Scattershot Post - Volume 13

• You know you're working for the right people when one of the executives walk around wearing this shirt.
• One of my Karaoke superstars told me there's only a few things he enjoys more than singing in front of a crown. One example he gave me was ice cold Visine in your eyes when you're baked off your ass. It has to be ice cold; he held the bottle out of the window of a moving car in winter to achive the proper tempature. And, yes, for the full effect you must be, as he said, "Baked off your ass".
• One of the local ranchers was moving his herd to a new pasture this past Sunday morning. I heard mooing, stepped outside my back door, and watched the cows walk down highway 414. Viva Wyoming!
• Starcraft II drops on July 27th. If you don't hear from me for about 30 days after that date, don't worry.
• Origins Game Fair in less than 30 days! Hooray for Vacation!
• And now, the Zac Brown Band will play me out. If Jimmy Buffet wrote country music, this is what it would sound like.

My Car, and No One Else's

I bought my first car back in 2006, because I was tired of taking the bus to work or catching a ride with my Dad. One more step in the plan for independent living, you see. We went to the local dealership, haggled over price a little, and I drove home my little blue Cobalt. It felt good. I remember going home, sitting down on the couch, jingling my keys saying, "Heh. I'm a car owner now! :-)".

My Mother, whom I suspect likes taking on the role of Captain Bringdown pointed out that actually, my financing company was a car owner, a privilege I wouldn't fully have for a few more years. Bummer...

Four Years, one leap up the career ladder, and several thousand dollars later, now I say to thee all (especially Mom):

"I Am A Car Owner!"

For I now have the title to prove it:

PS: Full disclosure - the afore mentioned Blue Cobalt met its end way before its time, when a Freak Blizzard, a big hill, and a phone pole conspired to end its life. This title is for my little Orange Cobalt.

Condimental Divide, Part 2

Last year, I discussed the culinary abomination of Fry Sauce, which is beloved by the Philistines in Utah. I was convinced that this was the dirtiest thing one could do with ketuchup.

Oh, how I wish it only went as far that.

Yesterday, I'm back in Ogden indulging in my games again, when I go for a dinner break between matches. I finally find a decent Chinese restaurant that serves good Hot and Sour soup, and good egg rolls, which I get on the side of some Orange Chicken. (mmm... MSG... so good). I sit down and unpack the paper bag with my food, and inspect the condiments. "Soy sauce... hot mustard... Ketchup?!" In all my years, I have never seen ketchup distributed at Chinese restaurants. Ever. So I bring it up to my fellow gamers, asking rhetorically, "Heh. Why the heck would they give me ketchup packets with my Chinese food?"

"Oh, they put those in there when people started complaining they didn't have any ketchup to put on their Kung Pao Chicken." The response was immediate as it was terrifying. He just said that, like it was the most natural thing. Just like putting it on tater tots or hot dogs.

Ketchup on Kung Pao Chicken. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Something is just terribly wrong with Utah. I now have evidence. For my part, I'm going to do my best to turn society against the abuse of both ketchup and Chinese food. Now, when I find something to be irregular, peculiar, or other wise not quite right, instead of saying that it's "queerer than than a 16 dollar bill" I will now say "queerer than ketchup on Kung Pao".

Seriously. Eww.

Skills that have been Long Dormant

My first job was at a local movie theater, whoring out overpriced popcorn to movie goers. while it wasn't a bad job for a 16-17 year old it really had no transferable job skills at all.

Ten years later, I move out west. My local boozery has bought a popcorn popper, offering free popcorn to it's patrons. The idea is Free Popcorn -> Eating Popcorn -> Saltiness -> people wanting to buy more drinks. Same principle as peanuts, only cheaper.

Today after an exciting afternoon of laundry, I stop by to have a drink with friends, and a little later, the new bartender explains that there's no more popcorn because she doesn't know how to operate the popper.

My head turns in interest. "Let me try it." Five minutes later the kettle is bursting forth with popcorn and I get kudos from the bartender, as well as a free drink.

And so, the lesson is, no matter how mundane, specialized, or poorly demanded your job skills are, someday, under the right circumstances, you juuuust might have a use for what you learned when you were a stupid teenager. So far, it got me a free Jack n' Coke. Who knows what the future may hold?

Wyoming Status Symbols

In most urban and suburban areas, status symbols are mostly about disposable income, and displaying it flagrantly. A nice lawn, overachieving kids, best car, a boat, trophy wife, etc. Last week, I learned how the locals display their Street Cred. Er, Hayfield Cred. It's not the most head of cattle, nicest toys, not even the number of tasty animals that one has killed. It's not the old beat up ranch truck, although you're getting close. It's all about the numbers on your license plates.

For those of you that don't know, Wyoming License plates are prefixed by a number representing a county (I live in Uinta County, which is 19) after which, is a second number that are given out not-quite randomly. At one point, I think they just started with the lowest number and worked up. Every 9 years, new plates are issued, but you can request to keep your old number as long as you pay to keep that vehicle registered.

As a result, those who have lived here a long time, and still have Ford Trucks that are +25 years old and still in service, they have numbers like 19-127 while all of the transplants, like myself, have already gone into the letters, or into the five digit range. The lower the number that you have on your Wyoming License Plate, the higher your ranking is in the Rancher Elite. Silly, maybe, but it unofficially gets the point across that you've been here a long time, you have clout, and a vehicle registration on an old vehicle is cheaper than a BMW or a Jacuzzi.

A coworker, the son of a local rancher and an epic smart-ass, knew that in the past year a lot of the old-time ranchers have passed on. He needed to get his vehicle plates replaced, so he called his wife and told her to ask for the lowest number they have. She came back with 19-246 a full hundred lower than his brother who felt smug about his three-hundred numbered plate. His Dad said, "Son, you are gonna piss off a lot of the Ranchers around here, including me!".

But still, it's a lot like getting seat at the Adult's table at Thanksgiving: Some one has to die before you have a chance at it.

Scattershot Post: This time, it's personal!

• About a month ago, my Director was asking the locals if they had an old anvil that they weren't using. Like, 18th century blacksmithing tool, drop-on-a-road-runner-for-hilarity type anvil. No kidding. The man who had one declined politely; he didn't want to give it up. I love this state.
• Happiness is a local bar that has Fat Tire on tap.
• Looks like I have made back my initial investment on the Karaoke System. Next stop: Profitville!
• For Christmas, my folks gave me a sweet gift: Three independently controlled 2.5 qt crocks in a single unit:

Its first appearance was at a coworker's Super Bowl party. It performed admirably!

• And now, I leave you with Miss Murder by AFI. Before you comment that this is the wrong song, wait until the long-assed emo-intro is over at about 1:46. If emo-ballads transitioning to punk rock isn't your thing, maybe this will persuade you to watch: It has bunnies!!

The Other, Cooler Wizard Named "Harry"

About a year ago, my sister recomended a series of fantasy books to me, about a wizard that freelances as a Private Investigator to make ends meet. I was never interested enough in that Potter kid to bother picking up one of his books, but this sounded a little more realistic, and I needed something to read in order to get me through George R.R. Martin's epic writer's block that keeps him from delivering A Dance with Dragons, or Robert Jordan's terminal case of Dead that prevented him from finishing the Wheel of Time series (Next WoT book via Brandon Sanderson due out this fall!).

So I picked up the first book with some old B&N gift cards I had lying around and gave it look through. I was curious by the end of the first chapter, drawn in by the second, and unwittingly gave up an entire Saturday to finish it after the third.

Harry Dresden has an office in the City of Chicago, where he gets by on contract work form the Special Investigations team of the CPD, and the occasional divining request to find lost objects. Other fun things discussed are:

• How to trap a fairy
• Modern Technology:Wizards :: Snails:Salt
• Why you shouldn't tell your name to a wizard or any creature from the Nevernever.
• Potions: General principals on mixing and brewing

Thankfully absent are Quiddich games*, British brats, and Wizard boarding schools. It's a light little read, so pick it up if that kind of thing interests you.

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*When Potter decides to form a Quiddich league that uses Australian Indoor Rules, I might get on board.

The Internet Tries to Guess My Location

A lot of advertising on the web attempts to guess your location based on your IP Address. Since I moved out here. I'm constantly amused by the precision, or lack thereof, on the ads.

"Salt Lake City Dad whitens his teeth by doing one simple thing. Click here to find out the secret, you butter-spitting yellow toothed baffoon!" The closest you can Get is Salt Lake? Try again, Bucko.

"Draper Mom makes %320,0000 a year by sitting on her fat ass and playing Windows Solitare on her computer. Click here for a lazily lucrative lifestyle that has NOTHING to do with whoring our overpriced products over the intterwebs!" We've gone from from Salt Lake proper, to the greater SLC metro area and it's suburbs. I'm not sure if that's better or worse. NEXT!

"Granger woman drops 300 pounds in a weekend by following this one easy tip that we won't bother to print in this ad. Click here with your sausage fingers to find out how!" Getting closer! At least you landed in Wyoming this time!

"Lyman man gets epic huge p3n!$ by taking a daily suppliment of stuff the FDA would destroy on sight, along with anything and anyone within a 20 mile radus! Unless you enjoy being hung like a housefly, click here and let our servers download our spambot software on your machine right now! HURRY!" This is the best I've seen, a mere six miles from Mountain View. Congratulations, malware distributor, and I'll be sure to look out for the guy with the the 18" wang!

Still Alive

First, let's play catch-up: Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas.

Cool. Now, Let's cover the near future: Happy New Year, Happy Presidents' Day, and just to hedge my bets, Happy St. Valentine's day.

So why have I been neglecting you all? Because I've been flying pretend spaceships: Eve Online is a Sci-Fi MMORPG that has recently been sucking up about 40% of my free time. Another 40% goes to Team Fortress 2, which is a well designed FPS game.

Otherwise, everything is chugging along. The new apartment is now cold by choice, rather than cold due to poor insulation. I guess the new tenants of my previous location complained loudly enough that they finally got the new windows they said they'd have installed by winter '08.

Work is going well. While the Christmas party was cut this year due to budget contraints, none of the staff was, so that's just fine with me.

My computer is still awesome, and still glowy blue.

Going forward, I'm hoping to take a week of vacation in the Summer to go back to the 'Burgh, as well as my usual trip to Origins.

I'll keep you posted on any new developments that I think people would find remotly interesting, but for now, I present the Black Scottish Cyclops: Meet the Demoman!

"You have chosen... wisely."

The year was 1991. Maybe 1990. We had a sweet new computer with one of those speedy 386 processors inside them. It had a whopping 2MB of RAM, twice as much that was considered necessary for people not calculating trajectories of Scud Missiles. A color monitor. 256 colors, about 240 than previous generations of machines. Seething with power.

My father brought home a game that one of his coworkers had given him, copied from the original, as game publishers hadn't yet taken draconian steps to make their games difficult to pirate. It was so graphically intense that it had to be carried on FOUR floppy disks! One whole disk with its vast 1.44MB storage could only contain a fourth of the visual and audio adventure! It was one of those games that was made to capitalize on a recent blockbuster film, before such games were immediately assumed to suck. Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade!

My sister and I sat and stared into the screen for hours trying to puzzle things out. This was made more difficult by the fact that on our first time through the game, we didn't find the Grail Diary left behind. Eventually we figured things out, puzzing through the catacombs, talking our way past the Nazi gaurds that infested castle Brunwald, flying and inevitably crashing the biplane.

The problem was that after we crashed the biplane, we attempted to steal the car (see the movie, its in there), the game itself would crash. The last disk that was copied was corrupted. Disheartened, we moved on with our lives, playing other games, taking up other hobbies. We found the strength to laugh again, even knowing that our quest for the grail was lost.

Over dramatic? Certainly, but if you ever read a book 90% of the way through and found the last 30 pages ripped out, you can imagine what this was like.

Years later, I move to Wyoming, buy a big powerful computer (like, a lot more than 2MB RAM), and when I realize I have to go at least as far as Evanston, maybe Rock Springs to pick up proper games, I discover Steam. Not content with their first game Half Life being the Game of the Year and all, Valve Studios set out to dominate the digital download and distribution of PC games. (yay, alliteration!)

I looked through the offerings of the steam store, and it looks like they acquired quite the back catalog. Even old games, like ones from Interplay and LucasArts... and then I saw it. an almost 20 year old game now only cost $4.99. The price of closure.

I download and install it. A few days later, The Grail is mine. At last, my own digital crusade comes to an end.

By the way, I mentioned before that when this game was first published, game developers didn't put layers of copy protection and CD-Keys on their games to prevent piracy. But they DID have measures meant to stop people from passing around copies of their games. Inside those huge textbook sized boxes that were industry standard until about 2000 or so, the publishers dumped all kinds of manuals and supplemental paperwork into those big boxes. Things like maps, histories of the game world, and often, as in the case of The Last Crusade, handwritten "Journals" written in persona of the game's characters.

In this instance, it was half of Henry Jones Sr's Grail Diary. Most of it was fluff, but interesting fluff. But in order to keep pirates at bay (pun unintended, but welcome) the games themselves referenced this documentation in important ways. To find out which grail was the wise choice at the end, I had to read a few pages from the handwritten "Grail Diary" to find out which one it was. I remember playing Battle Chess and Carmen Sandiego and having to type in entries from their paperwork and manuals. the xth Entry on page y. Things like that.

And now, John Williams will play me out: