Seriously. I challenge you to find anything better than this offering from the Altoona Curve, a minor league affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates: Salute to Frivolous Lawsuit Night.
The giveaways include:
- A Pink Totebag for the first 137 men age 18 or older
- Lukewarm coffee (to prevent burns) for the first 137 women age 18 or older
- A beach ball with a warning not to eat it for the first 137 kids
There is also "A grand prize drawing in which one fan will receive a 'clue' and their own frivolous lawsuit."
Is there anything left in America as pure as minor league baseball?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Pac Man Online
In case you can't tell, I've had games on the brain a lot lately. There are two major reasons for that:
1) Although I still enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons with my old pals once a week, our games have started to lose some traction.
2) I have a new surplus of free time that used to be occupied by the ultimately unsatisfying World of Warcraft.
Dungeons and Dragons
After running a majority of the campaigns for my D&D group, I decided I needed a break from being the GM several months ago. To prevent the possibility of future GM burnout, two of my pals picked up the mantle and decided to trade weeks.
This was a good plan on paper, but graduate school has put an increased workload on one of them, meaning he hasn't been able to run (or even attend) the game with the consistency he'd like. This left an increased workload for the second fellow, who works longer hours than a lot of us at a hospital.
Add to that equation things like new kids and job requirements, and we've had a tough time keeping any sort of consistent flow going in our D&D games. This isn't anybody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens as we all get older and have more responsibilities. But it does make it very tough to keep that sense of continuity going that makes a game memorable.
What does this have to do with "Pac Man Online"? I'm getting there. But first:
World of Warcraft
Obviously, I've become far more interested in this game since I've cancelled my account and am able to look at it from the outside. I'm not capable of looking at it objectively because of how crushingly disappointed I still am about what this game turned into, but I think the explanation has something to do with the theory of how games work in general.
In your standard, single player game, it is easy to give the player a sense of control and influence on the game world. After all, THEY are the hero and the game is tailored to respond specifically to their input. From Pac Man all the way to the latest games like Oblivion, the player is in firm control of everything. In Pac Man, you have a direct influence on the game board by moving that yellow guy around and eating stuff. In Oblivion, you have a direct influence on the game through a variety of quests and environments, all of which change in tangible ways based on what you do.
For this reason, single player games are, by their nature, empowering. What separates Pac Man from Oblivion, however, is the sense of accomplishment. That sense in Pac Man is fleeting, because once you complete the objective (eat all the pellets), the board essentially resets.
Sound familiar, WoW players?
Enter the Boss
Later games like Super Mario Bros. started to use the concept of the "boss": an end goal that pretty much meant you had completed the game and reached the epitome of what it had to offer. For SMB, this was Bowser, that lovable spiky dinosaur thing that hopped up and down and shot fire at you.
As a relic of the Pac Man type of game design, once you beat Bowser the game started over again, but essentially you had won the game. Later iterations of SMB (as early as SMB 2) threw away this "continuous play" concept completely... you actually got a "You Win" type screen that basically meant the same thing as "Game Over". You had won, no more to do.
In the best games, ingenious titles like Chrono Trigger and the more recent Indigo Prophecy, there is still value is starting the game over again because you can impact the environment in different ways the next time. Multiple endings and plot threads make the game fun to play numerous times. Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate 2, and just about any other game you can think of by Bioware provide these kinds of experiences. The player gets a chance to be someone else AND his actions have real, tangible effects on the other characters and the game world.
Despite these advances in single player games, MMOs are trapped in two distinct models. The most obvious of these is the kill, level, repeat model. From Ultima Online all the way up to WoW, very little has been done to improve upon this model except update the graphics. WoW is fun while you are leveling because there is an end goal (level 60). Then you grasp for new end goals. How about killing the big boss in Molten Core? Well, you can do that, but it really doesn't matter because he comes back.
The second model is the player created content model. Games like Second Life and a Tale in the Desert follow this model... there is almost nothing to do in the game that isn't created by a player. In these games you gather resources to create content which allows you to gather new resources to create more new content, etc. Although these games DO allow you to impact the environment, they require a huge time investment to make anything substantial or unique because most of your time is going to be spent gathering the right pixels to make even better pixels.
Pac Man with Guilds
Essentially, despite all it's prettiness, after level 60 WoW becomes a really nice looking version of Pac Man. Seriously. Eating all the pellets OR killing all the bosses over and over and over again is not fun, and you can play Pac Man over a TeamSpeak server for free.
What keeps people playing WoW, as far as I can tell, are two things.
The first and most obvious is the social aspect. I think this is what keeps most MMOs, even the mediocre ones, alive. You can make friends on these games, and with things like TeamSpeak you can actually talk to them and get to know them. For a lot of people, these games are great social outlets... it's like a discount fraternity or sorority. Every month you pay your dues and get to play Pac Man together, perhaps swapping stories about Pac Man in the process.
The second is what I call "moving the carrot". As pointless as doing these bosses over and over again is, after a few months anything remotely tangible you may thought you had achieved (i.e. a piece of pixellated armor or a sword, for example), becomes obsolete in the next patch. By keeping a steady stream of minor content updates, these games keep "moving the carrot", creating the illusion of groundbreaking new content that everyone wants to be the first to try.
So no matter how you choose to look at it, the MMO model as it currently exists, especially in a game like WoW, is really just at its core the most expensive Pac Man sequel ever produced. For this reason, games like Civilization IV, Neverwinter Nights, and the previously mentioned Oblivion will continue to provide a far superior experience to a player like me who wants to feel like he's accomplishing something.
Tying it all Together
I promised I'd explain what this has to do with D&D, and I will now. A good D&D game shares a lot of the elements that those awesome single player games have. There is a building story arc of which your character is a major part, and things you do have tangible effects on the game universe. Plus, there is an end to the story.
I still don't know how the heck that experience could translate into the MMO model... I'm not entirely convinced that it can. People are social creatures, and for that reason MMOs are initially appealing, but nobody has figured out a way to keep that shared content compelling in a computer game. Single player games have an audience of one to satisfy, and so they are able to produce an experience that feels much more rewarding than an MMO.
In a way, World of Warcraft and MMOs like it represent a giant step BACKWARD in game design... we've returned to the time where nothing you do matters, the game never ends, and as such there is no way to tell a coherent story.
The closest anyone came to doing it right was Neverwinter Nights, but the implementation of the GM piece was confusing and unwieldy. Some people are still playing that game in its multiplayer mode with moderate success, but the tools provided kept this type of gameplay from reaching its full potential.
In fact, at this point the closest thing in town to the tabletop experience remains the MUSH. That's right, a bunch of text does a better job of delivering than WoW.
Perhaps most frustrating is I don't have any sort of answer whatsoever. I still have no clue how you can translate the D&D tabletop experience to a real, graphical video game, and all attempts to do so up to this point have been failures. It seems ironic to me that those that come closest are all single player games.
1) Although I still enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons with my old pals once a week, our games have started to lose some traction.
2) I have a new surplus of free time that used to be occupied by the ultimately unsatisfying World of Warcraft.
Dungeons and Dragons
After running a majority of the campaigns for my D&D group, I decided I needed a break from being the GM several months ago. To prevent the possibility of future GM burnout, two of my pals picked up the mantle and decided to trade weeks.
This was a good plan on paper, but graduate school has put an increased workload on one of them, meaning he hasn't been able to run (or even attend) the game with the consistency he'd like. This left an increased workload for the second fellow, who works longer hours than a lot of us at a hospital.
Add to that equation things like new kids and job requirements, and we've had a tough time keeping any sort of consistent flow going in our D&D games. This isn't anybody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens as we all get older and have more responsibilities. But it does make it very tough to keep that sense of continuity going that makes a game memorable.
What does this have to do with "Pac Man Online"? I'm getting there. But first:
World of Warcraft
Obviously, I've become far more interested in this game since I've cancelled my account and am able to look at it from the outside. I'm not capable of looking at it objectively because of how crushingly disappointed I still am about what this game turned into, but I think the explanation has something to do with the theory of how games work in general.
In your standard, single player game, it is easy to give the player a sense of control and influence on the game world. After all, THEY are the hero and the game is tailored to respond specifically to their input. From Pac Man all the way to the latest games like Oblivion, the player is in firm control of everything. In Pac Man, you have a direct influence on the game board by moving that yellow guy around and eating stuff. In Oblivion, you have a direct influence on the game through a variety of quests and environments, all of which change in tangible ways based on what you do.
For this reason, single player games are, by their nature, empowering. What separates Pac Man from Oblivion, however, is the sense of accomplishment. That sense in Pac Man is fleeting, because once you complete the objective (eat all the pellets), the board essentially resets.
Sound familiar, WoW players?
Enter the Boss
Later games like Super Mario Bros. started to use the concept of the "boss": an end goal that pretty much meant you had completed the game and reached the epitome of what it had to offer. For SMB, this was Bowser, that lovable spiky dinosaur thing that hopped up and down and shot fire at you.
As a relic of the Pac Man type of game design, once you beat Bowser the game started over again, but essentially you had won the game. Later iterations of SMB (as early as SMB 2) threw away this "continuous play" concept completely... you actually got a "You Win" type screen that basically meant the same thing as "Game Over". You had won, no more to do.
In the best games, ingenious titles like Chrono Trigger and the more recent Indigo Prophecy, there is still value is starting the game over again because you can impact the environment in different ways the next time. Multiple endings and plot threads make the game fun to play numerous times. Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate 2, and just about any other game you can think of by Bioware provide these kinds of experiences. The player gets a chance to be someone else AND his actions have real, tangible effects on the other characters and the game world.
Despite these advances in single player games, MMOs are trapped in two distinct models. The most obvious of these is the kill, level, repeat model. From Ultima Online all the way up to WoW, very little has been done to improve upon this model except update the graphics. WoW is fun while you are leveling because there is an end goal (level 60). Then you grasp for new end goals. How about killing the big boss in Molten Core? Well, you can do that, but it really doesn't matter because he comes back.
The second model is the player created content model. Games like Second Life and a Tale in the Desert follow this model... there is almost nothing to do in the game that isn't created by a player. In these games you gather resources to create content which allows you to gather new resources to create more new content, etc. Although these games DO allow you to impact the environment, they require a huge time investment to make anything substantial or unique because most of your time is going to be spent gathering the right pixels to make even better pixels.
Pac Man with Guilds
Essentially, despite all it's prettiness, after level 60 WoW becomes a really nice looking version of Pac Man. Seriously. Eating all the pellets OR killing all the bosses over and over and over again is not fun, and you can play Pac Man over a TeamSpeak server for free.
What keeps people playing WoW, as far as I can tell, are two things.
The first and most obvious is the social aspect. I think this is what keeps most MMOs, even the mediocre ones, alive. You can make friends on these games, and with things like TeamSpeak you can actually talk to them and get to know them. For a lot of people, these games are great social outlets... it's like a discount fraternity or sorority. Every month you pay your dues and get to play Pac Man together, perhaps swapping stories about Pac Man in the process.
The second is what I call "moving the carrot". As pointless as doing these bosses over and over again is, after a few months anything remotely tangible you may thought you had achieved (i.e. a piece of pixellated armor or a sword, for example), becomes obsolete in the next patch. By keeping a steady stream of minor content updates, these games keep "moving the carrot", creating the illusion of groundbreaking new content that everyone wants to be the first to try.
So no matter how you choose to look at it, the MMO model as it currently exists, especially in a game like WoW, is really just at its core the most expensive Pac Man sequel ever produced. For this reason, games like Civilization IV, Neverwinter Nights, and the previously mentioned Oblivion will continue to provide a far superior experience to a player like me who wants to feel like he's accomplishing something.
Tying it all Together
I promised I'd explain what this has to do with D&D, and I will now. A good D&D game shares a lot of the elements that those awesome single player games have. There is a building story arc of which your character is a major part, and things you do have tangible effects on the game universe. Plus, there is an end to the story.
I still don't know how the heck that experience could translate into the MMO model... I'm not entirely convinced that it can. People are social creatures, and for that reason MMOs are initially appealing, but nobody has figured out a way to keep that shared content compelling in a computer game. Single player games have an audience of one to satisfy, and so they are able to produce an experience that feels much more rewarding than an MMO.
In a way, World of Warcraft and MMOs like it represent a giant step BACKWARD in game design... we've returned to the time where nothing you do matters, the game never ends, and as such there is no way to tell a coherent story.
The closest anyone came to doing it right was Neverwinter Nights, but the implementation of the GM piece was confusing and unwieldy. Some people are still playing that game in its multiplayer mode with moderate success, but the tools provided kept this type of gameplay from reaching its full potential.
In fact, at this point the closest thing in town to the tabletop experience remains the MUSH. That's right, a bunch of text does a better job of delivering than WoW.
Perhaps most frustrating is I don't have any sort of answer whatsoever. I still have no clue how you can translate the D&D tabletop experience to a real, graphical video game, and all attempts to do so up to this point have been failures. It seems ironic to me that those that come closest are all single player games.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Seeds of Disaster
The highly anticipated MMORPG "Seed" has been released as of May 2nd. I participated in the beta for this game after canceling my World of Warcraft subscription. Now that the game is public, it is okay for me to post my opinions on the game that was finally going to give roleplayers what they wanted.
Apparently, what roleplayers want is to be able to repair things instead of killing them. Of course, that's when the game works at all.
Seed is without question the worst game I have ever played. Extreme Paintbrawl is better than this game. The client crashes once every 10 minutes, and by then you'll have taken about 4 steps because the lag is so bad the game is virtually unplayable. Of course, those 4 steps will only be possible if the SERVER actually stays up.
The game is played in a windowed mode, so you can't even go full screen on it. At least then your crashes would take place in higher resolution.
I can't put it much more simply than this: I have never played a game worse than this. And that's frustrating, because the IDEAS this game was about were awesome. Unfortunately none of them found their way into the release.
Now, to be fair, Runestone (the publisher) had a lot of pressure to release this game ahead of when they would have liked. Their investors were understandably anxious after 2 and a half years to see some return, and as a result what got pushed out the door was this crappy mess that will almost certainly kill the game before it can even get off the ground.
But who knows? Anarchy Online had a horribly buggy release and is still around and going strong. Judging from the buzz, however, Seed has got to be one of the worst releases of an MMO in recent memory.
So, the search for a replacement for WoW continues, although I'm starting to think that I'm barking up the wrong tree with MMOs in general.
Apparently, what roleplayers want is to be able to repair things instead of killing them. Of course, that's when the game works at all.
Seed is without question the worst game I have ever played. Extreme Paintbrawl is better than this game. The client crashes once every 10 minutes, and by then you'll have taken about 4 steps because the lag is so bad the game is virtually unplayable. Of course, those 4 steps will only be possible if the SERVER actually stays up.
The game is played in a windowed mode, so you can't even go full screen on it. At least then your crashes would take place in higher resolution.
I can't put it much more simply than this: I have never played a game worse than this. And that's frustrating, because the IDEAS this game was about were awesome. Unfortunately none of them found their way into the release.
Now, to be fair, Runestone (the publisher) had a lot of pressure to release this game ahead of when they would have liked. Their investors were understandably anxious after 2 and a half years to see some return, and as a result what got pushed out the door was this crappy mess that will almost certainly kill the game before it can even get off the ground.
But who knows? Anarchy Online had a horribly buggy release and is still around and going strong. Judging from the buzz, however, Seed has got to be one of the worst releases of an MMO in recent memory.
So, the search for a replacement for WoW continues, although I'm starting to think that I'm barking up the wrong tree with MMOs in general.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Post Warcraft Curiosity Disorder
Now that my World of Warcraft account has officially expired, I find myself trolling around looking for news and thoughts about the game just to keep up with the buzz. As someone in the old guild used to say: "Talking about Wacraft is a lot more fun than actually playing it."
It would appear that in the next patch they are only adding yet another 40-man raid dungeon, exactly the kind of dull, repeatable content that resulted in my canceling in the first place.
When I mentioned this to a friend still playing, he sent me the following email which I now share with you (props go to Andy for this):
Their line of thinking probably goes something like the following:
Blizzard Developer 1: Hmmmm... What can we do to further challenge our players?
Blizzard Developer 2: How about a "WoW" historically significant instance that incorporates scripted encounters with a new, balanced layout as to not bog down players seeking the definitive "end" of an instance?
Blizzard Developer 1: That sounds great!!! How about we rewrite the mage and shaman classes to add balance to the gameplay?
Blizzard Developer 2: Yet another great idea!!!
Blizzard Developer 3: WAIT!!! By my calculations, that would only make 5,999,999 out of 6,000,000 of our valued customers happy. What about Dave Yeager?
Blizzard Developer 1: Crap. Can the project.
Consider me pwned.
It would appear that in the next patch they are only adding yet another 40-man raid dungeon, exactly the kind of dull, repeatable content that resulted in my canceling in the first place.
When I mentioned this to a friend still playing, he sent me the following email which I now share with you (props go to Andy for this):
Their line of thinking probably goes something like the following:
Blizzard Developer 1: Hmmmm... What can we do to further challenge our players?
Blizzard Developer 2: How about a "WoW" historically significant instance that incorporates scripted encounters with a new, balanced layout as to not bog down players seeking the definitive "end" of an instance?
Blizzard Developer 1: That sounds great!!! How about we rewrite the mage and shaman classes to add balance to the gameplay?
Blizzard Developer 2: Yet another great idea!!!
Blizzard Developer 3: WAIT!!! By my calculations, that would only make 5,999,999 out of 6,000,000 of our valued customers happy. What about Dave Yeager?
Blizzard Developer 1: Crap. Can the project.
Consider me pwned.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
... and Goodbye Warcraft
At the beginning of this week, I ended an era of gameplaying nerdery.
I cancelled my World of Warcraft account.
Like any good thing, it wasn't going to last forever. I guess I'm most surprised by just how difficult the decision really turned out to be. I mean, it's a game right?
Well, the tricky, and perhaps nefarious, thing about a game like this is that you build relationships with real people. Real people that you sort of get to know and enjoy hanging out with. Had I not met some of the people that I spent time playing this game with, I almost certainly would have cancelled several months ago.
When I'm honest with myself, the game stopped being really fun almost a week after I hit the maximum level. At that point, there are two options available to you: engage in combat with other players (which I have zero interest in), or form up teams of 20-40 people and go kill the biggest and baddest of pixelated bosses the game has to offer. When you do that, you'll get some cool stuff. If you do it again, you'll get more cool stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Frankly, to me that's boring. If I wanted to run on a treadmill, I'd buy a treadmill and actually lose weight instead of sitting there gaining it in front of my computer screen. And if you look at me lately, you'll know that getting on the treadmill is obviously not on the top of my list of priorities.
What a game like this needs to keep me entertained for years (and I'm sure every software company out there is waiting with baited breath for this declaration) is a real ongoing story where players actually have an impact. Warcraft is not designed that way. Why should it be? In the words of the developers themselves, it makes more business sense to design a raid dungeon that can be repeated ad nauseam forever and ever than it does to spend the same amount of time designing a one-time server event.
And guess what? It's a business model that is working well. Warcraft has over 6 million players at this point. That's an awful lot of money.
Warcraft does have a rich history, and the story does move along a little bit now and then. But at no point do you ever feel like anything you are doing actually has a real, tangible effect on the game universe. If you kill a big dragon, he'll be back in a couple of days.
For the loser like me though that cares more about a compelling story than the next piece of gear you can get, there does appear to be an interesting game on the horizon. The game is called Seed, and it has dynamically generated plots and stories... at least, that is the ambition. The game is currently in beta, and now that Win XP is booting on my Mac, I have been lucky enough to have an invitation extended to me as a beta tester. Whether the game delivers on its promises remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful.
And hey, if nothing else, Warcraft did allow me to make a couple of new friends in real life, including a new member of our weekly D&D game. So I guess, in the end, it was money well spent.
I cancelled my World of Warcraft account.
Like any good thing, it wasn't going to last forever. I guess I'm most surprised by just how difficult the decision really turned out to be. I mean, it's a game right?
Well, the tricky, and perhaps nefarious, thing about a game like this is that you build relationships with real people. Real people that you sort of get to know and enjoy hanging out with. Had I not met some of the people that I spent time playing this game with, I almost certainly would have cancelled several months ago.
When I'm honest with myself, the game stopped being really fun almost a week after I hit the maximum level. At that point, there are two options available to you: engage in combat with other players (which I have zero interest in), or form up teams of 20-40 people and go kill the biggest and baddest of pixelated bosses the game has to offer. When you do that, you'll get some cool stuff. If you do it again, you'll get more cool stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Frankly, to me that's boring. If I wanted to run on a treadmill, I'd buy a treadmill and actually lose weight instead of sitting there gaining it in front of my computer screen. And if you look at me lately, you'll know that getting on the treadmill is obviously not on the top of my list of priorities.
What a game like this needs to keep me entertained for years (and I'm sure every software company out there is waiting with baited breath for this declaration) is a real ongoing story where players actually have an impact. Warcraft is not designed that way. Why should it be? In the words of the developers themselves, it makes more business sense to design a raid dungeon that can be repeated ad nauseam forever and ever than it does to spend the same amount of time designing a one-time server event.
And guess what? It's a business model that is working well. Warcraft has over 6 million players at this point. That's an awful lot of money.
Warcraft does have a rich history, and the story does move along a little bit now and then. But at no point do you ever feel like anything you are doing actually has a real, tangible effect on the game universe. If you kill a big dragon, he'll be back in a couple of days.
For the loser like me though that cares more about a compelling story than the next piece of gear you can get, there does appear to be an interesting game on the horizon. The game is called Seed, and it has dynamically generated plots and stories... at least, that is the ambition. The game is currently in beta, and now that Win XP is booting on my Mac, I have been lucky enough to have an invitation extended to me as a beta tester. Whether the game delivers on its promises remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful.
And hey, if nothing else, Warcraft did allow me to make a couple of new friends in real life, including a new member of our weekly D&D game. So I guess, in the end, it was money well spent.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Greetings from XP on a Mac
In case you've been living under a rock (or you just have a life that doesn't revolve around tech), Apple released a public beta of Boot Camp, a nifty little app that makes a partition for you to install Windows XP on your Intel Mac. Once installed, you can boot in either OS just by holding down the Option key on startup.
It was remarkably easy to do. There's a step in the process where you burn a CD with drivers for your Mac, and I can report that XP runs like a dream on it. I fired up Civ IV on it tonight and it runs great.
The whole experience has led me to a couple of conclusions:
1) Now that you can load XP on a Mac this easily (and the next version of Mac OS X will include this capability), there is officially NO REASON not to make your next computer purchase a Mac.
2) Windows XP has got to be one of the worst operating systems ever. I don't think I ever realized just how bad it was until I got used to Mac OS X over the past several weeks.
3) Despite it's stinkiness, it's still a great platform for games right now because of the sheer volume of titles available. The ability to boot up in XP solely for gaming purposes is great because I'm no longer limited in what I can play, but as I said it makes you realize even more just how much better OS X really is.
4) This is going to spell big trouble for Microsoft. Windows isn't going to go away, not by a longshot... but one of the major reasons Windows is so dominant is that it just comes standard with most computers you buy. Now that you can run it on a shiny, nifty Mac, more people will be willing to buy one and therefore will get OS X by default. And the more people that get OS X by default, the worse off Microsoft will be because Windows is decades behind OS X.
Thus concludes the only post I will ever write using Internet Explorer in XP on my Intel Mac. Now I'm going to play Civ IV.
It was remarkably easy to do. There's a step in the process where you burn a CD with drivers for your Mac, and I can report that XP runs like a dream on it. I fired up Civ IV on it tonight and it runs great.
The whole experience has led me to a couple of conclusions:
1) Now that you can load XP on a Mac this easily (and the next version of Mac OS X will include this capability), there is officially NO REASON not to make your next computer purchase a Mac.
2) Windows XP has got to be one of the worst operating systems ever. I don't think I ever realized just how bad it was until I got used to Mac OS X over the past several weeks.
3) Despite it's stinkiness, it's still a great platform for games right now because of the sheer volume of titles available. The ability to boot up in XP solely for gaming purposes is great because I'm no longer limited in what I can play, but as I said it makes you realize even more just how much better OS X really is.
4) This is going to spell big trouble for Microsoft. Windows isn't going to go away, not by a longshot... but one of the major reasons Windows is so dominant is that it just comes standard with most computers you buy. Now that you can run it on a shiny, nifty Mac, more people will be willing to buy one and therefore will get OS X by default. And the more people that get OS X by default, the worse off Microsoft will be because Windows is decades behind OS X.
Thus concludes the only post I will ever write using Internet Explorer in XP on my Intel Mac. Now I'm going to play Civ IV.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Opening Day
Is it bad that after only 3.5 innings of real, live baseball in 2006, I was already hoping for a rainout?
Alright, so perhaps that's a BIT of an exaggeration, but after Scott Rolen knocked a grand slam out of the park to put the Cardinals up 10-0 on the Phillies in the home opener yesterday, I started to wonder if maybe it wouldn't be better to hope for a rainout before the end of the fifth so they'd have to play the game over again today. It was not to be, and the Cardinals won 13-5.
On the plus side though, it was baseball, and it counted, and it felt good. I consumed meats off the grill, drank beers in the parking lot, and watched the game with 44,000+ other fans. Despite the rain and the chill, it was still a good time.
Of course, leave it to the Phillies to destroy the moment by getting crushed so early. I mean seriously, it took them less than an hour to ruin what would otherwise have been the perfect day. In that sense, Opening Day '06 was sort of a microcosm of what the Phillies have been like the last few years: lots of talent, but no sense of the moment. When the chips are down and you absolutely, positively, NEED to have a win, the Phillies are guaranteed to lose.
But hey, Jimmy Rollins DID extend to his hitting streak to 37 games in the bottom of the 8th, and the place went nuts. There's always SOME reason to stick around until the bitter end.
Alright, so perhaps that's a BIT of an exaggeration, but after Scott Rolen knocked a grand slam out of the park to put the Cardinals up 10-0 on the Phillies in the home opener yesterday, I started to wonder if maybe it wouldn't be better to hope for a rainout before the end of the fifth so they'd have to play the game over again today. It was not to be, and the Cardinals won 13-5.
On the plus side though, it was baseball, and it counted, and it felt good. I consumed meats off the grill, drank beers in the parking lot, and watched the game with 44,000+ other fans. Despite the rain and the chill, it was still a good time.
Of course, leave it to the Phillies to destroy the moment by getting crushed so early. I mean seriously, it took them less than an hour to ruin what would otherwise have been the perfect day. In that sense, Opening Day '06 was sort of a microcosm of what the Phillies have been like the last few years: lots of talent, but no sense of the moment. When the chips are down and you absolutely, positively, NEED to have a win, the Phillies are guaranteed to lose.
But hey, Jimmy Rollins DID extend to his hitting streak to 37 games in the bottom of the 8th, and the place went nuts. There's always SOME reason to stick around until the bitter end.
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