July 8, 2002
Let me tell you up front - I am not much of A Patriot. While I know I enjoy the various freedoms I have because of the country I live in, and the people who fought and died for it, I stubbornly resist getting all nationalistic about it. Thus, I'm not much into the whole fireworks thing or other Fourth of July stuff. Lance isn't into it, either, which works well.
So.
Lance and I took the fourth Off. I don't simply mean off from work, or even yardwork, or housework. No, we left the whole program and took a break from reality. Ensconced in our respective offices, we plugged into virtual worlds of adventure/RPG/RTS games and tuned out from the world (for those of you who actually have lives, "RPG" means "Role-Playing Game," and "RTS" means "Real-Time Strategy." Shorthand for "Insanely Life-Sucking, Time-Eating, All-Consuming Non-Reality-Based Pasttime.)
These games, as I've written elsewhere, are like crack. They also have a huge, devoted, oft-fanatical following of otherwise normal (sometimes) geeks. For about a year, Lance has been eagerly awaiting the release of "Warcraft 3," an RTS game involving playing various mythical races in many quests along an intricate plotline. The graphics are very pretty, and the interface looks good. I'll probably give it a shot when he's done.
I was lost (sometimes literally) in the huge, HUGE world of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. This is a mind-boggling RPG of epic proportions. The graphics aren't mind-blowing, but the sheer vastness and complexity of the environment is a bit overwhelming. I've logged probably close to 30 hours in the game, maybe even closer to 40, and I haven't yet explored a third of the world! Insane.
But that's how we spent the fourth of July - glued to our monitors from when we got up, until about 5 in the morning. And, we'd both been playing late into the night before that. In fact, at 1am Wednesday night, Lance came into my office. "Done for the night?" I asked, surprised. He laughed. "No, I'm going to the store to lay in supplies." He came home with a box of raspberry Zingers, a case of Dr. Pepper, and sundry other things. For most of the weekend, we sustained ourselves on not much but Junk.
F-16s have been flying over the house regularly all weekend; as I sit here, I've been thinking "hmm, we've got some good flight sims downstairs..."
It's a sickness, I tell you.
Fortunately for me, I'll be leaving on Wednesday for a 2-week trip to Michigan, so I'll be wrested away from my computer. This will be Good.