Tag Archives: forum

NDS Shout Out

Posted on by
3

“Something is not right.”

“What? That ROM isn’t working? The emulator?”

I got a CycloDS Evolution for a friend for her birthday (and general holiday gift). Since she visited only recently, it wasn’t until now that I got to play with it. Of course, I said “Yea- I get to play with it,” while she actually had the idea in mind that I would spend a couple hours making it bend to her will. Since I’m the resident ‘knows-how-to-do-technical-stuff” person, being the actual day of her birthday, I complied. If scouring the web is what she wants, it’s what I’ll do.

“You did something. It’s not right. When it boots up it’s not supposed to make that noise,” she turned the Nintendo DS off again and on again.

“What noise?” I asked not really understanding what she meant, and of course annoyed at the accusation. The only worse thing than being the, “Can you fix my computer?” recipient is being the, “I asked you to fix it and you broke it!” recipient.

She turned it off and on again, and the chimes rang. I don’t own a Nintendo DS, so I have no idea what the chimes normally sound like when it turns on, so I say, “Okay, is there any other sound that’s messed up? When you open a ROM or use a game, is the sound different?”

“No, just when I turn it on.”

“Maybe you or I accidentally changed a setting so it has different music on boot up?”

“No, I checked that.”

Now I’m giving her the ‘you’re crazy’ look as she’s obsessively booting it, and turning it off, and booting again, and becomingly increasingly upset. Finally she has to go to the bathroom, so I figure I’ll search the internet and come up with the setting that must’ve been changed, or I can tell her she’s nuts with confidence.

I search Google and am surprised to find the issue is not a setting.

A similarly upset and worried fellow posted about this on a forum who had the exact same issue. Actually there were several hits as it is a common issue. I read further and find out the big problem, what was broken:

The Nintendo DS gives you a special chime on your birthday. It also gives you a rainbow “Happy Birthday” message in PictoChat.

I laughed my ass off. As she came out of the bathroom I continued to laugh. I wanted to look grim when I gave her the news, play it up, and tell her something was seriously wrong with her game system. I couldn’t do it, though.

And after all, it was her birthday.

Nintendo- making people everywhere think that their DS has broken on their birthday. Happy Birthday indeed.

FourmRuler & Writing is Born

Posted on by
Reply

I attribute my writing to a natural result of reading so much, but the internet surely played a large role as well. I started writing once upon a time in the (then) magical land of Compuserve. Sure, before that I wrote long posts and emails and even sort of ‘message role played’- but it was just communicating thoughts and words. It didn’t occur to me that I was writing stories, poetry, and essays.

The lame story of how I figured this out was an encounter with a luser with the handle of “ForumRuler” mocking me even though he didn’t know me. I was about ten and not going to let it go. I had a “Well, I rule more than you do.” attitude and online persona. We went back and forth and finally he threw the gauntlet down. He challenged me to a contest of words. The rules were that we write a poem about our own awesomness. Who ever wrote the better one would be the true forum ruler. I think he was expecting an easy win because I was “Huh… never wrote a poem before”.

We were working something close to real time, both online, so I wrote:

You first hear footsteps,
Then the smile,
You know you will be dead,
In a little while,
You say why me?
You whine and run,
But you know what will happen,
She is the one,
She is the one I say,
The one you despise,
She is strong and charming,
and she is wise,
Whom is she you say,
Why has she come?
It doesn’t matter,
Your life is done.

He admitted it was ‘not bad’ having posted four lines of clever ‘roses are red I rule ‘n stuff’ and I never heard from him again. He probably had to change his handle and start over. I, on the other hand, found it very satisfying and started writing for the sake of writing actual works for the first time.

Notepad and I would sit down and write poems, story lines, dialogs, beginnings, middles, ends, and scenes. I wrote about taverns without ever have been drunk. I wrote about dueling with swords and sorcery, even though I’d never fenced. The real bits were always in the poetry and the characters. I only wrote about emotions, motivations, and interactions as I understood them. This was the a part of writing I fell in love with.

My true motivations for writing were somewhere between escape and expression. I felt better after all the jumbled thoughts in my head came out and made some sense on paper. Those thoughts didn’t have to be me, they became characters in far off worlds with much more important things to accomplish. They had much bigger trials to face.

The stories in my head were no longer just bedtime stories to myself after closing my eyes. They bore some sense of importance that I might one day get them down properly and share them with others.

Communication Technology

Posted on by
2

So, people have a hard enough time with regular socialization skills. Now with all the tiers of communicating, it’s a wonder anyone can keep up. It’s not just technology to master, otherwise geeks would be super-pro at socialization.

First there were people communicating at social gatherings and work.

Then there was phone.

Now there is *deep breath* AIMPhoneMSNICQCellPhoneMySpaceEmailFacebookBlogRTSTextMessageForumMMORPG *another breath* -you get the idea. You figure this would ease communication. We’d be super in touch with everyone all the time. No. Because there is no way someone is going to call you to tell you something important if they can text you even if you disabled text messaging because you’re either dirt poor or got sick of getting texts of “hi :)” (or both). Even though you told them in person that you blocked texting, they forgot and they don’t like talking on the phone. They’d rather enjoy Olympic button pressing and staring at a post-it sized screen for 5x the time it would take to say what they needed to. They scoff and think that if you really cared to keep in touch with them, you would enable texting so that you’d get that one important text out of 500. And don’t dare ask them to email you, because that’s *totally* not the same thing.

I once had a boyfriend who argued with me on the phone until I downloaded an instant messaging service to talk to him. It doesn’t matter that we had cell phones, texting, and SKYPE (back when you could dial out for free). This was his most comfortable way of communicating, so I better adapt. On some level, I can understand. You can minimize the other person, don’t need to listen to their tone of voice, can play your RTS or MMORPG, have both hands to type unlike a cell phone, and they don’t know if you got up to get a bagel or pee. On the other hand, we were kind of trying to be emotionally intimate. One other advantage of online messaging is that I still have logs from these chats. That’s what I need… a record of how much I don’t stand up for myself. Hindsight is supposed to at least be softened by memory, and here I have a .txt file showing how pathetic I can be.

Sure, check your email, but make sure you have your FacebookMySpaceLinkedInRandomNetworkingThingies configured to let you know when someone sends you a message on one of these websites. But usually, you can’t read it in your email. I go into my email, see I have something on facebook, and in facebook go to my wall or my inbox… TWO separate methods of communication in ONE networking tool that tells you through email.

Woe onto you who have more than one email. I have two… one that I have had since… before it was cool. The other I got in college and has forums for jobs and places to live and alumni and dialogs on campus and stuff for sale and calls for art. It also has instant messaging built in too… so instant messaging services open and go into your email with yet another instant messaging service and texting on the cell phone in your pocket that can also ring… I’m sorry if I haven’t got around to checking my other email in awhile.

We’re not at the sad part yet. Want to know what the sad part is..? I’m part of a generation who is used to it. Sure, I set my boundaries. I’m on facebook. I’m not getting MySpace too. I’m not enabling texting for the pope- if you’re at your cell, call me!

But I’m used to it to the point where it is ingrained in me as a socializing solution to my communication shortcomings. That’s right, I sometimes look for even more alternate forms of indirect communication… Sure, I could turn around and say something to the funny and good looking guy in my IT class who I’ve thought was pretty cool since the first class (even if he does have a girlfriend but who cares it’d just be nice to communicate). Or, instead risking getting giddy and giggling like an idiot, I’d could go run, cmd, net send…

But the instructor set his boundaries. Thou shall not abuse net send or I shall disable it. Don’t make me do it.

And then people started writing batch files that sent net sends by the hundreds… and logged into other computers with remote desktop to say ‘it wasn’t me’… and flirted using poetic computer based metaphor (Oh, wait, that was just me… and him… as far as I know).

It’s ridiculous, and I realize it. I looked myself in the eye reflecting in the monitor and made a decision.

I asked for his cell number in the parking lot. *cheers* Score one for the communication revolution! At some point in the future, we will hang out and communicate outside of class- in person!

…now I just need to call it …and stop giggling at everything he says to me in person. Yes, even I- currently rated number three most confident on the compare people face book application of all my facebook friends who also have said application- can get shy. (see documentation above)

With all the additional ways to communicate and keep in touch with people, it’s true, we still don’t know how to communicate with other human beings. The opposite sex… oh, forget about that. This isn’t Star Trek you know. We don’t have the technology.

Follow up posts:
Communication Revolution: Quashed!
Wednesday Night