Tannishblog

Confession time: I’m obsessed with EVE Online. Most people know me as an old gamer. By old, I mean that I’ve been gaming since the first Civilization came out. I’ve probably logged ten thousand hours playing all the iterations of that franchise over the years.

I game like some people read: a leisure activity that stimulates the mind. I gave up television decades ago. For ten years, I worked and immersed myself in the bookstore culture, reading all I can and reading up on the rest - new releases of the day, New York Tomes bestsellers, Oprah reading club picks. My game has always been - to some degree - stimulating my brain.
Many would scoff, especially my loving wife, that computer games are a waste of time. To them, I say: yes. All leisure pursuits are time wasters; that is their function. Scoffers are reacting to media-fed stereotypes and hysterical ignorants.

I could go off about the bad rap shooters get. Most of the bad names they earn; that is how copies are sold to that demographic. The fact that most computer games involve guns is an unfortunate affect of several factors dovetailing: the limitations of computer simulations, programming techniques and human interface design; the psychological zeitgeist of our culture, i.e, our addiction to gratuitous sensory input and the attendant emotional jolt; and the common goal of all game design houses - profit.

But not all games are primarily kill-or-be-killed, primal endorfin feasts. Many war simulations are strategic, as are the aforementioned Civilization and it’s 4X clones (explore, expand, exploit & exterminate.) Many deal with complex scenarios inspired by meatspace. SimCity is a great example of a world renown title of management simulation. Even the hokey Second Life deals with the complexity of social and societal interactions.

So stands the two major camps of gaming nerds: twitchy trigger enthusiasts blasting anything that moves, and ponderous playing with a god-like perspective and similar responsibilities. Although many gamers play in both styles, most prefer on or the other. Game designers have looked for the Holy Grail of gaming that would unite the wallets of the two camps. Thus was born the MMORPG.

These Massivley Multiplayer Olnine Role-Playing games (or MMO’s), amalgams of twitchy ponderousness, can be played to whatever is one’s personal style. To the strategists, Player-Vs-Environment elements are available. For the rest, Player-Vs-Player campaigns allow the killer instincts to flourish as complete strangers show their antisocial proclivities.

EVE online, to which I am currently enamored (read: addicted,) is an MMO that on the surface is a space shooter a la Star Trek the Elder. I can be played that way, with squadrons of ships blazing at each other in true Space Opera milieu. but that would ignore the real depth of this game. Billed as the largest online “world” in the world, EVE Online is an entire galaxy of star systems to explore, with human faction-states and a multitude of corporations vying for political and economic supremacy.

The lowly star pilot noobie can proceed all the way to CEO of a player-owned corporation and build her very own space station and get involved with faction politics and the inevitable war or two. Under this expansive realm of possibilities is an economic simulator; EVE Online is a game of Capitalistic pursuits which dispenses the rigid, stratified leveling of World of Warcraft clones and replaces it with an educational approach of gaining abilities by studying for skills over time. In this way, a player has complete control of the abilities she wishes to have, and is not funneled into Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Thief variations.

So that’s what I’m into this year. As an entertainment value, I’ve always believed that a fifty-dollar game should - at least - give 100 hours of enjoyment as a fair return of investment. Not all can do this, and to gamble with a Franklin every other month is too often disappointing. With the monthly dues of a MMO, one can get as much value as one wants until boredom or something else comes along. Yes, after a year’s time, I’ll spend more on EVE than other games, but I’ll probably spend less money this year on gaming than in years past. That’s the real value!

Words intrigue me. That should come as no surprise. I don’t do this blogging thing for money, after all. The work I’ve been thinking about lately is:

at·ti·tude (āt’ĭ-tōōd’, -tyōōd’) n.

1. A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself: stood in a graceful attitude. See Synonyms at posture.
2. 1. A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work.
   2. An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition.
3. The orientation of an aircraft’s axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon.
4. The orientation of a spacecraft relative to its direction of motion.
5. A position similar to an arabesque in which a ballet dancer stands on one leg with the other raised either in front or in back and bent at the knee.

We have attitude when we walk. A person can tell the mood of another just by watching how he moves. By paying attention to the attitude of the body, as in definition 1, one can easily guess the attitude of the mind, as in definition 2. Of course words broadcasts attitude on several levels. One’s choice of words, ones pronunciation and tonal qualities in combination convey a spectrum of attitudes in subtle and obvious ways.

People use this consciously when manipulating for a goal. That’s the nature of interaction and communication. It’s when the attitude is delivered sub-consciously that interests me. How many of us are cognizant of how we project our attitudes? How we and our attitudes are perceived?

I don’t suggest obsessing about the opinion of others. Yet people who have negative attitudes toward others might want to ponder the affect it has on others. Conversely, I one has a positive attitude towards the people in their life, one doesn’t need to be concerned with such things.

Some may not care; that’s an copping an attitude about one’s attitude. Most would say they don’t care, even convince themselves of not caring, but would be lying. And lying to oneself is perhaps the most tragic attitude one can take.

Yeah, I know…

I’ve been away from the blog for a while. I haven’t abandoned it. In the middle of coping with a new job and resulting shift in schedules and energies, the family and I took off this past week for Quebec City for a vacation committed to before I was laid off last month. We’ll be back tomorrow, as I am currently in a hotel in Windsor, Canada that provides free wireless.

It’s been a great week, and I’ll post a picture for your hungry eyes. It will probably take the remainder of August for me to find my way back into a regular posting schedule. That is IF I can tear myself away from EVE online

A view of the St. Lawrence River Eastward toward the Isle of Orleans.

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks in Tannishburg. On July 9, I was laid off from a struggling company I worked for over the past three years. Too bad; I liked that job. Next came a week of ambiguous Internet job ads and digital red tape, as I emailed strangers and applied to a dwindling list of might-be-interesting positions. This activity netted three interviews.

To my surprise, I was offered a position Tuesday afternoon to start the next morning. This job will apply my skills in a new way, doing something I’ve never tried in an industry I never heard of until now. There’s a lot to learn.

That’s why my blogging has been sparse of late. In readjusting my energies, I’ve had less time to parse a whine out of the newsreels. I’ll get back into it as a routine develops. So please be patient, my three readers; the Tannishness will continue soon.

Chicago’s Edens Expressway was closed yesterday for seven hours. A Semi trailer tipped over and spilt it’s load on the northbound lanes near my house. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.

The northbound lanes of the Edens Expressway were shut down after the spilled pig ears, pig feet and grease created slippery road conditions. The affected lanes were reopened at about 3 p.m.

A sudden shift in the truck’s load caused it to tip onto its side near the Dempster Street entrance ramp in Skokie, according to Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey. The Edens Expressway connects downtown Chicago to its northern suburbs.

[…]

The mess took hours to clean up.

IDOT workers used sand to absorb the grease, Claffey said. They also sprayed a foam usually used in hazardous materials situations, and dispensed rock salt to provide more traction.

"This is obviously something that’s really hard to clean up," Claffey said.

For those unfamiliar with Chicago area demographics, the Village of Skokie, where the accident happened, hosts one of the most prominent Jewish communities in the state. (So well-known that a Neo-Nazi group petitioned to stage a rally and parade in downtown Skokie in the late Seventies. They were denied.) Indeed, as one travels north on the Edens into Lake county, most of the suburbs serviced by the road are heavily populated by the Jewish community.

So, my twisted mind finds this incident ironic. C’mon - pig grease? Will the local Rabbis try to cleanse the tarmac?

NOTE: Before you start calling me names, I confess to being a happily married Jewish husband-by-proxy. My soulmate and I are busy raising an outstanding young Jewish woman who happens to have a Scandinavian surname. I’m no stranger to irony…

To honor the anniversary of the blog moving to it’s own domain, I present to all three of my readers an honest-to-goodness 100% Tannish Design-ed blog template. Maybe this one will stay around for a while. I’ve build quite a few templates in the past few months, when I feel they’re as perfect as this, I’ll share them with the Wordpress community. Not this one, though; it’s my favorite.

The image is by the same people who did the the last one (the guy looking out over the foggy city.) and there’s a few variations out there by them of melted people. This image is so true to my personality: the music, the jeans, the leather chair and the black guitar - perfect.

And can’t we all relate to the emotional content in the image? We’ve all had days like that. Haven’t we, at one time or another, slumped into a favorite chair at the end of the day and *felt* like we were melting… Hence the name: Meltdown.

Yeah. You know the feeling.

I offer my heartfelt sympathy for the families affected by the Virginia Tech tragedy. It isn’t much - in fact it’s nothing at all. But I give it all the same, as well as my guilt for abetting a society that produces people who do such things.

If ever there are opportunities to ponder what needs fixing in our poor excuse for a civilization, this is one. But laying blame is as easy as it is pointless. Too many factors converge to produce such heinous actions. If one was to lay blame with any attempt at accuracy, then all factors should be accounted for. If all factors are accounted for, then by the grace of all things and all people being interconnected, every American is partially guilty of this crime.

I feel guilty. For ignoring the cracks in the fragile construct of polite society, for going about my life with blinders on to better focus on my own needs and wants. I feel guilty for not taking to the streets in righteous rage at the prevalence of violence and the absence of compassion in America. My heart is sickened by my own selfish inaction. For this and much more, I am as guilty of this slaughter as anyone. Although there are no excuses for my inaction, please forgive me.

I hang my head, not in mock mourning as our president will surely do, but in sorrow at the loss of future potential these young people had, and the further loss of innocence the campus, the town of Blacksburg, the State of Virginia and the whole nation must endure. I hang my head because I did nothing to correct the broken priorities of a nation that proclaims the sanctity of life while engaging in war, prides itself in equality while not allocating enough resources to help troubled kids in need.

Cho’s classmates knew he was disturbed. They read some of his plays in class and were troubled by the graphic and obscene imagery. His teacher was worried enough to hire a security guard for a time. A local counselor had seen Cho, and knew he was troubled, but for a variety of reasons, he received no help. Last December, a magistrate ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The next day, a report concluded that he may be a danger to himself due to mental illness.

Was he treated? The hospital has yet to comment. Hospitals are businesses, and decisions are too often influenced by a patient’s ability to pay for services. Since recent societal trends don’t allow for the caring of its members through governmental assistance, the needy are often left without services, or are cut short.

For that, too, I am at fault. Guilty by living in America and not helping her to better herself, I have neglected my civic duty and my fellows. And for that neglect, 32 people died.

…or “What I’ve Been Doing Lately Instead of Playing Computer Games.”

Blog themes never seem to hit the right spot. A consummate geek must modify. Blogger made the tweaking relatively simple, so I was able to create a new masthead in Paint Shop Pro (Photoshop is too pricey), and modify the blog’s colors accordingly. Playing with the structure was off limits, lest the aspiring geek noob break their site.

It wasn’t enough. Partly that longing to get “under the hood” led me to switch to Wordpress last June. The price was right too. Gotta love the free software groupies. My first peek seemed daunting, so I altered a couple color settings and left the template alone. All Wordpress templates are of high quality, so I was happy - for a while.

Working with the same site presentation over time gets weary on the eyes, and incessant curiosity and an attenuated slow season at work compelled me to dive into the CSS sites and read the Wordpress Codex (a lot of it, anyway.) Production themes, as they are called, involved a healthy dose of CSS, a smattering of PHP, a refreshening of my web standards knowledge, Paint Shop Pro skills, and installations of MySQL and Apache web server. Color schemes were limited because I felt obliged to use tan as a base - something about the name…

Ten weeks later I emerge wondering where all the snow went, proud of my finished fourth-attempt of a blog template (the other three will be done soon.) At least I think it’s finished… as much as anything like this can ever be complete.

I hope you like it. Feel free to comment.

Okay - not really; I quit that stuff years ago. But I did space out on this blog’s two-year anniversary. It was Wednesday. On May 7th, 2005, I began an experiment in writing, hosted on Blogger, which is surprisingly still ongoing.

I don’t have many readers, but I would like to thank you all for your silent encouragement, your occasional commentary and especially your patience. Having a hundred or so visits a week is enough to fool myself into believing I’m not wasting energy here. Blogging is often akin to screaming into a vacuum, but any kind of writing is like that. Thanks to the miracle of web site tracking, I can rest assured some few visit every day. That’s good enough for me. Besides, I have no vision of being the next Kos…

Thanks, all.

Chicago got it’s yearly Big Snow last night. For over 30 house a powdery snow fell sideways in a gusty breeze. Parts of my driveway was bare, parts were 18" deep. My snow blower barely chugged through the deeper parts, and as it did the wind gleefully redistributed the blast right back at me.

Not only do I care for my own 70+ feet of driveway, I look after that of my neighbor lady. So, for an hour after dark, as the wind and snowfall lessened, I pushed a growling perambulator and spat snow into the breeze.

I came in afterward, stamped my feet in the hall and shouted, "Look! I’m a Bumble." The Abominable Snowman had arrived, black clothing caked as well as eyebrows and beard.

I like snow. Shoveling is only a chore these days because of decaying spinal discs, but I’d still rather wield a shovel than the snow-eater. This morning as I set out before dawn, I managed to clean the inch-or-so tag-end accumulation off my drive in twenty minutes. I’ll do the neighbor’s when I get home.