My eyes are tired. I’ve been up since 5:15am. I woke up right before my alarm was scheduled to shock me out of bed for the weekly Toastmasters meeting. It’s weird when that happens almost as if part of your brain was busy watching the clock. I’m glad I’ve stuck with going even though I’ve belly-ached to the woman about having to be there so early in the morning to talk in front of people I barely know. The people I meet in Toastmasters are from many different walks of life and not people I would have met on my own. I like that about it. I also like that most of the regular people show up even though no one makes them. They have plenty of other things to keep them busy: families, careers, businesses. It shows a great deal of committment both to their decision to be a member as well as their committment to their fellows. These are people who welcome involvement and responsibility. I find that incredibly impressive. So much so that I feel guilty when I feel like quitting because I get uncomfortable extending myself in new directions each week. I’ve decided that it is a worthwhile type of discomfort, although I still get butterflies every time I have to do something else.
09
Jul 05
“Good advice never gets old”
Words of wisdom get lodged in my head and I like to get them out so they can be shared with anyone else who might find them useful.
- “Good advice never gets old” – JC spotted this one at a gas station on the way back from picking her up at the airport after her short trip to Lubbock.
- “At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.” I think about this Gracian quotation quite a bit, especially as I approach “lionhood”, which is a good description of what I’ve been feeling now that a lot of my shiny surface is starting to wear off and I feel like I’m maturing in some hard to define way. The older I get the more I feel like I’m being either polished or worn down. When I’m feeling optimistic, it’s polish. When I’m feeling negative, it’s being worn down. I thought about the stages one goes through in life yesterday when I was at the grocery store behind an old man while waiting to check out. He look slowed and bowed by time with his modest selections of frozen vegetables and twenty pound bag of wild bird seed. He seemed almost transparent or invisible, and I tried to imagine him in his twenties or thirties and how he might have been different. Surely, he was not preoccupied with feeding birds then. Maybe as we get older and we realize we have more life behind than ahead of us, we take more enjoyment in the natural world around us that will live on after we pass.
08
Jul 05
You know you play Battlefield 2 too much when…
- …you feel weird driving next to other cars when they don’t have wrench icons floating above them.
- …you hear the endless thp-thp-thp of a helicopter in your head.
- …you find yourself humming the theme music.
- …you put off important stuff so you can play for just “a couple more rounds”, which turns into another two hours.
- …your last three blog entries have been about playing BF2 as if that’s all you do.
07
Jul 05
Battlefield 2 1.01 Patch Released
A few bug fixes and some useful BF2 patch download mirrors available courtesy of digg.com.
06
Jul 05
Battlefield 2 Tips and Strategy
I’m a huge fan of EA Games’ Battlefield 2. I’ve played the entire series since my days working at the world’s largest independent game producer (EA!) where I could get discounted copies for my friends from the company store. Battlefield 2 is amazing fun, and I’m getting better and better as I tack on more hours of play time.
I’ve come up with a few simple strategies and tips to help you dominate the enemy and score yourself some points.
Always play in a squad
When I’m playing it seems like most players are playing solo, which makes absolutely no sense. Whether you create your own squad or join an existing one, always play as part of a squad. There is strength in numbers. Each squad leader is a mobile spawn point. This is good for a number of reasons. For example, if your squad leader is near a capture point when you respawn you’ll get credit for assisting the capture. That’s a free point for you. If the enemy has all the capture points you can still respawn with your squad leader if he evades death. If your squad stays together you’ll have automatic backup if you run into enemy forces. Let your buddy be the bullet sponge as you rack up the skulls. Chances are your squad will have several players with different “kits”. Maybe a couple medics, support, engineer, etc. This will keep you patched up with health kits, ammo kits, and repairs. If you’re the one dropping health or ammo kits you’ll rack up points when your squad members pick up your gear. You’ll also get two points for reviving team mates (with shock paddles no less), so if you roll with a squad you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get revive points. Always play in a squad. Squad players routinely top the score board.
02
Jul 05
Battlefield 2 Ranking
I haven’t posted in a while since we’ve been moving offices. We moved from downtown over to north central Austin off 183. The area is not as cool, but the space is better and the commute about the same. We have about twice the square footage now in the new offices, which is a big change. There will be more privacy as a result.
I noticed Breen put his BF2 sig up at his website, so I thought I’d put my rank up, which puts me at a Private since I haven’t played much time on ranked servers.
27
Jun 05
U.S. Resumes Plutonium 238 Production
Good story via. The federal government is gearing up to build 330 pounds of plutonium, which will be used to power spy devices. Maybe sonar listening posts or underwater tracking devices in the ocean around Japan and China? Or tiny satellites? Who knows.
Federal and private experts unconnected to the project said the new plutonium would probably power devices for conducting espionage on land and under the sea. Even if no formal plans now exist to use the plutonium in space for military purposes, these experts said that the material could be used by the military to power compact spy satellites that would be hard for adversaries to track, evade or destroy.
26
Jun 05
Mike Tyson
In the sweaty aftermath, Tyson was gracious to his opponent and stayed around to browse his own psyche one last time. “I’m a peasant,” he said. “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.”
23
Jun 05
A new interpretation of pr0n regulations
Via metafilter, the Department of Justice is changing how it enforces laws governing adult material on the web. From Wired, “Under penalty of federal prison terms, new interpretations of existing regulations would require sites that feature photographs or videos of sexual activity to keep records confirming that performers are of legal age.” I guess this means that anyone who has a website featuring adult material must keep complete records of any person depicted. I’m curious how this will effect the adult industry as adult media is treated essentially as a commodity.