Maybe I just don't get it.

I was in college once. A while ago. For a long time. With very little to show for it. It was near the early parts of the Internet revolution. I remember needing to get a signature on a form before I could have my first internet account that let me do such awesome stuff as gopher and telnet and finger (if at least 2 of those don't make sense, you may was well stop reading. You're not in my age bracket).
A while after that is when Napster made it big. Those were the days. I was on a company-sponsored cable modem with a big fatty T3 backbone. I downloaded ill-gotten music like it was going out of style. I don't have the 'too many songs to listen to in a lifetime' disease that so many of my cohorts have. I was choosy. Underground grunge remixes and rare cuts were my trade. I downloaded like it was going out of style. And it did, in a big way. The heyday of stealing music from random strangers went by the wayside, as did my high-speed connection.
Fast-forward to a not-twenty-something age and now I'm back at college, this time in charge of whatever hapless youths I can keep interested in working for the university until they graduate. We're in the age of the download. No one pays for anything, music, movies, TV shows. Doesn't matter they're all sharing it with reckless abandon. Nothing new, again I was in college so the though of paying to download anything was pretty much unheard of.
So one day I wander in to my help desk, one of my students is busy helping a customer with some strange time-consuming dilemma. On the monitor behind him is running some nearly 1st run major blockbuster movie from not very long ago. Chinese subtitles flash on the screen, the colors are washed out and dingy looking, the resolution is straining not to pixelate on the 17' lcd panel, and every now and then you can hear an outburst of laugher or coughing or conversation from an audience that's obviously just off screen. We're talking major Hollywood Special-Effects flick, not some award-wining indie feature full of important dialog and deep messages. Stripped of all its luster and "oooh ahh" factor reduced this to looking like a video tape from a bad high-school drama.
I guess the part I'm missing is how that is enjoyable in any way. How bad do you need to watch this fantastic movie minus all the fantasy? Was my student just such a rabid fan of this Major Feature that he was willing to slog through the murky visuals and packed-house distractions? Was he unable to cough up the dough (or suck up to parents) to get in and see the thing in all its glory 4 months ago? Doubtful. This is just one example of what I've seen over and over. In college, and out. From the die-hard fan to the casual downloader. There's an urge. A compulsion to have the thing you're 'not supposed to have'. An unconscious need to buck the system no matter how bad the end product really is. But it's like doing a smash-and-grab in the second-hand store, filling your pockets with costume jewelery and broken pocket watches. Most of the time you're diluting even the minuscule elements that make the thing worth while in the 1st place. I hope you're getting something meaningful to your soul and intellect, since you're missing out on the cool stuff.
Of course there are better-quality downloads out there, and most of the people I know who engage in said behavior are choosier in their production values than I've been describing so far.
But maybe that's not what I'm getting at.
The funny thing is how well trained the media has us. How we can't resist seeing the next big movie until we've spent our hard-earned time watching it only to say "man the effects were good, but the rest of it was crap". It happens with books, music, tv, video games. They crank up the hype machine and we eat it with Soylent Green enthusiasm. We want it so badly, but we don't even know why. It permeates our culture so badly we're even willing to steal it (according to the current forms of copyright law anyway), or at least take it if it seems to be given away for free. The snake oil they're selling is often so awful, but we swallow it anyway. There seem to be precious few who can resist the lure of the blockbuster. Who are willing to pass up because it doesn't meet their needs or hold their interest. People who hold to a different set of standards. They can look at something critically and decide before hand that maybe it's not worth the time to get caught up in, rather than simply march forth with the masses to the beat of todays manufactured Top 40 hit.
Get what you want, but at least make sure you really want it. The machines have you, and they play for keeps Copper Top.

Tales from the Help Desk

A Play

Setting- Any small private liberal arts college. One that people like me could not afford to go to when we were going to school and had to settle for seven years of state school.

Location- A small but friendly Help Desk attached to the 24/7 computer lab complete with free printing for all.

Characters-
Me: Lowly help desk manager. Somehow keeps friendly attitude despite years of tech support experience.

Awesome Help Desk Student: Unshakable undergrad, capable of handling dozens of MPM (Morons Per Minute).

Some Douchebag: Hip-looking, sallow-eyed loser. Obviously puts higher priority in clothing choice than bathing habits.

Curtain Rises.

Some Douchebag- "Do you have any computer paper I could have?"

Me- "You could go to the bookstore and maybe buy some."

Some Douchebag- "Yeah, but that's expensive."

Me-"So you'd rather just steal it from me? We have to pay for that you know."

Help Desk Student- "For a cheaper alternative you could shop at any of the large discount office supply stores nearby."

Some Douchebag- [walks away dejectedly... likely to come back and steal paper from the printer trays later anyway]

End.

Lesson- If you're going to an expensive college and can already afford a computer, printer, and ink/toner for said printer; please come up with a creative story to get the jaded help desk people to give you free paper you don't deserve.

Mostly harmless

It's one of those sun stabbing me in the eyes days. No warmer or brighter than the day before. Something just keeps my head down and lids half-masted. Makes the sunglassless steering more hazardous. Trips like this used to be mind-opening coffee and cigarette sessions and arrogant wait staff. Now the philosophic times are crammed into two hours of the back seat pickup because that's the only time the delirious little one will sleep. Barely enough time to circle the ways I don't know very well and hit the revolving door of complaining about everything a couple of times. Combine that with the fifty-dollar fillups and the shrink-fees start to sound worth it, I have good benefits you see.
Used to be able to get some distance on these things. Take a few days/miles and get ahead of the insects instead of watching them splash on my side of the windshield, right where I didn't want them to. Seems to be more like that lately. Can't be satisfied kicking up loose sticks in my face, instead less harmlessly splintering to pierce me in the eye, leaving only one left squinting at whats left of the glare on the road. Things can't just fall off the shelf, they have to fall, hit something else full and sticky and bring them both crashing down on your bare feet right when the eggs are done. Might just be me, but the random accidents are becoming perfect storms of mini-tragic events, ravaging my lack of calm into downright fury.
Somewhere along the sight-splitting road I blew a seal. Lost the ability to shift gears and run smooth on rough terrain. Went careening from easy-going to mercury-switch in a few miles of draining fluid. Shouldn't get out of whack like this. Stuff that used to shred my nails just glides, off, but little unworthy imbalances destroy my world in new and stupid ways. Faulty government, melting ice caps, email down? No sweat. Going to the dmv because my license expired two months ago and you're the first grocery store clerk to stonewall my post road-trip beer, I'll burst through the wall and take on slow-hour traffic with my bare hands and teeth. Alter the way I've decided things need go in my head and I'll detonate every blade of grass on this whole city block, leaving your upper-middle class sensibilities with an unmovable brown wasteland to unappreciate.
I swear I will.
One more move and the grass gets it.

The days of wiine and roses

If any of you follow console gaming, you already know that Nintendo's Wii is currently the the console to beat. Innovative, simple controls and a fetching price-tag have made it surprisingly popular. Developers are scrambling to produce content for it after they abandoned Nintendo during the GameCube years. Nintendo themselves didn't anticipate its popularity enough and are having trouble keeping up the supply chain. Since the day it was launched, stores can't keep them on the shelves for more than a couple of hours. Many of the smaller gaming stores haven't even seen any in shipments for months.
That's because they're all hiding in Vancouver Washington. I have it on good authority that the Fred Meyer store in Vantucky there keeps a constant supply of Wiis. But, hey. Since it's not the day after Thanksgiving, no one really cares about How 'Drink got is Wii. I could have grabbed one before, lots of people did. Needless to say I have one now.

It is cool, innovative, and fun. I can play video games without the usual butt-cramping, and thumb-wear I'm used to for marathon sessions. Games are intuitive, and family-friendly. Inadvertently or not, Nintendo has re-awakened the parlor-game niche for the console market. You think anyone's going to shell out for a dumbed-down tennis/golf/bowling/pool game for their spanking-new now-gen state-of-the-art console? Not on your life. But wait, to play tennis I swing my little wii-mote like a real tennis racket? Sign me the fuck up! The possibilities for cheesy, simple games that use even a shred of real-life activity in the wii-mote are endless (although most possibilities are already covered in the WarrioWare game- trust me).

Getting the thing started was not all booze and daises, there's a couple of quirks I didn't expect that left a sort of tangy taste in my mouth from something that's supposed to be sexy and elegant from start to finish.

Sensor Bar: Once I decided where to put the sensor bar on the top of my not-flat-topped TV, I was cruising along just fine. Until I noticed some colored splotches marring the stark-white background of the Wii menus. I don't have a new TV, it's a couple of years old and shows a little bit magnet-wear, and don't commonly stare at a completely white background so at first I thought maybe my tube was just showing its age. The more I stared, the worse it got, and soon enough a casual flip of the channels was enough to confirm that something had affected the screen magnetically. Sure enough moving the bar away from the TV for more than a few seconds started the screen down its slightly less blotchy look. Swell. This of course prompted me to move the bar from one frying pan into another fire: on the TV stand, in reach of my toddler. Needless to say we can now play the Wii blemish-free, but occasionally have to pry the sensor bar away from the little bandit before he rips the cord out during his getaway run. Silly Nintendo, if the thing was meant to be put on top of or as close to a TV as possible wouldn't some better video shielding been in order? Or have we simply crossed over the event-horizon of old cathode tubes, while I'm still spinning in an ever-smaller orbit on my 3-year-old, not LCD, non HD junker?

WiFi: One of the coolest features of the Nineteno Wii is the built in WiFi access. No extra network adapters to buy, just plug and play. Sort of. Setting it up was easy, I keep my wireless wide open these days (drop me a line, I'll give you my address and you can sit out front of my house and hog my bandwidth all day if you want) so I didn't even have to deal with any WEP or WPA hoopla. Click the button.. searching...searching.. squat. I scratch my head and take another look through the settings: all of which are correct (hi.. part-geek for a living, I know how to configure wireless junk). Nothing. Now I'm grumpy because I have to get off my lazy couch and dive into my wireless router to see what's up. Big surprise, everything is fine. Other computers are connected, the Wii just doesn't even show up on the list. Start to wonder is the Wii 802.11b or g? I have my router set to deliver g-only, since none of my devices are Neanderthal enough to only have b capabilities. 'Cept for my Wii apparently. Switching up my signal to broadcast both b and g ranges got the Wii happily on its way and (slowly) downloading updates. Maybe it was a cost-cutting decision, the Wii packs in a lot of mojo for a small price-tag. Perhaps it was a reliability and range issue. I was just a little disappointed inside to take what I felt was a step backward in my digital life.

That's it, that's all. Just two little issues in an otherwise worthy device. Maybe it's just me: my TV is too old, my router is too new for the Wii (hint, the TV and router are the same age = 3 years older than the Wii).

Oh and watch out for the tennis game, it's a doosey on the medical bills.