The Scoop

IN SICKNESS...

I'm sick. I woke up dizzy this morning and I haven't been able to shake it all day. I tried sleeping it off but all that gave me was a weird dream where the American Idol contestants competed by playing arena football instead of singing, and they were given lodging in emptied out clothing stores in a mall--equipped, of course, with Real World-esque hidden cameras and confessional booths in the dressing rooms. It was strange, yes, but I would gladly watch a whole season of American Mall-Abiding Arena Football Idol if it meant the room would stop spinning. Work will be interesting tomorrow...

IN HEALTH...

My cat is getting better. He has kidney failure, but the vet says he'll live as long as he would have otherwise, provided we stick him with a syringe full of electrolytes twice a day. So it's like he has diabetes...only he's not peeing everywhere. I'm starting to understand why people say they have nine lives - we were sure he was a goner.

FOR BETTER...

The Game. The game the game the game. Ideas are flowing like dia--well...they're flowing. I've got tons of ideas written down on napkins, left-over wedding programs, and other scraps deemed otherwise useless...I just have no time to fully develop them or get them coded. So the game is all in my head at this point, and hopefully when I get a job with better hours, I can devote a portion of every week to keeping the game ball rolling. And yes, I think I'm going to start a different blog specifically for the RPG Adventure Game Project.

FOR WORSE...

Well I have to be at work in five hours so I'm gonna call it a night. Just wanted to update - haven't done that in a while.

The RPG Adventure Project

This is the story of a Dot. He wasn't always a dot though, he was born as a square. A little red square on a little mission. Namely, a mission to collect a bunch of smaller white squares. He would weave his way through walls (brown squares) and water (blue squares). He would push yellow boxes (yellow squares) and avoid pits (gray squares).

A very square world, created by a very square 11-year-old programmer.

Then, two years and seven levels later, the square transformed into a Dot. A little red dot on a slightly less little mission. The walls gained depth, the little white collectibles gained shading (and a rounded figure), and the Dot gained eyes.

He was an imitation Pac-Man living in a off-brand Chip's Challenge world.

A slightly more lively world, upgraded by a slightly more lively 13-year-old programmer.

Seven years passed, and the Dot was beginning to think its creator had abandoned it. But then, something inspired that creator to jump back in the saddle and finish what he had started. In a flash, algorithms flew onto the scene, merging the wall squares into one long continuous brown strip of beautifulness.

The Dot was named "Big Red" and became animated and had captions to narrate its every move!

And to frost this mountainous Cake of Comeback, Big Red received an inventory with which to fill with various level-solving items, and...a small orange fireproof friend: Lil' O

Lil' O had the ability to swim in molten lava without being burned - in fact, he could resurface as a ball of fire and melt certain frozen obstacles!

Together, this discoid duo would dominate the world of dots!

But the plot thickens even...thicker-er. Though he beheld the finished product of his nine-year endeavor at game-making, the creator was rather unimpressed. He had inspired himself to test his abilities as a programmer and push the limits of his game-making skills to the edge. He wanted to put these loveable globules in an adventure of their own, outside of their labyrinthical confines.

He went online and unearthed the secrets of sprite-masking and array-building and back-buffering and Bit-Blitting. He spent hours in Photoshop creating grass and trees and rocks and dirt roads and treasure chests and cliffs and caves and best of all, this was just the beginning.

He hit the drawing board, and he hit it hard, designing villages and towns and cities and forests and and entire world for these round rollers to explore.

And that brings us to today. You are now officially caught up

in the history of the program tentatively named "RPG Adventure Game Project."

I will post my progress in this blog as it happens. If this thing actually manages to stay alive for more than a few months, I just might make a separate blog solely dedicated to the logging of this challenging yet exciting adventure.

18 DAYS!

Dreams, Death and Donuts

Last night I dreamt that I was a man in my mid-thirty's, rugged and set in his ways, with a thick-skin and a rogue attitude from one too many rough patches in his past. I was living in an abandoned barn, quietly avoiding attention from the world. In the dream, I woke up to three siblings, ages 12 to 19 who had run away from home. I began to mentor them and do my best to set them on the right path, knowing full well what the wrong path was and having the experience to tell them where it led.

They learned how I lived - working for my food and fighting for my territory. The months passed and I enjoyed their company, but I knew there would come a time when they would have to go out and face the tragedy that drove them from their home. That day came sooner than I had expected, and I found myself standing outside the barn giving them farewell gifts: my 25-year-old wooden-handled hunting knife to the oldest son, my father's compass watch to the middle son, and a homemade hemp necklace with wooden beads to the youngest daughter. I told them the barn was theirs, threw a bag of survival tools and dried meat over my shoulder, and began to head into the sunset.

Men in suits entered the scene out of nowhere, set the barn on fire and began to beat and interrogate the children, asking where I was. Something was keeping me from being able to rescue them, although by that point I had come to love them as my own children. I knew that the suits were there because of the mistakes in my past, but I was helpless to save my disciple children from the consequences of my own transgressions. I remember crying for the first time in decades and running as far and as fast as I could. My last thought to myself before waking up was that my knives would dull and my meat would go stale, but nothing could ever erase the memory of those childrens' faces as they looked to me for the salvation I could not give.

I was out of breath when I woke up, and my fianceé said I was breathing hard and kicking my legs. I doubt this dream means anything but it has been haunting me all day. Writing these things down always helps lift the burden these types of dreams place on me. Still, I can't help but wonder what's going on in my subconscious to produce a dream like this.

----- IN OTHER NEWS -----

Awana. One of our Cubbies leaders is going on maternity leave, and as such has officially passed on the torch to yours truly. It will be my fianceé and I in the Cubbie room for the remainder of the current Awana season, and my prayer is that I will be able to take most of the load off her shoulders without overbearing myself. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28

My parents are in California to visit my mom's dad, as he has been diagnosed with a form of cancer and is not expected to survive. It can't be hard saying goodbye, my prayers are with them. They left today and are scheduled to return Wednesday. In the meantime, it is our job to hold down the fort at home, feed the dog, and visit our cat at the vet who is also dying. Maybe I shouldn't have fed him those Krispy Kremes...

19 DAYS!

The Line Theory

"Who are you?"

Looking into the mirror and asking the question, "who are you?" can prove enlightening if asked in sincerity, and I often find it a bit startling when I discover something about myself I didn't know I didn't know.

For instance, today I discovered that I find myself living under the philosophy that life and memories are defined by experience, and experience is but a sequence of moments. I strive to make the most of these moments, so that at the end of my life, I will be known not as one who changed the world, but rather one who loved those who were hardest to love. I don't do things so that people will remember me, but rather so that they will remember what I stood for.

They say it's the little things in life that matter, but too many people focus on the wrong little things. And the Line Theory is simply this:

We grow from learning to draw straight lines to waiting in lunch lines;

From obsession over tan lines to laying down the pick-up lines;

From meeting the deadlines to reading the headlines.

Pretty soon your lifeline's coming to an end and the only lines you have to show for it are the ones on your forehead that you've earned from years of chasing the wrong dreams--

drawing lines in the sand to be washed away by the tide, a speck on the timeline.

My only dream is that when the ones I love look back on my life, it will be filled with laughter, the smell of everyone's favorite drinks in their hands, and the sound of "I remember when."

Who am I? With every passing day, I find a new way to answer that very question. Thus is the paradoxical whirlpool in which we find ourselves often circling but never sinking: to presume that I am today the same person I was yesterday, or that I will be tomorrow who I am today, is to presume that I'm not growing--not learning. At the end of each day when I face that fateful pane of polished glass, I can honestly say that the man looking back at me is one step closer to wisdom, discernment and understanding than he was twenty-four hours ago.

And that's a good feeling.

Life makes so much more sense when you understand it.