Activation, Part 3

The club’s bass beat turned up another notch, and in turn he took another sip from his drink. In front of him was a mass of people on the dance floor in a state of alcohol and narcotics-induced revelry. The DJ transitioned to the next track, yet another generic remix of a popular 90s song. Everyone in the crowd ate it up, but he was ambivalent. Is it that hard to find a good DJ? He threw back the rest of his drink and walked over to the bar to order a few shots. Seriously, what was even doing here? It’s not like he could get drunk anyway, at least not without consuming an amount of alcohol that would be fatal for most other individuals. Boredom had been the defining mark of the last few years of his life. Nothing excited him anymore, not even what had at one time been his favorite nightclub. Pulling out his phone, he thought to see if there was anything else going on that night that might be even remotely interesting. In doing so, he saw a message that had come in earlier. The booming sounds had kept him from hearing his phone when it first came in, but as he read it he couldn’t hear anything else. A smirk came across his face. The fools had finally made up their mind. No doubt they had tried to do something on their own and predictably failed, and now they needed him to save their sorry asses. It wasn’t exactly his idea of fun, but it sure as hell beat this.

Activation, Part 2

Jets roared overhead as he hurried back to his office. The letter had finally come, the one he had been waiting for. Everything from the preceding years had been building to this point. He had passed every test and proven himself time and again. Closing the door behind him, he sat down at his desk and stared at the envelope for minute. This was it, his moment of vindication. Struggling to contain his excitement, he slowly opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. A single page, standard font, on official letterhead. He read the letter. His heart sank. Despite his outstanding performance, there were currently no openings in any of the squadrons. How? How was this possible? He had read the reports himself earlier in the month. At least five slots were likely to open, and with his scores he ought to have been a shoo-in for one of them. Sinking deeper into his chair, the realization slowly crept over him that all his work might have all been for nothing. This can’t be happening. He slowly reread the letter, hoping that the act might somehow change the words. It read the same as before. He slumped forward, head in his hands. Had his phone not started buzzing he would have stayed there drowning in self-pity and grief. The message on his phone was from an old number, one he hadn’t seen in a long time. It was starting again. The timing was suspiciously convenient. One door had closed only for another one to immediately open up. Coincidence? Not likely. Regardless, he was in no position to change his circumstances, and he set about preparing for his departure. Duty had called, and he would answer.

Activation, Part 1

Eight names were displayed before him on his screen. Eight individuals who hadn’t been in service for years, but were now about to be recalled. They were third-rate, all of them. No, that was being too generous. Third-rate would be an improvement. If he and the others had more time perhaps another option would become available, but an existential threat demands immediate action, so here they were, summoning the prototypes. It was never supposed to be this way. The eight were only intended as a proof of concept prior to the creation of the genuine article. Circumstances, however, had nixed that plan, and now the eight were all they had. He sat there for a minute, staring at the screen. Eight names. He was banking the future on eight names. The message he was sending them had already been prepared and just needed a single click to send. He read each name one last time, and clicked the button. It was now in their hands. He just prayed some of them would agree to come back.

Late to the Party - Driveclub

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Driveclub.

A new milestone: creating my first piece of cover art

Too Good At Your Job

If you’ve worked for any amount of time in the traditional labor force, you’re aware of the concept of being too good at your job. While striving to do your job well is a commendable effort and we should all aspire to it, there is a point where it can start to work against you. When you’re too good at your job, your career hits a dead-end, as your superiors don’t want to promote or transfer you since you’re so good at what you’re currently doing that they believe changing your duties would be a bad move. This is an incredibly frustrating position to be in, and when you’re stuck in there it’s hard to see any good way to get out of it (in a sense it’s sort of like being in the Friend Zone of a relationship). I know this situation all too well, as it was where I found myself at my last job. I was one of the best people on staff at my former company, but I realized this had actually become a liability, because I did my work so well that there was no chance I would ever be moving up. That, along with a number of other factors, was part of the reason I eventually left that company, and the further away I get from my last day of work there, the more I’m convinced in my head that I made the right decision. Being too good at your job is one of those things that really shouldn’t be possible, but sadly is hard reality of our lives.

Your Memories on Facebook

For a few months now, Facebook has been doing this thing where it shows you photos you uploaded several years ago, and then you’re given the option to share the photo with your friends if you want. I’ve never used this function myself, but I can understand the appeal and I must concede that it’s another clever feature that Facebook has come up with. Seeing those older photos brings back a rush of memories, and since it’s normal to post positive photos to Facebook, those memories are normally good ones. There is one problem, however, with this feature, specifically as it applies to me. Facebook’s photo selection lately has been from my 2012 trip to Europe. While it is nice to look over those photos, the sight of them keeps prompting the question of when I’m going to go again. Seeing as how I don’t currently have the resources needed for another trip, looking at and thinking over these photos is leading to a great deal of depression and frustration on my part. Seriously Facebook, stop reminding me of this!

World Champions

One of the sillier parts of professional American sports is that the winners of a sport’s national tournament are often declared the champions of the world, despite the fact that no teams from other countries were invited to the tournament. There is at least one sport, in my opinion, where the proclamation of the tournament winners as world champions is actually valid, and that is basketball. This past Olympics we saw again what is now the pattern of international basketball, namely American domination. True, the rest of the world is starting to close the gap (on the men’s side) but for the foreseeable future American basketball will remain the undisputed best in the world. No other country will get invited to the NBA finals, but for now that doesn’t matter. Whoever wins that tournament can, at least for now, legitimately claim the title of world champions.

Grandma’s Books

Last year my grandmother on my father’s side passed away. I can still remember waking up to the email from my father with the news. My grandmother was one of those stubborn old people, and though she had been having some heart issues it had seemed like she was getting better and I thought she had at least a year or two left to go. Needless to say the email announcing her passing was unexpected. My father and his siblings soon set about the process of dividing up her remaining possessions amongst their families, with my father, the oldest of her children, taking point on the matter. He brought back to my family’s house a fair number of boxes filled with my grandmother’s things and it took him several months to work through all of them. A number of my grandmother’s decorations and other items were passed on to me, including a collection of books. Recently, as I was going through the process of cutting down the number of books on my bookshelf as part of the greater project of eliminating unwanted or unneeded possessions, I came across these books again. There are seven of them in total, all written during the period of the mid 1990s to the early 2000s. All of them are related to travel, and my father gave them to me since I’m the most wanderlust prone of his children and he thought I might find them useful. I had placed the books in my collection upon returning to Colorado, and there they sat, unopened and unnoticed. That finally changed when I was dividing up my book collection between what would stay and what would go. I spent a few hours looking them over, reading sections of them, and getting a feel for whether I would ever have any use for them. Sadly, only one book survived the inquisition. I say that it’s sad because these were my grandmother’s books and it feels wrong to let them go. They’re just books, but they were her books, and somehow that makes them more important, even if they’re outdated and/or on a topic I’m not interested in. At the same time, there are several other belongings of my grandmother’s that I’m keeping, so I know I’m not casting her memory aside. The books will go when I’ve finished building the pile of things that are being sold, donated, or given away to friends. There will be a tinge of sadness, but I have to do this.

Late to the Party - The Division

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Tom Clancy’s The Division, referred to hereafter as just The Division. There will be minor spoilers in this commentary, but nothing too big.

Online Forum Comments

I left a comment on an online forum exactly one time, and I’m pretty sure that I broke one of the sacred rules of comment threads in the process. Years ago I was having trouble with my PlayStation 3 not reading certain game discs. I went online to see if anyone else had insight into this problem, and during my search I came across a comment thread on one of the official PlayStation forums. One person had been having a similar issue, and there had been an exchange between him/her and several other persons about it. The thread didn’t solve my problem, but it did provide me with some pieces of information that eventually led to me properly diagnosing my PlayStation’s issue (it turned out to be that my PlayStation’s Blu-ray reader was going bad). I wanted to thank the person who started the thread for the helpful information, so I added a comment at the bottom to that effect. What I failed to notice, however, was that the thread had not had any activity in about a month, so in adding to it I think I broke the rule about not adding to an inactive comment thread. Whoops. What was worse was that by adding to the thread I had moved it back to active status, and shortly thereafter some internet troll noticed the thread back in the group of active ones and decided to add some artful language to it. At that point I felt like I owed the creator of the thread an apology, but keeping the thread active would probably have just made things worse, so I ignored the new comment and never came back.