personality types that people can fall into. It further posits that there are nine levels of health within each major personality type with distinct and noticeable behaviors and attitudes at each level. Finally, it rounds out the personality descriptions by adding a “wing” to each personality type. (That was my description, their description is here.) Let me illustrate with my type:

My predominant personality type is #9, the Peacemaker.

free enneagram test

The easy-going, self-effacing type. Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

I knew I was a nine when I was reading the book and ran across a description of the 9 personality type that described nines as someone taking a bike ride through a beautiful park on a lovely day. They are admiring the scenery and the people and the whole experience of the ride, with no one aspect rising above the other. The nine is so into the entirety of the experience that they don’t notice that both tires on the bike are flat. They are getting somewhere but not efficiently and without being aware of themselves.

That fit me perfectly; I’m perfectly able to ignore problems by immersing myself into the rest of the experience of life. Much of the rest of the descriptions of the nine also fits me well. In the book each personality type is also given nine levels of health.

I’m not the “At their Best” level of health but I do believe I’m on the healthy side, I would put myself at level 3 of the 9. I am reasonably in touch with my feelings and instincts (being out of touch is a flaw that nines are vulnerable to) and have managed to become more of myself in the process. Ironically, it was by becoming more into me that I have been able to become more aware of others and more able to support and nurture them. It has also given me increased motivation to pursue my own interests and hobbies and passions.

The nine has two potential wings. A wing is a tendency towards one of the personality types on either side of your primary type. So my potential wings are 8 and 1. Type 1 is the Reformer – a rational and idealistic personality type. Type 8 is the Challenger – a challenging and domineering confident personality. I have a weak one wing – which oddly is labeled the Comfort Seeker in the book – which is also a fairly accurate description.

This whole process of learning the personality types was a very powerful tool for me. I needed an intellectual framework to understand my own ways of thinking because at the time I learned these I was very out of touch with my own feelings and thoughts. Having a structure to attempt to compare my own thinking against opened my eyes to how I think – not just what I was thinking and gave me practice learning what I was feeling instead of reacting to my feelings without even knowing what they were.

I suppose these types of tests aren’t for everyone. But I found it a wonderful tool for understanding myself and those around me. You can take a free sample test here if you are interested in learning more. The sample test isn't scientific like their complete battery but it will likely give you a good idea of your primary personality type.

I KEN SPEL

I’m a terrible speller. I always have been. Anyone that has ever had an IM conversation with me can attest that I still am a bad speller. I think, in fact, that had it been popular when I was young I would have been diagnosed with a case of dyslexia. My spelling grades used to give my teachers fits. I love books and reading and I would read at any opportunity in school. During reading time I would read ahead of the class. During math or science or whatever, I would often have a book open below the desk and be reading. I remember several times being singled out to please pay attention now because I got lost in a book I was reading and never realized that free reading time was now over.

I’m still not a very good speller and I’m often grateful for the spell checkers that can even correct my spellings of BOOGA. Even with that electronic crutch I’ve managed to self correct a number of errors by simply learning the patterns of the letters through repetition. If I pound something in long enough I eventually learn it.

You may have seen this link before where it claims that spelling is irrelevant as long as the first and last letters are correct in any given word. This works because the human brain is very very good at finding patterns in chaos.

But the fact remains that this type of communication is chaotic. It takes much longer to parse the meaning of the paragraph than it would if it were spelled properly. And what is the point of deliberately slow communication?

In addition since it disregards any of the rules of the language it would be impossible to decipher a new word. Try taking a chemical name and reading it that way. Deoxyribonucleic is easy to read even if you don’t know what it is because it follows the rules of pronunciation. You can read it out loud correctly and someone that knows what it means can explain it to you. Mixing up the letters into a jumble will just slow down the ability to communicate for those who already know the word and prevent anyone who doesn’t already know it from learning it at all.

NO SUPRISE

I love web quizzes. I've had a lots a fun with them and some of them are even surprisingly accurate (and fun!)in predicting personality types. This is the second one that was a quiz for my blog. I found this one on Amber Nights blog. Based on the use of key words in my blog this site is now officially rated:



So ok, take the kids right on out of the... oh, wait. I mean... Never mind. Like I said no surprise with this rating. At the same site there was a Zombie Survival guide which I also took. It rated me as having a 40% survival chance in a zombie apocalypse. I think i scored low because I'd probably try and find those I loved to help them in such a situation instead of hunkering down in the closest inescapable basement.

USER MODIFICATIONS

I’m not sure if I should be impressed by what users can do to games or appalled by it. Well, OK, mostly I’m impressed but just a tiny bit worried that game developers will take this as a license to not craft their games carefully.

Let me speak to specifics. A while back I mentioned a review of the game UFO:ET. I ended up with a 7.2 score for the game out of 10. This is a respectable score indicating a well built game with some noticeable flaws but nothing that ruins the experience.

After finishing the review I started looking around for any patches or mods that could improve my experience. I was very pleasantly surprised to find one called “BMAN UFO mod” that actually combines several other user created modifications along with Bmans own mods into one large mod pack.

The game experience with these mod packs is much better than just the straight release was. There are multiple key improvements but my favorites were the inclusion of keyboard shortcuts for common tactical activities like standing up or kneeling down, the ability to reserve time for a snap or burst shot, the inclusion of line of sight (LOS) indicators, and the ability to hire and fire squaddies.

In addition to these there are many, many more enhancements and bug fixes. All of the enhancements are controllable using a new menu system that was also modded right into the game.

It was interesting to note that when the first official game patch was released many of these fixes and improvements were also included – requiring BMan to change his mod pack to remove many of the, now redundant, fixes and enhancements.

I like that games can be changed to suit the user. My enjoyment of UFO:ET is much greater now that it was in its initial release because of the work of these modders. I’ve very much enjoyed the user created content for Neverwinter Nights and other games.

The only qualm I have is a worry that game developers (or rather their overlords) may push to release an incomplete, buggy, or poorly executed game secure in the knowledge that if the license or game play gains enough interest that the user community will modify it to work correctly. That certainly couldn’t happen with most games but things that fit into rabid niche markets (like this X:COM clone or what about the upcoming Fallout 3) will rely on users to fix the problems that shouldn’t belong to them.

SKYS ARE FINE BUT THE GROUND IS HARD

I’m a weird flyer. I’m enough of a nerd that I love to look out the windows and look at all the planes I can see. I can identify many of them when I’m at the airport. I don’t enjoy socializing on planes so I always have a book and an iPod deployed defensively.

I imagine in my head the stages of the taxi and takeoff and the landings. When we rotate, go air borne and gears up I have a tendency to mutter those things under my breath. (With my typical mutter I probably sound demon possessed. My neighbors probably just hear “KILL KILL KILL” or something so maybe that is a defense against making an “airplane friend” too.)

I’ve had to travel from Salt Lake to the Santa Anna, (or John Wayne) airport quite a few times for my work. I’ve become rather familiar with that airport. It has some unusual qualities. The runway in Irvine is rather small and I’ve never seen any craft larger than a 737 there.

One of the fun things at that airport are the low noise take offs. Because the take off heads off right over Newport Beach (read expensive property) they are required to make a low noise take off. This means for 737’s that you firewall the throttles to get up off the ground, climb as hard and fast as you can and then as you reach the expensive property throttle way back and stop climbing until you are out over the ocean. This gives a nice falling sensation to the stomachs of everyone on the plane so they give warnings before this maneuver to prevent panic.

Because the runway is so short in Irvine pilots need to stick the landing right at the leading edge and slow down quickly. This has lead to quite a few bumpy landings as pilots think (in my imagination) “Oh BOOGA! That is a SHORT runway” and plop the plane down.

Earlier this month I came down with a cow-orker and he sat by a bunch of crew members from another flight returning home one the same one we were on. They laughed and giggled at the hard landing we received on that flight. But that landing was nothing compared to the one I had yesterday.

We were flying a CRJ 700. It was quite overcast with a morning fog and the ceiling was pretty low. I could feel the plane intercept the glide slope as we started our decent and I was wondering how close that needle has to be for the poor guys up front to make a smooth landing when it’s this foggy.

As we broke through the clouds and I started picking out familiar landmarks and I was having fun. As we approached the airport I said out loud “We’re a little bit high”. (My neighbor probably heard “I’LL GET YOU ALL”) It seemed that we were maybe 30 ft. higher than we should have been as we crossed the threshold of the runway. I could feel the pilot cut thrust and cut the flare a bit to drop the plain. At the last minute the pilot flared up again trying to ease down but POW! We slammed hard – jolting everyone in the plane. Everyone was a bit shocked by how hard we landed and there was some muttering in the plane. No one said much because we don’t want to be put in jail by the TSA for complaining about a pilot or something I guess.

The flight home is usually much smoother since the SLC airport has nice long runways. Pilots can just ease on down even if they are 30 ft above the glide slope. Plus I usually end up on CRJ 200’s on the leg back home and they are so small I’m sure they can land nicely about anywhere.

SILLY WORDS

I have a habit of using silly words. Here are some of my favorites to use.

Cow-Orkers. This came about from the long ago Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban. I used to lurk in that group a lot. This is back in the day when the loudest personality didn’t ruin discussion groups – usually – so there were some delightful conversations and threads that I often learned things from. The newsgroup was populated with extremely clever people and tons of lurkers. But it was also populated with people that were extremely pedantic about spellings. A few famous misspellings gained popularity in the group though. For example someone wrote voracity when they meant to write veracity and from then on it became a running joke to use voracious or voracity to refer to how much truth something had in it. A second famous misspelling was cow-orkers instead of co-workers. I was so amused by that one that I’ve used it ever since.

My kids are a great source of silly words that I like to use. Especially my youngest one. He doesn’t always pronounce his words correctly and some of the mistakes are just awesome. He mispronounces my sisters name in such an amusing way that I always us it now.

One of my favorites from him is how he says girl. It sounds like grill. When ads for dolls come on during Saturday morning cartoons he says things like “I hate this grill stuff”. Heh. It’s awesome. I don’t use this all the time but I use it around my kids a lot. I’m totally amused by it.

He also says wirld instead of world. It reminds me of the Knights of the Dinner Table wurld. I like wirld better though and have a tendency to use that as well.

I picked up a few odd ones on my mission. I went to South Africa and since the history of that land was heavily influenced by British settlers (and Dutch but their words are in Afrikaans and don’t get used as much in English). Anyway, I have a tendency to say flat instead of apartment and boot instead of trunk. I just like the way they sound and (WARNING INSIGHT INTO MY HEAD COMING) I like being different or special and using words like that feels different and even a little special.

One of the funny Afrikaans words was the way they say sure. Instead of a word for sure it’s literally “Yes No” to mean OK, sure. The first time someone said that to me I turned to my companion and said “Well, which one is it?” He just laughed and led me inside the house we had just been invited into. I don’t use that much except for in my head. It way confuses people in America to say Yes No.

There are lots more but if you ever hear/read/see/observe/whatever me using an odd word now you know why.

ULTIMATUM

My friend Coyote had a link to this site the other day, Blogging Ultima. I’ve read a page here and there since then remembering the times I spent playing the Ultima games. Ultima IV was the first of the series that I ever played and it rates right up there on my list of all time favorite games.

I’ve read up to the point where he just finished playing Ultima V. I enjoyed reading about the earlier games that I never played but the most of all I have enjoyed reading about the games that I had already played.

I believe that the thing I enjoy is remembering the fun I had playing them. Ultima IV was one of the most immersive games I had ever played and V only expanded on the level of immersion for me. I had so much fun in those worlds. It’s a nostalgia trip.

I loved the games so much that I joined the Ultima dragons and registered my own dragon name: Quiescent Dragon. I figured that was a pretty appropriate name for a dragon that wasn't going to really participate in the discussion forums or anything. I was definitly a lurker.

As for the rest of the Ultima games, Ultima VI came out when I was gone on my mission and so I never really played that one even though I had bought it when I returned. VII (both parts 1 and 2) are also on my list of all time favorites. VIII was interesting but just not the same and suffered from some very definite design flaws. Most of the horrible puzzles and jumping skills were fixed in a patch that was released WAY to late to do the release game any good and I did play through it once with the patch and once without the patch and the patch makes for a MUCH better game but still it was never enough to overcome the first impression that the game left. IX was a huge disappointment. This one switched to a 3d engine that was fairly clunky and suffered from “ummm-we-ran-out-of-ideas-or-time” design flaws near the end of the game. As the ending of the Ultima series it was definitely a letdown.

I’m looking forward to the chance to catch up with the blogging ultima blog since I’m sure that I’ll enjoy reading about the games that I did play and I’m curious to hear his impressions of the later ones that I didn’t get to. It will be fun to virtually watch over his shoulder and relive my own times playing these games.

I GOT YOUR TANGENTS RIGHT HERE

Yes the blog entry where you gain a much to disturbing view of how my brain works is back for part two. I still have a list of things I wanted to cover so we’ll just have to see how far I get.

First of all I wanted to formally mention that my first game review has been published at Strategy Informer. I really had a lot of fun writing it up. I had done a first take of the game UFO: Extraterrestrials on my blog and in the process of writing up a full follow up I realized that I’d basically written a review. Since my friend ~J had asked me once about writing a review for publication I sent it on to her instead of posting it here. The rest, as they say is history, and now I’m a published author. I think I’ll put that in my resume.

When I got to work today there was a gorilla (well technically, I THINK it was a person in a gorilla suit) standing by the door to my building. He was holding a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts with a sign that said “Gorilla Marketing works”. (Tangent within a tangent: Krispy Kreme doughnuts are just not as good as everyone seems to think. They are mostly air and to sweet for my tastes. I like good solid doughnuts made out of real potato flour instead). I hope he’s here to pitch his services to my company instead of enacting an elaborate plot to kill someone with poisoned (yet light and fluffy and very sweet) doughnuts.

Have you ever had the experience of seeing something out of the corner of your eye that really surprised you? Yet, on second glance it turned out to be nothing startling at all. Well something similar to that happened on my way into work this morning. I saw Cthulhu driving a red Honda this morning. He was headed south on I-15 just like me. I was pretty surprised by this – but I don’t think I lost any SAN points. On second glance it was just an extremely hairy and unkempt person driving a red Honda. I think maybe it was Cthulhu who just learned the secret oriental powers to cloud mens minds just like The Shadow did.

Speaking of freeways I have a huge complaint about them. I’m a somewhat analytical person (as long as the subject to analyze is quite irrelevant to common sense or real life I think I’m pretty good at it – when it comes to being normal or figuring out relationships or something like that I’m hopeless) and the human brain is VERY good at identifying patterns. In fact brains are so good at pattern recognition that we will find patterns when there aren’t any patterns there to find. (Try staring at the static on a TV tuned to a dead channel some day to find out.) So I’m sure that I’ve identified a recurring pattern on my drives – Why is the lane I’m in always the slowest one? Whenever traffic comes to a stop I take note of the cars around me. Invariably the ones in the other lanes will soon be so far ahead of me that I can’t see them anymore. Changing lanes doesn’t solve this problem – it just makes the new lane go slow – so clearly I’m the common element in this pattern. I see no way to fix this so:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Just don’t drive in the same freeway lane as me if you need to get anywhere fast. My lane will be easily identifiable by being the slowest one.

I’ve been running Windows Vista and Office 2007 for the past week and I like them a lot. Vista is waaaaaay faster than XP Pro was. It boots faster and the IE7 engine is noticeably faster than it was before. The only problem I ever saw in Vista so far was that my mouse cursor disappeared when I attempted to run City of Heroes. Poking around the internet a bit showed me that I needed to add the following to the command section of the shortcut for CoH: -compatiblecursors 1. After adding that it worked just fine.

Second Impression of CoH: It’s OK. It’s definitely better with friends than it was in the training missions. I find the game world to be fairly jarring though since it’s filled with thugs just standing around tugging on purses and taunting passersby. But I do like the quest system. You can just pick up random quests from the Police Radio or go to one of your contacts and pick up something more scripted. The groups can be fairly large, and that helps by allowing many of my friends to play all together. The combats are fairly confusing – it’s hard to keep track of all the good guys and bad guys since everything moves so fast. I usually just try to stand in the middle and debuff some bad guys that I hope will live long enough to keep my debuffs working for a while – and then spam the AOE healing spell I’ve got until I see someone has killed the target I debuffed. (Tangent: Although, my debufs are AOE they are targeted so once the bad guy I cast them on has died, the debuffs fade, and they need to be recast.) I haven’t created any alts yet – which is apparently a flaw of mine since everyone else has about thirty or forty different characters. I don’t think a single group night has had all the same characters show up yet.

Second Impression of UFO:ET: I love it even more than ever. The game was either intentionally designed to be easily modifiable or it’s just a fortunate coincidence of its development process but most of the (minor) flaws that bothered me have been fixed by modders. I think my opinion of the flaws is flawed though, since in this case flaws = stuff that was different in X:COM. The mod community is pretty darn impressive. I’ve only picked one mod to add to my game (but that isn’t strictly true either, I’ve picked one mod PACK to add to my game. There are several packs listed on the message boards to pick and choose from though). But I’ve very much enjoyed the changes that they have provided to me. The mods include bug fixes as well as game play balance fixes and changes to make it more X:COM-ie. All in all the list of changes with just the one pack are very impressive. Almost all of which changes I’ve found to be great improvements to the game.

And that is the rest of the list. I’m sure I’ll have more tangent laden posts in the future but for now… enjoy.

GROGGY IS A FUN WORD TO SAY

I think of that title line a lot. It comes from one of my all time favorite comics, OotS. There are not many things that I preorder. I tend to be, well, cheap and look for sale prices and wait to buy things. But I’ve preordered four times now for Rich Burlows Order of the Stick comic books. I’m anxiously, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word possible, awaiting the most recent book. For the last two weeks I have checked my mailbox every day muttering to myself “Maybe I’ll get a book today.” I’ve had to fight the urge to check the mailbox multiple times each day because the irrational (and some would say largest) part of my brain thinks that maybe the book has a magical delivery system instead of relying on the USPS to come.

In any case I’m a bit groggy today and that has made it hard to focus on any one topic so this is a collection of tangents. I’ve actually got quite a few ideas so when I’m done writing this morning any unused ideas will probably go into a future blog entry.

Yesterday was a really hard day. I woke up feeling weak and vulnerable, anyway. I wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend it wasn’t Monday. Some days are like that. Sometimes you wake up on the top of your game – ready for anything the world cares to throw at you and some days you wake up wishing it were all over already and wondering if there was any way to skip the entire rest of the day. The day proceeded to get worse from there and I had to really work hard to stay sane. I ended up with some cheeseburger therapy (Olympus Burgers on 9th East in SLC has REALLY GOOD bacon on their bacon cheeseburgers), going to a support group, watching some TV, and best of all talking with some friends. Fortunately I’ve survived.

I wanted to like Anime because I have so many friends that love the genre. But I’ve had a really hard time getting into it. I saw the Princess Mononoke (that word is like bananananananana, it’s really hard to stop spelling it once you start) movie and thought it was just OK. I saw some Princess somebody or other the vampire hunter and thought they were all right. I saw the first few episodes of Gundam and while I wanted to like it the show left a bad taste in my figurative mouth.

I haven’t given up though, and after looking at zillions of reviews on Netflix decided to try Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. This is based on some Japanese comics. The show is basically a sci-fi police drama centered on a special unit of cops called section 9. They end up taking the hard or strange problems like rouge AI tanks terrorizing the city, and android assassination attempts. The show was well drawn without all the impossible eyeballs and jittery camera effects that make other Anime unwatchable for me. Furthermore, there were no lewd or provocative scenes but rather it was a straight forward drama with no unnecessary extras, except for the excitable baby tanks with puppy dog like AI personalities but they were cute so I liked them. I watched all four episodes of volume one last night. The remaining volumes will come as they are ordered on my Netflix queue. I have definitely found an Anime style show that I really enjoyed, and I’m looking forward to seeing some more of it.

Checking up on my Daemon shows that I’m still a bunny rabbit. I can see how that could fit me and I really still like it better than the original moth I was assigned to. I’ve upgraded my system since I first filled out the quiz so I’m not able to check all the history of my Daemon changes on their home web site and I can’t remember how many more days I’ve got before it becomes set – hmmmm I suppose I could just scroll down and do some math but see the paragraph on groggy above, I don’t feel much like doing math today. My friend ~J gave me some bunny ears the other day so I’m all ready for the next dress-up-as-your-daemon party. *grin* The bunny picture on the site just doesn't seem to fit. I think I'm a lot cuter than the bunny there. I found this one that I like a LOT better. Not only does it capture how amazingly cute I am but also the silliness in me.

I’ve got more but I feel like I’m done writing for now. See the paragraph above on groggy. The rest of these awesome and awe inspiring ideas will have to wait for another time.

I LIKE BEING SILLY

When I got to work this morning I went to the fridge to put my lunch into it. Unfortunatly, as I opened the door a bottle of syrup fell out and broke open on the floor. Also unfortunately, the bottle was nearly full and the viscosity of the syrup was such that it rapidly created a huge puddle of sticky goo.

Well, I sighed, and cleaned it up and threw stuff away. There was no name on the syrup and I was feeling bad about just throwing someones stuff away, with out them knowing, so I thought I'd send an e-mail to the office. Then I thought a lame e-mail is boring I'll do something more fun. The message I finally sent was this:

Dear Sir or Ma’am,

We regret to inform you of the passing if your bottle of syrup. Late this morning upon opening of the refrigerator door a nearly full bottle of maple “flavored” syrup leaped to its death on the floor below. Passer-bys rushed to its aid but the syrup was dead immediately upon impact. Refrigerator police are investigating the incident after anonymous witnesses reported seeing a smirking bottle of poppy seed salad dressing near where the syrup leaped from. Clean up crews were able to successfully contain the syrup spill and in the process of removing the remains returned the floor area immediately in front of the refrigerator to previously un-seen levels of cleanliness.

With deepest regrets,

I had quite a few comments from people through the morning on my e-mail. I think I suprised a number of them. I am the IT guy here at work and I suspect that most of them just think I'm an uninteresting nerd. The truth of the matter is I'm a fascinating and complex nerd. Heh.

But if you stop and think about it we all are fascinating and complex and how often do we really show that complexity? How often to we only allow ourselves to BE fascinating and complex at certain times and and the rest of the time just play the roles our jobs, family or circumstances have given us?.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS LAST…

It’s funny how powerful first impressions are. I had two brand new games exposed to me over the last few days and they have both left first impressions. I’m going to be very interested over the next little while to see if the continued experience with the games changes my current feelings towards them.

Item the first: City of Heroes. Many of my friends and I have a regular Tuesday night online game. Lately we’ve been playing DDO. But we’ve reached a problem with it. The game is very much geared towards having six players and we currently only have five interested. For a few weeks we’ve been kicking around ideas for replacements or wondering if we should just try to slug it out with five.

We’ve reached an agreement to try CoH as a possible replacement game. Coyote had some invitations so we could all try it out for a 10 day free trial. I signed up downloaded the bajillion byte installer, got it installed and started it up.

The character creation process was a lot of fun. I made lots and lots of changes before settling on a character. I now regret what I decided on because it looks so bland in the game which is very vibrant and colorful – but I have heard that there are tailoring stores in the game where you can change your appearance so I’ll have to do that some time.

The next thing that happened is I was dumped into the training zone to learn some of the game basics. There was definitely some bewilderment while I was trying to figure out the menus and on screen displays and rather a bit more bewilderment when I couldn’t figure out how to walk and turn at the same time. Turns out that the key mappings are in the wrong place for turn actions and strafe actions.

The game itself was mildly interesting. I had a hard time not thinking of my Super powers as spells but that has more to do with me not really being a part of the super hero genre I suppose than anything else in the game. The final training mission had me teamed up with a CPU controlled buddy. I was exploring the rooms in this building when I entered a very small break room with a ruined candy machine. The CPU buddy stood in the doorway and when I tried to leave the room wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t push past her, I couldn’t jump over her. I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out some way out of this stupid little room. Finally I managed to jump up onto the candy machine apparently getting just far enough away to trigger her follow subroutine so that she moved a pace further into the room and I was able to get around her.

The mission finished uneventfully after that but I was also done. This first taste of the game left me feeling ho-hum and not really excited about playing any more of this. Now granted, this game is an MMO and solo play in MMOs is usually pretty lame – so the next test will come when I play with my friends. Hopefully the game will show its strengths then but my first exposure to the game has definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

Item the Second: UFO: Extraterrestrials. I’m a huge fan of the old X:COM games. I played the Terror from the Deep one first so it’s my favorite but it’s basically the identical game to UFO Defense. They were delightful and spooky games. For a long time I’ve longed for an updated version of one of these with basically the same game play and better pictures. Well that day is finally here.

My first take on UFO:ET was wow this is pretty much exactly what I asked for. The game plays in to major segments the strategy based geo-scape view and the tactical based combat view. In the first you can see the whole world where you can build and manage your bases and detect and hopefully shoot down UFOs.

The strategy portion is fairly faithful to the old X:COM games. The major differences are that you can not hire technicians, scientists and soldiers. Squaddies are apparently assigned to you as you go along, techs and scientists seem to be a part of the lab or workshop facilities when you build them with each one giving you 10 additional people.

In addition some of the other base management actions have also been simplified. There doesn’t seem to be the equivalent of general stores and I don't know how many people I can cram together in that one living quarter. I guess I’ll find out. The research trees have all started well and I like some of the changes with the fighters you use in that you have cannon hard points and missile hard points not just generic weapon ports.

The tactical section is so far the highlight of the game for me. The transport ship you start with can only hold one vehicle and four squaddies so the squad size was much lower than I was used to in X:COM. The first time out the door of the transport within five rounds all my squaddies were dead. YEAH! This game rocks. The second time I tried a tactical mission I was much more careful.

The aliens use decent tactics and avoid closing into obvious kill zones – forcing my squaddies to come to them. Squaddies can level up in rank like in X:COM games and their skills will increase but in this game you get to pick which stats to raise for them when they achieve a new rank instead of the computer automatically raising some of them for you. My guys currently have projectile weapons still and the bad guys are shooting plasma beams (that I can’t research yet).

This game is much less spooky than X:COM was, perhaps, it’s because this is set on a fictional world instead of on earth so there is already some unreality built right into the premise of the game. The aliens are good looking though, and the ones I’ve met so far are very alien not clay-mation beasties like the X:COM Apocalypse ones. I really wish that there was a map function in the tactical view and it would be great if I could left click on an alien to switch to the targeting cursor instead of having to click on the gun in my selected squaddies hand but these quibbles are fairly minor.

All in all this game has left a favorable impression with me and I’m looking forward to the chance to play more of it. Hopefully, this trend will continue.

THE END IS NEAR

I was tagged in the Blog Apocalypse meme. I’m not really good at memes. I have a stubborn streak in me and, frankly, some outright contrariness that makes me resist what the crowd is doing. I’ve avoided super popular moves because everyone was seeing them. Remember those Gresham books about lawyers that everyone read and raved about – I never bothered simply because everyone else was doing it. They might have been the most masterful entertaining and wonderful books ever to have been written. (I don’t think they were I’m just saying they COULD have been.) And I have not read them because everyone was doing it.

I suppose this is good in a way. If everyone jumped off a cliff I’d probably not do that. But it can also be bad in a way too because I might miss something I would otherwise really enjoy.

On the other hand I just can not resist a good web quiz and lookie here what I found on the Rabid Paladin



SWEEEEET! I'm R2-D! That is pretty neat. BTW: to follow up on the last quiz which is still in flux. My moth daemon has turned into a bunny rabbit which is also pretty cool.

Anyhoo……

The blog apocalypse meme is to pretend that you have just one last blog entry that you can write. You are supposed to leave some nugget of wisdom or some summation of your lifes (blogs?) work. Or something meaningful to you alone, I guess.

Interestingly enough, that is such a focused question that it is way beyond the scope of this blog. I’m not writing about anything in particular here. In fact the real point of this blog is for me to have a chance to do some expressive writing because I’m bad at it and need the practice and also need the emotional outlet of having created something. I do try to be clever in my writing but that is mostly to amuse myself while I’m doing it. There is no topic at all.

The name of the blog is the Tungsten Bathtub. I’ll explain that instead and hope that it counts as some sort of nugget of wisdom to someone.

The Tungsten part is easy. I occasionally play online games with my friends and I have adopted the name Drake Tungsten as my online alias for many of these games. This came from one of my favorite TV shows Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie was one of the Hercules movies staring Alan Steele in the title role. During one of the skits Joel (I think it was Joel and I always liked his delivery better than Mikes so I’ll just pretend it was Joel instead of looking up which host it was) and the bots were commenting on what a cool hero name Mr. Steele had. They tried to invent a number of other hero names. Crow had a problem with the game coming up with names like Biff Drywall. But Servo came up the Drake Tungsten and I loved it. From the first time I heard that name I’ve used it in games.

The Bathtub part is pretty easy too. I can’t be the only person whose mind wanders while taking a shower. I go in with good intentions of planning out the day and figuring out things and solving problems but I usually end up wondering about why some things happen before other things or what would chairs look like if you knees bent the other way or something equally strange or random. Sometimes I compose blog entries in my head there. Sometimes I wonder about a book I read or a conversation I had. Sometimes I’ll obsess over an upcoming situation playing out possible outcomes again and again. All in all it’s a pretty random thought process.

Therefore I named my blog for part of the character name I’ve adopted and for the location where lots of random thinking takes place.

As far as I know every blog I read with any regularity has been tagged by this meme so I suppose it dies with me. If you never got tagged and feel left out leave a comment or something and I’ll edit the post to tag you in. (Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.) Anyway there ya go.

WEB QUIZ JUNKIE

Jacob, is apparently, my pusher when it comes to web quizes. He's got another one posted up on his blog and so here it goes on mine too. Like he said there - this one has a twist - for the next twelve days people can click on the link and vote if my answers match your opinions. At the end of that time a final personality match will be given. When I clicked on his quiz it went from a badger to a racoon.

My answers matched me up with a Moth called Voltina. I wonder if that one will change.

NOW ON SALE…. FEAR!

I hate when people are stupid. I’ve mentioned this before. This morning while driving to work one of the local TV stations sponsored the morning traffic report. The ad copy (I work for an ad agency so I’m allowed to call what they say in ads ‘copy’) said: Watch as our hidden cameras uncover a store that knowingly sells items that can be used for drugs.

I’m supposed to be all afraid that a store sells drug supplies. Oh no, everybody panic! Stores that sell things that can be used as drugs. This infuriates me that this is an issue. Fear driven stories lead to fear driven stupidities. It is implied that these supplies can ONLY be used to make drugs. What stupidity. These stupidities are already impacting the quality of life for many people and it shows no sign of stopping.

Here is a prime example. I few months ago I got sick. I felt miserable but I still had work to do and life to take care of. I’ve been setting up a new life and I don’t have many things in my apartment yet – including medicines. Feeling sick and miserable I went to the local grocery store. I picked up one package each of generic Night-time and Day-time cold medicine. I staggered over to the checkout counter – displaying obvious symptoms of being sick and was told by the clerk that she could not sell me both packages. I boggled at her. She told me I would have to buy one now and purchase the other one later. Why, I managed to finally ask? Because they both contain a compound that could be used to create meth.

There a stupidity caused an obviously sick person to be unable to purchase the medication that would have helped them because of a stupid law.

At another time I went pack to purchase my one and only package allowed of cold medicine but this time I went through the automatic checkout counters. The computer scanned my single package in and then threw up a big sign saying that without proper authorization the transaction would not proceed. I had to get a store employee to come over and finish the purchase for me. Why? I don’t know. What value did it add having to make someone come verify me? I can’t imagine what. Another stupidity.

Stupidities happen because of bad thinking. Bad thinking, or no thinking, is usually driven by emotions and one of the easiest emotions to sell is fear. Look around you at the ads you see today. Most of them will use the classic Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) in their message. Watch the message!

BRAVE NEW WORLDS….

I hate when people are stupid. I find it highly irritating. Part of the reason for this is that I am highly invested in thinking that I’m a smart person. So it’s an ego defense for me to recognize stupidity in others. That is a double edged sword since I do stupid things too and my ego takes a beating when I am forced to recognize that I’m just as stupid as other people. (HELPFUL HINT: I know I’m not as smart as many of my friends but I’ve learned a clever trick of being quiet and just LOOKING smart. It turns out that this is almost as good as being smart.)

Hmmmm… gonna have to follow some bread crumbs back to where I was going with this….

Lately I’ve been super irritated by the recent announcement that scientists have discovered a new planet around a red dwarf type star about 20 LY away. The worst example of this came in a morning news broadcast. The scientists or their group have released a video animation of what the world COULD look like so that their story could get some air time on TV news. The anchor person said “So is this actual video of the new planet?” to her co-anchor as the video was playing. I sat there stupefied. Then I felt a surge of energy – I would have leaped through the screen and yelled “YOU MORON” at them were I able to.

I may not be the normal one – maybe regular people think that it might be actual pictures of a new planet. I’m familiar enough with physics and the general capabilities of our current technologies to know that there is no way we have pictures of a planet 20 light years away from us. It is common knowledge to me that this is impossible. So I’m amazed when someone else doesn’t understand this.

The planet was detected by measuring minute shifts in the stars spin and then inferring that the resulting red and blue shifts are because of gravitational influences of planets in orbit around the star. I’m sure the math is beyond me and I’m over simplifying this. From what I can understand the only things that we can really tell about the planet are: Something is orbiting that star and it has a certain minimum mass (approximately 2x the mass of earth).

With those two details we can theorize a few more things – one the approximate distance of the mass from the star, that given it’s proximity to its star it’s probably a rocky type planet (as opposed to a gas type planet), and that it possibly may have a local temperature able to support liquid water.

From what I can tell that is about it. Obviously these theories are completely un-provable given our current technology. That hasn’t stopped people from announcing long and loud that a human habitable planet has been discovered or that an extra-solar planet capable of supporting life has been discovered. I will grant that these are both potential theories but they are pretty extreme and I see no way to prove them true or false.

It’s stupid and funny. I guess just announcing that there is possibly a planet doesn’t have the same ring to people than announcing they’ve found Vulcan and expect to make first contact any day now. *sigh*

I guess I feel awful smart right now but also really sad. Have we come so far that it’s no longer acceptable to have actual science intrude into our consciousnesses? Are we so unwilling as a society to spend any time thinking but instead need to be drip fed fun sound bites regardless of their veracity? Believing in Voodoo will not help us at all in the long run.


P.S. The link to the voodoo science essay by Jerry Pournelle is well worth your time if you've never see it before.

FIRST PITCH

I got to my first baseball game of the season last night. We have a local AAA affiliate of the Anaheim of California, Los Angeles, and Surrounding Areas Angels. (Ok that is a joke – but I may have only amused myself with it.) The local team is called the Bees. It’s an AL affiliate so they have to use the Designated Hitter rule which is to bad, but it’s still professional baseball and it’s fun to watch.

The Bees have had pretty good teams the last few years which has also been fun to watch. They missed the play offs last year because in the end of the season they started to loose games – but they started to loose games because of how many of their players had been called up to the big league. So it was a mixed blessing – I got to see a bunch of guys that made the big time when they were local. But I missed out on seeing a playoff game for the PCL.

Last night I was given tickets by my Mom so I took my boys and met her and several other family members there to watch the game. We had a lot of fun – we got to see a real funnel cloud out over the lake as we walked up to the stadium (a rarity in these climes). My 10 year old got a game ball tossed to him by a Bees player and the six year old caught a promo Frisbee tossed into the crowd.

Team sports teach lots of things but I was fascinated last night by what watching a game could teach. Set aside for a moment all the times that my oldest and I talked over rules of the game and explained some of the strategies of the game, but look instead at what they learned by doing.

As the home team would run in from the field if a returning player had a ball he would toss it up to the kids waiting up above the dugout. So my boys would watch the game and when there were two outs they would get up – make their way down the stands and wait over the dugout – then wave and cheer and look hopeful as the players ran in. They were doing something on their own – without being guided or shepherded by me in any way. I could see them the whole time of course but this is something they did. The sense of accomplishment is much greater, I’m sure, because of their own actions. They learned it’s fun to get something by doing.

My youngest ate the entire time he was there. I made several trips to the counter with him to purchase peanuts and popcorn and typical ball game foods. He learned that you can just drop the peanut shells right on the ground at a baseball game. And also how much fun going to a ball park can be. This year is the first year that he is probably old enough to enjoy both the game and the experience – although he didn’t watch a lot of the game but more than he did last year for sure.

I don’t get to watch near as much of the game when I take my kids to a game but I love taking them anyway. When I go to a game myself I buy a brat and a soda on the way to my seat and never leave it once the game starts. With the kids I was up and down all the time helping them to the restrooms or buying the next bag of peanuts or jumping up to get pictures when they did something cute.

That kind of family activity is hard to beat – when I finally dropped the kids off that night they were tired but happy and so was I. Pretty good pay off for the first pitch of the year.

SERENITY QUIZ

I'm a sucker for web quizes. Since I've written about how much I liked Serenity before when I saw this quiz result up on my freinds site I had to take it too.

Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 65% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 60% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 55% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 45% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 35% Wash (Ship Pilot) 30% Alliance 30% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 25% Inara Serra (Companion) 20% River (Stowaway) 10% A Reaver (Cannibal) 10%

You are good at fixing things. You are usually cheerful. You appreciate being treated with delicacy and specialness.

Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz


I'm highly amused by this one and pleased with the results. All three characters that I rated high in I can see similarities in myself with them. I was a little suprised to see that I scored so low in Wash but I don't have any plastic dinosaurs either so maybe it's right.

FORTUNATE COOKIES

I like fortune cookies. Well technically I like opening fortune cookies – the cookie itself (with rare occasion) is a twisted dry lump of nearly inedible cardboard. Occasionally, I’ll find one that is really tasty. Not often but occasionally.

But by far the best part about getting a fortune cookie is opening up the cookie to get the fortune inside.

Every time I open one up, especially if I’m eating with friends, I desperately want to hold my fortune up as if I’m reading from it and say: “Help! I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory.” This is a joke I heard from my Dad when I was young. It has now become so engrained in me that every time I open up a cookie, and I really mean every time, I want to say it. I usually manage to hold it in UNLESS I’m with my kids – then out it comes thus infecting the next generation with the same meme.

I hate when I get a platitude instead of a fortune in my cookie. This happens way to often. “You are a nice guy.” Well whoop-dee-doo. I don’t care. I already know what I am and I definitely don’t want a cookie commenting on me. “You like puppies.” Sheesh – these kinds of ‘fortunes’ are just stupid. Yes people like puppies – people think they are reasonably decent people – so platitudes can often apply to a wide range of people and I’m sure that is why then end up in fortune cookies. But I always feel ripped off when I get one. I want a fortune in my cookie, I want a prediction, not wisdom from the I-Ching or a banal platitude.

If I get a non-fortune in my fortune cookie I will throw it away with the chopsticks and the plate. If I get a fortune though, I’ll keep it around for a while. If it’s a really good fortune it will get stuck up to my mirror where it becomes a little positive affirmation for me every time I see it. Right now I’ve got two fortunes stuck to my mirror.

The first one says: "You will have many friends when you need them". I got this fortune one afternoon about seven months ago when I bought myself a dinner at the Panda Express. Panda Chinese food is comfort food to me – half fast food half Chinese I really enjoy it, and use it sometimes, as a pick me up. It was a message that I needed to hear at the time – it funny because I don’t deserve it but I have terrific friends. They have been a tremendous source of strength to me during this past year which has been rather difficult. I have needed them and they have always been there for me. I can’t get any luckier than that. I hope I can learn from them to be a good friend too.

This fortune is right at the top of my mirror and every time I see it I’m reminded of my friends and feel a surge of happiness just knowing that they are there if I need them.

Oddly enough given my feelings above, the second fortune up on my mirror IS a platitude not a prediction. This one though, had enough truth for me that I kept it. I got this fortune when after visiting a game store prior to playing D&D with friends (and buying new dice which I am clearly unable not to do when visiting the gamer store) we bought Chinese food on the way back to the game. My ‘fortune’ said: "A little madness, a little kindness, makes for happiness".

This one seemed to capture the feelings I have when I am the most happy. I love activities where I can be silly (mad if you will) and let out the comments I think of. It’s not a form of madness it’s rather a form of freedom but I imagine that it looks like madness to an outside observer. I love the times when I can talk and listen and visit with friends to. The best times have been the opportunities to help someone else with something in their lives. The chance to be kind to another really does create positive feelings.

Now it’s like nine in the morning and I have totally made myself want some Lo Mien. That is a peril of blogging that I had never imagined.

BETTER THAN BEFORE

I’ve written here before nostalgically. I’ve mentioned books I liked and I’ve talked about the types of games that you just don’t get anymore. I generally like my old music better than this new fangled stuff. Fortunately, I haven’t descended to the point where I’m complaining about how I had to walk uphill to school both ways though the snow or about how kids these days just don’t get it right any more. Even though I did and they don’t. I’m really really really fighting the urge to start quoting a Weird Al song called When I was Your Age from his Off the Deep End album. I’ll settle for those links instead.

I got my hair cut the other day. I usually go to SuperFantasticGreatCutsClipsSams because I can find one that doesn’t have a long waiting time and I have no brand loyalty to any of the incarnations of the shop. Sometimes I get a stylist who just wants to rush through my very simple style and get my money and sometimes I get a really good cut. I get good enough hair cuts to make me keep repeating the process it’s like a vending machine that usually works – I’m now conditioned to keep going there.

Stick with me, this will all tie together in the end. Well at least to me it will – your mileage may vary.

This most recent trip I had my hair cut by someone who was clearly of the type of stylist that wants to get the cut done right not fast. Her name was Carlie. I had a chance to talk with her a bit and she told me that the thing she likes the most about cutting hair was that she loved helping people to be happier and feel better. We talked about how you feel after you get your hair cut and what it does for your attitude and mood. I have to admit that my mood is always lifted by getting my hair cut.

As she was working on my hair and we were chatting I mentioned that I usually just let my hair flop and as long as it wasn’t sticking out anywhere I considered it as done. I admitted that this wasn’t so much of as style as it was a complete surrender to entropy. I asked her what would be better to do. She told me my hair was fine – but then as she was nearing the end of the cut she said that my hair would make a perfect Caesar I’d just have to learn to make the front part do what it was supposed to do. So I had her teach me how to do that. I’m not really good at it since I’m used to letting it flop and now I have to try and point the stuff in the front out but it’s definitely fun to have a change.

Next came my favorite part of any modern haircut – the shampoo and rinse. This is the all time greatest invention in modern hair styling. Frankly – I just like being touched anyway. And to have a pretty girl wash my hair is a definite kick. Again sometimes they are routine and quick and sometimes they are done well with a scalp massage. Carlie, again, did this part just right – she took the time to make it a pleasant experience.

While she was doing this I started to remember haircuts of old. So I told her about my first barber. I have no idea what his name was so I’ll just call him Floyd after the one from the Andy Griffith show. I didn’t like going to get my hair cut as a child – I hated having to wait for my turn – there was nothing to do and the place usually smelled like old people. When it was my turn I had no choice but to sit still and let Floyd do the one cut that he always did. The worst part, for me, was that he always asked me if I wanted my nose hairs trimmed. Every single time he asked that. For crying out loud to little kids EVEN HAVE nose hairs? I never knew what to say to that question and I spent the whole time dreading when he would ask it. I could probably use that now but definitely not as a kid. I hated going to Floyds. It wasn’t fun at all.

Old Floyd has nothing on Carlie. Sometimes the good old days and ways just aren’t. I'll take Carlies cut anyday. I'm glad some things have changed.