Thursday, March 31, 2016

Writing Advice from C.S. Lewis

Not long ago I read an article that listed fifteen pieces of writing advice that had been collected from various letters written by C.S. Lewis. Below are a few of the ones that stood out in my mind, and a quick personal comment on each.

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about . . .)”
- I write about both real and imaginary things, and hopefully it's clear that I am interested in the things I write about.

“Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.”
- Dictionary.com remains one of my most visited websites.

“When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.”
- If you've been reading this blog over the last few months, you might remember my post on my Blog Graveyard.

“Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.”
- I love trying to be a wordsmith as much as anyone else, but I do think we overvalue coming up with unfamiliar, creative words when simple ones work just as well, if not better.

"Turn off the radio."
- I assume this means get rid of distractions. Like many writers, I've had many times where I intended to do some writing, but allowed myself to get distracted.

“Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.”
- I heard this advice a year or two ago from another person and it's been one of the biggest helps to me in improving my writing.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Pit

A Poem

I wallow at the bottom of a dark pit
It is cold
It is lonely
I dug it with my own hands
The floor is wet with my tears
The walls echo with my cries
But not a sound escapes from the pit
I dug it too deep
The memory of others fades
They are all gone
So far away from here
Will anyone find me?
Do I want them to find me?
Which is worse?

A voice speaks to me
It says give up
It tells me there is no escape from the pit
It fills my head with lies
Another voice speaks
An old friend; angry and unrelenting
It rages against my weakness
It will not let it end this way
A third voice speaks
It knows me better than anyone
Every failure, every mistake
It tells me to look up

Your hand reaches down into the pit
I cannot see it
But I know it is there
You will not leave me in this pit
This pit of my own making
I extend my hand upward
Desperately waving
Grasping at the air
I cannot see your hand
Still, I reach for it
You will not leave me in this pit
You will pull me out
And into the light
You always do


Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Thoughts on Big Friday

Last Friday, March 25th, was the fourth and final Friday of the month of March, making it the final Friday of my Big Friday project. The goal was to publish a longer than normal writing piece on each Friday for the month of March, and I am pleased to say that I succeeded in that goal. Trying to regularly generate one of these longer writing pieces turned out to be a good exercise and gave me a chance to test myself on how much I could write each week. That said, though I passed my own exam, it certainly required exertion. For example, the Borderlands 2 and Donald Trump posts went through many revisions and I'm still considering a few edits to smooth out some of the rougher parts of them. The PSX 2015 post wasn't overly hard to write, as it was just me recounting an event, but it took quite awhile to type out and I had to make some calls on what details were the most important to include. The only "easy" post from the Big Friday project was the Wood Photo Transfers one, but even that one required a lot of proofreading and wrestling with Blogger to get the images to appear correctly.

Going forward, I'm thinking it will be a good to continue in the pattern of Big Friday and attempt to produce one longer writing piece per week, but I'm not going to hold myself to it if I don't have something substantial to say. There may be weeks where my thoughts haven't come together in an acceptable fashion, I'm short on time, or maybe I simply don't have a lot to say, and if that's the case then I won't overburden myself with having to create good content where none exists. I also don't want to waste the time of you, the reader, so there will be no longer writing pieces that exist purely as filler material.

This particular week I've got a lot going on, so I'm going to exempt myself from publishing a longer post on Friday, but I've also been gathering some ideas for future Friday posts. There are a number of things I've been thinking about writing on and maybe this is finally the time to get around to writing them. I'm not sure which one I'll do first, but starting on April 8th I hope be back on the Big Friday schedule.

Monday, March 28, 2016

"No, he's your friend"

Many years ago, I happened to run into the mother of a friend of mine who I had not seen in awhile. We briefly chatted and at the end of the conversation I asked her to say hi to my friend on my behalf. "No, he's your friend," she replied, "you tell him." Her response was blunt, but it taught me an important lesson. If you want to stay friends with someone, you have to take the initiative and make the effort to maintain the friendship. Too often we simply allow friendships to fade and die by laying the responsibility for growing the relationship solely on the other person. Yes, the other person does have a share of the responsibility, but that does not give us an excuse to be negligent on our part. Reach out to them. Talk to them. Don't let that friendship wither just because you couldn't be bothered to stay in touch.

Friday, March 25, 2016

Wood Photo Transfers

Today is the last Friday of March, so for the final Big Friday post of this month, I thought I'd mix things up a little and publish an instructional post. I think it's been over a year since I last did one of these. Today I'm detailing the process I use to create my wood photo transfers, which some of you have seen in person.

The basic idea of this craft is that you take an image and transfer it onto a surface, in this case a piece of wood. You're not actually printing directly onto the wood, so it's technically not wood printing, but rather you're attaching the very thin layer of ink that's printed on paper onto the wood. Think of it as a classier version of gluing a picture onto a wood surface. You can find a number of websites and Youtube videos that detail this process (viewing them is how I learned to do it) and the instructions you'll find here are not significantly different from them.

Supplies Needed:
* Piece of sanded/smooth wood
* Image printed on a piece of paper using a laser-jet printer
* Gel medium
* Matte/gloss finish, or wood stain, or whatever you want to use to coat the final product
* Foam brush(es)
* Soft cloth/towel

Possibly Needed Supplies: (depending on your situation)
* Hand saw or power saw
* Sand paper
* Hand sander or power sander
* Work bench/table
* Eye protection
* Dust mask
* Work gloves
* Clamps
* Pen or Sharpie

Here's a pair of photos of most of the supplies:

Wood, power saw, clamps, work table, eye protection, dust mask, and gloves.
Foam brushes, gel medium, gloss and matte finish, sand paper, and a hand-sander tool

Before we get started, I need to notes a few things:

The image you use can be printed on a regular piece of printer paper, but it must be printed with a laser-jet printer. Images printed with ink-jet printers do not transfer as well as laser-jet ones. If you don't have a laser-jet printer, places like FedEx have them and can print your image(s). Also, be sure to horizontally flip the image before printing it. You'll be planting the image face-down on the wood, so if you don't flip it then you'll end up with a mirror image instead of the original image.

What type of wood you use is up to you. I've used a few different types and all have worked fine, though there are a few things to keep in mind. First, you want a smooth surface to place the image onto. Second, the color of the wood will affect the color of your image. Generally speaking, the brighter the color of the wood, the better, though if you want to go artistic and add a color tint to the final product you can certainly buy something like red wood. Lastly, be mindful of the thickness of the wood you're buying. Thicker wood is of course heavier, and may require more effort to mount to a wall.

The gel medium I have used is the one made by Liquitex, and seems to be the most popular type to use. There's a photo of the gel medium container further down for you to look at. For the finish, I've used both gloss and matte wood finishes made by Mod Podge, but feel free to use whatever strikes your fancy.

All the items listed under the Possibly Needed Supplies heading are dependent on the wood you purchase. If you can get a piece of wood that's exactly the right size for your image, then you probably won't need any of them. If, however, you buy wood that then needs to be cut and sanded into the proper size, like you'll see in my example, then you will probably need them.

With all that preliminary stuff out of the way, let's get started.

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In the process detailed below, I am using a 2'x4' piece of plywood and the images I used were all printed on regular 8.5"x11" printer paper. If your wood is already the exact size needed for the image, you can skip the initial steps in the first paragraph below.

If your wood needs to be cut into the proper size for your image, you'll need to start there. Mark out the proper dimensions with a pen or sharpie and then cut the wood as needed. This is easiest to do with some sort of power saw or table saw, but a hand saw can be made to work if needed. In the photo below I marked out a pattern on a 2'x4' piece of plywood with a sharpie and then cut along the lines with a power saw. Clamps are very helpful to hold the wood in place while cutting, and be sure to use proper eye protection and a dust mask to keep your face safe from all the dust and small bits of wood that will be flying around. When cutting, it's always safer to err on the side of creating a piece of wood that's a little too big than a little too small (you can always come back later and take off the excess). If your piece of wood needs to be sanded to smooth out the surface, also do that now before moving ahead.

The original piece of wood, marked up for cutting
When you're done cutting the wood into the desired size, put the piece down on a table with some scrap paper underneath it to keep the table clean. In this case, I used some pages from a magazine. Get the gel medium, foam brush, and your image. With the foam brush, apply a thin, even layer of gel medium to the surface that you want to put the image on. If the layer is too thin, then the image will not properly bond to the wood, and if it's took thick then it will be really hard to remove the paper on top of the image. Do your best to also make sure the gel medium is spread evenly across the surface. It's hard to describe the exact thickness of the gel, and I know the photo below doesn't do much to help, but generally speaking, you want the layer to be thin enough that you can see the wood underneath it. For me it took several rounds of trial and error to finally get the thickness right.

The cut piece of wood, with gel medium and image ready to be applied
The wood with a thin layer of gel medium
When you think you've got the gel medium properly spread across the wood surface, slowly and gently lay the image face-down on top of the gel medium (so that the back of the paper is facing up). I know this can be as stressful as trying to lay a protective screen across a smartphone, but on the plus side if you're a little bit off you can just gently push the image around until it exactly fits the surface. It will be a minute or so before the gel medium starts to dry, so you have a short period to make adjustments if needed.

The image now applied. I didn't get it perfectly smooth, but it turned out ok.
Next you need to smooth out the image and make sure it is evenly pressed down onto the gel medium. To do this you can use something like the back of a credit card or another flat surface. In my case, I have an old name tag from my former office that works really well for this. Smooth out and gently press down the entire image, especially the edges. Spend a few minutes gently working over the image and getting it as flat on the surface as you can. On a side note, if you notice a lot of gel medium is oozing out the sides while you smooth out the image, then you know you've used too much.

Smoothing out the paper
With the image now applied to the wood, you need to give it and the gel medium time to dry and stick to the wood. Place the wood somewhere off to the side and let it sit around for about 24 hours. A few times I've given the wood a little less time (around 18 to 20 hours) and achieved similar results, so if your schedule demands you let the wood sit a bit less than 24 hours you should be ok. I had one time where I was unable to get back to the project the next day and consequently it sat around for about 36 hours, but it also turned out about the same as the others.

Once the waiting period is over, it's time to begin removing the excess paper from the wood. This is the most tedious part of the process, and perhaps the longest, depending on how big of an image you used. For me it normally takes about two full days, so if you're doing something similar to what I was doing you'll just have to be patient. Take a soft cloth or face towel and get it wet. Then, wring out the excess water. You want the cloth/towel wet, but not soaking wet. Use the cloth/towel to get the paper damp and then start to gently rub the paper off. You can also use your fingers to rub the paper off, but however you do it, do not be forceful. After you've taken off a layer of the paper, let it dry for an hour or two and then come back and repeat the process. It will likely take you many repetitions of dampening the paper, gently rubbing some off, and then letting it dry before you finish. Keep in mind that you will likely lose small bits of the underlying image as you rub off the paper, but that's just part of the craft. If you were wanting an perfect reproduction of the image without any degradation, then you should have gotten it printed on nice photo paper and framed it.

Ready to begin removal

The first bits of paper removed
As you continue the process of removing the paper, the image will start to become clearer and clearer. You will likely also notice that the last patches of paper residue are the hardest to remove.

After a few repetitions, the image has appeared

Getting closer

Almost there
After many repetitions, you will get to the point where you have either have all the paper off, or the paper residue is so thin that it's hardly noticeable. When you get to the point of being satisfied with how it looks, then it is time to finish the project. If there's any additional cutting or sanding of the wood that needs to be done, go ahead and do that now. Once you're finished with that, or if you didn't need to do any of it in the first place, you can now apply the matte/gloss finish or your choice of wood stain. Follow the instructions of the product you choose and let it dry however long is required. When that's done, take a look at the finished product and feel good about what you've made. Below is a photo of the final result of project I was working on, as well a photo of the other ones I made.


My toes make a cameo appearance
How you choose to display your masterpiece is up to you. Mount it on the wall, stand it on a shelf, use it as a paperweight, there's a wide variety of options.

Before closing, I should also mention what you can do if, for whatever reason, you make a big mistake during the process or are unsatisfied with how the project is turning out. The easiest solution is to just flip the piece of wood over and give the process another try on the back side. If that's not workable you can use sandpaper to remove the paper and dried gel medium from the wood and then reuse the same side of the wood. A power sander is best for this, but you can also do it by hand (it will just take a lot longer). You'll want to use coarse, lower grit sandpaper (I used 60 grit). Below is a photo of one of my rejects getting the sandpaper treatment.


That wraps up this guide to transferring photos/images to wood. It's a time-intensive process but can give you a more distinctive piece of decoration for your home, or a nice gift for a friend. For me it took several attempts before I started to get the process to work consistently, so if your initial attempts have mixed results, just keep experimenting until you get it right.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Passing the Mark

Yesterday I published my 67th post to this blog for the year of 2016. That tied my total number of posts published for all of 2015, meaning this post, my 68th, officially breaks last year's record. To mark this occasion, here's a Star Trek gif of Data:



While it's encouraging to break the record for the number of blog posts, I still have a ways to go before I break last year's record for the number of words published. So far I've published 39,949 words (not counting the words of this post), making for an 11,559-word gap with the total number of words published last year, which was 51,508. Given the shorter length of most of the posts I've been publishing lately, it will probably be awhile before that line is crossed. Regardless, I'll try to remember to periodically check my word count, and whenever I pass 2015's word count I'll do another brief post to commemorate the breaking of that record too.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

A Mere Formality

Last year a friend of mine, whom I'll call Sam, finally got married and I was given the honor of being one of his groomsmen. I had been friends with Sam since college and I was as pleased as anyone else to see him wed the woman he had been with for the last few years. Sam's life, from the time I first met him up to when I last saw him, has been a long grind full of changed plans and delays. He's still working through schooling, having acquired multiple bachelor's degrees over the preceding years as his life plans have changed. To see him finally get to his wedding day felt like a major achievement for him and I was proud to be part of that big day. The wedding itself was notable for being science-themed to reflect the intended career paths of Sam and his bride, and another wedding guest told me that there was more glassware at the wedding than at many laboratories. I even gave a short speech, which I predictably bumbled through in my normal fashion. When it was all over, everyone bid Sam and his bride farewell and then myself and others cleaned up the wedding venue before our own departures.

On the drive back from the wedding I asked a friend of mine for his thoughts on the wedding and the new relationship Sam and his bride had entered into. He replied that the wedding was a mere formality. I thought about that statement for the rest of the drive and into the next day, and the more I considered it, the more it was clear that my friend was right. Sam and his bride had been living together for years and acting like a married couple. The only things that had now changed were the presence of a wedding ring on each of their left hands, a new legal status in the eyes of the state, and whatever financial adjustments they chose to make that they hadn't done already. While I was still happy for their marriage, it was saddening to think about how little it actually meant. Their wedding night would be about the same as any other, and their honeymoon wouldn't be much different from previous trips they had taken together (except probably more expensive). After their wedding and honeymoon their lives would return the same routine as before their marriage. The wedding was, indeed, a mere formality.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Tax Returns

Last week I partook in the annual tradition here in America of filing federal and state tax returns. Filing tax returns is always a chore and every year I have to push myself to get them done. I suspect that part of the reason I don't like preparing my tax returns is because they remind me of those homework assignments I hated doing as a child. That said, I really can't complain too much. My tax returns are usually very straightforward, only requiring one or two additional forms. I also frequently get a small tax refund, so it's actually in my interest to do them so that the federal and state governments can send me a check. When the refund checks arrive in the mail the whole tax return process doesn't feel so bad, but I know that twelve months from now I'll be back to square one - dragging my heels and grumbling about having to fill out government paperwork again.

Monday, March 21, 2016

WordPerfect

With my father's work, first as an engineer and later as a programmer, I had exposure to computers from a young age. In elementary school I got my first experience typing up book reports and other homework assignments on the family computer, and the ease and utility of typing and printing things rather than writing them out by hand quickly became clear to me. Since my dad's computers were always Macs, the only times I used Microsoft Word while growing up were when I was using a computer at school. Instead of Word, the computers at home had a program called WordPerfect, made by a company called Corel, which I found much easier to use and more intuitive. In fact, the only advantage I saw in Word was that it had GrammarCheck, which the version of WordPerfect on my home computer did not. From elementary school to the end of high school, all my typed papers were done in WordPerfect, and there was hardly a time when I had an issue with the program. After high school my parents purchased a laptop for me for college and since it had a Windows operating system, they bought me the then current Microsoft Office suite of programs, which meant I made the transition to using Word. It took some time getting used to Word, which felt clunky by comparison, but it was what I had to work with so there wasn't a choice on the matter. Today I still have Word on my current computer and use it a fair amount, along with another program called TextEdit, but sometimes I think back to those old days of WordPerfect. I did a quick web search recently and I saw that WordPerfect still exists. Having never used a WordPerfect program since high school, I have no idea if the more recent ones are any good. Maybe they're great, maybe they're garbage, but regardless of what WordPerfect is now, I'll always remember that old version of WordPerfect as my first major writing program on computer.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Donald Trump

Since the inception of this blog, it has been my intention to keep my online writings apolitical if at all possible. I do not wish for this to become a political blog, however the ongoing US presidential primaries are difficult to ignore, so I'm going to break with my normal policy. Hopefully posts like this one will be a rarity. In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I am an independent voter, registered with neither the Republican nor Democratic Party.

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There are so many things that could be said about this year's presidential primaries for both the Republican and Democratic parties, but for this post I just want to address a single facet, namely the ascendancy of Donald Trump. Out of everything that has been happening in the presidential primaries, nothing else has captured the attention of so many Americans, myself included, as this one aspect. I distinctly remember being asked last year while I was in Europe what was going on with Donald Trump's candidacy. The Europeans didn't know too much about Trump or American politics, and I confidently told anyone who asked that there was no way Trump would get the Republican nomination. At the time it seemed preposterous that a man like him would gain enough support to be a legitimate contender. Well, fast-forward to the present and see how wrong I was. At the moment Trump is the front-runner, and nothing that happens seems to dent his popularity. He has been described as an insurgent candidate - breaking ranks from the usual messaging of the Republican Party and peddling a form of populism that has been resonating with enough Republican voters to give him a sizable lead over his opponents. The other Republican candidates, and much of the Republican establishment, have been desperately trying to derail his campaign, but to little avail. Barring a large, sudden reversal, or a brokered convention, he is likely on his way to winning the Republican nomination.

Personally, I find Donald Trump to be a rather vulgar individual. The insults, the racist remarks, and other demeaning comments are among the many things that turn me off to him. He is a man completely lacking in integrity, even more so than the average politician, and has shown himself to be unrepentant in his disgusting behavior. Such a man is unfit to lead this country, let alone be a candidate for the job. Added to Trump's myriad character failures are his absurdly implausible policy proposals, like forcing Mexico to pay for a wall along the US-Mexico border. Granted, all presidential candidates make promises that they can't keep, but some of the things Trump proposes are borderline insanity. Donald Trump may be an insurgent candidate, but be perfectly blunt, and this is coming from someone who, like many others, holds a dim view of modern American politics, he is even worse than the political establishment he is supposedly rebelling against.

Donald Trump's political success befuddled me for a long time, and still does to some extent. None of my conservative friends that I talked to support him, so to gain insight into his popularity I had to turn to the Internet. Predictably, this proved to be a minefield of people positing simplistic explanations of ignorance, racism, and/or hatred as the primary drivers of Donald Trump's support. While I don't doubt their are people who fall into one or more of those categories among his voters, and Trump himself has certainly said many deplorable things, I'm not so naive to think his popularity solely comes from groups like the KKK, and I've known way too many Republicans during my life to believe the popular myth that the party is overrun with hate-filled idiots. It took some time, but with some searching I eventually came across a few journalists, political scientists, and others who have actually done the hard work of investigating Trump's popularity. Probably the best article I've read so far is an opinion piece from The Guardian, a British newspaper of all places, written by Thomas Frank. The article (found here) brings up a very important point which I, and I suspect many others, had not considered, namely how much focus Trump has put on trade and its effects on the American working class. Free trade has unevenly effected American society - enriching some but taking jobs from others, and those on the losing end of free trade policies are flocking to Trump's tough talk about righting the wrongs they've experienced. Yes, they are mostly white, and a few of them probably are racist, but their economic concerns are real and they feel like no one represents them. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have progressively expanded the trade deals that have been to their detriment, so we shouldn't be surprised when someone like Trump comes along, peddling grandiose pledges to take a hard line on trade, that these people would give him their vote, despite all the other nastiness that comes with Trump.

That brings me to the one somewhat positive thing I have to say about Trump, which is that for all his flaws I must concede that he is a master of campaigning and public relations. He knows how to tell people what they want to hear and has also somehow figured out a way to be almost completely impervious to his own gaffes and the attacks of other Republicans. One of the other things I came across while researching Trump's popularity was a video examining his debating methods and how he is able to effectively shut down opponents, even when they are making valid critiques. No doubt his years in business and entertainment have given him a lot of experience in the various aspects needed for his campaign, including how to control a conversation. He is the proverbial smartest man in the room - the one who understands what is going on and is a step ahead of everyone else.

The candidacy and current success of Donald Trump does not bode well for the Republican Party establishment, or America in general. There are a number of people out there who believe that what we're witnessing is a full-scale implosion of the Republican Party, and while I wouldn't go quite that far, I would agree that with Trump's ascendancy what we are seeing is the end of the Republican Party as we once knew it. I can only imagine that Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan must all be spinning in their graves at the sight of what has happened to their party.

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That's my Trump rant. I could do more writing on the other candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, or on the election in general, but like I said, I don't want to make this a political blog. Donald Trump's candidacy, however, looms so large on the current political scene that I felt compelled to say something about it. I'll continue to watch how the presidential primaries and presidential election develop, and depending on what happens over the next several months I may again feel the need to write another post.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Remakes

A number of years ago, my generation reached the point where we started yearning to bring back the entertainment properties we loved in our childhoods, but updated with contemporary sensibilities. Television shows in particular are commonly named as candidates for getting remade. While I can understand the desire for these remake, I'm concerned about a trend I've heard from people discussing what they want in remakes, which is the desire for the remakes to be very dark and/or hyperviolent. I'm not sure if this desire merely comes from the mistaken belief that such things make a entertainment property superior to those that lack them, or if this a testament to our society's ever-present desire to push the envelope on what sorts of things are portrayed in entertainment. Since remakes are not something I'm particularly interested in, I'm never part of these conversations, but if I was I would be curious to find out exactly why some people want these reboots to be so gritty.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

2016 Writing Project - Writing The Plot

Here is the fourth and final entry of a short series of posts on my 2016 writing project. Going forward, I’ll try to do some sort of progress updated every one or two months through the end of the year.

I know how my story begins. I also know how it ends. It's that giant part in the middle that's the hardest to construct. On the plus side, since I know where everything is leading I can at least know what direction I need to build the plot in. The plot of my story has undergone major revisions over the preceding years as new ideas have come and some old ones have proven themselves inadequate. There are a few pieces of the storyline that I think I have nailed down at this point, but many more that still need to be worked on substantially. I'll also need to improve my storytelling in general, so some research into the world's great storytellers is in order. I know my story is not that great, but hopefully I can write it out and communicate it in a decent fashion.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Lessons from Kung Fu Movies

One day I felt a strange urge to watch kung fu movie, though, to be fair, I mainly just watched the fight scenes and skipped most of the rest of the movies. When it was all done, my kung fu thirst had been quenched, but I started thinking more deeply about the movies and what could be learned from them. Of course, you could learn a lot of things like how fight choreography, sound design, special effects, and general cinematography in kung fu movies have advanced from the 1970s up to around 2010, (the general time period that the movies I watched came from) but I wanted to focus more on some of the underlying lessons of these films. This is meant to be a less than serious analysis.

Learning kung fu frequently gets your friends and family hurt or killed
Things were going fine, until either the hero learned kung fu, or until other people found out that he knew kung fu. Then all hell breaks loose. The hero of course can't get badly hurt or killed at the beginning or middle of the movie, so his friends and/or family bear the brunt of the villain's wrath.

People who use karate, and Japanese people in general, are usually the villains
Black Belt = Evil. That is the simple equation of most kung fu movies. There are a few exceptions, but in the majority of cases anyone in a karate outfit is out to get the hero. Since karate is usually associated with Japan, it therefore follows that Japanese people are bad.

Related to the previous lesson, white people should not be trusted
While the Japanese are common villains of kung fu movies, anyone from outside China should also be viewed with suspicion. White people in particular are always scheming to steal China's riches and destroy its culture. Sometimes the white people do the fighting themselves, and sometimes they are just the boss giving orders to henchmen, but they are always up to no good.

Villains have a bad habit of forgetting to bring guns to kung fu fights
Somehow the bad guys in kung fu movies either don't have guns, or if they do have guns they have a strange sense of honor that forbids them from using them. The lone exception to this rule in the movies I watched was a Japanese officer in the movie Ip Man, but even then his commander berated him for shooting a kung fu master.

Bad guys are not allowed to fully utilize their numerical superiority
Even when they have the hero hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded, the bad guys can only attack him one at a time, or in small groups. It is strictly forbidden for them to all simultaneously assault him from every angle, an attack that would be impossible to counter. Even villains have a code, one that, unfortunately for them, severely handicaps their combat effectiveness.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Betrayal

I've been on the receiving end of betrayal in the past, but that time it was me who was the traitor. Without going into details, I'll just say that I did something that I considered beneath myself - something I didn't think I would do.

I've struggled to understand my own motives for doing it. I didn't even gain anything from the act - not a single reason can be given to justify it. Was it a compulsive behavior that I'd been in denial about? Was it the result of an ongoing mental issue? Whatever the reason, it didn't change the facts of what happened. Temptation came upon me, and instead of maintaining my integrity, I caved in.

Friends were hurt. Trust was broken. What was damaged still hasn't been repaired. I confessed, apologized, and sought the forgiveness of those hurt by what I did. Consequences landed on me and I accepted them as they came. Nothing was the same, and all I can say is that I did it to myself.

Friday, March 11, 2016

Game In Progress Commentary: Borderlands 2

Today's Big Friday post features something I haven't done in long time - a commentary on a game I've been playing.

My PS3 doesn't get much usage these days, but a bit over two weeks ago I turned it back on to try out a game that I had gotten as a free download last year but never bothered playing. That game was Borderlands 2. It was highly recommended to me by a friend and from a quick perusal of major gaming websites I saw that it had reviewed very well with the gaming media. I wasn't working on any other games at that moment, so it seemed like a good time to finally get around to playing it. One night I commenced the download and the next day I got started on Borderlands 2. I haven't finished the game yet, but I feel I've played enough to give some impressions on it.

I never played the first Borderlands, but I have seen and read enough of both games (and now played enough of the second game) to know the basic premise. The Borderlands games take place on a planet called Pandora, which is like a futuristic Wild West crossed with Mad Max, but with a liberal dosage of humor thrown into the mix. You choose one of four characters to play as, each with their own special abilities, and then proceed to adventure across Pandora to advance the plot. Since most of the life on Pandora is hostile, when I say you "adventure" across the planet, I mean you kill and/or blow up nearly everything in your path. To progress on your joke-filled trail of destruction, you are constantly upgrading your character's equipment, which is done through loot drops that either come from fallen enemies or the seemingly limitless number of barrels, lockers, boxes, safes, and other objects that serve as containers. You'll get things like different types of shields, grenade modifiers, and character specialties, but the most common type of loot is easily the myriad number of guns in the game. Guns are broken down into different classes, and within each class there are an absurd number of variants based on the attributes a gun can have. These attributes include damage, accuracy, reload speed, ammo type, and rate of fire, among other things. I don't know how many different gun variations there are in the game, but I would guess there are many thousands, if not more. The other major system of Borderlands 2 which pushes you forward is the character progression, whereby each character has three skills trees that you can unlock to build your character as you see fit. You can upgrade your character towards offense or defense, close-quarters fighting or long-distance engagements, traditional gunplay or using special abilities, the list goes on. Since you can't get enough points to unlock everything in all the skill trees, you have to be deliberate in what you choose if you want to build a character that has skills that complement your playstyle. For my character, Axton, I've focused primarily on bolstering his special ability, which is to deploy an autonomous turret that attacks enemies that come within range of its cannon and rocket launcher. The turret's destructive force is then augmented by my characters primary weapons, which frequently have explosive or incendiary ammunition.

When I first started playing Borderlands 2, I was not sure if I would like it. In the first few hours of the game the guns you have access to do a decent amount of damage but are not particularly accurate, which I thought made the game unfairly harder. Especially since I was attempting to specialize my character to engage enemies at medium to long range, I felt frustrated when I had a hard time hitting what I was aiming at. Granted, I realize that the reason for this is because Borderlands 2 is not trying to be a traditional shooter like Call of Duty where the guns never change, but rather a shooter with role-playing game sensibilities, so the idea is that you slowly get stronger weapons over time. After a few hours I started acquiring better guns, and my issue subsided, though during those early parts of the game I would have gladly taken a gun that did less damage but consistently hit my target.

As I progressed further into Borderlands 2, I started liking it more and more. Normally I don't give games much time to hook me, but I felt compelled to stick with Borderlands 2 through the slow and somewhat troublesome opening hours, and I'm glad I did. It's a significantly larger game than I originally expected and there are plenty of side-missions to go along with the main ones. The story so far has been pretty straightforward, but the characters behind the story have made it much more interesting. Just about everyone is messed up, but in a comical way that turns the narrative genre of the game into an action-comedy. The standout is probably the game's main villain, an egotistical jerk whose bits of dialogue have been some of the most amusing in the game. When you combine Borderlands 2's characters and dialogue with its cartoonish aesthetic, the myriad jokes and pop-culture references, and the silly nature of parts of its combat mechanics and missions, it's clear that the game doesn't take itself all that seriously. I can appreciate when a game knows what it is and doesn't try to be something that it's not.

There is, however, one small complaint I have with the game. It is related to the loot system, which as mentioned before is one of Borderlands 2's core mechanics. You need the loot to improve your gear and help progress through the game, but there's so much loot that I frequently felt that I was getting bogged down by it. It seemed that I was spending a quarter of my time looking for loot, examining it, comparing it with what I already had, organizing it, and selling off what I didn't want. What's strange about this is that Borderlands 2 is not the first game I've played with an overabundance of loot and I didn't have this complaint in those other games. I suspect that the reason for this disparity is that Borderlands 2 is a shooter with lots of fast action, so my stopping to handle the loot feels like I'm interrupting the action when I ought to be pushing forward. After awhile I got better about dealing with the loot, but at the time I stopped playing Borderlands 2 it was still a minor gripe.

One last thing that I should note in this commentary, if wasn't obvious already, is that I am playing the game solo. While the game works just fine when you play by yourself, from reading other peoples' perspectives online I get the impression that Borderlands 2 is at its best when played cooperatively with friends. While I don't feel like I've missed out on too much, I realize my experience may be different from someone who played the game as part of a group.

At this point I've put in about twenty-five hours into Borderlands 2. Recently I got busy with other things and had to stop playing the game, but I intend to pick it up again at some point in the future. At that point I'll be ready to render a final verdict on Borderlands 2, but unless the game takes a sudden turn for the worse, I'm guessing it will be a pretty positive review overall.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Writing Voice vs Speaking Voice

Some time back I read an online post about some of the major ideas laid out by William Zinnser in his book On Writing Well. As one who seeks to improve his skill in the craft of writing, I found this post to be very helpful, but I take a slight personal exception with one of Zinnser’s points.

Zinnser contends that one’s writing voice should be the same as one’s speaking voice. While I agree that this is a good general rule and should be true with the majority of cases, I do not hold myself to it. I do not write the same way I talk, namely because my oratory skills are notably worse than my writing skills. It may be that part of the reason I am not a good speaker is that by being a quiet person for so much of my life, my vocal dexterity and speech skills have not developed as thoroughly as they could have. Extended conversations bring pain to the muscles around my mouth, as they are not used to being in action for long periods. I am not claiming to have a speech impediment, but I am far from anything that could be construed as eloquent. Writing allows me to express longer and more complex thoughts that my mouth has difficulty communicating. My writing voice can keep pace with and transcribe the thoughts in my mind; my speaking voice is hard pressed to do the same.

That said, it is not as if my writing voice is the “real” me and my speaking voice is some bumbling fool coming along for the ride. Both my writing and speaking voices are me, and I've come to accept them both as genuine expressions of who I am. I will let my speaking voice be my speaking voice, and I will let my writing voice be my writing voice, and I will not force them to merge.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

2016 Writing Project - The Setting

Now for the third entry in a short series of posts on my 2016 writing project. I'm thinking there will be just one more after this.

Where and when does my story take place? While many elements of my story have morphed over time, the setting has largely been known since I first started getting ideas many years ago. The story takes place in an alternate reality of our world. Now, to be clear, it's only a slight alternate reality. Essentially the world is the same as the one we know and live in, but with a few details adjusted for the sake of the storyline. As for the time, it's been my intention since the beginning for the story to be a modern one. Granted, the ideas for the story have slowly been building since I graduated high school, so what constitutes modern has continually shifted in the past decade. Because of this, I made the decision awhile back to set a more definitive starting year for the storyline. The story will start in either the year 2014 or 2015, and will span a period of about three years after that. My thought on this is that by starting it in the recent past, the story can end in whatever the present day is, as this project, should it somehow ever come to fruition, will take a few years to complete.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Cinematic Video Game Trailers

I love video game trailers. Like their cousins in the television and film worlds, trailers in video games help generate interest in and build hype behind the game they are promoting. There are many different types/categories of video game trailers, but today I just want to focus on one in particular: the high-quality cinematic CG trailer. Because of the requirements needed to produce these trailers, not many of them come out. Normally only the larger game franchises have the budgets needed to produce them, though once in awhile a smaller game will get one made. These trailers are effectively short movies that dazzle us with their visuals and keep their respective games at the forefront of our minds and conversations. At the same time, these trailers are not particularly informative, as they generally only give you small bits of the game's storyline and characters, along with a few hints of game mechanics. That said, because these sorts of trailers are often among the last ones to come out before a game launches, you could argue that they are effectively the dessert of games media - a sweet meal that's not meant to be nutritious but rather an enjoyable end to a long dinner party. I always appreciate it when a game gets one of these trailers, and I thought I'd share a few of my favorite ones from over the years. For this post I've restricted the trailers to games I've actually played. Because Blogger automatically shrinks the size of the videos, it may also be worthwhile to either watch the trailer full-screen, or click the Youtube button to take you to the Youtube page where the trailer is originally from.


Mass Effect 3 - Take Earth Back Trailer

Much like a trailer for a disaster movie, Mass Effect 3's Take Earth Back trailer starts with everything being pleasant, before all hell breaking loose. Things are looking pretty good in the future, but then a massive invasion of sentient machines sets the whole world on fire. As if that wasn't bad enough, they've gone so far as to turn much of humanity into zombie-like shock troops. Earth has fallen, and its up to you to take it back.


Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 - E3 Trailer

Clocking in at almost four and a half minutes, the E3 trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 is the longest of the trailers highlighted in this post. It continues the (surprisingly good but now non-canon) story of Darth Vader's secret apprentice that was established in the first The Force Unleashed game. I had big hopes for The Force Unleashed 2, however the final game proved to be a disappointment. This unfortunately means that this trailer is another example of the fact that a really cool trailer doesn't always mean it's going to be a really cool game.


Deus Ex: Human Revolution - TGS Trailer

Whereas the other three trailers in this list show at least a somewhat continuous series of events, the TGS Trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution jumps all over the place, with fast cuts galore. On one hand this gives the viewer lots of small fragments of the narrative, but on the other hand it can be a little disorienting. Still, the editing and narration keep the trailer coherent enough for the viewer to get the general gist of what's going on. Conspiracy, transhumanism, and a dark, technological future all come together to make a very intriguing trailer.


Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - E3 Trailer [North America]

The release of nearly every single Assassin's Creed game has been accompanied by a cinematic trailer, and this particular one is my personal favorite. Even if you have no clue what the Assassin's Creed games are about, it's an undeniably beautiful trailer. I love the color, the lighting, the detail of the outfits, and just about everything else in this trailer has to offer. Any of the other Assassin's Creed cinematic trailers could have been featured on this list, but in my opinion this one is a true masterpiece.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Bolder Boulder Training

83 days. That is the number of days between now and Memorial Day. That is the number of days I have to train for the Bolder Boulder 10k. Last year I finally achieved a longtime goal of mine, which was to run the Bolder Boulder in under 60 minutes. I finished with a time of 58:47, and also for the first time I managed to keep a roughly even pace throughout the race. Can I beat last year's time? I don't know, but I'm certainly going to try. I've got 83 days to prepare.

Friday, March 4, 2016

PSX 2015

It's the first Friday of March, so today sees the first entry in the Big Friday project.

Some of you might remember a post from December, 2014, about how I almost went to the 2014 PlayStation Experience, better known as PSX. While it would have been nice, the impracticalities of getting to Las Vegas on short notice led me to decide against attending that year. For the full story, you can read the post here. In 2015, however, one of my goals for the year was to attend a video game conference/convention, and PSX 2015 ended up being the one that I went to. It was the very first time I had ever attended such an event. Before that time I had just read or watched coverage of video game conventions, so being there in person and seeing things as they happened would be an all-new experience.

PSX 2015 was held in San Francisco, CA. I had a friend who lived across the bay in Oakland, so I stayed with him while I was out there and each day took the BART train to the Moscone Center, inside of which PSX 2015 was happening. The convention took place on the weekend of December 5-6. On Friday, after spending a full day walking around San Francisco, I stopped by the Moscone Center to pick up my convention materials; namely my entry badge, along with a tote bag of freebies that included a t-shirt that was size XL. I'm not sure if the t-shirt size was a mistake, or if at that point in the day they had run out of smaller sizes for non-giant people like me. It was already after dark when I left the Moscone Center, and right about the time that I left to return to Oakland the first few people had already started to line up at the entrance for the following day's opening. While I could admire the enthusiasm and determination required to show up early and snag the first few spots in line, I personally could never see myself doing something like that, as whatever pride and acclaim I might gather from getting to be one of first people inside would be heavily outweighed by the myriad inconveniences of being in line for that long. No, my plan was to just show up in the morning like a regular person.

The next day, Saturday, was the first day of PSX 2015. I arrived at the Moscone Center right at 7:00am, an hour before the building opened, and found a few hundred people were already in line ahead of me. The line itself wrapped around three sides of the building. Though it was long, I wasn't particularly concerned, because I knew the auditorium where the opening keynote event was being held had around 5,000 seats in it, so there was no danger of me not getting a seat. True, all the front and center seats would likely be taken when I got in, but as long as I got a seat closer to the front than the back, and with a good line of sight on the stage, I would be content. While I was standing around in line, I briefly chatted with two of the other people standing next to me. One guy was from elsewhere in California, while the other, like me, had flown in from another state. We talked about some of the games we were looking forward to seeing, the websites we frequented, and other expectations surrounding the expo. At 8:00am the doors to the Moscone Center opened and the line started moving, though it would still be another twenty or so minutes before I got inside, and then I had to wait awhile longer to get into the auditorium on the third level. The best seats in the center-front had already been snagged by those people who had been in line the longest, but I was still able to grab one a little back and to the right of the stage with a great line of sight. By then it was just before 9:00am, and it would be another hour before the keynote presentation began. For me that was not a problem, as I had a podcast to listen to while passing the time. At 9:00am the lights went dark and the show began. There was a short opening video building the hype around PlayStation and the various games on it, followed by a multitude of speakers who made announcements, showed off games and trailers for games, talked about things PlayStation would be doing in the future, and when it was all over there was a brief closing video. The whole thing lasted almost two hours and was very well produced. I had always viewed keynotes from home prior to this one, and I can't deny there's a certain energy in the room that you don't really get from watching them on a screen. The content is exactly the same, but when you're there you can feel the excitement of everyone around you.

When the keynote ended the auditorium doors opened and everyone exited out to go down to the two showroom floors, on the first and second levels. Before checking out the second level showroom, I spent some time observing the crowd. Looking out on the mass of people, I started to notice a few familiar faces. Members of the games media, games-related internet personalities, and some well-known game developers. I had seen these people in news articles and various other things online, but now I was seeing them in person. I didn't feel star-struck or anything like that, but it was interesting to be nearby them. For the next two hours I checked out the second level showroom, but then I returned to the auditorium and spent most of the afternoon in there. The reason for this is because there were a number of panels that were being held back in the auditorium and I wanted to see most of them. The topics of the panels covered things such as virtual reality, storytelling in games, advances in game AI, and even a live recording of a popular gaming podcast. These panels lasted me until around 6:00pm, after which I had another two hours before the first day of PSX 2015 ended. The time I spent at the panels could have been spent checking out things in the showrooms, but I'm personally just as interested in the art and science behind games as the games themselves, so I didn't feel like it was a waste of time. Also, I would have more time the next day. The rest of the day until closing I walked around the showroom floors and tried out a few games. At about 8:00pm the first day of PSX 2015 ended, and myself along with everyone else exited the Moscone Center. I got on the BART train back to Oakland and finished my day there.

On the next day, Sunday, I showed up at the Moscone Center about a half hour after opening. There were no keynotes or panels scheduled for Sunday, so I felt no real urgency to get there early. There was the Capcom Cup, a tournament being held in the auditorium that I stopped by a few times during that day, but otherwise I spent nearly the whole day in the showrooms. I got my chance to try out quite a few games, though there was one group that I wasn't able to get hands-on with: the virtual reality games. Because of popular demand and the limited number of stations on the showroom floor, you had to have a reservation to try them out. I didn't realize this until the preceding Friday, and when I looked online to see if there were any available times, I found they were all booked up. Out of luck, I contented myself to observing others interact with the various virtual reality games. The technology has certainly come a long way, though it will likely be a few more years before it becomes mainstream, assuming that it's affordable to the general public. Elsewhere in the two showrooms I did get to experience a wide variety of games - some of which had already come out and some that were scheduled for release in 2016. One of those games was Dark Souls 3 - the third edition of the brutally difficult Dark Souls games. I successfully completed my timed demo without dying a single time, though in all honesty I spent much of it running around and breaking furniture. On the larger multiplayer side of things, I played a match of Star Wars Battlefront as well as a race in Destiny's new Sparrow League Racing mode. In addition to the big-name games, there were also lots of indie games and a few of the ones I tried included Brawlhala, Abzu, Skytorn, Monsters & Monocles, and Viking Squad. There were plenty of other things I tried out besides the games already mentioned, and even though I didn't get to everything I was interested in, I felt like I saw most of them. It was a long day of going to various booths, waiting in line, checking out the Capcom Cup every few hours, and a lot of just walking around and taking it all in. My second day at PSX 2015 ended a little earlier than the first, and when I walked out of the Moscone Center I had an odd sense of both satisfaction and sadness - satisfaction from getting to see and try out lots of games, and sadness from it coming to an end. I lingered outside the Moscone Center for a minute, just staring back inside to where PSX 2015 had been held, and then slowly walked back to the BART station to catch the next train across the bay back to Oakland. There was to be no gaming-related events the next day - just a day of rest and recovery before returning to Colorado.

Before ending this post on PSX 2015, I'm guessing a few of you want to know if there was one game that stood out in my mind above the others. Well, there was, though I never would have guessed beforehand that it would enthrall me so much. Towards the back of one of the showroom floors (I don't remember if it was on the first or the second level) was a small area with several stations set up for a game called Bound. The game caught my eye as I walked passed, and I stopped and got in the short line to try it out. What followed, when a station opened up and I got to play the demo, was the most surreal experience I had at PSX 2015. Bound is a difficult game to describe, so bear with me on this one. It takes place in a dreamscape where the polygonal world around you is continually forming and falling apart as your character moves through it. Your character is the daughter of the queen who rules over this strange land, and you nimbly traverse the world with the graceful and stylized moves of a professional ballet dancer. She runs, jumps, flips, pirouettes, and dances from one area to the next, and somehow it feels right. With every other game I played at PSX 2015, when I got to the end of the demo I felt like I had a strong grasp on the sort of game it was and what to expect from the full version. With Bound, however, when I got to the end of the demo I wasn't really sure what I had just played and desperately wanted more. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something about Bound had me utterly captivated, like nothing else I played that weekend. It was my game of the show, and I look forward to whenever the full version of the game finally comes out.

So, will I being going to PSX 2016, or any other gaming conventions in the future? Maybe. I enjoyed my time at PSX 2015 and wouldn't be opposed to attending another convention like it, but I don't think I would feel particularly bad for not going either. PSX 2015 was an interesting time, and attending it fulfilled a major goal for the year of 2015. Regardless of whether or not I go to another gaming convention, I can at least say I did this one.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Fraud

One of the sad realities of modern life is the sheer pervasiveness of credit card fraud. Not long ago I joined the ranks of persons who have had their credit card information stolen, but thankfully my story is one of the milder ones you'll hear. There was a credit card that I frequently used for purchases, but prior to leaving for Europe I stopped using it, paid off the balance, and started using a different card for all my transactions. The old card spent the next five months doing nothing. It was sitting on my desk most of the time and I kept meaning to close the account down since I hadn't used it a single time since August, 2015. Last month, however, I got a envelope in the mail from the financial institution behind the credit card. I assumed it was just an informational notice, but when I opened it up I found that it was a statement for the credit card and there was now a $22.64 balance on the card. I looked at the description of the transaction and it was from January and through PayPal out in California. Obviously this perplexed me, as I hadn't used the credit card in months and I hadn't done any business out in California in January. After some searching through my personal records I confirmed that I hadn't made any purchase that matched what was on the credit card statement, so it was time to call the financial institution behind the card. I was transferred over to their fraud department, where I explained the situation and asked them to take the charge off my account. The person I spoke with was very helpful and even was able to supply a few extra details on the mystery transaction. It turns out that the purchase was made at an antique store, which made me curious as to what exactly the thief bought. More perplexing to me was why the thief had bought something of such little value. I had heard from another person in the past that sometimes credit card thieves do small purchases at first to test the waters and then move on to bigger things if the small purchase clears. Whatever the case, the person in the fraud department informed me that I would not have to worry about the charge, though they would be sending me a pair of forms that I would have to sign. After I finished with the fraud department, I requested to be transferred back to the main card services department, where I finally got around to closing down the credit card account. The whole process took about half an hour, and a few days later I got the paperwork in the mail that I needed to sign and return to the financial institution. My story of credit card fraud ends there, thankfully. Hopefully it was both the first, and last time I experience it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

2016 Writing Project - Creating The Characters

Here is the second of a short series of posts on my 2016 writing project.

A few years ago, I heard a person say that a good story starts with good characters. I'm not going to claim that my project has either good characters or a good story, but I can at least say that over the past few years I've been incrementally putting in more and more thought into the characters that are being created. In fact, the writing that I've done so far on the characters is far more extensive than anything I've done on the plot. On my computer I have a number of files for the various characters and once in a long while I edit them with new ideas. Each main character, and several of the side characters, has their own file with my thoughts on things like who they are, where they came from, what they believe, and how they interact with others. In a sense I've been creating the "rules of the character." True, humans are not machines and well capable of irrationality, hypocrisy, etc, but having a baseline history and worldview for each character has been helpful in my attempts to keep the storyline coherent. Whether or not I succeed in creating anything worthwhile remains to be seen, of course, but over the coming months this year I'll be more regularly updating those character files, and adding new ones as more characters are created.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

College Admissions

As a continuation of yesterday's post about college applications, I figured I might as well tell the story of what happened to me when I was going through the process. Among the several colleges I applied to, I sent applications to two of the University of California schools: UC San Diego and UC Berkley. I had good grades in high school and the usual extracurricular stuffs that you're supposed to have to pad an application, so I felt fairly confident I would be admitted. That year, however, the University of California system was having yet another budget crisis, which I'm not sure can really be called a crisis because it seems to happen all the time, so it really should just be called business as usual. As a way to cut costs, that year the University of California system decided to randomly ax ten percent of all students who would have normally been admitted, and I got a nice letter from them informing me that I had unfortunately been part of that unlucky ten percent. I was disappointed, and my teenage ego took a hit that day, but I had gained admission elsewhere, so it wasn't the end of the world. About two to three weeks before I left home to begin attending the university I had committed to, I got another letter from the University of California system. This letter stated they had gotten some extra funds and were willing to admit me, though they couldn't place me at either of the two universities I had applied to. If I wanted, I could go to UC Irvine. The thought of going to college in Orange County did not even remotely interest me, so I declined the invitation. It was too little, too late. While the University of California system was where I originally thought my story would lead to, it was clear to me that the path ahead was elsewhere.