Internal Stack Overflow, Hull Breach Imminent

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This post began life as my “About the Author” blurb. It was supposed to give people a sense of the scope and focus of this blog, and maybe warn them in advance about my various biases and predilections. But then, as John Ronald Reuel would say, the tale grew in the telling, until it was too big to fit in that little box. It’s raw and stream-of-consciousness and a little flamebait-y (I’m disabling comments, suckas), but I’m too lazy to throw away all those words, so I’m just leaving it up here as my inaugural post. How fortunate for you! Enjoy.

“I’m a Narnia guy, not a Tolkien guy. I’m not that interested in TOS, but I’ve seen every episode of TNG (except, for some reason, “The Naked Now,” which I now superstitiously avoid, because I don’t really want to think about Data and Tasha sexing each other). I hated Wesley Crusher but think Wil Wheaton is a genius.

“I have a Mac in my office and another Mac at home. On my home Mac I have both MacMame and a bunch of rom files (I mostly play Assault and Magic Sword–what can I say, I have weird taste in arcade games), which is probably a violation of some intellectual property law or other. My Slashdot user number is 2199. My favorite Avalon Hill game was Wizard’s Quest. Growing up I played AD&D (1st edition), Top Secret, Gamma World, Champions, and Traveler. I’ve been known to tear up when people quote Traveler’s strangely evocative epigrah: “This is Free Trader Beowulf…” I miss Tom Wham.

“I still crack up at Bohemian Ear-Spoon jokes. I subscribed to Dragon magazine, and I was more frustrated than amused by Phil Foglio’s endless ‘Sex in D&D’ running gag. I am obsessed with the work of Larry Niven beyond all reason, and cannot be talked out of it–better nerds than you have tried. I have read all the Ringworld novels, and am capable of getting pissed off that Niven doesn’t receive royalties on Halo, and when drunk have been known to talk about ptavvs. Of all the novels I have read multiple times, I have read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King more times than any other.

“I’ve spent more time than I care to admit listening to the commentary tracks of Futurama DVDs, even though I’ve always hated Bender’s self-consciously wacky robot voice, in more or less the same way as I hate the wacky troll voice they’re giving Skull in the upcoming animated version of PvP. (And in much the same way as I hated Andy Serkis’s fish-and-scenery-chewing performance as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.) I know that, as a grown-up, I’m supposed to like Philip Pullman more than Harry Potter, but somehow I just can’t. I’ve played Magic: The Gathering, but it still feels contrary to some basic law of the universe that Wizards of the Coast could have bought TSR…

“A very, very cursory history of my serious video game crushes would probably look something like this: Pong, Adventure, Battle Zone, Lode Runner (on the Apple IIe), Ultima III, Wizardry, Bolo (an underrated Apple II tank game–it randomly generated a brand new maze every time you played, which at the time seemed like black magic), Beyond Dark Castle (which I played on my Mac Classic–in college we would hook up the audio to somebody’s stereo and then walk the hero into walls to hear that goofy sound effect he made, which I can’t even render phonetically–what can I say, it was college in the 1980’s). There was a long blank period when I didn’t game, followed by Doom (in grad school I would stay up till 3 to get my turn in the computer room), Marathon (my real introduction to mouse-and-keyboard gaming, and my first LAN party), Quake, Myth (offhand I’d guess that I’ve spent more time playing Myth and its sequels than any other single video game), Nethack, Quake 3, Halo, Ninja Gaiden, Otogi and Otogi 2 (I’m pretty sure I’m alone on those two), and Halo 2…”

It could have gone on like that. But then Geordi ejected the core and the Enterprise was saved. Roll credits.