Soooo yesterday, I’m at the last of this series of scifi-writing workshops, and we were talking about whether we’d be returning for the next one. And there’s a 17-yr old girl there who is just an awesome writer, and she might not go because they’re evening classes and she can’t get there if she doesn’t get a ride.

And I’m local, have a car, I’m a fan, and I didn’t say anything.

Because, obviously, I’m a 30+ guy. Even married, I can’t make that offer. I can’t even say “I’d love to offer, but you see how bad this looks.” Or “I’d love to apologize, but…” which is in its way even worse.

I didn’t even really have the chance to be selfish, or consider if it was possible, or even think it through at all. All I could do is let the statement hang out there, and do nothing.

I felt bad then, and I feel worse today. It was a chance for me – or really, any of us – to do her a good turn, and I didn’t.

It’s always sad when we have our instincts for charity drummed out of us, often by people preying on them. But people did favors like this for me once, and now I can’t pass that on, and so today instead of feeling good about at least offering, I’m frustrated and a little depressed.

I’ve had System Shock 2 kicking around, just the disc in jewel case, for ages. Probably since it was released in 1999, when it played it after release. This last month I’ve been playing through it again, and it’s still mostly a great game that falls apart towards the end (games in general, though, have terrible problems with endings). And a lot of the game mechanics started to reaaaally annoy me (cybermodules as carrots, the excesseive weapon degredation and ammo scarcity, among others). Also, there’s no way a real ship is laid out like that.

But there were a couple of things that still amazed me:

SHODAN scares the shit out of me. Seven years later, hearing the voice in the demo freaked me out. Every time she’d contact me it would grate on my nerves and raise the hair on my neck. That’s an amazing feat.

I remembered a ridiculous amount of the game. Where stuff was, what goals could be skipped, that while I was in location X I should pick up some foo, because otherwise I’d be heading back. It was like having a subliminal walkthrough, but it didn’t give away so much that it was ever boring. It was strange, having chunks of knowledge fall out of the long-term memory archive like that.

System Shock 2 is so great at creating an atmosphere of isolation and horror that when you start to cheer for people you only know through audio logs, and when I hit the rec deck and – for the first time since the start of the game – saw another living person, I flipped a little. “I gotta help that guy,” I said, and started to rush. Even though I played it before and knew there wasn’t going to be any human contact in my future.

Anyway. It was really hard to get it running (especially with dual CPUs, ugh) and often it was a pain in the ass to run, but SS2 (and certainly the first two-thirds or so) are one of the greatest arguments for games-as-art and that there needs to be a better way to preserve old games. If I put the CD away, what are the chances it runs in another seven years?

(actually, it’s probably not so bad – I’ll be running some crazed super-Linux variant and there’ll be some awesome WINE configurator I can use as a wrapper…)

I went to Amazon today at 11 to see if I could snag an Xbox 360 for $100.

I saw the “get this deal” button. I clicked it. I got the verification page, which asked me “what is 15 plus 14?”

I put “29” clicked the “I agree…” to the T&C, and submitted.

REJECTED! That answer was invalid. I got the second one, and…

When I got the “no longer available” message, under a minute had passed.

Now, I don’t know if that messed up rejection notice cost me my chance, but… ARRGGHHH. I blame our public school system.

Really?

As satisfying to the Genghis Khan deep selfish gene part of my brain that might be, do you have any idea what a hassle that would be? It sounds like it wouldn’t even be much of a choice. I buy the product and bam, I’m in charge of at least 1.5b women. And it wouldn’t

Of course “be yours” might not mean they’re mine. It might mean they’re loyal to me, or, given the context, that they’re receptive to amorous advances, which from a practical standpoint would be more manageable – I wouldn’t have to come up with any kind of political system, or hierarchy. There’s no additional context in the message, though.

But what if I don’t buy it? If they’re marketing a product that gives the purchaser ownership of all women, my marriage is in trouble. I have to buy it, for my wife’s sake. What to do? Stupid spam, with your strange moral quandries!

And out of my system tray and quick-launch bar.

I know this is going to date me, but I spent a ton of time early in my gaming career optimizing “low” memory, trying to get as close to 640k free as possible, because games were horrible about it. I’d use experimental mouse drivers, all kinds of bizarre loadsys parameteres, whatever it took to get Wing Commander running.

So today, I looked at the running processes on my box, because I’m having weird mouse issues. What’s in there?

A bunch of corporations running things without my permission. I can’t decide what’s worse, that they think it’s cool to run all the time, or how amazingly bloated these things are.

OrderReminder.exe: HP wants to use 2 megs of memory forever so once in a while it can remind me to check my toner and order more from them. Ancient Art of War didn’t take 2 megs of space. And you couldn’t just run at startup, notice I didn’t need toner, and then go away?

qttask.exe: I hate Quicktime. Apple is the worst about this kind of hidden bloatware. I’m spending 3 megs on the off chance I’ll come across and want to run Quicktime. SIGN ME UP!!! And by the way, could you throw a Quicktime icon I’ll never use in the system notification area, where it totally does not belong, and the quick-launch part of the taskbar, even though I’d really prefer you didn’t? Outstanding.

Thanks Apple. Design is king, and consideration is the boy who stands by the table so nobles can wipe their greasy fingers on his hair.

My whole freaking process list is like this! It’s ridiculous!

How do I fight them? Well, let’s crack open MSCONFIG shall we?

What are those blank ones? That “Location” might be… helpful. Maybe I can expand or otherwise scroll… no, of course not. That would be something I’d want to do. Is there a way to get more information on an item? No, of course not. Awesome.

It’s part of this whole anti-consumer attitude expressed in EULAs as well: your computer is ours to fuck around with. Buy a printer? We’re going to bug the shit out of you. Install a program? Why would we ask you if you want shortcuts – our software’s so awesome we’ll just go ahead and put them everywhere.

Would you like us to somehow reimburse you for using a chunk of your memory all the time, for no reason? Don’t be silly, why would we do that?

Mainstream vendors are now spyware vendors with better PR departments. What a great development.

“As you know many kids enjoy watching Monday Night Football. We have one of those kids here now. Little Billy of New York. Hey Billy, how are you tonight?
“Okay, I guess.”
“Billy, can you tell me why you’re here in the booth?”
“Uh, my dad is the President of ABC? Duhhhhh.”
“That’s right, and his name is stamped on our paychecks. How are you enjoying the game?”
“It’s okay, I guess.”
“Which team do you like?”
“I don’t know. I’d rather be playing Gears of War on my Xbox. Oh, can I say something to my friend?”
“Sure, why not? You obviously could buy and sell us all.”
“Hey Jimmy, you suck, you’re a fag, you didn’t beat me my controller died, you never could beat me if it was fair and you know that you fag.”
“Uh, and it looks like the Giants will be punting.”
“Gaaayyyyyyy.”

I’ve been looking into buying a nicer coffee grinder (I’ve got a $10 cheap-o special) now that I’m making a cup or two a day, and in trying to find a good one to buy, I found myself in a world as silly as the planet of audiophiles.

Here’s the problem with audio freaks, if I may: up to a certain point, I believe you can hear improvements in equipment, and beyond that, I’m perfectly willing to believe that people can hear differences. I’m extremely picky about doing MP3 rips of my CDs, so I can buy that people are similarly particular about speakers.

But at a certain point, they’re making shit up. They want (they have) to believe that they’re making progress, that there’s something to the superconducting interconnectors or whatever that makes obsession worthwhile, or that obsession makes worthwhile.

Anyway. I came across this in an article on the KitchenAid ProLine Grinder comparing cups of coffee made from it and the Solis Maestro Pro:

I asked one of my regular testers to sample, and they did notice a subtle difference, but only after I pointed out a specific flavour (apricot in the finish, which was not apparent from the Solis cup.

It’s a leading question, the reviewing equivalent of the push poll. Of course once you’ve suggested a particular hint of flavor someone’s more likely to taste it. This isn’t even worth writing up.

Free fiction! New short story!

Ember

It’s got aliens! Cloning! Crime! Music! Street fighting! It’s sci-fi! Woo-hoo!

In Ember, a week in the struggle of the hero and the greatest flamenco singer in a Barcelona turned into a tourist attraction for aliens who enjoy the Spanish Civil War.

This hasn’t gone out for publication yet, and there are two sections I’d like to improve/remove/rework (feel free to guess what they are and send me thoughts).

This is a “teaser”

[edit – after some consideration and consultation with others, I’ve decided that there’s really not enough information to engage in this much soul-flogging]