Free Lunch

Tomorrow I have an off-site thing for most of the day. Well, it is actually only three hours, but there is two and a half hours of driving, too.
I got kind of roped into being responsible for a particular technology at work.
And by "roped into" I mean I wasn't paying attention when my boss asked for a volunteer.
But so far being in charge of this thing has been pretty low-impact. I have no formal training in it, but I can pick my way around the interface like a professional now.
Anyway, apparently the company which makes it is hosting a "training class" tomorrow in North Carolina and since being up to date with the latest developments in this platform is a key component in our technology strategy I have to drive there first thing in the morning. It didn't hurt that it isn't costing my company anything.
I'm generally suspicious of anything free, and this training class is no exception.
The fact that the registration form included questions about products we haven't decided to use is a pretty solid tip-off that this whole thing is more sales pitch than training class.
A bigger hint was that the host invited my co-worker and I to lunch within ten minutes of our registration this morning.
The fact that I'm a consultant with no purchase-making authority pretty much makes this a giant waste of time for all involved.
I also have a suspicion that the technology they will be pitching is one which I used at a past job and really completely don't like.
The whole thing sounds completely not fun, but we pretty much have no choice but to attend.
We have, however, decided to attempt to make it as interesting as possible.
There is officially $10 going to whichever of us can go the longest without speaking to the sales guys during lunch.
I have my strategy already mapped out. When asked a direct question, I plan to repose the question to my co-worker. If asked a general question, I will maintain stony silence or pretend to respond to a text message.
I plan to spend my $10 on lunch Friday since it is wings day in the cafeteria.

NERDS!

Saturday night Gwynyth spent the night at a friend's house and Shana and I attended the annual IS Social for work at a hotel downtown.
I had no idea there were so many people in IS here. I'm also not entirely sure what "IS" stands for, though I suspect it is "Information Services".
Whatever IS is, the theme was "A Cosmic Event" and the hotel ballroom was filled with hundreds of nerds -- Quite a few of them dressed in science fiction costumes.
Shana and I participated. Though I'm pretty sure I mentioned it prior to our arrival, Shana seemed surprised when we showed up and she noticed that business casual was an option.
Our Firefly costumes probably need a couple of extra weeks of prep, so we were unable to put that together in time. Fortunately, it isn't like we don't have other science fiction costumes.
My team was lightly represented, so we didn't actually win the costume competition which was judged solely based on crowd noise. The cash bar numbed the pain of loss nicely. An "R2-D2", at $5.25, is made of Diet Coke and one of those adorable mini bottles of rum.
There were casino tables set up and fake cash for betting, though we didn't actually make use of any of that.
I think the most popular costume choice of the evening was a reflection of our uncertain financial times. A red shirt and black pants is not only inexpensive, it works well with a sign on the back reading "expendable".
Depressing? A bit.
But my manager had an ample supply of liquor in his room so my concern level was pretty offensively low.
"You wanna play with my lightsaber?" was the question of the evening, though it generally is at most social gatherings involving co-workers.
I've made a game of avoiding this kind of event for about the past ten years. However, there hasn't been a time in the past decade when the dress code specifically allowed for Jedi robes.
Most awesomely, ours was not the only gathering at that hotel on Saturday night.
While a few hundred nerds were wearing glowing antennae and greeting one another with the traditional Vulcan wave, a conference of high school cheerleaders spent the evening being freaked out about the whole thing.
It had been a long time since I horrified a high school cheerleader with nerdiness and I didn't even realize how much I'd missed it.
Live long and prosper, Tiffany.

Misinterpreted Intentions

Disclaimer: This is another World of Warcraft post. However, the post is less about the game itself than the delicate web of human interaction it reflects.
I've been playing World of Warcraft for quite some time now. As a result, I've met a lot of people from all over. Some are total jerks, to be fair, but a lot more of them are actually very nice.
Wednesday night I was invited to participate in a raid of the capitol cities of the opposing faction. Wednesday night is not a raid night for my guild, so I jumped at the chance.
One of the latest features of the game is an Achievement system which tracks all the characters and grants points for doing specific things in-game.
Get a haircut? 10 points.
Complete a dungeon? 10 points.
Defeat the final big bad guy in a dungeon while juggling lemurs? Another 10 points.
There are achievements related to killing the leaders of the opposing faction. Each is worth 10 points for a total of 40 -- Plus there is another achievement for defeating all 4 which is 20 points and a personal letter from the leader of the Horde including a super-fast awesome exclusive riding bear. 60 points and a freaking bear? I'm so in.
The difficulty in this achievement is that once you start attacking one city, the opposing players group up at the next one to try to stop you. This makes each kill increasingly more difficult when you try to do them all in the same night.
However, we had a pretty good group of forty semi-dedicated Player-versus-Player specialists. Most of them I did not know, but I happened to be grouped with Vallyra.
Vallyra and Webinara were in the same guild for over a year. From voice chat, I learned that she is an actual girl from New Zeland who plays on a US East Coast server because her work schedule is weird or something. Raiding at level 70 with Vallyra and voice chat is a lot like having Olivia Newton-John tell you, "Stop standing in the fire, n00b!" When our guild dissolved we ended up in different ones and really only see each other in passing now, though we usually stop to offer a wave and right-click > Inspect for the opportunity to offer congratulations on new epic awesome super gear.
Vallyra had attempted this achievement before and only needed one city to complete it.
I insisted that we hit that city first so that she could leave afterward and do her thing.
I will spare you a complete description of just how, specifically, we obliterated the human King of Stormwind and sum it up by saying that it was over remarkably quickly. He did not suffer and we teleported away to leave the citizens of Stormwind to grieve with dignity.
Vallyra did not leave, though. She opted to help us out at the next city.
Staging 40 people for a long ride into hostile territory takes a while and the average WoW player is short of attention span, so there was a lot of goofing around at our start point. Players would dance and duel each other and cook weird things and flirt with animals. Typical stuff, really.
Anyway, Vallyra challenged Webinara to a duel.
Webinara has been challenged to plenty of duels and she has always declined them. I always assume that the person doing the challenging must have some reason for this confidence and being defeated in a duel just sounds not fun to me.
But Vallyra is someone I would consider a friend, and I felt certain that this challenge was just a good-natured way to spend a few minutes waiting for the others to arrive.
For the first time ever in years of playing, I accepted a request to duel.
Vallyra is nice enough, but I'm not about losing.
Webinara unleashed the full arsenal of her abilities as though Vallyra had personally insulted her parentage.
Having similar gear quality, I expected us to be pretty evenly matched. It did not work out that way at all.
From her first attack, Webinara mercilessly ground Vallyra into the dust. Webinara took absolutely no damage at all, but dished out a ton. Explosive arrows, poisonous arrows, flaming traps, angry insects, literally every trick in Webinara's book was triggered with a few keystrokes.
And winning a duel? 10 points.
The hardcore Player-versus-Player crowd around Webinara laughed since most of them got that particular Achievement within minutes of the implementation of the Achievement system.
I was still feeling pretty good. Webinara had overcome a literal challenge. And 10 points is 10 points.
Then I got the whisper from Vallyra,"Oops. I meant to right-click you and select "follow" because I needed to step away for a sec and I accidentally hit "duel" instead."
I possibly feel worse about earning those 10 points than any other 10 points I've ever gotten.
Even worse than the 10 for blowing up a bunch of turkeys or the 10 for poisoning a virtual well.
But the bear Webinara got in the mail about an hour later did a lot to make me feel better.

What I'm Reading

As I've mentioned several times, I don't have any patience for reading books which would be considered, in literary circles, "good".
I read junk. Popcorn fiction. Dragons, magic, laser swords, ninjas, killer robots, etc.
I wouldn't classify most of it as bad, really. The dramatic elements are generally all the same, the characters are alike enough to sometimes confuse from book to book and author to author and the plot twists are telegraphed from the opening lines or (in a style which makes me shudder and yet fills me with comfortable warmth) just a few lines before the twist itself as though the author forgot until that very moment.
It's all pulp. It was written to sell books, not stand as an example of art for all time.
While not written during the initial glut of books published during the Great Depression with the apparent purpose of amusing people in bread lines, Death in Delhi by Gary Gygax is a tribute to them. Of course, it is impossible to know whether the tribute is intentional.
It does lack the weird imperialist leanings of Burroughs and Howard.
In the Tarzan or John Carter Mars books, it can pretty much be assumed that the white guy just does things better than all the uncivilized people around him who need a good conquering. The Conan and Bran Mak Morn stories were almost a rebellion against western european entitlement stories -- The problem being that they are no less archaic in their perceptions on racial equality. I can forgive either since that is just an artifact of the time they were written. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer can be pretty offensive, too. The fact that Twain's books are considered classics doesn't give them any more of a pass than the pulp writers get. It must be noted that his Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was pretty close to pulp fantasy itself.
The protagonist in Death in Delhi is an Ægyptian wizard/priest/private investigator. He is capable of solving most crimes through his use of magic but he mostly seems to just observe things better than most. This is the same technique Sherlock Holmes used. The characters even share the same distance from the reader. Holmes works on an almost supernatural level. Watson, masquerading as the sidekick and narrator, primarily exists to bridge that distance.
In Death in Delhi, the sidekick more blatantly does the same, though she also kicks a lot of ass.
The bad guys are cliched Thuggee assassins. I'm convinced this is deliberately cartoony like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or The Stranglers of Bombay (1960 - In Strangloscope!). If he were going for historical accuracy, they would have been a lot scarier (since the cult of Kali was reported to have killed over 20,000 people at the height of British occupation) or non-existant (since a lot of current research indicates they never existed and were a fabrication of the Imperialist movement).
This is not the first Gary Gygax novel I've read. I actually started with his Greyhawk series sometime before middle school. To be honest, it isn't literature. It also doesn't ever pretend to be and I can appreciate that. This book, and all I've read by him, are just supposed to be fun.
Just like Dungeons and Dragons (which Gygax helped to create), this isn't a history lesson. This is fantasy mixed with modern conveniences slightly skewed by magic and pop culture references.
During his time working in various game companies, Gygax became famous among the gaming community for his not-interviews. He frequently picked up job candidates and drove them to lunch. During the drive, he'd ask off-the-resume questions about jobs outside the industry, books and movies recently enjoyed or hated and activities unrelated to gaming.
The opinion is that he didn't want game designers or editors working for him who took it too seriously and weren't well-rounded enough to make things fun.
James Lowder said thirty minutes of his not-interview centered around his days laying asphalt.
As they finally arrived at the restaurant for lunch, Gygax told him, "You do what you have to do to feed your family and then, if you're lucky, you get to do what you love for the rest of your life."
It is obvious, in reading this novel, that Gygax had a lot of love for what he did. Skill? Maybe. Love? Most definitely.
I would rather read something someone enjoyed writing than just about anything else.

I'm a Demographic

Sesame Street, and the associated Muppets who practically raised me, taught me that one of the most important things I can do is just be myself.
As I matured, I came to appreciate the fact that "be" is not an active verb, really. There is no associated action with "being one's self". It just happens, without effort (something I embrace) and following one's interests and beliefs leads organically to this Muppet-endorsed feeling of selfness.
As someone who has always revered individuality, I tend to notice when someone misses the target when trying to market to me.
When I watch TV, I absolutely love seeing commercials for things which I would never, ever purchase because it indicates to me that I'm watching a program that highly-compensated marketing types were certain I wouldn't.
Sure, a lot of my limited TV time is spent watching feminine hygiene commercials or advertisements for bizarre and painful looking kitchen gadgets, but I've managed to prove someone wrong by being myself -- and watching TV is about as close to completely inactive "being" as a conscious person can get.
But lately, mostly when crossing open areas, I feel a tickle on the back of my neck. I become convinced that there is the red dot of a targeting laser tracking my movements. Companies seem to almost desperately want me to buy stuff from them, and the economy is only making that worse as their desperation mounts.
Trying to cram me into the thirty-something paranoid-about-retirement crowd is ineffective.
Lumping me in with the sports-fanatic gang hanging out at Hooter's on Tuesday nights is also going to be a waste of precious marketing dollars.
If some company decides that my demographic is accident-prone and that my carpet needs a Shamwow they would be sorely disappointed at the number I've purchased.
The result of these wasted marketing dollars is an on-going effort at re-categorization. My people have found themselves targeted as "Gamers" -- Aged 22-40, predominately male, spending a majority of entertainment dollars away from television and cinema.
This is why there was a Doom movie.
This is why complicated computer peripherals can serve a single purpose and cost hundreds of dollars.
This is why Dorito flavors and Mountain Dew have become increasingly "extreme".
First, I'd like to apologize for all of those things on behalf of my community. Second, QQ more, newb.
The most horrifying example I've found is from Gillette. It seems my month-and-change of not shaving at the beginning of the year has caused them to re-work their Fusion line of strangely-vibrating razors.
One of the branches is called the "Fusion Gamer" edition.
Somehow, Gamer skin is different than regular skin and it requires a special razor.
To completely disclose how close to home this is, I actually currently use a Fusion razor. Sometimes more than once a week.
The blades (which cost a small fortune) are replaced once per quarter whether they need it or not.
But is there enough of a distinction in my skin to merit the purchase of a gamer-specific shaving device?
I looked over the website to examine the features.
There is no mention of gamer skin that I can find at all.
The qualities of gamer skin should be the focus of any razor ad campaign which targets it, but it really looks to be exactly like the Fusion I already own.
If the copy had mentioned "unique blade designed to comfort skin untouched by the glaring light of the hateful sun" I'd have been moved to purchase, certainly.
If it had mentioned that it "catches stray hairs which grow outside the beard-zone for no good reason" or that it "soothes skin irritated by conventional razors back to its naturally rubbery, grub-like texture" I'd have dropped whatever I was doing to head to the store to buy one. And by "head to the store" I mean "log in to my Amazon account" and by "buy one" I mean "add to my cart and flail over trying to hit the $25 minimum for free shipping".
The point I'm trying to make is that if they want to market to gamers, calling the same razor the "Gamer Edition" doesn't cut it when selling to a crowd more comfortable with Google searching than reading Consumer Reports.
Unless they make the colors a lot more extreme than they currently are, I'm probably sticking with my regular old over-priced vibrating nine-bladed razor.

Conference Calls

With meeting space typically at a premium around here, the technical groups end up doing a lot of work through conference calls.
It makes communication a little more difficult since it is impossible to judge the effect your words are having without the feedback provided by facial expression and body language.
That, and the fact that some people (let's not name names here) tend to think of the other participants of a conference call as "not real people".
This is kind of like the assumption I prefer to make about everyone on the internets: They aren't real people.
I know, we all interact with people online pretty regularly through Facebook or World of Warcraft or message boards, but this interaction is eased by the knowledge that no other online avatar represents a living human.
I realize my theory still needs some substantiation, but I'm going with it until someone can prove to me that they exist.
Anyway, while I try to believe that the other participants of my conference calls are not real, sometimes they still provoke anger in me.
During a recent security call, there was a question about how a certain set of servers would be remediated in anticipation of an upcoming audit.
The person responsible for the activity in question launched into an explanation which reminded me of the old Mouse Trap board game.
"Person A, if unable to access the system, will send an email and call Person D, who keeps the contact information for Group N which controls access but not patching for these servers. If they are unavailable, a call to Group B, with escalation to Groups C and F, will be made. If the outage is about to end, physical access will be requested for manual patching," or some crap like that.
None of the people referenced are me, and none actually work with me. Further, the servers aren't my responsibility either.
It didn't matter, though. The process was dumb and overly complicated and prone to error.
I felt compelled to speak.
"I don't care what process you use. No one cares. If you think your group can follow these steps every single time these servers need a patch (and these are Windows servers, so you can expect once a month at minimum) then write this up into a procedure document and send it up for review and approval. As long as you do this exact thing every single time, you are fine, but explaining this as a one-off process does not make it official and it wastes our time. This isn't the venue for procedure discussion, the moderator just asked for a completion date."
I realized I was probably harsh. It had been a long day, though, and I sensed the little productivity these calls provide being leeched away into a discussion of work-arounds for work-arounds.
There was no response anyway.
Just a silence.
A stunned silence.
It lasted long enough that I checked the display on my phone thinking I'd been disconnected.
The problem with silences is that I see them as something which needs to be filled. The problem with filling this silence was that I'd just thrown out a bunch of words and using a bunch more would be awkward and, likely, rambling.
But the silence stretched on. Since I had no body language or facial expressions to go by, I had to assume everyone was offended.
In the end I filled the silence with a casual sounding,"Yo, I'm just throwing that shit out there, dog."
Oddly, this seemed to make everything better as the rest of the call (following quite a bit of laughter from everyone involved) was less tense.
It did not, however, make the call productive.
I recommend the phrase, but it isn't magic.

Another "Snow" Day

Since the mere rumor of snow here causes school to close, Gwynyth is home today.
There is no snow. There is no excessive moisture. Even if the ground were wet, it is not freezing.
This is the second time hysteria has resulted in excessive Disney Channel viewing. I am starting to think that the school district gets some kind of kick back.
Of course, schools have to get funding somewhere.
Saturday night Gwynyth and I attended the Girl Scout Princess Ball. Apparently, Father and Daughter dances are a big thing around here. We were invited to three of them.
The decorations were adorable and Gwynyth had a good time with some girls from her troop who shared our table. There was a speaker and a long line for food, so pretty much everyone was fidgety by the time it came to actually dance.
After "the" dance, Gwynyth and the rest of the scouts hung out on the dance floor until we were all asked to leave.
I decided that I should avoid activities where I can watch other people parent. The guy next to me was so busy with his BlackBerry I went from feeling bad for him to feeling bad for his daughter.
After about an hour of brief interaction with his child, he buzzed again and gestured angrily at the screen while saying,"Next time your mother should bring you because then at least she wouldn't keep texting me!"
I had no idea which parent to like less. I enjoy knowing who to dislike and by how much. This is a statistic, a rolling mental graph even, which fuels my every interaction with the people around me.
In the end, I just helped Gwynyth and the other little girl with their crafts and managed trips to the water fountain and buffet for both.
I think we would definitely go again. After the scheduled activities Gwynyth actually managed to have a good time in spite of grown-up attempts to leave that out of the agenda. She can generally squeeze fun out of any boring old thing if there are other kids around.
And we will probably be invited to another three of these things next year.
Maybe more if word gets around about how fabulous I looked.