Ever since my call to be a "family history representative," I have been tinkering with the software that the FH library provided for each of us, RootsMagic. Apparently, it has the capability of signing on to New Family Search to find your immediate and extended family ancestry, and downloading it into your pedigree chart. Materials can be changed without worrying about anyone else looking to change it.
Oh, how I am intrigued. I set it to find my 25 generations above me (with four steps down to find the relatives), and I have seen many new and intriguing facts. Metcalfs, Smiths, Woodburys, and Crawfords alike are being found within my family line. I already knew that I was directly related to John Taylor (fourth great-grandfather), but I had no idea that there was so much I did not know about my family.
And still...
I have found that I enjoy the process of finding my family with a certain "lost" fondness that I once had. Perhaps this will become my antidote to my addiction to video games. I would hope so, but there is a limit to how much work is effective inside of my efforts. But, still, I cannot look into my family history without having the decency to work on it as much as I can. However, I can safely say that I can feel FH's warm arms telling me that I will still have my place with it if I pause to leave and go away, or if the power goes out. This was not so with video games (for the most part). I can enter information in RootsMagic and it will save as I go along. Technology is simply an instrument, but, oh how much good it is capable of. And yet, woe, to how much sorrow and grief it causes.
This world is nowhere near being black and white.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Nothing Left for the Inner Child
...I have no relief for my sources of entertainment. Nothing. None.
Ever since I left my concept of video games in the dust, I have no ground at all. Nothing to stand upon, nothing that brings me the joy that I once held from playing hours of video games. I find within myself a void, a longing for something that isn't there. (I would mention dieting, but I would need a more somber reference to base it off of...)
My life has become like the black screen of a television that lost power. However, I now face a dilemma that I would not have been able to observe had I been where I was three years ago: I can now look to see whether I want to stretch my legs and go for a walk, or try to find the reason for the television's cessation. This still leaves me with the question: Is there something out there that I can use to healthily replace my joy from video gaming? Where does my skill lie beyond the realm of the virtual? Is there a path to enlightenment that leads away from video games?
I have looked time and time again at reasons why I would not want to program video games:
- I would be destroying the very essence of others' time just as my own was almost destroyed years ago
- I would lead myself slowly into destruction again; I know that, were I to resume my video gaming habits, I would either repulse it again within minutes (by nature of ethics), or be enslaved perpetually. Nothing short of a miracle saved me from where I was, and making them would not only enforce me playing them, but spending hours upon hours working with them
I look at how my grades in college were affected by my choices to play video games, and I ultimately failed two courses that I should have excelled in: computer engineering, and physics. I saw many things that I now see as almost a self-brainwashing - I submitted a music CD to my English 1010 Class years ago, and all but two songs within the CD were directly related to video games. (Even one of the songs could have veritably been found within a video game, but there was only potential to become soundtrack material there.) And, yet again, I find myself reflecting upon my Missionary Farewell talk, which I found to be only two minutes long. I spent more time talking openly about video games in the M.T.C. than I did reading my 20-pt. font of a sheet of paper's worth of scripted material.
I needed to get away from my favorite haunt. There was nothing more dastardly than the path that video games were dragging me downwards with. I would not like to repeat what happened so many years ago, but I do know for myself that addiction to video games was not the end - I would have starved by lack of attention to bodily needs had that been the case. No, my spiritual needs were dying much faster, and had there not been (for lack of a better term) divine intervention, I would have been on the route to much more destructive habits.
Now that I have expounded a portion of my travels into the difficult past of my once demented memories, I can place before myself a question: What now? I don't know which way I can go to find something that would replace my natural capability for video games; only mediocre substitutes exist, which simply lead me to cups of happiness containing only drops of joy when I wander in thirst.
Please comment if you have any thoughts on the matter.
John
Ever since I left my concept of video games in the dust, I have no ground at all. Nothing to stand upon, nothing that brings me the joy that I once held from playing hours of video games. I find within myself a void, a longing for something that isn't there. (I would mention dieting, but I would need a more somber reference to base it off of...)
My life has become like the black screen of a television that lost power. However, I now face a dilemma that I would not have been able to observe had I been where I was three years ago: I can now look to see whether I want to stretch my legs and go for a walk, or try to find the reason for the television's cessation. This still leaves me with the question: Is there something out there that I can use to healthily replace my joy from video gaming? Where does my skill lie beyond the realm of the virtual? Is there a path to enlightenment that leads away from video games?
I have looked time and time again at reasons why I would not want to program video games:
- I would be destroying the very essence of others' time just as my own was almost destroyed years ago
- I would lead myself slowly into destruction again; I know that, were I to resume my video gaming habits, I would either repulse it again within minutes (by nature of ethics), or be enslaved perpetually. Nothing short of a miracle saved me from where I was, and making them would not only enforce me playing them, but spending hours upon hours working with them
I look at how my grades in college were affected by my choices to play video games, and I ultimately failed two courses that I should have excelled in: computer engineering, and physics. I saw many things that I now see as almost a self-brainwashing - I submitted a music CD to my English 1010 Class years ago, and all but two songs within the CD were directly related to video games. (Even one of the songs could have veritably been found within a video game, but there was only potential to become soundtrack material there.) And, yet again, I find myself reflecting upon my Missionary Farewell talk, which I found to be only two minutes long. I spent more time talking openly about video games in the M.T.C. than I did reading my 20-pt. font of a sheet of paper's worth of scripted material.
I needed to get away from my favorite haunt. There was nothing more dastardly than the path that video games were dragging me downwards with. I would not like to repeat what happened so many years ago, but I do know for myself that addiction to video games was not the end - I would have starved by lack of attention to bodily needs had that been the case. No, my spiritual needs were dying much faster, and had there not been (for lack of a better term) divine intervention, I would have been on the route to much more destructive habits.
Now that I have expounded a portion of my travels into the difficult past of my once demented memories, I can place before myself a question: What now? I don't know which way I can go to find something that would replace my natural capability for video games; only mediocre substitutes exist, which simply lead me to cups of happiness containing only drops of joy when I wander in thirst.
Please comment if you have any thoughts on the matter.
John
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Parables of the Video Games
I will begin by saying that my short acquaintance period for my return to USU has been almost pandemonaic... chaotic, to say the least. My efforts to establish myself here have been casually desperate (if I can even use such a term), with my state of confusion even leading to my clothing situation. No, no, I'm not in utter shambles, mind you, but I still as yet have to sort out my clothing into a workable order of access (which, by the way, adds a new spin on doing laundry).
I shall now begin my explanation of my title. Originally (e.g., before my mission), I had a headphone system for my computer that looked like I could fit into a call center - single headphone speaker, microphone on a pivot, you get the picture - that I enjoyed tremendously. Among the reasons why, I could unplug one or the other at will, depending on my mood. Now that the picture has been painted fully, zoom forward three years to (roughly) last week. I was looking to install Google Video/Audio Chat on my Aggiemail account, and when I went to check the microphone (because I knew that there was no video to be had yet) I could not get the computer to recognize microphone input. Now, to keep in mind, I knew that the headphone speaker still worked because I had been using it for some time after I had set up my computer again. So, I checked the Windows Help questionnaire. As a final review of that questionnaire, I would highly encourage the user to look to find alternate solutions to his/her problem without referencing said help function. Needless to say, the questionnaire told me to re-install my driver that was giving me grief about no mic sound. This led me to look online for the driver for my speakers/microphone. For those who do not know this, both the microphone and the speakers are on the same driver, and I spent the next three days looking for a replacement driver for my (now silent) computer. When I finally did obtain my real driver, it absolutely did not want to install itself correctly on my computer, despite my constant prodding to get it to work out.
Now, to the first reason why I titled this what I did. I eventually gave up on the whole "reinstall the driver" thing, and decided to look into the system restore function, because I remembered my past with fondness and a burbling computer, whereas all I heard then was the CPU fan running in the background. As I began the system restore function, I could not help but think of the Song of Time (G, C, Eb, G, C, Eb, G, B, A, G, Eb, F, G, C, lowBb, D, C if you want to hear it: [q:quarter, h:half, etc;] q h q q h q 8 8 q h 8 8 q) as I set the computer to restore itself to what it was the week before. If you are unfamiliar with this example, Link (Majora's Mask) plays this tune to return to the first day during game-play. When the computer was restarted, I was joyfully blasted by my speakers as I logged into my computer. Now, I'll apologize in advance: I won't tell you what I mean by this next statement, but that event meant more to me than just having my speakers working again, though I still don't have my microphone working yet. It probably is broken now that I think about it...
Now, for my next story, this being one that is significantly less long-winded. I have successfully named my bicycle, and after I tell you my encounters, I will tell you its name. When I returned to USU from the weekend I had spent in my family's ward, my father had finished his maintenance upon my bicycle that I had been using three years ago. Now, I don't know about you, but there's a lot to be said about a bicycle that has been waiting two, three years in a dusty shed with who knows how much could happen to it. My father had to tighten the bearings on at least one wheel's axle, re-lubricated the chain with what I believe to be WD-40 (or a very dusty and rusted mixture of bicycle chain and motor oil - I hope it was more along the lines of WD-40...), and bent one of the teeth back on the pedal's gear system from a 90 degree angle outwards. It still needed a decent lubricant and a fill-up of air in the back tire, which Aggie Blue Bikes was willing to provide after I tried as hard as I could to remove much of the previous lubricant.
I found out the hard way (again) that a bicycle runs much smoother and faster if it has a full tire. Once all that was fulfilled, I began riding it around campus, which is somewhat difficult considering all the crowds that line the sidewalks from building to building. Such a day happened where I rode my bike all around campus, and I found a different route that had less pedestrians on it. My final class (in Old Main) that day finished early because many of my colleagues taking the day's exam were slow in finishing, whereas I was one of the faster ones. After visiting the Bookstore for more Scantrons, I decided to take the road that led from Old Main to Old Farm, which happens to be a very steep descent on bike or in a car. I found myself humming the Final Fantasy 7 airship theme, especially as I began to be riding faster than my maximum speed on the downhill slope. Total time on bicycle: roughly five minutes, maybe less. From that point, I found the name fitting: my airship. As it turns out, I enjoyed flying around with my airship in FF7, and I figure that I'll be getting a similar relationship with this bicycle.
Now that I'm done telling my stories, perhaps I can do something productive. Like eat dinner, or something.
I shall now begin my explanation of my title. Originally (e.g., before my mission), I had a headphone system for my computer that looked like I could fit into a call center - single headphone speaker, microphone on a pivot, you get the picture - that I enjoyed tremendously. Among the reasons why, I could unplug one or the other at will, depending on my mood. Now that the picture has been painted fully, zoom forward three years to (roughly) last week. I was looking to install Google Video/Audio Chat on my Aggiemail account, and when I went to check the microphone (because I knew that there was no video to be had yet) I could not get the computer to recognize microphone input. Now, to keep in mind, I knew that the headphone speaker still worked because I had been using it for some time after I had set up my computer again. So, I checked the Windows Help questionnaire. As a final review of that questionnaire, I would highly encourage the user to look to find alternate solutions to his/her problem without referencing said help function. Needless to say, the questionnaire told me to re-install my driver that was giving me grief about no mic sound. This led me to look online for the driver for my speakers/microphone. For those who do not know this, both the microphone and the speakers are on the same driver, and I spent the next three days looking for a replacement driver for my (now silent) computer. When I finally did obtain my real driver, it absolutely did not want to install itself correctly on my computer, despite my constant prodding to get it to work out.
Now, to the first reason why I titled this what I did. I eventually gave up on the whole "reinstall the driver" thing, and decided to look into the system restore function, because I remembered my past with fondness and a burbling computer, whereas all I heard then was the CPU fan running in the background. As I began the system restore function, I could not help but think of the Song of Time (G, C, Eb, G, C, Eb, G, B, A, G, Eb, F, G, C, lowBb, D, C if you want to hear it: [q:quarter, h:half, etc;] q h q q h q 8 8 q h 8 8 q) as I set the computer to restore itself to what it was the week before. If you are unfamiliar with this example, Link (Majora's Mask) plays this tune to return to the first day during game-play. When the computer was restarted, I was joyfully blasted by my speakers as I logged into my computer. Now, I'll apologize in advance: I won't tell you what I mean by this next statement, but that event meant more to me than just having my speakers working again, though I still don't have my microphone working yet. It probably is broken now that I think about it...
Now, for my next story, this being one that is significantly less long-winded. I have successfully named my bicycle, and after I tell you my encounters, I will tell you its name. When I returned to USU from the weekend I had spent in my family's ward, my father had finished his maintenance upon my bicycle that I had been using three years ago. Now, I don't know about you, but there's a lot to be said about a bicycle that has been waiting two, three years in a dusty shed with who knows how much could happen to it. My father had to tighten the bearings on at least one wheel's axle, re-lubricated the chain with what I believe to be WD-40 (or a very dusty and rusted mixture of bicycle chain and motor oil - I hope it was more along the lines of WD-40...), and bent one of the teeth back on the pedal's gear system from a 90 degree angle outwards. It still needed a decent lubricant and a fill-up of air in the back tire, which Aggie Blue Bikes was willing to provide after I tried as hard as I could to remove much of the previous lubricant.
I found out the hard way (again) that a bicycle runs much smoother and faster if it has a full tire. Once all that was fulfilled, I began riding it around campus, which is somewhat difficult considering all the crowds that line the sidewalks from building to building. Such a day happened where I rode my bike all around campus, and I found a different route that had less pedestrians on it. My final class (in Old Main) that day finished early because many of my colleagues taking the day's exam were slow in finishing, whereas I was one of the faster ones. After visiting the Bookstore for more Scantrons, I decided to take the road that led from Old Main to Old Farm, which happens to be a very steep descent on bike or in a car. I found myself humming the Final Fantasy 7 airship theme, especially as I began to be riding faster than my maximum speed on the downhill slope. Total time on bicycle: roughly five minutes, maybe less. From that point, I found the name fitting: my airship. As it turns out, I enjoyed flying around with my airship in FF7, and I figure that I'll be getting a similar relationship with this bicycle.
Now that I'm done telling my stories, perhaps I can do something productive. Like eat dinner, or something.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
