Today's random bits

No rhyme or reason to the why of these today, it's just another one of those "nothing worth a whole post on its own" days...

• I hit Best Buy today, because the clip on my cell phone case broke... I don't think I've ever been in there this close to the dreaded "Black Friday". They've got piles of stuff set up in display piles, but all shrink-wrapped, and the "serpentine" checkout line all set up. Looks like they went and rearranged some of the departments while they were at it... heavens forbid anybody should be able to find what they want in a timely manner without tracking down a sales critter.
• I also gassed up on the way home today... for under $15, on a fairly empty tank. I can't remember the last time that happened, honestly.
• You know those little green army men many of us played with as kids? Wouldn't it be cool if they made something like Star Wars stormtroopers available in that size and volume? Maybe a mixed set... little white stormtroopers and orangey-brown rebels, something like that. I know I'd have a fine gift to give come Christmas if that existed... :)
  

Fun dining out

I had a lady college friend hit town today... some of the "old gang" got together with her for lunch, others were expected for dinner. Work's pretty all-consuming these days, so I opted for the dinner get-together... and just as well I did, since nobody else showed up. As such, I got to monopolize her for a good hour and a half while we dined, and much fun was had by us both. The main reasons I decided to write about this:

• We ate at Hill's, which is in downtown Spokane across from Auntie's Books. I've never been there before, and was favorably impressed. It's a place that does daily specials, and the duck proscuitto I had was pretty tasty... and the chicken my friend had looked and smelled pretty tasty, too.
• It's funny, watching people's expectations fall apart. When a gent came with our meal, he was obviously thrown by my getting the "pretty plate" while the lady had the, erm, sturdier fare. The waitress somehow figured that we were a dating couple, even though we were waiting for other people at first... and was similarly taken aback when the lady insisted that she wanted to pay for the meal.

All in all, a good time for all involved... :)

Stones, glass houses, and all that

A few days back, there was a protest gathering against California's Proposition 8... in Spokane, in front of Spokane City Hall. When I heard that, I was all ready to put forth a missive about appropriate time and place... you know, either go to California to protest a California proposition, or at least target something remotely connected to the support for the problem you're fighting. However, something didn't feel quite right, so I mulled it over a bit.

It finally struck me... what those protesters were doing was something quite similar to many of the blog posts I've made on this site. I mean, much of what I write in complaint here is "preaching to the choir", or at least to a napping congregation, or something like that... sure, I could write letters to my local congresscritters, City Hall, or the like, and possibly get some actual results, but I content myself with blogging in a "public" place where, in truth, very few people will ever read what I write, unless I go and do something unexpected to make my name (in)famous. As an added bonus, those protesters got some small sense of community, of being part of "something bigger", which I know matters quite a bit to some people.

So, much as I'd like to, I can't really mock those protesters too much. All I can suggest is that they aim a little higher, and take a little more risk, if they're going to be serious about supporting a cause in the future.

The war against Christmas is over

...and Santa lives on... in space, gathering power! No, wait, scratch that... I'm not here to talk about that particular bit of Invader Zim fun (and oh yes, fun it is). Neither am I blogging about the eternal complaints about The Public not embracing/enduring your particular religion's usurpation of the Winter Solstice festivities (that includes you, Christians). No, this time I'm off on a rant about the other bastardization of a perfectly lovely holiday season, its commercialization and, especially, its creep.

Younger readers might not remember that, even though commercialism around the holidays has been pretty standard for decades, that there was a time, not so long ago, where it was at least contained... that is to say, Halloween might be exploited for a few weeks beforehand, at most a month, then Thanksgiving had its turn (with maybe a slight nod to Veterans Day), then, immediately after Thanksgiving, the Christmas shopping season ripped into high gear. In recent years, there's been a little bleed-over between the separate holidays, but the pattern in whole has held pretty true.

As of this year, Thanksgiving has apparently been demoted to near-Veterans Day status by the powers that be. I snickered a little at first when Qwest and Comcast started dueling Christmas-themed ad campaigns the day after the election, sure that their snowflake imagery would be bad for them, what with the number of people who dread the approach of snowfall and all. But the madness has continued to build... and today, I saw the clincher. I hit my local grocery store for supplies, and found Christmas growing healthily, if not in full bloom... extra toys scattered here and there, Christmas decorations throughout the "seasonal" area, and Christmas-themed DVDs at the checkstands. Mind you, in many places I might shrug it all off... but Thanksgiving, with its heavy ties to food, is a natural for a grocery store to be pushing... instead, I saw a few anemic turkeys at one end of the meat section, and that was about it.

It's sad, really... I mean, I know the economy's in the shitter, but the reaction of the merchandising world at large seems to be to push the need to consume even harder, and please ignore that "be thankful for what you've got" holiday entirely. I know I'm pretty well turned off by the crassness of the whole thing... hopefully, by the time I get around to doing my gift-buying, there will be somebody left that I won't mind buying from.

No, really, World of Goo is pretty cool

I don't normally do "follow-up" commentary on games I've already blogged about... but I'll make an exception this time. On the down side, the end of the second chapter is, well, bizarre, and not necessarily in a good way... but the last two chapters (and, to a lesser extent, the epilogue) make up for it. That's especially true for you Gen-X types and younger boomers when you hit the "Information Superhighway" chapter, which comes complete with "green screen" technology and 8-bit sound in places. Oh, and those "artillery" games I reminisced about last time? You get to play a version of that with the gooballs on that last chapter, too.

Beyond that, well, let this be your guide to how hooked I am on that game... I took the day off yesterday, it being Veteran's Day and all, and figured I'd get some Fallout 3 time in (another worthy game, but a topic for another day)... but first, a little World of Goo. Eight hours or so later, I had finished the storyline, gone back through some of the earlier puzzles to gather more gooballs for my tower, and made more than one attempt to build a stable structure as high as I could. For all that the main game is "done", this is one game that I'm not done with yet... I'm obsessed by the fact that I'm still 2 balls shy of the maximum in tower mode, and haven't built a reliably stable tower to my satisfaction yet (I saw some Canadian got up to 29m high, and I'm sure I can do better than that). I'll be back, again and again... just not on a day that I need to get up and do anything the next day, I'm thinking.

Oh, side note? 8 hours clutching a Wii Remote in an underhanded death grip is a sure way for your body to tell you later that this is something you Should Not Do... but at least it doesn't seem to affect your ability to type or mouse about the next day, like, say, doing the same in most MMORPGs or FPSs would.

MetaPlace Beta

Well, MetaPlace has been in beta for a bit now... and now, I'm part of it. It's got a NDA, so I can't say too much about it so far... but if you're already in, and you know me, you can find me there. If you're not already in, well, there's a lovely link off to the right to apply for beta... supposing building your own games/worlds appeals to you, of course... :)

New president inbound, America shows their class

Public radio's on in the background, and John McCain just conceded. Maybe it's just been too long since I've heard a concession speech on the national level, but I honestly don't remember the winners being booed and jeered while the loser is delivering the speech... *sigh*.

Stay classy, America.

Never underestimate the power of "Free"

It was an interesting day in the Spokane Valley today... a local electronics seller teamed up with Waste Management and... Sony, I think? At any rate, the deal was supposed to be for people to drop off unwanted electronics at their warehouse for recycling at no charge, and also get a coupon worth money off on new gear, or some such. This event was heavily advertised, including a full-page newspaper ad and a "team-up" with a local morning news program.

Now, for those of you not from this area, you should know that "cheap" is a favorite word for most Spokanites, eclipsed only by "free"... normally, this is best demonstrated by the prevalence of buffet dining in the region, and the healthy attendance of store closing sales by the scavengers among us, myself included. It's also a region that, by and large, isn't particularly "well off"... people hold onto things like old computers and TVs on the basis that they might need them as a fallback, should something happen to their current equipment... especially since they don't know how to "safely" dispose of their computers, and trips to the waste transfer station cost money.

Oh, one more note... the group holding this recycling drive didn't establish much in the way of limits on what you could bring in, beyond "no appliances". Care to guess how things evolved from that point?

I was watching the news this morning on the affiliated station... the event was supposed to run from something like 7am to 4pm, it was 9am, and traffic was backed up several blocks to the nearest freeway offramps. The police had been called in for traffic/crowd control, and were pleading for anybody else coming down to use alternate routes. Word from the newsies was that they were looking at needing to bring in more containers for all the junk that people were bringing in, the ones on-site showcasing some of the "vintage" technology that had been brought in (think old record players and wood-cabinet TV sets), the ones further away looking more and more frazzled as the insanity continued.

Of course, I'm not immune to the lure of getting rid of old tech for free... I figured (especially since I had some laundry needing doing) that I'd wait for the afternoon, when things died down a bit, and dredge out my basement's collection of old tech goodies. I made it to the hornet's nest about 2pm, and traffic was still, to put it mildly, nuts... you had to make it all the way in to the center of the madness before anybody told you that they had closed the collection station early, because they didn't have anyplace to put any more junk from people's basements. Of course, there was still signage up directing people to come to the center, nary a "closed early due to popular demand" sign or any such to be seen... just some obviously ragged-out police doing their best to keep the swarm somewhat orderly.

Me, I shrugged, drove off to the transfer station and paid my $7 to unload my bounty (I sure wasn't going to stuff it back in my basement!). I'm thinking this might turn into a PR nightmare for the local companies involved, though... it'll be interesting to see what tomorrow's news has to say about the whole mess.