Well, emergency’s over and TGM is back up. It’s a strange experience, being heavily involved in a forum. I’m sure a lot of the people on the internet can relate, and it sometimes feels dorky, but it really does have the essence of a small town community in the day to day goings on. The boy / girl ratio is the only thing that I would change. As it stands in todays gaming world there are still *very* few girls interested in FPS 3d shooters. Percentage wise, of course.

To give you an example of what I’m talking about with that communal feeling, one of the main problems that you get when you spend you’re current gaming world revolved around a one level demo is that if there’s a way to cheat, someone will have found it. Cheaters have been a rampant problem in the last year or so, ranging from annoying barrel campers to insidious wall hackers. Since this game was a demo there was no support from Raven who had more important things to worry about with the full version. Enter sheep, our resident computer proficienado. He felt that SOF2 was in dire need of anti-cheating software and selflessly stepped up to bat to program it. Well I shouldn’t say selflessly, there’s always an element of self in everything you do. However any source of accomplishment should be nourished and I’m pretty sure that the TGM crew have fueled him by lauding him with praise.
Yet praise and wellwishing do not pay the bills unfortunately. There are a lot of people out there on the internet that are contributing in small but meaningful ways without any kind of financial reward. The fact that they do this without any kind of (substantial) financial reward should speak well of their character and sense of duty. Why else would the contribute, as a programmer like sheep or any of the other thousands of open source programmers who toil away for hours upon end, if they didn’t receive some kind of compensation? Perhaps they believe that what they’re doing will be benefitial to the world in some small way, or because they enjoy the encouragement from others, but it would be nice to see some kind of financial reward for their efforts.
Anyways, I think I’ve talked about TGM stuff for too long, plenty of other stuff happened tonight. Went to a rave party here in Winnipeg, watched Wally spin some records, smoked a bit of pot and enjoyed that wonderful Winnipeg vibe. I started writing an article about the Winnipeg night life a week ago or so, but I’ve been neglecting it. I wish I had more time to write, aghh! This was more of the same, that open honesty that comes from being equals. I was dressed as a monk, which was originally supposed to be a wizard. Unfortunately the shoddy job on the robe design (thank you, me) led to a change of plan. You see? I’m like the willow who bends in the wind, whereas the strong oak breaks and comes with a shitty costume.
There were a lot of nice people there tonight, a lot of younger kids from small communities all across the Manitoban prairies. Everybody was on some kind of drug or another but it led to a nice mix of different conversations. The guy on mushrooms vs the guy on crack led to different levels of introspection and communication. The one poor kid was bragging about how many rocks he’d smoked and all I could think about was why was he trying to break the smoking exit door? Where’s the satisfaction from wanton destruction? What is so wonderful about crack? Then there was the girl on E with whom I had a terribly un-smooth conversation about what my costume was. I’m pretty sure I scared her, although I don’t know why.
So tomorrow I’m heading to a funeral. It’s 4:30 and I have to be up in 6 hours or so, yay for the weekends. Then another party tonight at my house, Chez Quix, and then sunday, beautiful sunday. Maybe I’ll have that article up then.