Stubborn Idealism

BORED!

Date: Sun 2 April 2006
Time: 11:10 PM EDT

I can't wait till I move in with my dad in Lenoir, NC, this Summer. It's nice not working for somebody else, but now I have so much free time that it's hard to fill it. I work on the business, pet the cat, read some skeptic blogs (Skeptico and Swift are really good), and play video games. That's my whole life right now.

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Work, Work, Work

Date: Sat 1 April 2006
Time: 9:01 PM EST

I finally finished building the first server for the backup business on Wednesday. The last thing was to go pick up some hard drive cables, because they mysteriously did not come with the RAID controller (I think I might have accidentally ordered the cheaper 'bulk' package from the supplier). The server runs beautifully. I've been spending the last few days further developing the shell scripts that will automate the server management. There's still quite a lot left to do even after that's done before I can start advertising: business web site, customer login area, administrator login area for myself, PayPal integration, customer database. However, I don't have a deadline, and I've been taking advantage of that fact to take my time and do things right.

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Completely Wasted Day

Date: Mon 27 March 2006
Time: 10:00 PM EST

Or just think of it as a day off.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I got the urge to play the old Super Nintendo game Drakkhen. So I googled around for the ROM and an SNES emulator and proceeded to waste several hours last night playing it. I picked up this morning where I had left off and wasted some more time on it.

Then for no reason I felt like playing my Mega Man collection for the PlayStation 2. I haven't played that game in almost two years, and I had pretty much given up on it because I found it to be so difficult to play, but this time around it was fun and easy. So I spent about an hour playing that.

Once I got bored with Mega Man I thought, since I've got this SNES emulator, let me see what other ROMs I can find of games I used to play. So I played some Battle Clash and F-Zero, and I downloaded a bunch more for later.

Since I was in the emulator / games nostalgia mood, it was inevitable that I would seek out Atari2600 ROMs and emulators. So I spent much time playing Adventure, Barstorming, Beamrider (I hadn't even thought about that one in more than a decade, but on the first try I easily got farther than I ever did as a kid; it's one of my all-time favorites), Chopper Command, Circus Atari, Cosmic Ark, Exocet, Freeway, Frogs and Flies, Gopher, Grand Prix, Haunted House, Piece O' Cake, Skiing, Space Invaders, Starmaster (another one of my favorites), Superman, Towering Inferno, Vanguard, Video Pinball, Word Zapper, and Yars' Revenge (another favorite).

I really feel sorry for kids today who have to make do with the ultra-realistic, utterly uncharming games available now. They don't know what they're missing. Is racing a photo-realistic car that handles like the real thing around a beautifully-rendered city really as much fun or as memorable as playing the role of a square that's always the same color as the room it's in and slays dragons that look like ducks on skids with a sword that looks like an arrow?

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