Safety Fork, the

I played my first game of Civilization IV over the last two days. Here are my observations, in order of gameplay:

1. The music is awesome.
2. I don’t understand the criteria they used to pick which world leaders made it into the game. Particularly, you can choose Chairman Mao for the Chinese, but not Lenin or Stalin for the Russians or Hitler for the Germans. These guys were just too historically unimportant?
3. Leonard Nimoy did all of the voiceovers for the research and the setup bits. Even without salsa, he is definitely a force of excellence. They should have used his bit that plays when a new game is started instead of the lame CGI intro-movie; it’s better. Actually, the designers probably wanted to, but were overruled by marketing drones for not being “flashy enough.”
4. One of the world wonders a civilization can build is the Internet. I laughed out loud when, having researched it, I discovered that its icon is a picture of Al Gore.
5. I was a little put off at first because the interface isn’t done in the same colors and style as previous Civ games. After I got over the shock, though, it works very well.
6. I played on the default difficulty, but I should have turned it up a notch. I had a hundred turns at the end when I could have finished any time. Of course, I spent them building nuclear missiles. The optimal win, when this far ahead, is to nuke everything on the second-to-last turn of the game, and launch the spaceship on the last turn. On the second-to-last turn, I had 182 ICBMs. I spent pretty much a whole hour just nuking stuff. Now it’s just me and the glow.

Hypothesis: most people who think they are computer users are not.

So that I can purchase cars and other shiny things, I am paid to write software. Since I want to continue to be paid to write software, I spend some of my time making sure that people who are not me can actually use it for something. The important distintion (in this context, anyway) between me and people who are not me is that I am a computer user and they are not.

“Um,” you ask, “how do they use your software without a computer?”

They don’t, obviously. The distinction is that they are users of my software, mostly, rather than of the computer on which it runs. Some of them may be Windows users; even fewer actual computer users. I root this distinction in scope of knowledge. A user of a particular program knows how to start Photoshop and get things done. A user of a particular operating system knows more generally how to care for and feed Mac OS X; certainly she knows how to install Photoshop, maybe even the OS itself. A computer user is definitely at least a programmer, knows how to put the machine together and could, if necessary, figure out where to start to do work with the machine, even lacking an OS.

Most who think they are computer users, then, are actually Microsoft Internet Explorer users. They are probably also Microsoft Word users, and maybe Google Mail users. I don’t mean this as an insult. They (you, even, o hapless reader?) are not computer users in the same way that I am not a user of the Prairie Island nuclear power station; I know vaguely what it does, but I couldn’t build one. I’m a user of light bulbs and garage door openers.

I make this distinction because I think it would be beneficial for individuals to realize where they sit on the scale. Internet Explorer and Word users should know that they are not Windows users; they should not expect to be able to install new programs (or they should at least expect to fail sometimes when they try). Mac OS X users should not be exasperated that ninety percent of the people to whom they talk don’t know that duh, you just drag the application to your hard disk to install it. And those few of us who are computer users should probably recognize, I guess, that while Linux is teh r0×0rz, some people would rather knit socks or go bowling than learn about the /proc filesystem.

At least I’m getting paid. I do like my shiny things.

I received a note in the mail today with this text:

PLEASE CALL US AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE CONCERNING YOUR STUDENT LOAN(S). YOU MAY REACH US AT 1-800-238-7816 EASTERN STANDARD TIME, DURING THESE HOURS:

MONDAY - FRIDAY: 3PM to 11PM (EST)

RESPECTFULLY,

STUDENT LOAN CONSOLIDATION CENTER
LOAN REVIEW DEPARTMENT
800-238-7816

DEPARTMENT - 100

Now, I am a smart man, and so I can tell that this note is not from the bank that holds my student loans. I notice almost immediately that I don’t really know from what bank it came. I know enough about finance that it’s obviously a sales pitch for something I don’t need.

On the other hand, I am surprisingly irritated that this information is missing. I can easily imagine thousands—nay, millions—of gullible graduates who will see the terse message in fixed-width font and think, Oh no, my loans are broken! I better call them and do what they say! Whether loan consolidation is a good idea or not for any given individual, this is not an honest way to pitch it.

Do you know what’s bad about watching television shows on DVD? It’s real hard to properly justify running away, and there’s certainly no real ad breaks to give a respite.

On the other hand, while I was about, three separate people complimented me on my beard, but all in passing. Is my face too scary to talk to? Also, the mall was crawling with small children—you know, high schoolers. Eeew.

I really must obtain this DVD sometime, somehow:

I found it browsing the PDQ Bach website. Have I ever mentioned that I love PDQ Bach? Ever since my high school band played “Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion,” I’ve found all of Peter Schickele’s creations terribly amusing. Unfortunately it seems (according to his concerts pages) that he doesn’t get any closer to Minnesota than Chicago.

Well, I didn’t buy a BMW. My apologies if you were counting on riding in one in order to feel cool. I bought this car instead:

It is a 2005 Volkswagen New Beetle TDI. Yes, I have a diesel car. Aside from sounding cool, it also gets excellent fuel economy. All hail Rudolf!

Sometimes it’s nice to escape reality, even if only for 120 minutes.

Reality started at 7:30 A.M. this morning. The road was ridiculously slick. I have driven on ice with better traction. It turns out I can’t stop as fast as the guy in front of me. This might be a universal truth—or it might at least apply to the driver behind me.

So the three of us get out and stand in the rain. The guy I hit didn’t think he had any damage. That would be okay, because I got enough for everybody.

I didn’t think it was that bad at first. I have one of those plastic cars. If it doesn’t get hit too hard, the plastic is okay; if it does get hit too hard, the plastic cracks. I didn’t have any cracks, but the trunk lid didn’t fit right. I figured it was cosmetic, so when the driver’s dad asked me if I’d consider settling privately, I said I’d get a couple of estimates and we could talk about it.

Before you chastise me, let me explain my philosophy on insurance. I hate it when insurance is used as a clearing house for expenses. I think it’s a good idea to insure against catastrophe, but when every little thing goes through an insurance company, that just means that everyone’s bill goes up (for example, look at the cost of health insurance).

So I took the day off work and went to two places that do body work. The prognosis, doctor, was not good. My minor cosmetic damage hid a bent frame, just behind the left rear wheel well. Cost to repair: about two thousand dollars.

For those hapless readers just tuning into my life, that’s about twice what my car is worth. It’s odd, really, since the car is still drivable—not exactly the connotation of totaled. It was with a little trepidation that I called back the other driver’s dad to offer an option: if you want to settle privately, I’ll accept a thousand dollars today, or I’ll file a claim. Either way I’m covered for what I feel I’ve lost in monetary value. He agreed. We met, worked out the details, and he gave me the money. This is at about 2:00 P.M.

I think this feeling is what they were thinking about when they coined surreal. I’d been lazily thinking, over the last few months, about getting a new car—mostly spurred on my my brother’s BMW Z3 zeal—but I always figured I’d wait until my car needed an investment I didn’t think worthwhile. Now in a span of less than seven hours my car is now in need of repair greater than its value, I’ve got more for than I could have sold it for if it blew a head gasket or dropped the transmission on the road or whatever, and I still actually have the car…I’ll just never really trust it to go far from home again, and it’s not worth repairing it if anything breaks. So now I need to buy a car soon.

In that light, instead of pacing my apartment, I went to look at BMWs…

…what, did you think I was going to tell you I bought one? Hey, you really are hapless. BMWs are awesome in awesomeness, but also in expensiveness. I might consider buying one, but not on one day’s whim, and not without looking at anything else.

And then I escaped reality for two hours. Serenity was good. You should see it.