Quick Note

Tomorrow I get to go to the dentists and have three wisdom teeth pulled.

Aren't I lucky?

I fucking HATE the dentists.

The Great Experiment

Yesterday I had the pleasure of finally meeting up with blogger friend Evanescein08 for an online game of Halo. Not only did this mean playing Halo online was about a billion percent more fun…I got a lot more data for my ‘experiment’ and it supports my initial hypothesis.

What experiment, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

Being as generous to myself as possible, I can best be described as a completely average Halo player. I lose more often that I win and in team games, when my lackluster performance can be cancelled out by a team-mate’s excellence, my performance usually ranks me as third out of my four-man team.

In other words, I’m not very good at the game, but I’m not particularly bad either.

About a week ago I was playing online when Sunny walked through the door…and a funny thing happened.

Usually, I’m a pretty ‘tense’ Halo player. I concentrate hard and do my best to win. This time, however, we were only about a minute in, my team was getting slaughtered and when Sunny came home, the only reason I didn’t just stop playing was because quitting early loses you an experience point.

So, I just started talking to Sunny and was barely paying attention to what was happening on the screen. Usually with every death I call up the scoreboard to see where I’m ranking and who’s winning…but this time I honestly didn’t care.

Then I noticed something. In the five minutes that Sunny was in the room, my team had clawed our way back from a twenty kill lead, and I was responsible for getting 15 of them…which also put me as ‘kill leader’ by a significant amount.

My attitude changed. We had a damn good chance to win now, and that win would put me in spitting distance of getting my Sergeant rank. I started to concentrate and started trying to win.

Within a couple of minutes we were losing again and I couldn’t get a kill for love nor money. I rapidly dropped to the bottom of my team’s kill scores.

So I relaxed again. We’d already lost, so screw it. I went back to talking to Sunny again and barely paying attention to the game.

Five minutes later it was all over…and my team had won and in the last few minutes of the game I’d clawed my way back up and become team MVP.

I turned off the Xbox and started to think. It was something I’d noticed before. When I don’t actually care if I win or lose something, I’m far more likely to win because I just relax and enjoy myself instead of getting tense and wound up.

So, yesterday, when I was playing online with Evanescein08, we were playing in a series of team games with us both on the same team.

However, while we were playing, it wasn’t like we had any kind of plan and we weren’t ‘talking tactics’ over our headsets. To be honest, the game became almost secondary to the conversation…as a result, neither of us were paying the amount of attention to the game that we would if we were playing alone.

Now, here’s the thing. I performed significantly better during those games than I normally do. For example, according to my stats, in 65 games I’d never scored a ‘Killing Spree’ (that’s killing five opponents in a row without dying yourself)…but in the eleven games I played yesterday, I got no less than five Killing Sprees.

Evanesce didn’t do too badly either, getting pretty much every possible medal in one game, including ‘extermination’, where he took out the entire opposing team with a single grenade.

So basically, the results of my experiment is this:

If you want to win, the best way to achieve that is to not care if you win.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to want to win and not care if you win at the same time…rendering the whole experiment useless.

At best, if you want to be better at Halo, find someone interesting to talk to as you play.

I don't wanna...

Little over a year ago, I was sitting on my couch eating something when a hefty chunk of my bottom right wisdom tooth broke off.

So I had a great big gaping hole in my wisdom tooth, but the weird thing was that it didn’t hurt. Not even a little bit.

Since then, I’ve also lost a good portion of my upper-right and upper left wisdom teeth as well.

Now, there are probably people out there in blogland getting ready to admonish me for not getting them fixed right away. Just because a broken tooth isn’t causing you pain is no reason to not get it fixed.

Well, to those people I would like to point out my lack of a job and lack of dental insurance. Unless my teeth were causing me physical pain, I have better things to spend my money on…like food and electricity.

Well, last week my right-side wisdom teeth suddenly realized that they’d been mortally wounded and decided to let me know about it. I don’t know what it is about tooth pain, but I honestly think I’d rather break a finger than have toothache.

My wisdom teeth have a constant dull ache, and every couple of hours it feels like the entire right side of my face has been dunked in acid. Imagine having a red hot knife pushed through your teeth, down into your jaw and up behind your cheekbone, and you’re in the ballpark of what it feels like.

Long story short, I get to go have three wisdom teeth pulled this week. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that they prescribe vicodin for afterwards.

JJ Abrams Star Trek

Well, I just watched the latest trailer to the new Star Trek movie…and I have to say I’m really not sure about it.

I’m the first to admit that the most recent Star Trek films have been absolute crap…but while I’m fairly convinced the new effort will be a good movie, I’m not really convinced it’s going to be a good star trek movie.

Making a Trek movie is dangerous ground for any director. You see, as a Trek fan myself, I have no problem with pointing out that Trek fans are rabid, unforgiving, nit-picking gigantic nerds.

Basically, unless you’ve been a life-long Trek fan, it’s difficult to make a movie even with the original cast. Star Trek fans can, and will, complain just because someone messed up a bit of techno-babble or the plate on a door said deck eight when crew quarters are clearly on deck seven.

So, ‘re-imagining’ Star Trek, with all new actors, sets and a totally original story is going to be dangerous ground. Getting a dedicated trek fan to buy a new actor as Kirk or Spock is going to have a lot in common with trying to convince a fundamentalist Christian that Jesus might have been a woman.

I mean, I was delighted to see Simon Pegg cast as Scotty, because not only am I a huge Simon Pegg fan, Simon Pegg is a genuine Nerd and trek fan. However, John Cho (better known as Harold from ‘Harold and Kumar go to White Castle’) wouldn’t have been my first choice for Sulu. Frat-boy comedies and Trek don’t really mix.

Well, anyway, I’ll definitely be going to see it, but I think the only reason my nerd-alarm isn’t at Defcon 1 is simply because the original series isn’t really my Star Trek. As a child of the 80’s, The Next Generation was my Trek series…and I’d have much more of a vested interest if they’d re-cast Picard or Data.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that it won’t suck…unless of course you’re not a Trek fan, because then I don’t give a crap what you think.

Governmentphobia

Is Government-phobia, the fear of dealing with the Government, a real thing?

If it is, I think I have it.

This week, I finally got my Social Security number squared away. While the process for this was relatively quick and painless…let’s just say there was a reason it somehow kept finding itself on the back burner.

You see, while I have what most people would call an ‘irrational fear’ of having to deal with any form of Government entity…it may be irrational, but it is born of first hand experience.

To be too terrified to get on a plane is an irrational fear. Not so much when you’re rolling around the airport in a wheelchair because you lost your legs in a horrific plane crash.

Unlike some lucky people…Kelly…who took less than six months to go from first application to getting her Visa, it took me two whole years to get mine…and every step was like pulling teeth.

People have asked me what the Visa process is like, and if I was 100% honest about it I’d say: “It is one of the most expensive and stressful processes you will ever go through. Be prepared for long periods of waiting interspersed with moments of abject terror.”

Basically, you’re spending an awful lot of money and time on something that is the most important thing in the world to you (imagine if the ability to live in the same country as your spouse was in someone else’s hands)…and a simple mistake on a form can either stop you from getting a Visa all together, or send you all the way back to the beginning of the process.

For example, when I went for my final interview at the embassy in England, it didn’t matter that all my paperwork was in order. It didn’t actually matter that I was completely and totally 100% legitimate. If the guy interviewing me just got a ‘feeling’ about me, he could deny me my Visa.

Then, when I actually got my Visa and moved here, the whole thing started over when I applied for my Greencard. Don’t ask me how, but the DHS somehow got the idea that instead of applying for a Visa, doing a buttload of paperwork, tests and interviews then moving to the US…that I’d simply arrived in the US as a tourist, got married, and then contacted them.

Follow that with two whole years of sending forms, going for interviews and doing a lot of stuff I’d already done…all the while being told that it was perfectly normal and just to obey any instructions I was given. Things only got straightened out after four letter and about twenty phonecalls when they wanted me to spend $800 on a medical I’d already had.

Luckily, I’m through all that now. Once I get my SSN I can go apply for my driving license, and then in a couple more years I can go for citizenship if I want to.

…but this doesn’t mean dealing with the Government is any more pleasant or any less terrifying.

You see, a few months ago I applied for my SSN, only to send it off and be told that the form I sent was the ‘old’ form and I needed the new one. So I got the new one, and after sending that was told that my fully-notarized copies weren’t acceptable and I needed to send the originals. Not feeling like sending my passport and greencard through the mail, we went to the local Social Security office.

After a nice long wait I got to see someone, handed everything over…to be told that my passport wasn’t acceptable as ID because it had expired. (I don’t understand that. I can see why I wouldn’t be allowed to travel on an expired passport…but why is it suddenly not good enough to ID me because it went out of date a month ago?)

So, just to be double-awesome, after waiting outside the office in the rain at 7.30am, we had to drive all the way back across town to get my birth certificate, then drive all the way back…and wait in line again.

Finally, the guy looks over my form checks out my documents and says:

“Ok, Sir, if you’ll just bear with me for a moment.” Then he gets up and walks away. I turn to Sunny:

“This is the bit I hate.” I said.

“What?” Said Sunny.

“When they act all nice to you, but then get up and leave.”

“Why?” Said Sunny, looking puzzled.

“Because this is where I think there’s been a misprint on my Greencard, and my alien registration number is missing a digit or something, so they think it’s fake. He acts all nice, he walks away, and before I know it, security turns up, puts me in handcuffs and I end up deported before I can prove I’m here legitimately.”

Well, there wasn’t a misprint and he just came back with a form letter telling me when to expect my social security card…but he could have been calling the fuzz. It’s just a matter of time.