Category Archives: Life

Penny Arcade Expo

I’ll be going to the Penny Arcade Expo this year with my advisor and fellow gamer Jen Stone. I also invited all my guildies from Portland to come up and visit that weekend (last weekend in August). And finally, we’re also planning on going to the Game On exhibit at the Pacific Science Center then. If you want to come, give a hollar.

skin cancer?

So a couple of days ago I noticed a little dot on my foot that I hadn’t noticed before. Being completely a freak, I thought maybe it was skin cancer and so I got some tweezers last night and tried to dig it up. Then I thought maybe it was a splinter since it seemed like it was well-defined and was foreign… but eventually I gave up and convinced myself that it is a new mole… since I mean.. it’s not like I walk around bare-foot outside and it doesn’t hurt at all and I’m only 32…

How would one know, anyway?

new .sig

Lots of stuff happening in guild and real-life right now… How much do I post on this blog? What is the purpose of this blog? Academia or the other stuff in my life? whatever.
In other news, I finally created a new .sig! Email me if you want to see it. 😛

One week with the DS Lite and…

I am totally convinced this is the best gaming related thing I’ve ever bought.

The reason is the same reason why I am scared to hell about it. I can game anywhere. (well, except when it is too bright outside)

Yesterday, I played at a local park. Holy shit; I got some sun.

Got a DS Lite

Aaron is in town and wanted to get a portable gaming device for his plane trips… He decided on a DS Lite and since Ari has a DS also, I decided to get one, too.

We found out that a lot of games have a downloadable component which other DS owners can get to play certain game modes without owning the game cart. So we played a little Mario Kart, Metroid, FIFA, and Advance Wars. The Advance Wars Combat mode is fine but some sort of turn-based mode for download would have been great. The FIFA game advertises on the box that the download mode is from 2-4 players but they lie; it’s only for 2 players. Totally lame.

My first ever portable… can I afford it? We’ll see…

Zidane = stupid

I learned the word for stupid in French on Sunday! Hooray!

Zidane, the guy who made me secretly root for France in a predominantly Italian backing room by showing some crazy-ass fancy stuff in the previous games up to the final of the World Cup 2006, is stupid for doing that headbutt and getting a red card in the last game he’ll ever play (he announced his retirement before the match). What a way to end a career… and he ended up making me root for Italy, just like this woman named Lindsay.

So, maaybe what was said to him by that Italian player really, really sucked. But these guys are professional football players. Don’t they shit-talk to each other all the time?

Max was here for a week

My brother stayed with us for a week while attending a blacksmithing conference, ABANA. Some of them are more blacksmith craftsmen while others are more blacksmith artists with varying degrees of skill in each category. It was cool having him around and explaining some of the blacksmithing culture to us. Check out Max’s work!

Academics do a horrible job of supporting each other

Well, that’s a generalization, but it seems pretty clear that words of encouragement from our peers in the academe doesn’t happen often enough. I mean, there’s a dichotomy between wanting to make a name for ourselves and at the same time being really, really happy and proud of other people when they succeed. When we are really, really happy for others, we aren’t letting them know well enough, which translates to when it is our turn to be proud of our achievements, we don’t get enough encouragement from our peers.

Kurt Squire, professor at UWisc Madison, and a driving force in the new wave of video game studies, recently posted a comment about how Bill had a positive influence on his life when he was going through graduate studies and again as a new professional. I wonder if he ever told Bill that, and it makes me have to relook at myself and wonder if I’ve been letting others know how much influence they have on me. Come to think of it… Kurt, we hardly know each other but you’ve always been very helpful whenever I sought advice. Thank you.

The former dean of engineering at UW and more recently the chancellor at UCSC, Denise Denton , recently committed suicide. No one has formally said this, but it is generally understood that Bill also committed suicide. What is it about this profession? I think part of it is that we aren’t letting each other know we appreciate each other as people and as academics.

It also has been a minor shock to my world view. For some reason I had always assumed acts of suicide were typical of angsty teens or 20-somethings going through deep depression. To see two people who were nearing the end of their successful careers… I dunno… shock. Makes me wonder about what success means.

Education has made me a sissy

Well… maybe the right word is “compassionate” or something… Just that in the last year, I’ve gone to tears in front of people over the deaths of Jeremiah, a TEP student, and then of Bill. Prior to that… how many times have I cried in public? I don’t even remember a single instance.

During Bill’s memorial and other times of remembrance for Bill, while I was crying, part of me kept wondering, why aren’t any of his colleagues crying?

Was it that they are older and have experienced close deaths before and were better prepared? Did they feel like it wasn’t a place for them to mourn given their status and the setting? Maybe it meant more to the students than to his colleagues due to the nature of our relationships with Bill? I dunno.

Anyway, I haven’t posted anything to this blog in a while, partly because a ton of other stuff was going on in my life, but also partly because I just didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t sure what to say next…

One thing has become super clear after hearing from a lot of different people Bill had influenced: he was the Great Connector. He made connections across many disciplines AND he made connections between people. And it wasn’t purely an academic career kind of pursuit. And it wasn’t just a pursuit of knowledge and curiosity satisfaction, either. I think he really did care about people and saw in us all these pockets of information which would help all of us if only we’d just sit down and talk to each other. We needed him to make the connections for us, but now we must take on the torch and make them for ourselves and each other.

When I sit down and think about it, I realize (and I suspect this is true for a lot of educators) that learning stuff is really cool, but helping others learn stuff is even cooler. It’s a step away from power by empowering others, but at the same time it is very empowering in its own right in a soul fulfillment sort of way.

Bill’s death was tragic. Bill’s life was glorious.

Dr. Bill Winn passed away… :(

Though he was not my advisor, I received the most advice from him. He treated me with the same respect whether I was a masters student or a doc student, and he genuinely cared about my progress even though it had no relation to his own career.

Think about that for a sec. Some of the people I’ve met on campus, I don’t think I could say the same thing about. I wish more professors would use Bill as an example and take the time to care about students, even ones who barely know them, whose lives they have a profound effect on.

It was through a meeting with Bill Winn that made me certain that UW was for me. Now? Not so certain.