Mythos, Part II

Why in God's name did I think I could make a three-part BLOGGING EPIC about my adolescent computer issues?  Even more astounding: I somehow thought that said epic would be INTERESTING.  The TL:DR headline version of the whole thing is "fat kid likes video games, doesn't have good computer, does stuff to get better computer."  It's not exactly the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes.  But I confess that I am a breathtakingly stupid man, and even worse, I'm also stubborn.  So I will continue to regale you about this odd chapter in my life.

And indeed, it was odd.  Not bad odd, just unusual.  The late 1990's were a very exciting time, primarily because of the vast amount of pornography becoming available to the average American home.  Yes, this was the heyday of Napster, Kazaa, Usenet, IRC, and all other manner of digital gloryholes where America's throbbing e-knob went to be e-polished.  But before any of these existed, there was an awesome program called Hotline which combined all of the features of the conveniently-named products above.  It was a client-server based piece of software that included forums, chat, instant messaging, and file sharing.

I managed to get a hold of Hotline somehow, probably off of one of the Mac Addict CDs my friend Chris used to get.  However it happened, Hotline was my gateway to the wild wild web (SEE WHAT I DID THERE).  And sure, many of the servers were full of various contraband files.  But it did have nice communities where people actually talked, traded legal files, and used the Internet for the higher purposes that Al Gore had in mind.

My server of choice was run by a guy named Erik the Red.  It was a low-key and friendly place with a few game demos and assorted shareware.  Erik was basically a good guy with some free server space.  Meanwhile, I was a whiny kid with no money and an abundance of free time, and a burning desire to play Myth.  I was surely whining on his server about having no money for this computer I wanted real bad when, to my surprise, he asked me what kind of work experience I had (being 12 years old, the answer was a resounding "NONE WHATSOEVER.)  Out of the goodness of his Viking heart, he gave me some text transcription work.  I was taking addresses off of a scanned mailing list and putting them into an Excel spreadsheet.  Yes, I was helping to modernize the nefarious business of direct-mail advertising.  But I wanted a computer real bad, so screw you!

Were this deal made with anyone other than Erik the Red, I would not have gotten paid.  But Erik was good to his word.  Not long after I'd completed the work, I got a check for a few hundred dollars.  We could easily afford a new computer now!

And what kind of computer did I choose?

Abusing my college-bound sister's education discount, we got the Apple Power Macintosh G3 All-in-One.  It had a blazing 233 mhz G3 processor, a whopping 32 megabytes of RAM, a vivid 15" monitor, and it weighed a hernia-inducing sixty pounds.  I loved everything about it.  I even loved how it smelled; it had a porous, translucent mesh on the top for heat dissipation, and I literally remember putting my face on it and huffing its fumes of plasticky, electronicky newness.

And on it, I played Myth.  And I was never the same.

Mythos, Part I

Every gamer has that one game.  It's the one that you looked forward to playing at the end of every single day.  You would race home, throw your backpack/suitcase/small child onto the couch, and you would immediately plug in.  You'd play to master every part of it.  You'd skip meals for it.  You'd play it until sunrise if you could, and if you couldn't, you'd make time.  You loved it, deeply and purely, maybe voraciously.  And then life happens, and however long it may take, you eventually drift away from it.

Myth was that one game for me.  I just finished my Myth: The Fallen Lords LP and while I like the overall result, it felt incomplete.  For all of their virtues, LP's aren't the best medium for long-winded accounts of how a game shaped a multi-year chunk of one's life.  Blogs are probably better suited to telling stories like that, and whaddya know!  I happen to have a blog right here!

I really mean it when I say that Myth shaped my life.  The pursuit and enjoyment of Myth drew me in all kinds of crazy directions that were mostly cool and entirely formative.  I actually learned life lessons from the whole ordeal, starting with actually getting the game itself.

For everyone out there that has that one game, you probably remember the first time you saw it played.  My first time with Myth was at a computer store that was obnoxiously named The Computer Store.  The underlining was a part of the name.  It was on all of their branding.  It was probably in the phonebook with an underlined The.  I think I even remember the employees rarely answering the phone with extra emphasis on "The."  It was the kind of obnoxious swagger that befitted a Mac-only store in the late 90's.  It actually still exists and has since been renamed "The Mac Store," no underlining, after someone apparently decided to concede that there are actually computers that aren't Macintoshes.

Nerdy brand loyalty aside, it was a really cool place in my adolescent eyes because it had a consistent supply of Mac games.  I didn't care that the carpets were usually dirty and the place smelled like warm plastic and sweat; I probably smelled much worse.  A more important feature to me was the counter with mammoth 21" CRT monitors hooked up to blazing-fast Macs.  The guys at the store were pretty cool about loading the display models up with games, including Myth.

Some bespectacled lummox was probably playing the game as I watched arcs of gore and fire dance across the screen.  I saw purple plumes burst from the Soulless as arrows pierced their ghostly forms.  Exploding Wights rippled the ground and coated it with their excreta.  Warriors charged into the breach, their shields clattering against the clumsy blows of a Thrall's axe.   It was like Braveheart, except with 100% less Mel Gibson and 861% more gratuitous blood.

Another cool thing about The Computer Store was their laissez-faire attitude about unattended juveniles playing games that would be considered totally inappropriate for them.  I probably got away with playing it for a good two or three minutes before I shied away, knowing that my Dad was probably not going to be too happy with me playing a game that was essentially an explosive meat grinder simulation.  But the damage was done.  I had to have it.

Unfortunately, I was still plodding along on a Performa 475.  We bought it in 1994 and it worked fine back then, but Apple had come out with PowerPC-based machines in that same year.  A lot of applications were only compatible with these new chips, including Myth, and our plucky little Performa used a 68k based chip that was getting pretty wheezy by the time 1997 rolled around.

Buying a new computer wasn't just a matter of whining until my parents cut a check.  We flat out didn't have the money to buy non-essentials for a lot of my childhood.  It wouldn't happen unless I suddenly discovered that I had a third kidney or that my farts contained trace amounts of gold dust (I only just learned this about six months ago).

I was despondent, but determined.

Where the Eff Have I Been?!

Read on for more uproarious puns!

A self-remonstration is probably in order for leaving this thing dormant for so long, so here goes: I AM TERRIBLE.  There.

I mentioned in my first post here that I find the act of blogging to be one of humanity's finest expressions of narcissism.  I tend to rank it pretty low on my sensationally interesting day-to-day task list.  It's somewhere between "writing my congressman" and "getting my butthole bleached."  So when I find myself in the rare predicament of having free time, I tend to gravitate towards more wholesome pursuits, like talking over video games that I play for the Internet.  In other words, I would rather be actually doing the hobby I enjoy rather than writing about it.

Let's also not forget that I do other things like working and sleeping.  In fact, let's never forget sleep.  Let's make that an ironclad rule.  Sleep is a luscious, wonderful thing.  I have been reintroduced to its virtues since I finally came off of graveyard shift in January.  I will never take sleep for granted again.  And when I talk about sleep, I mean that thing that people do in bed, at night, with their eyes closed, and they don't stop doing it until the sun rises. Your body might allow you to sleep during the day, but it's tricking you.  It's the decaf version of sleep.  It's like this video below, except substitute "sleep" in place of coffee:



I guess this is all an obnoxious way of saying "I've been busy," but it only accounts for about seven months of my absence.  After I found myself considering another trip to the anal bleaching salon, I realized that I might be served to engage in some kind of intellectual pursuit.  So I've been in school lately.  Nothing serious, just taking a class here and there, but it's still an obligation.  Last term, I took a community development class that I found useful, but I don't know if I really want to take my career in that direction.

This term, I'm actually in a computer science class.  I am not a programmer in any sense. The extent of my formal education in computer science was this ridiculous class I took in my sophomore year of high school where we sat in the computer lab, piddled around in Excel, burnt holes in CDs with butane lighters (they smell terrible), and threw random electronic detritus at each other (I think a monitor may have been thrown at some point).  Oh, and my teacher made what we'll call a sixteenth-hearted effort at teaching us Scheme.  I retained none of it.

It really pisses me off that I've only just now taken a crack at programming because I'm actually finding that I enjoy it.  Even more, I actually understand it so far.  I convinced myself back in high school that I just didn't have the brain for it when I actually just didn't act like a weird recluse.  I'm not saying that's what programmers are, but that I had this sense that you just had to be a certain type of person to actually program.  I was completely wrong, obviously.  Admittedly, I'm just starting out and making programs that make fun of the user's penis size and stuff, but it's proven to be stimulating.  I'm even giving serious consideration to actually getting a second degree, which would mean some interesting things for the channel I suppose.

That pretty much brings me to today, which finds me writing this thing and thinking about my channel.  I like how things are going with one small exception: I am completely irregular, in so many ways, but mainly in the sense that I really don't keep a schedule.  This can have some undesirable results.  I don't like those weeks-long spells of not putting up any content because I feel like I'm letting people down.

On the other hand, I don't want to be forcing myself to make with the laff-laff.  I don't want to end up resenting what's supposed to be an entertaining diversion for me.  Sometimes, I just don't have an urge to sit and do an LP; in other cases, I have to take care of other things.

I was hoping that this struggle with time would go away once I switched over to day shift, or that it would at least diminish.  I've found that I actually feel somehow less in control of my time lately.  School is a part of that I guess.  Still, I feel like my days are way more rushed and that time slips more easily through my fingers.  My LPs get pushed aside, though in favor of what, I'm not really sure.

This is all just a bunch of rambling, but sometimes I need to clean out the grease trap that is my mind before I start some kind of kitchen fire.  Maybe I'll post something less... navel-gazey later?  I hope so, I'm kind of liking this.