A State of Failure

As I’ve mentioned before, my first memory of seeing a video game is when I saw Space Invaders in a Texas pizzeria.  This may not actually be the case, but it’s the first memory I can recall.  And that was a very long time ago.  Since then, video games have been an integrated part of my life – just like baseball and football is to my dad.

The first computer I remember using was a Commodore PET in my middle school.  Somehow I managed to wrangle time on it after school, playing with BASIC.  Since then, computers have been an integrated part of my life. 

As a child I had dreams of writing my own games.  Games that I would want to play.  I had dreams of being a kind of superstar. 

The first computer I owned was a Commodore VIC-20.  My mother, or grandmother, or both, bought it for me just before we started a long car trip from New Jersey to Louisiana.  It sat in the trunk while I spent the trip reading the manual that came with it.  I dreamed about being able to program the little fellow.  And, I think, the first thing I did when I got it hooked up to the TV was to toss in Radar Rat Race and play away.

Not that I didn’t do some programming on the 3.5K, 20 column device; I did.  I would enter programs from magazines (like Compute! and Creative Computing) and figure out how they worked.  But I never really created anything of my own that was worth very much.

There was an awful lot of justifying going on: the display was too small, there wasn’t enough memory, the BASIC wasn’t good enough.  Of course, those were all true and may have something to do with it, but the truth is that I would just lose interest after awhile.  Or I would get stuck on a problem and not feel like figuring it out.

Eventually I received an Atari 400 for my birthday.  It had better resolution, better sound, more memory (8K!), and a crappy keyboard (membrane!).  My dreams of writing games came back and then, sadly, fell by the wayside again.  I would rather play games than write them, once I started writing them.

By the time I got my Atari ST I figured the computers were too complicated for me to work with.  A windowing operating system, no built-in BASIC.  It just seemed too complicated to work with.  With the advent of the PC and Windows I figured that was the end of that dream.

Last night, though, I went to Frys with my step-son.  I was idly glancing at things when I noticed the HYDRA Game Development Kit by Parallax.  I saw the 80’s era graphics on the box and instantly started thinking about how awesomely incredible it would be to have it and try writing games again on a system that, maybe, wasn’t as complicated as writing for a regular PC.  I went to different sites reading about the Propeller processor and what people were doing with it and I was lost in dreams again.

This morning, however, those dreams are being dashed because of another realization.

I’m an intelligent guy.  I’ve always been an intelligent guy.  But, if I were to make an analogy I’d say I was a car with a lot of horsepower but very little torque.  I’ve had a lot of teachers, friends, and co-workers tell me I’m smart but I always questioned it because I’ve never achieved what it was I wanted to achieve. 

I’ve been told I’m a good writer.  I think I’m a good writer.  One thing I’ve noticed, though, since my school days is that while I’m fairly good at starting something I’m not very good at finishing it.  I write a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, perhaps an entire chapter and then never get back to it.  Even in this blog it can be seen by the amount of “Part 1’s” that never continue.

Could I have done better in school?  Yes, I think so now.  I just didn’t want to.  Could I have gone to college and become somebody much more than I am?  Yes, I think so. 

Could I have written at least one stupid game?  Yep.

Could I have finished one story, from start to finish?  I’m sure.

But I never applied myself.  I would hit a wall and instead of tearing it down, or climbing over it, I turned aside and let it beat me.  I’ve done for just about everything I’ve ever done.

There are times when I wish that my adult mind would enter a time hole and settle into my younger self, so I could have a chance to change, to live life again without the same mistakes and sense of futility.

A few people who have known me thought that I had a fear of success.  I laughed at them.  I would think that I would like being rich, or famous, or at least be able to live day to day without an obscene amount of worry about what was going to happen the next day. 

But maybe they were right.  A fear of success that keeps me from achieving what I’m really capable of achieving.  There’s no mental wormhole that will save me, only I can do that. 

Maybe one day I will be able to write a game or finish a story.  Or achieve a better position at work.  Maybe.

I’m Coming Back

Hang on.  I’ll be back soon.

The Big Four-Oh

     So, you’re sitting around one day with your friends, maybe.  Then some old clunker goes driving by.  Maybe it’s an old Cadillac.  One of those tan ones, with the rusted panels.  The trunk lock is missing, along with a headlight.  It bangs down the street past you, backfiring and spitting out brown exhaust. 

     You and your friends watch it, amused by the sight of such an old, dilapidated piece of crap rumbling along and you wonder how it manages to keep running because, let’s be honest, it’s almost 40 years old now.  Forty years old.  Wait, a minute, you think, I’m 40 years old!

     And your mind casts back to the things that are breaking down in your house.  The toaster is dead, at five years.  The curtains are ten years old and your wife is sure it’s time to replace them.  You have a 20 year old computer that your kids routinely laugh at.  All these things are crap now, garbage.  And the oldest thing is half your age!  And it’s considered ancient!  A car is generally considered a “classic” at 25 years.  Oh, me oh my!  Time for you to putter around the house shooting out exhaust.

     Today, November 2nd, is my birthday.  I was born in the year 1968, 40 years ago.  Four decades ago, I was brought forth unto the world.  Ten years shy of half a century.

     The world has gone through a lot of changes in forty years.  Computers have gone from the size of a warehouse building, completing calculations in days or weeks, down to being in tiny MP3 players and decompressing Britney Spears songs on the fly.  Televisions have become to dump the tube and gone LCD or plasma.  Cars have gone from being complex mechanical objects to hyper-complex mechanical objects with computer controlled bits.  Airplane travel has turned from a semi-enjoyable experience to the worst method of travel next to the bus.

     But, that’s all right, people tell me.  40 is the new 30!  According to who?  And how does that make much of a difference?

     Although, to be frank, I don’t feel forty.  I make goofy sounds to my bird.  I talk to my cats and believe they understand me.  I like most of the music my kids listen to.  And, in a little while, I’ll be booting the kids off my computer so I can play Fallout 3 (which I got as a gift from my mom; thanks mom!).  I don’t have aches and pains when I get up in the morning.  I could run down the street if I were chased by a dog.  Meh.  I don’t see much of a difference yet.  Inside, I’m still the young guy who wants to do a lot of stupid stuff.  The only difference is that I’ve been on this planet going around the sun 40 times.

     So, maybe it’s not so bad.

    

On Halloween

     Halloween was my second favorite holiday when I was growing up.  Halloween meant being able to dress up as your favorite hero (or villain) and not having to worry about people thinking you were nuts.  It meant eating as much candy as you could cram into your gullet.  It meant being able to walk around at night, in the dark. 

     A Halloween night in New Jersey was generally quite chilly.  Breezes caused the fallen leaves to rustle and fly around.  Wood smoke from fireplaces lent a certain taste in the air.

     It was a magical night.

     It also occurred two days before my birthday.  By the time I was over being sick on candy it was time to be sick on cake and ice cream.  But that was all right, because I’d have plenty of new stuff to be sick playing with.

     Back then, having a costume that was made was bette

r than a

store-bought costume.  It showed ingenuity, intelligence, craftiness, and creativity.  To buy a costume was a cop-out.  Of course, most purchased kids costumes consisted of a mask of some characters face and a plastic smock that announced who you were supposed to be, as if Casper the Friendly Ghost actually had his name printed on his chest.

     And it didn’t matter if the costume wasn’t an exact replica of whoever you were supposed to be.  Imagination filled in the gaps.  That Boba Fett rocket pack was a shoe box and a red “L’eggs” top, but to everyone that knew who Boba Fett was, it was a rocket pack.  Kids who had

parents that were really good had a problem.  While their costumes were wonders to behold, and everyone would admit that the costume was awesome, there would still be a hint of resentment in there.  It could be too good. 

     Why did it matter?  Because in the 1980’s and before, you were allowed to go to school in a costume.  You were expected to show up in costume.  Complete with mask, if necessary.  And everyone had fun, and there would be a parade so that the parents could see how cute everyone looked (God knows why, though; those same kids would be knocking on your door in a few hours anyway).

     Now, it seems that if you don’t buy a costume then you suck.

If you try and make one then you’re too poor to buy one.  And if your pre-teen daughter doesn’t look like a prostitute then you’ve got problems. 

     Does it matter, though?  To me, it looks like less and less kids go trick-or-treating every year.  Even in neighborhoods where kids are abundant, nobody seems to walk around that much.  Even to me, an adult who does nothing but pass out candy, Halloween has turned into a disappointment.

     So, what happened?  I would say fear got the better of everyone.  Schools don’t want costumes or masks in school in case someone goes nuts and shoots the place up.  We’ve all lived with the Halloween candy scares: apples filled with razor blades, candy corn and other candies injected with drugs.  Don’t eat anything home made, like popcorn balls or candied apples because you never know what’s inside of it.  Trust only candy that’s still in a big company wrapper.  And even then, inspect it for tampering. 

     But now we’ve reached a whole new level of fear.  Kids being abducted, kids shooting other kids, and other horrors that we’re inundated with throughout the years that just builds, and builds, and builds.  Maybe our communities aren’t as close knit as they used to be.  Do you know your neighbors?  Do you see them often?  Is the limit of your interaction a half-hearted wave while you’re mowing the lawn?

     It’s another piece of Americana that has slowly eroded.  Or maybe it never really was that way in the first place.  The problem with history is that the more you know, the less different everything seems to be.

Good News and Bad

Hello everyone,

I’m pleased to say that yesterday was a banner day here at GoE.  I finally broke one hundred visits in a day, for a total of 122 hits.  I don’t know what clock WordPress is working from, but it says today is a new day so I’ll go with that.

I’m saddened, though, that “orange kittens” and variations of that has been booted as the top search term that gets people here.  It was finally knocked down by “Yoville.”  If the stats so far are any indication, then tomorrow they may be beaten by people searching for cheats in “Pet Society.”

Orange kittens has been the biggest draw to this sight since the very first post, about genetically modified kittens.  To be fair, though, the picture has gotten more people here than the article.  And it’s not even my picture.

Anyway, I’m hoping a lot of people read some of the site and have decided it’s worthwhile to read on occassion.  I don’t get anything from this other than the satisfaction that it amuses somebody at some point for some reason.

Random Crap

     I’m using the new Windows Live Writer Beta now.  I’m not seeing much of a difference and I still can’t figure out how to change the default font.  And the ‘tab’ key still puts it into block quote mode instead of giving me a damn indent. 

     It’s actually sometimes raining today!  I haven’t seen rain in forever.  I’ll have to write it in my journal so that future archeologists will know what the weather was like today.  Yeah.

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     Despite the fact that I’ve been using computers forever, sometimes I just never get around to figuring out what stuff is on the internet.  I’m still not totally sure what a “podcast” is supposed to be.  I’ve only recently gotten around to using Twitter.  You know, stuff like that.  My photo albums on every site that use is an absolute mess.  I’m afraid to see what my Picasa site looks like.  It all makes me feel so behind the times.  But at least I have a Facebook and MySpace account. 

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     Tomorrow is Talk Like A Pirate Day.  I don’t think I’ll be able to participate on account of me not being good at talking like a pirate.  It would probably be a good day to release future “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, though.

hulu-stuff

     I had to drive to Louisiana and back the other day.  We made it in just over 24 hours.  Luckily, hurricane Ike hadn’t touched down yet.  While I saw a little bit of flooding on the way back it was nothing like what it would be a few hours later. 
     The trip there was worse in some ways.  I had the two oldest boys with me and they napped until we got to Houston.  Then they got hungry, but I wanted to get past Houston first because of the way I10 works there.  It wasn’t anything to be worried about, though, because there was no traffic at all.  Driving through Houston on I10 at 6:00pm and not seeing any traffic is kind of spooky.
     Then they started getting hungrier.  So once we past through downtown I started looking for something, like McDonalds or whatever.  Everything was closed.  Every once in a while there’d be an open gas station, where we’d get a couple of snacks, but otherwise everything was shut down.  We didn’t find a place to eat until we got to Jennings, La. and that town was packed with people.
     But we got there okay.  And we left the next morning and got back fairly quickly.  The highways were getting kind of backed up once we left I10.  Police were everywhere, even though it didn’t stop people from driving like asses.  People in black Dodge Chargers, in particular.
     Zoey was ecstatic when we got back.  She’d been left alone for that time so she went nuts when we got back.  She still had plenty of food and water.  Tooka was just about out, though, and I left three bowls of food in his cage.  I did have a backup plan in case something went wrong and we weren’t able to get back in time.

     Hulu.com rocks.  I’ve watched two seasons of The Pretender, and the first seasons of Tremors and Journeyman. 
     I’d never seen any of these before.  I like The Pretender a lot.  I think it’s up to four seasons, so I have two more to go.  I think.  I’ll have to look and see if they’re on DVD.
     I like the Tremors movies a lot.  I think they’re funny, smart, and goofy.  I’m sure other people didn’t watch any others after the first because it didn’t have Kevin Bacon in it.  And there’s probably people that didn’t watch after the second one because Fred Ward wasn’t in it.  But I think Michael Gross as Burt Gummer totally rocks.  I didn’t know he was in the TV show until I started watching it.  Overall, I think it’s pretty good for a TV show.  They don’t turn down the gore that much from the movies, and it’s still funny.  Also, several episodes had Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, Taxi) as an eccentric scientist.  Some of the special effects are kind of cheesy, but not too bad considering it’s television.
     Journeyman surprised me.  I thought it was going to be a lot like Quantum Leap, and it is, but it has its own twists and charms.  It’s about a newspaper reporter that (seemingly) randomally gets chucked back and forth in time tracking someone that they’re supposed to help.  It works pretty well.  Unfortunately, I hear that series has been cancelled after the first season as well.
     Hulu is also good for catching shows you may have missed, if you don’t have a DVR or something.  I was able to watch Kitchen Nightmares and Burn Notice last night.

     I’m writing this now using Notes by Thinkfree.com.  It looks pretty interesting and allows you to post to a Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress or Movable Type blog.  I guess.  I’m about to try that now. 
     My only real problems are:

• Tab doesn’t work
• Fonts keep changing with different paragraphs
• Can’t insert a horizontal rule

     Other than that, it may be a decent alternative.  Unfortunately, it still doesn’t match Live Writer because I can’t post to my Live blogs.  The upside is that I can use it in Windows and Linux.  I guess I’ll never have a blogging tool in Linux that will match Live Writer.

A Sunday Note

Ah, welcome to Sunday.

While I usually use Microsoft’s Live Writer to write up blogs, I thought today I’d try out Scribefire, the blogging plugin for Firefox. I have a feeling it’s not quite as full featured as Live Writer is. I really wish somebody would write a clone of it for Linux, but most of the fun is in the plug-ins, anyway.

I’m feeling pretty lazy today, and my should and neck hurts. Having watched Shutter the other night, I hope I don’t have the same problem as the guy in the movie did.

California Rules

     I don’t have very much to write about today, so I figure I’m just going to “wing it.”  I’ve got some updates and stuff that need to be installed, so they’re going to take some time.

9:25am

     My updates are done.  That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it was going to.  I even installed a version of Open Office so I could check some results.  I’ve also got The Cars playing on the speakers.  Usually I wear ear-buds, but since I’m deaf in one ear still I decided I was going to treat myself.

     Now I remember why I don’t change fonts with Windows Live Writer – they don’t always stick.  Okay, so where was I?  Oh, right, today I’m working in French.  No, I’m no working in France, I’m working with Windows in French.

     The best part is that I don’t speak French.  Or even read it.  That doesn’t make the job difficult at all.  I guess it gives me a chance to learn the language.  Pretty soon I’ll be able to go to France and tell people how to change their broadband settings.  I’ll be a hero.

10:52am

     I’m hungry

10:58am

     According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, it’ll be illegal for pharmacies to sell cigarettes. 

     I know there’s a lot of people ready to cheer that bit of information.  For them, here’s my advice: move to Russia or Libya or something.  If you want to live in a dictatorship where everything you can do is mandated by the government, then you need to leave this country behind.  America, "Land of the Free," isn’t the place you want to be.  You want to be in a country where it’s acceptable to micro-manage every portion of every person’s life.  So go ahead and pack those bags and please, please, please, leave this country so real Americans can live their lives in peace.

     And if you’re a smoker that lives in Austin, TX, then you can rest assured that what happens in California is going to happen here because there’s not one person with an original brain in Austin.  All the California imports are still connected to the Hive Mind out West.

     Oh, if you think you’re safe because you’re not a smoker (and smokers suck and you hope they all die, die, die!), guess again.  San Francisco would also like to charge a city-wide fee to retailers that sell sugary soda.  Guess who’s going to pay that extra fee?  No, not the smokers.  Not this time. 

     It’s just going to get worse, too.  Once the government gets their fingers into your life it doesn’t end.  Do you eat at McDonalds?  Don’t get used to it because it’s not healthy for you and you can bet your sweet ass that fast food will be put on the chopping block pretty soon.  It’s already started with the trans fats, but it’s going to get worse. 

     Everyone is concerned with your health, and yet we don’t have a national healthcare system.

1:45pm

     Still no rain yet.  It’s beginning to look like a Mad Max movie out there.

     I suppose I should package this up and send it to the sites.  Happy reading!

The Charlie Brown Factor

08:50am

     I’ve been at work for almost two hours now.  I’ve gotten everything prepped, new software has been downloaded and is now installing.  My laptop is pissing me off because it keeps pausing and stopping every few minutes.  I’ve turned off everything that’s running in the background, all the groovy things that I use in my day-to-day operations, and it still keeps doing it.

     Usually during this time I’d be checking the news sites and stuff.  Keeping up on what’s going on in the industry.  Seeing what kind of new disasters are striking the world.  Aside from a tropical storm off the coast of Texas, I’m not aware of much.  I don’t actually like reading the news because it’s depressing.

09:23am

     Time to stalk the vending machines and see if I can’t hunt down something to eat.

09:36am

     An Apple Strudel Pop-Tart.  Yum.

12:38pm

     I have opted not to eat lunch today.  Not a normal lunch, anyway.  Instead, I will be trying to whittle down this four pound bucket of Red Vines.

12:52pm

     Eating a bucket of Red Vines is not a good idea, no matter how hungry you are.  Moderation is the key.

14:06pm

     Part of my job is doing a little bit of web surfing here and there, to make sure everything is working correctly.  Usually I do a round of established sites that I normally visit.  Sometimes I get creative.

     Today I thought it would be amusing to read some articles about candy bars on Wikipedia.  Chocolate bars led to the York Peppermint Patty, and that led to Peppermint Patty from the Charlie Brown comic strip.

     While I could read and write well enough when I was a young child, I never really exercised the skills.  While my older sister was reading through books like a wiz, I would spend my time reading comics.  Not comic books, like Spiderman, but comics like B.C., Wizard of Id and, most importantly, Charlie Brown.

     I collected Charlie Brown paperbacks.  I knew what I had, what I had read, and could even tell you which book a strip came from if I were shown it.  I would also choose the books carefully because the paperbacks were collections from other, larger, books that I had never seen.  I would try and pick books that didn’t come from a larger work that I already had books from.  I was a Charlie Brown paperback expert.

     This annoyed my dad to no end, because he thought I should be reading real books.  My older sister would snort derisively at my choices, as we left the bookstore, clutching the newest Anne McCaffery or Alan Dean Foster novel.

     As I got older and the strip grew older I came to like it less, noting more of a religious flavor in the strip.  And, like any kid, I didn’t think it was “cool” to like it very much.  But even now, if I’m not feeling well, I would like to just curl up in bed and read Charlie Brown strips all day long.  Sadly, it’s nothing I can do now because I no longer have all of my books.

     It’s unfair, though, to look down at this.  I’m mostly happy with the person I am today and I couldn’t say with confidence that I would be this person if I had not read so many Charlie Brown strips.

     It was in those strips that I got an introduction to philosophy, religion, manners (specifically, other characters made Charlie Brown feel like crap – why would I want to make people feel that way?), the meaning of different holidays, that people should open their hearts more to kids who may be less privileged.

     At a young age I knew what depression was, because C.B. would often say he was depressed.  This, in turn, helped me deal with depression as a child because I knew what it was and could find a way to deal with it. 

     Charlie Brown, and the rest of the gang, helped me get through life.  Not in a drastic, dramatic way but in a long, slow, helping period.  It’s when I read the old strips and remember things that were going on when I read them previously that I remember just how it was that they were helpful.

     Of course, I picked up a few negative qualities also, I’m sure.  A lack of confidence here and there, although that could be attributed to other circumstances as well.  But maybe, if Charlie Brown had been a bit more assertive, I’d be a bit more assertive, too.  We’ll never know.

     Either way, Charlie Brown has made an on-going impact on my life, and I don’t know that I would want to give that up.