Racing Sims: A Few Quick Laps Down Memory Lane (Lap 2)

As I wrote in my most recent piece, no other type of video game captures my imagination quite like a good racing game/sim.  For sure, this is my favorite video game genre.

I’ve been playing racing video games/simulations for quite a few years.  As the years have gone by, the quality of the games seems to be in lock-step with the technology available.  With every advance in the technology comes a natural and corresponding advance in the quality of the sims available.

Let’s take a couple of steps back, then, to a year or two before those gloriously awesome years playing the Sega Genesis port of Super Monaco GP.  Before the Genesis, Nintendo’s NES was the console of choice.  My sisters and I had one, and so did my friend Rick, who is also as big a racing nut (but alas, not a sim racing nut) as I am.  One of the few racing games Rick and I played at that time was Al Unser Jr.’s Turbo Racing.  I actually don’t remember too much of this game now, but I do remember that once Super Monaco GP came out for the Genesis, neither Rick nor I brought out the NES to play AUJTR anymore.

I suppose Super Monaco GP was just about the apex of the pre-PlayStation console racing sims for me.  Not even Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II (for the Sega Genesis) was as good as the original SMGP port.  Graphically, the Senna-endorsed sequel was maybe a little bit more refined.  The sound, though, was a HUGE letdown.  The original SMGP had pretty cool engine sounds, with variations in pitch as the revs escalated.  Then there was the very impressive and immersive positional audio, wherein you can actually tell which side a rival car is on just by listening to the audio cues (a smart implementation of stereo, for sure).  In comparison, SMGPII’s engine sounds were quite uninspired.  Your car’s engine sounded like it wasn’t revving very high at all (no real discernible variations in pitch as the RPM increased, actually), and it sounded way too heavy in the lower portions of the mid-range frequencies.  Very unnatural.  Positional audio was still there, but it wasn’t any good to listen to.  What I did like about SMGPII more compared to SMGP was that the race tracks were probably more accurately modeled.  Other than this one element, though, I definitely felt that the original Super Monaco GP port for the Sega Genesis was a better game overall.

Come to think of it, SMGP was so much fun to play with, it surpassed a couple of games which were actually played on newer hardware.  I was one of those people who saved enough money to get the frankly pathetic Sega CD add-on for the Genesis.  I owned exactly THREE games for this hardware blind alley:  One of them was Formula One:  Beyond The Limit (the other games were NFL Football ‘94 Starring Joe Montana and Sonic CD, which were bundled in with the Sega CD module).

FO:BtL wasn’t awful, but I can’t say that it was as brilliant as SMGP was.  For one thing, FO:BtL featured a picture of my all-time favorite F1 driver of all time, Alain Prost (driving his iconic 1986 McLaren-TAG Porsche), on the cover.  The gameplay featured a couple of interesting touches.  For example, in starting the Career mode, you had to test drive a generic car; based on your performance, the different racing teams in the game would offer you a seat in one of their cars.  This was a simplified simulation of how drivers actually get offers from real-world teams, so as a fan simulating this process was pretty cool.  Another interesting facet of the gameplay was the fact that each car had its own unique characteristics.  SMGP had similar performance variations in the different cars in the game, but most of the differences were purely in engine performance; FO:BtL actually tried to convey the idea that a Ferrari handled pretty well, but had a gutless engine; the Larrousse-Lamborghini had good straightline speed, but bad handling; the Williams-Renault had great handling and very good top speed, but not as good performance in low gears + low RPMs (relative to the Benetton-Ford and McLaren-Ford cars, which had great Ford V8s with gobs of low-end grunt but lacked in top speed).  Allied to the cool variations in handling properties was the fact that each engine type had unique engine sounds.  The Ford V8s sounded different from the Ferrari V12; the Lamborghini V12 was different from Ferraris there again; and the various V10s all had subtle differences as well (the Ilmor-Mercedes in the Sauber was actualy the best-sounding V10 to me).

One other notable feature about this game’s gameplay was the fact that, for the very first time in racing games, there was a risk of doing permanent damage to your car if you drove it poorly.  In most other games beforehand, you could crash into the scenery or obstacles, but it wouldn’t necessarily spell the very end of your race; the game would simply let you continue from the point you had crashed.  The only time such crashes were terminal was if the Time Remaining countdown (i.e., a clock that told you how much time you had left to make it to the next checkpoint) reached zero.  In FO:BtL, you could do damage to many parts of your car if you drove poorly.  The car’s tires wore down as the race progressed; your engine could overheat, or even destroy itself  if you downshifted at full throttle; the handling could go awry if you bumped wheels with rivals too often (simulating suspension misalignment/damage).  In my opinion, this particular feature of the game was awesome in that it taught sim racers one of the foremost maxims in the sport:  To finish first, first you have to finish.

Another first was the possibility of changes in the weather.  This was an awesome advance.  This was simulated graphically — rain drops were added on to the gameplay screens — as well as in the game physics.  As you might expect, traction becomes more elusive, and you could actually lose control when the heavens open up and rain pelts the circuit.

Lastly, the game also allowed the player to change certain settings on the car, much as real-life racing cars do.  As I recall, you could change front and rear wing settings, gear ratios, as well as some very basic suspension adjustments.  As Alain Prost was renowned for his prowess in racing car set-up, this particular aspect of the game was just absolutely awesome for me.

As good as these features were, though, in total the game was lacking, given the theoretical superiority of the hardware.  For one thing, as lovely and detailed the effort was to replicate the actual engine sounds, they didn’t really connect you to the game as well as SMGP’s sound effects were.  I think the engine sounds in isolation were great; as part of the gameplay experience itself, though, you felt more as though you were hearing a recording of the engine sounds instead of actually causing the rise and fall of the RPM, the changes in gears.  The graphics, too, were a little disappointing.  Believe it or not, SMGP’s graphics looked more refined; during gameplay, FO:BtL’s graphics looked too pixelated.  Cutscene graphics, such as they were, were acceptable.  Though the game allowed for some of the cars’ settings to be modified, the effects of such changes were not as noticeable as I think they ought to be.  As I recall, the most obvious effects were changes to the gear ratios; aerodynamics and suspension adjustments were not as perceptible.

Perhaps FO:BtL was too ambitious, trying to incorporate many ideas and enhancements which the available hardware and software coding ability could not deliver.  Nevertheless, as a game it paled in comparison with SMGP.  It just didn’t measure up in the FUN factor.

One game that DID measure up to, and surpass, SMGP was Virtua Racing.  Virtua Racing did not simulate any particular F1 car or F1 season, but it did a superb job of simulating the experience of driving and racing a Formula One car.  VR, like SMGP, was originally an arcade game.  You sat in a racing seat, with two pedals at your feet (throttle for the right foot, brake for the left foot) and a steering wheel at chest level in front of you.  As you took hold of the wheel (it was a fair facsimile of a racing car’s steering wheel, with a thick rim and a diameter of around 10″), you would immediately notice the gear shift paddles just behind the spokes.  The right-hand paddle was for upshifts, while the left-hand paddle was for downshifts.  The pedals at your feet had different weights, with the brake pedal being much heavier than the throttle; this was very realistic.  Also, most arcade setups that I played with even simulated G-force loadings through movable pads in the seats.  Take a tight right hand at high speed, and you’ll feel an almost-violent punch in your left side; use more finesse in your cornering techniques, and the movable pads would move and make contact with your body with more subtlety.

My friends and I spent a good amount of money going to different video arcades racing each other on Virtua Racing.  Funnily enough, though, my most outstanding memory of this sim is from the L.A. Auto Show.  I don’t precisely remember what year it was — I think it was either 1995 or 1996 –, but Team Penske’s IndyCar operation had a display with their title sponsor.  Very prominent on their display was a group of several Virtua Racing machines on a LAN link-up.  

As I recall, there were maybe eight or ten machines linked together.  Showgoers could race in the machines against each other, and there were prizes on offer for outstanding achievements, including winning the race and setting the fastest lap of the day.

There were two catches, though:  1)  First, you had to be past a certain age; 2) you also had to be a consumer of the title sponsor’s product.  

At the time, I was not quite yet at that required age.  Moreover, I didn’t (and still don’t) buy that sponsor’s products.  

My friends and I just wanted to race.

Undeterred, we found used-up packages of this sponsor’s product in the parking garage of the L.A. Convention Center, got into line, and passed ourselves off as legal users of the product.  I was actually asked for identification, but since producing ID would have exposed the ruse, I merely and nonchalantly said that I didn’t have my driver’s license on me since I didn’t drive to the Auto Show.  The young lady controlling admission into the Virtua Racing LAN competition took my word and allowed me to race.

By the end of a five-lap race, I wound up winning the race and also setting the day’s fastest lap time so far.  If my lap time held until the end of that day, the prize was a bona-fide leather and suede jacket emblazoned with the sponsor’s logos.

Amazingly, my time held up, and the sponsor actually complied and sent me the prize!  I still own that red and black jacket, in fact (though I don’t wear it since I don’t want to advertise the product or the company).

Who knew racing sims could be so rewarding?

Racing Sims: A Few Quick Laps Down Memory Lane (Lap 1)

I’ve sampled a good number of racing video games/simulators in my lifetime.  For sure the racing sim is my favorite video game genre.

I think the first one I ever played was Pole Position, both in the video arcade — imagine using both the throttle and the brake while standing up(!) (no left-foot braking here, for sure) — and on the Atari 2600.  There were also full sit-down arcade cabinet versions of this game available in a few select arcades, but the stand-up version was far more common.

Super Monaco GP is another much beloved arcade racing game that I enjoyed in my younger days.  Like Pole Position, it also had a console port available (this time for the Sega Genesis).  I remember Grad Night from high school, when we went to Disneyland.  The Class of 1993 had the entire park to ourselves that night, and I remember spending a lot of money at the video arcade there on the sit-down Super Monaco GP.  The memory of holding that thick-rimmed steering wheel with the paddle shifters behind the spokes and the loud engine noises coming from behind my head still makes me smile.  

The Genesis port was actually quite good as well.  Goodness knows how many hours I spent in front of a TV screen, Genesis control pad in my hands, my fingers pretending to actuate the gearshift paddles I imagined were just a small stretch away.  How I used to marvel at the game’s sounds, as well; you could tell where a rival was simply by listening for his engine’s noise, whether it was coming from the left or the right or right behind you.  I used to imagine I was an up-and-coming Italian pilote hired by Scuderia Ferrari to initiate the fabled team’s renaissance; in this world of youthful dreams, I did what Michael Schumacher did and dominated the F1 Drivers World Championship for years and beat Alain Prost’s record for Grand Prix victories (albeit without ever resorting to Schumacher’s cynical, unsportsmanlike tactics).

I also have great memories of playing Hard Drivin’.  Although I didn’t spend a whole lot of money on this older game, I do remember it for two reasons:  1)  It had force feedback, which was absolutely mind-blowing; 2)  Hard Drivin’ was also the first driving “game” which replicated a manual transmission, complete with clutch pedal.  Looking back, this may have been the first true great driving simulator made available to the public.  In my opinion, Hard Drivin’ was good enough to function as a Driver’s Education tool; its gameplay and physics were that advanced.

I wasn’t very good at Hard Drivin’.  Come to think of it, I wasn’t all that good at playing Pole Position or Super Monaco GP (Video Arcade version) either.  In fact, to this day, no other racing game frustrates me more due to its difficulty than this old school Pole Position, Atari port or arcade version.  Nevertheless, I still love these games with all my heart.  I strongly believe that they kindled my blazing love affair with performance driving and racing.

“I’m John, and I too play a guitar — but sometimes I play the fool…” – John Lennon

I remember the very first thing I ever bought on eBay.  

I don’t exactly remember when it was I bought it, but I won an auction for Live at the BBC (The Beatles Album).  As a lifelong Beatles fan (the very first tunes I can distinctly remember are from when I was around a year old; my dad would put me to sleep playing Beatles records and humming or singing along with some of the songs), I was building up my collection of Beatles recordings at the time.  Most of the band’s material had been released on CD, and most of them were still in circulation.  The Live at the BBC album, though, was a notable exception.

Well, let me clarify.  

The album HAD been released on CD, but it was a limited release.  I had missed my chance to pick up the album on CD when it was readily available.  Now that I had the ability to pick it up, it was sadly no longer on the shelves.

eBay came to my rescue.  Happily I was able to find the album on auction for a reasonable starting bid; I put a bid in, and thankfully won the auction sans problems.  I was quite the happy Beatles fan when I got the package with the double-CD album about a week after auction’s end.

The quotation referenced in this blog entry’s title is from the band’s introduction in the Live at the BBC album (Track 1, Disc 1), and itself serves as a roundabout introduction to this blog entry.

JL

John was always my favorite Beatle.  

Many people have a favorite member of the band, and I am no different.  Many love Paul, and justifiably so.  After all, he unquestionably has the best ear for melody amongst the Fab Four.  He is also a talented musician, the best amongst the band; his work on bass is exceptional and distinctive, but he is also great on guitar — few people know it was he, and not George, who played the lead guitar on George’s psychedelic rock classic “Taxman.”  Not only is he a great musician, but he is a fairly good songwriter as well.  His “Eleanor Rigby“ and “Here, There, and Everywhere” are two of the best songs I have ever heard, lyrically and musically.

Speaking of George, he is much admired for his amazing work with a guitar (“I’m George, and I play a guitar,” he said simply in his Live at the BBC album intro).  Not only could he faithfully reproduce signature licks and playing styles — he did great on Beatles covers of Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, and Buddy Holly, amongst others –, but he also could come up with his own signature sounds and riffs.  His body of work is remarkable in its versatility and variety, able to be soft and loving (as in his work on “Here Comes the Sun” or “Something“) or wild and wooly, with a touch of the experimentalist (“Love You To,” “Within You Without You,” or his reversed guitar solos on John’s “I’m Only Sleeping“), as the song required.  The feel and texture and spirit of the sound of the Beatles would have been impossible without George’s work.

Largely the same could be said of Ringo, actually.  Though probably the most limited musician amongst the four, Ringo’s work on drums is stylish and unmistakably his and his alone.  In a similar manner that you could tell a McCartney bass line, you can definitely hear Ringo’s signature techniques and rhythms in his drumming.  Horribly underestimated by some, the Beatles’ body of work would be lacking without Ringo’s work on vocals; can you imagine McCartney’s “Yellow Submarine” or Lennon’s “Good Night,” or the uproarious “I Wanna Be Your Man” sung by anyone else?  Unquestionably as well, Ringo is the best actor of the four (The Beatles DID appear, as a group and as individuals, in various films, after all).

John, though… 

He wasn’t the best musician.  He played guitar fairly well, but he was definitely not nearly the best at that.  In fact, I wouldn’t be so daft as to call him a great guitar player, or even a very good one.  But he did it well enough to be the rhythm guitarist for the Beatles.

He wasn’t the best actor.  On the other hand, he was probably too honest to ever be a good actor, in my opinion.  (I guess what I’m trying to articulate here is that acting requires the capacity to pretend to be someone other than who you are, and John never really showed any ability to do that.)

John, though…

John was my favorite singer of the four.  His voice, and how he used it, had the ability to make you feel what the speaker of his song (frequently, he was the song’s speaker) was feeling at the moment he was singing.  It’s not just about the ability to hit the right notes and stay in the right key; lyrics take on a life of their own when a listener can experience the meaning of the words, whether it is an experience based on descriptions (you can see what the words are describing, as if you were there yourself) or one based on impressions of emotions or other abstract phenomenon (you can feel the emotions of the speaker).  Listen to “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Help!,” or “Yer Blues” to hear what a speaker’s emotions sound like; on the other hand, songs like “A Day In the Life” or “Across the Universe” are great at conveying visual imagery.

John was also my favorite songwriter of the four.  Some of Paul’s lyrics were, frankly, ridiculous (I hate that moment in one of his good songs, “And I Love Her“:  ”Bright are the stars that shine/Dark is the sky/I know this love of mine will never die.”  Really, Paul?  You sure you couldn’t have tried harder for that part of the couplet?  It ruined the song for me.).  Some of Paul’s songs, like “When I’m Sixty-Four” or “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” irk me endlessly since they seem to be too much a personal indulgence on Paul’s part, since they stand out for all the worst reasons when compared to the rest of a rock band’s catalogue of work (I have a hard time coming to terms with muzak and other works of whimsy being part of the same family as “Don’t Let Me Down”).

While John himself could be accused of sometimes of self-indulgent throwaways (“Mean Mr. Mustard” or “Polythene Pam” come to mind, as does “Glass Onion“), a closer look at such works reveals that perhaps these indulgences were expressions of Lennon’s natural penchant for wordplay.  Even if the words are nonsensical in a strict sense, they still have a poetic sensibility to them.  Elements such as alliteration, vivid visual imagery, odd rhythms, and creative rhymes make you think that such lyrics are poems set to music.   

Lennon had so many great lyrics, so many great songs.  ”In My Life” is an acknowledged classic; some of my other personal favorites include “I Feel Fine” (a rare Lennon tune for its optimism), “There’s A Place” (an early example of Lennon being a deep-thinking songwriter instead of just a writer of pop tunes), the melancholic yet loving “Julia,” the philosophical “Rain,” the achingly beautiful “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (an account of John and Yoko’s honeymoon and their first bed-in).  Mind you, this really is just a short list of my favorite John Lennon Beatles songs.

I didn’t even include the gems of his solo career.

JL

It shocked me somewhat when I realized Lennon would have turned sixty-nine today had that assassin not taken him far too early.  Somehow, you don’t think of rock stars as older people.  Personal gods, which Lennon is to me, simply don’t age.

Each year, on his birthday and on the anniversary of his death, I play his music to celebrate his life and his work.  So it is thus this year.

Happy 69th, John.

 

Missed Shifts

I had a weird “first” yesterday.

So there I was, driving to work in the morning.  I had just made the left turn from Harvey Dr. on to the on-ramp to the 134W.  As usual, I was in second gear, pulling about 3500RPMs.

The on-ramp from Harvey starts out with two lanes, which then blend into one lane after the traffic light controlling flow onto the 134 when freeway traffic is slow and dense.  95% of the time I’m in the right lane since most people take the left lane.

Anyway, yesterday as usual I was in the right lane, and there was no car in front of me.  As usual I spied the traffic light and peeked at the freeway’s flow to see how fast it was moving.  The freeway was moving pretty well, so it was no surprise to me when I saw that the traffic light was staying green (instead of cycling between red and green lights to control the flow onto the 134).  

“Ah, good,” I thought to myself.

Gently but firmly I pushed down onto the throttle; the tachometer’s needle swept past 4000, 5000, 5500RPMs.  

I pushed the clutch in while letting the throttle breathe a bit.  The tach’s needle dipped to around 3000RPMs.

I flicked my wrist and pushed the gearshift knob up and to the right to select third.

I popped the clutch out and pressed the throttle gently again.

And all I got was the tach sweeping up to about 4500RPMs, with the forward drive slacking.

And then it hit me:  I had missed the shift.

Holy.

Cow.

I.

Missed.

A.

Shift.

I pressed the clutch in again and lifted off of the throttle, then pushed the gear lever up more to engage 3rd.  This time the gear-change was complete, and I popped the clutch and throttled up again, enjoying the feeling of being pressed back into the driver’s seat.

All this took place in mere fractions of a second.

This was the first time I ever missed a gear-change in my Civic Si.  

*****

I used to drive a 1996 Ford Probe GT.  Like my present-day ride, the Probe GT was black, and it had a manual transmission.

I simply just adore driving a proper stick shift.  In fact, I’ve convinced myself that I’ll probably never own a car that doesn’t have a good old-fashioned manual transmission.  That means a transmission where I do everything.

I decide when to shift up or down.

I decide what gear to select.

I control the clutch.

I blip the throttle on downshifts to match the revs.

And yes, occasionally I miss a shift.  It seldom happens, but it does indeed happen.

In the Probe GT, because its gear-change required more muscle than the Civic Si’s gearbox does, I’d almost force in and grind the gears when my timing is just a little off and I release the clutch pedal a tiny bit too early.  In the Honda, I didn’t grind any gears; a lightness of touch on the controls, as well as a heightened sensitivity, helps make a car more reliable, perhaps.

But I’ve digressed.

Back on point:  I know that F1-style semi-automatic transmissions are now available on road cars, and have been for nearly a decade now.  Such systems are computer-controlled and therefore supposedly are the perfect technological solution when it comes to automotive transmissions.  They’re a very effective compromise between a performance-oriented manual transmission and a computer-optimized full-auto.

But I take issue with such computerized systems.

While these are good for the racetrack, I question how enjoyable they’d really be on the streets.

For one thing, the whole point of semi-automatic transmissions is to simplify a racing driver’s job by allowing him to keep both hands on the steering wheel while he’s attacking a corner and racing for position.  In other words, in a racing environment (where things are moving very very VERY fast), such a gear-changing system makes total sense because the driver’s reaction time is so short because of the speeds he’s racing at.  

Semi-automatic transmissions are impractical on the streets simply because of the limits imposed on the environment as well as by the law.  Speed limits and the lack of space, as well as the fact that most cars will not be travelling quickly even if you want to, mean that there is no advantage to having a semi-automatic gearbox.  Normal street speeds are far too slow to ever take full advantage of a semi-auto.

Some might say one “benefit” is to not have to operate the clutch with a semi-automatic.  Well… if that’s your argument, perhaps you should just stay with a fully-automatic transmission, buddy.  Operating a clutch properly is part and parcel of the experience of using a manual transmission.

For me, there is no gray area when it comes to transmission types:  You either rock a manual, or you’re a sissy who prefers an automatic. 

I guess I’m pretty old-school when it comes to lots of things.

When it comes to driving on the streets, for me there’s simply no better way to do things than to use a true manual gearbox.  It takes skill to do things properly.  Experience and application combine to hone such skill.  They thus mark you and separate you from the rest of the crowd.

Some people know how to drive with a stick, and most don’t.

Moreover, some people are demonstrably better at driving with a stick.

In its own way, developing the skills and techniques doing something as seemingly mundane as driving a fully-manual transmission is actually an expression of one of the most noble aspects of being human:  You push yourself to do the best you can at something.  Sure, you might make a few mistakes along the way, but that is beautiful in its own way.

Why?

Because, simply, to err is human.

Missed shifts or no, to do things the best way humanly possible is a very beautiful thing indeed.

Break A Leg, Brett

First things first:  I’m a San Francisco 49ers fan.  Ever since I first learned how to watch and appreciate football, the 49ers and their players captured my imagination like no other.

Having said that, I have absolutely no problem admiring the greatness of others.  Whether it’s the greatness of other individual players (Peyton Manning, LaDainian Tomlinson, Rich Gannon, and others, to name just a very few) or the greatness of other teams (the New England Patriots, despite the allegations of surreptitious sideline signal filming as exposed by the NY Jets a couple of years ago, deserve much admiration, for one), if they’re demonstrably the best at what they do, then they will have earned my respect and admiration.

The reverse, of course, is also true.  If players or teams do bonehead things, they earn my disgust.  Norv Turner, for example, is reputed to be one of the sharper offensive minds in football.  I’d say that’s probably true.  On the other hand, as a head coach he’s utterly useless.  I think that it’s safe to say that the San Diego Chargers have had one of the most talented rosters man-for-man for the last three years at least; two of those years, I think they were good enough to go to the Super Bowl (and probably actually even win it).  Norv (and predecessor Marty Schottenheimer) haven’t even made it as far as the AFC Championship game.  What boneheads.

Michael Vick (overrated piece of trash for a QB), Terrell Owens, “The Boz”… boneheads, all.  

But I think the new king of the utterly ridiculous, the NFL figure who most deserves my most poisonous spleen venting, is Brett Favre.  With his girlish fickleness, his egomania reaching Oprah-like levels, his crass dishonesty, and his blatant disregard for the good of his team (I’m pretty sure he wanted to play this year all along, but went through this ridiculous “I won’t play; I’m retired (again)” charade), I have no hesitation in wishing nothing but the absolute worst for Favre.

I hope he gets hurt in the remainder of the pre-season.

I hope he gets severely injured sometime during the season.

I hope he breaks his leg, just like Joe Theismann did when Lawrence Taylor broke through the protection.

I hope he gets hurt so severely, he’ll have absolutely NO CHOICE but to END HIS CAREER.

Hateful words, for sure.  But I AM SICK OF BRETT FAVRE.

He’s an overrated piece of trash as a quarterback anyway.  Two Super Bowl appearances, one win.  Sure, he has the record for most starts, most touchdowns, etc. for QBs.  Big effing deal.  He’s also got a horrendous number of interceptions.  Not cool for QBs at any level.  His “positive” statistics are not so much the result of superlative talent (he had the arm, he had some instincts, but not the mental acumen of true greats like Peyton Manning, Johnny Unitas, or Joe Montana, for example) as they are a consequence of his longevity.

Longevity may be an indicator of one’s value or worth in a particular sport.  But I don’t see it as a particularly significant metric of greatness.

Unlike Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who contributed significantly up until the end of his long career with the Lakers (helping lead them to the NBA championship a few times in his last five years, and losing in the Finals despite playing well and leading the team in his final season), Favre seems to play only to extend his iron man streak and to put butts in the seats.  Oh, and to provide fodder for the informal pundits and radio talk show people.  And let’s not forget to mention to salve a very sick ego so desperate to stay in the limelight and get attention.

Yes, I’ve said that Brett Favre is overrated as a quarterback.  I don’t care how many touchdowns you’ve thrown; how many games did you lose because you threw into triple coverage that even I can see?  I’ll say it now that Favre is also massively overrated as a man, too.

Let me slightly amend what I wrote above:  Most girls are not as fickle as Favre.

And I stand firm on that.

Seriously, Brett:  Break a leg.

Trying Windows Vista at the Pre-Dawn of the Age of 7

I love PC hardware.  I am not ashamed to admit that I may have a bit of an addiction.  I started building PCs in 2006, and to date I’ve put together around fifteen or so machines.

Mind you, most of those were not for me.  Most of those PCs were for clients.  Of course, what this means is that I’ve gotten my hands on all sorts of PC core hardware and tried them out.  I’ve sampled different sorts of motherboards, explored and configured quite a few BIOSes, and installed and swapped out numerous video and sound cards.

Perhaps the only part of a custom PC assembly from which I’ve almost never deviated is in the operating system installed.  Windows XP 32-bit, either in its Home or Professional guise, has been my (and my clients’) OS of choice.  I once installed Ubuntu in my old personal office machine so that it would dual-boot with WinXP, and while the experience was positive, there was definitely a learning curve to master.  

I’d never tried Windows Vista; funnily enough, my clients didn’t want to go with Vista either.  I didn’t want to buy a license to use it because the price of admission was steeper than what I was willing to accept.  Besides, XP did the job adequately.  For their part, my clients didn’t want to buy Vista because of the myriad stories of how it was worse in almost every way compared to XP.  They would inevitably ask me for my thoughts on Vista, but the most I could say was that I really had no experience with it other than the few and irregular occasions when I would sample a PC with the OS pre-installed.

But that’s not nearly enough to have an informed opinion about it.

So I settled on a definite course of action.  I actually now have a fully paid-for Vista Ultimate media and license, so I decided to install it on one of my machines.  

My first impressions of Vista are a little mixed.  At the outset, even on a fresh-from-the-oven installation, the environment feels a little slowed-down compared to an XP installation at the same exact stage.  It’s not glacier-slow, but it’s not whiplash-inducingly quick, either.  I’d call this more a very mild letdown rather than a true disappointment.

Other users have vociferously complained about the intrusiveness of UAC (User Account Control), so I made sure to disable this feature almost immediately after discovering how true the consensus opinion was; I simply HATE it when a machine, any machine, presumes that it is smarter than me and decides for me what is good for me.  I used this exercise, in fact, to try and discover if one of the other complaints about Vista was true:  Many users allege that Vista is difficult to navigate, especially if you’re used to XP.  I myself had no difficulty finding what I needed, to be perfectly honest, so I think this depends on the experience level of the individual user.

I very much enjoy the sheer visual beauty of Vista.  Even the most basic graphics driver (I’ve yet to download and install a graphics driver, since I haven’t reinstalled the “true” video card for this system — I’m using a proxy card at the moment) functions beautifully and renders everything with aplomb and smoothness.  I am excited about finalizing the hardware configuration and installing the graphics driver.

Another criticism of Vista is that it’s a resource hog.  It’s said to love RAM, and use it like there’s no tomorrow.  At this early stage of using Vista, I’m finding that it might be useful to reorient my own views on how an operating system should use available resources.  In XP, one of the hallmarks of an optimized system is a hugely reduced number of background processes and a large amount of unused RAM.  What frequently happens when you use up system memory in XP is that the machine will creep to a crawl, sometimes to the point of freezing the machine (necessitating a reboot and sometimes leading to a corresponding loss of data, which is always irritating).  

In Vista, with an XP-defined view of RAM usage, I was somewhat alarmed when I saw that the system was using 1.6GB of a total of 2GBs of RAM on a fresh installation.  The funny thing was, the system was not behaving the way a RAM-starved XP system would.  There was no slow-down, there was no (additional) sluggishness, there were no signs of memory starvation. 

(This writer does a great job of explaining how Vista uses its RAM.)

This made me recall what Vista advocates say about how it uses RAM:  Unlike XP, where it’s healthier to have a lot of unused resources, Vista actually uses what’s available, and does so effectively.  I cannot yet vouch for the efficiency of this different approach to RAM usage, but insofar as what I can feel at the keyboard level I’ve yet to discover any ill effects.

One more thing about Vista that’s very interesting:  I run an overclocked system, and in XP it feels as if the system is slightly off-balance; I’ve tested it thoroughly in XP for stability and it has passed every test I’ve thrown at it with no problems, but it still feels a little bit off, with some weird behaviors from time to time (probably also because the XP installation was running a Windows 7 theme hack).  Vista, despite its slightly slower response times, feels absolutely rock-solid at this point.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe I’ve ever felt this impression of stability at any time I’ve run overclocked in XP.

While it may seem a little stupid to try Vista right at the beginning of the market age of its successor, I think it’s still a useful exercise.  It’s a brand-new experience; therefore, it’s an opportunity to learn about something I had hitherto been largely ignorant.  I will confess that I used to have a strong bias against Vista, but perhaps this was largely brought on by marketing, both official and by word-of-mouth.  At this stage of the game, though, I feel fairly comfortable in my journey of discovery.  Even with so many more things to learn about Vista, I feel less apprehensive and biased against using it than I ever used to.

There’s nothing like experience to kill, or nurture, biases after all.

Summertime Blues

I really dislike SoCal summers.  I don’t care for the heat and the brightness of the sunlight.  

The heat is a scourge that is actually tolerable most days when I’m outdoors — unless it happens to be hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit — and is simply unbearable at night in my bedroom.  On a really terrible night, ambient temperatures in my bedroom have been known to hover at around 95 degrees F.  This is at around 10:00 PM…

Things don’t cool down until around 3:30 AM or so.  My bed and my pillows get soaked in perspiration, and I experience that most wonderful of maladies:  Insomnia.  It’s just a miserable phase that I can surely do without.

The lack of air conditioning in my bedroom (which is on the second floor of my apartment unit; idiotically, there is an AC unit on the first floor, which is useless if the bedrooms are the hottest parts of the apartment in the summer) is the principal reason for my summertime tortures.  Insomnia is never fun to slog through, and neither are the seasonal migraines which, I’m fairly sure, are triggered in part by the extreme temperatures.

In the past, I’ve tried using a portable air conditioning unit in my bedroom.  This has not been an altogether effective solution, as the heat that builds up (and seemingly gets soaked up by everything in the room — the bed, my pillows, the walls all seem to absorb and hold on to the heat) exceeds the unit’s capacity to overcome that heat.  Friends have also suggested installing a window-mounted AC unit; however, to do so would necessitate modifying the apartment (the windows and screens must be altered to suit), which violates the terms of use I signed with the property owner.

Thankfully, this summer so far has not been as torturous as the last couple of years’.  

The oppressive heat is not the only thing that bothers me about summers in SoCal.  Just as uncomfortable is the brightness of the sunlight.  Sunglasses afford some protection and relief, but even wearing my favorite pair doesn’t completely save me from discomfort.  Some days, my eyes actually do physically hurt after being out in the sunlight for long periods (or whilst driving in the daytime).

I suppose I’m complaining about things that many people actually want.  There are many places in the USA where SoCal summers are the image of perfection.  I guess that’s the difference between image and experience, as well as a perfect illustration of the maxim “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.”  I’ll allow for the possibility that, if I lived in a colder climate zone, I’d probably be writing about my desire to have typical AC-less SoCal summers.

There are few things more human than to complain about things that we have but don’t particularly enjoy, I guess.

Ebbs and Flows

I love Forrest Gump.  I love the movie, the story, and the character.  

I have to re-spin one of his sayings, though.  

He famously said, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”  For one thing, there’s something not quite… accurate about that.  I mean, think about it.  When you buy chocolate in a box, be it from See’s or in a Valentine’s Day novelty box or from any other chocolate vendor, you most likely buy the box because you know exactly what’s going to be inside it (or at least have a pretty good idea).  Who buys something without at least an inkling about what he/she is buying, anyway?  

Not only that, but I have to say that in almost every box of chocolates I’ve ever seen, there is almost always a pictorial guide inside the box telling you specifically what varieties of sweet treats are in what parts of the box.  Want a dark chocolate morsel?  Try the dark-brown one in the top-middle square.  How about a coconut-in-milk chocolate piece?  Bottom right, just next to the toffee chip topped with fudge.

Nah, sorry, Forrest, but I think life is more like the beach:  It’s all about ebbs and flows.  One moment you’re high; the next moment, you come down a bit.  You’re happy, then not so happy.  

Sure, there are always constants which are (by definition) ever-present in everyone’s life.  Love usually defines these constants.  People you love, places and things which trigger your memories of people you love…  each moment, in fact, might be defined by the love you can attach to it.  Presently, even as I write this at my work desk in the office, my mind is not on purchase orders or electric vehicle maintenance requirements:  Rather, my mind is on my little nephews, Jacob and Alex.  

The boys are going back to Coquitlam, British Columbia, tomorrow, and while I am filled with sadness because it will be a few months before I get to see them again, I still feel the strong tidal flow of love that I have for them.  My mind is pushed and pulled by waves of joy; my memories are stirred by potent currents of all that we did together these past few weekends.

I remember Jacob running to hug me when my dad and I got in from Glendale on Friday night; Alex’s smile on Saturday morning when he pressed his hand on my face as I lay on the inflatable mattress; the boys’ laughter at any random moment during the weekend; flying a kite at the park with Jacob; Alex feeding me grapes on Sunday; how heavy both boys seem to be getting (though, to be fair, I don’t think I was at maximum physical strength this past weekend); Jacob being sick two weekends ago, and being fat and happy just before leaving for home; Alex laughing as we chased each other all over the house…

My mood is starting to ebb now that I know they will be leaving for home.  Separation from loved ones always produces this ebb.  

It’s not a box of chocolates, but life’s nevertheless a beach.

C’e la vie…

Weakness

I’d been on a controlled diet for the last couple of months.

I had been fairly good at disciplining myself, staying away from the junk food and snacks and that most evil of evils, soda.  Now and then I’d slip up and give in to a pang of craving, but never allowed myself to lose control.

I’d have a little bit of soda on the weekend.

Maybe once every two weeks I’ll indulge in some junk snacks like chips.  Never in the large, binge-like amounts I used to do, but just in very small portions.

For the most part, though, I’d stayed on the straight and narrow path of decreased caloric intake and a strict regiment of denial of those really bad things that I used to eat and enjoy.

I’m ashamed now to admit that, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve strayed from the course.

I’ve listened to temptation.

Much worse, I’ve acted against my better judgment and willingly chose to relapse into the illness that is consumption of junk food.

Consequently, the weight I had fought so hard to lose has returned.  Perhaps not all the pounds and ounces have returned, but for sure it is a measurable kind of comeback.

If I’m honest, I’d admit to you (and to myself) that I am disgusted by my weakness, and that this significant amount of self-criticism only fuels the negativity I feel.  It’s part of a very vicious cycle which threatens to undermine my own personal quest to continually improve my health; the foundation of such a personal quest is a concerted, comprehensive effort to lose weight and get back to something approaching a healthy standard.

Personal weakness disgusts me.  But this is a demon that doesn’t need to be fed.

I hope I gain the strength within to steel my resolve and starve this demon to death.

And return to the straight and narrow path.

“I got my first real six-string…”

Lately I’ve been looking back at significant parts of my past.  I think one of the most fun, satisfying, and memorable phases of my life was when I was actually a practicing “musician” and songwriter.

I’m not daft enough to call myself a real musician because, well, I’m really not.  I used to play guitar with a modicum of proficiency, but I’m not really a musician.  Musicians are what you call people with real talent; I’m more of a ham-and-egger who just has far more enthusiasm and love for a craft than actual talent and innate ability.

I used to play rhythm guitar and had a band.  Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say that I had a real band.  It’s not like my guys and I ever played any gigs or anything.  But for a period of maybe three years or so, my pals John and Phil and I used to play together.  We called ourselves “The Leader Beans.”

I was the least-accomplished guitar player amongst us, for sure, but John and Phil were really really good.  Both were (and probably still are) very talented musicians.

John played guitar; in fact, he taught me how to play the basics.  With much patience and care he showed me the basic concepts of playing rhythm guitar.  He stressed the importance of being able to play on time and staying on time (i.e., not speeding up or slowing down unless it was by design, and staying on beat), as well as techniques on chord changes and strum patterns.

More than just being my guitar teacher, John and I were also songwriting collaborators.  He would play the tunes, and I would write the words.  We thought of ourselves as Lennon and McCartney; I would call him “Paul,” and he would call me “John” (if only to humor my own delusions).  After a few years of working together, he gave me the greatest gift of all:  I became confident enough to try and write complete songs, music and words, all on my own.  He also got brave himself and wrote songs solo, and I must say his work stands up quite well on its own.  As a nod to Lennon and McCartney, all of our old material is jointly credited to “Dionisio and Dalmacio,” just like “Lennon and McCartney” did so many years ago.  Until the Beatles broke up, John and Paul jointly credited their compositions.  Not only that, but John was also a very good singer.  He had a really great ear for melody (just like Paul McCartney), and could reproduce the melodies his ears heard with both the guitar and his voice.

Phil became a friend of ours towards the end of the 1990s.  Talk about a really talented musician.  He was a violin player, but learned how to play guitar from John as well.  The amazing thing is, he far surpassed his teacher very soon after learning.  Other than the guitar and the violin, Phil could also play the harmonica, bass guitar, dabbled in mandolin, and was (and still is) a pretty good singer himself.  The thing that amazes me most about Phil is that he learned to play one of the most difficult guitar styles around, gypsy jazz.

Gypsy jazz is one of those things that I know I can never learn on my own; I simply do not have the talent nor the patience to learn such an advanced form of the craft of guitar playing.  A good gypsy jazz guitarist often sounds like he’s playing three or four different people’s parts all on top of each other; there is a speed and precision required to playing any kind of gypsy jazz.

Lately I’ve been listening to music even more than I’m wont to.  I mean, I always listen to music as I’m going to bed, and I listen to tunes whilst I’m in the car.  But lately I’ve been thinking about music while I’m at work, or when I’m working out, or even while I’m just doing nothing in particular.  I’ve always loved music, and lately I’m rediscovering my love and desire to once again make music.  It’s akin to not having eaten a great meal for a long time:  You remember how good and how satisfying that meal was the last time you indulged, and you get hungrier the more you think about it.  Your desire for a return visit grows the more it’s on your mind.

I wish my apartment complex’s walls weren’t so thin; otherwise I’d take one of my guitars back here from my parents’ house (where my guitars all are) and indulge in the unadulterated joy of playing and singing and learning songs.  Maybe a song or two will find its way to me again, the way a few of them used to a few years back.

Love makes anything possible.