One's ability to type accurately is inversely proportional to the number of people watching.
2014-07-23
Porter's Law
In the absence of any evidence that anyone has previously codified this idea before, I present Porter's Law:
2014-05-29
WvW Map Limit Pontification
Following up on my last post, I've been thinking more about the actual numbers involved. According to some loose (it's the internet!) research, the per-map limit has been estimated by players at around 150 per world (so 450-500 total). So let's just run with that in the absence of anything concrete.
There are currently 5 maps in WvW: Eternal Battlegrounds, Edge of the Mists, and one Borderlands for each of the 3 competing worlds (Red, Green and Blue). This amounts to a maximum number of players per world equal to 5 x 150 = 750 players.
Assuming that the weekly tournament matches are indeed exactly 7 days long, then that's 168 total playable hours during a single matchup.
If a world managed to keep all 5 WvW maps entirely full for the entire time, they would be capable of exerting 126,000 player-hours towards their cause. This is a hard cap-- no world can participate more than this due to the time limit combined with the per-map player count limits.
So to restate the question from my last post in these terms: How often does a world that logs 20,000 player hours score more points than a world that logs 90,000? My guess is never.
I suspect that only at the top end of the matchups where WvW participation is high and the maps are always nor nearly always 100% full do you see true competition on "equal" grounds where skill and strategy actually come into play. The rest of the time I suspect it's merely a matter of, "who has more bodies on the ground?" Now don't get me wrong, a big part of winning a war is who can muster a larger fighting force and it's fair (to a degree) for that to be represented in the scores, but I would like to also see normalized scores in the form of (total_world_score / world_player_hours).
There are currently 5 maps in WvW: Eternal Battlegrounds, Edge of the Mists, and one Borderlands for each of the 3 competing worlds (Red, Green and Blue). This amounts to a maximum number of players per world equal to 5 x 150 = 750 players.
Assuming that the weekly tournament matches are indeed exactly 7 days long, then that's 168 total playable hours during a single matchup.
If a world managed to keep all 5 WvW maps entirely full for the entire time, they would be capable of exerting 126,000 player-hours towards their cause. This is a hard cap-- no world can participate more than this due to the time limit combined with the per-map player count limits.
So to restate the question from my last post in these terms: How often does a world that logs 20,000 player hours score more points than a world that logs 90,000? My guess is never.
I suspect that only at the top end of the matchups where WvW participation is high and the maps are always nor nearly always 100% full do you see true competition on "equal" grounds where skill and strategy actually come into play. The rest of the time I suspect it's merely a matter of, "who has more bodies on the ground?" Now don't get me wrong, a big part of winning a war is who can muster a larger fighting force and it's fair (to a degree) for that to be represented in the scores, but I would like to also see normalized scores in the form of (total_world_score / world_player_hours).
2014-05-27
Guild Wars 2 World vs. World: Skill vs Participation?
In Guild Wars 2, there are massive "world vs world" battles raging (or eeking by) all the time. At the moment, the Spring 2014 Tournament is soon coming to a close. My own home server, Crystal Desert, did mediocre in the challenge. Better than about half and worse than about half. I have never been very interested in WvW since the launch of GW2...that is, until this tournament. It became a bit of an obsession, and even though I am still a relative newcomer with lots to learn, a question quickly formed in my mind by observing the peaks and lulls in how many people were logged into WvW and our performance there. Specifically: Is a world's WvW score more about raw participation than team or individual talent, or even overall strategy? Is it simply that the world with the most people in the game more of the time is able to capture and hold strategic points for more of the time and thus earn more points?
I desperately want an answer to this question even though I'm unlikely to get it. I've found ArenaNet to be pretty poor at communicating, even in spite of their otherwise applauded efforts to do so. I posted the following support request today, and I'm cross posting here for posterity.
I desperately want an answer to this question even though I'm unlikely to get it. I've found ArenaNet to be pretty poor at communicating, even in spite of their otherwise applauded efforts to do so. I posted the following support request today, and I'm cross posting here for posterity.
I'm curious about the dynamics at work in WvW. The maps have player limits, which means that if there was enough participation, each of the three teams currently playing against each other would be on "equal" ground, at least in terms of manpower (let's leave aside the variable like armor/weapon quality, WvW rank, and even individual player skill for the moment.)First, so we're clear about what I'm talking about. If I play for an hour in EBG, then that's 1 player-hour. If my guild-mate and I both play for the same hour, that's 2 player-hours. If he plays for an hour, signs off, and then I play for an hour, that's still 2 player hours.My theory is that there is a strong correlation between the worlds that rank highly in WvW and those that have a higher WvW player-hours. In other words: Regardless of other skill factors, a world where there is a queue to enter WvW (meaning they have the max number of players in WvW) will have a competitive advantage over one that does not (meaning they do not have "full" participation) that results in a greater ability to take and hold WvW match points. So I wonder if the tournament rankings are more about, "who had more people in WvW, more of the time," than any other factor. Surely at the top of the spectrum (TC, JQ, BG) where I suspect the WvW maps are always full for every world the match is legitimately about individual and team skill, but I can't help but wonder if Kaineng and Eredon are at the bottom just because nobody plays.My question is really this: Do you have available, and can you please release, statistics about the total WvW player-hours for each world in comparison to their ranking, per each weekly match up? What I want to see is that Crystal Desert "only" logged 8,000 hours and still managed to grab 190,000 points for the week even though Shiverpeaks logged 12,000 hours to get their 350,000 points. Normalizing for the hours would give you an idea of a world's *actual* skill. I have a hunch the correlation is dramatic in the mid to lower tiers, but it will always only be a hunch unless you make the information public.
I'm a Collector's Edition owner, a semi-regular gem purchaser, a commander... and a believer in your original Manifesto https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/ . I support what you're trying to accomplish both in mind and out of pocket and I'm dying to know the answer to this question.
Thank you.
2014-01-02
Web Designers who start with Photoshop
I have a big ideological beef with designers who build websites from inside Photoshop.
The web is built on a single foundation: HTML. Sure, CSS and Javascript have extended it greatly, but everything ultimately boils down to HTML. This is the lingua franca of the web.
Designers who start with Photoshop generally (and keep in mind I'm making a lot of generalizations here that don't necessarily apply to every web designer everywhere) are looking at the web the same way they look at a print brochure or flyer, and that's wrong. "Designing" for the web should take the medium into account, and I don't mean that in the sterotypical visual way. I mean that starting from HTML and building it up with CSS produces a clear, more efficient, more informed result. I mean it from the perspective of learning a foreign language by rote; repeating key phrases over and over without understanding what the individual sounds being uttered actually mean as compared to learning a language the old fashioned way; vocabulary, structure, grammar, colloquialisms, practice, practice, practice. Only someone who has done the latter can truly be fluent in a language.
The difference between graphic design and web design is specifically that there is an underlying language and grammar governing every piece of output. Some (poor) web designers get around their lack of understanding of this by producing full-page images and simply spitting out one big![]()
tag per page. This is the most extreme example of course, but there is a whole continuum from that all the way to developers who could not make a web page look attractive to save their lives. (For the record, I'm way far down at that far end of the spectrum.)
To reiterate that point; I am not a web designer. I'm not good enough at the, "making pages look pretty," part to rightly label myself that way. I do believe though, that the sweet spot on the continuum is a solid foundation from both ends: Someone with the aesthetic tastes to make something beautiful, but that understands that the best way to do it isn't by slicing and force fitting an ill-considered PSD design intos, but building a document structure that's flexible, responsive, and subsequently easily styled with CSS.
As an application developer, these are the designers I dream of working with. Someone who can take the output of my code and, with the appropriate classes and id's, mold it into a dozen different shapes and styles.
The web is built on a single foundation: HTML. Sure, CSS and Javascript have extended it greatly, but everything ultimately boils down to HTML. This is the lingua franca of the web.
Designers who start with Photoshop generally (and keep in mind I'm making a lot of generalizations here that don't necessarily apply to every web designer everywhere) are looking at the web the same way they look at a print brochure or flyer, and that's wrong. "Designing" for the web should take the medium into account, and I don't mean that in the sterotypical visual way. I mean that starting from HTML and building it up with CSS produces a clear, more efficient, more informed result. I mean it from the perspective of learning a foreign language by rote; repeating key phrases over and over without understanding what the individual sounds being uttered actually mean as compared to learning a language the old fashioned way; vocabulary, structure, grammar, colloquialisms, practice, practice, practice. Only someone who has done the latter can truly be fluent in a language.
The difference between graphic design and web design is specifically that there is an underlying language and grammar governing every piece of output. Some (poor) web designers get around their lack of understanding of this by producing full-page images and simply spitting out one big
To reiterate that point; I am not a web designer. I'm not good enough at the, "making pages look pretty," part to rightly label myself that way. I do believe though, that the sweet spot on the continuum is a solid foundation from both ends: Someone with the aesthetic tastes to make something beautiful, but that understands that the best way to do it isn't by slicing and force fitting an ill-considered PSD design into
As an application developer, these are the designers I dream of working with. Someone who can take the output of my code and, with the appropriate classes and id's, mold it into a dozen different shapes and styles.
"In 1000 words or less, describe in as much detail as you feel necessary how you would do your laundry."
(Assumes laundry equipment is in-home.) Walk all living areas, looking for loose clothing. Collect it as you go and dump it all in the hamper, which itself should be in the room where the majority of the clothes are stored (typically a bedroom). If the load is small enough, skip ahead to washing (next paragraph). Otherwise, pre-sort the hamper into like-articles (all shirts, all pants, all underwear, all "whites", all "gentle wash", etc.). If necessary, sort too-large piles into further like-article loads (jeans vs. pajama pants.) (Prepping loads in advance provides a measurement for total time the chore will take: (Number of loads * time it takes to dry a load) + time to wash first load.) If you feel the need, combine any "compatible" piles that can be combined that together will still fit in a single load. (It's better to have two types of clothing in a load and do fewer loads in all.)
Put the smallest load, or the one that can be washed the fastest, in a laundry basket, take it to the laundry room and place the load in the washer. (Save "heavy" material loads like sweaters, jeans and blankets for last.) Add soap and softener as appropriate for the load in question. Set the quickest acceptable wash cycle at the appropriate temperature and begin the cycle. Take the empty basket back to the bedroom and load it with another load. Take the full basket back to the laundry room to "stage" it. Set a timer on a device you can carry with you (a phone, typically) to match the wash cycle's length. (Now perform other activities as time allows.) When the timer goes off, return to the laundry room and move the completed load into the dryer. Add dryer sheet, set appropriate time and temperature and begin drying cycle. (Get the dryer going before beginning next wash cycle since drying typically takes longer.) Take the staged load that is waiting in the laundry room and load into the washer. Again add soap and softener, adjust the cycle appropriately for the load and start it. Set a new timer for the remaining time on the longer of the two cycles (almost always drying). (Again pursue other activities until your carried timer goes off.)
Return to the laundry room, and move the load from the dryer into the basket, but leave it by the laundry room for the time being. Transfer the completed washer load into the dryer, add dryer sheet, adjust time/temp and begin the dry cycle. (This will leave the washer momentarily empty.) Take the basket of dried clothes back to the bedroom and put away the (pre-sorted) clothes. (For example, for my own shirts this usually means laying them in a stack right-side-out and front-up, then placing hangers in the each of the whole batch before carrying the lot to the closet.) Because each load only contains similar items, putting them away should be a relatively uniform process. Once the load is fully put away, put another load from the original sorting into the basket and return with it to the laundry room. Place the load in the washer, add detergent/softener, set time/temp/cycle and begin the cycle. The washer will likely still complete before the previously-started drying cycle, but set your timer for the larger of the two and repeat this paragraph for each of the waiting piles in the bedroom.
At the point where you've put away a load of dried clothing and there are no new loads to wash, return the basket to the laundry room empty instead, but still set your alarm for the end of the final drying cycle. When it finishes, return to the laundry room, take the final dry load back to the bedroom and put it away.
This process optimizes for fewest trips to the laundry room, fewest back-and-forths between the laundry and the bedroom and minimizes the number of interactions with the washer/dryer by both pairing *and* pipelining wash/dry cycles. It also optimizes for making the process of putting clothes away as painless as possible (the part that I hate the most) by making everything in a load be the same type of clothing.
Put the smallest load, or the one that can be washed the fastest, in a laundry basket, take it to the laundry room and place the load in the washer. (Save "heavy" material loads like sweaters, jeans and blankets for last.) Add soap and softener as appropriate for the load in question. Set the quickest acceptable wash cycle at the appropriate temperature and begin the cycle. Take the empty basket back to the bedroom and load it with another load. Take the full basket back to the laundry room to "stage" it. Set a timer on a device you can carry with you (a phone, typically) to match the wash cycle's length. (Now perform other activities as time allows.) When the timer goes off, return to the laundry room and move the completed load into the dryer. Add dryer sheet, set appropriate time and temperature and begin drying cycle. (Get the dryer going before beginning next wash cycle since drying typically takes longer.) Take the staged load that is waiting in the laundry room and load into the washer. Again add soap and softener, adjust the cycle appropriately for the load and start it. Set a new timer for the remaining time on the longer of the two cycles (almost always drying). (Again pursue other activities until your carried timer goes off.)
Return to the laundry room, and move the load from the dryer into the basket, but leave it by the laundry room for the time being. Transfer the completed washer load into the dryer, add dryer sheet, adjust time/temp and begin the dry cycle. (This will leave the washer momentarily empty.) Take the basket of dried clothes back to the bedroom and put away the (pre-sorted) clothes. (For example, for my own shirts this usually means laying them in a stack right-side-out and front-up, then placing hangers in the each of the whole batch before carrying the lot to the closet.) Because each load only contains similar items, putting them away should be a relatively uniform process. Once the load is fully put away, put another load from the original sorting into the basket and return with it to the laundry room. Place the load in the washer, add detergent/softener, set time/temp/cycle and begin the cycle. The washer will likely still complete before the previously-started drying cycle, but set your timer for the larger of the two and repeat this paragraph for each of the waiting piles in the bedroom.
At the point where you've put away a load of dried clothing and there are no new loads to wash, return the basket to the laundry room empty instead, but still set your alarm for the end of the final drying cycle. When it finishes, return to the laundry room, take the final dry load back to the bedroom and put it away.
This process optimizes for fewest trips to the laundry room, fewest back-and-forths between the laundry and the bedroom and minimizes the number of interactions with the washer/dryer by both pairing *and* pipelining wash/dry cycles. It also optimizes for making the process of putting clothes away as painless as possible (the part that I hate the most) by making everything in a load be the same type of clothing.
2013-03-22
Fresh Produce
So Chris sent me these:
And I immediately thought of Alfe Woodard's line from First Contact, but couldn't find a ready-made image on Google, so I made one:
So now that's a thing on the internet.
2011-10-08
"Minimalism"
Saw an interesting article come through on Google Reader today from Leo Babauta, courtesy of Miss Spencer, about the iPhone 4S. Rather surprisingly, it didn't have anything to do with Steve Jobs' recent death. The gist of the post is about consumerism, and rejecting material goods in favor of, "contentment without products." I have no argument with this ideal, although "no" products may be unrealistic-- especially for Leo, who is using quite a lot of products in order to publish that blog of his. My beef is with sentiments like this:
To that I would add:
Don't give in to the hype about vaccines and nutrition and education either. People did "just fine" without those 200 years ago. People still "get by" in third world countries without these niceties. Don't be a fool!
Now obviously this is hyperbole. I'm not seriously comparing the iPhone to a 2000 calorie diet or not dying from malaria.
Is having an iPhone a luxury? Certainly. But so is having a digital camera, a cell phone, an iPod or a computer, and I sure as hell bet Leo owns at least one of those! If you aren't going to gripe about any of them along with the iPhone, then it's pretty hypocritical to critize a device that conveniently (and cheaply, compared to buying a bunch of one-task devices separately) covers all of those at once. Isn't that kind of right up a "minimalist's" alley?
And not to mention, why is suddenly the iPhone 4S the reason not to get a smartphone? Is Leo okay with Droids and Blackberries? Where's the post about resisting the overwhelming consumer urge, brought on by the sheer power of sly marketing, to purchase a Samsung Nexus?
I've made my orignal iPhone last for over 4 years, and even now I don't want to give it up because it's been such a faithful and useful companion. But! I'll be getting an iPhone 4S as an eventual replacement so I can take videos of the daughter that will be joining us in December. It will be one device, replacing one device, which replaced 4 devices in my life 4 years ago. Are any of them a "necessity"? No, probably not. I'll concede that point. Will my girl grow up just fine without them? Sure. But choosing a quality product that I know from experience will last a long time and serve me well is not a bad decision, and not something I think is a wise choice as a source of criticism. Poor Leo:
Why not do both? I've gotta be honest: It sounds like Leo's been missing out on more than a little fun.
Five years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist. It wasn’t a need in your life. You were able to live perfectly without it. And now that it does exist, all of that is true. It’s Apple’s marketing that has worked on us, and we’re fools for it.
To that I would add:
Don't give in to the hype about vaccines and nutrition and education either. People did "just fine" without those 200 years ago. People still "get by" in third world countries without these niceties. Don't be a fool!
Now obviously this is hyperbole. I'm not seriously comparing the iPhone to a 2000 calorie diet or not dying from malaria.
Is having an iPhone a luxury? Certainly. But so is having a digital camera, a cell phone, an iPod or a computer, and I sure as hell bet Leo owns at least one of those! If you aren't going to gripe about any of them along with the iPhone, then it's pretty hypocritical to critize a device that conveniently (and cheaply, compared to buying a bunch of one-task devices separately) covers all of those at once. Isn't that kind of right up a "minimalist's" alley?
And not to mention, why is suddenly the iPhone 4S the reason not to get a smartphone? Is Leo okay with Droids and Blackberries? Where's the post about resisting the overwhelming consumer urge, brought on by the sheer power of sly marketing, to purchase a Samsung Nexus?
I've made my orignal iPhone last for over 4 years, and even now I don't want to give it up because it's been such a faithful and useful companion. But! I'll be getting an iPhone 4S as an eventual replacement so I can take videos of the daughter that will be joining us in December. It will be one device, replacing one device, which replaced 4 devices in my life 4 years ago. Are any of them a "necessity"? No, probably not. I'll concede that point. Will my girl grow up just fine without them? Sure. But choosing a quality product that I know from experience will last a long time and serve me well is not a bad decision, and not something I think is a wise choice as a source of criticism. Poor Leo:
I’ve wanted an iPhone for almost 5 years now, but haven’t bought one because I know I don’t need it. Will it make my life a bit more fun? Sure, possibly — but so will a walk in the park with my kids, or a hike with a friend, or a free book at the library.
Why not do both? I've gotta be honest: It sounds like Leo's been missing out on more than a little fun.
2009-10-13
Ten True Things, Number One
"1. I struggle with what is "real." You see, I haven't been fully awake in eight years."
That tweet was a self-elected response to Nikki's Ten True Things. The "rules" state that you have to be nominated for this honor by someone who thinks you're a "brilliant" blogger. Nikki qualifies (naturally) but I'm going to break the rules because I received a specific request to expound upon that tweet.
That tweet was a self-elected response to Nikki's Ten True Things. The "rules" state that you have to be nominated for this honor by someone who thinks you're a "brilliant" blogger. Nikki qualifies (naturally) but I'm going to break the rules because I received a specific request to expound upon that tweet.
2009-09-08
System Reloads and Customizations
I follow the blog of one of my fantastic ex-professors from Knox, and he's been posting recently about switching from Mac OS X to linux. I know better than to criticize someone's decision when it comes to their OS, especially a professor of Computer Science, but Don's post did get me thinking.
See, I've played with my fair share of *nix distros in my day. I cut my teeth on FreeBSD 4.x, and I've installed everything from Ubuntu to Gentoo (an odd duck that at the time I played with it insisted on compiling the entire damn operating system from source code for every installation.) Thanks to its incredible utility for recovering files from corrupted Windows NTFS partitions, I've spent a ton of time inside Knoppix boot CDs too. Out of all of these, I can tolerate FreeBSD the best, provided I don't touch the X Windows system at all. (If I'm going to have to deal with some *nix flavor, at least give me the semi-consistency of the command line!) The reason I've stuck with FreeBSD is because they have a halfway-sane package management system that makes it somewhat less painful to maintain an "up to date" system. Even then it's a serious undertaking in order to ensure your network-facing components are fully patched and still happily talking to each other afterwards!
Now, it's worth saying that I've personally tried to use linux as a primary desktop OS. In particular my attempts were a desperate attempt to avoid Windows 2000 and XP so I'm willing to acknowledge that some distros have (hopefully) come a long way in the 8 years since I was put off by each and every one of them in turn. Based on my experience, I just can't for the life of me see how anyone could subject themselves to the kinds of "system maintenance self-torture" that Don is fastidiously documenting on his blog specifically so it won't hurt so bad next time he has to install and configure his system.
This brings me to the point of my post. Back in the day (primarily my first year or two at college) I would "modify" my B&W G3's copy of Mac OS 9 in a variety of unadvised and unsupported ways. Custom visual themes, custom icons, custom behaviors and desktop utilities abounded to fill in the gaps where I found the stock OS lacking. All of this was fine, because I was experimenting, and learning, and it was all very educational. As time went on though, and as I installed new hard drives and reloaded operating systems onto my machine, those customizations began to get dropped. They simply wouldn't get loaded onto the new installation either in the interest of system performance, or because the utility they provided wasn't worth the investment of time to find, download and install any more. I began to look for faster ways to get through the increasingly tedious system setup up process and back to the important work I wanted to be focusing my attention on instead.
Now, you can criticize me for being willing to adjust my own workflow to the provided behavior of the system, but after all these years when I'm faced with a clean system install now, I think about how much time it's going to take before the computer is "usable" and I still cringe. I have very savagely uncluttered my setup experience. There are certainly still some things I insist upon, such as MacPorts, TextWrangler, MenuMeters and DropDrawers, but these tend to be things that I keep bundled together specifically so that they're on hand when I sit down at an unfamiliar Mac. And more importantly, I make sure to keep the list of "extras" small enough that it fits comfortably in my memory, even during the years that pass in between reinstalls on my Mac (which is itself a blessing I try never to take for granted.)
MacPorts in particular is soooo ridiculously easy to use compared to just about anything I've been exposed to in the linux world. A single command like sudo port install x (where x is the name of the unix utility I need for the given situation) will get me literally any tool I need in a matter of seconds along with all of the tools it needs in order to run. And six months from now, when both x and every single one of x's dependencies have updated point releases, I can run sudo port upgrade installed and come back in half an hour with a fully up to date, still working system! It absolutely baffles me why anyone would bother with traditional RPMs or installing from source unless they were: 1) a student, 2) masochistic, or 3) had a gun to their head and had no other choice.
MacPorts in particular is soooo ridiculously easy to use compared to just about anything I've been exposed to in the linux world. A single command like sudo port install x (where x is the name of the unix utility I need for the given situation) will get me literally any tool I need in a matter of seconds along with all of the tools it needs in order to run. And six months from now, when both x and every single one of x's dependencies have updated point releases, I can run sudo port upgrade installed and come back in half an hour with a fully up to date, still working system! It absolutely baffles me why anyone would bother with traditional RPMs or installing from source unless they were: 1) a student, 2) masochistic, or 3) had a gun to their head and had no other choice.
Here's the bottom line for me: When I have to reload one of my systems (which I've gotten pretty adept at avoiding) I ask myself this question: Do I want to spend the next 3 days downloading and installing and tweaking and customizing this poor system into the convoluted environment I require in order to be able to be productive, or do I just want to sit down and concentrate on banging out some great code? The answer these days is invariably the latter. I certainly wish Don the best with his switch, but for me sysadmin != productivity and the day I need to start writing down how I configured my system to get it to do what I expect is the day I need to reevaluate my expectations. Believe it or not, I think I'm still young enough that it's easier to change myself than it is to change hundreds of lines of config files throughout the various and sundry /etc directories of my system.
2009-08-28
"What's Wrong?"
There are times when I can sense that my wife is unhappy or bothered about something. At those times, I ask the obvious question, "what's wrong?" and she gives me this response; "nothing." This is an awful answer for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is this: I'm a geek, and I analyze everything. If my wife were to tell me what was wrong, I would take that little bit of information, and file it away in my mental model of "how my wife works." It would get corrolated against everything I could possible associate it with. Everything from the topics of conversation leading up to the "what's wrong", to the events of the day, to the time of day and where we were. Everything would get filed away into the massively-cross-linked database that is my nerd brain.
Now let's fast-forward again to the next time I'm about to ask "what's wrong?" This time, I'm mentally going back and checking against all the previous instances I've encountered like this one, looking for similarities and trends. This time, I don't have to even ask, "what's wrong?" because I am informed from my previous experiences and the corrections my wife made to my mental model the last time she explained herself. She would be letting me learn something about her that helps me be a better mate to her.
The thing is, when she answers with, "nothing" right now, I give up and I walk away, because she's shutting me down and closing me out. There's no way I can learn the motivations and impulses and feelings she's experiencing that are leading her to be upset, because she's providing no feedback at all for me to adjust my approach. This is like playing a videogame actually: you learn how high Mario can jump, how far he can jump, and under what circumstances you can safely navigate a level. The game gives you immediate feedback that lets you build a model for expected outcomes: given this set of variables, and this set of inputs you're applying to the game, you can expect such and such a result. You can begin to predict and influence the outcome. The more you play, the better you get at being able to navigate the game's environment because you're integrating the feedback (both positive and negative) back into how you handle the controls.
Now by no means do I at all assume that my wife (or any other woman) could be reduced down to something so simple, and by no means are the life events that lead up to a, "what's wrong," moment deterministic, but it would go a long way towards me being better able to read her, understand why she's upset and even work to help avoid such circumstances in the future if she would just be willing to explain what was in her head. It wouldn't have to make sense, or be logical or even be nice, but I just can't learn from a deadpan response of, "nothing" every time.
Now let's fast-forward again to the next time I'm about to ask "what's wrong?" This time, I'm mentally going back and checking against all the previous instances I've encountered like this one, looking for similarities and trends. This time, I don't have to even ask, "what's wrong?" because I am informed from my previous experiences and the corrections my wife made to my mental model the last time she explained herself. She would be letting me learn something about her that helps me be a better mate to her.
The thing is, when she answers with, "nothing" right now, I give up and I walk away, because she's shutting me down and closing me out. There's no way I can learn the motivations and impulses and feelings she's experiencing that are leading her to be upset, because she's providing no feedback at all for me to adjust my approach. This is like playing a videogame actually: you learn how high Mario can jump, how far he can jump, and under what circumstances you can safely navigate a level. The game gives you immediate feedback that lets you build a model for expected outcomes: given this set of variables, and this set of inputs you're applying to the game, you can expect such and such a result. You can begin to predict and influence the outcome. The more you play, the better you get at being able to navigate the game's environment because you're integrating the feedback (both positive and negative) back into how you handle the controls.
Now by no means do I at all assume that my wife (or any other woman) could be reduced down to something so simple, and by no means are the life events that lead up to a, "what's wrong," moment deterministic, but it would go a long way towards me being better able to read her, understand why she's upset and even work to help avoid such circumstances in the future if she would just be willing to explain what was in her head. It wouldn't have to make sense, or be logical or even be nice, but I just can't learn from a deadpan response of, "nothing" every time.
A videogame where the screen goes black and resets every time you make a single mistake isn't at all engaging. I mean, have you ever played Dragon's Lair? Awful game really. Not fun.
2009-03-24
DNS Update Speed: A TTL Primer Plus Tips
Just a real quick primer/tip on DNS updates. Keep in mind that this doesn't help if you haven't planned ahead, but if you know a day or two ahead of time that you are GOING to be changing DNS, you should go in and adjust the TTL values for the records you intend to change DOWN to a lower number.
For example, a TTL of 7200 means that the record in question can be cached on a client for up to two hours before the client MUST go back and request a "fresh" record. The problem is, changing the TTL is still subject to the *current* TTL, so if you change the TTL from 86,400 (1 day) to 300 (5 minutes), it will take a day before clients realize they can only cache records for 5 minutes. So this goes back to what I said originally, if you know you're are GOING to be changing DNS in a few days, lower the TTL ahead of time so the clients put themselves on short updates cycles. When you make your REAL DNS changes, they will happen almost instantly, and you can also bump the TTL back up to "normal" at the same time.
The reason you use a longer TTL is because it can pretty significantly affect the traffic load you place on your DNS server. A long TTL means fewer overall requests, because they get cached more. "Good" registrars like Network Solutions allow you to set your own TTL values. "Bad" registrars (**cough*GoDaddy!**coughcough***) don't.
For example, a TTL of 7200 means that the record in question can be cached on a client for up to two hours before the client MUST go back and request a "fresh" record. The problem is, changing the TTL is still subject to the *current* TTL, so if you change the TTL from 86,400 (1 day) to 300 (5 minutes), it will take a day before clients realize they can only cache records for 5 minutes. So this goes back to what I said originally, if you know you're are GOING to be changing DNS in a few days, lower the TTL ahead of time so the clients put themselves on short updates cycles. When you make your REAL DNS changes, they will happen almost instantly, and you can also bump the TTL back up to "normal" at the same time.
The reason you use a longer TTL is because it can pretty significantly affect the traffic load you place on your DNS server. A long TTL means fewer overall requests, because they get cached more. "Good" registrars like Network Solutions allow you to set your own TTL values. "Bad" registrars (**cough*GoDaddy!**coughcough***) don't.
2009-03-11
Working for a Living?
It seems I only want to write here when something is going really right, or really wrong. Right now, I'd be leaning towards the latter part of things. I'm annoyed because I'm opinionated. I have a pretty good idea what I want right now, but I can't see a good way to get there. Of course, as soon as I'm there I will probably revise and update "what I want," but that's to be expected-- I just want to be moving down that path at some speed other than "standing still".
The thing of it is, I like writing software for myself. I even like solving other people's problems when I care about them (which admittedly happens pretty frequently.) What I've really been trying to avoid is writing "installed" software for other people. I guess I'm just a typical engineer in that regard: I think I know what's best, and I want you to both pay me, and leave me alone long enough to come up with software that will fix your problem for you in the way I think is best. I don't think it's unusual to not want to worry about deadlines, or even being accountable to a supervisor (or a client). I want to control my own destiny, so to speak.
I am so envious of the guys at 37 signals and Twitter I could just tear my hair out. I'm envious because they just freakin build whatever they want, however they want, and they've managed to find enough people who like what they turn out to support themselves. They decide if they want to add or remove a feature, and they do it when they feel like it, not when their manager says, "have this module done by Wednesday." If their clients don't like it, they cancel their Basecamp and Backback accounts and take their business elsewhere, but they are one-hundred-percent in control of their own products.
There is more I'm envious of too. I like writing custom software solutions, but I hate leaving a client in the lurch. I could write great stuff for my current clients, but what happens to them and their investment in the software if I leave the company I'm at? I work in IT right now, and we deal with a lot of old, abandoned pieces of software that our clients cling to like life rafts because it's all the know and all they have. I don't ever want to be responsible for releasing software like that out into the world. When you write web-based, service-based software, you get to update your code ONCE, and every single one of your client just installed the "patch" immediately and with zero effort. (The flip side with web software is that if you do go out of business, your clients don't even get the "consolation prize" of the last version of the software you released.)
With web services though, support is provided to your paying customers as a part of the service you are offering, instead of an annual service contract that costs more than the software you "sell" (or license.) I also hate software installations as a matter of routine. We're working on an internal web software project right now that has some nasty nasty ugly make-you-want-to-gag-it's-so-distasteful hacks in place in order to get it to talk to Quickbooks. I see this as a HUGE potential point of failure, and again, what are the consequences of my company investing time in me building this software if it's going to be so damn FRAGILE in places like this? I HATE having to worry about integration with other products! I'd rather be the one producing the API that others need to talk to my app!
There's just so much that appeals so strongly to me about hosted web services like Twitter and StackOverflow and (gods forbid) even Facebook. Right now though, I'm totally overwhelmed by the single most important part of that process: thinking up a great idea. I'm not even worried about executing it, or scaling it, or monetizing it. I would LOVE for my biggest worries to be: 1) How to handle a million page views an hour, and 2) How to convert a million pages views an hour into revenue! I would be just THRILLED to have those problems. But no, my problem is that I'm stuck on an even earlier problem: What problem do I have that I need to solve.
I believe in scratching your own itch, but everybody out there is doing such a good job for me, that I'm largely itch-less. My biggest beef with my iPhone used to be that I couldn't sync my calendar with my wife's calendar, so every week we had to sit down and manually type each other critical appointments into our respective phones. But now Google has released that feature using Exchange protocols, and they've done it for free no less, and it works so well for me and my wife that I'm happy. . . . . . so there's nothing for me to do myself!
At my current company, our techs frequently want to bounce ideas off the world in general and get thoughts and suggestions about cases we have. Well, there's a place you can do that for programming problems called StackOverflow.com, and guess what, they're working on an IT version already! Dang.
I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I wish I had a serious problem I could solve with a good web service!
What I need to bring all this back to is that I don't think I'm going to be happy working for someone. I would be thrilled to be working with people, but not for, not anymore. I crave freedom, and if I didn't have a mortgage payment and a wife that deserves some of the niceties of life, it might be a lot easier to take a big risk in that direction.
Of course, it doesn't help that I'm generally a conservative guy anyway. I'd love to have my cake and eat it too. If the guys at 37s are hiring, I'm available. (I'm just not sure I'm quite sharp enough to work with that crowd.)
The thing of it is, I like writing software for myself. I even like solving other people's problems when I care about them (which admittedly happens pretty frequently.) What I've really been trying to avoid is writing "installed" software for other people. I guess I'm just a typical engineer in that regard: I think I know what's best, and I want you to both pay me, and leave me alone long enough to come up with software that will fix your problem for you in the way I think is best. I don't think it's unusual to not want to worry about deadlines, or even being accountable to a supervisor (or a client). I want to control my own destiny, so to speak.
I am so envious of the guys at 37 signals and Twitter I could just tear my hair out. I'm envious because they just freakin build whatever they want, however they want, and they've managed to find enough people who like what they turn out to support themselves. They decide if they want to add or remove a feature, and they do it when they feel like it, not when their manager says, "have this module done by Wednesday." If their clients don't like it, they cancel their Basecamp and Backback accounts and take their business elsewhere, but they are one-hundred-percent in control of their own products.
There is more I'm envious of too. I like writing custom software solutions, but I hate leaving a client in the lurch. I could write great stuff for my current clients, but what happens to them and their investment in the software if I leave the company I'm at? I work in IT right now, and we deal with a lot of old, abandoned pieces of software that our clients cling to like life rafts because it's all the know and all they have. I don't ever want to be responsible for releasing software like that out into the world. When you write web-based, service-based software, you get to update your code ONCE, and every single one of your client just installed the "patch" immediately and with zero effort. (The flip side with web software is that if you do go out of business, your clients don't even get the "consolation prize" of the last version of the software you released.)
With web services though, support is provided to your paying customers as a part of the service you are offering, instead of an annual service contract that costs more than the software you "sell" (or license.) I also hate software installations as a matter of routine. We're working on an internal web software project right now that has some nasty nasty ugly make-you-want-to-gag-it's-so-distasteful hacks in place in order to get it to talk to Quickbooks. I see this as a HUGE potential point of failure, and again, what are the consequences of my company investing time in me building this software if it's going to be so damn FRAGILE in places like this? I HATE having to worry about integration with other products! I'd rather be the one producing the API that others need to talk to my app!
There's just so much that appeals so strongly to me about hosted web services like Twitter and StackOverflow and (gods forbid) even Facebook. Right now though, I'm totally overwhelmed by the single most important part of that process: thinking up a great idea. I'm not even worried about executing it, or scaling it, or monetizing it. I would LOVE for my biggest worries to be: 1) How to handle a million page views an hour, and 2) How to convert a million pages views an hour into revenue! I would be just THRILLED to have those problems. But no, my problem is that I'm stuck on an even earlier problem: What problem do I have that I need to solve.
I believe in scratching your own itch, but everybody out there is doing such a good job for me, that I'm largely itch-less. My biggest beef with my iPhone used to be that I couldn't sync my calendar with my wife's calendar, so every week we had to sit down and manually type each other critical appointments into our respective phones. But now Google has released that feature using Exchange protocols, and they've done it for free no less, and it works so well for me and my wife that I'm happy. . . . . . so there's nothing for me to do myself!
At my current company, our techs frequently want to bounce ideas off the world in general and get thoughts and suggestions about cases we have. Well, there's a place you can do that for programming problems called StackOverflow.com, and guess what, they're working on an IT version already! Dang.
I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I wish I had a serious problem I could solve with a good web service!
What I need to bring all this back to is that I don't think I'm going to be happy working for someone. I would be thrilled to be working with people, but not for, not anymore. I crave freedom, and if I didn't have a mortgage payment and a wife that deserves some of the niceties of life, it might be a lot easier to take a big risk in that direction.
Of course, it doesn't help that I'm generally a conservative guy anyway. I'd love to have my cake and eat it too. If the guys at 37s are hiring, I'm available. (I'm just not sure I'm quite sharp enough to work with that crowd.)
2008-11-04
Opportunity
Tonight I am struck by the awesome amount of optimism and opportunity for change that our new president elect can bring to the table for us.
I admit this is an unusual opinion for me to hold.
I admit this is an unusual opinion for me to hold.
2008-09-19
The Past Year
Now that the wedding is finally here, this is what the past year has felt like.
...except for the stabbing and dying parts of course. Really, it just feels like we've been working towards this for so long, and it's never really felt like we were getting any closer until the rehearsal and dinner today. And then FINALLY we're all of the sudden here, and it's finally happening. I don't know what we're going to focus on once the wedding is done and the house is built. There will be no anticipatory tension left!
...except for the stabbing and dying parts of course. Really, it just feels like we've been working towards this for so long, and it's never really felt like we were getting any closer until the rehearsal and dinner today. And then FINALLY we're all of the sudden here, and it's finally happening. I don't know what we're going to focus on once the wedding is done and the house is built. There will be no anticipatory tension left!
2008-08-30
Saturday Morning at PAX
August 30, 2008 3:20:17 PM CDT
We're back in the hotel taking a breather after the absolutely hilarious Penny Arcade "Make a Strip" panel. Gabe sounds a whole heck of a lot like Dana Carvey-- it's really striking. What I love the most is, after seeing them, realizing how much of their personality is coming through in their comics. They took a couple suggestions from the audience as they were creating the comic for Monday. (The girl coming out of Mr. Coulton's trailer was originally a brunette.) They also changed Tycho's expression in the third frame from a disapproving look to one of envy/longing. All in all, it was amazing to watch them both work, and they're great presenters. They're naturally funny, and obviously they relate well with their audience.
We also sat in on the "Raising Children with Games" panel, which was interesting, but a little slow. They touched on a couple things that really resonated with me. The biggest of which was making single player games into communal events. My brother and I used to "tag team" single player games, passing the controller back and forth for alternating levels. We also used to just sit and watch each other, especially as we got older and our tastes diverged. I would watch him play Parasite Eve and ask questions to fill in the back story I missed before I sat down. He would watch me play FF7 (even though he played it too) just so he could experience it again without having to press X himself to get through all the dialog. These were great times my brother and I had, and I remember many occasions where we left an NES game that didn't have a save feature running over night so we wouldn't have to start from scratch.
The other thing that the panel touched on was incorporating mechanisms to control or remind people of how long they're playing. The panel, and most of the audience, seemed to think this was something we should "start" doing now, but Jenn and I both already had examples of games that did this in our minds. Guild Wars starts reminding you every hour (after a few hours) that you should take a break, and even 15 years ago EarthBound had a gimmick where the father of the main character, Ness, would call you on your cell phone and ask if maybe you felt like taking a break. That in particular was a great and really effective way of reminding the player of how long they'd been sitting there without fully breaking the fourth wall. It's not a new idea-- it's just that developers have a financial motivation to make their games as appealing as possible FIRST. Realistically, developers want you to play their game forever.
We're back in the hotel taking a breather after the absolutely hilarious Penny Arcade "Make a Strip" panel. Gabe sounds a whole heck of a lot like Dana Carvey-- it's really striking. What I love the most is, after seeing them, realizing how much of their personality is coming through in their comics. They took a couple suggestions from the audience as they were creating the comic for Monday. (The girl coming out of Mr. Coulton's trailer was originally a brunette.) They also changed Tycho's expression in the third frame from a disapproving look to one of envy/longing. All in all, it was amazing to watch them both work, and they're great presenters. They're naturally funny, and obviously they relate well with their audience.
We also sat in on the "Raising Children with Games" panel, which was interesting, but a little slow. They touched on a couple things that really resonated with me. The biggest of which was making single player games into communal events. My brother and I used to "tag team" single player games, passing the controller back and forth for alternating levels. We also used to just sit and watch each other, especially as we got older and our tastes diverged. I would watch him play Parasite Eve and ask questions to fill in the back story I missed before I sat down. He would watch me play FF7 (even though he played it too) just so he could experience it again without having to press X himself to get through all the dialog. These were great times my brother and I had, and I remember many occasions where we left an NES game that didn't have a save feature running over night so we wouldn't have to start from scratch.
The other thing that the panel touched on was incorporating mechanisms to control or remind people of how long they're playing. The panel, and most of the audience, seemed to think this was something we should "start" doing now, but Jenn and I both already had examples of games that did this in our minds. Guild Wars starts reminding you every hour (after a few hours) that you should take a break, and even 15 years ago EarthBound had a gimmick where the father of the main character, Ness, would call you on your cell phone and ask if maybe you felt like taking a break. That in particular was a great and really effective way of reminding the player of how long they'd been sitting there without fully breaking the fourth wall. It's not a new idea-- it's just that developers have a financial motivation to make their games as appealing as possible FIRST. Realistically, developers want you to play their game forever.
Friday Night Concert
August 30, 2008 9:19:59 AM CDT
The Concert Friday Night
Was amazing. Mostly.
The OneUps had already started playing by the time we got through the queue room, but man did they sound good. In spite of the fact that they mostly played music from games I had somehow missed as a kid, I was still perfectly content to listen to them. They had cleared the main theater of all the chairs so that it was standing-room only, and geeks being geeks, there was a huge mass of people crowded around the stage...plus another huge mass lining the walls of the room that were all sitting on the floor playing their DSs. It was an incredible sight actually, to look around and see so many faces bathed in the white glow of their handheld's screen, totally enjoying the live music while they played their favorite games and chatted on PictoChat. This whole trip can be characterized as me getting hit by things, because I was once again struck at how unusual this type of behavior was for a concert, but how right it felt anyway. I wish I had anticipated this better, because I had (quite foolishly) determined that there was no need to bring my DS with me to a concert.
There was actually a second reason I ended up wishing I had had it, and that's the Freezepops. Now, I like to consider myself a mild fan of electronic music. I go from the pretty mainstream end of things with Moby, through Blueman Group right up to Daft Punk. (Please don't criticize me for thinking is the "opposite" end of the electronica spectrum: it's what I know.) Where I start having a problem with electronic music is when it's just a synthesizer on a loop for 32 measures. The incredibly slow, 2 minute fade from ba-ba-dum, ba-ba-dum, to baaaa-dum, baaaa-dum doesn't do it for me, and neither does the "let's see how many instruments we can bang on all at the same time" kind of noise. While quite a few people at the concert seemed to appreciate this type of music, it pretty much just made my head hurt. Jenn and Pat sympathized, and we went outside into the lobby to wait for them to finish their set.
We stuck around though, because Pat and I both really wanted to see Jonathan Coultan perform. This turned out to be a wise move, because he was entertaining as hell. I may be too naive to know better than to admit this, but I actually only know of him because of the track he did for Portal called Still Alive. The rest of the audience was (once again) far better informed than I and was able to sing along to pretty much every track he played.
The Concert Friday Night
Was amazing. Mostly.
The OneUps had already started playing by the time we got through the queue room, but man did they sound good. In spite of the fact that they mostly played music from games I had somehow missed as a kid, I was still perfectly content to listen to them. They had cleared the main theater of all the chairs so that it was standing-room only, and geeks being geeks, there was a huge mass of people crowded around the stage...plus another huge mass lining the walls of the room that were all sitting on the floor playing their DSs. It was an incredible sight actually, to look around and see so many faces bathed in the white glow of their handheld's screen, totally enjoying the live music while they played their favorite games and chatted on PictoChat. This whole trip can be characterized as me getting hit by things, because I was once again struck at how unusual this type of behavior was for a concert, but how right it felt anyway. I wish I had anticipated this better, because I had (quite foolishly) determined that there was no need to bring my DS with me to a concert.There was actually a second reason I ended up wishing I had had it, and that's the Freezepops. Now, I like to consider myself a mild fan of electronic music. I go from the pretty mainstream end of things with Moby, through Blueman Group right up to Daft Punk. (Please don't criticize me for thinking is the "opposite" end of the electronica spectrum: it's what I know.) Where I start having a problem with electronic music is when it's just a synthesizer on a loop for 32 measures. The incredibly slow, 2 minute fade from ba-ba-dum, ba-ba-dum, to baaaa-dum, baaaa-dum doesn't do it for me, and neither does the "let's see how many instruments we can bang on all at the same time" kind of noise. While quite a few people at the concert seemed to appreciate this type of music, it pretty much just made my head hurt. Jenn and Pat sympathized, and we went outside into the lobby to wait for them to finish their set.
We stuck around though, because Pat and I both really wanted to see Jonathan Coultan perform. This turned out to be a wise move, because he was entertaining as hell. I may be too naive to know better than to admit this, but I actually only know of him because of the track he did for Portal called Still Alive. The rest of the audience was (once again) far better informed than I and was able to sing along to pretty much every track he played.Friday in Seattle
August 30, 2008 8:50:08 AM CDT
Written Saturday morning about sightseeing in Seattle on Friday
My mouth is...let's see, how would the kids put it these days... nuked? We just barely caught the start of the concerts last night, which included the amazing OneUps, the Freezepops and Jonathan Coultan. That's kind of starting at the end though, so I'm gonna back up. (Writer's note: it's going to be a while before I get back to this.)
The whole day was awesome. We woke up early (and by early I mean 7ish local time, which would have already been 9 in Illinois and an incredibly late start for me). Pat was riding into Seattle to spend the day with us doing touristy stuff. We started out by going down to the Farmer's Market, which I can only really describe as a chaotic and haphazard assortment of inside and outside streets, alleys and hallways all lined with tiny little shops offering an incredible variety of goods. We saw the fresh fish counters, where they toss the goods across the room to each other (they didn't toss anything while we were watching though), and a bronze pig that apparently was some kind of historical thing. I don't know. We took a picture.
We spent some time wandering through the passageways getting lost and looking for a shop to sell us something tasty for breakfast. We found a corner bakery that smelled absolutely incredible. A mix of the freshest bread and cinnamon. In fact, the place had "cinnamon" in the name, but I can't remember exactly what it was called. (Edit: Despite the fact that I've attached an image with the exact name. Oi I'm dense sometimes.) I got a HUGE cinnamon pull-apart roll thing and a cup of coffee (NOT starbucks) and Jenn got a muffin of some sort. Pat got a cinnamon roll too and we walked down to a park area overlooking the bay. For some reason it was really windy-- Jenn and I joked we must have brought the "windy city" thing with us from Chicago. I couldn't complain though: bright, sunny, warm but not hot: it was perfect weather other than the wind and I was happy for it.
I want to take a minute here and make sure you understand that I've lived my entire li fe in Illinois; a state that has very little vertical geographic variance. (That's a nerdy way of saying "it's really damn flat".) I've spent my entire life in the suburbs and more or less surrounded on all sides by corn fields. Visiting a place like Seattle is interesting to me if for no other reason than for its actual honest to gods geography. There's real hills, and a bay, and things beyond the bay. It's all very interesting to look at. I was also struck by the idea that at some point in history, people had to build around the land and not just put things wherever the hell they wanted because everything was already completely flat without any water in the way. It really reminded me of SimCity. (Interesting point: when I play SimCity, the first thing I usually blow my entire budget on is terraforming the entire map to a nice flat area with n othing in the way to build around. I'd be the worst urban planner in the world. If I want to get really psychoanalytical, this urge must come from playing too much Populous as a kid.)
After we finished eating, we took all the obligatory photo combinations: Jenn and I, Jenn and Pat, me and Pat, just Pat, just me, just Jenn, some other random couple (they saw us doing our little photo shoot and asked us to take a picture of them), and of course the three of us. From there we walked along the water south past the aquarium and a bunch of seafood places. (Something else we don't have in Illinois: fresh fish.) Eventually we turned back towards the heart of the city and started trudging up some gnarly hills. We made a second city comparison at that point: we wondered if we were now in San Francisco. Some of those hills must have been close to a 40 degree grade, and we took 2 breathers on our way up 9 blocks. Pat showed us the areas where the underground tours run, and we once again took some obligatory tourist photos of the spot marking the historical start of the city (or something-- even Pat wasn't too clear.)
Having satisfied our need for occasional exposure to the sun, we headed back towards the hotel and changed clothes (too many damn hills!) then headed down to officially start PAX. Jenn and I had planned our itinerary more than a week ago around the events we wanted to watch, the panels we wanted to sit in on, and where Wil Wheaton was going to be, so we had already decided to skip the keynote and its long queue line in favor of being able to catch a couple other things instead. We went to the expo hall while we waited for the first panel.
Written Saturday morning about sightseeing in Seattle on Friday
My mouth is...let's see, how would the kids put it these days... nuked? We just barely caught the start of the concerts last night, which included the amazing OneUps, the Freezepops and Jonathan Coultan. That's kind of starting at the end though, so I'm gonna back up. (Writer's note: it's going to be a while before I get back to this.)
The whole day was awesome. We woke up early (and by early I mean 7ish local time, which would have already been 9 in Illinois and an incredibly late start for me). Pat was riding into Seattle to spend the day with us doing touristy stuff. We started out by going down to the Farmer's Market, which I can only really describe as a chaotic and haphazard assortment of inside and outside streets, alleys and hallways all lined with tiny little shops offering an incredible variety of goods. We saw the fresh fish counters, where they toss the goods across the room to each other (they didn't toss anything while we were watching though), and a bronze pig that apparently was some kind of historical thing. I don't know. We took a picture. 
I want to take a minute here and make sure you understand that I've lived my entire li fe in Illinois; a state that has very little vertical geographic variance. (That's a nerdy way of saying "it's really damn flat".) I've spent my entire life in the suburbs and more or less surrounded on all sides by corn fields. Visiting a place like Seattle is interesting to me if for no other reason than for its actual honest to gods geography. There's real hills, and a bay, and things beyond the bay. It's all very interesting to look at. I was also struck by the idea that at some point in history, people had to build around the land and not just put things wherever the hell they wanted because everything was already completely flat without any water in the way. It really reminded me of SimCity. (Interesting point: when I play SimCity, the first thing I usually blow my entire budget on is terraforming the entire map to a nice flat area with n othing in the way to build around. I'd be the worst urban planner in the world. If I want to get really psychoanalytical, this urge must come from playing too much Populous as a kid.)
After we finished eating, we took all the obligatory photo combinations: Jenn and I, Jenn and Pat, me and Pat, just Pat, just me, just Jenn, some other random couple (they saw us doing our little photo shoot and asked us to take a picture of them), and of course the three of us. From there we walked along the water south past the aquarium and a bunch of seafood places. (Something else we don't have in Illinois: fresh fish.) Eventually we turned back towards the heart of the city and started trudging up some gnarly hills. We made a second city comparison at that point: we wondered if we were now in San Francisco. Some of those hills must have been close to a 40 degree grade, and we took 2 breathers on our way up 9 blocks. Pat showed us the areas where the underground tours run, and we once again took some obligatory tourist photos of the spot marking the historical start of the city (or something-- even Pat wasn't too clear.) We're really bad tourists.
And Pat is a really bad tour guide.
Having satisfied our need for occasional exposure to the sun, we headed back towards the hotel and changed clothes (too many damn hills!) then headed down to officially start PAX. Jenn and I had planned our itinerary more than a week ago around the events we wanted to watch, the panels we wanted to sit in on, and where Wil Wheaton was going to be, so we had already decided to skip the keynote and its long queue line in favor of being able to catch a couple other things instead. We went to the expo hall while we waited for the first panel.
Editing note: The story stops here, abruptly, again. When one is on an awesome trip like this, finishing your complete story from yesterday isn't as important as going out and experiencing a great story today. The funny thing is, I can't remember everything we did after that but before the next post, which I guess proves my theory that it was a really damn good idea to write it down. Too bad you can't pause time and write for three hours to get everything in while it's still in your pathetic little head.
2008-08-29
PAX, First Day
Written Friday night about Friday afternoon and the start of PAX.
I'm typing this out on my incredible iPhone while Jenn, Pat and I sit on a ledge outside the main theater at pax. It's just the first day and already it's been incredible.
We started out by skipping the keynote, which apparently was incredible, but we were trying to catch some other things instead. We decided instead to brave the expo hall, which naturally was just packed. That type of environment just isn't my cup of tea, so I wasn't as enthusiastic being there as I was when I was looking over the booth list a week ago. The Valve booth was totally devoted to their new source engine-based game, Left 4 Dead. Being based on Source, and running on some incredible hardware, it looked great, but I have a hard time getting excited about FPSs anymore. I think I may have reached old man status in this genre now: I'll happily stick to my Counter-Strike (not Source!) and call that a day thanks. I was hoping that some of the guys from Valve might have been on hand, but in retrospect I wouldn't have had anything insightful to say to them given the chance anyway so I guess it doesn't really matter. Jenn picked up a couple Japanese soundtracks to our favorite Miyazaki films, and I picked up the obligatory "PAX 08" T-shirt. I really wanted a "Will Says: Don't be a dick" shirt, but apparently he's popular or something lately so there weren't any. The three of us also played our first xbox (360) game ever: Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball. That was mildly entertaining.
From there the first real event we "participated" in was a panel that was ostensibly supposed to be about violence in games, but was more of a discussion about a game publisher's first amendment right to release a game with adult content, a retailer's right to sell (or not sell) a game like that, and a consumer's right to purchase it. It was an interesting talk, and my fellow gamers surprised me with some questions for the panel that were pretty detailed and well thought out. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised-- the are geeks after all, but I wasn't prepared for the level of thought that was active in that room. It felt like a graduate student lecture.
It even ran long by a bit, and we went straight from the panel to the "queue room" to try to get into the Penny Arcade Q&A session. They let us in with about 15 minutes left, and I'm glad we didn't just skip it because Jerry and Mike are just hilarious. They had witty responses to pretty much every quesion from the audience, and Marrisa's Bunny even made an appearance on stage. We ended up staying in the theater for the Roosterteeth panel, which was also funny, but seemed to be somewhat...influenced by intoxication. It was great hearing the voices from RvB come out of real humans and not Halo characters though, and there were some great moments from these guys too. It jet seemed a little pale after catching the last 15 minutes of Gabe and Tycho.
Sent from my iPhone
I'm typing this out on my incredible iPhone while Jenn, Pat and I sit on a ledge outside the main theater at pax. It's just the first day and already it's been incredible.
We started out by skipping the keynote, which apparently was incredible, but we were trying to catch some other things instead. We decided instead to brave the expo hall, which naturally was just packed. That type of environment just isn't my cup of tea, so I wasn't as enthusiastic being there as I was when I was looking over the booth list a week ago. The Valve booth was totally devoted to their new source engine-based game, Left 4 Dead. Being based on Source, and running on some incredible hardware, it looked great, but I have a hard time getting excited about FPSs anymore. I think I may have reached old man status in this genre now: I'll happily stick to my Counter-Strike (not Source!) and call that a day thanks. I was hoping that some of the guys from Valve might have been on hand, but in retrospect I wouldn't have had anything insightful to say to them given the chance anyway so I guess it doesn't really matter. Jenn picked up a couple Japanese soundtracks to our favorite Miyazaki films, and I picked up the obligatory "PAX 08" T-shirt. I really wanted a "Will Says: Don't be a dick" shirt, but apparently he's popular or something lately so there weren't any. The three of us also played our first xbox (360) game ever: Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball. That was mildly entertaining.
From there the first real event we "participated" in was a panel that was ostensibly supposed to be about violence in games, but was more of a discussion about a game publisher's first amendment right to release a game with adult content, a retailer's right to sell (or not sell) a game like that, and a consumer's right to purchase it. It was an interesting talk, and my fellow gamers surprised me with some questions for the panel that were pretty detailed and well thought out. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised-- the are geeks after all, but I wasn't prepared for the level of thought that was active in that room. It felt like a graduate student lecture.
It even ran long by a bit, and we went straight from the panel to the "queue room" to try to get into the Penny Arcade Q&A session. They let us in with about 15 minutes left, and I'm glad we didn't just skip it because Jerry and Mike are just hilarious. They had witty responses to pretty much every quesion from the audience, and Marrisa's Bunny even made an appearance on stage. We ended up staying in the theater for the Roosterteeth panel, which was also funny, but seemed to be somewhat...influenced by intoxication. It was great hearing the voices from RvB come out of real humans and not Halo characters though, and there were some great moments from these guys too. It jet seemed a little pale after catching the last 15 minutes of Gabe and Tycho.
Sent from my iPhone
Flying to Seattle & Settling In & Randomness
So this is kinda old. I'm not a professional blogger: I don't get this stuff down "right away" like I'm supposed to. I wouldn't have been able to post it at the time anyway, because as great as the hotel was, it didn't have free internet (you'll see.) Be that as it may, I have a chance to post it now, so I'm posting it. Also, and this ties into the whole "not a professional blogger" (or a writer) thing, and it's also important because I'm only going to say it once: I'm going to freely switch between past and present tense in the coming paragraphs, because sometimes I was writing what was immediately in front of me, and sometimes I was writing about what I just did in terms of what I was doing as I was doing it, and sometimes I was remembering it like it was a past event. This is clearly confusing and random, but I don't care.
2008-08-30: 7:02 am PST
Let me repeat: I. Don't. Care.
Moving on!
2008-08-30: 7:02 am PST
Written Friday morning about traveling Thursday
Ever since I got in my head to try to start documenting my life a little better, a part of my brain has been mentally keeping tabs on everything I do, trying to think about how I was going to write it down. As such, I have about a million things I want to spew out onto the screen right now, but I need to take a detour first and talk about shitty internet for a second.
The short of it is that I'm really looking forward to the day when the Internet (with a capital I) finally becomes ubiquitous. I say this now because while my fiancee is sleeping in bed trying to adjust to the time change, I'm sitting at the desk in our hotel room writing this....offline. The hotel has wifi access of course...provided you have an account with T-Mobile.
"Not to worry," I told myself, "they also have hardlines in each of the rooms so I'll just plug in." Like most wifi spots, as soon as you open your browser, you're redirected to a TOS page, and this one kindly states that each day your room will be charged $9.95 for access. That's not exactly the "complimentary internet access" they advertise on their website. To get back to my point, I seriously can't wait for the day when there's no monetary value left in charging for internet access because everybody just expects to be entitled to it, like being able to use public streets for your car.
Besides the crappy internet service though, this has got to be the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in. Jenn booked a corner suite for us, which is essentially a sitting room with a nice big plasma TV and a desk in it, a hallway to the bedroom with a huge and beautiful bathroom off of it, and a bedroom with a king bed and another 60 inch plasma TV. The windows are floor to ceiling, and from our corner on the 23rd floor, the view is just great. In fact, we can see straight down into the skyway where the main door to the PAX LAN party is located! The blinds are even motorized, so flip a light switch and BRRRRRRRRR, the blinds go up or the blinds go down. Of course, technology can go to far too. The little guest services book sitting on the desk next to me warns that if you take something out of the minibar, the electric pressure sensors underneath each item will immediately and automatically bill the item to your room account. You can't even pick anything up! I wonder how many people they bamboozle with that little trick who don't read the book first.
I'm working out of order here, because there's a fair bit to talk about from yesterday's "travel" day too. Jenn and I both worked half-days, because our flight wasn't until 5:45 pm. Admittedly, it was hard to concentrate on anything at work with the anticipation of this weekend on my mind. Jenn swung by the office around quarter to noon to help make sure I made a timely escape from the office, and we headed back to my parents' place to finish packing up and meet Chris, who had foolishly agree to be our chauffeur. (Someday I'll know how to spell that word without auto-correct helping me.) We loaded our stuff up and went for lunch at PotBelly. (I grew up in suburbia, and while I am aware that there are far better places out there to eat, I'm used to the huge restaurant chains.) We still had enough time afterward to stop by Best Buy and see if there were any last minute game purchases we wanted to indulge in before coming to the new mecca of all gaming. I've been eyeing The World Ends With You and Super Dodgeball Brawlers for a while now, but I thought of the 70 bucks those two games would set me back, and I imagined of all the swag and collectibles that were waiting for us on the west coast and I managed to keep my anorexic wallet in my back pocket. We walked out empty handed and got back on the road.
I don't travel often, and I can't claim any great expertise in it, so forgive me if any of this ends up sounding naive. I like flying. I like flying out of O'Hare too. The airport is nice, and modern technology allows us to bypass the ticket counter entirely by using pre-printed boarding passes from home. With no baggage to check, we walked with to Chris up to security and said goodbye.
As much as I like flying, I'm not a big fan of the security checkpoint. When I was in eighth grade, I went with my class on a trip to Washington DC. That was the first time I ever flew on a plane, and I had a good time. While we were there, I bought a couple bottles of what eventually became Mountain Dew Code Red. At the time, it was still in trials in select areas of the country, because nobody from my class had ever seen it before. The effect that this stuff had on me at that age is an entirely different tale, and I might be tempted to leave it to Chris to tell since he was there all the way back then. His memory of the evening might be far more accurate than mine too...
The short of it is that I'm really looking forward to the day when the Internet (with a capital I) finally becomes ubiquitous. I say this now because while my fiancee is sleeping in bed trying to adjust to the time change, I'm sitting at the desk in our hotel room writing this....offline. The hotel has wifi access of course...provided you have an account with T-Mobile.
"Not to worry," I told myself, "they also have hardlines in each of the rooms so I'll just plug in." Like most wifi spots, as soon as you open your browser, you're redirected to a TOS page, and this one kindly states that each day your room will be charged $9.95 for access. That's not exactly the "complimentary internet access" they advertise on their website. To get back to my point, I seriously can't wait for the day when there's no monetary value left in charging for internet access because everybody just expects to be entitled to it, like being able to use public streets for your car.
Besides the crappy internet service though, this has got to be the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in. Jenn booked a corner suite for us, which is essentially a sitting room with a nice big plasma TV and a desk in it, a hallway to the bedroom with a huge and beautiful bathroom off of it, and a bedroom with a king bed and another 60 inch plasma TV. The windows are floor to ceiling, and from our corner on the 23rd floor, the view is just great. In fact, we can see straight down into the skyway where the main door to the PAX LAN party is located! The blinds are even motorized, so flip a light switch and BRRRRRRRRR, the blinds go up or the blinds go down. Of course, technology can go to far too. The little guest services book sitting on the desk next to me warns that if you take something out of the minibar, the electric pressure sensors underneath each item will immediately and automatically bill the item to your room account. You can't even pick anything up! I wonder how many people they bamboozle with that little trick who don't read the book first.I'm working out of order here, because there's a fair bit to talk about from yesterday's "travel" day too. Jenn and I both worked half-days, because our flight wasn't until 5:45 pm. Admittedly, it was hard to concentrate on anything at work with the anticipation of this weekend on my mind. Jenn swung by the office around quarter to noon to help make sure I made a timely escape from the office, and we headed back to my parents' place to finish packing up and meet Chris, who had foolishly agree to be our chauffeur. (Someday I'll know how to spell that word without auto-correct helping me.) We loaded our stuff up and went for lunch at PotBelly. (I grew up in suburbia, and while I am aware that there are far better places out there to eat, I'm used to the huge restaurant chains.) We still had enough time afterward to stop by Best Buy and see if there were any last minute game purchases we wanted to indulge in before coming to the new mecca of all gaming. I've been eyeing The World Ends With You and Super Dodgeball Brawlers for a while now, but I thought of the 70 bucks those two games would set me back, and I imagined of all the swag and collectibles that were waiting for us on the west coast and I managed to keep my anorexic wallet in my back pocket. We walked out empty handed and got back on the road.
I don't travel often, and I can't claim any great expertise in it, so forgive me if any of this ends up sounding naive. I like flying. I like flying out of O'Hare too. The airport is nice, and modern technology allows us to bypass the ticket counter entirely by using pre-printed boarding passes from home. With no baggage to check, we walked with to Chris up to security and said goodbye.
As much as I like flying, I'm not a big fan of the security checkpoint. When I was in eighth grade, I went with my class on a trip to Washington DC. That was the first time I ever flew on a plane, and I had a good time. While we were there, I bought a couple bottles of what eventually became Mountain Dew Code Red. At the time, it was still in trials in select areas of the country, because nobody from my class had ever seen it before. The effect that this stuff had on me at that age is an entirely different tale, and I might be tempted to leave it to Chris to tell since he was there all the way back then. His memory of the evening might be far more accurate than mine too...
At the end of the trip though, I still had one plastic 20 oz. bottle left, which I had packed in my carry-on for the trip home. When it went through the x-ray machine though, this smooth, solid-colored, cylindrical object must have caught their attention, because they pulled me and the bag aside and asked me to open it. I was more confused than anything because I knew there wasn't anything dangerous in my own bag, and I couldn't figure out what item they were talking about from their descriptions to me. They kept saying, "do you have something round in your bag?" which just didn't make any damn sense to me until we opened the bag and they saw the bottle of Mountain Dew in there. I remember the security guy doing kind of a scoff and rolling his eyes before sending me on my way.
The point of this sidetrack is that since then I have a very slight, almost imperceptible nervousness associated with going through that process. To be fair, my fear is probably far less than most other people's to begin with, but even though I know I have nothing dangerous and they have no reason to stop me, I always worry whether something they see on their screen is going to look like something else. None of this is terribly important I guess though, because Jenn and I both went through the checkpoint without so much as a second glance, and we proceeded to our gate. Well, we proceeded to what we thought was our gate. When we checked in online the previous night, the boarding passes we printed said B19. While we were walking through the terminal though, Jenn got a status update email from whichever online service she used to book the tickets, letting us know the gate had been changed to B21. "Not a big deal," we told ourselves, since we were headed in the right direction anyway. The funny thing is though, that the "Departure" monitors all over the place all still say B19, so that's where we took a seat.
We are ridiculously early. Like almost 3 hours early, because even with lunch and Best Buy and travel to the airport, getting through security was easy and our gate wasn't very far away. The big monitors that United have at their gates are pretty slick: they tell you which flight is currently boarding or arriving, which passengers have checked in, which are waiting on standby, and which flight is next "on deck." As we're keeping an eye on the monitor though, the next flight keeps coming up as Montreal, not Seattle. I walk down the terminal and check the board for gate B21: Rochester is on deck there. Eventually, with less than an hour to go before boarding, I check the Departures board again on my way back from the Starbucks (with a grande, iced, skim, no-whip white mocha in hand for my soon-to-be-wife) and find that we're now leaving from C21. I relate this to Jenn, and we shoulder our bags and march off towards the underground tunnel connecting to the remote terminal. I remember this tunnel from trips here as a kid-- back when you could still walk with your party all the way up to their boarding ramp. The tunnel has funky 70's (I'm assuming they are 70's: I wasn't actually alive at the time) neon lights on the ceiling and these long "people mover" conveyors to walk on. The kid in me enjoys these immensely, but don't tell anybody that, especially not Jenn, who would probably roll her eyes. When we emerge, we once again find our gate and take a seat. This time, the board does say Seattle, so we figure this time we might be in the right place.
While we still had time, I run off to the restroom while Jenn stays with the bags. When I get back, Jenn says she's not feeling so hot and takes her turn. I'm documenting it here folks: my wife is no longer allowed to drink Starbucks before flights. That probably wasn't the real cause, but she really wasn't feeling well, and was still indisposed when they started boarding our flight. The restrooms are immediately across from our gate, and I'm standing there nervously pivoting 180 degrees between the line of people shrinking into the plane, and the door to the lady's room across the way. With literally less than a minute left, she's back and we board pretty much directly in front of the 10 stand-by passengers waiting to take our seats.
The point of this sidetrack is that since then I have a very slight, almost imperceptible nervousness associated with going through that process. To be fair, my fear is probably far less than most other people's to begin with, but even though I know I have nothing dangerous and they have no reason to stop me, I always worry whether something they see on their screen is going to look like something else. None of this is terribly important I guess though, because Jenn and I both went through the checkpoint without so much as a second glance, and we proceeded to our gate. Well, we proceeded to what we thought was our gate. When we checked in online the previous night, the boarding passes we printed said B19. While we were walking through the terminal though, Jenn got a status update email from whichever online service she used to book the tickets, letting us know the gate had been changed to B21. "Not a big deal," we told ourselves, since we were headed in the right direction anyway. The funny thing is though, that the "Departure" monitors all over the place all still say B19, so that's where we took a seat.
We are ridiculously early. Like almost 3 hours early, because even with lunch and Best Buy and travel to the airport, getting through security was easy and our gate wasn't very far away. The big monitors that United have at their gates are pretty slick: they tell you which flight is currently boarding or arriving, which passengers have checked in, which are waiting on standby, and which flight is next "on deck." As we're keeping an eye on the monitor though, the next flight keeps coming up as Montreal, not Seattle. I walk down the terminal and check the board for gate B21: Rochester is on deck there. Eventually, with less than an hour to go before boarding, I check the Departures board again on my way back from the Starbucks (with a grande, iced, skim, no-whip white mocha in hand for my soon-to-be-wife) and find that we're now leaving from C21. I relate this to Jenn, and we shoulder our bags and march off towards the underground tunnel connecting to the remote terminal. I remember this tunnel from trips here as a kid-- back when you could still walk with your party all the way up to their boarding ramp. The tunnel has funky 70's (I'm assuming they are 70's: I wasn't actually alive at the time) neon lights on the ceiling and these long "people mover" conveyors to walk on. The kid in me enjoys these immensely, but don't tell anybody that, especially not Jenn, who would probably roll her eyes. When we emerge, we once again find our gate and take a seat. This time, the board does say Seattle, so we figure this time we might be in the right place.
While we still had time, I run off to the restroom while Jenn stays with the bags. When I get back, Jenn says she's not feeling so hot and takes her turn. I'm documenting it here folks: my wife is no longer allowed to drink Starbucks before flights. That probably wasn't the real cause, but she really wasn't feeling well, and was still indisposed when they started boarding our flight. The restrooms are immediately across from our gate, and I'm standing there nervously pivoting 180 degrees between the line of people shrinking into the plane, and the door to the lady's room across the way. With literally less than a minute left, she's back and we board pretty much directly in front of the 10 stand-by passengers waiting to take our seats.
The fun thing about airlines these days is twofold really. First, they overbook their flights, which makes financial sense to them but is just about the shittiest practice in the world for passengers. Second, even if you DO get on the plane, they don't seem to design them with enough room for everyone's bags. Had we boarded when we were supposed to, it wouldn't have been an issue, but literally being the last ones on the planes, there wasn't room left in the overheads for our rolly-wheeled carry on suitecases. Who designs an aircraft with 138 seats for people, but only enough space for 136 carry-ons? The head flight attendant made us walk all the back to the boarding ramp to have our bags checked and (presumably) pitched into the belly of our aircraft. On the walk back to our seats, we gathered quite a few sympathetic glances from our fellow passengers, but I bet all of them were secretly thankful it wasn't them.
Remember when I said I like flying before? This is the part I was really talking about. We took off. Yeah, that's it. It's my understanding that loads of people don't care too much for this step in the process, or the whole middle part I guess, but for me it's like a roller coaster. It's ironic, because for the first half of this flight, I just couldn't stop thinking about what it would feel like to fall straight down for 30,000 feet. I even wondered if I would have time as I fell to grab the iPhone on my hip and type out a last love note to Jenn. The laws of physics and aerodynamics probably make that pretty improbable, but I'd like to think that with no hope of saving myself I could at least tell someone somewhere in the world what was most important to me before I died.
Wow. Morbid. Okay, so back to fun flying. The whole middle part of flights (where you can't tell you're really moving) is usually pretty boring to me, and I'm thankful that I don't seem to have any kind of motion-sickness that would prevent me from watching a movie, reading a book, playing my DS or even typing on my computer. The last one was the thing I really wanted to be doing, but the incredible lack of room effectively excluded that for me. Instead I read a book. And a half. Both really good. Both, and this wouldn't be at all surprising if I had a chance to explain it yet, by Wil Wheaton. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven't read his books yet, because I've been reading his blog for a couple years now and have been incredibly entertained and inspired by him just from that. He convinced me that he was like me (even though he spends lots of time talking about how he's realized that lots of people are like HIM) and that he's a role model seriously worth looking up to. There's a lot more I want to write on that subject, but I'm trying to stay in the general vicinity of a single thread here.
I started with Dancing Barefoot, because it was the one that was in my backpack and not Jenn's and therefore easier to reach. Even though I don't make the time to read as often as I should, I can be voracious when you put something I'm genuinely enthralled with in front of me, and I just devoured the book. I was a huge Star Trek (TNG) fan when I was in middle school (and I'll admit it: high school too).
Oh, I'm afraid that I'm going to lose my thread. I'm running out of time to write! Jenn's going to be expecting me back in bed when she starts waking up, and I don't want to disappoint her.
Final thought: I've wanted to write about my life a lot lately, partly because I can't remember it that well and there's people and things in it now that I feel are worth remembering. But I'm struck by the cruel balance writers have to make: spend time shut in a room by yourself documenting the amazing things in your head, or be "out there" in the world, actually experiencing the very things you will eventually want to write about?
Remember when I said I like flying before? This is the part I was really talking about. We took off. Yeah, that's it. It's my understanding that loads of people don't care too much for this step in the process, or the whole middle part I guess, but for me it's like a roller coaster. It's ironic, because for the first half of this flight, I just couldn't stop thinking about what it would feel like to fall straight down for 30,000 feet. I even wondered if I would have time as I fell to grab the iPhone on my hip and type out a last love note to Jenn. The laws of physics and aerodynamics probably make that pretty improbable, but I'd like to think that with no hope of saving myself I could at least tell someone somewhere in the world what was most important to me before I died.
Wow. Morbid. Okay, so back to fun flying. The whole middle part of flights (where you can't tell you're really moving) is usually pretty boring to me, and I'm thankful that I don't seem to have any kind of motion-sickness that would prevent me from watching a movie, reading a book, playing my DS or even typing on my computer. The last one was the thing I really wanted to be doing, but the incredible lack of room effectively excluded that for me. Instead I read a book. And a half. Both really good. Both, and this wouldn't be at all surprising if I had a chance to explain it yet, by Wil Wheaton. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven't read his books yet, because I've been reading his blog for a couple years now and have been incredibly entertained and inspired by him just from that. He convinced me that he was like me (even though he spends lots of time talking about how he's realized that lots of people are like HIM) and that he's a role model seriously worth looking up to. There's a lot more I want to write on that subject, but I'm trying to stay in the general vicinity of a single thread here.I started with Dancing Barefoot, because it was the one that was in my backpack and not Jenn's and therefore easier to reach. Even though I don't make the time to read as often as I should, I can be voracious when you put something I'm genuinely enthralled with in front of me, and I just devoured the book. I was a huge Star Trek (TNG) fan when I was in middle school (and I'll admit it: high school too).
Oh, I'm afraid that I'm going to lose my thread. I'm running out of time to write! Jenn's going to be expecting me back in bed when she starts waking up, and I don't want to disappoint her.
Final thought: I've wanted to write about my life a lot lately, partly because I can't remember it that well and there's people and things in it now that I feel are worth remembering. But I'm struck by the cruel balance writers have to make: spend time shut in a room by yourself documenting the amazing things in your head, or be "out there" in the world, actually experiencing the very things you will eventually want to write about?
2007-06-25
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