Damn you, Activision

Anyone who knows me knows that I love video games. And I'm pretty damn good at them. As a nerdy kid I became ridiculously good at Pac Man (without learning a pattern from a book, I made up my own), and from there it just went downhill. There's hardly a video game I didn't waste countless hours (and quarters) mastering.

Then, of course, console and computer video games came along. Goodbye teenage social life. It took me years to recover from that. Luckily, I more or less gave up video games in college, when beer and girls suddenly became more interesting than Ultima III. With the exception of a brief stint that began with the dawn of the first person shooter (I mean, c'mon, Doom was like nothing I'd ever seen before, how could I not get hooked on that?) and finally ended with many 4 AM session of Unreal Tournament, I cut myself off. Call it a self-intervention. I deleted all that crap from my computer and didn't play video games any more.

Until now. I got a new roommate a few weeks ago who brought an Xbox 360 into my house. Seemed innocent enough. I'm over that, I can handle it.

Enter Guitar Hero.

I'm probably the last person on earth to have gotten hooked into this craze, but it hooked me hard. I mean, it combines all my favorite things - rocking out, playing guitar (sort of), and video games. It's air guitar with a scoreboard. And believe it or not I actually believe that the finger dexterity it develops will help me when playing ACTUAL guitar (which I swear will happen again. Once I can get through Knights of Cedonia on Hard).

So anyway. I am telling you all this so you know why I haven't posted much lately. It's because I'm completely sleep deprived from staying up until all hours playing Guitar Hero, instead of thinking of things to blog about.

I believe I've taken the first step towards recovery. I'm aware that I have a problem. I also have a pulled muscle in my right arm from playing Dragon Force's "Through the Fire and Flames" on Medium last night. Badly, I might add. How the hell does anyone play this on Hard, much less Expert?

There I go again. I am going to try to care about something other than this game. To that end I decided to finally take the plunge and get a digital SLR camera. I decided on the Nikon D60, it is now officially on order and I should have it in a day or two. If it takes an expensive new toy to get me away from the life-sucking Xbox then so be it.

The 911 Script

Yesterday at 11 AM, Adams Morgan again became the wild west as a Latino male was shot in broad daylight. The Prince of Petworth's story has an excellent account of the events in the comments.

There's also a bit of discussion there about the way the 911 operator handled the call. I was immediately reminded of the last time I called 911. They said the operator would not dispatch police until being given a street address. My own experience was similar. I told them I was on 11th Street NW between Park and Monroe. After negotiating about whether it was Park Place or Park Road for a while, they demanded a block number (which luckily I know because I live a couple blocks away) despite the fact that I'd told them it was halfway between two streets.

By the way there is a Park Place in DC - but it sure as hell doesn't intersect with 11th, in fact, it's parallel. If you put 11th and Park NW into Google Maps, it pulls up the right place in a second. Apparently, 911 operators don't have internet access.

I am sure there's some reason for this amount of anal retentiveness when fielding 911 calls, but whatever it is, it's not good enough. When you call 911, you're freaked out. That's why you called - because there's a crisis or all bloody hell is breaking loose. You don't have time to look for street numbers on nearby buildings, if there even were any to be found. You don't have time to go to the corner and look at the block number on a street sign, if there even is a street sign.

I understand if people give ambiguous directions or don't say the quadrant. But that is not the case in these situations. If you give a 911 operator an intersection, or a block between two streets, there should be no reason for any further discussion. This is how we tell cabs where we are going, this is how we describe locations to our friends. It works. Just. Fine.

This situation delays police response and frustrates people to no end. Why can't this be fixed?

Pet Extra

Perusing the blog roll today, I saw one of my blogger friends had just lost her cat. I've always loved animals and have had cats most of my life. Her lament reminded me of how much these creatures have added to my own life. This post will be dedicated to my menagerie, past and present. There are a lot more pictures here.

My current creatures:

Mingus





Lady





Creatures from my past life (alive and well):

Zoey





Kori





Creatures from my past life (no longer with us):

Pippin





Bacci



Shiloh

Shortchanged

I just went to the slev's by my office for a couple morning necessities. You know, advil, red bull, two packs of lucky strikes, a taquito from the heat roller case, and a ten-pack of scratch-offs. All right, I'm not quite that ghetto, that's pretty much what everyone else there was getting.

After waiting in line for five minutes while the guy in front of me carefully selected his Powerball numbers by hand -- because using six non-randomly selected numbers dramatically increases your chance of matching the ping-pong-balls than six computer-selected numbers -- I handed the lady a twenty for my $6.87 purchase. She gave me back $13.10.

I stared at the palm of my hand for a minute, confused. I looked again at the register. Yes, the price was $6.87. I looked back at my hand.

Jamie: It's $6.87, right?

Clerk: Right.

Jamie: (Confused) The change is $13.13.

Clerk: Right. $13.13.

Jamie: Umm. OK. Maybe I'm missing something. This is ten cents.

Clerk: Yeah?

Jamie: Do you see the problem here?

Clerk: No.

Jamie: Umm... how can I make this any more clear? I would actually like ALL the change. This is 10 cents, not 13 cents.

Clerk: (Finally appearing to understand) Oh, ok.. umm...

I don't really care about the 3 cents, of course. In fact I despise pennies, and usually leave them in the penny tray. This is about principle. About the idea that someone thinks it perfectly fine to shortchange ANY amount of money, and not only that, when called out on it, doesn't really even see the problem. And if it had been one or two cents, I might not have said something, since at least that's rounding in the right direction. But rounding down - when the closest nickel is up - is being given the finger.

As it turns out, she doesn't actually have any pennies in the cash register. Which I suppose was her reason for shortchanging in the first place. So the incident finally ends with the cashier getting my three cents... by raiding the charity jar. Classy.