Cup of Coffee

December 27, 2013: I’ll Probably Waste it on Video Games

73 Comments

After today I have three days off with no obligations but a lot I could do on my game and such. Here's hoping I buckle down and do something meaningful with it. And if not...well, at least tell me it'll be fun.

73 thoughts on “December 27, 2013: I’ll Probably Waste it on Video Games”

  1. Is it normal to have five revisions on a video post? If I were in charge here, the coffee would be served once per month!

    1. I thought this seemed familiar and it was:

      The article above, written by Jed Lipinski with illustrations by Quickhoney, is reprinted with permission from the September-October 2013 issue of mental_floss magazine.

      Naturally, mentalfloss.com no longer has the article available. Can read comments from when that link was posted, including a gem from Rhu_Ru.

      2. While searching for the mentalfloss article, I found a piece in CityPages documenting the history of Oregon Trail from early 2011. I found this nugget in the middle:

        IN 1978, MECC OPENED up the bidding process for a new kind of computer to distribute in its schools. Huge multimillion-dollar mainframes the size of rooms and teletypes were being replaced by compact units with screens. MECC was looking for the right microcomputer to put in its schools. Bids from the biggest computer companies came in.

        On the final day, just minutes before the bidding was set to close, a husky courier screeched up to the office in St. Paul and ran to the front desk with a hand-scrawled bid. He slapped it down with just seconds to spare.

        The handwriting extolled the virtues of something called the Apple II. The letter was sent by two no-names in their twenties—Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

        But the machine met MECC's specs and price, and the market-dominating Radio Shack lost out over bungled paperwork. Soon 500 Apple IIs were heading for Minnesota. The deal was one of Apple's biggest early successes, and helped launch the longtime marriage between the Apple computer and the classroom.

        The Apple II's software came on diskettes, an innovation that would put Oregon Trail into the hands of an entire generation.

        Apple might owe its existence to MECC. In high school, the computer lab was 90% Macs, something I was used to as previous schools' computer labs consisted solely of Macs as well. Education was Apple's market and now I know why.

        1. My grade school computer lab was 100% Apple products (about 20 Apple IIs and one brand new Macintosh IIci). I also always sort of wondered why that was.

        2. What's a Mac?

          I remember when the Apple II's first came in, same time a computer programming course was added to the HS curriculum. Matter of fact, that's one of them in the photo in that parasitic link in the first thread.

          We loved them in the hardware lab in college, too -- we had breadboards wired to cards where the ground and clock signals would get connected; the Apple froze up, we powered it down, fixed the circuit, and it powered up with no issues. They could take a beating.

          I also remember when the memory chips weren't soldered to the motherboard, and due to heating they would become unseated and have to be pushed back into place. The quick method was to lift the front of the CPU a couple inches and drop it, which would reseat all the loose chips -- we called it the "Fuch Fix" in honor of one of the department staff techs.

    1. There are lots of folks I don't follow because on the off chance they say something interesting I figure someone else will retweet it. Gleeman is one of those.

        1. He's moving to Uptown. Or so he said on the podcast. I suppose that ends any remaining dispute about the degree of Uptown's gentrification.

          Also, he discovered brunch after thirty years in the US.

          1. Not to go down a brunch rabbit hole, but I dont understand the love affair with brunch. Is it because its a morning meal where its socially acceptable to drink alcohol?

                  1. That's not a thing in Youtube's embed link that I've got. But let's try this:
                    httpv://youtu.be/5774X2wQ9To

            2. I didn't know that alcohol during brunch was a thing.

              Also, I don't like to eat meals before eleven o'clock, and by that point, I'd rather just eat garden variety "lunch".

              Also, also, it's too late to prevent going down the brunch rabbit hole. Just give in.

                1. Mimosas and Bloody Marys tend to be the alcoholic breakfast beverages of choice from what I can tell. I prefer brunch without alcohol, though, because if I don't keep drinking all day I wind up with a headache.

            3. My opinion is that brunch gets high ratings because on most days people eat something relatively lame for breakfast, but all of the great HOF breakfast foods (eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, waffles, fruit, syrup, etc.) are pretty common at brunch.

          2. Has anybody told him that Uptown hasn't been cool for at least a decade? I say this as someone who still lives in Uptown.

            1. Are you sure you just haven't outgrown Uptown's cool? Because my daughters and their friends still think it's the bees' knees.

                1. Ha, I was just recently trying to sell New Gal on the North Loop's charm. We are tentatively planning on cohabiting starting this summer, so we're scouting out all the neighborhoods.

              2. Yeah I think that is definitely true, now that I'm several years younger than Gleeman is I'm not really interested in the bar scene anymore. To the teenagers/recent college grads/Gleemans, I'm sure Uptown will always be cool.

              1. In a city without a lot of nightlife, it's the place with the highest concentration of bars/restaurants outside of downtown. Back in the 80/90's it was the neighborhood where all of the coolest musicians and artists hung out, but it gradually became more and more commercialized until a few years ago when the development began increasing exponentially. It still has a reputation for being hip and gritty despite being very safe and accessible.

          1. It was mostly just him being butthurt and avoiding actually responding to the things CH says. He does this a lot - get in Twitter arguments and then delete all his tweets from them - you'd think he'd work harder at avoiding getting into them if he's going to be self-conscious or whatever else enough afterward to want to erase them all. God knows I've been in plenty of arguments on the internet, and said plenty of dumb things, and it's all still out there if one wants to see it (other than that which was at places like the old basement).

            1. I actually still don't understand what was going on. He must have gone digging through my old tweets and read the conversation I had with cheaptoy, free, and Zack last week. Just listening at the margins of his comments on the podcast, it sounds like others (including women he knows personally?) have been suggesting he tone things down. Maybe things hit close to home.

              shrug

              1. Last week I had a three tweet long unfollow to Gleeman that I couldn't pull the trigger on. But just now I just unfollowed with one short and sweet. This was building for a while (see my list of Festivus grievances) so I'm glad his churlishness today was finally the last straw for me.

                1. Just in time to make a clean start in the new year. I'm going to be putting out a call for suggestions of who is relatively new and doing interesting/compelling Twins blogging/tweeting in the next couple days.

  5. I know the Suzuki signing is a little old now, but I'm surprised that so many are saying that Suzuki was brought in to mentor Pinto. Shouldn't Mauer be mentoring Pinto? Just because he's not going to be playing catcher doesn't mean he magically forgot everything about playing the position. Not that Suzuki has nothing to offer, but I'd assume Pinto and Suzuki would be willing to listen to whatever Mauer said.

    4. I think the role of players mentoring other players is highly overrated anyway. Pinto is an unknown commodity. Suzuki was brought in as insurance.

      1. Well, right. I'm assuming the whole "mentoring" thing is mostly just jargon and doublespeak, it's just funny that one of the best catchers of the past several decades (you know, the one that won several gold gloves), would be at least discussed in such jargon.

      2. I don't know that mentorship is necessarily overrated so much as people talk about it gets more attention in the media than it should--sort of like Derek Jeter.

        Like you said, first and foremost, Suzuki was brought in as Pinto insurance and because you need more than one catcher, I completely agree. What surprises me is just that I feel like every news blurb I've read about Suzuki's acquisition talks about mentoring Pinto, and it seems too soon to Battey Mauer like that.

  6. We got (most of) the siding power washed today; the north wall, which only gets a little morning and evening sun, had some pretty severe mildew building up. Whoa man, it looks like a new home now.

    The dog is pleased that the ordeal is over.

  8. Aftermath of preparing for and/or hosting a half-dozen different Thanksgiving and Christmas meals-
    This morning, the dishwasher wouldn't get the dishes in the upper rack clean. I started dismantling it and ended up cleaning about a quart of turkey fat and who knows what else out of the dishwasher pump. I love the holidays.

      1. Yep.

        I think the Gophers outfit would look better if Syracuse were wearing a dark colored jersey. There is too much white so everything blends together.

      2. Well, Syracuse's strength on defense is stopping the run, so it was going to be hard anyway. But the Goofs lost in Vikingslike fashion.

      3. I wouldn't call it ugly, just frustrating. Gophers weren't huge favorites and would have won if they either cover a punt, which they had been very good at all year, or caught a desperation pass in the end zone, which went right through the receiver's hands, in the final minutes of the game. Syracuse's offense was designed specifically to avoid getting pressure on the QB, which is the Gopher's strength. The Orangemen must have used a couple dozen screen plays.

        Reusse compared this team to Brewster's 2008 team, which is ridiculous. That team was built on a ridiculously easy schedule and didn't beat a single BCS team with a winning record. Plus, it also lost to a Michigan team that won only one other conference game and didn't have to play Penn State or Michigan State. Both of those teams were ranked that year.

  10. Greetings from my wife's Christmas present, a Samsung tablet. It was from her parents, who also gave me a PS3. Trey and Junior also got smaller tablets, so it was a good Christmas.

  11. Some bad officiating on that last Goofer possession. That offensive interference call was terrible.

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