Lunch With George!

December 14, 2001 - Samurai Sam's

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Agenda

• Habits
• From Doughnuts to Black Holes
• Virtual Driving
• Addictions
• More on Gaming
• Infinity - DEFERRED

From Doughnuts to Black Holes

George remarked that he never felt like he fit in at such places, and found that Garrison Keillor felt the same way. In a National Geographic article, "In search of Lake Wobegon," Keillor related similar experiences in a small town where he lived. He would go to the restaurants and bars, trying to engage others in conversation, but they would just say "hello" and then keep to themselves. About the only thing anyone said to him was "Hey, ain't you a writer?"

I really love Garrison Keillor's radio program A Prairie Home Companion, and so does George. I've tried to get Teri to listen, but she's just not interested. She doesn't like most of the non-news programming on NPR. George and I, on the other hand, really like Car Talk, Whad'Ya Know? with Michael Feldman, and Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!, the NPR news quiz show. I mean, can you imagine winning a better prize than having Carl Kassell record the message on your answering machine?

George was lucky enough to get tickets to see Michael Feldman's "Whad'Ya Know?" live in Tempe at the Red River Music Hall (I alway remember it as the Red River Opry). Even though I have listened to the show for several years, I have begun to enjoy it less and less. Perhaps I'm getting tired of his brand of humor.

The live show topic reminded me that I wanted to go to a live show I learned about (and Geoge would like to go, too): Black Holes at the Arizona Science Center Planetarium. There are daily shows through May 24, 2002.

Living in Phoenix, Don't We Drive Enough Already?

George and Toni and their friends, when they still lived in Pittsfield, would go to the arcade and race each other at the long bank of racing games which were all inter-connected. Each racer got their own bucket seat, steering wheel, pedals, shifter and video screen. On the screen, you saw the view from your own car, and the cars driven by the other people were there on the track with you.

I mentioned to George that a home system might have a slight drawback when compared to the arcade version, since you only have one screen (although I'm pretty sure most of the game consoles allow a split-screen mode where one driver's view is in the top half ofthe screen and the other's is on the bottom half).

I have a copy of SegaGT for the Dreamcast, and everyone I've talked to says it is Sega's version of the PlayStation Gran Turismo series. I'll have to let George try it and he can let me know!

Addictions: from Video Games to Malted Milk Balls

George never liked Quake III much (although I think he said he was a big fan of the earlier Quake incarnations), but I have found the Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes to be quite addictive (there's that word again!).

We commented on the addictive nature of computer games. I know that I have probably played dozens of hours on Diablo and Diablo II, and yet all you really do is

1. Bash something
2. pick up stuff
3. go back to town to sell stuff (get money)
4. buy better armor/weapons
5. goto #1

Of course, once you bash enough things you get to increase your skill levels, thus you can now bash bigger things. Pretty graphics help, little "quests" to go find the right things to bash help, but in the end it all comes back to my little algorithm above.

George said that The Mythical Man Month, (a classic tome for software project managers) made note of the addictive nature of programming-- how software developers can get "into" an assignment, sometimes not leaving their desk for days at a time. This does seem similar:

1. compile/run your program -- it works! (sort of)
2. look at the result
3. go back to the editor to fix it
4. write more code
5. goto #1

George said it would be cool if you could create a similar addiction model for the work place. People would do their work for a little while, and when they met some achievable intermediate objective (you need to meet one about every 20 minutes), you get to "level up", receiving some sort of immediate gratification. George suggested food pellets... to which I replied "only if they're malted milk balls!"

George reminisced about the terrific malted milk balls we once bought from the Mountain Man Fruit and Nut Company. He would come to the Honeywell cafeteria every other Wednesday and cover three or four banquet tables with large bags of candy and nuts. His malted milk balls were not only tasty-- they were also pretty large (about the size of a large gumball).

He hasn't come for a couple of years now... I wonder if there are still any local distributors? Here's the main web site... you can order from there.

But wait!!! There's an Arizona listing for Mountain Man Fruit and Nut Co. at QwestDex! (602) 252-8656.

More on Gaming Consoles

George and I also talked about the Xbox. Microsoft has really hit the ground running with this one! They have done what they usually do to create a new line ofproducts... they bought them. One of the best Macintosh gaming companies, Bungie, was bought lock, stock, and barrel by MS a little over a year ago. They immediately halted Mac game production, and focused their efforts on finishing the game intended to be the X-box flagship: Halo.

They also pulled the rug out from under Sega Dreamcast owners by buying exclusive contracts on games which had already been announced for the DC (and have now been canceled), Shenmue II among them.

The X-box is very powerful, and seems to represent Microsoft's effort to move the computer out of the office/den and into the Family Room. I think it is a brilliant idea! This game console (which already will play DVD movies) could easily do all the things a traditional desktop computer does-- surf the web, run Quicken, Word, and other apps. And why not do all these things on your big-screen TV?