Missed Web free your inner fez

Point Omega

Dear Don Delillo,

I really like the way you write. Your post modern dialogue? I can totally relate to it. I've read a few of your books and really like what you do. You got style. You got class. But most of all... you got [a lot] of technique.

I heard you wrote a new novel called Point Omega. I ordered it sight unseen from Amazon because that's how much I've enjoyed your work so far. And it arrived via UPS and I just got the package, and I opened it up and.

Dude. What the fuck. One hundred and sixteen pages? Writing that took longer than it will take me to read your damn book, bro. This better be like the magnum opus of short stories in hardcover. Else I'm going to have to do something with your post modern ass.

Just kidding. I'm sure it will be great.

Toodles.

Dear Anonymous Person Who Does the Pricing at Scribner,

Dude. What the fuck! Twenty-five bucks for a 116 page pamphlet? You got to have some fucking balls of steel, because when I find you, I may just kick you there. Hard. And often.

Bite me.

my year in cities 2009

My father once told me that my best friend Katia is the daughter he always wanted (sorry Alicia and Cristina) because she loves to travel and I love to do anything but. This year I really racked up them frequent flier miles! Proof? Here ya go:

• Austin, TX
• Reykjavik, Iceland

That's right, I went to two places! Austin first endured my presence back in 2000, so this was a welcomed return for me. I was called sir by Brazilian waitresses waiters, got a tat, and finally met Alex!

Iceland wanted me to return so they could meet the national foul language quota for the year. I happily obliged.

Next year I'll be going to Mexico, Nayarit/Jalisco with hopefully a stopover in Mexico DF to visit my father's favorite not-daughter.

the great big new wave compilation

recent twobitgames posts

• I like Alpha Centauri!
• Bad game designers deserve no twinkies
• If we didn't have The Sims Online, would Cafe World and Restaurant City exist?
• I'm probably going to always suck at Dragon's Lair. For eternity. Times ten.

Geek Test: What’s Wrong With This Sentence?

"The Internet was conceived as a utopian ideal, designed by nonprofit researchers in 1990 as an undiscriminating conduit for information." -- Ripped, Greg Kot, p. 25.

There's so much wrong, I'm almost inclined to put the book down and not pick it up again, only I have to review it =P

This book is about how the Internet has changed the music industry, but if the author can't even differentiate between the development of WWW as just one part of the Internet... I'm scared, mommy.

P.S. Turns out that my previously described PC problems are still happening, and it's not outlet related. Upgrading the video card. Hopefully that will help =P

i feel like a boob

Recall two months or so ago my PC became infected with malware, Trojans, and this weird green thing that Nic seems to have become infected with *shivers*

Around that time my computer started shutting down spontaneously. Cam and I sat down one day and we did some diagnostics, but everything seemed fine. Then I couldn’t turn my PC on. To be specific: power was going to the motherboard, fans and the like, but nothing would boot. I couldn’t even get into BIOS.

Assuming the worst, I bought new hardware: mobo, RAM, SATA (btw, I LOOOOVE new Windows installs. Very sexy). Same problem was happening, but then it went away.

This weekend I had another shutdown, and I decided to swap out the PCU. Maybe there was a power issue.

So there I am, in bed, reading my sexy kindle, when the cat runs under the bed and my computer powers down.

That’s when I realized what’s going on. I have an extension cord running from an outlet from behind my bed to my desk, where I have all the power strips plugged in. The extension cord sometimes gets loose in the outlet from the beds movement (e.g. when I change the sheets). Because it’s blocked by the bed, I don’t see it, so I didn’t even think that that would be the initial cause of my problem. Viruses can do nasty things, so I, and my friends, assumed it was virus related.

*CRIES*

I SPENT HUNDREDS OF MY MOM’S DOLLARS FIXING MY COMPUTER WHEN I JUST NEEDED TO MAKE SURE AN EXTENSION CORD WAS PLUGGED IN!!!

I mean, I’m happy with my more powerful computer, but that could have been medication money or money to help pay off my medical bills or something 

extremely preliminary kindle 2 impressions

from an email i just sent my brother Jay:

I've not yet had a lot of time to work with it as I'm pulling some OT today. The buttons will take a little getting used to, I think, as will the little control stick (the k1 has this roll thing button). It's comparatively smaller, but the K1 is angled down from the left, which makes it more ergonomic. the k2 is flat.

crisper screen, and the increased number of greys really does help. i just loaded up a NY Times front page image and it looks like a picture from the paper, not some blah image on a windows 3.x machine.

the keyboard is nicer, and when i was typing my info to register the kindle it didn't take me 9 years. page load is slightly faster, still with the black screen, tho.

my previous purchases were in a "folder" called archived (but i don't yet know if folders are an option on the k2, i don't think so but i hope so). downloading them onto the new kindle was easy, but i had to go onto the amazon site and manually set my ny times subscription to go to the k2.

amazon also doesn't track any samples you download on the customer's kindle page so i will need to go back and request the samples again.

after I spend more time with it (I named it Balthazar), I'll write up a real comparative review.

twobitgames blog

I decided to start a games blog.

twobitgames

first two articles are up:

• designing around limitations - about the book racing the beam (Atari VCS)
• remembering the little professor

the life update

I'm so full of updates of late =P

this one is for the friends i recently re-connected with via Facebook. there's been a few "what have you been up to," and since I've not seen or spoken to most of them in 20 years (yes, Cristina, I graduated high school 20 years ago, and yes, we had electricity back then =P), I figured I might as well blog about what I've done since graduation.

Not much. No, seriously. I'm really quite the bum, which isn't a surprise to me, or my family. But I can't say I've really done anything truly spectacular cure cancer and AIDS and create masterful pieces of art or anything special like that. Which is fine by me. I'm a lazy bastard anyways.

After high school I immediately went to Hunter College, where I bummed around for six years. At first I was going to major in Biology, but I felt that was the easy choice for me as biology came naturally to me (I wanted to specialize in genetics, which completely fascinated me). I tried English, but realized I hated writing papers. I settled on Theatre, even tho I had zero theatrical experience. My focus was on directing, and I think as a student director I was pretty darn good and may have had some form of off-off-Broadway success had I not chickened out and got a real job to support myself post college (btw, I left without picking up my degree; it wasn't important to me at the time).

I worked in New Media until Christmas 2000, when I got fucked up the ass by the bursting of the Internet bubble. Because it was difficult to find work where I was in northern VA, I moved back to NYC. Because it was difficult to find work in NYC (this was 2001), I wound up moving in with my maternal grandmother (the German) who was still in the early stages of Alzheimer's. I cared for her for over six and a half years until her death last October. That was, perhaps, one of the most difficult journeys I have ever taken. Alzheimer's is an absolutely horrid disease, one I would not wish on my worst enemy (I would, however, wish that they would be forced to care for an Alzheimer's patient for a week as that's difficult enough!).

I did wind up going back to Hunter, although for health reasons I've had to take some time off. I'm currently studying Media Studies, and have done some game design classes there as well. My interest is to eventually get a Masters in Cultural Studies or something similar. Lord knows if that will ever happen with my medical debts and all, but hey, I'm still young, and I look even younger (thanks, shiny eyebrow ring!)

Many of you may remember that I was a prolific creative writer during high school. I think I stopped writing creatively in my third year at college. That would be around the time I really started studying theatre, which is a collaborative creative process. I still write, but mostly here or about gaming.

Ah, yes, gaming. I'm not only an Internet addict, but also a gamer. Not as hardcore as some of my friends, but it's a big hobby of mine. What's interesting is that unlike many of my friends, I never really wanted to break into the industry, but an opportunity came by that was perfectly timed, and not only is one of my best friends my bosses boss, but the company I work for (CCP, an Icelandic company) is completely amazing. I truly love my job, and haven't had anything to complain about. It wouldn't surprise me if I didn't come up with something. I work with amazing people, doing amazing things that keep me occupied without annoying me. I have an amazing team and a boss that completely rules. And I also get to work in my pajamas, at home, with my cats crawling all over me while I'm trying to write something profound that our players would enjoy. Okay, I guess I found a complaint: I can't keep Hija off the freaking keyboard!

Oh, I'm also an aunt. Jason has two children and a step-daughter, and Alicia (she was a toddler back then) has two kids as well. They all live in Virginia, and I talk to them quite often and love them all to death. Mom remarried and is living in the Victorian she always wanted in Jersey City (meh). Her health is horrid (heart, lungs) but she's happily surrounded with her cats and Battlestar Galactica.

I have four cats, live in my grandmother's house in Cambria Heights, enjoy reading (sci-fi, but mostly non-fiction), listening to music (80's new wave (some things never change), alternative, classic rock), sleeping, and photography. I'm an information junky. And my favorite color is grey

Questions?

i think i may have won

I successfully set up the new HDD with WinXP and ran scans on the slaved drive that had been infected with rootkits and trojans and all sorts of evil overnight and that drive came up clean. So it looks like I've been successful, although I'm still cautiously optimistic.

As promised, here's the info from Kaspersky on what started it all. I don't know what site it was that had the bad advertisement, but at least you can block the URL below and whatnot:

3/1/2009 1:36:07 PM    Detected: Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Agent.aihr    WJQS.EXE        http://www.buyincomeproperties.com/adv.exe

after this, all the fun started happening. Interesting how Kaspersky "caught" it and "denied" it and yet I still wound up shits creek and several days, billions of hours, and various scanners and removers later...

well, you know the story already, no need to rehash.