Archive | November, 2010

NightScene and Simplicity

24 Nov

NightScene: Find Your Scene

This is a series on a brand new social website that myself and several other team members are getting ready to launch called NightScene, a social search engine that helps you discover new venues, events, and friends that suit your own tastes wherever you go. To see more posts about NightScene, just click here. And to visit the NightScene landing page to find out more and follow us, click here.

Simplicity is key to the internet — everyone is opening a million tabs in their browser trying to find a million different videos, keep tabs on their friends, and discover new content all at the same time. It’s hard to keep anyone’s attention, especially now that all of this is happening not just on a laptop in someone’s house, but through such a large number of mobile devices such as cell phones like the iPhone or tablets such as the iPad. Everything is pretty much single serving content that is designed to be consumed in one brief view and then the user moves on to something else.

So how do you get this right? Well, I’m not an expert in traditional sense that I work for some multi-billion dollar advertising company. (On second thought, I suppose the Navy is one of those entities…) But, what I do know is that I consume a ridiculous amount of media, be it social or traditional media. Except newspapers; I live in 2010 not 1910, thank you. I also have had the fortunate experience of working for companies that produced social media as well as traditional marketing and advertising. I feel like this gives me grounds to say the following:

There, you don't even have to click the link. It's Google, not like you already didn't know what it looked like. Oh yeah, that reminds me that Thanksgiving is coming up. Thanks again Google!

Google got it right. So right. Go to their page right now. What do you see? A search bar. It’s so intuitive and simple; no one needs to know what the site is because it’s already so obvious. The thing that most users probably never realize is that there are so many features to Google that its depth and complexity is pretty much endless. Everything is presented in a simple way, but the information there is surprisingly complex. (I know that sometimes this can be overwhelming; Google’s “Wave” was an attempt to simplify sharing information and it turned out to be way too complicated to make it useful. For the most part though, Google has it down.)

The problem with emulating Google is that everyone understands a search engine. And in most cases, everyone understands, say, Facebook, a common social website. Where things start to get tricky is when you want to combine those two and you get a social search engine. What is that? No, really, I’m asking you to tell me because even I have a hard time grasping it — and I’m making it. NightScene, therefore, has to be both forgiving to the new user so that they can get into it and deep for the returning user who already is exploring their scene. It will take time to justify this concept as being the best thing since Al Gore invented the internet, but I’m actually pretty confident that it will be.

Wow, this looks kind of cool but what is any of this junk? Is it sorted? I don't get what any of this means or how it connects to me. It all seems like a big advertisement. (It is.)

In my mind, when I’m coming up with design ideas and general strategies, I want to keep this site simple enough that anyone can jump on and use it and feel familiar while still feeling fresh and socially relevant. It really needs to be accessible from anywhere easily and have the main features be right there, front and center. Honestly, we’re going to be dealing with a lot of bars and clubs, so this will mean that people who are feeling no pain need to be able to figure it out too! So, how do we accomplish this? Here is a list of thoughts in a bullet point form because I know you’re loading a YouTube video of someone falling off a skateboard right now and you’re running out of patience for all these words. (Why couldn’t I have just done this in 140 characters?!)

  • Make vital features take as few clicks as possible to access.
  • Make smart use of advanced coding to reveal more detailed information only when a person wants to see it.
  • Keep the pages as simple and clean as possible.
  • Help the user understand the site by guiding them through unfamiliar features.
  • Don’t post blatant ads on the site. Make them match your demographic when you do use them.
  • Allow the user to control the content that they interact with so they develop a connection to it.

I know these are really pretty general concepts, but you’d be surprised at how many sites completely ignore the user and just assume that the user is on the same level as the person running the show who is intimately familiar with everything aspect of the product. Similarly, many popular sites just try to push their sponsored content onto you without making a real connection as to why you should care about whatever is being promoted.

You too will cheer for joy like this awful corporate stock photo when you use NightScene.

There’s a real balance that needs to be achieved between showing a large amount of information to the user and keeping things simple. Keep it too simple and the user might get bored. Make it too deep and the user might be confused or turned off by all the content. NightScene is still in its infancy but the design is essentially finalized and I think we’ve done it right. There’s a lot of interesting information up front, the site is easy to use, and it offers depth to the user who wants to support the social aspects of it. But this is coming from me, the guy who is making the product and not the actual user. It’s really up to how the user actually interacts with the site to shape and evolve its future. What we’re doing now is laying the groundwork for something that can be huge, but it’s up to you to make it the site you want it to be. And I think that’s the freshest idea on the web right now.

Sweet, Sweet Justice

22 Nov

Here's what New Mexico wants you to think New Mexico looks like.

New Mexico sucks. Honestly, I don’t see why they made a New Mexico when the Old Mexico was bad enough as it is. Nearly everyone will tell you that it sucks, especially Texans. (Everything just seems smaller there — I don’t get it!) I’ve recently remarked on my twitter that when you live a bad life and do bad things and die, you don’t go to hell, you just go to Jal, New Mexico. (The town’s slogan is “LIVING IN JAL, NM”. I think this was all they could attribute to Jal — people do indeed live there. Though “DYING IN JAL, NM” might be equally appropriate.)

I think that the constant 65 MPH winds are a good start to why it sucks, but you need to combine that with the desolate wasteland and the dust to get a better picture. The worst problem is that New Mexico apparently has the world’s slowest speed limits and the most highway patrol cars in the world. Some highways in the oilfield are, get this, 45 MPH though most are a somewhat more palatable 55 MPH (which is still slower than the damn wind).

Here's what New Mexico actually looks like.

So, I really don’t mind speeding and going ten over or whatever. People who know me know that I drive offensively rather than defensively because defense doesn’t win football games so obviously it doesn’t win life either. But, right now because I have the Navy review boards going on, I absolutely can’t get a ticket or this could set everything months behind. It’s such a huge hassle to deal with a ticket in the military (seriously, why are there so many forms?) that I would do whatever it takes to avoid getting one. This means actually following speed limits that are so impractical and awful that no one besides myself will even consider obeying.

Usually, this entails that the drivers will  just pass you since there’s hardly ever any turns anyway and the possibility of a hill is also pretty remote (though there are a few here and there). I don’t mind this: if I was in a hurry I would go the Texas style minimum of 70 MPH and just say I forgot I was in New Mexico because it’s just a little worse looking than West Texas. So, that’s fine with me. However, what I do mind is when people are pissed off about me going the speed limit. If you have to pass, don’t tailgate me and then stare at me like I’m an idiot when you pass. That’s frustrating but I deal with it.

But today some tool (a Texan tool, sadly) was tailgating me in a 55 MPH when he was obviously trying to go 75 MPH. When he finally passed (in the middle of an open nowhere, so it wasn’t a big deal anyway), he not only stared at me but flipped me off. I considered speeding up and not letting him pass, or cutting him off right as a 50 foot bridge came up and he would hurl off the side of it in a fiery explosion ala an early ’90s action movie… but I contained myself and just let him do his thing like an adult. But I was still angry. That jerk.

I drove off with a smug satisfaction. Thanks for fixing this one God!

So I continued to drive and passed through Jal on Highway 18 and on my way out, who do I see on the side of the road? The truck that flipped me off and he was getting a ticket for speeding. I laughed some sadistic, insane laugh and started shouting “yes, yes!” because I was so happy at seeing this. Of course, when I drove by, I slowed down and honked so the driver saw me and my huge smile.

Enjoy the ticket, you dick.

This Town or This Weather

17 Nov

This field is a good summary of my life right now.

I’m not sure which it is, to be honest. I’ve been feeling sick, kind of foggy for the last few days (weeks?) and it’s just not going away. I think partly because I do the same thing day in and day out and that it’s actually a pretty tiring routine, but I think it’s also something to do with the weather, random illness, sorcery, and living in Midland. All of this combined has left me at a blank and sometimes I feel like this blog is the only connection I have to those random stories and ideas that are in my head. I contemplated doing movie reviews of all the movies I watch — I watch a lot of them, let that be known. But, in the end, I scrapped my review of Dead Snow (it’s a movie about Nazi zombies, so basically it’s the best movie created) and wondered what the hell is this blog for? Who is reading it? Originally this way to post my day-to-day crap, but right now I’m not really emo or really happy or anything. It’s just been uneventful.

If anything, this is a good stress relief and so I think I’ll try to post my random daily thoughts even though they are just kind of average events. Maybe when I look back on this in five years I’ll have some sort of emotion towards it one way or another.

Thanksgiving is coming up and my mom is worrying about the logistics of it. I’m just thankful we don’t have turkey like everyone else. We’re doing steaks, which is the Texas way of saying we’re awesome. Usually at this time I’m at Trinity hating myself over midterms, but right now I just get to go to New Mexico and do oil field stuff. It’s a lot less stressful, though I find there are advantages to being in a warm dorm room complaining to the guys about schoolwork when you’re outside in the blowing dust and the cold. Makes you get quick at getting things done though. Today I ate some leftover Chinese food that I warmed up on my dash. I think I’m starting to get into this oil field gig, which may be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

12 year olds scream that I suck. And I do. But at least I'm not 12, you little shits.

I haven’t been doing much new besides work. I’ve played some more Call of Duty Black Ops, which is the most infuriating game that makes me want to go strangle the 12 year old players who apparently do nothing except play video games all day long. I’ve already broken a controller. I picked up the new Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and the new Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (Gamestop must really love the thousands of dollars I’ve pumped into them over the years). But, I’m writing this instead of playing them. Like I said, I have a video game collecting problem, not a video game playing problem. I’ll get around to them this weekend. But, at the same time, I really need to spend more time at the gym. I’ve been getting home late (or getting home early and taking naps) and that’s cut into my daily gym time. The results are pretty good still and everyone has been complimenting me on my progress, but I guess I want more. I only ran 5 miles and biked 10 miles, which is decisively less than I want to. I know that sounds like a lot, but I need to do more. There’s no goal really, I just want to push myself. I know that when I ship out I will be unprepared regardless of what I do, but having an edge physically will be helpful. Or it can’t hurt.

So, there you go. That’s me for right now.

How to Churn Out a College Essay & All My Awful Essays

17 Nov

Sorry for the super long title and what I’m sure will be a super long post. Basically, I was thinking about what I learned in college and I just kept thinking about the song “I Love College” by Asher Roth — a lot of partying and social things, but not a lot of actual, tangible facts that I can pull from my head. I think my philosophy minor taught me that I don’t actually know anything, meaning college was essentially the experience of learning that I know nothing (read my last essay listed on this page). Sorry, that’s an aside.

 

Me not writing an essay. Mission accomplished.

The real point of this post is something that I learned how to do really well in college: churn out an essay. Notice that I’m not saying write an essay. This is more out of grinding process where words just manifest in nonsensical and only vaguely related ways for ten pages. The following, in a simple 7 step form, is what professors don’t want you to know, what they don’t want you to write, and what will make you graduate with a 3.5 GPA without spending almost any time writing stupid papers for classes you have little to no interest in. Yes, these papers will suck. Yes, if you do this you lack scholastic integrity. Yes, you can get back to partying with your friends.

 

  1. Read your essay guidelines that usually suggest topics for you to write. I’m going to choose an actual topic from my senior year, but this method works for any subject or discipline as you will soon see. “Analyze a thematic style from a classic film director studied in this course.” Boom. Okay, find something easy that people will have obviously wrote about in the past. So, I chose “suspense in Alfred Hitchcock movies”. I know, this is an easy example — sometimes essays are harder in those upper level philosophy courses and with those you have to get much more creative in part two…
  2. Immediately get online with your school’s library and choose a database listing. I think my favorite is Academic Search Complete because it’s got something like 50 databases in one. Make sure to check all of the databases so you search everything. So first, enter in “Suspense” and then “Alfred Hitchcock”. You might also find out what movies he has directed and then use “Suspense” and “Movie Name” to find those too, if you’re looking for particular films. Make sure to check “Full text available” on your search”
  3. Click search, and then open about 20 sources and read their little descriptions. If they sound relevant, download the PDF files to a folder so you can get to them easily again. (I also like to check that the PDF articles are searchable when I preview them: who the hell wants to actually read these things to find content? You can search for suspense or whatever and find quotes faster.) You’ll also, at this point, want to make sure you have a RefWorks account (just Google it, but it’s usually provided through your school). This site takes those articles you’re searching and compiles your Works Cited page. Because who the hell wants to try to figure out MLA, APA, ASA or whatever formats? I didn’t, so I just let this site do it for me. You’ll see an “export to Refworks” icon on almost all databases, or something similar. You’re in college, figure it out.
  4. So now, gather the top 10 or however many sources you need, open then, read them if you have to, or just search the PDFs (control + f) for things you need. I take five or six quotes from each article about my topic and past them in a Word document. Make sure to write down page numbers so you can cite them in your paper without having to look at the articles again.
  5. Now you want to make a framework for your paper based on your quotes. Look at what they have in common or don’t have in common. Use this to establish three broad topics, and for each topic, three subtopics. This will give you enough BS to write about to go for several pages. So, for example, three topics in this case can be individual movies, and the subtopics can be how suspense is used in each of the movies (three examples or three different approaches). Something like that. You’ll figure it out as you start pasting it what fits or doesn’t fit.
  6. Write your paper. So from here, write a brief introduction that is probably where the paper will go, then start filling in ways to bridge the quotes. My formula is usually quote, two sentences about the quote, another quote, two sentences, and so on.
  7. Add more filler until you reach your page/word quota. Print it out and turn it in (because professors live in 1910 apparently) or e-mail it to the super future professors who use this advanced technology. If you’re struggling on the filler, you can always blatantly cheap. Google the period trick, which is the best way to gain a page or so when you write a paper.

So, you might be wondering how is this possible? Am I making this up? No, I’m not, and it’s really possible because I certainly did it just like I explained it. I was able to churn out the worst, yet acceptable, papers in just a few hours. So, provided below is every paper I wrote in college at Trinity University. I don’t care what you do with these essays. Use them as a reference, laugh at them, print them out and turn them in as your own (I feel like that might be kind of stupid, but hey, I don’t think many professors actually check).

As an aside, some of these classes I really enjoyed a lot, and, in general, those papers have more interesting content because I had some enjoyment from the class. I’ve denoted those classes with an asterisk after the course title.

AIS 3180 – Introduction to Aboriginal Studies (Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia)
Presentation (Aboriginal Art and Community)
Essay (Importance of Aboriginal Studies)

ANTH 1301 – Introduction to Anthropology
Essay – Final Paper (Avocado Production Chain)

ANTH 2310 – Human Evolution*
Essay – Final (Zoo Project)
Project Review

ANTH 3327 – Contemporary Minorities
Presentation – History of Marginalization
Essay – Final Paper

ANTH 3394 – Seminar in Forensics*
Essay – Final (Ballistics Trauma to the Skull)
Presentation (Ballistics Trauma to the Skull)

ANTH 4362 – Globalization and International Development
Essay – Final (Development and Sustainable Agriculture in Central America – A Case Study of Belize)

ARTH 1307 – Art History Prehistoric to Medieval
Final – Roman Verism Portraiture (Note: This is a really awful paper; in the professors feedback she wrote “thesis unclear” and then crossed it out and wrote “thesis missing“. Still got an A, but just a warning.)

ARTH 1308 – Art History Medieval to Modern
Presentation – Las Meninas
Final – Art Comparison

CLAS 1302 – Introduction to Classical Literature
Essay – Ethics in Classical Literature
Essay – The Role of Sex and Power in Jason and the Golden Fleece

COMM 1301 – Introduction to Mass Media*
Project – Follow the Ownership Trail
Project – Media Fast
Final Project – New TV Show

COMM 2302 – Media Interpretation and Criticism
Essay – Ad Analysis
Essay – Media Self-Reflection
Project – Video Project
Essay – Final (On Family Guy – The Narrative and the Postmodern)

COMM 3303 – Media Audiences
Essay – Theodor Adorno Bio
Presentation – Theodor Adorno
Essay – Propaganda Messages in Americas Army

COMM 3322 – International Development*
Essay – National Profile – Belize
Essay – Final (Belizean Agricultrual Dependence)

COMM 3323 – Propaganda and the Media*
Essay – All Quiet on the Western Front Analysis
Essay – America’s Army Analysis (Revised)

COMM 3326 – History of Mass Media*
Literary Review – Character Development in Sitcoms
Essay – Media Study – Race and Gender

COMM 4395 – Communication Major Capstone
Thesis – Developing a Targeted Website (Here’s my entire thesis. Someone please print this out and turn it in as their own in an 100 level communication course and let me know what grade you get!)

ENGL 1302 – Writing Workshop
Essay – On Dishonesty in Integrity
Essay – The Console Divide

ENGL 2304 – American Literature
Essay – Feminism in Trifles
Essay – Native American Representation

FILM 1301 – Introduction to Film
Essay – Hitchcock, North by Northwest, and Suspense

HIST 1371 – African American Literature (For one of these book reviews, I remember asking my roommate to pick random passages for me to quote and put into the essay as a dare. So these are bound to be winners.)
Essay – Aristocrats of Color Book Review
Essay – Blacker the Berry Book Review
Essay – Brownsville Raid Book Review
Essay – Soul on Ice Book Review

MCC 1354 – Video Game Art & Design
Essay (Video Game Design)

PHIL 1301 – Introduction to Philosophy*
Essay (Descartes)

PHIL 1354 – Ethics*
Essay (Kant and Mill)

PHIL 1320 – Classical Philosophy
Midterm Essay (Plato Crito)
Final Essay (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics)

PHIL 2314 – Philosophy of Film
Presentation – Fight Club
Essay (Appartus)
Essay (Platos Cave Allegory and Film)

PHIL 3331 – Philosophy of the Mind*
Literary Review (Functionalism)
Final Essay (Consciousness as Functionalism)

PHIL 3339 – Epistemology*
Essay – Reflections on Knowledge

Paying with Pennies

12 Nov

A bunch of coins. Yeah, I wasn't very creative with this caption.

I was a real asshole in high school. I think this was probably because I didn’t have a ton of friends and I didn’t fit in entirely well. It wasn’t that I wasn’t liked, but rather I just had a distinctive sense of humor and I really thought my accomplishments in life up to that point set me apart from everyone else in high school. In retrospect, they did, and my humor was well appreciated by those who could understand it, such as the crowd in college. I know that’s kind of arrogant and insulting to the people that went to Lee High School from 2003-2006, and yeah, well, it is. If you’re reading this now and thinking that I’m wrong, maybe I’m still just an asshole.

Regardless, the state of me being an asshole isn’t the point of this post, but rather I wanted to tell a story about what Mikey and I did sometime during one of our high school lunch breaks. I think that hanging out with Mikey, someone who felt just like I did — a very cynical, sarcastic guy, in other words — really made us feed off each other to do stupid things that stupid kids are likely to do. One such great idea was paying for lunch with of a fistful of coins. I’m not sure who came up with this genius idea, but I’m glad we did because I look back on it and still laugh, even though I know it makes me a bad person for doing so. But, this was probably nearing on eight years ago (wait, am I really getting that old? Damn!) so I feel like I’m justified in saying I’m not the same person anymore, and neither is Mikey. We’re still cynical, sarcastic jerks, but in a more endearing way, I assume.

This place is pretty good. But I don't get how it is so expensive.

So, what we ended up doing was going to the bank and getting a couple rolls of nickles and pennies and then mixing them up in a big plastic bag, and then heading to Sonic, America’s  Drive-In (apparently), and ordering a few things to eat.

When the girl came out to hand us our food, we quickly took it and we both were already trying our best to stop the laughs from just knowing what we were about to do. Then, I pulled out the bag of coins, scooped up a huge handful of them and then poured it in her hands. The girl didn’t know how to react to this and just stood there trying to cup the overflowing mountain of coins while they showered down to the pavement making so much noise that everyone at the drive-in was probably staring directly at her. When this finished, I managed to stammer out one sentence while Mikey was looking the other way and crying laughing:

“You might want to count that.”

So, the poor girl sat there, collected all the spilled coins, and then counted it all out for somewhere around five minutes. After all this, she finally had the right amount of change to give back to us. Then I told her:

“Oh, you can keep the change.”

I Googled "Heaven" and I got this back. If Heaven looks like a Lisa Frank binder, maybe I don't want in.

I’m thinking right there, at that moment, God was looking down from Heaven with a big red Sharpie and crossed my name off the guest list. (He’s probably looking at me now to see if this is an apology but I’m still laughing while I write it, so I guess I’m just screwed on this one. Sorry God!) I feel sorry for this girl, and I instantly did as I said this, but I couldn’t stop from laughing. The ridiculousness of the whole situation was incomprehensible and Mikey hadn’t stopped laughing the entire time, his face buried in his clothes as he tried to stifle the laughter.

I think what this whole situation proved is that this girl was just a bystander that we dragged down, and yet, somehow, she was able to remain calm and actually not flip out on us. I’m sorry, but Sonic does not pay enough for me, if I was in that situation, to hold back. I would have thrown the coins back in my face and tried to kill me. So I guess the whole point of this story is that, one, it’s awesome and hilarious, two, it’s sad and depressing, and three, it proves that this girl was incredible.

Nose Bleed

11 Nov

This is how I look the other 99% of the time

So, I’m not sure what it is about Midland and the West Texas area in general, but for whatever reason, I get nosebleeds about once every week or two weeks. Maybe it’s the dry climate, maybe it’s the dust. I’m not entirely sure. I know it’s just this part of the country though because I never got them in San Antonio or anywhere else.

Well, today I was driving in my truck to a  unit near Garden City that had stopped responding and I realized that my nose was dripping blood all over me and had apparently been for a little while because I hadn’t noticed. I quickly grabbed for something to stop the leak with, which ended up being a Sonic paper bag, and tried to at least collect the blood and make sure it didn’t get on anything I would have to pay for (thankfully, it didn’t).

While scrambling for this, my left hand had already got completely covered in blood (this was a good flow) and I’m pretty sure I looked like I had just been shot in the face. Of course, what could happen but, in the middle of a nowhere, a truck was trying to pass me. I watched him pull around me into the oncoming lane and pass, and then, he must have saw me and wondered what the hell he had just witnessed, and instead of going into the right lane to overtake me, he slowed down and matched my speed right beside me. He just looked over with this perplexed look and I gave him the “What?” look like nothing was wrong. He eventually drove on, but it took him about 15 seconds of staring at me for him to get tired of it. This was kind of weird, kind of hilarious. If it had been me in that truck I would have been pulling out my phone to take a picture, so I guess I can’t fault the guy.

Either way, it’s not something I’m likely to forget for a while.

AOL CDs

10 Nov

CDs to install an awful internet service

I know that these are already irrelevant and that a younger person probably has no idea what I’m talking about. Basically, these CDs are what AOL and other companies would send you to try to get you to try “the internet” with. Amazingly, I even remember getting these offers on floppies, which are an ancient technology used by mythological humans in the 1990s. I know the concept of getting a CD just to start the internet seems strange, considering that these days if you start a computer it’s probably online. And if not, your phone is. But, back in the day, these CDs were everywhere. You’d get them in the mail and see them at every cash register. They’d be all over the place. So, as a kid, I couldn’t help but just grabbing everything that said free.

If you can imagine anything more awesome to a kid than this, your parents must have given you LSD.

Of course, I experimented with the usual ways to abuse these things — as frisbees or as microwavable mayhem. But, the point of this story is not about those obvious (though interesting) ways to break the free AOL CDs.

One of my best friends in elementary/middle school was Pierce. He and I would always hang out, and always ended up going to the movies with his mom. (I remember at least 10 cases of her bringing a soft drink smuggled in her purse and it somehow exploding in the movie theater all in her purse…) One day while at the theater we discovered what was essentially the Holy Grail of free crap — and entire box of AOL CDs. Obviously, we grabbed as many as we could carry — fat stacks of these things. I don’t know why we didn’t get a bag, but instead we just stuffed them in our clothes and tried to remain innocuous.

Secretly, this was our goal. Why didn't we use nails? Stupid kids!

When we got to Pierce’s house, we instantly decided what we had to do: destroy every last CD. After about 20 or so CD frisbees, I think we finally figured out the best way (worst way?) to possibly do it. We went outside and stuck them in the cracks in the road in front of his house and lined them up until there were probably 30 or 40 CDs. Then, we set up a laser pointer that would go from his second story window onto a stop sign right in front of the CDs. The genius result was that people would drive, get flashed in the eyes by the laser pointer, and then bust a ton of CDs with the most loud crack imaginable and then get puzzled, stop, and see what the hell had just happened.

Somehow we were never caught. I don’t get how because we did this literally right in front of his house and we would just hide in the bushes. But I’m glad we didn’t because this makes for one of my favorite childhood memories.

Videos Games

10 Nov

At a game launch, typical gamers aka my future

I own a lot of video games. Enough that when people come over they compare me to a Blockbuster. (Note for reading this ten years from now: Does Blockbuster even exist anymore? Do we have hover cars?) I feel like I spent most of my childhood playing them and I can still recall specific moments in my gaming history. I think from the normal person’s view, video games were considered to be a waste of time, and maybe they still are. Yeah, I guess it is pretty much like vegging out and being an unproductive member of society. If anything though, playing them has become less of a nerdy thing to more of a thing that every adult male does. When the next Halo or Call of Duty comes out, we all line up rank and file to get our copy at the midnight release.

I have a few specific memories about video games, but there are four games that really started me down this path to playing and collecting them the way that I do now:

  • Doom
  • Quake
  • Half-Life
  • Gran Turismo 2

I played the crap out of these games as a kid. With the exception of Gran Turismo 2, the other games were computer games and their objective was to shoot stuff. In Doom, you shot 2D things. In Quake, you shot 3D things. In Half-Life, you shot 3D things are there was a cohesive and interesting story. In Gran Turismo 2, well, you raced cars. I remember seeing Quake and thinking “Wow, how is this possible this technology exists?” This was the first game that I stole.

This game was somehow the most incredible thing I had ever witnessed

Alright, so how does this lead into thievery? As a broke kid who knew way too much about computers, I was able to track down and find all the games I wanted to play and get them for free. I feel like most of the people who were doing this were also broke kids. It taught me a lot about the internet and how computers work, something I should be thankful for because I ended up pursuing tech fields as income. That said, I no longer steal games because I can actually afford them. But, at the time, it was what I did, for better or worse. This means that when I actually did buy a game, it was serious stuff. I remember buying Half-Life at the store and not being able to see over the counter when I bought it. It was a mature game, of course, but that didn’t matter then. And, I remember getting it home and finding out that I couldn’t run it because my computer didn’t have a graphics card powerful enough. So, I had to buy that too, and 199 dollars is expensive for a kid. But, I got it and that launched me into a world of gaming I never turned back from…

Until now. I feel like even though I still buy and play video games, my patience for them has gone down the drain. I don’t want to die a ton and restart levels or checkpoints, I don’t want to sit online and progress though ranks to get a gun. I don’t want to deal with the people online, and I don’t have the time or energy to sit there and play them all day. Typically this changes for all the big releases and I’ll find myself in GameStop at their midnight release standing next to the largest people with even larger BO.

We've certainly come a long way from shooting block men

But this time, I was just too busy and I actually forgot about the release for a day and picked it up the next day instead. And I tried to play it tonight but I just can’t get into it. I’d rather be writing this article than playing it and this game is the next big thing everyone had been waiting for. It’s just not doing it for me. I feel like such a slug for even playing games, and all I do is get frustrated at the screaming twelve year old kids. I guess I used to be one. I think in college, and more so in high school, I had the freedom to just play whatever I wanted and do it all day because you don’t have anything meaningful going on as a kid. And by meaningful I don’t mean profound, I mean working to pay bills and dealing with all your other responsibilities. Speaking of which, I need to cut a check for student loans which are finally kicking in. Ugh.

This game is really addictive. It's just red vs blue and a lot of team strategy

I actually feel like even if I was just sitting around all day, I couldn’t let myself do it anymore. I just can’t get into video games like I used to. I still will have the occasional day where I will sit around, eat Butterfinger bars and drink (diet) Mountain Dew like a video game nerd is supposed to do. However, at this point, it’s more or less like the days where people sit around and watch movies — they end up feeling like they wasted their day and don’t do it again for a long time.  I want to take the time to give a shout out to Dan, my roommate, for one of the stories I tell everyone about video games; I will note that he has since changed his ways. During our sophomore year of college, Halo 3 had just come out and Dan was constantly playing it to obtain the rank of a general or a 50 rating or something like that. So, at 8 AM I left for me 8:30 class so I could get some breakfast and coffee to try to stay awake. At about 9 PM or so I come back and Dan had literally not moved the entire time. He had been stationed in front of this crappy TV in the world’s worst folding chair for the entire day. How can anyone do that?

Homeworld is my favorite video game of all time, in case you're wondering. It was the best story, and the best gameplay I had ever seen. And for the time, the graphics were, pardon the pun, out of this world.

Well, I know how people can do that because I’ve done that during finals, playing Grand Theft Auto 4 from start to finish in one sitting. I’ve done that with Halo ODST and Halo Reach too. That’s how I tend to play games — short in one burst. Play for a couple of days or a week, then move on. I just get so tired of things so easily now. Maybe I’m just too tired in general and I let games frustrate me, or maybe games have just got so complicated that they’re becoming more of a chore than a good time. (The latest Call of Duty has so many options to customize things, but I got what I wanted within the first hour. Who has the time to sit around and change their icon in the game? I don’t get it.)

Dead Space was the last game that really sucked me in. Dead Space 2 is about to come out, so we'll see if I have that same connection again.

I’m really not quite sure what the exact reason is that I don’t feel the same connection, I guess the word is, that led me to spend so many hours in games, completely absorbed in their world and enjoying every moment. I can replay these games for the nostalgia factor and a few moments still shine, but it’s just not the same. Maybe it’s because I’m older and I’m different? I don’t have a good answer for this, though I do assume I’ll be playing games in the future, just in a limited capacity. I still certainly buy the games, so I don’t think the game publishers are worried by this phenomenon. I’ll even buy the map packs and try to get back into the game, but this only lasts a couple of days before I move on again

I think it comes down to the fact that I want to be connected like I used to be; I want to be drawn into a world and escape for a while. But I just don’t feel it like I used to. And that kind of sucks.

Taking on the Oil Field

8 Nov

This, this is what I work with. I hook stuff up to a box that takes readings from this.

At first glance, you might think that working in the oil field is all fun and games. Oh wait, no one thinks that because it’s damn hard work. It’s something that has really taken some getting used to, and it’s definitely made me respect the people that do it day in and day out with little benefits besides a steady paycheck (which is, I guess, the main benefit). So first, it should be clarified as to what I do because that’s really the hardest thing to explain to people.

…

I just deleted a full paragraph explaining what I do because it’s so uninteresting I can’t even bare to read it, so here’s the short version: I dig holes in the desert to mount equipment that goes on the tanks that hold the oil.

The real focus of this post is not really what I do, but really what the oil field makes you into. I’m not trying to get poetic — it’s really not some man vs. the machine thing that makes him stronger in the end. It’s really just a natural progression of what happens to people who work in the oil fields, and this is dedicated to them. Of course, I don’t think anyone who works in the oil fields even knows what a blog is!

There are a few main elements which make working in the oil field a pain, and I felt compelled to make a list of them with no specific order since each have their own merits:

  • Trying to find remote locations. It’s nearly impossible to find some of the oil leases. You’ll drive for hours around a fence line only to find a small dirt road that will take you to an adjacent fence next to where you want, but never quite there. This gets better with time since you learn to look for tanks, pump units, and black piping on the side of the “road” as clues.
  • Dealing with the elements. It’s either super hot or super cold, with few exceptions. You combine this with some rain and if you don’t have a 4×4 you’re screwed (bring tow ropes). If it’s windy, the dust will make it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you.

  • My brother shows off his kill, a 6 foot rattlesnake

    Nature. I can’t think of many positive words to describe yellow jackets (the wasps, not the fashion statement), and I think even God might be at a loss as to why He decided to add them to the roster of awful creatures. I’m being particularly harsh tonight because I was stung earlier today on the back of my neck. There are also a large number of spiders, though I am less upset by these than I initially was. Rattlesnakes exist and some of them are pretty huge. I’ve only seen a couple and they didn’t bother me, but I would imagine getting bit by one in the middle of nowhere has to have a huge suck factor.

  • For the astute observer, yes I work the oil fields in a black vneck so I can crash the clubs when I'm done

    Hazardous chemicals. Well, I think oil itself is supposed to be dangerous right? I was seeing them wear all sorts of outfits to clean the oil spill in the Gulf, but I certainly haven’t seen them out here. As far as I’m concerned, a little oil never hurt anyone. But, what does really suck is something called H2S gas, which is basically like a tear gas that makes you feel lightheaded and foggy. Everyone wears a meter to detect it, but it only goes off when it’s above a certain percentage. In general, about 50% of the places I go have some of this gas (it is often associated with the smell of rotten eggs), and of those 50%, 80% have levels high enough to make me work while streaming tears down my face. I haven’t cried like that since a funeral. Then again, I think my eyes are pretty weak to that stuff. Either way, I guess in theory you could die from this gas, but it’s more of a frustration than a danger.

  • Entertainment. I get it, it’s work, why do you need entertainment? Well, I get the pleasure of driving to all of these locations and a big part of the job is just making it there and back, sometimes being hours just getting to one unit that takes 15 minutes to get going right. So, in the company truck, there is one option: the radio. I’m not quite sure why, but the strongest station I can get is a pop station. So it’s either Katy Perry or static-filled conservative talk radio or silence. This is more of a danger to your sanity than anything else.
  • There’s more stuff that sucks that could go here (like dismemberment and death), but you get the idea.

What’s the point of even talking about all this? Well, the effect that is has on the people who do this kind of work every day is apparently pretty evident, that or it just naturally attracts the most badass dudes on the planet. These are some no-nonsense folk who make me feel like the most out of place guy around… though I’m finally getting used to how things work out here.

This whole story has essentially led me to a short example of why the oil field workers are the hardest people on the planet. When I meeting someone to show me where a unit was located, the guy walked up to me and said hello and we shook hands. After this, he grabbed my shoulder and pulled back a still moving yellow jacket and crushed it inbetween his fingers. Before going back to his truck, he said only this:

“You had a wasp there.”

This man is the epitome of America.

Time Flies

8 Nov

So, today I got on Facebook to try to find something that I immediately forgot I was looking for as soon as I got on. While doing so, I noticed it was Dan’s birthday, my old roommate from college, and I so I gave him a call. He made two really valid points about both of our lives at the moment, and it’s kind of upsetting. The following quotes are shown below, but I don’t actually remember what he said exactly. (I literally just got off the phone with him too, making this pretty impressive.)

“Don’t you think it’s sad that we haven’t talked for a few months and we’re doing exactly the same thing as we were before? Nothing is new.”

“Isn’t it crazy how work completely destroys your sense of time? You go in to work on a Monday and all the sudden it’s Thursday. You’re just getting to work and then all the sudden you’re leaving — and then somehow you’re back at work.”

If the amount of 4ft postholes I've dug in the desert is proportinate to my life's success, then I am a winner.

Both of these are sad points. I haven’t updated this journal in months and the only new thing in my life is that I’ve moved back to Midland and started working. Nothing else has happened in my life and it looks like that will be the same for some months to come. Kind of a scary thought. We both really don’t find our jobs to be engaging (though I don’t hate mine). It’s just something that fills up time and gives us paychecks.

I still can’t wrap my head around how people get stuck doing something they don’t really enjoy and then do it for the rest of their lives, just coasting through and until some point in the future — and I’m not sure we know what that point is — where we decide to make a change. I feel like doing it young is the way to go because youth gives you more options to do the things you haven’t. I will go skydiving soon; this is my greatest fear and I have to do it. I’m afraid of waking up one day and being old, realizing I’ve wasted so many years so I could get a paycheck. I think, fortunately, the Navy will keep things varied, and for this, I am thankful. It was a radical option in terms of the regular 9-to-5, and it’s something that will hopefully avoid this fact.

Aim very, very high

So, I guess my question is this: is this bleak outlook really how  the rest of our lives play out? Because honestly, that sucks. I can’t handle doing something like this day in and day out, never getting to do the things I want, never getting to accomplish my goals, and never getting to marry a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader (aim high, right?).

This is actually hopeful post because I feel like my future will have that spark to keep it interesting and give me options on trying new things. The Navy is exactly that: adventure. As well, I don’t think it’s impossible for Dan to get out of his cycle either. Today at dinner, two of my close friends announced they were moving — they’re picking up and getting out of Midland. They realized that all they were doing is flying a holding pattern and searching for something that Midland could not ever offer them. So, they’re dropping everything and moving. Hell yes. This is the power of our freedom, and it’s something we seldom exploit. Have a goal? Do it. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll die with the regret that we could have done something and never took that chance.

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