I love science fiction. It can often provide insight into prevailing thought patterns, and I often find myself thinking that SciFi is often prophetic - not in the predictive sense, but in the "If you keep doing these things, this will be the result" kind of way that the biblical authors intended for their writings to be used. Star Trek is popularly known as having addressed social and political issues, in the television shows, movies, and books. Other science fiction writers also consistently address thee topics within their writings. Isaac Asimov is one such writer. His Foundation and Robot series in particular cause me to pause often and reflect on how modern society reflects the kind of thinking within that universe.

Of course, one of my favorite quotes of his comes from an article he published in 1980:

Not-so-famous Quote from Gandhi...

"When the symbol (of any given religion) is made into a fetish and an instrument of proving the superiority of one's religion over others, it is fit only to be discarded."

Contrast...

We decided to go to the Great State Fair of Oklahoma, mostly to see some of the displays of arts and crafts ribbons that the kids won... And to get one of those monster turkey legs... and some cotton candy... and some salt water taffy...

I actually took my camera in the hopes of capturing some interesting people pics, but alas, couldn't find any prime examples worthy of documentation.

However, after reviewing some of the pictures I took, I thought these two kind of documented the "range" of the whole experience, from the asthetically pleasing to the wretchedly excessive.

Don't know what else to say.

The Bully...

to be known only by the damage you do to others
your arms flailing, you bring chaos
peace...quiet...solace...
wrapped in violence and destruction

your presence is announced with a booming voice
you break into our comfortable world
structured...ordered...controlled...
we cringe when we hear you coming

we flee from your presence
unsure we can withstand the onslaught
weak...fragile...small...
fear finds a home in us

we pretend that we know you
pretty names...katrina...rita...josephine...
made familiar by those who dare not face the reality of who you are
deep...chaos...leviathan...

realizing that you lose your strength
as you cross the threshold 'twixt our worlds
waning...fighting...slipping...
one last punch thrown - knowing you will lose the fight

we take it on the chin
knowing that it will hurt
but that the pain will fade with time
recovering...fighting...hoping...

CY

Commander Keen

Earlier this week, some of my uber-geek friends at work were talking about the videogame-du-jour, Age of Conan. I must admit, that although I’m very impressed with the whole gaming experience that modern PCs present, I’m not willing to put forth the financial and technical commitment required to power these ever resource hungry games. In fact, some of my favorite computer/video games are those of days gone by. I play my Super Nintendo games a lot more often than I do those on my Nintendo 64. In fact, it brought a little tear to my eye when PAC-MAN, Ms. PAC-MAN, and other “classic” video games were brought to the consumer-friendly formats that are self-contained within the controller, run by batteries, and plug into any television. I guess this makes be a video game Luddite of sorts...

My 1982 era Atari 2600 aside (It didn’t really provide the same gaming experience as the arcades), my first foray into video gaming on computers was several games I had on my Commodore 64. Waaayyy back in 1987, it had graphics and sound that enabled the creative game programmer to provide a version for the C64 that looked, sounded, and played just like the arcade versions.

But I wasn’t really “hooked” on a PC game (Meaning that I spent hour after hour trying to “complete” the game) until I was introduced to Commander Keen my sophomore year in college. Of course, as luck would have it, my own computer needed an upgrade before I could play it in my room, so I spent most of my waking hours in the computer lab in front of the one computer up to the task… It also helped that a great deal of that time I was being paid for my time spent “researching sound and graphics capabilities of modern computers”. Guess that was one of the unspoken benefits of being a lab assistant and often working the late shifts when no one was around needing me to “help” them write their homework programs.

At that time, the open source software movement was not yet in full swing, and if you wanted cool games, you paid for them dearly. And on the budget of a college student, I just couldn’t afford them. However, the nice folks at Softdisk decided to release their new game as “Shareware”, a concept by which sharing the software is encouraged, meaning that there was no tricky copy protection or key codes required to use the software. The only thing asked of the end user was to contribute some small amount to the developers, on a goodwill basis. Of course, LOTS of folks, including myself, shared the software without ever contributing monetarily.

But back to Commander Keen… My favorite game in high school was Super Mario Brothers. I used to take a dollar to school, pay 75 cents for lunch, and ride to the local bowling alley after school to play one game of SMB with the leftover quarter. Obviously out of necessity, I had to get good at the game if my money was to be well spent… When I first saw Commander Keen, I thought “Hmmm… Looks a lot like Super Mario Brothers”. I played my first game and was instantly hooked. It’s a game in a class called “side scrollers”, where you basically have a 2D world that you travel through, using four directional keys and two buttons, the standard for most side scroller games. The cartoonish graphics and sound were a world apart from previous games for IBM compatible PCs, using a newly developed graphics technology called EGA… With stunning 16 color graphics!!! The original developers released several sequels, and there were other folks who developed other similarly themed side scroller games (Duke Nukem), but Commander Keen was the one for me… Of course, at that time, there wasn’t any world wide web, so the only way to get them was the old fashioned sneaker net or forums on local dial in bulletin boards (you had to be RICH to get 9600bps – most common was 2400bps).. Ultimately, technology advanced and newer style games (first person shooter, etc) were developed to harness the more powerful machines’ capabilities, but those never really caught on for me… Give me a side scroller and a joystick with a red ball on top, and I’ll show you fun!!!

And a side note – shareware had a sidekick called “freeware”, which was entirely free, and didn’t even suggest a monetary donation. Individually developed and distributed, freeware products became the way by which companies could get their name known… But one side effect was that once folks were used to shareware and freeware being actually quality software, it opened the door for the open source software movement to gain popularity and viability… But that’s a discussion for another time and pla

Hot Rod Power Tour 2008 Day 5

Ok... We were officially on our own today - the Tour left for Lincoln, Nebraska at 9:00 am, one of the shortest legs of the trip, while we started out at 6:00 am for the longest leg yet of our personal tour. We headed south from Ottawa on some Kansas highways, through a fair bit of flooded fields and side roads. Fortunately, none of the roads we needed were flooded. We decided to head towards West Mineral, Kansas, where I heard of a pretty cool attraction - Big Brutus. It's a HUGE electric shovel used for strip mining in the 60's and 70's... Who knew that Southeast Kansas had coal mines?

We then decided to see where the short stretch of Old US Route 66 was - turns out there were a whopping 13 miles of the old highway that ran across the very far southeast corner of Kansas. So off we went - and ran the whole thing... From Baxter Springs, through Riverton, and to Galena... Where by chance we took a wrong turn and ended up on the old downtown route, and found an old service station that had been bought and restored recently, so we had a neat photo op! And it turns out that this service station is where the "official" inspiration for Tow Mater (From Cars - the Movie) lives!
We then went to Joplin, and then south to Bella Vista to drop Dad off, but not before the requisite run in with the local police!!! Sometimes being nice to the officer will get you off with a verbal warning - I KNOW it wasn't my winsome charm.

I put the pedal to the medal, because our lollygagging around SE Kansas left me with precious little time to get home before my deadline, and I pulled into the driveway at 5:15 pm... Eleven hours of driving today! I'm done.

Click Here for Today's Pictures

Mileage for today: 483

Tank 1: 133 miles/7.25 gallons - 18.34 mpg
Tank 2: 228 miles/12.3 gallons - 18.53 mpg
Tank 3: 118 miles/6.6 gallons - 17.87 mpg

Total miles for the trip: 1541 miles over five days.... WOW!

Hot Rod Power Tour 2008 Day 4

I bring you greetings from the great state of Kansas!!!

Today started out pretty wet - we woke up to a light sprinkle that fairly quickly turned into a drenching downpour. Not such a good situation with a leaky windshield gasket and several hours of soaking rain ahead. A couple of hours into the trip my radio started doing wierd things and I noticed a faint burned electronics smell, so we pulled over at a station that had an overhang. Fortunately the stereo was the only casualty, but it came back to life a couple of hours later after the rain subsided and everything dried out a bit.


Today's venue was the Heartland Park Raceway in Topeka, Kansas. Once the rain let up, which was well in advnce of our arrival, the day was cool and overcast - a rarity in June. We both still got sunburned, though. The tour had set up for folks to do "fun runs" at the drag strip, but the tech inspection prior to the run and the probable embarassment of being the slowest car on the tour kept us from making our own run.

The lighter side of the news is that although the drive across Southwest Missouri and Southeast Kansas majorly sucked because of the rain, by the time we got to Iola, Kansas, the rain had let up and we were able to visit some old haunts...


Dad used to pastor a Nazarene Church in Yates Center, Kansas - yeah - I know - a bit coincidental, but anyways, it gave us a good chance to reminisce and tell old stories. We stopped and took pictures of some familiar places, and did some narrative remembering. Overall, it was a good day. We decided to get a jumpstart on tomorrow's travel, and cancelled our hotel in Topeka, and drove to Ottawa, Kansas to surprise his sister and niece with a visit. His neice, Diana, lives in Ottawa, and his sister lives about 15 miles away. Diana was actually shopping at Wal-Mart, so we stopped there to find her. It was a short, and impromptu family reunion.

So the 2008 Power Tour is done, at least for us. Tomorrow holds a LONG trip back to NW Arkansas, to drop Dad off, then back to OKC for me.


Click Here for Today's Photos

Total miles today: 310

Tank 1 - 101 miles/5.3 gallons - 19mpg
Tank 2 - 177 miles/9.1 gallons - 19.7mpg

Good stuff!!!