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Day Three

Fax machines are how old? I ponder this as I stand by our fancy all-in-one machine. This is the third day I’ve tried to fax this single-page document (with cover letter!) to the State of Texas. I also ponder how long it takes to send an email. Two seconds maybe? How long does it take to send a fax? Twenty minutes? I’m just trying to verify it goes through so tomorrow I don’t come in to someone handing me a FAX FAILED document, which is what happened this morning.

So I’m standing at the printer (/fax/whatever) just waiting, watching the status bar say “Dialing” for who knows how long. Then someone prints something. Ugh. I’m sure that pauses my fax. The second and third printings don’t seem to bother it though. But the lady leaves and I find myself praying to the fax machine. “Please just send. Please send.” With my hand on its shoulder, imploring. Then I realize the ridiculousness of what I am doing. “I am praying to the fax machine.” And instead get mad at it. This ancient piece of technology (because it’s older than I am) refusing to do the simplest of its tasks—send one page over a phone line. Dial-up would’ve done this faster.

I get bored and poke around a bit. Accidentally hitting the power button. Why is the power button there? I had no idea it was there. Then I pressed it. Now my fax goes from “Sending” to dead. And I have to wait who-knows-how-long for this satanic object to restart.

When will this be over?

Evolve Again

I haven't been playing Evolve at all. But I have been watching it quite a bit. From all those hours of watching, I've decided that it's a beautiful game. Sure, it looks gorgeous, but I just love thinking about all the work the devs put into it. It's (pretty) balanced and neither hunters nor monster are easy kills.

I can see that it is frustrating. Many games I've played have an easy way out. An alien takes two or three shots to kill. If I hit a guy in the head once he's down and out. If I get caught off-guard in Destiny, I handily melee my way away.

In Evolve, your type really matters and you can do a few prescribed jobs. So you have to work with your team. If you try to go off alone, you will die. I find that beautiful, in a game design way. If you're the monster, one pounce doesn't kill even one hunter. Plus, the team can possibly revive them. Maybe I'm completely wrong and I know some people do find the game boring, but, watching it, it seems very well designed.

Still, I'm scared to play.

Late to the Party

Evolve is coming out next week and my boyfriend is super excited about it. I am more ambivalent, though his excitement is starting to bleed over.

Last month, I thought I would never play the game. I had gotten a code for the alpha and made many unsuccessful attempts to play at that time. Then I received an email with a code for the technical test on PS4 due to my "participation" in the alpha. I gave that to my boyfriend, since he hadn't gotten one and I knew he loved what he had played during the alpha. But, once again, I documented this for Twitter and a follower provided me with his spare code. (Thank you, @ilikesomegames!)

This time around, I was able to get into the game. I played the tutorial, but I think that was it. I spent so much time watching Jesse play, though, that I can't be sure I didn't play more. And when the test was over, I was sad that I couldn't go home after work for a session of Evolve.

Which is why I would consider buying it. Maybe. On sale. For some reason, it just didn't feel like something I would buy or ever put hours and hours into. Unless it was $20. I heard this same sentiment on at least one podcast (@gwjcc) as well. It seems like I might get bored. I don't know why. I can get addicted to some pretty repetitive games. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'll be watching a lot of Evolve for a few weeks. Well, maybe I'll be playing Resogun Vita, now that I think about it.

Programming for All!

Yesterday I started a new class on Coursera. I have completed one class there and signed up for a few others that I ended up not either not having time or deciding they weren't what I wanted. Honestly, even the class I finished didn't turn out to be what I had expected. (Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World ended up being a little more overview and a little less constitutional law than I was looking for, but it was a good class.)

The current class is called Programming for Everybody (Python) and I had a lot of fun messing around today, figuring where my computer hid my Desktop files, getting it to run a one line program.

Two line program.

I'm a little worried that the lectures will be boring, since "I already read this!" But I hope to improve my computer skills and figure out if I like this programming thing at all. We history (political science) majors can use all the "special skills" we can get.