We've moved!

We've moved. And by "we" I mean "I" have moved.

For now, point your browser to http://web.me.com/aasplund/Profound_Darkness

Andy checks the mail (again!)

Most of the mail I get nowadays is from law schools. Some of it is pretty silly. Sometimes, I get things that just plain confuse me. Other times, it is something funny. However, I do get stuff that has nothing to do with law school.

I have gotten three or four advertisements recently from an organization I never thought I would hear from: Navy Officer Recruiting. Each one arrives, advertising the great advantages of life as a naval officer. Apparently, naval officers have lots of time off, excellent pay and benefits, and plenty of opportunities for recreation and family life.

Honestly, I am reminded of the old VHS tapes that they gave me back in the day. I remember watching them. The best one, which starred a man that would later become my XO, showed a few novelty submarine shots combined with guys playing golf, riding jet skis, and having picnics. If you assessed the life of a nuclear submariner based on this video, you would interpret that being in the Navy is 80% awesome and 20% work with submarines. I can see how people get into that.

Some of the mailings I have gotten have advertised some excellent degree completion programs. Apparently, I can finish my bachelors degree while the Navy pays me and all I owe them is a little time afterwards. This sounds like a great plan. It would sound like an even better plan if I had not finished my bachelors degree back in 2002.

Most of them seem generic, though. They seem to be targeting Andy the Liberal Arts major and not Andy the Math major. It took me a few days to figure this one out. For some reason, I instinctively thought this was some sort of mail error because I started applying to law schools; maybe they somehow figured out I was an undergrad by the fact that I was applying for law school. Unfortunately, the truth is far from that.

Instead, it looks like the Las Vegas area officer recruiters picked up my name from UNLV. As it ends up, I am still listed at UNLV as an undergraduate majoring in Social Science Studies (no more vague a degree name could be created). I took a few classes for fun a few years back (history, anthropology, and such). I guess those classes "came back to bite me," as it were.

Anyhow, that is the recent mail scoop. I still get Navy recruiting material despite the fact that I just finished seven years of service in the Navy. It is too bad, really.

Andy is afraid of the dark

Recently, I purchased Silent Hill: Homecoming for my appropriate video game system. I have always had a certain fascination with horror video games; the ability to put somebody into the horror seems an amazing feat of storytelling (if done well); the Silent Hill series has a habit of doing that well (as my experience has shown me).

I suppose before I go into my experiences with the game, I should start with a little history. I have played every Silent Hill game released since its inception with the exception of the practically invisible Silent Hill: Origins. As it ends up, I did actually buy that one but stopped playing it after two hours. Because I was too creeped out by it.

Uh-huh. Too creeped out. Then again, I tried playing the game late at night, in the dark, in bed, with headphones on. I suppose I banked too much on creating the proper ambience and found myself disturbed by it. So much for that good idea.

What possessed me to purchase this game, I will never know. Perhaps I forgot my experiences with the portable version and remembered the "fun" that I had in my youth playing these games. Of course, there was some fear to be had, but there was always something compelling about the games. Maybe I enjoyed the fear. Who can say. Either way, I should have drawn some conclusion from my more recent experiences but, like so many good ideas, I failed to act on it.

When I bought the game at went home, I stuck it in the playing device and went at it. Well, I will admit that before doing so I set up the right "mood" in the room by turning down the lights and making the place even creepier. Brilliant idea, right? It took about fifteen minutes for me to pause the game, stand up, and turn all the lights on. All the lights on.

I am still playing it but I cannot help but wonder what has changed in the eight or nine years since I played the original. Was it a matter of realism? Maybe the original super-blocky polygon people just did not strike home like the seemingly realistic people (with funny teeth) do now. Maybe I am just old and am afraid of things now. I wish I knew.

Either way, there is something a little depressing about finding out that a video game scares you too much for you to play it. Hopefully, when I am done with this one, I can go back and finish the game I forgot to play. I hope so. Despite being (apparently) afraid of it, I still really (conceptually) like the idea of well executed horror and Silent Hill has often been known for doing it right.

Well, back into the fog I go.

Andy lives on the cheap

There are strange things you start to notice when you find yourself unemployed. Little things that used to not be a big deal suddenly seem like a big deal. Today, I noticed the strangest thing with the way I have been drinking my soda.

Allow me to explain. There is a local semi-fast food place which I like to frequent. I always got the large soda; it came in a sturdy plastic cup which I routinely kept around for drinking later soda and water from. I never kept them for long, though, because I would frequent the place every week or so and get a new one.

Unfortunately, things have changed now that I am unemployed. My large soda has been replaced by the regular sized soda which comes with their daily specials. They come in wax coated paper cups which have terrible endurance. Therefore, I still have the last large cup I got many weeks ago. The good news is that this cup has lasted quite a long time; the cup still looks just like the day I got it. The top to the cup, on the other hand, is a standard Solo drink top. It has not done well at all. This is where the excitement begins.

After spilling beverage on myself from my classy large beverage cup because of the failed top, I decided enough was enough. On my most recent visit to the establishment, I ordered my standard special (Taco Tuesday!) with a regular cup. When I went to the beverage fountain, though, I became consumed with madness; after filling my beverage cup, I stuffed four large sized lids into my pocket. That is right, folks. I STOLE FOUR LARGE SIZED BEVERAGE LIDS. Then I went about the rest of my meal as if nothing happened.

When I got home, I pulled the lids out of my pocket. They had survived the fateful event unscathed and I found them absolutely perfect for topping my rugged beverage cup. Thus, my crisis had been resolved successfully. No more beverage spills will happen with my new beverage tops.

I suppose I could feel guilty. I did, technically, steal four beverage lids. I imagine the right answer would have been to ask the nice employees if I could take them. Then again, I could see that ending poorly.

"You want to do what?"

"I just want four large sized lids."

"Uh. We don't charge for lids."

"So can I take them?"

"Did you buy a large drink?"

"Sure! Two months ago!"

"Umm... yeah?"

Then again, the better answer may have been to actually get a large drink. I guess I could, but it tends to screw up the magic of the special when you try to modify the drink; last time I did it, the whole thing ended up costing the same as a special AND a large drink (which made no sense at all).

So, that is my story. Who would have thought that being unemployed would have with it so many adventures.

Andy gets physical

No, not a tribute to the song by Olivia Newton John (or, as my somewhat eccentric father calls her, Olivia Neutron Bomb). Instead, I thought I would tell the inspiring story of my adventures with the Nintendo Wii Balance Board.

I freely admit that I had been trying to get one of these things for months. It is hard to pinpoint why; there is really only one game that goes with it (Wii Fit, which comes with it) and it has been described as neither particularly fun nor aerobically impressive. Nonetheless, with countless warnings to the contrary, I searched and searched until, as luck would have it, I found one at the local store. My days of simulated fitness began.

After some initial setup (which really only involved installing batteries, but I like to overdramatize that part for effect), I started the program. All initial indications were good; the software talked about health, fitness, and... balance? Apparently, I had misunderstood the point of Wii Fit. I figured it would focus on fitness and whatnot but instead it seems to have spent far too long talking about posture and balance. To my surprise, a lot of problems result from having poor posture; if I simply fix that, all my problems will (apparently?) go away. This was news to me but I continued on.

Soon enough, I had to select my Mii (my virtual representation) and get my initial "assessment," which involved little more than a weigh-in and some embarrassing balancing tests. I say the tests were embarrassing not because what they have you do is especially strange but because when I try to do them I look like some sort of dying beast twitching its final life away.

Balance games aside, the most enlightening part of the process was the weigh-in. First of all, understand that the Wii Fit softare uses a high-pitched, almost childish, voice when it does the "Body Test." When the software is ready, it will say, "Step on!" As it measures, the voice intones, "Measuring!" After initialization, when I first step on, the Wii Fit gives out a startled, "Oh!" That one is really heart warming; apparently, my mass is so startling that it stuns my poor Nintendo into submission.

When the weight test is concluded, it shows a little BMI (Body Mass Index) scale where it rates me. As the meter goes up to its intended place, I look in horror as it blows right out of the "Normal" and "Overweight" sections and parks itself on the low end of the "Obese" region. When it stops, the cute little voice gets one last quip: "That's Obese!" it says in surprise. My computer avatar, the little Mii I crafted to look a little bit like I might if I were a misshapen video game creature, goes from its normal svelte appearance to a bloated behemoth. Apparently, this is the Nintendo's way to strike back, giving me a horrific representation of myself. In the world of Second Life and virtual selves, even my Nintendo Mii has to be a bloated fatty.

The final portion of this "Body Test" involves assessing my performance on balance testing and giving me a rating, a "Wii Fit Age" that estimates how old my body seems to react. I am a little excited; when I first used the related Nintendo product Brain Age, my Brain routinely came up as much younger than it physically is. Unfortunately, my brain and body seem out of synch in this regard; my bloated, fat avatar stood aghast as the Wii Fit Age counter shot up to forty-eight. Despite seven years of Naval service (which may or may not have been physically involving, I will never tell), my body is actually the equivalent of somebody twenty years my senior.

Of course, the fun does not stop there. Once the Wii assessed where I was, it showed me what I had to do to get where I want to be. It offered strength training, yoga, and aerobic exercises to get my fit. As far as basic workouts that somebody could do on their own, they seem to run the range of foreseeable options; pushups, squats, step aerobics, and the like. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the "Hula Hoop" game, where I have to stand on my balance board and simulate spinning a hula hoop as fast as I can. I can only imagine how I look to somebody that may happen to spy me performing this; if I did not look like a spastic epileptic when trying to ace my balance tests, I have no doubt the hula hoop antics did me in. Special thanks for Nintendo for finding new ways to embarrass myself; I had practically forgotten the sting of Dance Dance Revolution.

So, now I have a whole world of physical discomfort to enjoy in front of my television. Some of them make some sense while others are absolutely asinine. As I do my best to spend the thirty minutes a day asked of me by Nintendo, I can only hope that my grotesque Mii will eventually become something less horrifying to look upon. Luckily, the fatness of my Mii does not seem to translate to other games, so my Wii Bowling should be okay.

Then again, a fat, bloated Nintendo Mii might be just perfect for Wii Bowling...