makeshiftmind

I used to have dual monitors, and sometimes my windows show up “off-screen” because my computer still thinks I have two displays when I really don’t. I finally found out how to correct this nuisance!

• Do whatever should bring the window front.
• Type Alt-Space bar, then M. This invokes the system menu and the Move command
• Use the arrow keys to move the window. If you see an outline appear from the side of the screen, you’ve got it. Hit Return to use that position

The Job

As most of you know, I recently switched jobs. I no longer work for National Auto Warranty Services as of Friday (well, technically — I skipped my last day because there was nothing left to do, so instead I spent all day Friday cleaning the house — thrill of thrills). I am now employed by a company called Family Tree DNA in a “team lead” position (which is just a fancy way of saying “the guy who is responsible for all the software bugs”). The business change is pretty drastic — from extended auto warranties to DNA testing — but I will still be writing code, and that’s what matters (for those who are interested, they are currently using the .NET platform, but there’s an ongoing debate about whether a re-platform is in order, or whether they should just let a sleeping dog lie and continue down the road-most-traveled). I don’t know much about the inner-workings of the company, but I do know they’ve interfaced with National Geographic and IBM, so I am very curious and pretty excited to be joining the team. The company is located in Houston, but I will be tele-commuting part time (which means I fly down to Houston for a few weeks a month at first, which will taper off as the workload allows). I do have a few fears, but I can safely attribute them to pre-new-job-jitters. Except for my fear of airports. Which is totally justified.

Brittany

Brittany has a crazy-ass work schedule right now, which I do not envy. But she is fighting through it until mid-October, when PWC’s corporate busy season will finally be over, and she’ll get to come up for breath. I am very proud of her, because she is working “full time++” AND studying for her CPA (which means nights and weekends are all filled up). The more I learn about the world of “big business”, the more impressed I am that she’s making her way through the muck and mire. Even her own co-workers come to her for advice because she knows how to think critically and can’t stand sloppy work. I can’t wait for Fall to get here so we can both finally relax a little bit — we need it!

Bounds + Cloud

My little sister is getting married on October 6! I just went and got fitted for my tux this weekend. I am very glad Megan has found a man she loves, and I wish her and her fiancé Micah all the very best! (I can’t write too much here because then I’ll run out of material for my wedding toast

World of Warcraft

I finally succumbed to peer pressure and joined the legions of nerds who play World of Warcraft. It can be pretty fun to run around and whack orcs with friends. My character is Subrosalis and I’m on Khadgar — if you’re in the neighborhood say hi.

Bioshock

Even more important that World of Warcraft though is Bioshock, a new first person shooter from the makers of the lesser-known games System Shock and System Shock 2. The game has received a lot of hype, and for very good reasons. Each of the “Shock” games basically allows you to play through a very complex plot line, with well defined characters and eerie, intense environments. As you play, you really feel as though you’re immersed in a thriller/horror film (which obviously means that the best time to play is at midnight, with all the lights off, when no one is home!). What makes Bioshock unique (and especially intriguing to me) is the premise of the game. In a nutshell, you play the survivor of an oceanic flight crash in the year 1960. After the crash, as you surface for air, you discover a large tower jutting out of the water with a stairway that leads you to a submersible vehicle. You enter the vehicle and begin your descent to a hidden underwater city named “Rapture”. The city was built in the 1940’s by a man named Andrew Ryan, who wanted a place for the world’s greatest minds to converge and be free to live without interruptions from the State or the Church. When you finally arrive at the docking port, you quickly see that the city has fallen into heavy disarray, and the once sane inhabitants have been transformed into nightmarish creatures that prey on each other. The rest of the game is a process of discovering what happened to Rapture, and how to escape.

Now, probably the most interesting thing about the game is that it borrows heavily (in a twisted kind of way) from the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Certain things in the game are clearly lifted from her life and works. For example, Andrew Ryan is a sort of anagram of Ayn Rand, and the first human contact you meet in Rapture is a man who calls himself “Atlas”. As the game unfolds, you quickly learn that the citizens of Rapture became unrealistically infatuated with their own greatness, and began to ignore any type of ethical constraints in their pursuit for perfection (think Nietzsche on crack). Their quest for beauty, strength, intelligence, etc. led the best scientific minds of the community to begin performing genetic experiments on citizens in an attempt to create a utopia — experiments which ultimately turned people into deranged monsters and led to the downfall of Rapture. As you make your way through the game, you come across little girls who have been genetically altered to extract something called “Adam” from the corpses of dead citizens. “Adam” is the genetic material that functions as the base for all the “enhancements” that the citizens of Rapture were striving for. To progress through the game, you need to acquire this material from these “little sisters” who are protected by lumbering steampunk cyborgs called “big daddies”. Once you eliminate each “big daddy”, you can acquire the Adam from the girls in one of two ways — by curing them of their genetically warped state, or by taking it forcibly from them and ending their lives (an ethical dilemma which is compounded by the fact that forcible removal increases the amount of Adam you receive). The outcome of the game is changed based on which action you decide to take. And here is where the overarching greatness of Bioshock is revealed. Your individual actions in Rapture are a mirror of the actions of its own citizens. You can choose to believe that your own self interest is served best by destroying the weak, and living at their expense. Or you can choose to believe that your own self interest will be met by investing in the weak so they become something better than they are. Ayn Rand’s philosophy clearly teaches the latter approach — that one’s dignity, self-worth, and identity are partially affected by how one treats others. If you live at the expense of others, you truly are a parasite with no identity or self-worth of your own. If you treat others as equals, and if you invest in others, you can and will reap benefits because you have not compromised your individuality and you are helping them develop theirs.

I did finish the game by helping the “little sisters”, and, as geeky as this sounds, was quite impressed by how the game ended (it was even a little emotional, if you can believe that). I do plan on playing through a second time, making the opposite choice, so I can see how the game portrays the consequences of that decision.

Misc.

I got a new desk, and it’s pretty kickin’. My old one was falling apart, and I’ve been putting off the purchase forever because of the expense, both in terms of money and labor (putting a big desk together is a *pain*). But I finally bit the bullet. If I’m going to be working from home, I need a nice desk.

I had swordfish the other day at Bristol’s and it was quite good. Good seafood is hard to get in MO, but Bristols is the place to go if you don’t mind paying a premium (between $15 – $25 a plate). And they have some awesome Spanish wine.

The End