A Last Frontier

Chance of some snow here tonight, but no accumulation is likely.  Being mid-February, that was probably our last chance.  If it doesn't snow in January it's unlikely the next ice age will be dropping in March, so maybe next year, huh?  It did get me to thinking about the Army and being stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska though.

 

For those that don't know, Fairbanks is a small town right in the middle of Alaska. If you've a mental image of snow-capped mountains surrounding cabins, warm yellow glowing windows, with small trickles of smoke walking towards the sky, on a frozen lake with giant christmas tree in the middle, you are sadly fucking mistaken.  If you're looking for picturesque, you might try Anchorage, Denali, Juno, etc. Tall, mountains and evergreens, caribou and moose, and ponds surrounding the airport filled with small planes that have pontoons rather than wheels.

Fairbanks looks a lot like High Point, the place I was born, with a population of about 35,000. Yes, on clear days you can see the alaskan range in the distance, but there is no looming crags, or mouth-agape vistas like you find in Denali.  Instead you find Mcdonalds, Burger King, a small mall, a 14 screen theater, too many bars, car lots, Blockbuster and just about ever other normal small town staple that you probably drive by everday.

What makes my mind return to it isn't the glaring differences, but the small peeks behind the curtain that during the course of a normal, ho-hum kind of day, alerted me to the fact, "yes, Todd, you are in Alaska".  I would Frequently see 7 foot tall moose walking across the lawn of the local Burger King.  Though it was too bright in town, many times on training exercises with my unit, out in the wilderness, we could see the Aurora, and I swear to God it looked 10 feet away and so vibrant I could actually 'hear' the lights as they folded and blended like nothing that I've ever seen.  In the winter, in the parking lot of my barracks, it would be about 20 below zero and the ice crystals would actually stop in midair as the street lights shone down and through them it looked like giant pillars of light reaching 100 feet in the air. Rabbits were the size of bulldogs.  Metal posts in every parking space offered outlets in which to plug in an extension cord from the front of your car in order to keep the oil pan and battery from freezing.  100,000's of thousands of dollars would be bet each year on when a  small tripod would fall though the ice as the temperatures warmed.  Darkness for months, or twilight rather, as the sun would tease and come just to the horizon threatening to peak over, then slowly rotate through-out the day, taking a lazy lap around the world before settling back into complete darkness again.  People playing golf at 2:00 in the morning because the same fickle sun would not go down in June.

 

Of course what I miss the most is the snow, like clockwork every year. It used to snow here in NC every winter (by snow I mean a legitimate covering of the earth, not this pissant flurrying and small shower stuff we have now) but those days seem to be gone.  Val said maybe we should move to Canada when Kira is older, since we both miss the snow (actual proof of winter) and the fact they are the only country whose economy is thriving right now(along with a surplus budget and universal healthcare, imagine that). I don't know if that will ever happen, but i do think now and then of taking my family up to Alaska during the winter sometime, to see the small things I was talking about. Let them go to the only state that makes fun of Texas for being small. Eat giant pancakes and see the borealis.  Watch a bear on the side of the road and some emerald lakes and sapphire glaciers, so old the oxygen trapped inside them has turned them blue.  Maybe we'll take a sled.

For Your Conscience..

This afternoon, after getting back from a nice lunch full of pizza, wine, tiramisu, and some fantastic bread, I was lounging on the couch with my daughter Kira when the phone rang. Valoree, my wife handed me the phone.  She had the telemarketer face on, which if its for me 99% of the time it is a telemarketer,  and a southern drawl greeted me as I took control of the phone.

8 Police officers had died in Greensboro or the surrounding area last year and their families needed help.  35 Dollars would go a long way towards helping their families, or so I was told, and this would be a silver level donation.  I'm sure you know this conversation without me telling you the rest.  I was  sympathetic, but apologetic, that we had in fact given to quite a lot of charities lately and could't help them.  Of course the gentleman understood, and agreed that 35 dollars was quite a lot and anything at all would help them.  As he pressed valiantly ahead in the same breath, not giving pause in the conversation to which I could express my regrets and wrap the whole thing up, he added a new wrinkle to the conversation I thought I knew. Instead of mentioning how easy it would be to send me an envelope that I could stuff whatever money I could spare, he offered to run the same 15 dollars I had given to them last time, on the same card I had used to pay with, quoting over the phone the last 4 digits of it.

The subtext to this is:  I had  given to this charity before, the situation to which i gave the money in the first place had worsened as 8 officers as opposed to 5 had died. I was now trying to take the position that I wasn't going to be supporting them.  "What has changed?" is what I  heard as he read those 4 numbers of my credit card. 

Nothing has changed, except the way they do business.  Charity telemarketers are in the business of selling you something insubstantial, something you can't see and don't know you're paying for when you agree to give them money: guilt. Men I know nothing about, have my credit information, number and all, on record and in hand.   I am truly in awe in of  the way charities of this variety have evolved. I'm pretty sure mr. country accent talking to me on the other end of the phone had nothing but the best of intentions in what he was doing.  I'm also sure his rhetoric is almost identical to the person sitting 2 feet away on the phone next to him. Having come from some afternoon long training course along with a couple hours of a supervisor sitting next to him listening to him add his own folksy icing to the exact same cake he just told him how to make.  

Don't get me wrong.  I support different charities throughout the year, I understand how they are needed and what good they can do.  However, the process is disgusting at some of these local level phone based organizations.  The local police, fire and hospitals would , you think, be able to smell an intrusive and unfair system with all the morals of a game of three-card-monte, out.  You know what team the guy on the other end of the phone is playing for and you've seen the rules: keep the person on the line as long as possible, appeal to their civic pride, press guilt onto them, pull the heartstrings, and leave no windows for rebuttal or questions by always ending with one of your own.  "Can I go ahead and count on your support", means: "Don't ask me anything."  Questions like: "What percentage of the money I'm pledging actually gets to the people who need the money?" are unwanted and only slow things down.

I don't like this ambush mentality, and even though I've spent this time ranting about it, I will still probably give to telemarketer-faced charities like Make-a-wish.  I just don't like the practices, and I especially don't like having 5 minutes of my day taken to make me feel like a complete shit for not saving the world with my 15 dollar donations.  Maybe I should start a non-profit charity to look into the ethics of these other charities. Or at least get caller ID.

Thanks for coming

Better with friends

So, I'm really on a roll here vacation wise.  Yesterday morning was spent delving in to Persona 4. Jesus, is it just me or is the normal setting hard?  Gotta say, i'm really into it though.  Funny how the ps2 is still sputtering out quality games in it's ride to the sunset.  Today I spent hanging curtains, well, I screwed in the brackets while my wife, whose back was hurt, told me she'd like to help more and her grandmother hemmed and sewed the fabric to the right length.  Or close to the right length, until my wife was able to tell her it wasn't and we were able to take it down and do it again. 3 times.  Well, I did manage to get in some more "Preacher" during the day, reading the angelville arc, so not a complete waste.

The highlight, I have to admit has been Left 4 Dead.  If you you have an Xbox and the internet hooked up to it, go get this game.  Well, make sure you have some friends too. Or if you are interested in having friends you could perhaps meet online.  What a night and day difference playing this game with people you know is.  Or any co-op game for that matter.  I've been playing with my friend Rodney who got the game about a week or two after me.  That means for the first few campaigns I finished ("No Mercy" and "Blood Harvest") I was playing with complete strangers.  

 I'm sure anybody who has played any type of game online can tell an immediate difference in the amount of adrenaline their body is spitting out to their heads when you first go online with a game as opposed to playing single-player.  Games are designed now not just for multiplayer, but for Co-op. They can now be subdivided past FPS, RPG, Action, what have you, into, single, co-op, and multi.  I know, I know, this is nothing new, this has been around, or has been coming around for awhile now.  It's just the space it's landing in now, home consoles rather than pc that seems to be the big change.  It would have been hard to imagine last generation, outside of Final Fantasy 11 and Socom on PS2 and Halo 1&2 on Xbox,  how fast online gaming would have taken over.

Speaking of hitting its stride, Left 4 Dead really is a perfect co-op game. Four players on a console, like in PSO isn't brand new, but with the help of this games A.I. that constantly changes the gaming experience, you have to feel like you're seeing the formula laid out for all smart developers in co-op games for years to come.  Like if you recognized Super Mario Brothers was going to, not just be a classic game, but an entire genre (platforming) when you first saw it.  I'm excited for what's ahead, thats certain.

I also have a distinct memory of playing the game Return Fire on my 3DO( I guess I was the guy who bought one in NC) until 2 in the morning against Rodney when we were in college.  It was an epic battle we both ultimately lost by running out of vehicles. It was also one of the most fun and competitive experiences I have ever had gaming. Now that Rodney lives in Seattle and I still live in North Carolina, it's amazing that just this past weekend playing L4D I found myself looking up at the clock and noticing it was 2 in the morning.  Wow.  It's been awhile.  Maybe people are becoming less social with ipods, blackberrys and cell phones.  I think it's safe to say though, thats not going to be the end result in all cases.  I just spent a couple of hours with one of my best friends who lives thousands of miles away from me, having the time of my life. Again.

Well, if that's the future, perhaps its not all bleak gloom and doom.  Maybe our social awareness will just have to change, like it did with the telephone, telegraph and mail system. Its not the end of talking or interacting with people.  We'll just adapt  like society always does. We'll still comunicate. We'll just do it from further away.

Thanks for coming...

Let there be vacation

Yeah, this is it.  I'm sitting at the precipice of a week long vacation. (on a side note before we get started, i just spelled precipice right on my first try and the red line told me i spelled vacation wrong, go figure.)  That's 7 more days of almost nothing to do except change my oil and go to the dentist, well and study some more for a Comptia exam.  Other than that, nada!

 

So, as you can see this is a new blog written with the intent of doing something productive. Well, if you don't consider videogames productive.  The most important thing when starting a new project, being a painting, article, short-story what have you is to have a direction. Well, my compass is broken and i have none.  I won't be pontificating on one subject, though video games will probably come up a lot, but sports, movies, books, politics, comedians, children, ipods, society and popcicles are all on the table.   Hence the name switchboard.  I plan on searching papers and  the web and tv and the man on the street and relaying my opinion and having a discussion on this topic.  Get it.  Switching.  ugh.  Well, I like it, so step off. 

I'll try and be funny so you won't get bored and hopefully anyone who reads this will leave their opinion and we can use that to lead to further topics and so on and it will begin to snowball and I will have to do even less work.

Oh before I wrap up, who am I?  Nobody you'd know.  32, married, with daughter, brown hair, 6 feet tall, work at a softdrink company.  I read, walk, eat, breathe, listen to music, want to be a comedian (probably shouldn't write that) and writer (probably shouldn't make light of that) and am generally terrible at athletics and board games which belie my intense competitiveness.  Thanks for coming, see you soon.