Category: Diversions

Not won, just played. Yet I’m still pleased with this milestone of IPhone distraction. What next to achieve? Fortune? Glory? 500 Unique Beers? Stay tuned…

Gun Fight

Battle Zone

Front Line

While I don’t really think of myself as a ‘gamer’, I’ve pumped my share of quarters into quite a few machines in their 80’s heyday, and we’ve had our share of computer games and game consoles in my adult life. I typically play games in obsessive spurts. Not dabbling across many different games, but becoming totally engrossed by a particular game until I rule it, or it sends me away defeated. My latest addiction is Call of Duty: World at War.

First some quick history. Video games have been giving us the opportunity to kill each other, again and again, since the earliest classic games. I cut my combat teeth on games such as Gun Fight, Battlezone, and Front Line (much more to follow from me soon on my recent renaissance of classic arcade game play) The 90’s and our Playstation provided new and more realistic opportunities to play at war with EA’s Medal of Honor series.

On his last birthday, my son Will received an Xbox, and his first game was Call of Duty: World at War. Not surprisingly, the graphics, sound effects and overall gameplay make all the predecessor games seem pitifully primitive, and by comparison, they certainly are. But the biggest innovation is the ability to play the game on Xbox Live, in real time against other players. And unlike playing soldier as kids with the uncertainty of shouted, “I got you” and “No you didn’t”, the online game leaves no doubt when you’ve been got or have gotten someone else, typically with a graphic display of your limbless corpse and a ‘Nemesis Killcam” view showing you what your killer saw as he ‘got you’.

The other innovation, almost sinister in it’s ability to keep you playing, is the way the game doles out new and improved weapons earned with Experience Points (XP), and dangles ‘challenges‘ to be completed, such as my favorite in the ‘Humiliation’ category called ‘Cruelty’ in which you must “Kill an enemy, pick up his weapon, then kill him again with his own weapon”. After fighting your way up 65 levels of rank, unlocking new features along the way, you have the option of doing it all over again by entering a ‘Prestige’ level, which gives a new insignia and one new slot to save your favorite guns, but basically is just a voluntary do over.

So, after more than a couple of late nights of doing my duty, killing (and more often being killed by) my fellow basement dwelling online warriors you can expect to find online at any time of day, I noticed that my accumulated play time had passed seven days. Not seven days in a row, but 168 cumulative hours playing this damn game. And I can say with my new lingo that I took advantage of a Double-XP weekend to enter 2nd Prestige, and ‘Nightfire’ is my favorite level from the new map pack. Previous experience tells me that that I WILL reach a burnout point and put this game behind me. But for now I’m still hooked. Here’s what I’ve accomplished in this online week of war;

Playing Time:	7 Days, 2 Hours, 1 Minute
Score:	94,109
Kills:	7,463
Headshots:	713
Streak:	18
Deaths:	13,862
Rank:	542,550
Wins:	669

And for those who’ve never seen the game, here’s a brief video example of what it’s like;

For those that remember the 1983 hit movie War Games, in which Matthew Broderick’s character almost accidently begins WWIII by playing ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ against the W.O.P.R. computer. I’d like to reassure you that no such thing could ever happen. But when I ponder that I’m playing a realtime shooter against the typical 100,000+ people who are playing at any time of day, on a platform built by Microsoft, I just can’t make an promises that something won’t go horribly wrong.

I often wonder if I might suffer from some degree of OCD. The latest evidence of which is today’s project, sorting and cataloging my t-shirts. I have too many t-shirts, and it would not be an unreasonable chore to look through them for ones that I might throw out. But I couldn’t just do that. T-shirts are one of my primary pieces of clothing. I have acquired those that I have over many years, and most of them have some sort of personal or historical significance, at least to me. Before any purge, there must first be a census!

So what did I find? Here’s some results from my T-shirt Census:

Total Count: 54

Type Breakdown:

Political: 14
I acquired a few in this last year, my favorite of which was this Obama/Biden shirt purchased at the Democratic Convention in Denver. I attribute Obama’s historic win in Virginia to my wearing of this shirt while running in my Northern Virginia burb. But I also love this bush-basher.

Sports Related: 17 (5 Chicago Cubs)
Music/Band: 1 (wow, this is a change. In my younger days, just about all of my shirts were concert tees).
Blank: 3 (two orange, why?, and one single plain white tee).

Top Colors:
White & Grey: (combined total of 21 shirts)
Tie-Dye: 2

Top Brand:

Hanes & Gilden: 7 each

Age:

There are two that date to the 80s. One of which, I’m embarrased to say is a black tee that reads ‘Hustler Muff Dive’, which I think I acquired in high school and I hope I’ve never worn, but just never through out either. The other says, “Miru Mir”, Russian for “Peace on Earth” from the foreign language house I lived in off campus at UCSB.

My favorite in the batch is one of the oldest. It’s a black t-shirt from the Internet World Conference I attended in 1995. The shirt has held together enough to wear, but the fabric has achieved a unique softness that feels nothing like the heavy cotton it once was.

What other insights did I gain? Probably just that I need to do a better job prioritizing my tasks. Feel free to browse my list of tee shirts here, and see what insight you can learn about me from it.

At some point, when I wasn’t paying attention, the meaning of ‘shorts’ changed, and I mean ‘shorts’ in the context of pants without leg coverings, hence the name ‘shorts’. Today ‘shorts’ instead describes something more like a pair of small baggy pants with legs that reach to or beyond the knee. You’ll often see them worn hung low, with boxer shorts hanging out above. Ridiculous.

In my day, shorts meant one thing. OP (short for Ocean Pacific, who produced a fine line of real shorts, usually corduroy, and in a wide variety of colors).

Search for ‘OP Shorts’ online today, and you’ll find they’re now hard to find. Sport It sells OP, but has a limited supply. For someone of my waist size, orange seems to be the only option. Essential Apparel teasingly offers the color ‘royal’ in sizes 30 and 32… but, NOT. Each is unavailable, and then instead suggest their own knockoffs as an alternative. You might then turn to Ebay, where you’ll find plenty of listings for new and used OP shorts, and always with the adjective ‘vintage’ attached (I guess ‘antique’ just doesn’t work well for clothing, it is instead ‘vintage’).

And in today’s Washington Post, another like-minded fellow ask whence went the shorts, and got knocked down pretty hard. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m sticking with my OPs. Style is for snobs who will order you what to wear. Laugh all you like, I’ll stick with what I like, and what I am comfortable in.

Three Wise Guys on Short Shorts for Men
The Washington Post, June 15, 2008

Each year, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names in America. I’m happy to report that since I began paying attention to the trend for my own name, Christopher, back in 2005, it’s dropping trend as reversed. In 2004, Christopher was #10. In 2005, it had risen to #9. In 2006, it jumped to #7. And now I’m happy to tell you that for the year 2007, Christopher was the #6 most popular name for boys.To all of my fellow new Christophers out there, I bid you a fond welcome to the world. We’re a good bunch of guys, and we’re on our way to claim our rightful place in the #1 spot.