Morality, karma, call it what you will but theres an aspect of ourselves that defines how we act and interact with others. I don’t believe this an unchangeable aspect but I do think its integral enough that you’d require some dedication to change it. An ex-girlfriend once described me as having no regard for human life (post relationship), a statement I disagree heavily with: I would never harm another intentionally even though I may think about it in a kind of day-dream way if they’ve been particularly annoying.

RPG games offer us the unique chance to play through a small reality with a different morality but my problem is I don’t think this is actually possible to do properly. I recently ploughed through Fallout 3 where I began with the full intention of playing a Jayne Cobb style character – an expert with guns, low on charisma, very mercenary and willing to stab friends in the back if the price is right.

Jayne Cobb. Big damn hero.

For the majority of the first few hours I was able to keep this character attitude up but then I started to care about the story, the fellow characters and most importantly how they viewed me. Come the end of the main story arc I sacrificed my characters life by going into a radiation filled room to release the pressure on a control panel even though I had a member in my team who could withstand radiation. Ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to ask another to do a dangerous task that essentially was my responsibility, even though it was just a computer game!

I know for a fact that if I restricted myself to playing Fallout 3 for no longer than say 40 mins max a time, I would have been able to keep up the Jayne character easy enough but as soon as you start to get involved in a game like this I think it requires an enormous amount of willpower to make choices against your nature. Or rather, what you want your nature to be. On reflection it occurs to me that you’re not so much playing your nature but maybe how you think your nature is?

Perhaps this is part of what is so appealing about RPGs to me. It’s not just about the storyline, characterization and development, its about being able to play an idealized version of me. To go back to my scenario in Fallout 3, if that were in real life…. Im not so sure if I would have jumped into that chamber. I think I may have eventually done it, but I would have probably waivered enough in the vain hope that the person who had a better chance of survival would step forward and stop me!

Im at a pretty exciting point in my life at the moment. In a week’s time I start my new job and I’m also taking some tender steps into the world of drifting! First up, new job. Ill be starting work at a place called Vistra as a system engineer (bowing gracefully out of the IT security world for now) which, amongst other benefits, will see me visiting random places around the world from time to time. The offices are spread around the world so occasionally Ill be expected to visit these sites for auditing, maintenance etc. A very exciting career move I feel, and one that should keep me interested and active for a long time!

The second aspect is my move to take up drifting. It’s a sport that I’ve been always mildly attracted to but never thought about too much. The closest I’ve ever come to doing it is drifting in Need for Speed, or that time I slid the bum of a Ford Scorpio Cosworth out going round a roundabout.
My girlfriend Kayliegh has offered to buy me a drifting “taster” session for my birthday in July but the majority of the sites require you have your own RWD car to use… not very handy when I drive a 1.2 FWD Punto. This has led me to consider selling the Punto and investigate some RWDs (and an AWD…) but nothing concrete yet.

I joined two communities to get a better idea of the drifting world, particularly in the UK scene. The first was “driftworks.com” and the second was “trampdrift.com”. Driftworks is a huge site, home to a successful team and a lot of users. The community is very diverse but is amazingly relatively self moderated. Abuse is handed out frequently but pretty much tempered with useful advice.

The second community, TrampDrift, is a lot smaller but more tightly knit. It revolves around people drifting on the cheap (welded diffs, cut springs etc) and so far they all seem to be really cool guys. I think out of the two communities, this is probably the one Ill end up idling the most.

Interesting little adventure to note though. There’s two drift taster people I found out about; “drift-tutor” and “driftexperience”. Drift Tutor expect you to have your own car where as the other supplies one, but after a suggestion from a forum member at Driftworks I pm’d the man behind Drift Tutor and double checked.
I got a very prompt courteous reply confirming that they could supply a car but it would cost more money and that even though I had no experience I would still benefit from the course. Grade A response and one that made me want to find a RWD just to use them.
However, I was keen to see just how helpful the community at Driftworks were and posted a question about how the LSD actually works. I need to make it clear that this wasn’t a semi-troll post or anything; I genuinely didn’t know how it worked properly. First response? I was told to google it. By a man who was advertising the Drift Experience people….
So yeah, think Ill stick with Drift-Tutor or anybody else over that company! I admitted that I had googled it before but all the answers were too technical for my non-mechanic brain but I still can’t help thinking “Wow, what a dick!”. After the general pleasant atmosphere I had witnessed over the previous few days, this just seemed such a shitty response to make. Anyway.

So now I’ve made a sizeable update to this blog, Ill update again when I have something hopefully awesome to say about getting a new car or something.

What to do in life? Its a question Ive been asking myself a lot lately and sadly one Ive not been able to answer sufficiently. Currently I work as an IT security analyst, a post that I love as I hold a strong interest in that area but lately it feels like Ive just been going through the motions with no real goals (or at least readily attainable ones). As a result Ive been reflecting heavily on how I should determine what I want to do with my life.

A recent Cracked article (on 5 Creep Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted) which mentions at one point a theory by Malcom Gladwell that to be satisfied with your job you need three things:

• Autonomy – being allowed to make your own choices within reason.
• Complexity – has to be mentally taxing, not repetitive.
• Connection between Effort and Reward – when you complete a task, you see the outcome.

Now, rather annoyingly my current job offers me all three of the above to a certain extent. This means that within the bounds of this theory I am a happy and content little worker. This obviously doesn’t answer my internal dilemma though I do appreciate that this isn’t the full theory.

The next site I came across was one of these hippy new-age deals, where the opening page contains the word “self-help” at least 5 times and is littered with the now clichéd motivational pictures representing life, energy, succe- yeah, you know the sort. Anyway, it does cover the “what do I want to do with my life?” question by asking 8 in return:

• What did you dream of becoming when you were a child?
• Where do you spend your free time?
• Listen to your inner self. What does it really wish it could be doing?
• What activity do you do that makes you feel happy and when you do it, the time just flies by?
• What activities, events, shows, books are you attracted to?
• Resolve your past issues. Your past does not have to decide your future. If you let your past go and any limitations you’ve placed upon yourself, what would you be doing?
• What would success mean to you? What would the perfect life be?
• What would you do if you had the Universal Credit Card (money is no object)?

The general gist of these questions is to figure out your hobby, the solution being that your hobby is what your job should be. The problem is that the answers don’t really give me much. Take the first question for example – my child hood dream changed depending on what computer game I was playing at the time. At one point I even wanted to be a town mayor, safe in the belief that it was just like playing Sim City. One time I even seriously considered the pros and cons of being a space pilot in an Arwing. I think the closest I came to a real job consideration would be that of a computer game designer, but looking at the world of games development as it is today, it seems quite a tough area to get into and quite a segmented area once you’re in.

This reminds me of a quote from Fight Club (the movie or the book, it appears in both albeit with slightly different wording so take your pick):

We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

The result of those 8 questions leads me to believe that I will be a professional gamer with the chance to pick up any game I please and instantly get paid for it. Bit of a shame then that although the world of professional gaming is blossoming its still not enough to give me a David Beckham life style. Furthermore Ive been down the semi-pro route in online gaming before – it made me an arrogant jerk with minimal social skills and a pale complexion. It may be what my inner me wants but the outer me (thats based in the real practical world) knows better.

All this soul searching and questioning hasn’t done anything except leave me feeling even more lost and confused about what I should be doing. The closest thing Ive come across in my searching that makes me go, “Hmm” is ‘Game Story Writer’. This role involves writing plots, storylines and scripts for computer games. Considering my love for creative writing and gaming, this seems pretty awesome! However this role seems to only ever be available in temporary contracts or one off sessions – not exactly a valid career move!

One thing that has become clear through this little research dance is that our lives are no longer about who we are but what we do for a job. “What do you do for a living?”. Congratulations people, this is the new “Hello.”

Been a bit busy recently with all the start of year stuff (you know, coming out of hibernation and so on) so I have a fair bit to blog about.

First up, the holiday to Milton Keynes to see the other half’s family for Christmas. This was epic fun except I managed to catch a nasty head cold the first day there and subsequently spent the entire holiday suffering. One very nice thing that I always like about going to Milton Keynes however is getting cans of Jolt and/or Mountain Dew.

Second up, been doing a lot of short story intros – apparently its safe to call them “flash-fiction” pieces – but as soon as I have something actually completed Ill be uploading them!

Thirdly, been doing a lot more NFS recently while I wait for World Online to be unleashed. If you check my YouTube link (look to the right there!) you’ll see my attempts at breaking/setting records.

Lastly, Ive opened a small forum for the World Online community over at www.wogarage.com. Its still small but with next to no advertising its managed to get 20 members already in a week so Im pretty confident about it.

Anyway, a more detailed blog post to follow at a later date!

So, just got back into the office after a 2 week holiday (of which I had a nightmare cold for most of!) and found that my lovely Fiat-scotland.com coaster had its image defaced:

Hah bloody hah!

For those of you who haven’t already been passed it via email or read about it on one of the many sites this link has appeared on:

http://lilysussman.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/im-sorry-but-we-blew-up-your-laptop-welcome-to-israel/

Essentially, for those who tl;dr it, a lady went to Israel and got stopped by the border patrol police who then, after heavy questioning, decided to fire 3 shots into her Mac laptop under the belief that it may have been a bomb. To the rest of the civilised world we are all well aware that this isn’t exactly normal practice – even if it was a bomb, firing 3 shots into it is certainly not the way to establish whether it will go bang or not.

However, reading through the comments its interesting to see the different points of view. 90% agree that its retarded, 10% believe that the border patrol acted perfectly rationally. I posted a response to one such idiot and instantly realised how stupid I was being – if these people think shooting laptops will solve problems, what chance do I have of convincing him otherwise? Even if there was a bomb inside the laptop, firing 3 bullets at random isn’t a surefire way to detonate it!

Anyway, the blogger is still travelling through Israel and promises to update with her compensation claim on the laptop and anymore run its with the might of Israel.

A quick test post to see if my twitter link up thing works. If it doesnt first time, Im giving up (for serious).

My hosting company is Dreamhost; the last fora I used to help admin used them extensively and they seemed fast enough, plus I got a free domain via a promotional code. Upon sign up I was given the promising words of, “99.9% uptime!” and “reliable hosting!” so it seemed like a sure thing.

The past week or so however theres been a few spots of downtime and when I woke up this morning and noticed the site was down I decided to see if I could find any info on it. I googled “dreamhost down” (as the main dreamhost site was down as well) and found a status page for Dreamhost, hosted by Dreamhost presumably on a different server – http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

Well, this lovely site details every issue they encounter and their resolution with the added bonus of timestamps and the ability to comment. Clicking on the comments were amazing though, for example:

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

How can you bill for December with a straight face after all this mess?

C’mon dreamhost, i know its cheap hosting with you guys but this is beyond a joke now! 

Oh wait, did I mention these comments appeared between 2 and 5 minutes after the service went down? The reason behind the issue was an issue with the core router and the service was down for a total of about 1/2 hour. Thats 1/2 hour to get an on-call cisco engineer into the office and resolve the issue at what was 11:30pm. I dont know about you, but thats a pretty rapid response time.

It does make me wonder about all the people complaining though. Yes, we’re paying for a service and yes we expect that service all the time if possible but problems do happen, especially incidents like this which arent directly Dreamhost’s fault. I was amazed at how many people were demanding a month’s free hosting because of some downtime, or announcing that they were going to move to a fresh hosting company as soon as they could, and part of me couldnt help but feel that if another issue happens next month I’ll see the same people complaining with the same style of comments.

My monthly mobile phone bill is stupid. To give you a run down, I have a Blackberry 9500 and an iPhone 3G: the Blackberry is on a £20 “Corporate Blackberry” contract (needed to have it connect to my works Blackberry Enterprise Server) and a £30 contract on top of that to give me so many minutes and text messages and to allow me to have recieved the 9500 for free. The iPhone is on a £50 contract which gives it so many minutes and text messages with an additional £10 ‘booster’ pack which gives it unlimited data bandwidth.

So, every month Im paying Sure (Cable & Wireless) £110 – thats even if I dont use my phones – for the luxury of having a phone for work which gives me my emails instantly and the ability to text and call friends/family without worrying about running out of credit. Paying such a price though, I expect a decent quality of service and till a few months back thats exactly what I got.

The first harbringer of doom was a text that came through to both phones from Sure offering me free text messages on new pay-as-you-go deals. Fantastic but Im already on a contract with two phones, so such a message has no use to me. Since then, every week (roughly) I’d recieve a similar text offering some amazing deal of which either I couldn’t use, didnt care about or didnt affect me remotely (like offering me unlimited data when I already have it).

Today was the last straw though. As I received two messages both saying I could text from abroad without incurring charges I pulled up the Sure support website and searched on how to stop these annoying spam messages. Unsurprisingly, I found no information so I decided to email their support:

Good morning,

 

Is there anyway to opt out of receiving the spam text messages from Sure please? Although they aren’t exactly causing me any issues, they are a bit of a nuisiance and generally they relate to things that I cant get the benefit of anyway!

About 5 mintes later (seriously! cant fault the response time) I received this:

Cute. I liked the replacement of the word spam for “promotional”. Anyway, I quickly sent the word stop to 101 and I received a lovely text back informing me that I had done this silly thing of opting out of recieving promotional messages but should I wish to recieve them again in future I just had to call a number!

I think Ill risk not knowing what offers you can get on pay-as-you-go in exchange for not being disturbed randomly on my phones. The thing about this whole event is that the texts werent exactly ruining my life but they were something I should never have really got in the first place. After you buy a car for example, you dont expect the dealership to call you once a week with new offers and in that same concept I dont expect to be badgered constantly about new offers from my phone compay. I can read the website and the adverts that are everywhere for them, and at present Im happy with my service. If they wanted to give me the service for cheaper, they’d mail me about it so why do they even bother texting me about services that I cant use? It reminds me of the Bill Bailey joke, loosely quoted:

I used to be a door-to-door salesman selling doors… that was a tough gig, “Ding-Dong, do you want to buy a do- oh, you already have one, never mind.”