September 2001
- 9 -
No sympathy at all
The August entries have been
on the front page of this site for a while, and no one has written me expressing
sympathy for how I was supposedly so cruelly censored and deprived of my
freedom of expression on the 14th and 15th. It was, of course, just
a bunch of silly anticlimactic rambling, but then again, so was Words of
Fire and I got sympathy e-mails for that. Was the Panera thing more
obviously a joke, or did I just cry wolf one too many times for the sarcasm-impaired
to even care? Did the revelation of my complaint's utter triviality
in the first entry make it less suspenseful? Or was there just nobody
reading my site on those days because there hadn't been any Azenera-related
information lately and everyone was bored? These are questions for
the ages, my friends. I just know that someday I'm truly going to
feel like I'm being censored, and nobody will believe me because I've been
mocking that kind of self-martyrdom too much.
Shareware time limit features
are becoming more and more intricate as people learn how to get around
them. I remember the days of old shareware programs, where the number
of days remaining or the registration date was stored in a simple .ini
file, and you could just go in there with a text editor and change it.
Now programs use much more complicated methods. The downloadable
shareware version of Bejeweled, for example, stores the information for
the number of times played in the registry. But here's the trick:
if you just go into the registry and try to change the number, it'll check
the registry entry against a file called Popcinfo.dat, which is placed
in the Windows directory when you run the Bejeweled shareware version.
If the registry entry has been changed and Popcinfo.dat hasn't been changed
or deleted, the count for the number of times played will be changed to
100, which is the maximum number allowed before you are required to register.
Try to cheat the system, and the system punishes you. It's a clever
way to discourage people from trying to crack the program.
I have binges. It's kind
of like bulimia, but without the puking and it's not as life-threatening
and serious. What I mean is, when it comes to things that can be
done pretty easily, I can get things done in short bursts. Also I
eat too much chocolate and that's why I always look fat in these pants,
but that's a matter for a different day... anyway, the reason you're not
seeing anything about Azenera here is because although I have been working
on it, thank you very much, I'm writing all these entries before the days
they represent because I want to have a few free days from it. I'm
just like a little kid sometimes with my short attention span, impulsiveness,
and unpredictable hyperactivity. A little kid, but scarier.
It's not enough just to not care
about the issues. I say that because it just makes me bored, that's
all. There's much more pleasure to be had in mocking the issues than
not caring because it's "edgy" and cool to mock stuff, at least according
to places like the Something Awful forums. Actually there are plenty
of people who mock political issues and they do a much better job at it
because they actually care to study the nuances of them all, unlike me,
so I'll have to come up with a new idea. Just give me a few days...
Everyone has an opinion these
days, it seems. Liberals, conservatives, moderates, and others are
down to arguing over trivial issues while being all self-conscious about
which side is in vogue these days. At least that's what it seems
like reading message boards and web sites like Salon.com. The problem
is that no one speaks for those of us who do not care to speak, probably
because they don't care either. These sites make it look like there's
much more debate going on everywhere, and it's totally not like real life
because most people are just trying to go about their lives and don't care
about issues at all. To properly reflect this, I propose setting
up a huge Political Apathy Movement, where several journalists talk about
how much they don't care about what's going on in the world. All
issues will be addressed with a simple, resounding Whatever. Then
we will let the world know how many of us there are who are, for the most
part, apathetic to most issues. Or maybe we won't, I don't really
care about this either. By the way, it seems to be libertarianism
that's in vogue these days, and that could very well be a good thing, at
least for computer gamers like me because they seem to be the only ones
who aren't blaming video games for moral decline or school shootings or
whatever is the demon of the week.
=,+,-/_7" -h" /-7,"-h:/- /=/"/-,|-",
/=//:/--]!!! All right, I'll stop it and just type in English.
It seems the firewall here is more selective about games than I imagined.
I can start a server and play on it just fine, but the problem happens
when I try to connect to other servers. It just doesn't work.
At least this is better than not being able to play games at all, but I
don't want to have to run a server all the time just to play multiplayer
games. It seems to work if I try to join other games while running
my server at the same time, but it has been very shaky.
As part of my Japanese review,
I'm going to attempt to write out all 46 katakana characters in ASCII text.
Here goes: |7 /| "7 I ,+ -h =|=
/7 /-, _7 +|- :/ 7, t+ '/
/=/ -T- "/ ,= |- + = -7,
7|, / /\ t 7 ^ ,+, ,7 =`
/- X -L- +7 _7_ -] =, |/
/\_ L [] '7 -7 -/ There! Okay,
it looks terrible, and there's no real way to write katakana like this.
Even script kiddies trying to imitate hackers wouldn't use it. But
that doesn't stop me! 7,=`,7t+-/!
Today I went canoeing on Lake
Mendota.
There were speedboats and jet skiers out there, and they made a lot of
waves. I didn't tip over like I did in Utah, but it was close.
After that I went back to my dorm, and then I went to a tailgate party
where I learned all the football cheers and stuff, and then forgot them
because I won't really need them because I don't usually go to football
games. Classes are coming up in a few days, and I have to review
for Japanese.
My suspicions are confirmed.
I can't get FTP access to my server again, because of the firewall.
Online multiplayer games, like Drakan deathmatch, aren't working either.
Maybe this time I should ask the people running the systems here for a
way past the firewall. Anyway, I've had a few setbacks, but everything's
working pretty smoothly so far. My roommate is having a bit more
trouble because he can't get his computer to connect to the network, probably
because of a software or driver problem, but it also might be because the
ResNet system here is faulty. Download speeds are adequate, not as
fast as they could be for a T1 line but much faster than my old 56K modem.
I downloaded the Arcanum demo, which is 250MB, in an hour.
There's a local cable access
station here called WYOU, on channel 4, and a few nights ago I happened
upon it by accident and saw some really weird stuff. They had run
out of original material, so they were playing a song that consisted of
only the words "If it's Christmas then it's Christmas and I'm happy" repeated
over and over again at different frequencies, played over images of a singing
bearded guy, the power plant on campus, and a bad computer animation of
a humanoid figure with one of its leg and arm lines moving around.
Then they switched over to a demonstration of where all the chakras are
on a statue of a human body, with the sound occasionally interrupted by
the Christmas happy song. I think I'm going to pay a bit more attention
to channel 4 to see just how deep the madness goes.