Wow, I guess I'm a visionary...

So, here's a post from a couple years back... note in particular the section about what might make for an ideal video game controller.  Now, compare that to this, a patent Sony filed not quite a year later.  Mind you, I didn't see the great glowing balls on top of each piece... but that's because that's nothing short of stupid.  I'm not just saying that because it's Sony (for all I'd rather almost anybody else had filed that patent)... pieces potentially in the way of trigger fingers is not a good thing.  Still, it'll be interesting to see if something like that controller actually gets made... it'd be fun to see how it behaves in the real world.

Blast from the Past: Extended Edition

Looks like this cycle of drama has likely run its course, so I can post something less cryptic than my previous post... and, since there's popular demand for such, why not.

First, some back story... back in high school, like most guys, I "fell in lust" with my share of ladies, but never really went any further than that until my senior year.  That's when a fetching young lady, who I'll just call F for this story, transferred in.  Not only was she pretty, she was smart (I believe I met her in my calculus-based Physics class), and she was a Trekkie.  What more could a growing geek ask for, right?  Still, it's not like she was perfect... F always struck me as being a bit "scattered", but that didn't bother me at all.  We became friends and, in time, something like boyfriend and girlfriend... again, it wasn't perfect, but it was more than just lust.

Things went astray at our senior prom... I invited F, and drove a close friend of mine and his date (a junior whom I'd never met before) there.  After a while, F and my friend went off on their own, leaving me with the stranger.  Let's just say that I didn't handle that well, and I made quite certain that all involved knew that I was hurt by it.  No, hurt would be an understatement... it strongly shaped my outlook on life, and it took the better part of fifteen years for me to get back to a point in my life where I could truly forgive F and move on with my life.  It never occurred to me that any of the other participants in that incident could still be weighted down by it.

Fast forward to this past October, when I received a call from F from out of the blue.  She needed a little liquid courage to make the call, so she may well have said more than she intended... while I make no claim to being a gentleman, there's still much she said that it wouldn't be right to repeat.  The main highlights, then:  F was truly and terribly sorry for the grief she had caused, she had been recovering for several years from a nervous breakdown brought on in part by the 9/11 attacks (she had been in the greater New York area at the time), she's working to get into grad school (a process complicated by how long she had been out of, well, everything), but she would also like a relationship with me... that and much more, she laid at my feet.

Like I posted before, she mostly talked and I mostly listened... the fact was, it was obvious that she had a decision to make, and had likely called me, consciously or not, hoping to get the proverbial door slammed in her face, so she could concentrate on the path she really wanted to follow.  More's the pity for her, I had forgiven her some years back, so I didn't have that lash-out instinct at play... instead, I was intrigued.  I could still see the bits that attracted me all those years ago, and got reminded of things I'd forgotten (like her voice... it still has the power to coil around my brain stem and give it a nice squeeze), and, layered on top of that, was a couple of decades of change, paths she took that I never went near.  There's no way I could just "dive in" the way she wanted, but sniffing around the edges couldn't hurt much...

There was a problem, though... it became apparent, the more we talked, that she had a lingering image of me as a good/nice guy, perfect in too many ways.  If we were going to pursue any sort of relationship outside of Facebook-friendship, that needed corrected.  Since I also needed to get my thoughts and feelings straight, I tried to kill two birds with one stone... since she was extremely open and honest with me during her call, I composed an honest telling of my own experiences for the same general time-frame.  It took me the better part of four nights to get everything down, and I ended up with about six pages of prose, which I promptly emailed off to her.

Writing has many good things to say about it, but it also has one major downside... if you're not careful to understand your audience, and write in a way that works for them, you can get results you never intended.  F read my manuscript, and it was like I walked into her home, dropped trou, and crapped on her carpet.  It necessarily included a section surrounding the events of that long-ago prom, and, for all I had told her on the phone, and written in the manuscript, that I had forgiven her long ago, she took it as an indictment of her behavior.  A flurry of emails and text messages followed, as I tried to convince her that, truly, I wasn't trying to dredge up the past in a damning way... and she seemed to be somewhat mollified.

Thereafter... well, we texted a very little bit, but we never got on the phone again.  F kept herself quite busy with studying for tests and the like, so my hopes for getting to re-know her dwindled and faded.  Finally, I sent her an email last night (a mere four paragraphs, how's that for brevity? ;) ), putting the ball firmly in her court for initiating further contact, once she's not so busy... she didn't take well to that one, either.  Still, I think it was the right thing to do... it lets me get back to my normal state of serenity and contentment, and there's no sense in both of us being miserable.  Besides, if she does get back to me in a few weeks' time, it'll be a (possibly) pleasant surprise.

Blast from the Past

So, my high-school girlfriend from a couple decades back called me over the weekend, and we talked for a couple of hours (or, really, she mostly talked and I mostly listened, but, in my case, that's more or less to be expected).  Let's just say I'm "conflicted", and leave it at that for now.

こんばんは

Ran across some cheap language-learning software on my last trip out of town, and I decided, given my addictions to manga and anime, that it might be fun to take a stab at learning Japanese.  It's only a week, and I've already discovered that I'm in for way more than I bargained for, thanks to multiple writing systems, of which I would only classify two as "sane", from what I've seen so far.  Still, I'm hopeful that I can pick up on it all, in time... after all, many people would classify me as only partially sane, so it should be a good fit... ;)

Oh, as far as the title of this post goes?  That's the Hiragana representation of the word "konbanwa", which means "good evening", which I can never think without hearing it in Alfred Hitchcock's voice.  It's one of the few words I know how to spell so far (as long as I'm using a keyboard... I don't know how long it will take me to attempt writing by hand), so I thought it might be a fun test of how this blog system handles non-English scripts.

School lunches

OK, not my usual sort of topic, especially since I don't have kids myself, but I do have school-aged relatives.  I knew that there was a push on to put more "healthy" foods into school lunches, to try and combat the growth of childhood obesity... but I never knew that they were trying to calorie-restrict students, especially to the point where students would collaborate to complain publicly about it (link).

That in itself would be bad enough... but then I think about the kids who get reduced/free school lunches, some of whom don't get a reliable meal elsewhere.  Then there's the talking heads... I caught "the professionals" on the Today show talking about this earlier today, saying how this is supposedly a good thing, that the kids should only be eating until they're "satisfied", not "full" (which obviously isn't happening), and then one of them started going on about how this was a "shared sacrifice" issue... can't find a link to their segment online, unfortunately, but it's been enough to stick in my mind all day, hence this post.

Note to the "food crusaders" out there... if you want to try and push healthier options, more power to you.  As soon as you start harming one group of children, in the name of helping another group, you've gone too far.  Now, I'll just leave this here...

2012 Olympics - Closed

Summer Olympics are done for another 4 years... no major incidents that I heard about, and the U.S. pretty well dominated medals-wise, so that's nice.  Once again, NBC coverage was sucktastic, for anybody without a cable subscription especially.

As far a closing ceremonies go... well, I didn't watch much of it this time.  Pretty much every time I tuned in, it was another rock/pop group performing, which doesn't strike me as particularly "ceremonial"... except, of course, when there was a Python performing "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life", which was definitely not ceremonial, but at least amusing.  When Brazil's turn came up for the "coming attractions" part of the show, that was... interesting, at least.  Certainly, it was a damn sight better than what London did last games... it'll be interesting to see how things shape up, in four years' time.

2012 Olympics - Open

It's that time again... athletes from around the world, competing to show that they/their team/their country are "the best".  Good luck to all involved!

Of course, after China's spectacular to open their games last year, I had to see how the UK would handle their opening ceremonies, especially considering how disappointing their portion of the closing ceremony of the last games was.  Thankfully, they didn't embarrass themselves... it was genuinely entertaining, and my only quibbles come down to matters of personal taste (excess use of pre-filmed clips and popular music from decades back, mainly).  Still, for me, the highlight had to be Rowan Atkinson's part in the ceremony this time around... so, yeah, "spectacular" isn't the word I would use to describe it.