So, this summer a lot of my local friends have gotten into pen and paper RPGs .. a la Dungeons & Dragons (in fact, D&D specifically). While buttering my toast this morning (and by morning I mean 3:38pm), it occurred to me… roleplaying games are never complete — they leave out huge parts of life. Never has there been an RPG involving such mundane tasks as buttering toast, brushing your teeth, using the restroom, etc.
Why is this? Well, it’s presumably because these things exist for another take on things, for adventures and the like, not the daily grind.
There have been games that did showcase the daily grind though, incredibly popular ones, in fact. The Sims, for example, is the best selling video game in history1. Why is it that when so much of gaming/movies/television was founded on providing distraction, providing colorful imagery and exciting adventure, that somehow the mundane became so popular?
And this trend does not stop with the Sims, it includes such movements as reality television and, I would say, blogs.
All of these present others’ lives within a semblance of our own, there is familiarity and yet an aloofness and excitement. In The Sims, the exciting element was that you got to micromanage a whole family in every aspect, time compression let you simulate events that are ever unsure in our own lives. Reality TV introduces various distortions, be it forcing people of unlike minds into closer proximity, introducing absurd challenges, or even simply the elements that the extra scrutiny add to people’s already odd lives.
And then there are blogs.. blogs offer us windows into people’s lives, but only what they wish to report. They provide a filter and give us access to part of a person’s life, but not that which they either don’t want others to see or simply think others won’t care about. And it is this limited portrait which produces intrigue, which produces excitement…
Well, if the limitedness correlates with the excitement, clearly this is one of the most exciting blogs ever! ^_^ So, other than a critique on the nature of the medium and a joke at my own expense, what shall I do with this entry? Originally, I intended to explain my lack of prolific blogging is the result of lack of interesting (and also freely admissible) happenings in my life, but I have talked (written) myself out of this because its a lame excuse AND I realized that one man’s tedium may be another mans enthralling subject matter. The Sims proved that everyday life CAN be interesting.
Therefore I have decided to use this entry to introduce a series of miniposts on the routine things of my life that have been busying me of recent. I hope that they give you a window into my routine life, familiar enough for the appeal of a reality show, but aloof enough to be intriguing. These miniposts should follow in (relatively) quick succession after this one. I hope you enjoy them! ^_^
It has been an interesting aspect of my life that, despite the best intentions, I have always wanted to, and usually failed to keep some sort of journal. One could say that it comes from a need to be remembered, a need to record my history; I think these are a crock. My desire to keep a journal is probably most easily traceable to Doug. I think that practically every day I heard him say Dear Journal and then have great adventures, so I thought keeping a journal was awesome.
Granted I know now that it probably had a lot more to do with being a convenient frame for story telling. It has been used in television and film many times since (e.g. As Told By Ginger, examples that are less lame because they aren’t children’s shows -_-). Regardless, I think that truthfully Doug is the origin.
My attempts at journal writing have been many and varied. The most successful was probably a compulsory one I wrote in a composition book, every day in 4th grade. In 5th grade I acquired a white book with a hot air balloon on it, and in middle school I bought a gold book with the Chinese for “Imagination” on the cover. Both of these were intended to be used as daily journals. I believe each garnered about 3 entries.
With the advent of the “web log” craze .. (we don’t use the w, e, or space anymore), I saw the fusion of my desire to keep a journal and my love for/proficiency with computers. Since then I have made severalvaliantattempts at getting a blog off the ground. Usually only to see them grind to a halt not long after.
You now stare at the current incarnation of these attempts, created unashamedly in hopes of providing a suitable “portfolio” for the great people over at http://www.mitadmissions.org. Like my other attempts it has also gotten off to a rough start for various reasons (varying from sheer laziness to indecision between Wordpress and Movable Type). But now it has existed for awhile and yet still it sits, largely bare of content.
Why?! I suppose it has a bit to do with laziness, a bit to do with overthinking and oververbosity in my expression, and a bit to do with not being sure anyone will care. Maybe, its just the fact then other times I’ve started a journal or blog, I’ve never ended up meeting the Beets at Honkerburger or become Quailman -_-!
But its reached the point where no more excuses shall do. It is time to try to blog legitimately, if I can. The blogger app on MIT Admissions, and I really do quite want to be one. I know that I have many, manytalentedcompetitors and frankly I expect their success over mine, but I’ve decided that I do want to do it, so I really ought to at least try.
So .. here goes, consider my lame attempts below part of the old blog. This was supposed to be the first entry in my blog, and I never got around to writing it in full form. The real attempt starts now, this is when we have that “Better Blog To Follow…”
Hello … it is 9:40 on May 25, 2008 and I am blogging. I am supposed to be writing my speech for my upcoming graduation, but I have a bit of writer’s block so I am going to babble onto the internet. Perhaps it will get me in a writing mood and I can turn out some speeching later. In any case, what exactly is the point of a blog? .. let’s ask wikipedia! According to said wiki, a [[blog]] is “a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.” (see, you learned something). Lets check this one:
maintained by an individual? *opens photobooth as a mirror* check!
regular entries? ermm … about that.
So. Onto commentary, descreptions of events, graphics and video. I think I’ve already covered some of the commentary aspect, so I guess I should talk about events. What has happened since I last updated? Well, as I predicted (sort of), I survived the english portfolio project! I got it all turned in, have gotten it back, and recieved a 100% A+ on it. Further, AP Exams are over! There is a draft of an entry in which I was going to do a break down of each AP exam, but they are over and I don’t want to talk about them too much, so screw that entry. What I will do, since this blog’s limited history is in the habbit of prediction, is predict my scores:
AP English Government: 5, simple, simple exam. There was an essay on the difference between monetary and fiscal policy on which I made things up and another regarding supreme court regulation of apportionment in which my answers were a bit off.. I think I can sustain both faults.
AP English Literature: 5, 4 possible. I somehow managed to run out of time and leave a significant number of MC blank, but my essays were pretty good. Again, it should shake out. Regardless, I got a 5 on Language last year so no FEE for me.
AP Psychology: 5. Yea .. pretty much. (I have 104% in the class for the year, it is by far the easiest AP class I ever took)
AP Physics C. I’m gonna say 5 on Mechanics, 4 on E&M. A 5 on E&M is possible, but unlikely. Truth be told, I don’t deserve a 5 for E&M, but since I will be taking 8.02(2) regardless, it would be very nice. Also, while I could perhaps have been a bit better prepared, fouling up this exam can not be seen as entirely my fault. First off, the class was not best taught ever. Our teacher, Mr. Boyles, is a nice guy and a pretty decent teacher, but we simply didn’t keep a good time table. This is partially because due to the double-class nature with Muti/Diff, his time was cut short most days (if you are curious what I am talking about, feel free to comment). Also, the day of the test, it was very rainy and stormy outside. We all showed up and sat in the testing room for about an hour for the test to start. Right before it did, however, an employee of the place we were testing came in saying that they needed the room for other purposes. As a result we were moved to a different room with a loading-dock sytle exterior door that preceded to make loud banging noises throughout the test. We stayed in this room for all of Mechanics and the MC of E&M, then we were moved again for the free response portion of E&M. Almost needless to say, I was a bit frazzeled by the whole ordeal, and it very well may have made the difference between a 4 and a 5. Due to this situation, I was offered a complete retest which would have been last Friday, the 23rd. Knowing that this was going to be after the English portfolio of doom(!!!), I decided it wasn’t worth the effor to prolong the exams.. thus, it now stands as it is. My socre report will, however, show a note saying that my performance was possibly affected by a disturbance in the testing room. I doubt this will give me enough sympathy points to get out of 8.01 with a 4 on E&M, but we shall see.
So yea, thats probably pretty much what the draft I never finished would have said. Hopefully it is at least slightly more condensed. In any case, for now, events… check!
I have one quick other random piece of commentary to add. Note to all advertising, marketing types and people in general: A forward slash and a backslash are different characters!! Again, note carefully:
I have repeatedly in the last few days heard radio commercials giving a web adress as ” h t t p colon slash slash [note proper usage] w w w . [almost invariably] myspace . com BACKSLASH <something> “. This is wrong! As a concrete example, I have heard the local surf shop Wave Riding Vehicles do this recently, but if you go to http://myspace.com\wrv , you get an error like you damn well should. Perhaps some marketing executive heard the term backslash and thought, “Hmm that sounds like a fancier word for slash; I should use that word instead, afterall market research shows that surfers love feeling fancy—thats why they don’t just surf the waves any more, they surf this newfangeled thing called the interblagotubes The sad thing is that I realize most listeners will also not know the difference between a slash and a backslsh, but they should! And ignorance is not an excuse to promote further ignorance! </rant>
So, that covered commentary and descriptions of events. I will leave you with “graphics or video”. This has been on the internet three days, so most of the people who will appreciate have probably already seen it. Oh well, its worth watching agin!
In any case, that is enough blogging for one time. See you next time….
So, I’m sure you have all heard that supposedly the world is supposed to end in my/our college graduation year, 2012 (or at least there is supposed to be some major psychic shift or something .. trouble with this Mayan predictions is we can’t really ask them what they meant). Well, I’m not talking about that … I’m talking about now.
Like most of my peers, I am afflicted with the lovely ailment referred to as senioritis. On top of that, my teachers (particularly my english teacher) thought it a good idea to set up a negative correlation between seniors’ motivation and seniors’ workload .. it’s actually insane.
<whining about english>
Consider that, in the first place, our AP English Lit exam was last Thursday, so by all reason, the class should be pretty much done or at least switching over to “fun” activities. Yea, we aren’t. At my high school (and by all accounts, only my high school within the district), we are required to submit a senior english portfolio composed entirely of NEW compositions.. in the order of 12 of them. For most of them, we have to submit 3 drafts + pre-writing (as though we actually do prewriting). On top of that, she thought it a good idea to assign us a series of poetry journals. Not only are these of substantially larger quanity than those earlier in the yaer (6, each requiring analysis of 3-6 poems), but they are in the majority due BEFORE the portfolio. But no, it does not stop there, on top of this we have been assigned to read and keep “a detailed character list” for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. So, in summary, the first day after our AP exam, we have the first poetry journal, 69 pages of Cuckoo, and a check on our senior portfolio progress (theses checks are graded seperately). Also, keep in mind, it is still AP exams .. I won’t be there.. I have AP Physics C, for which I do not feel prepared and won’t feel prepared, despite studying more than I have for any other AP exam. Then the next day, I have AP Psychology.
</whining>
On top of the insane English load and AP Physics C, I have a chorus concert I need to work to prepare for, and a 2 day Enviornmental competition (about which I am less than enthralled) that will wipe out my ability to work on the english portfolio Sunday or Monday of next week, with the portfolio itself due .. let’s see… WEDNESDAY. Oh and on top of this I also feel physically ill.
Basically .. my point is that of my title, I feel doomed plain and simple. That said, I also know myself and having gone through this cathartic excercise would expect that this prediction of doom will go the way of most (i.e. it will turn out false, but its true believers will continue on unphased). We’ll see.
Anyway, if I get through this one, I’ll see you in 2013.
Thanks for listening to my doomsaying,
~Donald Guy
P.S. one other prediction, amongst my HASS classes, I will probably never take another english class proper.
Well, we all heard the Chorollaries’ beautiful renditions of the Engineers Drinking Song, but there is another traditional MIT song (this one in the Logs standard repertoire) that (at least in bits) more accurately expresses a lot of prefrosh’s current feelings.
This is quite seriously how I am feeling at the moment. Like a lot of prefrosh, I am dealing with a lot of senioritis (yes, there is a wikipedia article on it) and I’m ready to head back to the ‘tvte. Though I have some great friends here at home (many whom I will miss dearly), I feel like I have friend’s at (and soon to be at) MIT who I already miss.
Since this is ostensibly a CPW entry, I guess I should talk about my CPW. Overall, my CPW was pretty tame. Keep in mind this is saying tame for CPW- this is a lot like saying west campus people are normal (they are, for MIT).
In any case, for a trip to my new favorite place, the beginning was less than glorious. It can be summed up well in one picture
yea -_- Due to nice fog, my plane to Boston never touched down, so I went to Boston from Virgina Beach… by way of Atlanta. While displacment is a vector, time is a scalar, so I caught the shuttle
and arrived on campus a lot latter than intended (noonish rather than nineish).
Over the weekend, the rest of my schedule has been covered by a lot of the other entrants:
I was, at times, in the chat group with Omar (in the picture of the cameras, mine is the orange camera phone)
I went to the CSAIL presentation, 6.02 class, and EECS open house, Ball Drop and many other things where Karen could be found. (In general, her longer blog here closely follows my CPW experience (especially thursday, friday), though somehow I never actually met her)
Like lots of people, I was there for the Icebreakers, festival, Meet the Bloggers etc.
Though I didn’t play Underground CTF, I did play BC’s CTF on Thursday night
So, I won’t bore you with too much redundant recounting. Quickly here are some pictures/videos I have to add (in roughly chronological order):
the housing/dining info session
The real beauty of CPW
4th East (Slugfest)’s Iron Curtain music visulization project
The poor orientation hosts who were in charge of running “ice breakers” on the chat group (and the one poor guy in the group who wasn’t a chat person)
The obligatory picture from the roof of Baker (before the party)
A nearly empty infinite corridor at 2am on Thursday (Random Standard Time)
Our hard-hatted tour group at the new grad dorm where the so-called Phoenix/W1 Incubator group will live for two years. Will U, Kimberly S ‘12 and I were the only prefrosh to go on the tour of the dorm. It was a really nice (albeit under construction) facility and really will afford the people who go for it great opportunities to jump-start the culture of the former-Ashdown house. That said, I’m not sure if I can handle living one place 2 years (WAAY off campus) and another 2 years some place else, both new. For those of you who are adventurous, its definitely worth looking into.
6.02 Lecture on Variable Length Encoding. Very interesting and I actually understood it and learned a lot.
Some (anti-)VI propaganda handed out at the EECS open house. (Note: free shirts that Omar didn’t get!)
The sounds (and almost sights) of the Ball Drop
Snively + Me + Colbert’s “my ______ friend” pose = AMAZING PICTURE! (if only camera didn’t ruin it)
Random Hall’s flying cow. You can hear part of a Random Hall tour in the background
As even these few meager pictures show, I had an awesome time at CPW. Keep in mind also that during some of the most awesome times, I was too busy (or forbidden hint) to be taking pictures.
For example, during the GBIS A cappella concert, I was literally too awed by the awesome groups (several of which I’d love to be a part of), to snap a picture. During the Roadkill Buffet performance (which I forewent Battle of the Bands for), I was much too busy laughing. By far the funniest moment to me, although it may not translate well to text, was during a game in which they had to interject phrases the audience wrote before the show into a scene,
Actor 1: *pulls phrase from pocket* GERANIUM URANIUM! Actor 2: Yea, I remember man. Thats what we called you in high school. Everyone was afraid of the Geranium Uranium. I remember they called me *pulls phrase* Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My! Actor 1: yep, we used to call you LTBOM for short
.. I laughed to the point of tears (I think you had to be there).
Overall, however, I find myself wanting more. Not more from CPW, but more from MIT- I need more of MIT… soon.
This is partially my fault. I enrolled before CPW, so I wasn’t running to make sure it was all for me and I feel like I left some things undone. I never saw Simmons nor Senior Haus; I hung out with the chat group a lot and, in doing so, didn’t meet that many completely new people (though I actually probably am now best friends with some of the chat people I knew least before the weekend), and I feel like I probably slept too late.
The larger cause of this yearning, however, lies squarely in the nature of CPW. CPW was MIT in super-condensed form and, as much as we tried, one simply couldn’t experience it all. This isn’t really a problem, but it does have a serious side effect: MIT Addiction. I want to go back ASAP. I realize that real MIT life involves a lot of tooling, but I’m ready to face that for the rest of it (plus I actually love learning, so maybe psets won’t always be torture) (one can hope).
I feel ready to learn, ready to tool, ready to punt, ready to hack (if the occasion arises).
And yet orientation is 4 months and 3 days away.
Being the smart one I am (I got into MIT!), I know that there is still a LOT of fun to enjoy here in my senior year. I will continue to keep that in mind, but like a lot of prefrosh, I find myself singing “Take Me Back to Tech”.
