Teamwork

Thanks to some help from my co-workers, my wastebasket found its way back home yesterday.

I was afraid my method of motivation wasn't working. My whining about it and wheeling myself to various trash cans all over the floor to dispose of whatever seemed to be pretty universally tuned out. I knew that a concerted effort by everyone would have results.

I thought (in the interest of fellowship and team spirit) that bringing everyone together in the shared cause was important to the ultimate return of my wastebasket.

The Team Building technique I settled on was simple. I walked to the vacant cubicle of a co-worker who was at lunch and wheeled the office chair out of there. On my way back to my cubicle, I stopped at every desk and grabbed something. By the time I wheeled to a stop, I had a label maker, two staplers, a dry-erase board, a tape gun, a keyboard, the handset from a desk phone, the toner cartridge from the printer, a potted plant and a framed picture of someone I don't know, all loaded into the office chair.

Note: Always grab the wheelie chair first.

Once everyone was reminded how crappy it can be to have one's stuff stolen, that team spirit kicked in and my wastebasket found its way back into my cubicle even faster than I'd dared to hope.

I was happy to have my wastebasket back, but I was even more happy to have used petty theft to bring our group closer together. Building bridges is hard work, and sometimes the key foundation stones have to be stolen.

Let me clarify by stating that I do not condone or endorse theft as a problem-resolution method. Please be sure to research local laws in your area before trying this where you work.

But I Never Got To Say Goodbye . . .

Again, I took a personal day yesterday to take care of various things which were. . . you know . . . personal.

Anyway, I dragged myself back into my cubicle this morning to discover that someone has made off with my wastebasket.

What are they even planning to do with it? The contents, by definition, were valueless. It isn't even like the street value on the basket itself is too great. Believe me, I've done that research.

Ever since I was laid off from a job years ago and replaced by foreign I.T. workers in some sweat shop in Kuala Lampur I make a point on accepting a new employment opportunity to determine the resale value of every item within twenty feet of my desk. I got caught off guard once. I have my Looting Exit Path planned out from day one now.

However, my own larcenous ways are not on trial at the moment. I want to know who stole my trash can and when I'm getting it back or, preferably, how I get my cut of the profits.

Maybe I don't always recycle. Sometimes I even use more than one styrofoam cup per day. Neither of these things, even taken together in one giant Earth-hating, eco-terror, iceberg-melting, pollution-a-palooza, means I don't deserve a place to dispose of things.

Long time readers know that this theft of my company-issued waste receptacle means two things:

1. I will have to find a new place to dispose of my personal refuse. It will need to be functional, not already used for someone else's trash, and amusing enough to make it worth my time.

2. I will get absolutely nothing done until the thief is caught and my rightful wastebasket is returned, preferably containing the still-twitching severed hand of the miscreant who removed it without permission.

Harsh? I'm holding an empty disposable coffee cup with no place to dispose of it. I'm holding trash!

For Great Justice,

G

Not, so much, working

I took the day off from EVERYTHING on Monday. I'm back at my desk today, but let me tell you -- yesterday I was much less vertical. What did I learn?

I learned that my presence in the house during the day was not stressful to our cats. It seems they do every day what I did yesterday. I tried to emulate as well as I could, though they seem to possess an unnatural talent for just falling to the carpet mid-stride and being asleep before they slide to a stop. I wasn't that good, but I have rug burns on my chest from trying.

I learned that on rare occasions AT&T experiences an outage in the coverage area which impacts both my personal and work phones making them unable to get a signal in my house at all. Actually, I knew that already. What I learned is that I love AT&T for that.

Today I'm back at work. I've got a bunch of emails I probably should have checked yesterday and I suppose they aren't, as they say, going to delete themselves.

Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng -- The Early Years

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I grew up in a small town. I actually got emails about that! Apparently, my sophisticated, cosmopolitan mannerisms seem at odds with a small town background. While I admit to having adapted to big city life remarkably well, my small town past helped make me what I am today. Namely, a paranoid neurotic with a nearly painful physical addiction to every legal stimulant and a few marketed as "Herbal Energy Boosters" that slip (for now) under the radar of the FDA.

I grew up in Post, Texas, which had a population of less than 4,000. Post is named for its founder C.W. Post, who is known mostly today for Cocoa Pebbles. Back in the day, C.W. Post was a breakfast visionary. He invented Elijah's Manna (which was later renamed Post Toasties) and Grape Nuts, which were probably named between a couple of Mr. Post's frequent visits to the Sanitarium. Talked to him, the Grape Nuts did. They told him things. Things about the end times.

Before his apparent suicide in 1914, C.W. Post also invented a breakfast drink called Postum. It is a (shudder) caffeine-free "coffee alternative" even available today, though the ingredients are different. On store shelves today, Postum contains wheat and molasses, mostly, but the original formula was reported to contain these with the addition of cocaine and a couple of rain forest opiates -- All in the interest of eliminating caffeine. The marketing even featured a caffeine-fueled super villain with a jet pack:

"Mr. Coffee Nerves" was apparently (if these comics are to be believed) responsible for the complete destruction of many, many families.

Whatever Mr. Coffee Nerves was really about, C.W. Post founded what he envisioned a "Caffeine-free Utopia" in the West Texas desert. And that is where I grew up. In hindsight, I suppose that may explain a lot.

Please feel free to email me any and all questions about my various psychological issues. I'm comfortable enough answering just about anything thanks to the power of caffeine. Let's get better together, dear readers. Dr. Phil would be so proud.

Technorati Tags: coffee

NOT a Paid Endorsement

I swear. No one has contacted me about shilling for anything. Not that I wouldn't, necessarily. I'm just saying I haven't been contacted. Side note: Any company wishing to contact me about pitching their product/service/pyramid scheme need only email me at geek_AT_prettygeekything.com. All requests will be evaluated with regard to the "legal tender" status of the offer. Um, and also the quality/safety/legality of the product in questions. /end side note.

Let my love of Google never be called into question. I've gone on and on about their Microsoft Office replacement. Their image search possibly makes this blog a bit more visually interesting. There may be no question Google cannot answer, even if some of those answers are delivered sarcastically or by weird conspiracy theorists.

However, I have been directed at a new search engine.  Now, on the first visit one will be prompted to install a browser plug in (Microsoft Silverlight) but after that the lucky searcher will be witness to the most visually stunning search page I've ever seen.

The person who first pointed me that way did it with multiple repetitions of the description "sexy". At first, I silently mocked. However, I find myself at a loss to come up with a better term after having actually used the search engine.

On the left, one will find spinning icons for various types of searches. The results are displayed in the center and results found appropriate can be dragged onto a "glass shelf" on the right side which will store the results for later access. You can drag in links and RSS feeds and URLs and have them all stay there through later searches just waiting for you to need them again.

Just for fun, you can reset the results to a tree format which arranges them on a graphically rendered, slowly spinning 3D tree with the search results hanging at the end of the branches like information-laden fruit.

The site is still officially in Beta and the end results may change, but right now Tafiti is the very definition of a "Pretty Geeky Thing".

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Tafiti

Things I Don't Remember

I've always read. A lot. From the exclusion of normal childhood activities to a profound inability to sleep unless I've finished a chapter even today, I've forever nursed a fear of being "out of book".

These days, I hit Half Price Books or Borders regularly enough but when I was little I relied on the library. Specifically, my small town public school library. My class's library days were almost a holiday for me. I knew where everything was and could instantly tell if there was anything new. Anything new in that library was almost painfully rare.

I specifically remember one fateful trip to the school library when I was in second or third grade and I found one of those never-before-checked-out-by-anyone books. I remember looking at the bright glossy-wrapped golden-orange cover with a pirate ship on it. I remember worrying that the book was possibly too new to check out for some reason and that I'd be sent back to the old shelves again to check out the same familiar copy of Robin Hood I'd already checked out a dozen times that year.

But I successfully checked it out and took it home and read it almost completely that first night. There were two boys and high adventure and a pirate ship . . . and for the life of me I could not remember the title or author no matter how hard I tried. And I tried for years.

Since my daughter is about the age I was when I read it, I started really trying to figure out what it was again. Google was no help, or rather I could not provide Google with enough information to go on.

Then, possibly due to a happy coincidence of vitamins and cola and the hyperactive regurgitation of my subconscious I remembered the first four words of the title!

"The Day the Sea . . . something something". No author came to mind but I figured, being that it was giant hardcover novel (to my third grader hands, anyway) it would belong to a prominent children's book author from the late seventies.

Amazon came through for me with just that information. "The Day The Sea Rolled Back" is an out-of-print novel from 1979 in which two boys wander out into an exposed sea bed in search of pirate treasure during a freak tidal event. The author? M. Spillane.

M. Spillane? As in Mickey "Mike Hammer" Spillane?  

Apparently, yes. The author of gritty, sex-filled, violent detective novels also apparently wrote a couple of "Young Adult" books.

This goes a long way towards explaining my life-long love of pulp fiction. I had attributed it solely to the works of Robert E. Howard up until now, but apparently my introduction was much earlier.

Anyway, I won't be picking up a copy for Gwynyth until she is old enough to legally drink. She is bound to be warped enough without the assistance Mickey Spillane could provide an eight-year-old in that regard.

Technorati Tags: Mickey Spillane

Teh Interwebz kill!!1!!!!

Every once in a while, a story surfaces which chills a gamer to the core. Sometimes driver support for a beloved piece of hardware is discontinued. In some cases, a new expansion pack promises to trivialize everything one has accomplished in game to that point. In more than one case, a thread on a message board "outs" a popular female character as being, in fact, a dude.

In the case I linked above, someone sat in an internet cafe in China playing video games for three days and then fell over dead. According to the story, there were unsuccessful attempts made to revive the man before most of the people playing along side him packed up and moved to the internet cafe down the street (I assume) out of respect.

Anyone remember (way back in "the day") when people talked about "cyberspace" as a place to go from time to time where one could assume a different identity and live a different and parallel life? I've heard another term lately and I'd like to share it.

The alternative to being logged in and actively pursuing a virtual life (be it Second Life or World of Warcraft or Grand Champion Bejeweled) is starting to be referred to as spending time in "meat space". Meat space is where most of us have families and jobs and interests outside the world provided by the programmers. And, more and more often, it fills a subordinate role in the consciousness of a lot of people.

When I vacate this weak and fleshy shell and log in to my game of choice, no matter what time of day it is I see the same people online. They play constantly and I have to wonder if neglecting their meat space is having an impact on their IRL lives. More, do they care? 

The article didn't specify which game the man was playing. It also didn't say that he had three max level characters and was probably running a lucrative Alchemy/Herbalism/Dark Moon Faire card scam through multiple virtual identities and had banked a few hundred thousand gold. At least, that's what I'd do if I planned on killing myself through gaming for three solid days.

It is painfully easy to lay the blame at the feet of the game. It is, in my opinion, much more accurate to find fault with the dead. If I play a game and decide I need sleep, I sleep. If I get hungry, I grab some food. If I get thirsty . . . I drink too much Diet Coke to ever experience that sensation for more than an uncomfortable moment or two. I suppose thirst is answered by reaching less than a foot to where my beverage is mounted. At all times. Must save Coke Reward Points.

So. This guy sits in a crowded internet cafe for three days and no one notices until he dies. Aside from the obvious tragedy, this also lends fuel to the idea that people become too involved in online games and forget the world around them. It gives credibility to the thought in the media that gamers are an anti-social bunch with no idea how to interact with real living people. In short, it makes defending games harder for those of us still listening to the noise about gamers in meat space.

This is the truth: When I was little, defeating the evil necromancers at the end of Keep on the Borderlands merited a trip (outside) to someplace for burgers and a long round of cola toasts to our success as a group.

In high school, when one of us made it to an unknown, high-score level in Super Mario Brothers during lunch, we all stayed to watch even though it meant being late for class.  

When my group of total strangers on EverQuest banded together for a 15 minute attack of a monster we all needed to kill, we stayed in touch in game until all of us had moved on with our lives. Except that one guy who I believe still plays.

When I played the PlayStation 2 with my daughter and she (through savant-like button mashing) managed to pull off finishing move after punishing finishing move with her deadly pig-tailed avatar and severely pwnd my own, her trash talk was delivered with the dignity and grace of a seasoned warrior -- And in-person, human to human as all trash talk should be.

Gaming is an inherently social activity. Gamers are just like any group of people whether they are lawyers or actors or doctors or cable repairmen -- a very loud and awful minority possesses the ability to make the rest of them look like total asshats.

What do we do about it? I'd like to suggest that those of us who game invite a non-gamer to play a little. Don't drag them on an end-game raid first off. I'd suggest a button mashing fighting game or maybe something where cars are raced against one another. Let people see how much fun it can be to sit with a friend and enjoy a game together.

Just remember, their thumbs are not like our thumbs. Try not to be too mean when you completely pwn them.