Physical digital assets are dumb like me

I rented Darkon last night from the local video store, Lost Weekend Video. I'm a big fan of both.

Darkon is a really intense documentary about live action role playing. The filmmakers take the subject very seriously which I admire. The homemade-LOTR-style of it makes it easy to get wrapped up in the in-world narrative.

I'm also fascinated by the game mechanics of Darkon since it requires so much from the participants. My initial reaction to seeing the actual gameplay was "Wow - this would be so easily griefed." I mean, you determine how much damage you take from an incoming attack, not the attacker. I don't think it gets gamed a lot because people are willingly creating this world. They want the narrative to work. Not once during the documentary did they show any disputes about rules or abuses.

I also love Lost Weekend Video. I've rented movies there for years, even through my Netflix addiction. I actually suspended my Netflix account several months back because I was getting all my stuff through Lost Weekend.

So it was a little disappointing when, on my way to return the video at the store this morning, I accidentally put it in the mailbox instead.

I guess it makes up for the time I accidentally mailed Eugene's copy of the Two Towers to Netflix by mistake.

SteveJ's Birthday

Steve's Wishes
Originally uploaded by goldtoe

Is Christmas safe...

I am distracted by shiny things.

Cannonball

I've blown past Shel and moved into Dom DeLuise territory.

Calypso bulbosa

Crystal and I went on a great hike near Mt. Tam yesterday and right toward the end we saw a whole mess of these orchids. They bloom in late March and can be seen on the Benstein trail near the Rock Springs trailhead.

They're commonly known as fairy slippers. Which is pretty fruity even for a flower.

Horn of Plenty

Had my most common recurring dream last night: I somehow end up with a massive, seemingly inexhaustible supply of video games.

I've had this dream since the time of the Atari 2600. In the dream, I'm just surrounded by boxes of games and the games are more fantastic and amazing than any in real life.

I get so into the dream - figuring out what I'm going to play first, how I'll tackle this avalanche of games - that it's always very disappointing to wake up. It's my most realistic dream, the one where it takes me the longest to realize it was a fantasy.

I guess I could go buy a whole big mess of games. But I don't really want that. It's kinda sad that now that I can have the object of my dreams I don't even want it that much. But in the dream I do.

Of course, last night I also dreamt I had an inexhaustible supply of yogurt. So it's a little unclear what my subconscious wants.

Brother from the same mother

Haven't seen my brother in well over a year. Thank you Oracle Training Center in Pleasanton for bringing him to our shores.

The Giving Tree

Making a note here

I was trying to login to att.com to pay my bill. I logged in. And was successful at doing so.

I guess they thought I should stop there.

Political contributions from tech employees

The year-end campaign reports filed on January 31 provide information on how candidates raised money. I looked at contributions to four Democrats and five Republicans from five technology companies: Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and Microsoft. The following graphs show these contributions first by company and and then by candidate. (Disclosure: I've contributed to the Obama campaign.)




Some observations:

• Ranked by total dollars raised, the top three candidates are: Clinton (38% of all money raised), Obama (29%), Paul (22%). Together, these three candidates took in 89% of the money contributed.


• Clinton raised the most money with 68% coming from Microsoft employee contributions of $86,360. In terms of raw dollars, both Microsoft and Ebay employees prefer Clinton, Google employees prefer Obama, Yahoo and Amazon employees prefer Paul.


• Microsoft employees contributed the most money in total at $169,421, but Google contributed the most per employee. Google employees contributed $111,160 which works out to $6.61 per capita (based on end of year head count data). This far exceeds the other four companies' per capita contributions which range from $0.64 (Amazon) to $2.14 (Microsoft).


• Given the strength of Ron Paul's fund raising, I'd conclude that technology workers skew fairly libertarian. And not as liberal as you might expect given that neither Kucinich or Edwards did not fare particulaly well.


• The presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain, was in 4th place among Republicans. Huckabee was the worst-performing Republican ($1,550) and Kucinich the worst-performing Democrat ($4,250).