The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

You know what I need to do? I need to enjoy my successes.

I got an acceptance email from a lit mag today, saying that my short story, “Downsizing,” has been accepted for publication there.

That’s top of cool, isn’t it?

At the same time, I didn’t really jump up and down. I told everyone because that’s what I’m supposed to do, you know? In the same way, I succeeded at this because that’s what’s supposed to happen. I’m supposed to write things, and submit them, and get them published.

Basically, this is, like, the stupidest way to think about things ever, and I do it all the time.

I don’t know why my instant reaction to being successful is to undercut my success and attempt to make it meaningless. When amazing, awesome victory is merely “adequate,” it’s hard to take joy in anything. But this is really cool. This is like, the first time a serious publication has picked up my work. This is a thing that I should be proud of, and I’m letting my stupid brain stop me from being proud.

So fuck that, I am proud. I did it. Me. I win at writing, and will continue to win.
I’m cool.

I wonder where the luck/strategy threshold is for Essner.

So we played Acquire this evening, a game which has a strong random element to it. You draw tiles from a box that you can play on the board. Knowing what kind of connections you can make with tiles and guessing what various hotels your opponents are investing in are important to the game. When you know this, you’ll know what is going to buy out what, and thus what to invest in. Of course, you only know the moves possible from your hand. You don’t know what everyone else is drawing.

Essner seems to think this creates a game where there is no strategy to the moves and decisions you make, and someone just randomly wins. While luck does play a huge part, the idea that it’s only luck is verifiable as not true, which I think he would admit. It doesn’t change his gut reaction to the game, though, which is perfectly fair. A lot of the game can feel really random.

I just wonder where the line is for that kind of reaction, though. I mean, this is a guy who loves to play those coin push machines, and I feel like that’s almost completely random. Does he agree? Does he think there’s some small element of strategy in playing those games? I can’t speak for him, so I’m not sure. We play stuff like Magic, which has an obvious random element in card drawing, and other games with dice rolls and things of that nature, and he doesn’t really seem to think those are luck based, even though he always critically misses.

I don’t mean to pick on Essner. The other people I know who don’t like Acquire have the exact same feeling about it. I just wonder what it is about how the game goes that causes it to feel that way. Is it simply because you have to hedge your bets against many possible futures, and try to set up a situation where you can capitalize on most of them, as opposed to dealing with one threat in front of you?

This is what I am thinking about as I head to bed. What do you think of Acquire?

I remember when I was young, and we had Comedy Central. Late at night, at the crazy late time of midnight, they would show Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a magical show, and I remember trying, each and every time when I didn’t have to get up early the next day, to stay up and watch it. Almost always I would fail, but those times when I didn’t were the best times. True comedy times.

Now I live in an age where I would say that the majority of my non-video game entertainment, and significant amount of my entertainment overall is based in watching things that have taken this general format and ran with it. Stuff like Spoony, the many, many LPs I watch, and so on, are all comedy similar to that which I tried my hardest to get to see over and over again. Still, I guess I wonder why I gravitate to spending my time on that, when so many other avenues of amazing entertainment are out there. I’m behind on Community, 30 Rock, and Archer. I hear Important Things is on Netflix streaming now. So many things I could be watching. Yet this is what I spend my time on.

Here’s my current theory: it turns viewing into a pseudo-social experience. Now, that seems kind of potentially depressing, that I’d be replacing the people commentating in these videos for “real friends,” but it’s kind of true. I never see films alone, nor do I want to. I never watch TV shows unless I’m watching them with people, really. If I’m turning a television on, it’s because I need inoffensive background noise, I’m going to play a game on that television, or I’m watching something with someone. I don’t really watch things on my own. It’s slowly gotten to the point where it just doesn’t fit with how I go about doing things.
So I watch Let’s Plays were I have commentators “watching” with me and cracking jokes, adding to the experience. And I sit there, enjoying their humor, obviously, but also thinking about what they’re missing, reacting accordingly, and so on. It gives me the extra level of interaction I have sitting around doing something with my friends, but I can have it when my friends are busy or otherwise indisposed.

Did I manage to write that in a way that didn’t sound lame? I don’t feel like it’s lame. I feel like it makes sense. I watch things because I want to have the social interaction around watching something, whether it be discussing an episode over dinner or whatever. These sorts of internet entertainment let me have that in one complete package when I can’t figure out how to make schedules work.
And hey, if you have a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.

Today, my mother asked about buying a 360 for her TV downstairs.

I thought this was a bit silly, but I told her the price. She didn’t feel like it was worth 200 dollars. When I asked her why she wanted one, it was so she could play games. Well, hey, that seems like the reason one would get a 360. Of course, the games she wanted to play was trivia stuff like You Don’t Know Jack and whatnot. She wants to be able to play with Dad without bothering me, which is nice of her, of course. It’s not a great idea. She doesn’t trust herself with a 360 controller at all, so I don’t know what she’d do with actually owning a system. But it’s kind of cool she wanted to.
I followed this up by showing her the new Jack on my iPad and some of the funny Portal 2 videos that have been going around. I was showing her what was going on in gaming, and she seemed relevantly interested.

It’s kind of amazing to me that trivia has basically made my mother respect one of my biggest past-times. She doesn’t understand most of what I do, of course, but she gets the appeal of having everyone over to play Jack, or Buzz, or Scene It!. She wants to play these games, and even though it’s normally a huge hassle for me (she’ll only play them downstairs, so I have to unhook all my systems and carry them downstairs and hook them up there and such, which would be less of a problem except I am also forced to hide all the cables, making it hard to adjust things, but oh well) I always go ahead and do it because I love having her, and dad, and everyone involved. It feels awesome, and it’s a lot of fun. It worked with Dad and Golf, and it works with my mother and trivia.

Similarly, giving my mother a good, working laptop has done wonders for her understanding why I am on the internet all day. She gets as stressed as I do when the internet doesn’t work nowadays. She is on there, watching videos, reading news, or playing games on Yahoo games basically every night. She understands it, and doesn’t fight with me about being connected anymore.

For so long, I wished she would just leave me alone, or try to understand why I enjoy what I enjoy. It always seemed to hypocritical that she’d tell me I needed to not play games the whole night when she’d spend the whole night watching television. Finally, I have that understanding, at least with this stuff, and that’s pretty neat. Gives me hope for other things.

Flock sent me an e-mail today, telling me of it’s death.

Right around the time I fell in love with having two monitors, I heard about Flock. Originally a fork of Firefox, and eventually a fork of Chrome (and changing right around the time I changed over myself, like it loved me), Flock was supposed to be a “social web browser.” It originally drew me in with its interesting bookmark integration and built-in blogging software, and soon became my main browser, with Firefox, and eventually Chrome, sitting on my second monitor for opening links people sent me in chat and whatnot. It was built upon the solid innards of the more popular browsers, but it was something unique, and something mine. It worked well, and I enjoyed it. Even after Chrome appeared as a fantastic second browser to Firefox, I found myself ending up booting Firefox 3 to the curb instead, and sticking with Flock.

Alas, I should have guessed this day would come. As much as I loved Flock, it really didn’t offer anything that Firefox with three or four plugins didn’t have. Nobody was going to pile onto it. It couldn’t be worth the money to keep developing and updating. I’m not surprised they’re closing up shop, but I am sad to lose it.
I guess I have a little Indie Rock Pete in me, as I really did enjoy using a browser that was capable, but unknown. It was my special portal to the internet, that only I used. I don’t think I ever met anyone else that knew about it. It didn’t have the stigma of something like Opera, and it was not as complete bullshit as Safari or IE. It was totally mine. It has a special place in my heart because of that.

I installed Firefox 4 today to replace it. It looks a lot better than 3 was, and once I installed a plugin to make the address bar like Chrome (I can’t live without searching in the address bar anymore. It immediately pissed me off and I immediately started searching for plugins.), it seems like it will serve me well. Still, I already miss the way Flock would, very slightly, misrender my website, and the way it would fake out not saving my open tabs on a crash, then suddenly restore them. God speed, little browser. Rest in peace.

The tabs in Chrome are getting so small that I can’t even make out the little icons of the pages. That’s kind of crazy. Maybe I should leave some links for you here, so I can close some of these windows.

Do you like bananas? Do you like sculpture? Maybe these creepy sculptures would be up your alley, then.

If you answered yes to the second question, and not the first, than this might be more your style. The detail in this thing is kind of stupid.

If you’d like to attempt to explain why this picture of Applebloom cosplaying as JoJo exists, I would really like to hear it.

There’s no need, however, to explain the joy someone can receive by looking at Hulk Hogan’s face.

these are insane computer time’s we live in
wow.

I’m unsure why this wasn’t thought of sooner, really.

Computers in pop culture are amazing to compare.

Prepare for raddness.

Finally, Deptford continues to be hilarious with his comic. Do take a look.

Whew! I can see my tabs again! Thanks linkdump post! You saved the day again.

Ha, you came here, thinking you’d get content, but instead, you just received a list of links! This is the best April Fool EVER!

I dare you to stop watching this animated gif.

I dare you to watch this video involving ponies that has been stuck in my head since Val linked me to it and will not get out of there.

Wait, you wanted funny jokes? Maybe you’d like a humorous png image?

This says so much about Reginald’s outlook on the world.

This says so much about the world in general.

This image is posted without comment.

Oh, right, people were really mad at Scott Adams for being an amazingly sexist idiot because of this. I remember that now. Man, that tab has been open for awhile.

Very good – Attractive

Have a lovely Foolish April Day and remember: Friendship really is Magic.

Talking to Cara over a Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich, I realized I don’t give a shit.

Okay, wait, no, let me try that again.

Talking to Cara over a Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich, I realized that I don’t much give a shit about what other people think.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I am very based upon my own little world, my own little sphere of influence. If you’re in that sphere, man, I really care about you! You’re awesome. Ask me for favors, and hugs, and so on and so forth. I’ll do what I can. If you’re outside that sphere, though, I’m going to be polite because I am a polite person, but if you disagree with what I’m doing and it isn’t actively fucking you over, well, you can go die in a fire.

As real, actual changed based upon my gender shit nears actually occurring in my life, I find myself worrying like crazy about things like clothes. How am I going to look feminine? How am I going to project to every person I pass on campus that I am, in fact a woman? Thinking about this makes me sick, really. I have no idea how to dress like a woman. I don’t even particularly want to.

See, that last sentence is important. I don’t really particularly want to. I’m only doing it because other people expect it of me. And who are these other people? I don’t know. They certainly aren’t in my circle. Those in my circle don’t give a shit, because they know who I am. I don’t have to dress up for them. I mean, you know, as long as I’m not embarrassing, it’s not a big deal. They get it. I can be casual and comfortable.

Here’s the thing: now that my identity is not in jeopardy, I’m much less down on “masculine” styles and shit. The idea of being a woman who wears more “male” sorts of dress clothes and things has an appeal, whereas before, when I was more in a state of panic, the idea of doing that would have made me cry. Plus, I mean, fuck, what do other girls who play video games, blog on the internet, and play board games wear? Exactly what I wear on a daily basis, although maybe the t-shirts are, sometimes, of a different cut.

There are still some clothing-related things I need to get in order, but seriously, it’s not worth freaking out about something I don’t actually want to do. A huge part of the reason why I am doing all this stuff is because I want to have control over my life. Why I am letting my bid for freedom be caught up in having to adhere to completely different rules is beyond me. So let’s not do it, yeah? I like you, I don’t like wearing super-girly clothing, let’s go play You Don’t Know Jack. (Did I do that right, Advice Hot Dog?)

I am someone who enjoys a twitter or two. I mean, I look at my twitter all the time. I have a monitor partially dedicated to just displaying tweetdeck at all times.

Flipboard is quickly becoming my favorite way to look at twitter.

Okay, so the webpage and the demo video seem pretentious as fuck, and I’m sure anyone who has had an iPad before me already knows about Flipboard, but seriously, it’s kind of amazing. Twitter is, in many ways, the way I get the news that I give a shit about. I follow cool people who link cool things, and Flipboard will magically lay out a whole day’s worth of tweets and all the articles and pictures within it and make it easy to browse and see what I missed. I can tap on the blurbs to pull up the articles in the app, tap on pictures to make them full screen, and tap on videos to play them. It even, somehow, knows which tweets that don’t include content are the cooler ones, and will just put little statements in big boxes alongside the articles to make me chuckle. I have no idea how it does this. It rarely highlights tweets that aren’t amazing. Everything is laid out in a nice-looking way. It is really kind of magic. You just don’t often see a lot of thought being put into the design of things that aggregate content like this.

I don’t know if I would have paid for it before I tried it, but now that I have, I really would drop a few bucks on this. I don’t have to, of course, but I would. It is a fantastic way to read web content, to the point that I find myself opening it to look at what’s going on on twitter when I’m sitting in front of the computer here. I kind of wish I could plug in straight RSS feeds into it to create a separate little Flipboard magazine of all the blogs and stuff I read when I remember to. That would also be awesome. I’m not sure how to do that unless those blogs have twitter posts, though. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it’s just a different app for that sort of thing. Maybe I just need to follow the twitters of more blogs I like. But I wouldn’t enjoy just a straight stream of links… hm.

In any case, Flipboard is made for the platform, works flawlessly every time I use it, and is totally free. If that’s not a reason to grab it, I don’t know what is. I’m sure I’ll keep using it at least once a day. I mean, we’ll see of course, but yeah. Solid.

I guess I’m older now.

This is the second year in a row where I haven’t actually known what my age is at my birthday. Let me do some math… hmm… okay. 27 is the correct answer. I am 27. I think. Okay, I just double checked, I am definitely 27.

Milestones like this are normally either places for pep talks or pity parties on my part. I do that shit because it’s my blog, and I can do what I want with it. Doesn’t make it less stupid, though. I don’t think I want to do that this time, but who knows what’ll happen by the time I get to the end of this post.

This year, I did and am doing things for myself. I cleared my schedule so I’d get to relax on my birthday. I bought myself the gift I wanted. (Yes, that’s the stupid iPad.) I schemed ways to make sure Grandma was still involved.
Basically, I did what I needed to in order to make the day feel like something special. It wasn’t going to do it by itself. Nothing in life is going to just happen. I made it happen.

Trust is good. Depending on others is not good. There are people I trust more than anything in this world, who I love very much, but I learn that I should not depend on them. I should do things myself. I should make things happen myself. A job done by someone else is rarely completely right. There is always room for disappointment. The important things in life are those you tackle yourself. What you go after. What you create. What you are. Nobody else can figure that out or do that for you.

Is this a pep talk? Oh well.

Today is my day. I am making it as such. This life is my life. It will be as such. I’ll go back to working on that now. Have a great day.