{"id":1436,"date":"2007-10-18T18:03:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isplotchy.com\/blog\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2013-05-04T01:46:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T01:46:01","slug":"the-cool-lame-nexus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isplotchy.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/the-cool-lame-nexus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cool Lame Nexus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Idea Of Progress<\/a> recently tagged me with a task I thought might be fun to attempt.<\/p>\n

I am acutely aware of my own idea of coolness and how it often intersects with what others would consider lame.<\/p>\n

To fulfill my task, I now present to you five I’m-cool-yet-lame-to-you facts about myself.<\/p>\n

1. I geeked out with a couple Apple II graphics programs in junior high.<\/span><\/p>\n

In what was perhaps foreshadowing of my current career in IT, I was really into playing around with some Apple computers in the computer lab at my junior high school.<\/p>\n

There were two different graphics programs I played with — lo-res (GR) and high-res (HGR).<\/p>\n

In HGR, I mostly did weird things where I would have shifting lines I created by plotting lines using X-Y coordinates, set by counter variables I would decrement and increment. Ah ha! I can see already that you have no idea what the hell I am talking about. In plain English, the stuff I created in HGR kind of looked like the Qix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In GR, I was even more geeky. The GR screen consisted of a screen of 40 by 40 blocks. In GR you could issue commands to make horizontal lines, vertical lines and individual dots. I actually had graph paper where I would draw out pictures, which I would then painstakingly render in a GR program.<\/p>\n

My pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance was a nighttime scene with a red sports car, with an animated shooting star falling from the sky. Wicked! Unfortunately, I have no idea where my original graph paper or programs are. Your loss, I guess.<\/p>\n

2. I made Billy Bob swear.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s another computer anecdote showing how cool\/lame I am, also from around the time I was in junior high. I was a big fan of arcade games in my youth. Chuck E. Cheese’s<\/a> was about the only place within walking distance of my house that had any arcade games (and those weren’t even all that good), so every once in a while I’d go there.<\/p>\n

At the time there was a computer terminal there on which you could play some various games. I think the games were free (they were educational, and not that popular with Chuck E. Cheese patrons). One of the activities on the computer was a somewhat primitive voice synthesis program. You typed in some words, and “Billy Bob” the bear would say the words in his eerily synthetic voice. Obviously, the first thing I tried to do was make him swear.<\/p>\n

Oh, those clever computer programmers! Whenever you typed in “shit” or “fuck” the voice synthesizer would instead say “Billy Bob Will Not Say That”. <\/p>\n

I immediately rose to the challenge, typing “shiht” and “phuck”, which Billy Bob promptly pronounced. I think that’s when I started to insanely cackle.<\/p>\n

Then I typed “fuck phuck” which made the program say “Billy Bob Will Not Say That Fuck”.<\/p>\n

Man, I still smile thinking about that. Good times.<\/p>\n

3. I was a kickass Dungeon Master for a day.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have already documented my limited experience with Dungeons and Dragons here<\/a>. However, I have not mentioned that I DM’ed a game once. A DM (Dungeon Master) is the guy who is responsible for guiding player’s characters through an adventure. He or she (aw, who the hell am I kidding, it’s just “he”) plays all the Non-Player characters (NPC), he rolls dice for monsters fighting the characters, he is the characters’ eyes and ears in the world they are experiencing. My short time as a DM was at the University of Illinois in Urbana. With me being lame and living in a twelve floor male-only dorm of concentrated lameness, I am assuming that the probability of me playing Dungeons and Dragons in some capacity there was very high.<\/p>\n

Anywho, it was just one game, with me as the DM and two other people playing characters. It actually was just the start of an adventure we never finished. For preparation, I had scribbled to myself some very basic details about the world I was having these people move their characters through. I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. But, here’s the coolness. I realized I was good. I reacted very quickly to their characters’ actions. I was rapidly painting a world as their characters walked into it, and it was a nice, vivid world fraught with danger and excitement. I was confident, and knew I could be a decent DM if I wanted to be.<\/p>\n

But, that’s as far as I took it. Which I’m fine with.<\/p>\n

4. A band I was in got a record released in Italy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wow, that sounds cool, don’t it? It does until I tell you the band was one of the most stinkingly pretentious, dumb-dumb lyric, cheesy bands that ever reared its head in Southern Illinois.<\/p>\n

I guess I carry the coolness\/lameness duality within myself for this experience. It was great to be on a record in another country, but I just wish it wasn’t the lame album that it was.<\/p>\n

If you play your cards right, I might upload one of the songs I was on.<\/p>\n

5. I still remember the plotlines of my Amazing Spider-Man comics.<\/span><\/p>\n

I stopped collecting comics over twenty years ago. My favorite title was The Amazing Spider-Man. I have a pretty damned good memory for things I like.<\/p>\n

I am proud that I still remember the one-off villain Mindworm made his first appearance in issue #138. Oh, who can forget the sadness that is issue #121? Poor, poor Gwen Stacy.<\/p>\n

If you check out the Amazing Spider-Man Wikipedia article<\/a> and scour through the revisions, you may note that I corrected the first appearance of The Lizard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Damn, I am cool\/lame!<\/p>\n

I tag all the lame people! Cool people, relax!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Idea Of Progress recently tagged me with a task I thought might be fun to attempt. I am acutely aware of my own idea of coolness and how it often intersects with what others would consider lame. To fulfill my task, I now present to you five I’m-cool-yet-lame-to-you facts about myself. 1. I geeked … Continue reading The Cool Lame Nexus<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-peek-into-the-exciting-life-of-splotchy","category-meme"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Cool Lame Nexus - SPLOTCHY<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/isplotchy.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/the-cool-lame-nexus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Cool Lame Nexus - SPLOTCHY\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Idea Of Progress recently tagged me with a task I thought might be fun to attempt. 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