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-Myst 5: End of Ages quote: "Perhaps my words... perhaps I do not give myself enough credit!"-

Last night I dreamed I was working on a project in Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express, which is slightly better than the normal fare of just checking my email. But still, seems like a waste of the "unlimited powers" one has when dreaming.

Yesterday's post (specifically, the part about Windows Vista) got me thinking...

[pause for everyone to gasp at the weirdness of being inspired by one's OWN POST]

Why, exactly, do people like to pick on the "overdog" (that term would be my word for the opposite of underdog)? To a certain degree it makes sense; with a large corporation or anything like that, you don't want them to get cocky and start misusing their power... it's in our best interests to keep them a little humbler than their products may deserve. But seriously? I think the whole Microsoft-bashing thing is a little out of proportion. Take the XNA program I talked about playing with in my dream. I am fairly certain Apple doesn't have an equivalent, at least not with all the beginner tools and reach of XNA, but after the initial buzz, everyone sort of dropped it (except the developer community). Also, the Vista-bashing is getting really old. If you don't like the processor-hogging graphics, turn them off, for goodness' sakes! You're not 3. And much as people hate to admit it, the new OS does have some handy upgrades, they just take getting used to, like any upgrade does. And the lack of programs that are Vista-compatible? Hm, I wonder who's to blame for that...

On the other hand, all the snubbitude is resulting in less Vista machines, which nearly guarantees less virus attacks on mine. So there's a plus side!

Let's talk now about the Google-is-evil contingent. You know, the people who are all GASP! Google caved to the Chinese government and censored their results!!! AAAAAAZOOORZZZZ!!! etc.

Well, I may not be qualified to exonerate all of Google's supposed "sins", but this one I can. I'VE BEEN TO CHINA. I'VE SEARCHED THE INTERNET THERE. If you use Yahoo, or Dogpile, or any of those other searches to bring up, say "Tiannamen Square", you get NOTHING (well, other than "Internet Explorer cannot display this page"). In Google, all the results will show up, but some won't be clickable (but less than you might guess). Here's how this is better: you can still read the little blurb underneath the links! So yes, Google is censored in China, but the net result is the Chinese people get more information than they do from the other "noncooperating" search engines.

Reality check. Of course, I joked to the relative who's computer I was using that she might be getting a phone call from the government after all the searches I made on hot topics.

j j

-Download window quote: "75% of 1 file - Downloads"-

I had a pretty typical dream last night -- lots of stuff that pops up often in dreams, like working on the computer (which is an awful waste of dreaming time, if you ask me) and walking through a hilariously complicated version of my home church building. For some bizarre reason, that building seems to gain thousands of rooms and passageways every time I dream about it. Kind of fun to explore, I guess. Not half as convoluted in real life, which is a good thing.

I found a couple interesting sites yesterday while browsing Cnet. One of them is this blog post with kind of a neat premise -- it looks at your browser history and compares that to a database listing the male-female ratio of each site. Then it uses that information to estimate what gender you are! I found it rather charming, though kind of silly for since I clear my browsing history whenever I exit the browser. I plan to try it sometime after I've been surfing a while, just to give it a more accurate picture, although it's even fun just to read the comments section.

You can find the post here.

The other site is the Mojave experiment. If you're online at all these days, you probably know that Microsoft's newest operating system, Vista, has... how shall I phrase this gently... met with an unusual amount of resistance and gotten some (read: scads of) negative press. Microsoft has been trying to counter this for a while now, but their arguments so far haven't been getting through. I have Vista on my new computer, and while it isn't half the monster people make it out to be, it does occasionally have a couple "features" that frustrate me.

I go to www.mojaveexperiment.com/ to cheer myself up. Way to go, Microsoft, for bringing some creativity and fun into the Vista campaign.

Reality check. I really should check more while I'm on the computer, seeing as I dream about it so much (and it sure would be a relief to take over at that point and say: "Ah-ah-ah! No more dream-wasting mundane computerness!!! I will now go do something I DON'T do every day in real life!!!).

ama,

-Me quote: "...some kind of robot Hippocratic oath..." (commenting on how hard it is to get computers to delete files)-

I remember one of last night's dreams in great detail: I was trying to take a shower but unfortunately got somehow transported into a large, crowded building -- but still clothed only in towel, of course. Supposedly the story was that the men had messed up the in-out flow of the building by all crowding in at once, and weren't being too successful at pushing to the exit through the mob. The women, meanwhile, were walking out merrily over our heads, doing some sort of levitating job. I finally figured out how to get out with them when I got myself passed along to a couple of bigger guys, who hauled a line of us up into the air -- where we stuck. Then we were able to walk along the air and out of the building just as the women were doing before. Keep in mind, I'm still in fashionable towel garb at this point. Then I walked out to the bus stop and waited there. Some of my friends caught up before the bus got there (one playing with an ENORMOUS spherical rock), so we headed to the next bus station. In the course of conversation, I find out that the friend with the rock lives on the same street as my grandparents... even though I only know this friend from an online forum (and two pictures) and they actually live halfway across the U.S. So, naturally, the bus drops us at my grandparents' place, and my grandma pops "another" anime movie in (because, yeah, all the other stuff? Apparently also a movie that I was sucked into).

[insert authentic-sounding click]

Another thing I did on vacation was fiddle endlessly with (someone else's, thankfully) Polly Pocket Secret Safe, complete with the stunningly obscure password of POLLY. Seriously, if anyone knows how to reset the password on that toy, please comment. After willing that toy to give up its secrets to me for hours on end, the curiosity is burning me up. I tried pushing every buttonlike object on that thing (believe me, there are more than you see at first) in every combination, and the only thing I got in return was a saccharine, creepily adult-sounding Polly voice telling me over and over again, "That's not right!"

Then: "Enter your secret 3-letter [aside: yes, you read right. Polly can't count either] code, and then press enter," while I'm sitting there thinking "What self-respecting kid would say 'press' in that context? The only thing I can imagine fitting there is 'push'."

(closely followed by "GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH how come your password can seemingly never be reset until the end of TIME, no matter how many adults BASH THEIR BRAINS OUT on your innocuous pink surface????????")

[insert authentic-sounding click]

Reality check. FYI: my grandmother actually detests anime.

qt

-Zanika quote: "Are you ready?"-

Had a dream I was playing a MMORPG with my brother, and a more experienced player was frying his character. I mean, literally torching it, not just walloping it.

I was going to continue with boring vacation stories today, except that I discovered possibly the most hilarious little program bundled in my new computer.

Namely, Live! Cam Avatar Creator.

The general purpose of the software is apparently to enable the user to take a picture of a face (theirs or more likely someone else's), mark the locations of the eyes, nose, and lips, and the program will animate it so that it looks like some sort of really low-budget CGI android. I mean, what more can you expect, considering all it has to work with is one frame -- which it valiantly muscles into blinking and moving its mouth and head. In the interests of simplicity, there are only four points to line up along the mouth, often leading to parts of lips or teeth (depending on how large and cheesy a grin the subject of the portrait had to begin with) splitting and going their merry ways when the mouth is "opened".

Shall I even mention that the calibration of the face occurs to a female voice with a prerecorded message? Oh, the juvenile amusement in picking the most manly-man pic you can find, then going through the sequence. [in female voice] "And some natural movement" [inside animated picture, which is currently stretching around side to side in a decidedly unnatural manner] "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What happened to my throat?!"

I think after I post this, I will embark on an internet scavanger hunt for the perfect face to subject to this treatment.

Reality check. If you see one of these avatars heading toward you, don't reality check. Just run.

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-The Mole's Journal quote: "I don't even like grapes."-

Had another lovely human-relations-failure dream last night. You know, the ones where you speak your mind to someone (as inhibitions are much lower in dreamland) and it launches a massive, comically (well, looking back) inflated argument?

[insert authentic clicking sound]

Another thing I discovered on vacation was a sink and counter cleaning/polishing product called Gel-Gloss. Longtime readers will recall my fanaticism over bathroom cleanliness and Shininess -- which explains why I'm actually plugging for a product that sounds more worthy of an infomercial in my blog.

Basically, it's this varnish-like substance that comes in a rectangular pink can. You pour some on a cloth and rub it all over the counter and sink, wait for it to turn cloudy, then wipe it off with a clean cloth. And I speak literally when I say that the result feels like your countertop is made of cool butter. The way my relative (the one who introduced me to it) described it: "It makes the counter feel soft." Now, I didn't really believe this statement at first -- why would you want a soft countertop?? How could a countertop become soft? Grow a shag carpet?

After the application (and running my hand along the marble every bathroom visit thereafter), I can assure you that, yes, you do want a soft countertop. I plan to get it for myself as soon as I can.

[insert authentic clicking sound]

Reality check. So I'm slightly obsessed.

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-WoW quote: "Binds when equipped." (no, I don't actually play World of Warcraft, but I do enjoy peering over the shoulders of others -- so many silly quotable things)-

My dream last night involved a classic dream segment: trying to change my clothes whilst getting annoyed by the fact that everyone else wouldn't leave the room and give me some privacy. Really, I need to start figuring out that this is a near-certain tipoff of a dream. Also, there were children cliff-diving into murky water, which was just weird.

[insert authentic clicking sound here]

Continuing my virtual vacation slideshow of boring doom, one thing I got introduced to on vacation was this show called The Mole. I got so hooked on it after the first episode that I'm planning to watch the entire season, even though it airs here at an hour I find yawn-crackingly late ( -> me <- early bird). Basically, it's the reality show that makes all the horrible reality shows foisted upon us worthwhile.

The premise behind the show is that there are twelve people competing for a single monetary prize. Each episode, they play games that increase the value of that prize. The catch is that one of the "players" is actually [drum roll] THE MOLE, who gets paid to sabotage the games and decrease the money won. The great thing about the show is that neither the players NOR THE AUDIENCE knows who the mole is. In fact, the elimination (they call it Execution in this show) rests on a quiz that the people take about the identity of the mole: the one who gets the least characteristics right is executed that round.

The sort of dynamic this creates is that the mole is acting like an innocent player while the rest of the people act like the mole -- after all, if they can successfully convince the other people that they are the mole, those people will flunk the quiz sooner. Unlike a lot of reality shows, therefore, even viewers can't figure out the answer right away. The American version of the show is almost at the end of its season, and I still haven't precisely pinned down who the mole is. The challenges in the show don't make it any easier... they're tough enough that even the players that want to increase the prize money mess them up. There's often a lot of memorization and a lot of steps and possibly even an exemption or two (these usually decreasing the money won but preventing the player who defects from being executed).

I don't often get too excited about TV shows, but I definitely recommend this one.

[insert authentic clicking noise here]

Reality check. Also, it has really cool theme music.

fjfmq

-Windows Experience quote: "5.1 determined by lowest subscore"-

Well, I'm finally back from vacation. I discovered there that it is true that discomfort/new settings can induce lucidity, as I went lucid the first night I was bunked on the couch. Go figure. Meanwhile, last night's dream was considerably more vague.

Ah, where to start? I suppose I will do the classic "and now it's time to watch a long boring slideshow of some other dude's vacation" bit. Complete with authentic-sounding clicks (okay, so you'll have to make them yourself. I find sucking on my tongue makes a good imitation slide click).

Um, I went swimming a lot. Longtime readers will know that swimming is rather agreeable to me. Alas, my home is not well-supplied with community pools, but my relatives' house is. I made sure they got their money's worth. Also, I found out that walking across the deep end without touching the bottom (I suppose you could call it "walking on water", except without the whole head above water part) was rather fun, if slightly difficult. You see, my body is bound and determined to float -- the reason I couldn't manage to walk along the bottom at all -- so I have to keep moving to stay upright and not end up on my stomach on the surface of the pool.

[insert authentic clicking noise here]

More vacation slides are to come.

Reality check. Yes, I know this is a short post for me. But I also got a new computer, which I am at this moment more eager to outfit with programs than to use it to blog.

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-Matthew 24:28 quote: "Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather."-

Not much that I remember of my dreams last night. Seems to come in waves, forgetting and remembering. If only I could figure out the cycle these waves are pinned to. All I remember of last night's dream was (maybe) my grandfather dying? I'm not even sure of that, and I would think I'd remember more of the dream if it had something like that in it.



I was bored yesterday, and I had access to a pen and index card. Muahaha. Odd Sketchy Time!



I've always thought power plants were beautiful, and nuclear power plants most of all. This scribble certainly doesn't do them justice (was originally planning to make a more graphic-y t-shirt design -- so I could eventually PUT it on a t-shirt, hence the cartoony smoke -- but then it got more complicated...), especially since I added another power line to the rightmost pole but forgot to "update" the shadow: oops. I could interpose a rant here about how people let their irrational fears about "radiation" (most of which comes from natural sources anyway) bar one of the most reliable, safe, clean forms of power there is, but rants are so unbecoming. Plus, no one ever listens. Just stop by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's response to Three Mile Island fears.

(Full disclosure: I do have several family members who are working or have worked in nuclear power)

Reality check. Oh, by the by, I'll be visiting relatives for a couple weeks starting tomorrow. So don't think I've moved to Mars (terrible Wi-Fi reception there) or something when the posting hiccups.

fjtfjfta

-Alarm system quote: "READY TO ARM" (why must they use the word "arm"? It sounds so menacing)-

I remember not much of my dream last night, as my (clock) alarm woke me up this morning. I remember saying that it was no wonder something cost a lot. Hm.

I may not like cleaning bathrooms, but one household chore I do enjoy is folding towels. Not anything else, understand; t-shirts especially seem to intentionally take on mountains of creases and wad up when my fingers so much as brush against them. But there's something profoundly satisfying about folding the thick terrycloth in half, then shimmying the edges together and folding down again, then mounding the narrow result into perfect thirds. Perhaps I like it because towels don't show small imperfections in folding, like, say, t-shirts do; towels are so thick though that a small bulge here or there just adds to the charm. Or maybe it's the delicious not-quite-firm, not-quite-soft rectangular package that the towel ends as -- perfectly sized and shaped for stowage. Then again, I do also like the fact that a few seemingly random folds somehow (almost magically) manage to produce a towel-bundle with the monogram or other design neatly centered on the front. Looking at that end result makes me feel like I'm in some fancynose hotel rather than my own home.

Reality check. Towels and peas...

jf fjf

-Diaper box quote: "For HIM and HER!"-

Had a surprisingly vivid dream last night, considering that -- as I predicted in yesterday's post -- I got to sleep somewhere around... this morning. Some sort of camping trip, in which I somehow got around to pretending to be a Roman commoner (some other dude played the emperor) in an RV which was rather precariously tipped forward. And also, at the end I dreamt I was recording the dream in my dream journal, and almost smelled a rat. Reason? I was only writing in the ending -- the beginning of the dream was magically already written. I kind of sort of suspected something might be up (probably because "writing in my dream journal" is a popular tricksy false awakening for me) but woke up before I thought to do more detailed reality checking.

Weird thing that happens in the shower, for me. I'll be doing my thing, washing up, singing perhaps, all that, and (usually right after I cease singing to myself) the shower will sing back to me. I know this is likely some sort of cognitive trick brought on by the random noises of the water and the pipes being muscled into coherent music by my rabidly pattern-seeking brain, but it's still kind of interesting to hear a ghostly little girl's voice singing (complete with words, I might add) after me. The most annoying part: the shower is more likely to sing on-key than I.

Listen for it next time you're in the shower. It's fun, in it's own weird way.

Reality check. I wonder how many folktales are spawned by similar cognitive tricks?

nsfa

-Url quote: "http://mail.google.com/mail/?source=navclient#inbox"-

I had a dream that I was flying somewhere on some sort of platform (no propulsion mechanism I could see). Boy, would that revolutionize air flight. I got to bed early last night because I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight... since...

It's INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoohoo!! America, you can be silly sometimes, but I love you. Have a happy, happy birthday.

Reality check. I only hope my neighbors won't set off TOO many (illegal) fireworks. I mean, yeah there's a fire risk (which is why nonprofessional fireworks are illegal here), but the main problem is they have so many extras that they feel like they have to set them off 1) insanely late into the night and 2) every subsequent night for MONTHS.

n7qa

-MystCommunity quote: "Gehn's tableside lock combination? no"-

Well, I had a dream where I was a character in some sort of Celtic fantasy novel fleeing from bad guys (but hey, we had a bard, so we were unbeatable). Then later I saw a hyena (or something that looked like one) bolt through my backyard, and then I was back in high school -- except it was now in a tower -- and getting sick. But I didn't want the teachers to know, because I knew it would create a hassle. Which is totally how I would think, when I was little. I was mortally afraid of having to go home sick; it meant having to make up classwork!

Yet another episode of "Am I the Only One Who Does This?"

The scene is in some smaller setting, such as a small classroom or boardroom or even a face to face conversation. Someone is in the front of this smaller-sized room (or right in front of me), speaking. And, it may be because I already know the information, or it could be that they just are boring, but I can't focus on what they're saying. However! I want to be polite, so I'm looking at them intently.

Specifically, I am watching their nose. I am noticing that as they speak, the tip of their nose bounces up and down a tiny bit, apparently unnoticed by everyone else (including the person owning the springy proboscis). I am trying very hard not to grin.

Presenter: "So you see" [draws picture on board] "if we look" [bounce, bounce] "at it" [nose does a little mousy shiver] "from this" [big jump] "angle..."

Me: [quiet croaking of a surpressed laugh]

Reality check. The funny thing is, no one notices this, but EVERYONE I've looked at does it. Try it next time you're bored... you'll see what I mean.

7,

-Purse shopper quote: "This is, like, eating my armpit."-

And I had two dreams last night, of which I remember a minimum. One was attending an orientation at a college (I think) and in the other I think I was a character in a book. Still doing two glasses of water at lunch, three at dinner, and a travel mug of water just before bed. I think the problem is that I'm going to bed too late and thus don't become alert early enough to catch the dreams.

A young man I know is in his junior year of high school, which means only one thing: endless reams of college mail, both to his poor overloaded inbox and his actual snail-mail box. Well, let me just tell you, he is the sort of guy that kind of sits in the background, quiet, observing, until...

In this case, the idea dawned on him when he realized that virtually every email directs him to a form that requests, along with his name, address, and other sundries (so they can innundate him with paper spam), his "preferred first name". Now, at first this puzzled him, since to his knowledge very few people have a preferred first name besides their REAL first name (at least not that they'd want colleges using), but then he saw an opportunity. The next time he got an email asking him to consider a college he wasn't remotely interested in, he filled out the form... and inserted a preferred first name:

Rensalmon.

He continued with the next piece of spam, and the next.

Ahasapeshtim.

O fount of all knowledge.

Deagol. (ring a bell? Smeagol's perhaps the more famous of the two)

Handsome.

And so forth. Now he's looking forward to college spam, because of the awesome rush that comes with an actual paper copy of "Dear Ahasapeshtim, here is the 'Guide to Picking a College (hint, hint: pick ours)' you requested..." And I'm trying to convince him to frame the letters.

Reality check. Don't you just love automated systems?

jft,

-Ad quote (sung opera-style by people in flagrantly bad Viking costume): "I have an annuity but I need cash now!"-

No memory of my dreams last night except that the dream that I had was rather charming. And there was a part where I was going (I don't know if walking or driving) down my home street. This is the worst, when you know that the dream you had was interesting but can't remember a whit of it.

I have an idea for the people who make the voicemail setup sequence (beyond volunteering them for the company dunk tank). Instead of making people listen, then press an odd pattern of buttons, then quickly return their phone to their ear to make sure they don't miss the next instructions (or worse, wait so long that the annoyingly cheerful lady's voice asks "Are you still there?") and by the end of the call melt into a ball of hopeless futility, have a little sheet on the phone to fill out -- perhaps in the options or settings section. Then, when you're done filling it out and/or recording your voicemail message, press send and the PHONE will emit all the tones needed to go through the service, instead of making YOU have to press the right buttons. Honestly, isn't technology advanced that far by now? I mean, whoever thought of voicemail obviously didn't take into account that on a cell phone, at least, you can't press buttons while simultaneously listening to the phone. Furthermore, even if you could, you still would have to remember what each button stands for and also probably be juggling in your head what you're going to say as your voicemail message (in my case, a corny limerick) and wishing Annoying Recorded Saccharine Lady would repeat herself or at least go slower and not think you're about to hang up on her if you're trying to think of what button to press and wait a split-second too long.

Seriously, it's way too much pressure to go through if you have to remember what numbers mean what AND worry that pausing to remember them will result in "Are you still there?"

Reality check. Bah, humbug, and voicemail.