The Gary Gygax Effect

08.30.2006

While reading Jim's blog entry yesterday about all the different universes he's created (well, not exactly, but if that doesn't make you want to go see what he's talking about you're not nearly curious enough!) I started to recollect about my theory of the universe, or multiple universes. It may be my sci-fi upbringing, but I've often thought of key points in my life and "what would have happened" if something very specific hadn't happened.

My favorite example is Gary Gygax, famed/generally-recognized creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Without old Gary I wouldn't be where I am today. Travel with me along my little timeline:

• 1984-ish. Mom is dating a guy that lives in Nashville. He has a son who is 2 years younger than I am who enjoys role-playing games and attempts to get me interested in Dungeons and Dragons (enter The Gary Gygax Effect). We never play a "real" game, he just walks me through the steps of how to create a character and walks me through a scenario of Expedition To The Barrier Peaks.
• During a trip to Nashville with Mom, I pick up a copy of Dragon magazine, hoping to learn a little more about D&D.
• The following Monday, sitting at my desk waiting for 1st period Health class to start, I'm flipping through said Dragon magazine. A tall, skinny 15 year old nerd sitting in front of me turns around and sees what I'm reading. "Is that a Dragon magazine?" he asks. "Yeah, you wanna look at it?" I ask back. "Sure" he says as I hand him the magazine. 22 years later he still hasn't gotten away from me.

But there's more to how my life was influenced by The Gary Gygax Effect and my meeting Jerry.

• Upon graduation from high school, I start going to Birmingham-Southern since that's where Jer is going.
• Once at BSC, I take it upon myself to become a social butterfly. With that I become responsible for Jerry meeting Chris, whereupon they begin dating.
• I take my leave of college after the Freshman year, while Jerry continues on to get his degree in Computer Science. After his graduation, I decide "I can do that", so I then re-assert myself and get my degree in Computer Science 5 years later.
• Jerry gets a new car. I get a new car soon afterward.
• Jerry buys a house. I buy a house soon afterward.
  • Jerry's tangent: Even though he had broken up with Chris years earlier, Chris' mother sets him up on a date at a garage sale with Elaine, who would eventually become Jerry's wife.

• Jerry gets married. I mock him incessantly and flaunt my single lifestyle from that point on.
• Thanks to Elaine, Jerry ends up working at Research Genetics.
• Thanks to Jerry, I end up working at Research Genetics.
• Thanks to Invitrogen, Jerry and I both (eventually) get laid off from Research Genetics.
• Thanks to Elaine and her theater connections, Jerry starts working for Spiritus.
• Thanks to Jerry, I end up working at Spiritus.

Everything for the past 22 years can be traced back to that Dragon magazine. I've always given Gary Gygax the credit. Granted, he had nothing to do with the actual magazine, it was just reference material for a game he developed (along with a bunch of other TSR games back in the day). But if I hadn't gotten that Dragon magazine, what would have happened? Would I have met Jerry anyway? Would I have kept in my little ROTC world that I was stuck in during most of high school? Would I have taken advantage of the scholarship that I was offered from UAH? Would Jerry have met Chris, and then after that met Elaine?

The funny part about all of this spawning from a D&D magazine is that until my senior year of college, I never actually played the game.

Whenever something bad happens (such as the lay-off from ResGen), Jerry I look at each other and say "Damn you Gary Gygax!", since odds are without that Dragon magazine meeting so long ago we wouldn't be in whatever predicament we're in. Overall, I think it's been a good 22 years, so I'm holding off any serious damning of Gary for a while yet.

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Cousin Dugal

08.28.2006

Now that school has started back for all the young'uns, I've found myself drifting back to my scholastic years and noticing that even though I'm a pretty odd fellow now, I used to be a lot weirder.

Harken back with me to 1996. It was around my senior year in college, finally. I've found myself thinking back to being in the Athens State student center studying for an Abstract Algebra final (which I was pretty sure I was going to make a D in the class) while also playing Highlander Pool with Rob. Any story about Abstract Algebra is going to be boring, so let me tell you about Highlander Pool.

Highlander Pool was borne from watching the Highlander series of movies and tv shows. The pool table in the student center was unusually small, or at least it felt small. Rob and I were the big and beefy guys that all the men wanted to be and the women wanted to be with (it's my story, so allow me a little artistic license!). Taking that into account, along with the table not belonging to either one of us, we would often try some stupid/trick shot where more often than not one or more pool balls would become airborne. Said airborne balls would occasionally make a roll for freedom by bouncing off the table and rolling around the room. Or down the hall. Maybe even down a flight of stairs or two one time. As most people who either lack a certain degree of sophistication, or have watched The Color of Money more than should be admitted to, Rob and I would twirl our respective pool cues while awaiting our next turn to shoot, often would a sword-styled flourish.

I forget which of us was shooting and which was twirling, but a shot was made and a ball left the table. Suddenly the twirling cue stopped it's twirling and came about in a [soft] slashing motion landing on the back of the shooters neck along with the exclamation "There can be only one!". At that point, both of us started jiggling as we felt the power of the quickening that accompanies the death of an immortal in the movies/tv show. It wasn't planned, it just happened. From that point on, whenever a ball left the table, you would hear the cry of "There can be only one!". The only recourse would be for the shooter to bring his cue up to block the attacking cue (thus preventing the quickening).

I don't think I've played pool since my Athens State days. I pulled a B on my Abstract Algebra final, but still got a D in the class. Last I heard Rob was off working in the Virginia/D.C. area. I hope he's careful if he finds himself in a pool hall.

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Anglais/Englisch/Inglés

08.22.2006

My super cool TV remote that I got for myself back on my birthday brings me much joy. It's the first universal remote that I've actually used as a universal remote. In the past I've only gotten other remotes to replace a non-functioning component remote, and I've generally used said replacement remote for that component only. This time, it was a little different because my goal was to get a universal remote that I would actually use as such, thus getting rid of the 3 or 4 remotes that I found I kept on the end table. Plus, I had grown to despise the TV remote. Scroll wheels for channel surfing and volume control aren't as nifty as I originally thought.

My favorite feature of the Logitech remote I got is that it's programmed through the PC. You hook it up through a USB connection, connect to the Logitech website, and then go through a wizard where you select your components which in turn programs all the appropriate buttons. Easy as cake. Afterward, you go through a wizard which sets up 1-button macros. For instance, there's a button for "Watch DVD", which goes through the process of turning the TV on, setting the TV to the appropriate channel and aspect ratio, turns on the DVD player, and automatically presses play. As much as I use my TV for watching DVDs (just finished watching my 100th episode of Star Trek Voyager last night!), I thought that would be a pretty handy button.

But it's an annoying button.

Somewhere along the way pressing the "Watch DVD" button cycles the TV to the next language in the language list. It's not that important. The only hting I usually see n the TV are the channel number and volume level. But the thing that bothers me is how hard it is to change the language back to English. Once the language has been changed to French, German, Spanish, Klingon, whatever, I have to remember that the language menu is a sub-menu under another option - an option that is not readily apparent when presented in a foreign language. I've gotten to where I remember "next to last menu option, then select the last option for languages".

The odd thing I've noticed is that the language selections are in the language that is currently selected. If I'm in Spanish mode, I have to remember that Spanish for English is Inglés. Shouldn't the language selections be listed in the native language? I would have to hate to have to pick English if I was stuck in Manadarin. The Logitech site lets you properly select your language. I've been scarred to change the language of my remote to see if it has reasonable language changing syntax for fear I can't get back.

Maybe I just need a smarter TV. Can you upgrade the RAM in one of those things?

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Task Writing

08.21.2006

Did you ever have one of those weeks where you have a lot to do, and actually it's a lot that you want to do, and the one thing that seems to get in the way is work? I think I'm going to end up having one of those weeks.

Last week I made a list of things to do over the course of the week, including the weekend. When I made the list, I looked at it and said to myself that even while trying to be reasonable with the time I had allotted, there was no way I was going to get it all done. In fact, there were notes by some of the tasks that said if I get around to it.

I've taken to making a list early in the day to try and plot out the things I want to accomplish that day and a plan for the next couple of days. It sounds like a Jerry-ish thing to do, what with his list-making obsession and low tech stack of index cards, but it works. At least it works better than nothing, since if I go to the trouble of writing something down, especially multiple times over the course of a few days, I'm more apt to try and get it done, or at the very least decide it's not worth doing right now and should be rescheduled for later, as opposed to not thinking I've got anything to do as I plop down on the couch and watch Star Trek all weekend.

I managed to get a lot of the little things done I've been putting off for a while, most of which were little tweaks or fixes for various websites that I'm either maintaining or working on. I haven't gotten the headway I've wanting on making the big switch from Paint Shop Pro to Photoshop. I've got some Poser projects that need some file organization before I can really get started there. I've committed myself to either finally learning Flash (I get stuck at about the same point in any of the 4 or 5 Flash books I've got) or I'm just going to give it up completely.

So today I will write out a new list. Some of the items from the old list will fall to the wayside. Some will get pushed off until next weekend. A few get marked off as DONE! Part of me wants to make this an administrative web tool, but I would have to schedule the time to write it on my list. How's that for a quandary? Or is it more of a conundrum? I could always just use what's out there, but where's the fun in that?

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Mail From The Motherland

08.17.2006

It's been a while since I got a good piece of spam to amuse me.

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FROM THE DESK OF DR ABUDULAHI ISA,
AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING MANAGER,
BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A)
OUAGADOUGOU-BURKINA FASO.

Ever want to take a vacation to OUAGADOUGOU? Use our special coupon code "Ooga Booga" for savings now!

Dear Friend,

I'm a friend of a bank manager! In Africa!

I am the manager of Auditing and Accounting department of BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A) here in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$15m dollars (FIFTEEN MILION US DOLLARS)

I wonder if there was this pile of money just laying in the floor?

in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer (MR. ANDREAS SCHRANNER from Munich, Germany)

Looking at Google, this guy gets around...

who died along with his entire family in Jully 2000 in a plane crash.

It's best to not fly in Jully. Or Junne.

For more information about the crash you can visit this site:( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm)

I would have put up a link to the bbc page, but it doesn't exist any longer.

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless some body applies for it

Any type of body will do.

as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidlings and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash

I think this was the plot of King Ralph. I never knew King Ralph was a documentary!

leaving nobody behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.

The banking law and guidline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after Six years, the money will be transfered into the bank treasury as unclaimed fund. The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occassioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner. I agree that 30% of this money will be for you as a respect to the provision of a foriegn account , 10% will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 60% would be for me

Oddly enough, that really is 100%.

Thereafter, I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you arranged,you must apply first to the bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased with a text of application form that i will send to you when i hear from you,so i will like you to send to me your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where in the money will be remitted.

For easy communication, I will receive the text of application form through my private telephone. I think Yoda is really a bank manager in Africa!

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application . I will not fail to bring to your notice this transaction is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer.

I am now free of all fear atoms and him hitch free.

You should contact me immediately as soon as you receive this letter.

Trusting to hear from you immediately.

Yours Faithfully,
DR ABUDULAHI ISA,
MANAGER AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT
BANK OF AFRICA.

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This came from abudulahi_isa20@hotmail.com. So there's (probably) at least 19 other Abdulahi's out there. I wonder if they all have $15 million that was currently found? I should step forward as next of kin for them all and collect $300 million. Or 30% of $300 million.

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