Looks like the BioWare voting should just about be wrapped up.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
We'll see how this turns out; I have a good feeling. They're going to announce the winners on Wednesday.
Playing: Dragon Quest 8, Final Fantasy 4, Super Mario World
Reading: The Catcher in the Rye, which I am given to understand is turning me into a serial killer or an assassin or something. I saw it in a Mel Gibson movie.
So this morning, I'm driving to work. (I prefer biking, but I was running way too late for that.) And I'm listening to NPR. And I hear the following:
"On March 15, two thousand and fifty years ago, Julius Caesar breathed his last. The news, coming up next!"
But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about gambling and wonder what exactly the hell the draw is.
I mean, okay, my coworkers get together a pool and buy a bunch of tickets when the lottery pot gets big enough. I don't participate, and refer to the lottery as "a tax on people who can't do math". They respond that somebody has to win, and you can't win if you don't play. (Which isn't strictly true. My department consists of two people, and if my supervisor wins the lottery, that means I'm the new head of the department.)
But mainly, what brought this sentiment on is my recent experience with Dragon Quest 8. Yesterday I finally got enough money together to get all the best items at the casino.
Which sounds good until you realize I'd been working at that since Sunday the goddamn 5th.
That's over a week where all I did in the game was fucking play the casino. To be fair, I probably average under two hours gaming per day, and played a bit of Sonic CD and Sonic 3 here and there when I got too annoyed with DQ8 to keep playing, but that's still hours and hours at the fucking casino. And it's like pulling teeth.
I guess it's not as bad as it was way back in 2 when the lottery game debuted (and obviously somebody must like these goddamn casino games, because they're still including them 17 years later), but it was a whole lot worse than 7 -- which was still pretty bad (and, unlike 8, had an item which you needed to get to complete the game; 8 just has generally sweet but not absolutely necessary equipment), but had more games and higher-yield slots.
And speaking of slots, that wound up being the game I went with in DQ8. I played a good deal of roulette on the supposition that you're more likely to win there, but it got to be too labor-intensive -- since you have to stack your chips at the beginning of each spin, and since I was stacking a total of 8000 chips all over the board (every single combination including 14, as that also covers every single square on the board except 0, meaning when I lose I usually pick up 1000 for the square I'm sitting on, so I only lose 7000 tokens instead of the full 8000), well, I basically had to sit there and play the game. Whereas slots you can just hit the up button over and over. Don't have to pay any attention whatever. So I could go do something else. Feed my fish, surf the net. Since I have a wireless controller, I could've even done it from another room. Point being, I'd prefer to be doing anything else but sit there and watch what I was doing.
So what's the draw of real casinos? I'm going to admit I've yet to take a trip to Vegas, but it sure seems like gambling isn't how I'd want to pass my time there anyway. I guess you get the excitement of losing real money over the crushing boredom of knowing you're inevitably going to win if you just keep playing because you can always just restore from your last save, but that doesn't seem like a huge advantage. I mean, if you're any good at math at all you have to realize the deck's stacked against you.
A lot of friends have told me the way to go is to play nickel slots and drink free cocktails. Which I guess I can get behind. But for a lot cheaper than a trip to Vegas, I can buy a six-pack and curse at the casino in Dragon Quest 8.
Or, better yet, finally fucking get back to playing Dragon Quest 8. That game's pretty cool when it's not making you play other games which aren't best played on a TV in the first damn place.
The rain never quite hit us yesterday. But it sure smelled divine for about twenty minutes.
But none hit Sky Harbor Airport, which, as that's Phoenix's weather center, means we're technically still in our dry spell. This is day 142.
On another note, what's the deal with ICQ?
You remember ICQ. It's the redheaded stepchild of IM networks. It was big in the late '90's when it was the only game in town besides AIM, but has long since been displaced by MSN and Yahoo. Of course, the fact that AOL bought it out probably hasn't done it any favors either.
The weird thing about ICQ, as compared to the other networks, is the amount of random contact I've received.
A few years back, my ICQ account was inundated with porn spam. That's died down, but just the last couple weeks I've started getting weird random contacts from China and eastern Europe.
A sample:
(08:45:10) 264737669: hi
(08:46:46) 264737669: hey homie
(08:46:50) 264737669: write to me
(08:47:13) 264737669: i´m not a bubble gum gang leader like rest of slovakia
Now, my ICQ number's been relatively easy to find for the past...Jesus, has it been seven years already? Probably seven years. (Just for perspective, my ICQ number is seven digits, compared to the nine on my Slovakian friend's.) So my question is...why the hell have I just now started getting these messages? Where has my account number been recently posted to attract the attention of bubble-gum gang-leading Slovakians?
And on another topic, what genius decided Gaim should display ICQ numbers by default instead of nicknames? In the rare event that somebody I know drops me a message, I generally don't know who the hell it is, even if he's on my list under a nickname.
The world may never know. But at least somebody's asking the right questions.
And on the 141st day, it rained.
I don't think that those of you who haven't spent the bulk of your lives in a desert can truly understand what it's like to get rain here, but I imagine it's much like seeing the snow melt in New York, seeing nightfall for the first time in months in Alaska, or seeing the rain stop in Seattle. Relief and gratitude.
There are few things in life I enjoy so much as the smell of rainfall in the desert -- and even rainfall on the dirt and asphalt of the urban sprawl of Phoenix smells pretty good to me.
It's barely sprinkling outside the door right now, but the sky to the east and to the north is dark.
Storm's a-brewin'.