Groove on Fight. Rock the GO!

groove_haircut @ 2006-03-23T23:54:00

2006-03-24T04:54:17Z

The first thing that happens when you get to heaven is that St. Peter (or whoever happens to be working the door when you show up) tells you the funniest joke in the known universe. Very few people get it, and I mean really don't get it. You're not told it's a joke, so you either get it and immediately explode with uncontrollable laughter like you wouldn't believe or you don't, and you spend an awkward couple of seconds thinking that you ended up in crazy people heaven while St. Peter (or whoever) looks at you expectantly and makes little coughing noises. Finally, if you didn't get it, he'll feign surprise and say "Wow! Look who's here! It's your Aunt Tillie!" and sure enough, there will be Aunt Tillie, or Uncle Morty, or Great Grandpa Ferdinand, and St. Peter (or whoever) will quickly palm you off on them and be on his way. If you do get it, once you've recovered (which usually takes fifteen minutes or so and doesn't last more than five before you start laughing again) St. Peter (or whoever) shows you the secret handshake and lets you into the heaven for people who get it. Luckily, those who get it always have a couple of dead friends or relatives who also got it, so it's not like you're surrounded by strangers. Even if you were, though, you'd at least know they have a good sense of humor. Oh, and don't worry if you've got family members with lousy senses of humor - you can still go to unfunny heaven, and there's always some sort of mixer or box social going on with lots of chances to mingle. In the end, it's not even that big a deal - funny heaven just has nicer chairs and that's pretty much it - but God works in mysterious ways.

The joke will start to seem old to you after about three weeks, but then someone will tell it with a funny accent, and it'll be like the first time you ever heard it. After that, it will never seem old or stale again.

File Under "Uh... wha?"

2006-03-21T00:03:03Z

This is an unaltered screenshot of a context menu in Thunderbird. Sometimes, when I select a URL and right-click, the top two options ("hotpot" and "plight") appear. Most of the time, they don't. When it first happened, I was unable to find any information about it on the web and was subsequently unable to show that they'd been there in the first place. When they appeared again, I thought it meet to get a screenshot of 'em. If anyone knows what the hell this is all about, please enlighten me. It smells fairly viral, but AVGFree, MS AntiSpyware, and AdAware all report clean after full scans. I've found nothing referring to "hotpot" in the Thunderbird help pages or support forums, and the only occurrences of "plight" are uses of that word in normal contexts. Curiouser and curiouser...

EDIT: 'Tis nee viral. It's... spellcheck! I'm still not entirely clear on why it comes up sometimes and not others, but now that I know what it is, all fears of infection and hallucination are put to rest.

EDIT 2: It comes up if I highlight the URL from left to right, as it thinks I'm highlighting "http" in order to correct it. If I highlight right to left, it doesn't appear.

The average price of gas in Atlanta is $2.439/g. The average price of gas in the United States is $2.490/g. These numbers come from http://www.atlantagasprices.com/.

Stand Alone Complex

2006-03-20T14:47:36Z

I came up with an interesting (at least to me) question this morning. Say we developed a way to perfectly simulate brain function, and that we could knock a person out and dump a perfect imprint of their brain into a perfect copy of their body. Then, when the original and the duplicate wake up (separately), they are guided down identical hallways by identical signs to identical rooms with identical tables bearing identical plates of identical assortments of donuts. Would the two choose the same type of donut? From the same position on the plate? Kind of a silly final test, but you get the idea.
Maybe if I'd taken philosophy in school, crap like this wouldn't pop into my head while I shower.

The average price of gas in Atlanta is $2.449/g. The average price of gas in the United States is $2.487/g. These numbers come from http://www.atlantagasprices.com/.

groove_haircut @ 2006-03-12T14:27:00

2006-03-12T19:27:05Z

My cousin William died yesterday, most likely of an opportunistic pneumonia in the wake of treatment for leukemia. William was a truly decent human being. His staunch Republicanism often vexed the liberal wing of the Karp family, but all the while we understood that it was born of his intense belief in self-reliance and personal responsibility, not the nasty, vituperative scolding that many of that party's marquee players exhibit these days. He believed in absolute rights and wrongs and lived by them. He served in the Marines and then became an FBI agent, always working to preserve the safety and civility of our lives. He embodied what was undeniably good and right about military and civil service so completely that it almost became self-parody. He joined the family by marrying my mother's cousin, who had struggled earlier in life but seemed to have found exactly what she needed and wanted in him. Together, they raised a daughter who has become one of those preternaturally good kids that news magazines occasionally do cover packages about, talking about "the future ruling class" (that was Atlantic Monthly, I believe) or worrying about whether parents are putting too much pressure on their little wunderkinder. I don't know if William and Bebe put too much pressure on Hannah - I'm willing to bet that she just saw their example and holds a deep-seated belief in the virtue of being your best and honing your talents to perfection - not as a means of making others seem small, mind you, but because the world benefits when people do things well.

I wasn't really close with William. We weren't distant, and I was certainly fond of him, but his super-Marine demeanor sometimes made it hard to have conversations with him. He tried, though - he was constantly making ridiculously corny jokes as a means of communicating across our differences, and one in particular has stayed with me all the years since the Marine told it to the awkward, nerdy young adolescent during our family's yearly trip to the beach. How many pancakes does it take to cover the top of a doghouse? 21, because ice cream doesn't have bones. He got that from somewhere, and it changed a bit between him hearing it and retelling it to me, but I like his version better.

I found out about it from Mike, who I haven't talked to in forever. Usually, when I see that a call is coming from him, I don't take it, rationalizing that I'll call him back later. I never do. For some reason, maybe it was the great weather, maybe it was listening to The Clash version of "Pressure Drop," it seemed right to answer. I was really jovial, trying my best to make small talk, when he interrupted me and said "I've got bad news." I was instantly terrified. Elliott had called yesterday while I was sleeping, and I'd figured I'd call her back, but the sudden realization that she was almost certainly calling because of the bad news made me recognize that some form of bad news was headed my way from my two siblings. I was terrified. I hate to say that I was relieved to hear that it was William who had died. He was sick - it had always been a possibility - I wasn't that close to him - all that mattered was it wasn't Mom or Dad.

In writing this now, it's starting to sink in. I haven't dealt with death much. That's one of the benefits of having a very small family - not a lot of chances to mourn. In all but one case (now two), the deaths of my relatives had come long after their mental faculties had failed, making the end of their physical lives seem almost like a blessing. Not so with William. He was young - in his mid-50s. His daughter will be graduating high school before long. No doubt they've already talked quite a bit about colleges and plans for the future, always with him in them, proud at each graduation, guiding her through the pitfalls and vexing new experiences of life in the real world, eventually bringing that authoritative Marine gaze to rest upon terrified boyfriends and an eventual husband-to-be. Certainly he and Bebe must have talked about retirement, looking to my parents as an example, thinking about the time they'd spend together, the traveling they'd do. Now those plans are all changed, deeply and tragically. The graduations will be bittersweet. The travel will be that much quieter. We'll have Thanksgivings together where his absence is palpable, where his handyman skills aren't there to fix the myriad tiny annoyances accumulated since his last visit, where he and my father won't watch the ball game, where he won't say "Bilbo Bobbins" (he always got it wrong) to me, just because he liked the sound of it and it seemed like a bridge between our worlds, even though it's been years since I read "The Hobbit." It seems so strange to be sitting here thinking "He's gone - death means gone" at my age, but as I said, I don't have much experience with it. Just enough to know that I hate it, regardless of how everything is impermanent and it's a natural part of life and all that. I can't accept that our lives, in all of their intricate and impossible and hilarious beauty, are sand mandalas, that some day each and every one of us will have to be swept into the water to remind those left behind that all is temporary and fleeting. Yes, we're all floating in space. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

Wherever you are now, William T'Kindt, you are missed.

Maybe We Could Make the Future Better

2006-03-05T20:50:42Z

A belated happy birthday to jimmyether. I hope you had a good day, Mr. Ether, sir.

My first real return-to-college class is coming swiftly to a close. Two class sessions remain, with the next one being the presentation of our final project game to a group of local industry-types for evaluation. I'm fairly certain my group's game will do well. A lot of people seem to be going for a ridiculous level of complexity, which will make for interesting games but will also make explaining the rules and processes very difficult.. Ours is simple, but hopefully features plenty of room for strategy. Hey, Go and Chess are simple, right? Ours is a pretty far cry from Go or Chess, though. It's been referred to as a combination of Stratego and Poker, actually. I don't know that that's entirely apt, but it's not completely off, either. The professor let us know last week that we're not allowed to use dice. This seems like a bizarre and extremely limiting requirement, but he's probably trying to teach us something about the often arbitrary limitations put on real-world developers by whoever is bankrolling the project. I think we've found suitable dodges in order to keep random chance in the game. The best thing about the entire process is that it has continually reinforced the sense that this is what I want to do with my life. Every idea one of my cohorts threw out required a set of rules to make it function, and with each idea my brain automatically dove into rule-making with complete abandon and glee. Rule-making is the very heart of game design, and it seems I have a knack for it and an enjoyment of it. This is good.

The average price of gas in Atlanta is $2.251/g. The average price of gas in the United States is $2.304/g. These numbers come from http://www.atlantagasprices.com/.

Tales of Area Restrooms

2006-02-26T21:27:14Z

Above the door of the men's room at The Highlander, there is a drawing of a button with the label "Push button for free bacon."

In the men's room at The Local, there was a long-running battle between the proprietors and someone who drew pictures of chicken heads and labeled them "Chicken Head." A drawing would appear, and within days, that area of the wall would be repainted. Soon, another drawing would repair, prompting another repainting. The cycle repeated for quite a while. At this point, it seems that Chicken Head has moved on or changed his ways.

The men's room at Joe's Coffee features a large drawing of a sharp-toothed, droopy-eyed monster saying "You are da betst." A question scrawled above the toilet, "Doesn't anyone write about girls on bathroom walls anymore?" has elicited the response, "This is East Atlanta. Try Cobb County." Where someone has written "Poke Smot," another writer has come back with "'Ha Ha'" (in quotation marks).

The walls of the men's room at the Gravity Pub are liberally adorned with quotes from "The Simpsons." Only a small handful are worded incorrectly or misattributed.

The men's room at the new offices of Creative Loafing originally featured a standee of Elvis Presley equipped with a motion sensor. When the sensor was tripped, one of a handful of recordings of Elvis speaking would play. One was "Thanks for letting me talk to you," which was kind of strange to hear when leaving the restroom, your business there concluded. At some point, an unknown trickster moved the Elvis standee into the women's room, replacing it with the Marilyn Monroe standee that had previously occupied that space. Marilyn has no motion sensor and says nothing.

The average price of gas in Atlanta is $2.083/g. The average price of gas in the United States is $2.233/g. These numbers come from http://www.atlantagasprices.com/.

Should We Talk About the Government?

2006-02-26T05:34:13Z

Today I learned that my first love (and the other half of the only serious relationship I've had in my life) is married. We haven't spoken in seven years, so it hardly matters, but it hurt to learn. It put to rest a comfortable fiction I've held on to ever since I left New York. Maybe that's a good thing. Hell, I'm certain it's a good thing. Still, it was a comfort, a well-worn and reassuring old companion. Sure, I'm close on 30 and still entirely alone, but hey, maybe she's out there, mixed up and worried just like me. Only she's not - of course she's not. Isn't it better that way? In the end, that was all just an excuse - I'm not that mixed up, and while I might have been at one point, that was a long time ago, and I've just been taking it easy on myself and chalking it up to being lost in the head for years. I haven't been lost, I've been lazy.

I don't know where my magic bullet lives. Young Democrats? Rock climbing? Going to the theater? Juggling goslings? Who knows? You're not supposed to know. That's the whole point. You don't do the things because they're the magic bullet. You do them because you enjoy them in and of themselves, dummy. You've got to believe, dear reader, that I get as tired of seeing me repeat myself like this as you do...

I'm roaring toward 30, and I can't stop taking stock of my life and feeling like I'm nowhere near where I should be. Sure, this is nothing new, but that arbitrary number makes it seem somehow sharper, like it matters more. I need to get my life started, because the waiting isn't helping any. The waiting leads me to look up that long lost love on the internet in order to confirm what I knew had to be true - she moved on a long time ago and is living her life.

White Lines Flashing By On the Pavement Like the Sky

2006-02-01T03:29:09Z

I'm coming down from some sort of mild anxiety attack at the moment. It's strange - I have no idea why everything seems to pulse with vague threat. It just does. It's not a dire threat, not the sense that everything is out to get me. It's more that everything is out to ignore me. Insignificance has pulled up alongside me at the stoplight of turning 30, and he's gunning his engine. Soon that light's going to turn green.

Maybe I've been working to hard, or maybe I haven't been sleeping enough, or maybe I'm afraid of being alone, or maybe I'm not working hard enough, or maybe I'm getting softer by the day, or maybe I'm not doing anything but complaining and not doing a damn thing to fix the problems. Maybe the big problems are just excuses for me not to get the little things right. If peak oil hits, I'll still draw breath. If we nuke Iran, the odds of keeping on are still in my favor. If the rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor, I'll still hum along at my particular frequency.

Caffeine Effect

2006-01-15T20:49:48Z

I'm jumpy! JUMPY!

I'm working at Joe's, in EATL. The subject of my labor is the new Creative Loafing site, and pardon the blowing of the horn that I own, but we've got some really cool stuff in store. We're making the things that suck not suck, and in the process, some of them are really going to take a major leap forward. I'll be quite pleased to put this thing on my resume when it's done, and this time, it looks like it's actually going to go live as I made it (well, except for some design elements, but I'm over that). Of course, this jumpiness is making it really hard to concentrate, but hey...

In unrelated news, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks promising.

jumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpgordonjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjumpjump

Groove Haircut, College Boy

2006-01-13T05:26:31Z

I had my first actual college class since 1997 this evening. Introduction to Game Development. And so, it begins. The professor was almost disturbingly pragmatic about the world of game dev, emphasizing the money aspect above all else. When I asked him what he thought of Steam and the possible shortcut around the publishing/retail roadblock that it represents, he was at least receptive and talked about how he'd like to see the development of art house and indie games. In the end, his opinion on the money side of games doesn't really matter - he can teach me something about the process, and that's worthwhile. Yay. Now I have to do something I did quite a bit of during my first college adventure - sleep.

I Need Schoolin'

2006-01-11T00:13:04Z

I've registered. I start my first real back-to-college, none of this continuing-ed crap class on Thursday. Credits, baby. Credits. Introduction to Game Development, here I come.

Everybody Needs an Education

2006-01-09T18:34:46Z

I have a great deal of enthusiasm for going back to school right now. Thing is, this isn't a new state of affairs. The following sums it up rather succinctly:

Me: Well, I think I get to this point around this time of year every year, but by doing so, I've missed the Spring semester, which means the earliest I could start is summer. This means I have plenty of time to procrastinate and let the desire and willpower fade, leaving me unschooled and prepped for yet another surge of school-lust around New Year's 2007.
marcee: well, then, you don't really wanna go
marcee: you just have an impulse to do something you can't do
Me: No, I wanna go... I just let old fears and stuff creep in over time.
marcee: the fact is aaron -- school requires a lot of advance planning. if you can't make it a priority to plan a year in advance to start something that will be a long-term goal, then you shouldn't go to school
marcee: because it doesn't get any easier

She's absolutely right. This is something I've been dancing around for years now. Literally years. That's insane. I've known for years that there's something that seems to move me, and it ain't what I'm doing now. For years I've dithered about it and hidden from it, doing things that don't kill me, but don't make me happier either. Years. Years of my life.

I won't say I'm going to do it now. I know myself, I know how I get. I will say that I hope I'm able to hold on to this current feeling of drive and resolve and actually do something with it, to take my passion and make it happen, as it were (sorry, sorry). I want to go back to school. I want to make games. I want to move forward with my ridiculous life.

Standard Annual

2006-01-06T21:49:16Z

Right then. Negativity. I seem to have quite a lot of it since my return from Charleston. There are a number of possible causes - I had a very good time in Charleston, and in comparison, Atlanta seems boring. Or perhaps it was the wedding of an old friend that got me thinking about the state of my own life. Or maybe it was the relatively successful flirting with multiple women, something that never seems to happen in Atlanta. It could also be something endemic to the time of year, with all of its resolutions and talk of fresh starts. Could be it's just this cold. Whatever the cause, I find myself listless, irritable, and unmotivated. Thoughts of a change of venue flit through my head. The knowledge that Creative Loafing isn't - can't be - a forever thing looms large. Game design, as always, seems just over the horizon, well within my ability if I'd just give it an honest try. Happiness and contentment seem Road Runner-esque in their consistent, effortless defiance of my most diabolically constructed snares. By staying in place, staying in web design, staying out of school, out of shape, all I manage to do is create excuses. And that brings us back to d'oh.

Rokki wa Doko?

2006-01-03T08:03:35Z

I'm in Charleston a day longer than I intended, having come down with a head cold last night. I didn't feel up to a long evening drive in the rain (despite my love of driving in the rain), so Fernando and Cheryl are putting me up in their hotel room for the night. I drank too much, spent too much money, and fell for too many women, but this trip was excellent. Will has some terrific friends.

When I get home, I'll watch some TV (hopefully GitS: SAC and IGPX) and play some CoD2. I'll relax and try to rest/enjoy this cold out of my system. I've got resolutions, of course - I've always got resolutions aplenty - and I'll see to them in time. For now, I'll just sleep.

They Call the Wind Mariah

2006-01-01T07:49:09Z

People are doubtless bringing the New Year into my apartment, complete with mortar shells and abundant felicitations. While part of me wishes I were there, sharing the revelry, another part of me couldn't be happier to be in Charleston right now. Will's wedding was beautiful, and he seems genuinely happy to be wed. The wedding party spent the latter part of the evening at AC's Bar, where we sang and shouted and gesticulated the New Year in in rare form. At AC's, I met a lovely woman named Mariah who claimed she didn't love anything, that she wasn't passionate about anything. I told her I didn't believe her. She was... dismissive? no, that's not it, exactly - more like knee-jerk negative. She was too smart not to be passionate about something. She hasn't found it yet - that I'll buy - but there's someting, and that's worth quite a bit. I shall use back channels to learn her email address and will attempt to establish a coorespondence. O brave new world, that has such people in't! That is the hope. As ridiculous as the machinations of power get (and they truly are ridiculous - they'd be uproariously funny if they weren't so deadly), the hope remains in the active, questioning brain. She asked me, at one point, which way my politics did tend. I asked her to guess. I wasn't at all surprised when she said "Republican." I gleefully informed her of my ridiculously liberal leanings. I think it's my hairstyle that gives people the wrong idea. As the bar sped inexorably toward closing (they have this weird thing where they scream at their patrons to get them to leave), I told her "I'd love to take you to a coffee shop and scream at you about Sartre." It was perhaps inelegant, but the substance is true. I'd like to talk to her about the significance of Motoko Kusanagi's consistant selection of female prostheses, or what she thought of Syriana, or the debate over the USA PATRIOT Act renewal, or anything else under the moon and stars. I s'pose I'm smitten. For what it's worth, I'll use my back channels to get her email address and I'll follow it up that way. What the hell - it's just a 6 hour drive. I live right around the corner, three states away - take a holiday, come check me.

The Ice of Boston is Muddy

2005-12-31T07:49:35Z

I'm in Charleston, SC for a friend's wedding, to take place later today. After the reception, we'll adjourn to a Charleston bar to ring in the new. I hope that everyone has a good intro to 2006, and that the year follows in similar fashion.

We Rise or Fall

2005-12-27T08:40:44Z

Get in shape, the Section 9 way!

Step 1: Drink plenty of water
Step 2: Have entire body replaced with cybernetic prostheses

Unfortunately, cybernetic prostheses aren't quite where I'd like them to be. That leaves the old-fashioned method. So it's exercise and watching what I eat, and that's no fun at all. Or perhaps it could be. Rock climbing!

Happy holidays to everyone. I hope you're all enjoying or have enjoyed your respective winter festivities.

Liberation

2005-12-19T22:12:32Z

For those who don't like to read about politics on their friends page, a warning, and an apology - I'm about to talk about politics, or at least about world events and actions that can be placed at the feet of certain political leaders, along with my opinions on them. If you don't want to read such things, I encourage you to turn away and I apologize for the intrusion into the goings-on of your day.

They said we'd be greeted as liberators once we stormed into Iraq, that the cheering throngs would shower our soldiers with flowers and candy and kisses, a replay of our proud, long-gone memories of towns freed from the Nazis way back when. For you see, we were there to end the rule of a tyrant, a dangerous despot who sat at the head of a government that spied on its citizens, that tortured and disappeared its enemies, that flouted international law at every turn, and colluded with terrorists to radically alter our way of life through violence. That's what they said. Of course, they were wrong. Time has proven that. Whether they were mistaken or lying, we now know that what they said was not what came to pass. While we've been watching their error play out, we've learned some other things worth discussing.

We have tortured prisoners. Some say this is the work of a few "bad apples," but the evidence seems to show that this is either untrue, or that the armed forces are rife with "bad apples." The fact that the Vice President has been strenuously fighting measures meant to clarify and codify our absolute stance against torture seems to argue for the likelihood of the former - it's not just a few isolated troops losing it under pressure. The constantly compounded reports of abuse, of secret flights to secret prisons where detainees are systematically mistreated and kept off the books and incommunicado speak to a larger, more coordinated and systemic strategy than those bad apples could manage on their own. So it seems that we are a government that tortures and disappears our enemies.

We have learned that the President authorized surveillance of American citizens and foreign nationals within our country in violation of the law (specifically the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978), in spite of the relative laxity of that law's constraints. According to the law, "the executive branch cannot monitor electronic communications that originate in the United States without obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" (taken from Salon). Lest it be misunderstood that the President acted out of an urgent need to monitor someone immediately to counteract an imminent threat, it should be noted that FISA allows monitoring to commence without a warrant, as long as the warrant is sought within 72 hours of the beginning of surveillance. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, throughout the act's history, over 15,000 warrants have been requested. Four of those requests have been rejected. Clearly, these obstacles to surveillance are hardly insurmountable. Why, then, did the President feel it was necessary to do away with them? Regardless of his reasons, it seems we have a government that spies on its own people. Granted, that's been true for years, but we also have laws in place to ensure that such spying is overseen at some minimal level. Since those laws are being ignored, it is clear that our perception and understanding of how we are being spied on are no longer accurate. We have also learned that the Department of Defense has been spying on domestic anti-war groups, in a development that smacks of the early stages of the nasty age of COINTELPRO.

In the run-up to war, the Administration talked at length of securing permission from the United Nations to go to war, and of constructing a truly multilateral coalition to do so. When the international community didn't go along, the administration and its allies ridiculed the UN and its member nations, calling it "irrelevant." Legal advisors within the administration declared the treaties and conventions against torture that the US had signed "quaint" and drew up legal reasoning for ignoring them completely. So it seems we are a government that ignores international law.

One of the terrorist groups that we are certain received support from Saddam Hussein is Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a Iranian group opposed to the mullahs. MEK is included on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. The group was added to the list during the Clinton administration and remains there today despite strong support from many people within the US government and abroad. Despite the fact that the Bush administration continues to acknowledge that the group is a terrorist organization responsible for violent acts and the deaths of American citizens, the group was given protected status after many of its members were captured in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. The group's camps were initially bombed by the US, but a cease-fire was negotiated. The Pentagon handed down orders that MEK members in custody were to be subject to proper treatment under the Geneva Conventions. The US is funding Iranian dissident groups, and many believe that MEK is now operating with support from the CIA. The President has used intelligence provided by MEK to support his position on Iran's purported nuclear weapons programs. While I cannot say with certainty that our government is actively colluding with terrorists, I can say that it has acted in a manner that is quite inconsistent with the stated goal of the "War on Terror," namely the eradication of all terror groups worldwide. The MEK remains a terrorist group. At worst, we are encouraging and assisting them in committing violent attacks within Iran. At best, we're handling them with kid gloves while publicly (and loudly) proclaiming a zero-tolerance stance on terrorism.

So here we are, well down the path toward becoming a monster to fight a monster. I can't help but ask, what's the point? If we are aiming for a better world, how can we achieve it by adopting the very methodologies we say we seek to end? When are we as a people going to say that we've had enough? As I see it, it really can't get much more black and white.

Recovery

2005-12-15T03:48:05Z

Somehow, updating to WinXP SP2 has recovered all of the files I believed were lost. The bot list is back, 821 strong. Everything from Storage is as it should be. It's all there, and it all works.

Deleting orphan file record segment 36921

2005-12-15T02:02:06Z

My machine seems to be purging itself of all of the lost data from last night's fiasco. Well, it's getting rid of something, at least. I hope it's the stuff it already lost. There are a few important things left to lose. Kind of a disturbing thing to stare down, this rapidly scrolling screen of orphan file record segments...

Trying to get things up and running this time has been much more difficult than in the past. My experiences with WinXP have been remarkably pleasant, a point I loudly and tipsily proclaimed to 12ftguru and jimmyether at the former's recent beer tasting. I guess there was some sort of compu-karmic backlog in the wings that decided now was the time for the whammy. I'm sure it'll be fine soon enough - if it's not, I'll just format and reinstall again.

Hm.. it's moved on to some new something or another... deleting index entries. Now "CHKDSK is recovering lost files." Don't get my hopes up, you cruel bastard!

Right. I'm going to be alone with my desktop now.

Oh Dear God No...

2005-12-14T05:55:37Z

I formatted my desktop machine tonight. I dutifully backed up everything. All of the important stuff was carefully squirrelled away, ready to be put back into place when the OS was reinstalled. Everything seemed to go fine. I was getting the network configured, and as always, I couldn't remember the DNS servers, so I went to where I'd backed up my "storage" folder, the place where absolutely everything important to me on my machine (with one exception that I'll get to momentarily) lived. Double clicked it, and I got an error. Folder is invalid or corrupt. So I ran chkdsk. It fixed all sorts of index files, so I thought everything would be fine. I opened the folder, and there were all of my files. My heart soared! What had been a terrifying glimpse into the complete loss of literally years of stuff was turning out to be little more than a scary hiccup. Back to the task at hand - those network settings. Load up the file in Notepad and... it's blank. What the hell? Let's try another text file. Blank. Okay... this isn't good. I'll try opening this JPG... won't open. This zip file? No. Everything is there, but it's not there. My portfolio. My various .txt files full of good ideas I'm supposed to get around to later. My favorite non-portfolio designs. Years of stuff, gone.

It dawned on me that there was one bit of joy to be gleaned from this - the single most important file on my computer was not in the storage directory. Since I access it with great frequency, it was on the desktop and had been backed up separately. I had to be sure, though. I went to the folder where I had backed up the desktop. I was too afraid to open the file in question, so I opened another of the same type - it was fine! Everything was as it should be. I mustered the courage to check the real treasure. Notepad thought for a moment and then... blank.

The Bot List is gone.

Let me say that again - the Bot List is gone.

Now, there are versions of it floating around, even fairly recent ones - the loss isn't as monumental as it could have been. Still, a great many excellent bot names have been lost. This is a tragedy.

Most of the important files exist in a few other places, so they'll be recoverable, but... the bot list. The bot list. Without a doubt, the greatest of my digital achievements, the work of several great minds over years... vanished. I can't believe it...

For the Flex, Next, It's the Textbook Old to the New

2005-12-10T01:40:45Z

Another work week concluded. Another mark in some invisible book that no one will ever read. Remarkably, I feel pretty good about it. For the first time in a while, I have very little work lined up to mar my weekend. This is good. At the same time, I have to make sure I see to some of the non-work stuff I've been meaning to do. I've been thinking a lot about my game idea - need to spend some time on that. For the moment, I'm pleasantly tipsy and unmotivated. I think I'll take a nap. Ey yo, Bo knows this, and Bo knows that...

groove_haircut @ 2005-12-06T05:22:00

2005-12-06T10:22:28Z

All-night work sessions are strictly brasenose. Bad for the soul, I tells ya. Should have been done hours ago. Won't be done for hours yet. I'm tired.

Had a Rough Week/It Got Beat by Passion

2005-12-05T18:16:12Z

Over the weekend, I found myself listening (as I often do) to "Passion," by Blackalicious and featuring Rakaa and Babu of Dilated Peoples. It struck me that it was the second time the idea of doing what one is passionate about had come up in as many days, the first being a chat with a neighbor at a bar. He asked me what I did for a living, and I told him about web work. He then said "Yeah, but what are you passionate about?" The answer came without a second thought - video games. But then... questions. I haven't been 3ds maxing, story writing, or Source-studying for a while. I also haven't played anything that really grabbed me for some time, either. Far Cry Instincts is good, but Ubisoft made some choices in their reimagining that just don't rope me in the way the original did. F.E.A.R. was technically proficient, but lacked a certain oomph and had some rather nasty undertones that kept me from engaging with it (see my full review here [hey, look at that, three users agree with me! Neat. I'm also pissed at Gamespot, since the score showed as 6.9 before I saved the review, but now it shows 7.0 and I can't change it]). X-Men Legends feels like a nice update of something akin to Gauntlet, but I don't feel utterly driven to play it. So what's the deal? Where's the passion? I think it's suffering from my overall level of work and stress - not a lot of time to spend thinking about games and working on my education toward working on them, but this year has also been kind of thin for games. Maybe it was the looming next generation of machines, top-flight dev teams being tasked with the new machines to the current gen's detriment. Whatever it is, it had me worried until I realized that this isn't the first time I've felt kind of disconnected from this thing that's supposed to be my passion.

The good news is that the passion has always returned in the past, and I don't feel as though this time will be any different. The bad news is it's another year ending with me thinking about how I'm not much closer to doing anything about that passion beyond talking about it. I won't make any declarations about that. Just note it and move on.

groove_haircut @ 2005-11-20T16:56:00

2005-11-20T21:56:23Z

Trying to get a design together for work, needs to be done in the very near term, but my brain won't focus. It doesn't help that a very beautiful woman was here at the coffee shop the last hour or so. She just left. I've seen her here a couple of times before, and every time I get all tangled up in my mind, wishing I could approach her and talk to her. So now I'm all spun around, design undone, mind undone. I'm more confident than I've ever been, I'm happier than I've been in a long long time, but I still can't do anything when I see a lovely woman across the room. Now I'm running in circles in my mind. I need social training wheels or something.