In light of a few bad calls during this week's Division Series -- namely, the supposed trap by Greg Golson of the Yankees against the Twins and Buster Posey's slide against the Braves -- there has been a lot of talk about instant replay in baseball. Bobby Cox and Bruce Bochy were both spouting off about replay in their press conferences last night, saying that there would be too many "arguments and red flags" and that it would "slow the game down."
I don't know how many times I have to say it: IT WON'T SLOW THE GAME DOWN IF YOU DON'T LET IT. Make rules about replay so it won't turn into a free-for-all where replays dominate the game (like the NFL).
My pet instant replay theory is this: Each team gets one challenge per game. Win or lose, you don't get to challenge another play that game.
This works on so many different levels. With only one challenge, chances are most of the time both teams will get through an entire game without using one. Why? Because it forces you to be judicious. Wasted your challenge on a close play at first with nobody on in the third inning? Sucks for you if there's a blown call against you when you're scoring the winning run in the ninth -- you already used your challenge. Since nobody wants to be that manager, chances are challenges will go unused more often than not.
At most, there will be two challenges per game (plus any close home run/foul calls, which should be automatically reviewed as they are now). If done efficiently -- either by an "eye-in-the-sky" umpire at the park or from a "Batcave" at MLB headquarters -- these reviews will be quick. There are plenty of other ways to trim significantly more time from baseball games outside of replays, including further limiting mound visits, penalizing pitchers or hitters who stall, and reducing warm-up toss times.
Additionally, contrary to what Cox and Bochy stated, the number of arguments (and their durations) will decrease. In the current system, after a bad call, the manager runs out of the dugout and screams at the umpire for a few minutes, gets tossed, makes a scene and takes his time leaving the field, and then the game goes on like nothing happened. With challenges, there won't be lengthy arguments. The manager will just toss his flag (or whatever) on the field before the next play, and the replay monitors will decide what the correct call is.
I have lots of specific situational rules for this -- namely, that you can't argue balls and strikes or things that would be blatantly uncorrectable -- but that's the basic framework. One challenge per team per game, win or lose. Home runs still reviewed automatically. Try to tell me that would slow the game down. Seriously.
08 October 2010
30 September 2010
... 23:49
Moving twice in a month and dealing with a bit of an emotional trauma like things ending with Resident Girl. But now I have the world at my fingertips. I have to try to view this as an opportunity, whether or not I am sad as hell and confused about what the heck to do with my life. I need two things though: a hobby, and a passion. I have hobbies but not one productive thing I fall back on when bored aside from cruising the internet and reading sports crap and watching dumb videos. I need something that will further my education and quality of life. I like doing nothing but I can't always do nothing.
I need a passion, too, but I really don't know what to do there. I love the arts. I will write more later when I am not so drained.
I need a passion, too, but I really don't know what to do there. I love the arts. I will write more later when I am not so drained.
24 September 2010
The New Workout Plan 13:57
I just finished a jog of four miles in 95º heat as a warmup for an 8-mile jaunt tomorrow and I feel pretty good about myself for it. This is something like the tenth week of my half-marathon training, and I can feel my knees starting to hate me -- especially since I also work a job where I am on my feet in uncomfortable shoes for 6-7 hours at a time. I am not signed up for a race and I am not really sure if I will be able to run the full 13.1 miles on the appointed day, but training has been a lot of fun and I've really started to love running.
This would have seemed impossible to me about four months ago, as I was out of shape and really hated running. But for whatever reason, a few months ago I decided I was tired of feeling fat and eating like crap. I wore my weight pretty well but my good metabolism was bound to betray me at some point and I wanted to avoid that before things got out of hand.
A few months later, I'd lost about 30 pounds (depending when you start counting from) and I've kept it off. I figure I should document this, not necessarily because I think I've done something revolutionary and I want to tell the world, but more for my own benefit five years from now when real life has caught up to me and I've put on weight and feel like crap again. So, for your enjoyment:
THE MOST AWESOME WEIGHT-LOSS PLAN EVER
My brother was getting really annoyed with me when I started shedding pounds because he had been trying to lose weight and hadn't. He asked me what I was doing and I told him: diet, and exercise. He had been doing neither, so I wasn't surprised that he hadn't lost weight. He ate whatever he wanted, including going out for fried chicken tenders and fries about three times a week, and never did anything physical. And really, in a way, my awesome weight-loss plan was that simple. Diet and exercise.
Diet
When I made the decision to start losing weight, I realized that I didn't really DO anything physical (more on that in a moment). Without using any complicated calorie calculators or keeping a food journal or anything, I was able to see that. I kept it simple and decided that I would just eat a lot less, and at least for breakfast and lunch, I would keep it mostly to fruit and yogurt. I was working a 9-5 desk job so controlling portions during the day was easy: If I didn't bring it to work, I couldn't eat it. I also tended to wake up really late so controlling breakfast portions was no problem -- usually all I had time to do was grab a banana on my way out the door and quickly throw together my fruit-and-yogurt lunch.
I also drank a lot of green tea during the day.
Most days, I would be starving when I got home. I'd grab a quick, very light snack if I knew I'd be eating late, or otherwise I'd just hold out until dinner. Dinner was a much larger meal, and I aimed for some kind of protein (meat and/or beans), carbohydrate (rice, potatoes, or pasta), and vegetable. I tried to control portions and just eat my fill, which actually became easier the less I ate and the more I got used to my diet. Even though consuming most of your calories in one large meal is supposedly the exact opposite of what you want to do when you're dieting, I didn't have the restraint necessary to keep from eating big meals during the day, too. The moral there, I guess, is do what you need to do to keep from eating too much.
Most of the time, I'd have a glass of wine or two with or after dinner and maybe a SMALL bowl of ice cream. The nice thing was, portion control wasn't that hard because you actually remember what it feels like to be hungry, and of course, what it feels like to be full, instead of drifting all day in this nebulous "well, I COULD eat" phase (where you usually do, because why not).
I didn't deprive myself of foods I like, really, but I will say that after returning from Spain, really greasy and fatty food hasn't appealed to me that much. (The few fast-food burgers I have had in the 10 months since have left me feeling like I took a hook to the stomach from Sonny Holmes [yes, I know that's not a real boxer, but it makes sense to someone out there]). So that probably helped. But when I'd go out to eat, I'd just kind of eat whatever. I didn't go out a lot, but once a week I did go to my favorite bar in the Syracuse area and order a big ol' plate of "Scotchos" and chicken wings with one of my best friends, so there was that.
Exercise
I once heard that, when working out, you should "do what you hate the most." It might have been "do what you fear the most," but the message is the same either way because you would probably fear doing what you hate more than anything else.
I followed that advice and decided to try to start running. Any time I've ever belonged to or had access to a gym, it hasn't worked out because I've lacked the willpower to drive myself over there, shower after, change, etc. It's an ordeal. Running, though, is free. You can do it anywhere. You don't have to drive anywhere. You can shower in your own shower afterward and you can use your own towel. And you burn more calories per [time or distance unit of choice] than anything else. So I ran.
But part of the reason I chose to run was because I hate running. I had never run more than one mile in any one session, those miles were only done for school, and I had never finished in under about 8:45.
When I started running, I sucked. But I knew I sucked, so I decided to just run loops around my house. (I lived on a circular street about 0.4 miles in circumference.) I started slowly, trying to run a loop then walk a loop, doing as many as I could handle (or shooting for about 30-40 minutes) and making an effort to run at least as much as I walked. Over weeks, I crept up to run 1.5 loops walk 0.5 loops, and then I was trying to push myself by starting and ending my sessions with 2-loop runs. I was getting better but I never really thought I could do any sort of distance training (back to that soon).
I aimed to run three days a week, usually Monday/Wednesday/Friday but sometimes Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Whenever I did it, I tried to give myself a day's rest in between runs so I wouldn't get injured. (I should also mention I didn't kill myself trying to stretch every muscle in my body and simply stretched out a bit after my run, before I got in the shower.) On the other days, I sometimes took a short walk with my mom. I always, however, did pushups (and later, I added crunches as well). I started training with the hundredpushups program around the same time I started running. The workouts don't take long. While it's months later and I've kind of fallen behind and still haven't "done the hundred," I do pushups and situps every week and it's a nice way to keep active and build muscle on the days I'm not running. I feel a lot stronger in my upper body, my biceps have grown, and my chest has gotten tighter.
Eventually, I went for a run with Resident Girl (returning from her hiatus as Girl and before she became Resident Girl) and she said that I seemed like I was in good enough shape to start training for a half-marathon using the same program she had successfully finished in the spring. So, I did, and since I had already been sort of working my way into it for about 6-8 weeks, it wasn't difficult to get into, even though I had never tried running much more than 0.8 miles prior to starting the program.
Honestly, that's about it.
As I got into the training, I still ate well, and didn't eat as much as I used to, but I did recognize that as the runs got longer, I needed more calories in my body so I would eat slightly bigger lunches on run days (or carb-heavy dinners the nights before). Not that much more food, though. I would try to eat a piece of fruit in the afternoon a few hours before my run to give me some fuel (and as a snack to tide me over until dinner and give me some energy in the meantime). I still try to make healthy decisions, I don't drink that much, and I try not to eat out of the house as much as I used to. (Seriously, if you told me before I lost this weight that I'd be living within two miles of a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Domino's, a Pizza Hut with lunch buffet, an all-you-can-eat Indian food buffet, a Chipotle, a Taco Bell, and a Wegmans with a sub shop, and that a month into living here, I'd only been to Chipotle twice and Taco Bell once, I would have laughed in your face. Most of that food doesn't appeal to me that much anymore.) I buy lots of veggies and fruit to munch on, I have cheap granola cereal with lowfat yogurt most days for breakfast, and I snack on chips and hummus.
I'm out of gas here and need to shower before work, but I'm glad I got this on the record so I can kick my fat ass back into shape five years from now.
This would have seemed impossible to me about four months ago, as I was out of shape and really hated running. But for whatever reason, a few months ago I decided I was tired of feeling fat and eating like crap. I wore my weight pretty well but my good metabolism was bound to betray me at some point and I wanted to avoid that before things got out of hand.
A few months later, I'd lost about 30 pounds (depending when you start counting from) and I've kept it off. I figure I should document this, not necessarily because I think I've done something revolutionary and I want to tell the world, but more for my own benefit five years from now when real life has caught up to me and I've put on weight and feel like crap again. So, for your enjoyment:
THE MOST AWESOME WEIGHT-LOSS PLAN EVER
My brother was getting really annoyed with me when I started shedding pounds because he had been trying to lose weight and hadn't. He asked me what I was doing and I told him: diet, and exercise. He had been doing neither, so I wasn't surprised that he hadn't lost weight. He ate whatever he wanted, including going out for fried chicken tenders and fries about three times a week, and never did anything physical. And really, in a way, my awesome weight-loss plan was that simple. Diet and exercise.
Diet
When I made the decision to start losing weight, I realized that I didn't really DO anything physical (more on that in a moment). Without using any complicated calorie calculators or keeping a food journal or anything, I was able to see that. I kept it simple and decided that I would just eat a lot less, and at least for breakfast and lunch, I would keep it mostly to fruit and yogurt. I was working a 9-5 desk job so controlling portions during the day was easy: If I didn't bring it to work, I couldn't eat it. I also tended to wake up really late so controlling breakfast portions was no problem -- usually all I had time to do was grab a banana on my way out the door and quickly throw together my fruit-and-yogurt lunch.
I also drank a lot of green tea during the day.
Most days, I would be starving when I got home. I'd grab a quick, very light snack if I knew I'd be eating late, or otherwise I'd just hold out until dinner. Dinner was a much larger meal, and I aimed for some kind of protein (meat and/or beans), carbohydrate (rice, potatoes, or pasta), and vegetable. I tried to control portions and just eat my fill, which actually became easier the less I ate and the more I got used to my diet. Even though consuming most of your calories in one large meal is supposedly the exact opposite of what you want to do when you're dieting, I didn't have the restraint necessary to keep from eating big meals during the day, too. The moral there, I guess, is do what you need to do to keep from eating too much.
Most of the time, I'd have a glass of wine or two with or after dinner and maybe a SMALL bowl of ice cream. The nice thing was, portion control wasn't that hard because you actually remember what it feels like to be hungry, and of course, what it feels like to be full, instead of drifting all day in this nebulous "well, I COULD eat" phase (where you usually do, because why not).
I didn't deprive myself of foods I like, really, but I will say that after returning from Spain, really greasy and fatty food hasn't appealed to me that much. (The few fast-food burgers I have had in the 10 months since have left me feeling like I took a hook to the stomach from Sonny Holmes [yes, I know that's not a real boxer, but it makes sense to someone out there]). So that probably helped. But when I'd go out to eat, I'd just kind of eat whatever. I didn't go out a lot, but once a week I did go to my favorite bar in the Syracuse area and order a big ol' plate of "Scotchos" and chicken wings with one of my best friends, so there was that.
Exercise
I once heard that, when working out, you should "do what you hate the most." It might have been "do what you fear the most," but the message is the same either way because you would probably fear doing what you hate more than anything else.
I followed that advice and decided to try to start running. Any time I've ever belonged to or had access to a gym, it hasn't worked out because I've lacked the willpower to drive myself over there, shower after, change, etc. It's an ordeal. Running, though, is free. You can do it anywhere. You don't have to drive anywhere. You can shower in your own shower afterward and you can use your own towel. And you burn more calories per [time or distance unit of choice] than anything else. So I ran.
But part of the reason I chose to run was because I hate running. I had never run more than one mile in any one session, those miles were only done for school, and I had never finished in under about 8:45.
When I started running, I sucked. But I knew I sucked, so I decided to just run loops around my house. (I lived on a circular street about 0.4 miles in circumference.) I started slowly, trying to run a loop then walk a loop, doing as many as I could handle (or shooting for about 30-40 minutes) and making an effort to run at least as much as I walked. Over weeks, I crept up to run 1.5 loops walk 0.5 loops, and then I was trying to push myself by starting and ending my sessions with 2-loop runs. I was getting better but I never really thought I could do any sort of distance training (back to that soon).
I aimed to run three days a week, usually Monday/Wednesday/Friday but sometimes Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Whenever I did it, I tried to give myself a day's rest in between runs so I wouldn't get injured. (I should also mention I didn't kill myself trying to stretch every muscle in my body and simply stretched out a bit after my run, before I got in the shower.) On the other days, I sometimes took a short walk with my mom. I always, however, did pushups (and later, I added crunches as well). I started training with the hundredpushups program around the same time I started running. The workouts don't take long. While it's months later and I've kind of fallen behind and still haven't "done the hundred," I do pushups and situps every week and it's a nice way to keep active and build muscle on the days I'm not running. I feel a lot stronger in my upper body, my biceps have grown, and my chest has gotten tighter.
Eventually, I went for a run with Resident Girl (returning from her hiatus as Girl and before she became Resident Girl) and she said that I seemed like I was in good enough shape to start training for a half-marathon using the same program she had successfully finished in the spring. So, I did, and since I had already been sort of working my way into it for about 6-8 weeks, it wasn't difficult to get into, even though I had never tried running much more than 0.8 miles prior to starting the program.
Honestly, that's about it.
As I got into the training, I still ate well, and didn't eat as much as I used to, but I did recognize that as the runs got longer, I needed more calories in my body so I would eat slightly bigger lunches on run days (or carb-heavy dinners the nights before). Not that much more food, though. I would try to eat a piece of fruit in the afternoon a few hours before my run to give me some fuel (and as a snack to tide me over until dinner and give me some energy in the meantime). I still try to make healthy decisions, I don't drink that much, and I try not to eat out of the house as much as I used to. (Seriously, if you told me before I lost this weight that I'd be living within two miles of a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Domino's, a Pizza Hut with lunch buffet, an all-you-can-eat Indian food buffet, a Chipotle, a Taco Bell, and a Wegmans with a sub shop, and that a month into living here, I'd only been to Chipotle twice and Taco Bell once, I would have laughed in your face. Most of that food doesn't appeal to me that much anymore.) I buy lots of veggies and fruit to munch on, I have cheap granola cereal with lowfat yogurt most days for breakfast, and I snack on chips and hummus.
I'm out of gas here and need to shower before work, but I'm glad I got this on the record so I can kick my fat ass back into shape five years from now.
21 September 2010
Predictability and Repetition 19:25
Sometimes I feel like a lazy and uninventive* idiot when I play through video games I like. No matter how many times I play through certain games, I always wind up doing it the exact same way, no matter how hard I try to convince myself to do otherwise. You've probably done this, too, even if you're sitting there telling yourself that you don't and that you're much more creative and prone to diversity than I am.
A good example came when I was playing through Final Fantasy VI lately -- "Final Fantasy III" to the layperson, though the real Final Fantasy III is a very different (and also incredible) game. I set out to play through this masterpiece differently than I had before, using new characters and abilities to try to add to the challenge. But I got about ten hours in and realized that I was just using the exact same strategies I'd used to dominate the game many times over, and I stopped playing.
And this is all over the place. Even in games that purport to have great replay value due to the ease of diversity! I seem to always end up in the same ruts.
I remember sometime last year, a friend and I were hanging around watching my brother play Pokémon -- first generation, none of this elemental+color crap like "DIAMOND PURPLE" -- and he was slogging through the game for the 10th time that summer with the same old predictable crew: starting 'mon, Abra/Kadabra/Alakazam for most of the heavy lifting, Gengar, an Eevee evolution, and Gyrados and whatever feel-good benchwarmer he kept at the end of his lineup that happened to be able to learn Fly. I asked him what the point was of playing through this game for the hundredth time with the same exact strategy, knowing full well that after 10 or so hours (or less on TURBO MODE), he'd beat the game just like every other time.
He didn't know what to say.
My friend and I then gave my brother a challenge: use Game Genie codes or catch some 'mons and try to beat the game outside his normal formulaic approach to the game. He looked up the codes but balked and never did it. We, of course, suggested 'mons that were well outside the norm, like Muk and Mr. Mime and Rapidash and Seaking. Because that would be fun, right? Of course, we never did it either.
I think part of this is just a question of personality. My litmus test would be the Dynasty Warriors** games -- or at least the PS2-era incarnations of it. In these games, you walk around, and you kill everything. You do this until everything is killed, and then theboard level is beaten and you move on to the next one. There is a certain comforting, reassuring aspect to a game like that. You know that there is a clear goal, and with a reasonable amount of skill, you know you're going to get there. If you hate Dynasty Warriors or other similarly goal-oriented games, you probably wouldn't be the type of person who would like to play Pokémon 30 times with the same lineup, either.
I fall victim to this. I often like games that might be classified as being "too linear" because you don't have to think as much, and that might make me sound like a dullard but so be it. So I can see how my brother (and I) can fall into this trap. Going through something familiar with a familiar strategy is an almost guaranteed sense of reward.
So I don't know what to do about this.
I did pass off one of my devious plans to my brother: an "ultimate low-percentage run." A common game to fall into the old trap of beating it same way a zillion times is Mega Man. Of course, there's a lot of Elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors going on that forces your hand, but you can beat the stages in any order you want, really.
I told my brother that he had to beat Mega Man X au naturale, with no powerups or robot weapons or even dashing, thus making the game ridiculously, unnecessarily difficult. It took him ages to do, even with emulator savestates, but he eventually did finish the "ultimate low-percentage run" using only one weapon other than the X-buster -- the Rolling Shield, required to beat the last boss. It was awesome and, of course, added some of the Spice of Life to his gaming experience that would have normally begun with Chill Penguin and ended with an anticlimactic final battle.
I think I would be well-served by trying some more ultimate low-percentage runs in life.
* - That's not a word? Really?
** - I will, if possible, from now on, link to things that the audience might not be familiar with via tvtropes rather than "the other Wiki" in order to try to get the world to realize how amazing tvtropes really is.
A good example came when I was playing through Final Fantasy VI lately -- "Final Fantasy III" to the layperson, though the real Final Fantasy III is a very different (and also incredible) game. I set out to play through this masterpiece differently than I had before, using new characters and abilities to try to add to the challenge. But I got about ten hours in and realized that I was just using the exact same strategies I'd used to dominate the game many times over, and I stopped playing.
And this is all over the place. Even in games that purport to have great replay value due to the ease of diversity! I seem to always end up in the same ruts.
I remember sometime last year, a friend and I were hanging around watching my brother play Pokémon -- first generation, none of this elemental+color crap like "DIAMOND PURPLE" -- and he was slogging through the game for the 10th time that summer with the same old predictable crew: starting 'mon, Abra/Kadabra/Alakazam for most of the heavy lifting, Gengar, an Eevee evolution, and Gyrados and whatever feel-good benchwarmer he kept at the end of his lineup that happened to be able to learn Fly. I asked him what the point was of playing through this game for the hundredth time with the same exact strategy, knowing full well that after 10 or so hours (or less on TURBO MODE), he'd beat the game just like every other time.
He didn't know what to say.
My friend and I then gave my brother a challenge: use Game Genie codes or catch some 'mons and try to beat the game outside his normal formulaic approach to the game. He looked up the codes but balked and never did it. We, of course, suggested 'mons that were well outside the norm, like Muk and Mr. Mime and Rapidash and Seaking. Because that would be fun, right? Of course, we never did it either.
I think part of this is just a question of personality. My litmus test would be the Dynasty Warriors** games -- or at least the PS2-era incarnations of it. In these games, you walk around, and you kill everything. You do this until everything is killed, and then the
I fall victim to this. I often like games that might be classified as being "too linear" because you don't have to think as much, and that might make me sound like a dullard but so be it. So I can see how my brother (and I) can fall into this trap. Going through something familiar with a familiar strategy is an almost guaranteed sense of reward.
So I don't know what to do about this.
I did pass off one of my devious plans to my brother: an "ultimate low-percentage run." A common game to fall into the old trap of beating it same way a zillion times is Mega Man. Of course, there's a lot of Elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors going on that forces your hand, but you can beat the stages in any order you want, really.
I told my brother that he had to beat Mega Man X au naturale, with no powerups or robot weapons or even dashing, thus making the game ridiculously, unnecessarily difficult. It took him ages to do, even with emulator savestates, but he eventually did finish the "ultimate low-percentage run" using only one weapon other than the X-buster -- the Rolling Shield, required to beat the last boss. It was awesome and, of course, added some of the Spice of Life to his gaming experience that would have normally begun with Chill Penguin and ended with an anticlimactic final battle.
I think I would be well-served by trying some more ultimate low-percentage runs in life.
* - That's not a word? Really?
** - I will, if possible, from now on, link to things that the audience might not be familiar with via tvtropes rather than "the other Wiki" in order to try to get the world to realize how amazing tvtropes really is.
Genesis 18:45
I have been in a bit of a funk lately and I've basically realized that I've washed up on the shores of real life without a clue as to who I am or what I should be doing. I realize that I now find myself in the very unique position of being a twenty-something who doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. Still, it's a real predicament. The last almost 20 years have been spent being little more than a professional student. Now that I've (at least temporarily) retired from that position, I have this sense like everything I've once liked is gone and I don't know what the heck to do with myself, even in leisure time.
Sure, I have hobbies. I love to watch and follow sports. That's easy enough to do. But aside from that? I like gaming... but old-school stuff. I have logged FAR more hours on my N64 over the last few years than I have on my XBOX360 (or that of someone with whom I live). That's not a bad thing -- I'm a cheap date when it comes to video games -- but I feel silly continually playing through the same handful of classic RPGs and platformers I've loved since I was a kid. The world contains lots of NEW knowledge; too much to spend cooped up appreciating games made when I was eight years old.
My other principal interests are tough to pursue as a borderline-broke twenty-something living in a cheap apartment: travel, fine wines, and playing the French horn. (Too expensive, too expensive, and too loud, respectively.)
(I love good music and films but I can't bring myself to be so trite as to actually say "I like movies and music." Oh, really? That's so fascinating. Let me guess: oxygen and water are also high on your list.)
I'm also interested in physical fitness and keeping myself thin and healthy but that's more of a lifestyle choice than an interest and I'd sort of like to keep it that way. Kind of like how one can be Christian and believe in Jesus, or be Christian and believe in JEE-zus. With respect to fitness, I'm the former.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that, now that school's over, I feel like my identity is gone, and since I've done little more than dip my toe into other fields and passions, I'm left without many other true passions to sink my teeth into, except writing lengthy self-examinations with too many "justs" and tired clichés like "sink my teeth into".
So that's what I'm going to do. My goal is to try to find myself -- a career goal, a wonderful hobby, inner peace (and world peace?) -- by writing in here. Hopefully, something will jump out at me, both for me to latch onto and for me to gain a small but rabid fanbase writing about. As was once said about about Will Leitch's "Ten Humans" column, this may or may not work.
Oh, almost forgot, I like Spanish too. I need to practice Spanish more, so we're going to have to have some posts in Spanish up in hrrr. Deal with it.
Sure, I have hobbies. I love to watch and follow sports. That's easy enough to do. But aside from that? I like gaming... but old-school stuff. I have logged FAR more hours on my N64 over the last few years than I have on my XBOX360 (or that of someone with whom I live). That's not a bad thing -- I'm a cheap date when it comes to video games -- but I feel silly continually playing through the same handful of classic RPGs and platformers I've loved since I was a kid. The world contains lots of NEW knowledge; too much to spend cooped up appreciating games made when I was eight years old.
My other principal interests are tough to pursue as a borderline-broke twenty-something living in a cheap apartment: travel, fine wines, and playing the French horn. (Too expensive, too expensive, and too loud, respectively.)
(I love good music and films but I can't bring myself to be so trite as to actually say "I like movies and music." Oh, really? That's so fascinating. Let me guess: oxygen and water are also high on your list.)
I'm also interested in physical fitness and keeping myself thin and healthy but that's more of a lifestyle choice than an interest and I'd sort of like to keep it that way. Kind of like how one can be Christian and believe in Jesus, or be Christian and believe in JEE-zus. With respect to fitness, I'm the former.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that, now that school's over, I feel like my identity is gone, and since I've done little more than dip my toe into other fields and passions, I'm left without many other true passions to sink my teeth into, except writing lengthy self-examinations with too many "justs" and tired clichés like "sink my teeth into".
So that's what I'm going to do. My goal is to try to find myself -- a career goal, a wonderful hobby, inner peace (and world peace?) -- by writing in here. Hopefully, something will jump out at me, both for me to latch onto and for me to gain a small but rabid fanbase writing about. As was once said about about Will Leitch's "Ten Humans" column, this may or may not work.
Oh, almost forgot, I like Spanish too. I need to practice Spanish more, so we're going to have to have some posts in Spanish up in hrrr. Deal with it.
16 September 2010
Speed-running 18:07
A favorite non-hobby of mine is video-game "speed-runs." I say "non-hobby" because I have never actually tried one myself. As of now, I just watch and enjoy. These things are recordings made by people who are just messing around, trying to make a name for themselves by beating video games, old and new, as fast as possible.
They fall into two categories, each with its own sort of home site and governing board. Natural runs can't be played on an emulator and generally discourage -- or at least make note of -- large-scale glitching and cheating. The best site for them is at Speed Demos Archive. I like these guys perhaps a little better because they're done without computer or emulator assistance. But sometimes, these videos do seem a little bit lame compared to their tool-assisted cousins, who reside all over YouTube and the internet but are governed well by the folks at TASvideos. The tool-assisted videos do use emulators to slow the games down and achieve absolute inhuman perfection, be it through manipulating normally impossible-to-control luck or executing frame-perfect moves that would normally be too risky... or sometimes just doing really, really weird stuff.
Some of my favorite runs are based on favorite games of mine as a kid. The Mega Man games have a sizable following, as do most platformers. If I had to choose one run in particular from each category, Super Metroid in 32 minutes is pretty impressive for a natural run, and Super Mario 64 completed with 0 stars is pretty hilariously amazing on the tool-assisted side.
A year or so of enjoying these movies and following the progress on certain games has understandably given me a bit of an itch to want to try this myself. I think if I did it, it would have to be on the natural side -- I love and respect the tool-assisted runs a lot but I am not sure if I possess the technical know-how or the patience to grasp the art form's (HA!) steep learning curve.
Also, the marks on the very popular games (Mario, Zelda, etc.) are impossibly low. So I kind of want to try a game that isn't already listed at SDA. My plan would be to practice for a few weeks on an emulator, and then when I go home, grab my Super NES or N64 (and a VCR) and get to "work". A huge part of these things, beyond the obvious complete mastery of the game in question, is planning and executing the most time-efficient route.
My initial thoughts:
Cool Spot
This is a Super NES game I loved as a kid, and it seems like a modest platform game that I'm honestly surprised nobody has tried yet. For those curious, you control the former 7up mascot, that red dot with the sunglasses, and shoot little bursts of 7up at things and collect "Cool Points" to save your identical Spot buddies from incarceration. While remembered mostly for its engaging plot* and certainly not for being a shallow marketing ploy by the folks at 7up, it's kind of a fun game, it has cool music, and it's one that I think I could really master given the chance.
Bubsy
Another SNES platform game, this one featuring an extremely fragile bobcat as the protagonist who starts with, hm, nine lives. The game seems made for speed, as Bubsy could run really quickly and the game loved to race forward, but doing that unprepared was basically suicide because, good Lord, any one hit in this game and you're dead. "Yikes," as Bubsy and our good friend Mike both love to comment. Bubsy 2 was a little more fair with three hit points, and neither has a run on SDA, so that's a possibility, too.
Eek! The Cat
Another cat-based platformer, I got this dog of a game from my grandma for my eighth birthday or something, and I was stoked because I liked the cartoon. This is easily one of the worst games I have ever played... basically, you don't just guide Eek! to the exit of each stage. Rather, you need to push and kick an old lady out of harm's way and get HER to the exit before her health runs out. She is constantly walking forward and this is even more unbelievably frustrating than it sounds. If that's even possible. Put it this way: I consider myself a pretty strong gamer, and I never made it past the first "world" of this game**. If I tried now, I like to think that I'd be able to, with another couple years' worth of wisdom under my belt. The only reason this might be an impossible game is because the damn thing has maybe the darkest, dingiest graphics of the 16-bit era (before the N64 really raised -- lowered? -- the bar in that department).
Any other suggestions would be welcome. This was really just a brainstorm for me.
* - not really
** - despite never making it past the zoo world of Eek!, I can sing -- from memory -- the music from the second world of the game, which you could listen to in the options menu. This is one of the most embarrassing iterations of my most useless talent: an ability to remember video game music from my childhood EXTREMELY well (but struggling now to remember why I walked into a room).
They fall into two categories, each with its own sort of home site and governing board. Natural runs can't be played on an emulator and generally discourage -- or at least make note of -- large-scale glitching and cheating. The best site for them is at Speed Demos Archive. I like these guys perhaps a little better because they're done without computer or emulator assistance. But sometimes, these videos do seem a little bit lame compared to their tool-assisted cousins, who reside all over YouTube and the internet but are governed well by the folks at TASvideos. The tool-assisted videos do use emulators to slow the games down and achieve absolute inhuman perfection, be it through manipulating normally impossible-to-control luck or executing frame-perfect moves that would normally be too risky... or sometimes just doing really, really weird stuff.
Some of my favorite runs are based on favorite games of mine as a kid. The Mega Man games have a sizable following, as do most platformers. If I had to choose one run in particular from each category, Super Metroid in 32 minutes is pretty impressive for a natural run, and Super Mario 64 completed with 0 stars is pretty hilariously amazing on the tool-assisted side.
A year or so of enjoying these movies and following the progress on certain games has understandably given me a bit of an itch to want to try this myself. I think if I did it, it would have to be on the natural side -- I love and respect the tool-assisted runs a lot but I am not sure if I possess the technical know-how or the patience to grasp the art form's (HA!) steep learning curve.
Also, the marks on the very popular games (Mario, Zelda, etc.) are impossibly low. So I kind of want to try a game that isn't already listed at SDA. My plan would be to practice for a few weeks on an emulator, and then when I go home, grab my Super NES or N64 (and a VCR) and get to "work". A huge part of these things, beyond the obvious complete mastery of the game in question, is planning and executing the most time-efficient route.
My initial thoughts:
Cool Spot
This is a Super NES game I loved as a kid, and it seems like a modest platform game that I'm honestly surprised nobody has tried yet. For those curious, you control the former 7up mascot, that red dot with the sunglasses, and shoot little bursts of 7up at things and collect "Cool Points" to save your identical Spot buddies from incarceration. While remembered mostly for its engaging plot* and certainly not for being a shallow marketing ploy by the folks at 7up, it's kind of a fun game, it has cool music, and it's one that I think I could really master given the chance.
Bubsy
Another SNES platform game, this one featuring an extremely fragile bobcat as the protagonist who starts with, hm, nine lives. The game seems made for speed, as Bubsy could run really quickly and the game loved to race forward, but doing that unprepared was basically suicide because, good Lord, any one hit in this game and you're dead. "Yikes," as Bubsy and our good friend Mike both love to comment. Bubsy 2 was a little more fair with three hit points, and neither has a run on SDA, so that's a possibility, too.
Eek! The Cat
Another cat-based platformer, I got this dog of a game from my grandma for my eighth birthday or something, and I was stoked because I liked the cartoon. This is easily one of the worst games I have ever played... basically, you don't just guide Eek! to the exit of each stage. Rather, you need to push and kick an old lady out of harm's way and get HER to the exit before her health runs out. She is constantly walking forward and this is even more unbelievably frustrating than it sounds. If that's even possible. Put it this way: I consider myself a pretty strong gamer, and I never made it past the first "world" of this game**. If I tried now, I like to think that I'd be able to, with another couple years' worth of wisdom under my belt. The only reason this might be an impossible game is because the damn thing has maybe the darkest, dingiest graphics of the 16-bit era (before the N64 really raised -- lowered? -- the bar in that department).
Any other suggestions would be welcome. This was really just a brainstorm for me.
* - not really
** - despite never making it past the zoo world of Eek!, I can sing -- from memory -- the music from the second world of the game, which you could listen to in the options menu. This is one of the most embarrassing iterations of my most useless talent: an ability to remember video game music from my childhood EXTREMELY well (but struggling now to remember why I walked into a room).
07 September 2010
SCAM'D 19:14
I finally did get a response to one of my job applications last Thursday morning. I wasn't kidding - I was as thrilled as I thought I'd be. For about a second.
The interview request was a poorly written email promising me $17 per hour if I could just enroll for this credit-reporting site and give them my credit card number. But I thought maybe, just maybe this was a legitimate company, so I did a little research on the company. I can't link to the site because it's already gone (it was www.ply-corp) but I looked it up and turns out it had been registered earlier that same day... in the Bahamas. The website was also curiously vague about what this company actually DID, and the hiring manager was a little TOO attractive to be believable. And there was no reference to the company ANYWHERE on Google. Hm.
Oh, and I found the job listing on craigslist, which should have been my first hint.
So I wrote an email back saying thanks but no thanks, and forgot about it.
Fortunately, I DO have a job tending bar and I have another interview on Friday so that didn't matter but I'm really glad I'm not a total sucker.
The interview request was a poorly written email promising me $17 per hour if I could just enroll for this credit-reporting site and give them my credit card number. But I thought maybe, just maybe this was a legitimate company, so I did a little research on the company. I can't link to the site because it's already gone (it was www.ply-corp) but I looked it up and turns out it had been registered earlier that same day... in the Bahamas. The website was also curiously vague about what this company actually DID, and the hiring manager was a little TOO attractive to be believable. And there was no reference to the company ANYWHERE on Google. Hm.
Oh, and I found the job listing on craigslist, which should have been my first hint.
So I wrote an email back saying thanks but no thanks, and forgot about it.
Fortunately, I DO have a job tending bar and I have another interview on Friday so that didn't matter but I'm really glad I'm not a total sucker.
01 September 2010
The Syracuse episode of Man vs. Food: One Syracusan's Take 22:09
Note: Cross-posted from Nunes Magician...
This was a pretty run-of-the-mill episode... not terrible, not great. I thought they did the Dinosaur justice (though I wish they'd have mentioned the Today show thing that ranked it #1), and Heid's with Jim Boeheim was, of course, fantastic even knowing it was coming. I've never been to Mother's Cupboard so I don't want to comment on that... what'd the Nuneseratti think?
Minor Gripes:
- Have you SEEN Onondaga Lake, Adam? Not exactly pristine, and calling Syracuse a "lakefront" town is generous as I think most Syracusans prefer to pretend Onondaga Lake doesn't exist and only acknowledge it by rolling up their windows and going to Lights on the Lake.
- Also, it's not a Finger Lake and it's not pronounced OWN-ondaga.
- What was the lacrosse thing all about, besides being a blatant filler and shameless plug for SU? (In the next episode it showed a picture of him playing lacrosse as a kid but they made no reference to that in the Syracuse show)
- Would have loved to have seen a trip to the Hill—where would he have gone? I'd vote Acropolis, I guess.
31 August 2010
General mind dump 22:38
- It bothers me when people don't add target="new" to their links on blogs or whatever; that just strikes me as lazy web design. I don't want my links to open in the same window/tab as the thing I'm trying to read because I'll lose my place. Resident Girl thinks that it's better without target="new" because "you can just press backspace" to get back to where you were, which I disagree with completely. I have made such a habit of opening links with "Open link in new tab..." because I don't even like to tempt fate and find out whether or the current site is a target="new" fan or not.
- The most common grammatical error I see online is a complete ignorance of the difference between "its" and "it's". Lots of blogs are offenders, but one of the worst also happens to be one of my favorite sites. This is so exceedingly simple and there are so many grammatical mix-ups that are more complicated than this that most people nail. It's = it is. Without going into any sort of lecture about what a contraction or a possessive pronoun is, one can learn the difference that simply. If you could substitute "it is" for the word, use "it's". Otherwise, use "its" (which is the possessive). It's time to put this book back in its place.
(Note: I would be a horrible example-sentence writer for a textbook, but we used to like coming up with nonsensical word problems. "Jonah has three red marbles, seven blue marbles, and one green marble in his pocket. If Marty rarely bathes, what time will the train reach Poughkeepsie?" Of course, Netflix ripped this off with their "bonus round" radio commercials, which don't seem to live on YouTube.) - I am afraid when I write cover letters that, if I punctuate some compound noun or adjective correctly, the person on the other end might not know correct hyphenation rules and mistakenly think that I hyphenated incorrectly. You know, that didn't sound as conceited when I was thinking it.
- What's Britney doing with her life?
- So glad I can finally dust off the ol' "hyphens" tag
- On the front of an old record album I bought, there was a singer listed as "Dick Hyman." This is sort of an old record so it was probably made back when there were actually still people named Dick without a shred of irony, but... come on. You have to laugh at that. My mom did, so I didn't feel as silly or immature.
Where to work?! 21:13
Free blogging time! Want to bring this sucker back to life—again—but not sure what to do so whatever comes to mind will be written. (It is written.)
I've moved to a new city, once again far beyond the Vale of Onondaga, and I'm looking for a job. Not as fun as it sounds. I'm starting to feel a bit like the Wagon Fulla Pancakes and the Cheat as down-on-your-luck salesmen with all the rejections I'm getting. Actually, I'm not getting rejected. I'm getting nothing. I guess it's easier to just ignore something this day and age, where everything is done via email or fax, but it's frustrating no less. I've been applying to places all summer and have gotten nothing. I'm at the point where I would love an email back—any email back.
THAT EMAIL WOULD MAKE MY DAY BECAUSE IT MEANS THAT SOMEONE HAS READ AND CONSIDERED MY APPLICATION. In addition to responding to every conceivable anonymous post on craigslist (jobs section only, not getting freaky), I've started driving around and just looking for "Help Wanted" signs. Crude, but effective. It's hard to straight-up ignore someone who's in your face asking for an application, but it is easy to feign a language barrier if you work in a Japanese restaurant*. Based on what I've found and applied for... or something...
JOB OPTIONS
There are lots more but I'm about spent here. Any awesome suggestions for where I should work?
* - yes, I know the Seinfeld host is Chinese.
I've moved to a new city, once again far beyond the Vale of Onondaga, and I'm looking for a job. Not as fun as it sounds. I'm starting to feel a bit like the Wagon Fulla Pancakes and the Cheat as down-on-your-luck salesmen with all the rejections I'm getting. Actually, I'm not getting rejected. I'm getting nothing. I guess it's easier to just ignore something this day and age, where everything is done via email or fax, but it's frustrating no less. I've been applying to places all summer and have gotten nothing. I'm at the point where I would love an email back—any email back.
Dear Applicant:
Are you serious with this resume? Financial intern? What the hell does that even mean? You graduated with a useless degree for this position, you have no relevant experience, and we have no interest in ever hiring you, or even so much as hearing from you again. Ever. If you so much as attempt to contact our office regarding this opening, we will have our friends Sal and Vito pay you and your family a visit. If we were you, we'd just drop dead, you worthless sack of crap.
Respectfully,
Some Hiring Manager
THAT EMAIL WOULD MAKE MY DAY BECAUSE IT MEANS THAT SOMEONE HAS READ AND CONSIDERED MY APPLICATION. In addition to responding to every conceivable anonymous post on craigslist (jobs section only, not getting freaky), I've started driving around and just looking for "Help Wanted" signs. Crude, but effective. It's hard to straight-up ignore someone who's in your face asking for an application, but it is easy to feign a language barrier if you work in a Japanese restaurant*. Based on what I've found and applied for... or something...
JOB OPTIONS
- Dollar Tree (or, as Ms. Junkins called it, the "DS")
PROS
Getting to secretly make fun of every customer for being poor;
It's right down the street—don't know if that bodes well for where I live or not;
Employee discount!!! Hello, Fig Newtons for only 72¢!
CONS
General Dollar Tree stench;
Only sell off-brand Oreos;
No quality, American-made merchandise in there! - GameStop
PROS
Employee discount—seriously this time. I could buy all the Insane Clown Posse crap I want, and it'd probably be, like, part of my job to play the latest games, man;
The place is air-conditioned and it closes at the reasonable hour of 21:00 (and doesn't open until like 11:00);
I could embrace my inner geek and do things like play the Final Fantasy XIII battle-music French-horn lick without fear of societal repercussions (not that I'd ever do that, even in private)...
CONS
The general Creatures that inhabit that place—have you ever spent any time in there? It's not good, and they tend to try to make the clerks their best friend;
Midnight releases of select titles would cause me to come home late at night, reeking of Red Bull and Slim Jims to boot;
I would become bitter and look at my customers as caricatures of their actual selves as I judge through my preconceived notions (obviously, as it's already started) - Some law firm I applied to on craigslist that didn't give out its name
PROS
Probably get paid pretty well as a paralegal/secretary/clerk-type dealie-o;
All the legal pads I could ever want (which is huge for me);
Poder hablar en español si es necesario
CONS
Knowing that any one single coworker will probably make more money any given day than I'll make in a year;
Knowing that any one single coworker will probably make more money any given year than I'll make in a decade;
Becoming resigned to this fact and starting a life as a career secretary for rich dudes - The local, big-city Symphony Orchestra
PROS
Getting to be around something I love and have a passion for;
Free concerts from an amazing performing group;
Working in the city proper, giving me a real local flavor;
Getting to work WITH people and not FOR them or in their assistance
CONS
Working with INCONSIDERATE JERKS WHO DO NOT REPLY TO CALLS OR EMAILS NO I'M NOT BITTER - The Airport
PROS
Perpetually singing the airport action-scene music from Dumb and Dumber like we did in Europe when we were late for a flight;
Being somewhere where people openly expect to be miserable and have to deal with horrible customer service, thus greatly lowering expectations for me and my coworkers;
Airplane jokes!
CONS
Perpetually thinking that I'm the very personification of Guster's Airport Song (ignore the weird music video)—"you'll be sellin' books at the airport"... ¡Viva Hudson News!
Dealing with stressed-out travelers;
Having to constantly remember whether or not "travelers" has one or two L's
There are lots more but I'm about spent here. Any awesome suggestions for where I should work?
* - yes, I know the Seinfeld host is Chinese.