Don’t ignore the real world

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Computers are wonderful things. A computer plus the Internet is even more so, with the ability to connect easily, quickly, and in many different ways with people around the world.

But the real world is a very important thing, too — and it scares me when people will abandon their lives for the sake of online interactions. The Everquest Daily Grind tracks stories from people whose lives have been affected by Everquest addicts…

My 15 yr old son bought the game two years ago for his sister. My husband took it over and has been playing constantly ever since. My son says he regrets ever buying it and considers anyone who plays computer games all day to be a loser. It’s hurt his relationship with his dad.

…He starts playing about ten mins after getting home from work and stops just long enough to eat dinner. Then he plays again til bedtime around 11. ON weekends he gets up around 8am and plays all day til 10 or 11pm.

…I don’t know if he realizes how bad things are between him and all of us. The kids have lost respect for him and I am very lonely. We just live our lives without him.

I’ve seen this happen with friends, too.

I’ve watched one friend lose his friends, girlfriend, job, and health because he did nothing except play EQ, sunup to sundown. I’ve consoled the girlfriend of another when he ignored her attempts to coax him into bed, preferring to play his game.

Of course, it’s not just EQ, but virtually all forms of online interaction that can prompt his sort of behavior in people. IRC channels, web-based chat, online gaming, discussion boards…even weblogs (gasp!) can interfere with people’s real lives — and not just the people that are directly involved — if they’re allowed to have too much influence.

I’ve always kept a fairly strict hierarchy for my interactions, and it’s rare that I’ll deviate without good reason. In order from most to least important, with each able to be superseded at any time by the item above:

  1. Real-world, face-to-face interactions.
  2. Phone calls.
  3. IM messages.
  4. Online chat.
  5. Online games (mostly included just to fill out the list, as I’ve never been much of a gamer, let alone an online gamer).

Personally, I find it somewhat amazing that people can approach the world with a different set of priorities, but it’s obvious (and somewhat sad) that they do.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “Pore” by ohGr from the album Welt (2001, 3:57).

Rove in Seattle

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Jackqueline got a chance to “infiltrate” a College Republicans event with Karl Rove as the guest speaker last night. Some very interesting tidbits come out of her notes on the evening, not least that Washington is going to be a prime target for the Republicans in the upcoming elections.

Most interestingly, they are planning to really compete in Washington this year. He said in 2000 they only lost this state by 138,000 votes, and that there were 118,000 Republican supporters living in King County alone who did NOT vote in 2000. (How do they figure that out?) So they think they have a shot at winning this state, if they can get out the Republican vote.

He also said Bush doesn’t want a “lonely victory” — so they’re concentrating their resources in states where they think they can help get a few more people elected down ticket as well. Here that would be our Governor and Senate races, as well as a couple of House races.

They also want to “leave something behind.” They want Bush’s campaign this year to inspire a generation of young Republican activists like Reagan did. They’re really working on mobilizing grassroots volunteers, especially college students, to recruit people and get out the vote.

Maybe not terribly surprising, but interesting to hear it “from the horse’s mouth”, so to speak (okay, secondhand, but still…).

Rove also talked about the Bush campaign’s plans to do their best to rake Kerry over the coals in the upcoming months.

He said the past year, especially the past three months, have been bad for them. He said as everyone in the room knew, the national media were not on their side. So they had to put off launching their campaign until the Democrats had a nominee, but they’ve been planning it, and a race against Kerry, for a long time. He kept emphasizing how much they’ve studied Kerry, what a wealth of material they have to use against him, and how many stupid things Kerry has said that they’ve gotten on tape. He mentioned how the National Journal recently rated Kerry as the “most liberal” Senator, amazingly making Ted Kennedy the more conservative Senator from Massachusetts. The ads they’ve rolled out over the past two weeks are just the beginning, and they’re planning to hit Kerry and have him howling every week. He said they’re very carefully testing these ads with focus groups before they run them to make sure they’re effective.

2004 is going to be a long, rough, nasty campaign. Bush needs to go, but I’m still very unconvinced that Kerry had the best chances of ousting him, and Nader’s egotistical grandstanding isn’t going to help things in the least.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no excuse for anyone to remain oblivious. If you care at all about where our country is headed, you really need to pay attention. Keep your eyes and ears open — and don’t just stick with the echo chambers of the people you agree with. Watch what the other camps are doing, whether or not you agree with them (or to what extent — Jacqueline runs far more to the Libertarian camp than I do, and I know I don’t agree with her wholeheartedly on many of her positions, but I’ve been enjoying reading her posts, as even if I don’t always agree with someone, I can always respect someone who seems to put some thought into what they believe). No matter what, don’t just bury your head in the sand.

iTunes: “What is Love?” by Jones, Howard from the album Pop and Wave Vol. 2 (1983, 3:38).

I should probably be worried about this…

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Kirsten pointed out the Book Quiz — another of the many online personality tests, this one purporting to link your psyche to a novel.

My results?

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blockquote>Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita'

You’re Lolita!

by Vladimir Nabokov

Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn’t the best and you’re not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you’ve done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay away from children.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Oh my.

[Ahem.]

More camera ramblings

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I’ve spent a good portion of the evening bouncing around various camera reviews and specifications, comparing all the various suggestions made in my comments today (many thanks to all of you!). Right now, I’m leaning towards one of two possibilities…

Option one is essentially what I was looking for recommendations for, a more immediately affordable smaller “point-and-shoot” camera. Right now, I’m leaning towards the Canon PowerShot A80 (here’s the DPReview listing). Small, good combination of features, a little more expensive than I was aiming for (\$381.52[*]/\$385[**]) but it looks to be worth it.

Option two is if I can hold off a little longer, save a bit more, and get paid back for a loan I made to a friend a few years back — in which case, I’ll go for a more powerful camera. While I’ve had my eye on the Canon Digital Rebel (DPReview listing) (\$1100.90[*]/\$927.99 [body only]) for a while now, Nikon just announced their D70 (DPReview listing) (\$1114.49[][*]) which looks to handily best the Digital Rebel and should be out soon — but the Minolta DiMAGE A1 (DPReview listing) (\$754.19[][*]/\$736.40) is really catching my eye. It doesn’t have the lens-swapping capabilities of the other two, but really, I’m not likely to have the ability (financially or photographically) to worry about that for a long time to come, and the number of features it packs in for the price is fairly astounding.

I’ll keep looking, though, to see if something else looks like a better deal. I’ve gotta come up with the funds first, after all. ;)

[*]{#mcr1} Average of all appropriate results out of the first ten hits in a Froogle search.

[**]{#mcr2} Average of the five prices listed on DPReview’s pages.

iTunes: “Wiggedy Wack” by Utah Saints from the album Two (2001, 1:28).

Digital camera recommendations?

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Okay, so it looks like I’m going to be in the market for a new camera as soon as I can afford it (which, knowing me will be sometime in 2007, but that’s beside the point).

My camera of choice right now is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel — but given its \$1000 price tag, I’m afraid that it’s going to have to stay in the “pipe dream” category for a while.

So here’s my (more realistic, and not that unreasonable) wish list:

  • 2-4 Megapixel resolution.
  • Compact Flash storage.
  • Optical zoom (not digital).
  • Smallish size.
  • \$200-\$350 price range.

Any recommendations?

Today sucks

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It’s all of 2pm, and I’m having an amazingly shitty day.

First, iPhoto corrupts its library, so all 3500 photos need to be re-imported and re-named.

Then iTunes corrupts its library, losing all ratings and play count data.

Now, both of those are more on the annoying side than anything of really major importance — the data is still there, just not as conveniently organized as I might like it. Frustrating, but not that big of a deal, all told.

The crowning moment so far, though, was getting so engrossed in reading The Stranger‘s’Marriage Issue‘ that when the bus comes, I stand up, get on, and sit down…

…then realize halfway to work and ten minutes later that I left my bookbag at the bus stop at 2nd and Spring.

Shit.

Items lost include:

  1. The bookbag itself: just a bookbag, but a nice one, and one I got for free during my months at Microsoft, complete with Microsoft logo embroidered on the flap.
  2. One necktie. Eeeh. No biggie.
  3. The book I was reading, which wasn’t even mine, but was loaned to me by Prairie. A minor annoyance, but books can be re-bought, so I’m not terribly worried about that.
  4. My \$300 (at time of purchase) Kodak DX3500 digital camera. Shit.

Work let me bail out as soon as I got there and take a cab back downtown to see if by any chance someone had turned my bag into the building that the bus stop is in front of, but (as I expected), no dice. A quick swing by home to pick up another tie and verify that my camera really was in the bag and not on my desk, and now I’m just waiting for the next bus back to work.

So, I’ve managed to be a complete and total idiot and lose my camera.

I guess it’s time to start saving….

Elation and Frustration

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Been somewhat of a roller coaster morning here.

Elation: finding a Quest Customer Service representative who’s competent, and who discovers that due to some billing wonkiness Quest owes me \$130, and credits that to my current telephone account.

Frustration: discovering that iPhoto has somehow self-destructed, and while I still have all my photos, I’m going to have to go through and re-sort, re-categorize, and re-name all 3500 of them.

And the word “PROJECT” flashed before my eyes…

Update: And the day just keeps getting \<sarcasm>better\</sarcasm>. iTunes just flaked out on me too, so now I’m re-importing all my music. ID3 tags should be fine, which is the main worry, but I’ve lost all my custom smart playlists, all the “last played” metadata, ratings, and anything else not recorded directly in each file’s ID3 tag. Argh.

Today just doesn’t seem to be a good day for me to be touching a computer.

iTunes: “Floor Show: Rose Tint My World/Don’t Dream It, Be It/Wild and an Untamed Thing” by Original London Rocky Horror Show Cast from the album Rocky Horror International (1973, 6:00).

Sounds like it’s closed

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Well, I was a bit of an idiot and walked out of the building without my bus pass today, so I’m going to be a bit late for work (which they’re okay with — when I called them, a three-alarm fire next door complete with road closures, some of which are still in effect, counted as a reasonable excuse for being a bit distracted).

Before I realized that I didn’t have my pass on me, though, I passed a TV news crew either filming a report for later or broadcasting live, and overheard the reporter say that Jensonia residents were only being let in the building to retrieve personal belongings, and that the Red Cross is going to be assisting them find places to live. Sounds like the Jensonia finally got shut down.

Now, off to find the next bus to Georgetown…

Update: According to this KOMO report, the building isn’t permanently shut down, though it is closed off for the next few days due to fire, smoke, and water damage.