It's All Fun and Games Until...

The level to which our games indoctrinate us and try to shape our values is actually pretty incredible.  Classics like Monopoly and Payday instill the singular value that whoever gets the most money wins.  The most extreme case is the game of Life, which clearly communicates that acquiring the most money the is whole point of Life.  I played these games as a kid, not recognizing the absurdity of that idea, and the process that has been at work for quite a while, continues to this day in living rooms across the country.

I have been aware of that issue for a while, but it seems to be manifesting itself in a new way recently.  Instead of promoting excessively greedy materialism, the new trend seems to be games that promote eco-friendly behavior.  I saw one strategy board game at a Christmas festival that was all about renewing the forests.  They were being sold by the inventor in his booth, and he attempted to explain the rules to me.  I am actually curious whether the underlying game is a good one, before being re-skinned to its green theme.  Then I got the newest addition to Settlers of Catan today, which it turns out is all about oil.  If you use too much oil, it will eventually destroy the island, and deliberately foregoing oil is rewarded.  They directly address the polarizing nature in the rules, but claim they don't want to involve themselves in the political debate, that it's just a game.

I am not necessarily opposed to the shift towards games promoting more conscientious behavior, but it is getting kind of ridiculous.  I am for being a good steward of the earth's resources, as we are charged to do so in the Bible, but the idea that our individual choices effect the climate is a pretty arrogant assertion.  Kids don't need to be bombarded with this propaganda.  I found all sorts of things to worry about growing up, based on selective exposure to age inappropriate information. (Nuclear weapons, viruses, rapture, etc.)  The last thing kids need is to be filled with a fear that the world will be a barren wasteland by the time they grow up.  And of course on top of that, it's their parents’ fault, for driving an SUV.

So it might be worth taking a look at the games we play.  Most video games are based on the idea of staying alive as long as possible at any cost, which may not be the most Biblical model for values.  On the other hand, SimCity might hold they key to rebuilding the country, in that it illustrates what happens if the government spends more than it brings in in tax revenue.  Maybe we need to send free copies to everyone in Congress.

When Rejection is not Culturally Acceptable

I didn't realize the degree to which this was a problem, until talking with a friend of mine who works in a retail environment.  She is an attractive girl, and was telling me how customers frequently hit on her or ask her out.  I am of the opinion that relationships should be developed on the basis of more than just physical appearance, which is all that anyone is going on in that situation.  On top of that, many of the people approaching her appear to be twice her age.  So the question, which I had never really thought much about, is how does one respond in that situation?  Instead of just telling them no, or that she doesn't date people over 30 or 40 or whatever, she tells them that she is seeing someone.  While that is an admittedly affective way of closing the issue, regardless of whether it's true, I find it interesting that a more direct and truthful answer would not be considered as acceptable as a convenient lie or passive avoidance.  Both parties seem to prefer the charade, but that doesn't promote trust between the genders at a cultural level.

In a very different scenario to illustrate the same issue, I have a story that my Mom always used to tell.  My parents met as neighbors, and shortly after my Dad first asked my Mom on a date, his roommate did the same thing.  In this case, the parties involved actually know each other, so I would say the initial question is a more legitimate one.  The part of the story she would always get most excited about was, "and then he made me come up with an excuse for every night for the next two weeks."  As in he didn't take a hint that the answer was no.  After hearing her tell others this story many times, she brought it up to me during one of our conversations about relationships.  My response was to ask, "isn't it your fault for not giving him a straight answer?"  She paused, thought for a second, and then responded, "I've told that story to hundreds of people, and no one has ever said that."  "Does that make me any less right?"  The possibility of giving a straight answer doesn't even occur to most people.

I frequently hear something about wanting to get to know each other better first.  Isn't that the point of dating?  I guess I have Joshua Harris and the whole Christian anti-dating movement to thank for that, right?  Or another popular one is, "I am not ready to be in a relationship right now."  Regardless, the end result is the same, no progress, and no closure.  This leads to an interesting trust problem.  Sometimes those excuses are given hoping that the guy will take a hint, but other times they are legitimate, and the guy just needs to be patient.  The trick is to determine which is which, and I make no claim to be able to tell the difference.

I am not certain whether it is an American thing, or universal, but I am certain that it has a negative impact on people and their relationships.  It decreases trust in the idea that people will mean what they say.  I am not sure what the source of the problem is, maybe television, but it could be something else.  Solving the issue isn’t simple either, but deliberately communicating as clearly as possible is a good place to start.

Aiming in a New Direction

My previous post marks the halfway point in my college career.  That was as far as I got into writing the story while I was traveling, and it is a good stopping point.  I have a variety of other topics on my mind anyway, so it is probably a good time to switch gears for a while.

Among other recent projects, I have been building my own rifle.  I first looked into the idea a few months ago, but I wasn't sure if that is what I wanted to do, and wasn't in any hurry to start..  Recent national events have increased the urgency of that project.  After a good bit of research on the subject, from a variety of perspectives, I have decided to pursue that project, in part because I feel like it is an important civic duty.  Specifically I think it is important to take responsibility for one's own safety and freedom.  I would never look to the government to take care of me in regards to provisions or finances, so the same should be true of safety and freedom.  The government is supposed to take responsibility for the bigger picture issues, like making sure there is food in the grocery stores, but not to the point of making sure that I can pay afford to pay for it.  That is were my part of the responsibility comes in.  They are supposed to provide roads and bridges, not the cars to drive on them.  Americans have been given a high degree of freedom, at great cost to those who came before us, and it is our responsibility to both make appropriate use of that freedom and protect it.

With the current political climate surrounding the future of gun control, the market for firearms is through the roof right now.  So it is a bad time to be on the buying side of the transactions, but I have the same reasons and motivations as everyone else, in that it may be now or never.  Cost is not so much the limiting issue right now, as much as availability is.

The process of actually building a firearm is quite interesting, due to the strange nature of the laws we have.  It is my understanding that everything I have done is legal, but at times it has felt the way I would imagine a drug deal would be.  Buying parts in industrial areas on weekends, doing everything with cash, and learning how to finish milling my own parts, has been quite the adventure.  I am looking forward to actually having a finished product, but certain pieces may take quite a while to find.  But I have learned a lot in the process, and will eventually end up with a valuable tool, which I intend to pass on to my future children.

Riding the Relationship Rollercoaster

I spent a lot of time with J that summer, especially since my internship had fallen through, and I was on campus all the time.  She helped me re-paint the multimedia lab, and other parts of that project in the evenings.  Her roommate for the summer was one of my friends from the TV Production class, and therefore the Vegas trip, so we all hung out together in the evenings.  And she lived across the hall from the guys I worked with, who I am still friends with now.  I helped her take care of her roommate, who would come home drunk out of her mind on occasion, and we had all sorts of other adventures that summer.

Shortly before school resumed for the year, J was house-sitting for one of the faculty members, and I went to visit her.  After watching a movie, the conversation turned to our relationship.  She basically called the question in regards to whether or not I loved her, and was ready to tell her.  I told her I needed to think and pray about it.  So I had a lot on my mind while I was biking home that night.  My eventual conclusion to do so was based on two things: one I was conscious of, and one I was not, but which is obvious now.  I figured I should be able to say that to her and mean at least as much as she does when she says it, so that can't be wrong (and I was probably afraid of losing her, because I appreciated the role she played in my life).

So the next night when I went to see her, and at the appropriate moment, dropped that line.  The response was not what I was anticipating.  She was stunned for a moment, and then confused, and eventually started sobbing, but not in a good way.  Over the course of a half hour, it was revealed that basically she had been bluffing.  She had called that question expecting me to refuse, as I had in the past.  That would have given her grounds to break up with me, but leave it my fault. (Not that we were really even "together" but there was no real question that we basically were.)  It seems she was starting to develop feelings for the guy she was working with in San Jose, and was curious to explore that possibility.

So that night we ended with her being the one that needed to think and pray about things, and make a decision.  At a certain level, my role putting up with all this was ridiculous, since I wasn't even that emotionally attached to her.  But I was "used to" her, and she played a significant role in my life.  I liked spending time with her, and was probably not emotionally mature enough to have a deeper relationship with someone else, so I was sacrificing little by sticking around.  But the process probably had a serious impact on my ability to trust females, especially in regards to meaning what they are saying.

This time around, she ended up choosing me, which was a nice change, and probably a positive thing in regards to growth and confidence.  That marked the point of us definitively being back together again, and in a deeper and more significant relationship, as we went into the next school year.  Looking back, it’s hard to believe that whole on-and-off series of events took place in less than a year, from when Lindsay originally schemed to set us up together.

At School Over the Summer

When the semester ended, only about 60 students stayed on campus over the summer.  I was staying there to do my internship, and continued working at ISS to qualify to live in the dorms.  J stayed to work on her biology research project, and worked in the business office to earn her spot in the dorms.  Alex went home and while he only lived 30 minutes away, he was hardly heard from.  A week or two into summer, he broke up with J over the phone, and that was that.  He had only been interested in using her for his own purposes, in extremely selfish ways, and he was done with her.

Both J and I had gotten cars from our families at the beginning of the summer, but were used to staying on campus all the time, so we saw each other a lot.  My internship basically fell through before it even started, after being delayed a few weeks into the summer.  They ended up hiring another student who had just graduated, because he planned to stay there, instead of returning to school at the end of the summer.  The teacher who introduced me to that company had originally had a talk with me about the temptation to stay once I got established there.  I don’t think he could fathom how much my parents would have killed me if I had dropped out of college, regardless of who much I would have been paid there.  So instead I was at ISS full time that summer, which was okay, since I was committed to staying there and paying for my dorm room.  But in hindsight, I should have just stepped away from all of that, and returned to work at camp again.

My other major project that summer was to rebuild the multimedia lab, and help setup three new editing rooms.  The department had gotten a decent grant, and bunch of new high end computers, so we had to setup the infrastructure to support them.  I had taken on the role of Departmental Assistant, and oversaw most of the practical technical details for the program from then until I graduated.  The entire lab had been built haphazardly over the previous few years, as the department grew, with no real plan or organization.  So I tore the whole room apart, repainted it, rebuilt all the desks, and rewired the network.  It was similar to my Eagle Scout project, but on a much larger scale, and with a reasonable budget.  Across the hall, I started from scratch with another room, and after a few walls were build, I wired up three new edit rooms, and setup all of the computers.  All of the systems were cleaned up and optimized, and setup to actually communicate with each other, so students could learn to share digital assets, and truly collaborate together on complex projects.

J and I were staying two floors apart in the same small building, where all of the summer students were housed, and returned to eating all of our meals together, since there were very few other people around.  Our relationship slowly returned to its previous state over the course of the summer, without much conscious or deliberate action on our part, but we didn’t really define or formalized it.  That conversation was probably my job to initiate, but I had no clue how to do that back then.  She was also making occasional weekend trips to San Jose for her research project, and working with a guy up there on some joint microbiological experiment.  We spent a lot of time together, and gradually reconnected in steps over the course of the summer.

Finishing Up Sophomore Year

I had continued being friends with KC, my neighbor freshman year, and she ended up living with a different group of girls that year, all of whom I already knew.  Most of them were taking sign language, although we were not all in the exact same class.  I was over in their room practicing once a week, since that is what I was using to satisfy my foreign language requirement.

The strangest thing happened that spring, when they asked me to help them with something.  They were more excited than usual to see me at dinner that evening, and they all sat down to eat with me, which wasn’t particularly unusual.  But they were definitely looking for something.  It turns out, they were going to do a dance performance to the song “My Boyfriend’s Back” at the talent show that Student Life was putting on that evening.  And they wanted me to be the boyfriend who was returning to avenge his girlfriend’s reputation.

I was not a huge fan of the idea, for a variety of reasons.  First off I don’t really like acting or performing, even though my actual role was minimal, arriving at the end to cap off the song.  On top of that, the comedy of the plan really hinged on the fact that I was the least likely candidate for my role.  And while that was true, I wasn’t a part of the subculture that was concerned about appearances and gaining social position by who I was dating, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about what that ironic portrayal said about me either.  But they were all friends of mine, and a handful of attractive girls can be mighty persuasive, so I eventually agreed.

KC was the ringleader of this new set of roommates as well, so she was the “girlfriend,” while the other four were the “backup.”  The guy she was threatening the whole way through the song was one of their friends, who had the image at least, of being a smooth guy with the ladies.  The girls all started off looking as conservative as possible, with sweaters, long skirts, glasses, and hair in a pencil bun.  And over the course of the dance, all of those were discarded for more “attractive” wardrobe underneath.  I came on-stage at the end, and shove him out of there, to reclaim “my girlfriend.”  My unexpected appearance at the end definitely had the reaction from the audience that the girls were looking for.  But once again, I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about that, and what it said about the general perception of me, even though I was well known and respected around campus.

Anyhow, the performance went off as planned.  I wasn’t real stoked about the way it all worked out, but I survived the experience.  Ironically the other guy ended up being assigned as my roommate when I stayed on campus that summer, but we were both gone a lot, and rarely saw each other.  And then we connected up two years later as potential business partners, when four of us looked into starting a company upon graduation, but he ended up flaking out before we ever really got going.

I planned to stay on campus that summer so that I could do one of two required industry internships as part of the Multimedia program.  I had gotten what was basically an actual job lined up with Paradise FX, the leading company in Hollywood at the time for stereoscopic 3D work.  There were only a couple of main people in the company, and they were loosing their main technology guy for a while, so it was a perfect fit.  But there were still details to work out by the time the semester ended, so I stayed on with the ISS Dept at the school as well, and waited to work things out at the end of May.

First Time in Las Vegas

I attended my first of many NAB tradeshows my sophomore year of college, with a large group of students from my TV production class.  We carpooled, and I was assigned to ride with two guys, Gil and Rob, in Rob’s car.  They were late that morning, and everyone else had already left by the time we connected up.  Rob had been up all night, and was clearly drunk.  That was supposed to be okay, because Gil was going to drive.  So we set off, with Rob immediately passing out in the passenger seat, and me stuck in the back.  Gil didn’t know how to get there, and while I didn’t either, I at least knew the general direction.  It became clear the Gil had no idea where he was going as we headed south through Los Angeles instead of northeast to Nevada.  Rob just kept mumbling about staying on 5, while I was in the back, trying to convince him that he was going in the wrong direction.  They eventually figured it out when Rob woke up as we past Knott’s Berry Farm and asked why we were there.  We got back on track, another hour or two behind as we left the city, and then we stopped for gas in the high desert.  Rob decided he wanted to drive, which I was obviously opposed to.  But it was his car, so I was left with the option to get in, or be left in the middle of the desert.  Because we were so delayed, there was no way to catch a ride with one of the other cars, they were hours ahead.

So I reluctantly got in, and we resumed our drive through the desert.  Things seemed fine, so I started to fall asleep.  I woke up for a moment to realize that Rob was head down, eyes closed, as we hurled down the straight line of pavement at 80 miles an hour.  “HEY!  How about I drive?”  Head pops up, eyes wide, car swerves a bit. “No, no, I’m fine.”  Even Gil was with me now that he had woken back up, but Rob refused to pull over.  So I sat in the middle of the back seat, and glared at him through the mirror, but even with me staring at him, his eyes would slowly close, until I would yell at him.  We did eventually make it, but it was a stressful couple of hours.

There were about fifteen of us that went, and because of a mistake by Rob who helped plan the trip, we had only had two hotel rooms to cram into.  I actually was lucky enough to get a bed, but I never ended up getting to sleep anyway.  That night we arrived, those over 21 went out drinking and gambling, after leaving the six of us who were under 21 with a bathtub full of ice and alcohol bottles in the hotel room.  I had never drank before, but am not strictly opposed to it, so that was my first time.  We played a variety of games and such that night, while they all tried to get me drunk, since I was the only one who didn’t do this frequently back at school.  I drank all sorts of stuff that night, but felt no effect of any of it.  The best they could claim, was that I was a bit more relaxed than usual.  So between the cost, the bad taste, and no effect on me, alcohol has never held much appeal to me.  Anyhow, we eventually headed to bed around 3am, but other people were constantly showing up from their night on the town, and all sorts of things happened, so for the first time in my life, I got absolutely zero sleep before heading to the show the next morning.

One of the other multimedia students was showing his work at one of the booths.  When we arrived on the show floor that morning, he realized he was missing a bunch of the files he needed.  This was another project supervised by Dan, so we ended up flying another student out to Vegas that afternoon, to bring us another drive of data.  I spent the day seeing the show, and hanging out with others in the group we had come with.  There was all sorts of dramatic fallout from the drunken exploits of the previous night, which I got to observe with amusement.

We spent the whole next night in Dan’s hotel room, working on a borrowed laptop and beta software to rebuild the project with the new copies of the data, to present the next morning.  I was the only one left awake by morning, due to their excessive consumption of alcohol while working all night, so I took the files in and setup the demonstration.  This made me look good with the company we were doing the presentation for, a San Diego software company called Cineform.  Once that was done, I headed back to connect up with the larger group that was heading back to school that morning, and made sure I had a different ride back home.  I ended up finally sleeping in the back of that suburban for the drive home, after being up for 60 hours straight.  It was one hell of a day in Vegas.