Why MMORPGs are as Contradictory as Our Views on Life, and we Love Them Still

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are ludicrous because they set up the same hypocritical, contradictory expectations we have in life in a game world, and then we fall headlong for it.

• Everyone is equal. This is made true on a religious level because all you have is your account, your monthly payment, and your invested playtime. Buying gold outside the game is seen as bad because this breaks the equality bit and invites the outside world of "Other people have more money than I do."
• Everyone can reach lofty goals. Nevermind the fact that it's not true, it is important that you do not tell people that they are worth less than others, even if it's true.
• Clear directions on where to go, and what to do. Most people in the real world aren't leaders, or, by definition, even very smart - they like clear instructions, from a General, a dictator, a body of Government, or their daily job. But they want to think that, given the right opportunity, they could do so much better, like what they see on TV! And MMO's present that equal playing base - or so they like to think. This is another reason the masses hate the hardcore players who blaze through the game - they don't do it following the instructions.
  

The truth is...

• Human beings don't want to believe others are more important than them - the selfish gene tells them they are the most important (this impulse which becomes thought can be overridden).
• Human beings don't want to think they can't achieve great things, that would be conflicting with the above. Everyone is vaguely aware of IQ - intelligence quotients - but try not to think about it, or try to think of why it doesn't matter (they're partly right, but EQ - emotional quotient - solves that problem, and I've never met an IQ meaning minimizer who knew about it).
• Because most people aren't stunning intellectuals or even particularly decisive, they like to have their decisions fed to them, and think "That sounds right!" But they don't want to admit that - at least not in the United States of America, land of the free (thinkers).

Now I will ramble. This was written before the above was more clearly thought out... feel free to stop. I display it only because I like giving my readers access to some of my research.

I tried some World of Warcraft Private Servers
No, really, it's stupid... and not just because I can only connect to the very first private server I connected to and no other.

I logged into a "High XP" server, which apparently grants much less XP than "Funservers" and got to sixth level in 12 kills, finding the next Defias bandit that was about my level each time I could. All I had on me was the gear they dropped.

Every NPC in the world had a conversational link to the Auction House, which had nothing in it, which lead me directly to my problem - as much as I'd like to see level 60 for virtually no work playing by myself without jackholes, MMO's don't function without other people.

I set WoW up on my wife's computer as well, so I'll try that and see how it goes as I didn't connect to any private servers yet.

MMO's Are Still Stupid
The experience was great for identifying to me why MMO's are stupid: all games become repetative, and MMO's survive by, largely, keeping a carrot in front of your face (whether or not you can ever get that carrot, such as Warlord on WoW PvP), and social interaction. Big world, lots to do, clear directions.

MMO's, at their core, are hallow. You can't take the stuff with you, and people only want you for your stuff. Think I'm lying? How many people have level 1 characters whom their "friends" are willing to game with no matter how low level you are, help you out, and never "expect" you to make them a profit back one day, return the favor, if not to them, to the guild? If you can find that, you are likely playing with your brother, or your father. Even real life friends can't be bothered to follow you around, predominantly.

MMO's main reward is stuff, they say - makes me wonder if Dove's love of MMO's is partly related to him being able to figure out what to do with his character and the interaction he gets with the people in the game - whether he chains death to a plot NPC that low levels need or talks with his guild - it's not about the carrots for him, it's about those most fascinating to play with creatures - humans. It's the same law of Multiplayer Versus games - a human is always more thought provoking than a computer AI. Computer software has yet to demonstrate volition, only reaction.

That's not to say stuff isn't fun, every friend I have who plays MMO's (my cousin Paul, Kevin, Dove) like their stuff to varying degrees. It's that only two of them "get it." Paul is quite trapped by stuff, he works hard for his stuff, he grinds his stuff, it's all there is, and every "friend" he has in WoW is merely another WoW player who is great at getting stuff fast. Uh huh. I call that not being self-aware.

Disclaimer
I'm sure Blizzard should baninate my account, which would be great, because it got hijacked and I only realized it when I started getting e-mails from their GMs about what I (wasn't) doing on an account I (wasn't) using. It's probably already banned. Maybe they can ban it again.

Good Weekend

Connections
Well Maria's school took precedence over her watching Connections and answering more questions, but that's not for lack of trying on her part: her mother told her to wait for summer. She asked me if I would promise to work with her on it after school.

How many kids ask for that? Connections was made in the late 70's, right?

Maria's Weekend Out
My mom and dad kept Maria for most of the weekend and they had a fabulous time. Dulce got a chance to be the biggest daughter and boy did she have work to do, but she enjoyed it. Still, at the end of it all, when Sunday at 3pm came and Maria came home, Dulce was the first to run up and hug her sister, followed closely by me, then Alejandrita. Jose Francisco, who had been napping, stirred, and Maria ran off to greet him with as much enthusiasm as we greeted her with.

Mom took her to see a retired horse ranch in Alachua. The ranch isn't retired, the horses are... former Police horses, race horses... all kinds of horses and ponies.

Disk Space!
Jock gave me a SATA cable for my new 400GB Western Digital Hard Drive because frickingFrys.com / Outpost.com didn't label the item as OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer, which often means "You get nothing but the bare unit, no cables, no box, no software." I couldn't use it. For three days it was very pretty, and utterly useless. Jock solved all that by bringing a SATA power adapter and controller cable.

2nd Hard Drive Cures Ills
Having my SWAP file on the 2ndary drive has made Supreme Commander imminently more playable, but far from smooth. I can now complete my 1v1 games with 500 units apiece without much problem, and a disastrous 4v4 game that was simply too stuttery to control on my $3,600 behemoth (PureXS) became choppy, but playable. I can't stand choppy, so I refuse to face more than 2 AI (no 2v2) which severely cripples the game still.

Armed Assault also runs a lot better in this configuration, and I have a feeling Oblivion would a well, if I could but run it - there's the Oblivion official patch, the new unofficial patch, and all the MODs that I needed to find new versions of, or find if the old ones worked with the newest patch(es). By the time I got all of that sorted out, I'd lost my motivation to play.

Marguerite
Billy came over with his son, Zach, and his daughter, Marguerite, who is Dulce's friend. They spent an hour here, which was all Billy had - poor guy has been so busy with the migration to Outlook (e-mail) at work. It was good of him to take what time he had and let us know he hadn't fallen off the face of the planet, his children screaming as he hurtles away at 1,700 kilometers per hour, being left in space a burnt husk as the planet careens away on it's orbit.

Betcha don't usually get that visual.

200 Million Americans Can't Be Felons

I'll say it again... read this.

Exactly 100 years ago, economist, lawyer, and historian Brooks Adams, great-grandson of revolutionary John Adams and a close advisor to Roosevelt, was in pitched battle against the U.S. railroads, who were charging extortionary rates for shippers to and from points between Chicago and the West Coast, where they held monopoly power. Adams wrote:

"There is no ancient and abstract principle of right and wrong, which can safely be deduced as a guide to regulate the relations of railways and monopolies among our people, because railways and monopolies are products of forces unknown in former times. The character of competition has changed, and the law must change to meet it, or collapse. Such is my general theory."

At 4 AM local time and suffering the delirium of jet lag, it's my general theory as well.

Adventurous Evening

Imagine David, on one shot of tequila. I took two in a row once at 1:30AM because I couldn't sleep, and when my wife told me to take a shower (relaxes the body) I said "I can't," she asked why, I said "because I can't stand up," and no sooner had I said this, but I rammed my shoulder into the door frame trying to enter the bedroom. She laughed, of course. Silly Mexican. Or is that silly American?

So anyway, I have a cold sore, so my friend Kevin told me "Listerine" and I tried our generic last night - no burning sensation. I read the label. No alcohol. So I take a shot of tequila and swish it around the front of my mouth. God, that tastes awful. Swallow. Woozy. Buzzed. One shot of tequila, mind you. I sit down and chat with my oldest, who is still up. It's almost 10PM.

We go to hang out with my lady, and she says her tooth is really hurting, can we go to Walgreens? I think "Well, I have to go, might as well not worry her..." so I don't say anything about Tequila and make my firstborn come with me so she can talk to me along the way, not that she minded.

We get to Walgreens at 10:02PM. Northeast stores close at 10 or earlier, if they are smart. So I try thinking of any pharmacy open that late that is closer. Think, think, think. It took a conscious effort to pull up the locations in my head. Tower road. Millhopper Plaza. Butler Plaza. 13th Street. They were all on the Western side of the city. Why? For the same reason everything closes at night in Eastern Gainesville. 13th Street it was.

We came back safely, but the first 10 minutes of the ride were fun.

After we came home, I told Maria the complete story after she'd applied her medicine to her tooth and felt better.

She laughed.

Great Reading for Fledgling Science Fiction Authors

This article was fascinating to me - the reality behind building a Halo - styled universe. A Halo is a sort of Ring World / Ring Satellite, which uses centrifugal force to create gravity, and spins rapidly. Ships wanting to land on the inner surface would, naturally, need to match this spin, but here's my favorite is catch - the atmosphere at the upper edges would be traveling at a different speed than lower atmosphere, and any ships attempting to land in it would be incinerated.

The Abdication of Parenting

Freelance writer and former Atari public relations manager W. Jayson Hill has subjected himself to six months working video game retail. He sheds some light on the topics of used game sales, the ESRB and parents, console launch windows and more.

[Source Article]
While the article is interesting for how it illustrates the "front lines" of game retail stores, what strikes me the most is the section on parents, their children, and "mature" rated games. There are three kinds of parents, Mr. Hill says:

1. Parents who follow the letter of the law. If their twelve year-old wants a "teen" game, tough luck - wait a year. These are the rarest.
2. The Ad-Hoc parents who make obscure value judgments such as "It's okay to buy games with violence and chop peoples head's off but it's not okay to have semi-naked bodies in the game." This makes up the vast majority.
   
3. Parents who abdicate all responsibility.

The last major subspecies of game-buying parent is not quite as numerous as the ad hoc decider. However, they seem to far outnumber the parents that worship at the alter of strict ESRB adherence. But these parents are also the ones that are most insidious. They let their kids have any game he or she selects – ratings and content be damned.

The excuses vary widely on why this attitude prevails. My personal favorite was the parent who said, "Well, it's nothing he didn't see on 'CSI' last night." At this point it took a supreme effort on my part not to reach over the counter, snatch this woman up by the collar and demand to know why she was letting a 7-year-old watch a program that regularly features half-decomposing and cut up corpses. The sad thing is that she also struck me as the type of individual that would cheer on a politician in favor of putting into government hands the very responsibility she had so blithely abdicated.

That last bit sums everything up for me. I hate, with a passion, the Public School System. It sucks. It's stupid. It was formed during America's Industrial Revolution. It has changed from being a service provider (education) to a care-taker of children, of which is it more delinquent at than most parents.

The femenist movement in America, however necessary, didn't bring about equal pay for the sexes, it reduced mens' pay by 2/3rds, to the point at which now both sexes must work to keep the same family one man used to be able to. With that, comes the destruction of family, and with that, the willful abandon that parents give today where they just don't want to do the parenting thing - they have jobs, or something else they'd rather do, and with that, politicians who say schools should support kids more because they aren't supported enough. The whole cycle makes me sick.

And then there's Duck dicks, and the women who love them...

A seriously interesting article on the evolution, and counter-evolution, of duck genitals. If you read it right, or take a few paragraphs out of context, it's also incredibly funny.

That'll Be 10 Cents Per Page

Just yesterday I saw that my 7yo, Dulce, and my 4yo, Alejandrita (alay-hon-dri-ta), were playing "mail delivery" with each other. I pondered, "What are they using for mail?"

We don't own a computer printer, but I buy a ream of paper (500 sheets) for them to draw on. Each drawing gets numbered and put into their folders so they can see their own progression (as well as me).

I found that they were using the white copy paper. I smiled and said "Okay, but I have to warn you, Dulce, you owe me 10 cents for every page."

She paused.

"500 sheets of paper costs money, sweetie. That's why we don't bother to have a printer - the cost of ink plus paper makes it better just to read the computer screen."

Dulce said "But my mommy took all my money."

Maria, my 10yo, added a clarification "That's because you left it in your pockets."

House rule: any money left uncared for is claimed by the finder - hence why dad never has any money on his person - but that works both ways.

I said "Then you'll have to do some chores to earn some money to pay me back." I started counting folded paper with scribbles on it, and Maria said "I'm not getting you out of this one, Dulce."

I counted up 32 sheets of paper. The cost of her expending resources for fun visibly sank into her. "I'm going to have to work for a whole day to earn that (bit exaggeration, but close)." she said.

"Okay." I said. "You can use more paper if you want, but that'll cost you. I give you the paper for free because I want to see your drawings and creative work, or school work."

My girls have plenty of games that don't involve wasting anything - it was a perfect opportunity to...

1. Make sure the paper isn't wasted.
2. Teach my little girls the value of things they see as magically replenish able.
   

Maria has saved up enough money to buy that much paper 10 times over - somewhere around $50 - but she immediately clarified for her 7yo sister that she wasn't going to bail her out of her own problem, whereas I've seen Maria buy Dulce a $20 toy before, so I knew it wasn't selfishness, but rather Maria knew Dulce had created her own problem, and she's learned the hard way that solving her sisters' problems for them only makes them do it again.

I thought Dulce had $8 but, apparently, she left it somewhere and her mother found it. My wife will really keep it, too - treats herself to a thrift store. And these girls don't get an allowance, any money they have is either earned or, less likely, found in my pockets.

It might sound hard but - my 10yo went through the same process. Now she doesn't lose her money and doesn't spend it quickly or frivolously, either.

At any rate - play with my kids, I tickle them, rough-house, chase them around, have them all try to wrestle me to the ground (my hamstrings are a favored target), and even my 10yo girl isn't embarrassed to sit in my lap and talk an hour away, though sometimes I have to ask her to shift her weight to some other part of my lap that still has blood circulation.

It's great to know I'm on the right train track. I run into too many parents these days who act shocked that we make our children work - and I keep wondering "What do you think they are going to do when they become teenagers? Magically become hard workers who handle things for themselves one day?"

Battlestar Galactica - is it based on Mormonism?

More accurately ...is it based on Mormon themes?

When confronted by things I don't know, rather than say "I don't know" or "It's all based on conjecture" I try to see if I can find the truth. This is merely a thought exercise - can I find the truth? Did Glen A. Larson, a prolific writer and TV series creator, make this particular project based on elements of his religion, Mormonism?

In my gathering of research material, I found one interview with the new Battlestar Galactica executive producer that clinched the whole deal:

Interviewer:

"Glen Larson, creator and producer of the first show, is a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints. He based much of the first series on Mormon cosmology. Was there a concerted effort to move away from that in this version?"

Ron Moore:

"Not specifically, no. I looked at the original series as mythos and the way it dealt with religion as sort of a global sense. I was aware that Glen had used Mormon influences and how he had created the cosmology, but I'm not that familiar with Mormon belief or practice. To me there were things that were sort of obvious, the twelve tribes, the twelve tribes of Israel."

Unless Ron Moore is lying, he's acknowledging that the old series was, indeed, based on Mormon themes, and that while the new series is not expressly based on Mormon themes, no effort was made to change the mythos of the old show.

The article goes on to reveal that, in the new version, Ron gave the Cylons their own belief system, and it was monotheism, whereas the humans had polytheism, which created parallels - he said - with the Romans and the way Pagan religions fell to monotheistic ones.

So it is safe to say that the new series, however based on the mythos of the old, is going its own direction. It is also safe to say that the old series really is based on Mormon themes.

Research Material

• Battlestar Mormonica - Deals directly with whether or not the series is based on Mormon themes.
• Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism - another article.
  
• Battlestar Galactica Frequently Asked Questions - First created: May 24, 1994, Last modified: November 26, 2002 - this means this FAQ is a good snapshot of "Before the new series"
• Articles and Interviews about the old series - lists "FORD, James E. “Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Theology” Journal of Popular Literature. A Professor at BYU takes a close look at Mormon ideas in BG." Also cited as: Ford, James E. “Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Theology.” Journal of Popular Culture 17 (fall 1983): 83–87.
• The Souls of Cylons - Ron Moore, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, talks about the theology behind the Sci Fi Channel series.
• Observations on the correlation between Battlestar Galactica and the LDS Church - this is what first clued me into the question.
  

More about the Author

• Glen A. Larson at the Internet Movie Database
• Glen A. Larson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Glen A. Larson on Wikipedia
  

I originally found the first article on Bill Otto's page. I was there because his home page has synopses on the Connections series by James Burke.

Connections: "The Trigger Effect"

This is the first series of written questions and answers given by my to my 10yo daughter, Maria, about the first episode of Connections. Her answers are written in purple, and were transcribed by me.

It is part of these posts:

• Connections: Rationalism, God, Kids, and Waking Up...
  

Questions and Answers for Connections Season 1, Episode 1: "The Trigger Effect"
1) Take a look at the room you are in, and above all, at the man-made objects in that room that surround you - the Television set, the lights, the phone and so on - and ask yourself "What do these objects do to my life, just because they are there?"

List as many or as few as you want, and a bit about what they do to your life just by being there.

They help us. If we didn't have lights we wouldn't be able to see, we would have to use candles again. We couldn't watch what's going on around the world if we didn't have TV.

2) How important is electricity to this house? What would happen if we lost electricity and could never get it back?

We would have to do what we used to do back in the old days, and find ways of surviving. We don't have enough land to run because we can't put any of the necessary things like we see at the nature park - there they had a big wide spot. Outdoor bathroom, a place to make... the animals would all be fighting for space.

3) Why did the people in the subway just sit around waiting instead of trying to get out? What did they assume would happen (that, of course, didn't)?

Because they weren't thinking they were thinking that someone was going to come and help them - because lots of people are so used to being helped and not helping themselves - like a computer helps you write things for your homework - instead of using a pencil. [bad example]

4) How important is electricity to an entire city? What would happen if we lost electricity and could never get it back?

Then it wouldn't be a city anymore. Cities are full with traffic lights, electricity. Everybody will go crazy - and get supplies for only them - because the supplies would run out.

5) Briefly describe how you would try to survive without electricity, OR, what you would need to survive without electricity.

You would need light - with candles - to get food you take care of animals - you would need horses with horse drawn carriages to move around - you'd need to wash your own clothes.

6) Name a few reasons you think the ox/animal-driven plow is important.

You need a plow to live, and not just have a little food and be starving.

7) Why did the plow help civilizations to grow? (Note: Irrigation is the process by which we move water from one location to another to make dry land wet, and then are able to grow crops for food.)

Because it made more food, and the people thought "Hey we need this... hey we can do this..." "Where do we store the food, how do we cook it?"

8) Watch how the discovery of oil helped to rapidly transform the Middle East / Arabia. No question, just watch.

9) [45:40] "Never have so many people understood so little, about so much." Briefly write down what you think this means.

How we use so many things but understand so little about them.

10) Briefly write down what you found most interesting that James Burke, the narrator, taught you.

What started it all, the planting thing - the plow.

Addendum: Proud of my 10 Year-Old Daughter

In addendum to the original post...

Corrections:
Maria is 101 pounds with clothes on but without shoes, not 70 something. That's Dulce Maria, my 7 year-old rail-thin skinny cuddle bunny dainty princess. Maria is about 4 feet, 11 inches tall. She's already almost as tall as her 5'4" mother, and she's ten, so I'm betting she got some American genes for her height. Nobody on the Rodriguez side is tall by American standards.

Omitted Part of the Story:
Maria read the blog post for accuracy and told me a part of the story she'd omitted. After their encounter with each other, she saw the boy with his four friends sitting behind a car in the yard in the back of the church. He had taken off his shoe and was observing his foot, thinking he was away from anyone being able to see him, she reasoned, and she saw that his foot had turned purple. She told me "He was a really, really black boy, so to see something darker than him on his foot... yeah." making a sincere expression as she talked.

So I asked her "You really held nothing back when you hit him, didn't you. You must have really done some damage."

"Oh no. I'm sorry, but he made me mad." she replied. "Oh no" in this sense meant "Oh no I didn't." She has a habit of not finishing sentences as she speaks.

I said "That's good, never hold back or pull your punches, because people will take that as a sign of weakness and, now that they're mad because you've hit them, hit you back. I'm a nice guy so there were three times in High School I'd get mad and hit someone hard enough to let them know to stop, but not hard enough to really do all the damage I could, and each time they'd come back at me, whoever it was, so I learned that if I had to hit someone, I had to give it all I had, and then, half the time, there would be no more fight."

She asked about the possibility of breaking people's bones.

"Sweetie, you're a 10 year-old girl, and you've had no formal martial arts training. You can't hit someone hard enough to do that because you don't know how to. Once you have formal training, they will teach you how to hit people, and then you will learn how to do the same amount of damage with less force - and using all of your force, yes, can break bones. But right now you don't have to worry about that."

She seemed to understand. She got her reward yesterday, since none of my friends bothered to post a comment :P

The Reward
Her choice? She said she really wanted Planet Earth but, since only Dulce would enjoy that with her, got Wiiplay with an extra Wii Remote instead. She plans on buying the Planet Earth DVD set with her own money for herself.

That made me proud - she picked not the gift she wanted the most, but the one she thought most of the members of the family would enjoy.

Connections: Rationalism, God, Kids, and Waking Up

A friend of mine has inadvertently managed to cut a knife through my years and years of upbringing which has taught me I'm a flawed and useless mind. Flawed, yes, anyone with AADD (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder), by definition, is - but useless?

His net effect is that I've found the joy I used to take when I was young in engaging my brain in things. Growing up about the only TV I watched were nature shows, PBS (Public Broadcasting System), Doctor Who, original Star Trek, some cartoons, and Night Court. I enjoyed horseback rides and spending hours and hours not playing videogames, but drawing and making up my own worlds - which I do to this day every time I'm walking by myself.

So I bit torrented the first season of James Burke's Connections and, while some of it is out of sync and the 70's film quality doesn't hold up well, it's still just an incredible series, and it's got me thinking.

God
You see, I have a rather rational mind. I recall, watching something Carl Sagan put together, learning that 95% of the world believed in some sort of God. My immediate response was "95% of the world is stupid?" I am no longer an atheist, but that's not by choice, but by personal experience. Believe me, if faith was all I had - I would still be the staunchest atheist you could find who really didn't care to spread it around or use it to say "I can do whatever I want," which is what almost every other atheist I ever met did, and I didn't like them, but that didn't matter to me at the time, because rational thought mattered more than emotional beings.

Suffice it to say, I do not believe in coincidences anymore than God or a policeman does, and aside from this, I've seen proof that the world isn't as simple as what we can normally observe. Beyond that, I can't tell you anything - what religion to follow, what ethics to follow, I can just tell you - the tree is there, even if nobody sees it or believes it, and I get the sense that the tree isn't anymore damaged by a lack of belief than a tree in this world. It just is. I make no effort to explain it because I'm rational enough to believe the only way to explain it would be through the scientific process, and I don't have the tools I'd need to do that. It's also pointless, because as much effort as some people put into believing in God, others put into disbelieving. It almost always boils down to emotional need.

I've also found that I still enjoy rationals more than true believers in Christ because they're capable of thinking without boundaries. My wife is a wonderful exception - she'd be akin to some of the scientific Catholic friars of old - devout to the physical secular world as well as the clerical one. You can't bring scientific information to her that she doesn't want to accept because, to her, all proven science is part of the world, from Dinosaurs to ancient man to the vastness of the cosmos, it fascinates her. There was a time she'd have been burned, or, like the old friars, carefully researched away from prying eyes.

At any rate, the thinking rationals put into the workings of the world interests me more because they aren't afraid to say "Fanatical religion = bad" and so on. For some stupid reason, most followers of faith don't want to admit that there is any bad associated with what they do.

The flip-side, of course, is rampant liberalism and the problem this brings with rearing children, but I digress...

It Helps My Life
Anyway, rational thinking has got me thinking about the world again, like I used to do more of - how news is spread, information twisted, how societies and civilizations work, how change happens (thanks to Connections) and how we are all caught up in it. The Internet wasn't around in the 70's, but it was on the drawing board, so to speak.

This, in turn, has given me another hobby I can engage in with my wife. You see, my lovely armchair anthropologist (she's had college level courses in anthropology but, as she was a traditional Franciscan Nun at the time, she was not allowed to collect a paper degree, so she has no proof other than quizzing her) goes so far as to take a notebook and colored pens to make notes on everything she sees, so much so that she cross-references what one documentary says with another.

Testing My Daughters
Back on Connections: I actually wrote up a written test for my 10 year old daughter, Maria, 9 questions in total, dealing with the first episode. My wife tried to tell me it was too much, and I realized it was, so I added money to the pot: $1 per every two questions answered. 1 question was rhetorical.

Dulce participated passively, by watching the show and then observing Maria giving her answers.

Maria de Guadalupe couldn't write down her answers, so I transcribed for her. It was made especially difficult because her reward for beating up a 13 year-old black ghetto boy (poor kid, but this is basically where I live, so I might as well write it like it is) arrived the same day - she was stuck: she wanted to have fun with her reward, but I told her "If you don't do your Connections work today, you won't make any money. You'll still have to watch it, but you'll have no questions and no opportunity to make money. This is how the world works, Maria. If someone asks you to do something for them and they are willing to pay you, you can't tell them 'Maybe next week.' "

She eventually saw my point. Her questions weren't entirely correct, but I kept telling her as I transcribed "I don't care if you're completely correct, I care that I've made you think." She earned $4 in roughly 2 hours of work - one hour spent watching the first episode by herself, and another reviewing it and saying her answers with me when I got home. She's lucky if she can make $4 in an entire day of chores, so she was amazed at the work/reward ratio, and asked if she could do more.

Mexican Jew. She likes work and spots ways of making easy money fast. *chuckles*

The questions:

• Connections: "The Trigger Effect" - lists all of the questions I wrote down for Maria, and the answers I transcribed for her.
  

The questions ranged from "What would happen if there was no electricity in our house? How could we survive if it never came back on?" to "What happens to a city if it loses electricity permanently? What do the people do?" to "Why is the plow so important to civilization?"

Her answers ranged from bits of ideas to pure accuracy based on what James Burke said. I'll post it here. Dulce was interested, but is 7 - I can't do this to her just yet, but I'm glad she wanted to observe.

How many 7 year-old little girls do you know who want to watch Connections, twice?

Summary

• Watching Connections has helped rekindle my questioning of the way things are, and why.
• Dove's daily commentary and friendship helped spur all of this.
• I love asking my children why, and not focusing on their answer, just that I made them think.
  

PS to Kevin - The other religious friend of mine whom I find capable of rational thought is Kevin, in Virginia. He's got some hard and fast views, but that's what makes him a great person - he'll never betray a confidence, and never betray a person, because he's incapable of it. Jack Bauer could torture the man, and he'd stay firm. On the flip-side, that means you can't question President Bush or the PS3 ;)

And I love him like that. Too few people have firm minds. His is just one (firm mind) that is unusually free from being stuck in the mud, so to speak.

PS to Dove - I know he's not big on compliments, but I hope he realizes that he's made my life a bit better, and that is pretty much the best thing someone can say about a friend.

PS about Dave - I am an INTJ. I am aware this makes me more apt to thinking rational thought and working systems is far more important than emotional concerns, which don't affect how the world works, only what you do in it.

In the title, "Waking up" refers to my re-realization that my mind, while beneath super geniuses, is still useful, and fun to exercise.

Proud of my 10 Year-Old Daughter

My 10 year-old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, had her first real fight with a boy on Sunday, April 29th. The subject was one black 13 year-old boy, who was surrounded by his four friends, roughly equaling his age.

The fight, like so many real fights, was very quick, and really only involved one blow. At our local Southern Baptist Church, Harvest Baptist Church, some adults had handed one piece of candy to each child. The children went outside the back of the church (really a rented house) to play and eat.

We live in the North East section of town, which is predominantly black. Pastor David Middlebrooks and his his three sons, daughter and virtuous wife are also, and I love showing my son, Jose Francisco, the Pastor's grown sons, David, Darius (his third, DJ, is still at home), because they are such fine examples of good men. They're strong, smart, educated, and most definitely "mens' men." Jose Francisco's face lights up every time he sees them, and David and Darius call him their little buddy.

The young boys Maria dealt with, however, were new to the church, and undoubtedly did not come from as good a family as the Pastor's sons. When presented with one piece of candy a piece and a selfish desire for more, one of the boys decided to steal a piece of candy from a six year-old black girl.

Maria de Guadalupe stepped up to the 13 year-old boy. She's 101 pounds, 4'11", and most people, in part due to her height and in part due to her Latin blood endowing her earlier than white girls, think she's 12.

"You better give that back to her," she warned him. They quickly exchanged words, his to the effect of "No" with disdain and, upon one last warning from her that she'd make him, he and his friends laughed.

Now, bare in mind, I have taught Maria the basics of making a fist, forming a line with her hand bones and forearm, shown her how easy it is to gouge out an eyeball, where pressure points are, and the infamous "Kick them in the balls" trick. She'd nailed me there just the day before after I had, whilst sparring with her, hit her in the side of the ribs and her shoulder. I do these exercises for obvious reasons.

Maria was wielding, or wearing rather, large pump shoes. So she stomped on the 13 year old boy's foot so hard he nearly fell over. He hopped on one foot, she said, and yelped and nearly cried, but looked at his friends and "looked like my brother, realizing he was a boy and couldn't cry."

I asked her "What did his friends do?"

"They looked like 'We're not going to mess with her.' " And they didn't, nor was anyone else's candy stolen.

I told her that she did just the right thing, and that had he responded by punching her in the face, or continuing the fight, she would have gone after him just like she does me when she's had enough. "You would have come back at him so hard he would be unable to keep 'playing.' " I told her. She just said "Yep."

She was embarrassed at the attention I lavished on her, and wasn't proud of the fight but rather what she accomplished with it: the gave the piece of candy back to the six year-old girl, and her look was one of happiness and amazement.

Bare in mind that none of her siblings were around; Dulce Maria was still inside with Jose Francisco and Alejandrita, which Dulce confirmed of course. The 20 year-old daughter of an adult member of the church had stepped inside, apparently being bored. So Maria was outside, without an adult, facing 5 older boys, and it didn't matter. Even so, it was a battle well picked - she hit the ringleader, hit him while he was laughing and not expecting it, hit him with the only weapon she had (her thick pump shoes) right where it would work the best - in the fragile bones of the feet, which I've also shown her in the past.

(To be precise, her strike was aimed not at toes, but at the metatarsal bones of the foot.)

God, I love these children.

Maria knew the ages of the boys because newcomer kids give their name and age at the start of the service.

Oh! And her reward: I'm thinking of two options - buying her a $54 DVD set of Planet Earth (she loves nature shows but dislikes the "in your face" style of the late Croc Hunter) - or something else she and her sisters might enjoy: WiiPlay which bundles another Wii Remote. If you have any opinions on the two, please drop them in my comments.

Addendum
I made an addendum to this post. Maria read this blog post for accuracy and added a piece of the story she had omitted before.

Family has been sick, and speaking of sick...

By Wednesday, 3 out of 4 of my children were sick, excluding my oldest daughter.

I woke up on Thursday morning early (6:15am) so I sat down to wait for 7am at my computer. I knew something was wrong when nobody got up. Not my firstborn, not my wife, not even the baby boy. At 7:25am I crept in and saw the children all looked like they had sweated all night long. My wife was in similar shape, so I cleaned the living room and kitchen (save washing dishes, noisy dishwasher) and waited for 8:25am, at which point I called work and told Rich my situation, and to ask a manager to call me back if they'd like. I wasn't sick, and while my family could have survived without me, I would not have felt good about that.

Now here's the cool thing - I kept everyone hydrated all day, made the kids stay still (broke our TV rules and set up hours of Blues Clues and Azumanga Daioh for them, the latter of which I watched as my children can't watch any anime without me - not because I like anime, but because I know how quickly something inappropriate but funny to Japanese folks can crop up) - but it was the cleaning in the morning Maria Alejandra kept thanking me for at the end of the day.

Friday, I've done much the same, but they've been more self-managing. Jose Francisco still looks like he's in the process of turning into a vampire - his eyes are red, he has rings around his eyes, he holds his mouth open all the time, and his lips are flush and his face is pale. Vampirism! That's it!

Speaking of Sick...
I've had all the Supreme Commander I can tolerate in one single day, I think. Friday being easier, as I haven't had to ferry food and drinks to bedridden family members, but rather help Maria (well, both of them) with the kids.

The final game runs better, but 4 players with 500 units apiece still slows down Pharra. What I dislike, ultimately, is that it's not a strategy game, it's an arcade game. The only strategy revolves around what order you build things in and what units you produce. For all of Chris Taylor's boasting about it's strategy game controls, and it has the best I've seen, there's not much to do with that. You just overwhelm.

Sure, there's strategy in the rock, paper, scissors, air supremacy, naval supremacy, land domination game-play - but it's all about momentum. That's it. Just keep up momentum.

After a while, and many games, you come to see what is like in a thing - and it's the momentum, and I just don't care to keep it up - it's always the same.

RIAA debacle reveals hidden truth

Everyone knows:

1. File sharing copyrighted material is illegal.
   
2. You have to use a Peer to Peer file sharing program and send copyrighted files for the RIAA to go after you - though there are plenty of noted exceptions, it goes without saying: If every claim the RIAA made was totally specious, every defendant would hold their innocence and show up to court to avoid summary judgment.
3. The RIAA is attacking people with intimidation.

What's fascinating about this whole debacle isn't that the RIAA is ethically and morally wrong in how they attack people, making false litigious claims, suing whole families and so on...

It is fascinating that the Internet public at large has galvanized into a pure hatred of the RIAA, one that is not reflected in the outside world. Joe Schmo has no real opinion of the matter, or might even say "File Sharing is wrong!" Certainly Republicans with vast investments actually support the RIAA for supporting their interests as shareholders.

What this tells me is that the legal problems with the RIAA isn't really the issue: the issue is a kind of business/cultural revolution, one that only people involved in the Internet really have the ability to know about and partake in.

As I've pointed out before:

1. RIAA: Guilty of not following the market
2. One Man Understood What Market He Was In
3. Suing Innovation

...business models have changed, but moreover, how people want to interact with content has changed, and how they want to treat it. These things aren't going away with Fascist strong-arm tactics - at least not in this country.

So remember next time you hate the RIAA, remember your own hypocrisy: are you downloading free music, but smart enough to do so over encrypted bit torrent protocols? Realize what you are: you're a revolutionary engaged in an illegal activity, active in something that isn't recognized as a revolution (so you won't be treated nicely). calling something a grand revolution which isn't. It's just the standard, changing market, shifting to yet another piece of technology that changes the way people do things faster than business models, and laws, can adjust.

We are not idealic soldiers if all we do is sit back and download. We are opportunists, waving our fists in the air hoping one day we'll be legitimatized. As of yet, the market has not found an equilibrium, and sitting back and bit torrenting only helps further the need for change - it does not create balance and harmony in and of itself.

The Cutest Thing Happened Last Night

Jose Francisco is a very Latin baby boy. You cannot convince him of anything he doesn't already agree with, or decides on his own terms that he agrees with. This includes:

• Having fun in a bouncy air-filled gym with 40 balloons and his two little sisters already inside playing. He took 20 minutes to consider this before deciding it was good and had fun.
  
  
• Kissing anyone. My mom has gotten frustrated with him many times because he won't kiss her, which would be flat rude if it was me. I kiss anyone who asks for one (cheeks mostly, exception daughters, wife and mom).
  
  
• The last time I was smacking Dulce on the arm three times for shoving her little sister, he came running up to me and hit me on the leg with a fist.
  
  I decided the two smacks I already gave Dulce was good and made him feel that his bravery and confronting the most terrifying thing for a baby boy - an angry father - got him what he wanted: I stopped.
  
  I didn't leave him unscathed and I went "ARRGH" at him, to demonstrate I was mad and if he was going to fight, he had to be prepared for the target's reaction. His response was to go "UHN, UH!" at me and wave a hand, and I relented, and told Dulce to hug him.
  
  
• Absolutely everything else.

His oldest sister, my 10 year-old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, is his little momma. He called her "Marr" until recently, now he also calls her "Lupe" (loo-pay).

Well he likes to go to sleep with his mother and he likes to sleep with Maria. Switching this rarely works - sometimes he likes to sleep with his mother, but he usually won't go to sleep with his sister. He will, however, wake up if she or her mother is not there.

Last night Maria was sleeping and he woke her up kicking her for space. He'd gotten himself splayed out on the bed such that he was taking up the whole thing. She gently picked him up to move him and he mumbed, in Spanish, "I love Maria" or "La quiera Maria..." or in Jose Francisco speak, "ra quira marr."

She didn't know what he was dreaming, but as, during the day, you're lucky if you can get a hug from him, she was touched, kissed him on the hair and went back to sleep but remembered the story to tell us in the morning.

He is a good baby boy. He loves his family, his sisters, his mother, his father, his grandmothers... but he doesn't show it like I do. You have to watch what he does.

Running up to a father who is holding and hitting his sister and attacking him? That's love, I think, and while the description isn't reality, from a baby boy's eyes it might have been closer to what he saw.

I feel sorry for my mom, of course. She's a sweetheart and loves demonstrative love, and Jose Francisco just doesn't have any of that to give. She said it right, once: "I love Jose Francisco, and always will, but I'm glad I had you (me) and not him for a son."

Maybe she should think what he'd do if I yelled at her.

How to Cure your Children of Wanting to Play MMO's

Answer? Let them play them. But make sure to

1. Be there with them.
2. Have them follow you and your guild members.
3. Give them enough rope to hang themselves.
4. Do everything you can to make their stay better, literally, that way they won't think you conspired against them, and on the surface, you didn't. You let the stress of the MMO and the Guild do it for you.
   

I got back on City of Heroes / City of Villians, though the latter wasn't part of the picture when I left, joining my friend Kevin in Virginia. After a few nights playing, my 10 year old daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, asked me if she could play with us. I realized the game came with a 14 day free trial so I said "Sure."

Now you might ask "Why is a father introducing his TEN YEAR OLD GIRL to the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games?!"

Here's why, and the result of the evening, in an e-mail I sent to my friend Kevin and my lovely Latin wife...

Last night was too much fun. And most of that was either

• Watching Maria become frustrated with MMO's or
• Watching my minions slay the enemy.

I genuinely wanted to give Maria de Guadalupe the chance - it was just like D&D, I just laid all that rope out there (the old adage of giving the D&D players enough rope to hang themselves and sitting back as the DM) and did nothing on my own part to make her time miserable, other than demonstrate how a team can be frustrated with another team member's ineptitude. After that, she, once again, got stuck on some stairs with enemies hitting her, and we risked ourselves to save her, and I'm sure she understood that. Nobody likes to watch their friends go through hardship because they did something wrong.

And, as I told you, when she wanted to watch her Spanish soap opera I reminded her that you and I had gone through a lot of trouble so she could play, and what were we going to do now that she's leaving? (Soap Opera: Not like the States, they last only 6 months a piece and this one is about an ugly girl who has the most beautiful personality and intellect, literally titled "The Ugly More Beautiful," or translated I would say "The most beautiful ugly girl." Sweet show, actually. Imagine an American Soap Opera that stars an ugly lead girl. The actress is kinda like Carrie-Ann Moss/Princess Leia: pretty only if you really truss her up, and they dressed her way down for this show - Like Carrie, she's the unbeautiful progeny of two other famous actors. Unlike Carrie, she can act very well, and has, up until winning the lead on this show, made a living in comedy shows.)

Anyway, so she got to feel

• "MMO's dictate when you can play them because of who you have to play them with."
• She got to feel "Pulls are bad."
• She got to feel "Not being able to navigate the world is bad."
• She got to feel "There are some real creeps out there." (Start area creeps trying to flirt with her father playing a girl character - she's 10, and she's a girl, she's not stupid, and she can read, and all she told me afterwards were there were some really bad people online.)
  

She also got plenty of good. She seemed to like seeing you, but she told me afterwards you didn't talk much. I told her "You weren't in the room with me, but you're right, he's kinda quiet. When he talks, it's usually interesting." That, she knows, is like her mother. She enjoyed our social RP before you joined us most of all, I think. I will never, ever show her Second Life. Actually she wouldn't like that either - too many creeps.

But... I'm glad. If she had liked it I would have kept playing with her and taught her how to be responsible concerning the time spent playing. Either way, as she likes her NDS and some PC games, I knew MMO's (as they are the future) were going to be in her life at some point, and I figured, opportunity knocking with her saying she wanted to play with us, there was no better chance to teach her the ins and outs.

Lastly, one day my 10 year old little girl will be reading Daddy's blog, and she won't mind coming across this. She knows I do lots of things like this to teach her about the world, rather than just try to tell her how it is.

RAIDEN III, Lord of the Rings, Left 4 Dead and Supreme Commander

The Lord of the Rings: Online Sucks. It's largely like the World of Warcraft; however, in this game, getting lost on your 3rd mission and wandering around for forty minutes is FUN. Apparently it gets worse.

I downloaded Raiden III and am in love with it - I might acquire the PS2 version. Dual player support on one input device is supported in the PS2 version, and perhaps the PC - I can't read Japanese. At any rate, it's really a remake of Raiden II in 3d with modifications, and that's grand. It has replay modes that show you Seibu Kaihatsu's best playing through the mission you completed in one life, and demonstrates how to beat bosses and evade their attacks. The greatest thing about the Raiden Shoot-'Em-Up series is that if you play correctly, there is always a way out - you are never hemmed in by shots until you are dead unless you just aren't playing well. Actually Raiden III was developed by MOSS, licensed by Seibu Kaihatsu. I just thought it sounded cooler.

I want Left 4 Dead to come out.

I got Supreme Commander as well, but haven't installed it yet. So many games.

"Super Gas Chamber Tycoon 1943"

This post against the post that supports the "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" has the funniest quote I've seen all day.

Next I want to see "Super Srebrenica Massacre RPG" and "Virginia Tech: Perfectly Executed".

At least "JFK: Reloaded" waited, you know... a while.

Lord of the Rings: Online

So I downloaded that and tried it - there are 6 days left. I'm on the Vilny server, top left option. It appears to be an RP server, as I saw only one name that wasn't RP, and saw several people use "OOC:" in their chats.

Executive Summary
The game leaves me unimpressed. It is a very good WoW clone. That's not exactly a compliment. It is artistically pleasing, and the first MMO with that distinction since WoW that I've seen.

Accessibility
It's not as user friendly as WoW and that might really kill it. In WoW, you pick up quests that are clearly identifiable and immediately do them. You can pick up several and accidentally do them. In this game, I spent two hours and didn't get near as many quests done, nor could I follow them as easily as in WoW. Hard to explain, but it just happened that way - I was a member of American Mensa, so I don't think it's because I'm just dumb. That said, it wasn't boring or punishing, because I kept playing.

To do anything with your levels you have to find a trainer, which is kind of homosexual, but expected. Perhaps I'm just used to WoW's inventory system, but I like it better than LotR:O. The inventory system appears to be a functional copy, without directly copying - I'm sure Blizzard has patented something.

The game does not assume you know about the lore of the Lord of the Rings, and each race lets you choose a nation / land of origin, which alters what color hair and skin you can have. Making a red-headed Pharra required that she come from Rohan, not Gondor, which I thought was cool.

Graphics
The graphics are incredibly good and smooth. The bad part is that everything is easy to see even in the dark, so nothing is very scary. I did experience the "Dread" effect when I saw a Nazgul though, my screen got dark and contrasty and my vision blurred - that was disorienting so I backed off quickly. Neat, but I haven't seen it used since.

Combat & Classes
The combat feels kind of like WoW with a Warrior, having played around with a Guardian and a Champion (Warrior Tank / Warrior DPS).

I must say that the LotR setting has hurt the game classes, although I'm sure it will save the game as far as people actually joining it. I'm sure it will be a commercial success, a viable game, but not a killer MMO.

The reason? Well since The Lord of the Rings canon says there were only five wizards during the end of the Third Age, "Lore Masters," "Minstrels" and "Burglars" all suffer. We have three classes that are really "Warriors with different skill trees" in WoW:

Captain - a Warrior who handles group buffs and agro.
Champion - a Warrior who hurts things.
Guardian - a Warrior who handles agro and tanks.

That's really a whole lot of warriors.

Other than that, there's a Hunter! Which is really a ranged Warrior.

Perhaps, at higher levels, the differences will be more pronounced, but there's a 15 level cap in the BETA (out of 50) and this is what I've seen so far.

Minstrels heal, supposedly, as does the Lore Master class - which is "NOT A WIZARD!" but pretends to be. How... strange.

Split Servers
All of that said, it is better than I expected, and should be a viable game. Once again, the game is split into servers, which is homosexual, so you can't play with your friends like you can in Awesome Guild Wars, which is un-awesome in about every OTHER aspect, if you're holding it to the MMO candle.

Lifetime Membership and stuff
For $199 you can get a lifetime membership if you order now, and pre-ordering gives you rights to $10 a month instead of $15 forever, if you don't opt for big bucks.

It Will Probably Sell
Given the licensing and the setting, I think this MMO will not die horribly. It will probably find its niche, like City of Heroes, etc., and do well.

Remember, Dave hates MMO's, with a Passion
Also, bare in mind, I hate MMO's. I hate their repetition, the way they force you to play them, the way you can't tinker with a darn thing, etc. I hate that I can't hear a cool story from Dove or Kevin and go home, fire up the game and go meet them, lose interest and do it again in a few months. All I can do is live vicariously, and I'm content with that.

Lastly, I'd Like to Play it More
The terrain is really neat and I was really surprised about the names given to the characters. None of this "Prestochango" the Druid shit, or "Idoitfrombehind" Rogue bullshit names. I'd like to see what being in a Fellowship (party/guild) is like. But unlike City of Heroes, other than the setting, I can't think of why I should.

Oh yes, you can inhabit Monsters starting at level 10 and use them to attack other people in certain "free" zones where this is to be expected. From what I've read - you get the option to buy non-reusable buffs for your character for your trouble. Yay. Not. But nifty idea otherwise.