Why Joel Doesn't Sleep

Believe it or not, I'm still a freelance writer. In fact, I've been busier than ever writing for and prepping for a few new markets that will keep me running for the foreseeable future.

First off, I've submitted a couple of reviews--and built up a testbed for more--to Maximum PC, a site/mag I've been associated with for many years. In fact, way back when it was called boot magazine, I worked on the other side of a partition from the editors during my stint as PC Gamer's first Technical Editor. We used to kick the boot team's asses at CTF in Quake 2. Legends like Sean Cleveland, George Jones, my current editor Michael Brown, and the late and personally influential Andrew Sanchez have all been/still are part of the incredible MaxPC team.

Next, I've recently been awarded a contract position as the "acting" Editor-in-Chief of FiringSquad. My first column is up, and as you may know, this site needs a lot of TLC. Under my reign, it will retake its position as one of the premiere gaming websites in the universe. I have a ton of stuff in store for the site, some of which will go up this week, so keep an eye on it.

I've also been working for PC World with my old ExtremeTech teammate Jason Cross, and I'm in the running to become the Video Game Gear Guide at About.com. All the while, I've been writing a steady string of notebook reviews for Computer Shopper. Fun stuff there. 

So yeah, with all that going on, plus family life and attempting to grow a decent crop of tomatoes, I've got a heck of a lot to do lately. That said, I have some writing to do. Peace!

Vincent "Kip" Bianchi

This piece has been a long time coming, primarily because it's been so difficult to write. My uncle Vincent Bianchi, whom I knew as Uncle Kip, and who was also my godfather, died May 24. He lived in Stafford, NY with his wife, Bonnie, and he and was known throughout the world by fishing enthusiasts--more on that later.

Uncle Kip was a magical, larger-than-life figure during my childhood. He was my cool uncle, the one with all the best toys, the most awesome pets, the gnarliest personality. In fact, he was a larger-than-life figure to a great many people, as I'm finding out every day. He let me fire weapons most people never even get to see firsthand; he collected knives and gave me most of the pocketknives I own. When he showed up with a gift, I knew it was going to be fantastic.

My mom's brother, Uncle Kip was my only first uncle on her side. In fact, on her side, most of my great uncles have all passed; I have one left. For the first half of my life, Kip was closer to me than the vast majority of my other extended family members. When his children and I were young, we got together every Christmas eve for great food and a gift exchange. By the time I was old enough to drive, I'd often drive my grandmother out to Stafford to see her son and to hang out, ride Kip's ATVs, shoot a few tracer rounds into the woods, and chill with my cousins Vincent (aka "Hooch") and Rhonda.

After the rigors of adulthood and parenthood took hold, I didn't see Kip as much as I used to. Everyone was busy; there was no time. The Christmas tradition faded away. We failed to connect.

I regret that now, because his death brought on the realization of how much he meant to me.

A couple years ago, Kip was diagnosed with two forms of cancer. With the help of the outstanding doctors at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, he beat one and the other went into remission, but the battle weakened him severely. When the other cancer came back--returned with a fury--there wasn't anything anyone could do. He died at home, his final words being: "I knew a lot of people."

And that he did. After retiring from a painting company he created from the ground up, he pursued with passion his hobby of fishing. He created his own brand of lures, all handmade, called the Glitter Bitch, he participated strongly in the muskie fishing community in the Niagara River area, and he even appeared on fishing shows on ESPN. He also loved animals and owned a number of birds (including Bomba, the coolest parrot ever) and became active in breeding and showing dogs.

I miss Uncle Kip dearly. I offer my love and support to all who remember him fondly, including Bonnie, Hooch, Rhonda, my mom Janice, Kip's grandchildren Nick and Bianca, the kennel and fishing communities, and everyone whose lives he touched.

He knew a lot of people.

Draw Muhammad Day is Stupid (language warning)

My feelings about this fracas are summed up in this post I made on Quarter to Three:

I was so fucking ready to participate. I was in the Facebook group and I had my picture ready.

The FB group threads were filled with Western idiots screaming "ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS" and Arab fuckheads screaming "WE WIL KIL U DIKS HU DRAW R PROPHET (PBUH)."

It was sickening. I was defending free speech, saying the point was that we weren't going to let radical Islamofacists prevent us from exercising freedom of expression through threats of violence. Responses amounted to: Western idiots screaming "ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS" and Arab fuckheads screaming "WE WIL KIL U DIKS HU DRAW R PROPHET (PBUH)."

Then I met a peaceful Muslim named Ali. He simply said, "Please, these people threatening you are not true Muslims. I beg peace. True Muslims respect all others and do not cause harm. Please do not insult our prophet."

Ali and I got in a conversation between all the FUCK ISLAM and FUK U WE KIL YUO posts. We grew to respect each other. He respected my lack of faith, and I came to respect his view of Islam, and his begging for a lack of violence.

I deleted my Muhammad picture. I can't insult a billion Muslims for the radicalism of a small percentage. I discovered I love peace as much as I love the First Amendment.

Take from that what you will.

'Nuff said.

One other thing: Ali Shehzad, if you read this, contact me.

Warhammer...WTF?

If you've ever played Warhamer tabletop or computer games, you've probably visited Warhammer- Alliance.com. It's the ultimate fan site for the Warhammer series of titles, owned by Games Workshop. Fans gather at Warhammer Alliance, on its busy forums, to discuss the IP's titles, share mods, post about strategies, and so on.

If you owned a franchise, would you be grateful for such fostering of your brand, or would you sue the bejeezus out of the site for various reasons including copyright violation? That's exactly what Games Workshop is doing to Warrhammer Alliance. The complaint (PDF) is ridiculous, and, in my opinion, looks to be a money-grab more than anything else. From the complaint (thanks to McKnight at Quarter to Three for pointing this out):

22. Defendants' website at the URL warhammeralliance.com displays HTML links featuring banner advertisements, and, upon information and belief, when Internet users click on one or more of the displayed HTML advertisements at the warhammeralliance.com website, Defendants receive payment from one or more advertisers, search engines, or affiliate programs.

Here's a tangent. You may have read of my fandom of Elliott Smith. When he found a Website promoting his music called Sweet Adeline, named after a song on his album XO, he contacted the sites administration and asked for it to be his official site. That, my friends, is embracing your fans.

By "embracing" I mean "not crapping on" your fans, which is exactly what Games Workshop is doing. According to the post linked above, the complaint mentions "trademark infringement, cybersquatting (on the domain name), dilution and unfair competition." I'm sorry--I didn't know that by dedicating your time and your life to promoting someone's product, you were harming the product. That's new to me.

There's no shortage of stupidity and fan alienation in the games industry (see, for instance, Ubisoft DRM). I played a bunch of Warhammer Online (am I allowed to say that?), until I realized that if I continued I'd never get any work done. I've also played most of the standalone Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 PC and even PSP titles.

I'm uninstalling them now.

I'm trading in my copy of the PSP's Warhammer 40,000 Squad Command game. Unless this lawsuit is dropped, I'll never drop another dime on product from Games Workshop.

I hope all the denizens of Warhammer Alliance follow suit. There are plenty of tabletop and PC strategy games, and, as of now, they're all superior alternatives to anything bearing the Warhammer logo.

Rigged

A few weeks ago, something impossible happened to my primary rig. When I say "primary" I mean it's the one I do most of my gaming on, as opposed to the workstation in the basement that serves as my grinding-out-articles PC.

The impossible event originated in the keyboard, a Logitech G11. There was a distinct, but very quiet, popping sound, and then it quit working--lights out and all. It also smelled like roasted electronics.

Here's the impossible part: Somehow, this itty-bitty spike blew out the entire USB bus on my computer, which was then powered by a Gigabyte EX58-UD3R.

Long story short, that's not supposed to ever happen, ever, due to the fact that there are several failsafes between a USB device and the USB ports on the computer, all of which failed, but both Gigabyte and Logitech came through for me and sent new parts. I built up a new-ish rig, which is configured as such (some links provided for less-common parts; the others are easy to Google):

Case: Thermaltake Element G (lots of fans in lots of adjustable colors, but still relatively quiet and very cool)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58-UD5 (complete with SATA 3 and USB 3.0)
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 overclocked from 2.6Ghz to 3.2GHz with a Thermaltake air cooler of some sort (I forget the model, but any decent aftermarket cooler will allow such a modest overclock)
Memory: 12GB (6x2GB) of 1333MHz OCZ Gold triple-channel +
--Dell S2409W 1920x1080 monitor (an oldie, but a goodie)
Graphics: ASUS's version of an Nvidia GTX 285, with an old Nvidia 8800 dedicated for PhysX. (Not sure if that second card is worth even having, considering the heat and wattage factors.)
Audio: ASUS Xonar Essence STX (simply the best headphone-centric sound card available) +
--Phiaton PS 300 NC headset (wow, just wow) and
--Logitech Z-5500 connected w/optical cable (too loud for my living room--which is a good thing)
Input: Logitech G500 mouse + G110 keyboard (because I take gaming seriously)
OS: Win7 x64, natch.

I gotta say, I'm pretty satisfied with this system so far, except that I can't play Metro 2033 at full bore. I'm not even sure that a 400 series Nvidia/5000 series ATI card can do that, though.

Oh, and another note: I've been talking with Michael Brown over at Maximum PC, and it looks like I'll be doing reviews there soon. That's almost like going home; back when it was called boot Magazine, I sat on the other side of a partition from the editors whilst I worked as Tech Ed for PC Gamer.

Life After Carmageddon

I recently unearthed a floppy diskette with some writings on it, dated 1997. That would be when I worked at PC Gamer as the magazine's first Technical Editor (predating some poseur who called himself "The Vede" by more than a year). Though tech is fun and all, I've always considered myself a writer first and foremost, and I wrote a bit at home as well writing 12 or more pages of The Hard Stuff at work. Remember, this was when PC Gamer was a 400 page monthly tome, not the pamphlet it's become today. In the words of then-editor Dan Bennett, we could sneeze and accidentally put out a 96-page mag back then.

At home, my computer was, at the time, a floppy drive-equipped, Celeron powered piece of crap, good for running a word processor and not much more. Still, I banged away at it, with its clickety-click IBM PS/2 keyboard, and even, as I've just discovered, had the wherewithal to back up my writings to floppy. A few minutes ago, I dug out a floppy drive from deep within my pile of ancient drives on one of my gray shelves so I could see if this diskette, labeled "Random Writings 1997-98," was readable. I was amazed at the fact I could actually pull a couple of Word files from it.

One I actually remember writing. I'd probably just reviewed Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now for PCG (a review I cannot find online). I had fun with the Carmageddon series, an apocalyptic racing franchise which not only encouraged you, but required you, to run over pedestrians in droves. Animated sprites, they went splat in a few shades of satisfying red before disintegrating. I remember referencing Joe Lieberman in the review; he was the Jack Thompson of the day, the mentally challenged village idiot who thought games corrupted our youth or something.

(Incidentally, now that Jack's been so thoroughly discredited and neutered, I wonder who will take up the "cause?")

One night, after my wife was in bed in our tiny, little apartment, which was only a few feet from route 101 in Burlingame, I stayed up and wrote a what if piece. Inspired by the merciless-but-fun pedestrian murder in Carmageddon II, I wrote a short bit hinging on the idea that each of the poor souls had a real life. For your (and my) amusement, I now post it in its entirety.

Thirty Seconds of Carmageddon
Joel Durham Jr.
CARMAGEDDON is the copyright of whomever owns it now.

In a roar of an engine, with a satisfying splatter of blood and bone and meat, my ped count goes up by one. Four more, and if I can nail them in less than about twenty-eight seconds, I'll have this race wrapped up. It's a ped kill race, not a beat-the-other-guy race. In those types, I kill other drivers. This time around, I'm killing so-called "innocents," people dumb enough to be walking the streets while I'm behind the wheel.

Most of them have scattered, though. They're running into buildings, up stairs, places where my ride can't go. With its enormous wheels, its massive engine, it's too wide to blast its way into an office building, too heavy for a pedestrian overpass. Chrome spikes all around, this vehicle was made to kill, not to finesse its way down bike trails in the park.

But they can't all escape. As the timer ticks down to twenty-three, I line up a fat white guy sporting a traditional striped tie toting a traditional black briefcase. Kill number forty-seven explodes across the hood, decapitated head bouncing off my windsh--

Charles. Charles McGraw. He was about to hail a cab when he painted my black car momentarily red. He was late home from work and, even though he knew there were reports of a Carmageddon race in the city, he decided to take the chance to get home to his wife, Liz, who was pregnant with their second child. Their first, Timothy, would right now be pacing as fast as his three-year-old legs could carry him, back and forth in front of the front door, chanting WHERE'S DADDY? WHERE'S DADDY? Liz will receive a phone call in half an hour, her face will go white, she'll drop to the floor denying the whole time--

What the hell was that?

My brain, something flashed in it, when my eyes made contact with the last guy's (Charles') lifeless eyes as his head bounced off my front window.

How the hell was I supposed to know all that? Was my imagination running away with me? I remember the first few, way back, years ago, when the Carmageddon races were new. Those were tough. But now? How many have I wasted? Enough to live in a big damn mansion, that's for sure. Why would they--no. That was just some sort of, well, flashback.

Aw, hell. Too long. I have to look for a crowd now. I'm not used to losing races, but that killed almost ten seconds. Down to twelve.

There. There's a lady, tall, with a purse. Easy kill, if I throw the wheel to the right in a sec...now. Excellent. She goes up like a sack of red paint in a water balloo--

That was Jill Wright. Fiancee to Keith Stanley. This would have been her second marriage. She lost her first husband, and truest love of her life, to a long battle with prostate cancer. Jill took more than four years to recover enough to meet Keith, but at 29 she had still been young and, though she never believed she would be, she had finally been ready to make another man happy. Jill had lived for her loved ones, her generous heart going out to anyone in need of some caring. Keith understood she would always love her first husband, but Jill was such a special girl he could understand. He was at her apartment, awaiting her with a single white rose. He'd heard about the races and was a bit worried--but the cops would bust them up before she left her retail job downtown. Unbeknown to Keith, Jill had left early to surprise him...

Not again! And time was up. I'd missed it. For the first time in literally a year and a half, I didn't finish off 50 peds in time. What was going on? Was that really someone named Jill?

Naw, I was going crazy. Only explanation. I glanced in the rearview, but there wasn't much left of whoever that girl had been.

No way. There was no Charles. There was no Jill. I stroke my stubbly chin, glance back out the front window...

...and it's too late to brake.

I hear the whistle, see the red and white striped gate break into pieces across my hood.

I wonder if the engineer will get some sort of vision of who I had been, I think, as my blood stained car comes apart--like a pedestrian against its own chrome spikes.

-end-

This is How You Do it.

I guess the word is out, so I can blog about this now. My father-in-law, Frank, just found out this past week he is afflicted with stage four, terminal, incurable lung cancer. He is not a smoker. He's a fit and active guy who look twenty years younger than he is. The shit of it is this: He never had symptoms to catch it early. He started getting short of breath recently, went to the hospital, and they drained his lungs, which were filling with fluid. It happened again and again.

Meantime, he had back surgery. The doctors studied some of the pre-surgical tests and found out his diagnosis. He needs CT and PET scans before his oncologist can give him information about the extent, the time he may have left, etc.

The thing is, he's in terrific spirits. I know the first stage is denial, but I don't think that's in his nature. Frank's oncologist told him to carry on with his life as long as he's feeling well, which he is.

So Frank has plans. He's going on tour. He's coming to Rochester next week to enjoy my daughter's baptism and first communion (she was 8 when she decided, to the surprise and delight of her mom, who is spiritual, and I, an atheist, to join the Catholic church). Her grandfather, Frank, who has always been involved with the churches in the towns in which he's lived, will be there, along with his wife Betty, and of course my wife and I and my parents. We'll celebrate!

Then Frank and Betty are going Philadelphia to see my nephew (their grandson) play hockey. The kid is right around 16 and the star player on his team, the one who constantly makes the last-minute, game-saving goals. He's a prodigy, more at home on skates than in sneakers.

Next, Frank and Betty are going to attend the Masters golf tournament. Frank has not only been there many times, but has actually volunteered (and been chosen) to keep the grounds clean--a high honor for golf fans.

Why did I tell you all this? Because I want you to know that Frank is going to spend his last days, however many they are, living. Cancer or no cancer, Frank is not dying in any greater sense than we all are. He is a wise and wonderful man and deserves as much time as he can get--and he'll spend every minute of it enjoying life.

In the immortal words of Jim Morrison, no one here gets out alive. And in the equally compelling words of Mark Oliver "E" Everett, maybe it's time to live.