Should this bother me? I mean, I think little kids play this game, but I don’t think they’re going to “get” any of that. It’s just that I’m used to the Neopets kinda thing where they get rid of sexy looking faeries and slot machines and anything slightly risqué.

I never learned the shortcut for making an é on the numberpad. I’m mean the short shortcut. I still use Alt+0233. There is one that’s only three digits, but I forget. Oh, 130. Nevermind. But 0233 has a special place in my 8 year-old’s heart.

So yeah. FrontierVille. Shocking.

You know how they say some people have a fear of commitment? I think I have a fear of obligation. Which is like a fear of responsibility, which probably makes more sense, but is not what I mean. Sometimes I like to say exactly what I do mean. But that’s not the point of this.

Maybe it’s the same thing as fear of commitment. It certainly seems similar. I don’t want to be obliged to do anything, thus I don’t want to be committed to anything. But isn’t commitment the same as dedication? Because I certainly dedicate myself to things.

Anyway, responsibility is different from commitment because you can take on responsibilities by choice, but obligation is more something you have to do. I don’t like doing things I have to do because I have to do them. I prefer doing things because I want to do them.

I try to rid myself of obligations whenever I can. I didn’t like taking my medicine because, well, one, it was gross, but two, because I don’t like having to do things like that. I don’t like having to remember to take it. I don’t like being reminded either, so that’s not the issue. I just don’t like doing things that I have to do.

Maybe it’s also connected to not doing things —

Ah fuck it. Does anyone read introspective shit like this? Let’s go back to random.

I almost unfriended a real life friend of mine because she’s always joining liking stupid little groups, like, I dunno “I like cuddling” and shit. And “I joined that group because of YOU, I hope you noticed”. Then I realized I could just hide her. So I did. She’s not a good friend anyway. But whatevs.

I super wish FarmVille hadn’t made that agreement with Facebook for five years or whatever, because if I could play FarmVille without a Facebook account, I totally would. Get rid of my Facebook, that is. I only use it for FarmVille anyway.

I think I took my birthdate off a long time ago because I didn’t like getting the same old uninspired birthday messages from people I haven’t talked to in ten years, and then having to reply to them and say thanks. (See? Ridding myself of obligations again!). And how do I make my messages inspired? If I’m just going to copy and paste “thanks, and happy new year to you” on everyone’s walls, then what’s the point?

Yeah, social… umm… stuff. When people say “how are you?” I don’t automatically respond with “good, how are you?”. I just say “good”. Because I don’t care how they are. Or maybe I do, and then I will ask how they are. Or maybe I’ll remember, oh yeah, you’re supposed to engage in this silly social custom, and then I awkwardly ask how they are.

And when people compliment me? I feel obligated to compliment them back, but I don’t want to make something up. So when I actually do pay people a compliment, it’s really sincere. Like, one time my aunt came to my house and she had nice shoes, and I said “I like your shoes” and I really meant it. Or my roommate this year got her hair cut, and I felt like I should say something, so I said it looks good, even though I didn’t really mean it, but then the next day, it really did look good, and so I felt like it’d be weird if I said it again, so I didn’t.

Jesus fuck. Don’t I ever have anything worthwhile to say. While grammar technically tells me that is a question, I feel it is better suited to a period at the end. Seems much more melancholy. But also stupider.

I dreamt I won two Olympic gold medals last night in sports that don’t actually exist or take any talent. I think I just closed my eyes and like did something and then I won. Basically.

I have a little stuffed polar bear sitting on my shelf and I didn’t notice it until just a few days ago. I got it from Quebec. It was probably overpriced.

I don’t get the deal with buying lipstick. I want some lipstick that is like skin colour but with a bit of pink. Or orange. I don’t care. But something mostly nude. But not nude as in you can’t tell there’s lipstick, nude as in I look like a dead person with a little bit of pink. Or orange. And there is no bloody way I can find out if the lipstick is that colour unless I buy it. And eight dollars for this little tiny thing? No. No deal.

It’s getting to be the time where I have to do all this school stuff and I hate hate hate doing it. Already applied for residence, don’t know if I’ll get in though since I’m third year. If I don’t get in, I really wouldn’t mind living on my own, which would be totally awesome, except that I would be really scared at night that someone was going to break in or something. Plus, I don’t know where people go to live alone. Apartments? I don’t know how much that is, or how near one would be to Brock. I really don’t want to take the bus to class. Not that it’s a problem with the bus, because I love the bus, but I like being on campus so I have somewhere to go in between classes, and commute time is a waste of time. Hell, I would live in DeCew again if that was my only option for staying on campus. It wasn’t that bad anyway. Just a total waste of money on food. I can deal with everything else. And I know now I can deal with everyone else, and if I can’t, I can unplug my phone.

I need a new project. My last big one was my Jeopardy game (GUI version) which is basically done, I just don’t feel like trying to figure out how to clear the response box of the buzzer keys. But I’m really proud of it.

I was going to do a Lost RPG game, probably of Hurley and Ben, but now that the “If Lost was a 1987 NES game…” thing is popular, I don’t want to, because it’ll look like a ripoff. Another thing I have a fear of, looking like a ripoff.

I started to put all my Monkees lyrics in a database so I could use all my knowledge I learned from databases class this year, though I already did on my FarmVille gift tracking thingymadude, but then I figured, well, it’s going to take a lot of joins to display this darn thing. And I want it like super duper umm, non-replicationing, so I won’t have the table Last Train To Clarksville/The Monkees/Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart/Micky Dolenz, it would be like Song1/Last Train To Clarksville in songs and then Song1/Album1 in song_album and Song1/Writer1 and Song1/Writer2 in song_writer and Song1/Singer1 in song_singer… but look how many friggin’… well, not joins, I guess, technically, how I do it, but a lot of database calls. But I want consistency, grrr! And I mean, it’s not like the songwriter is going to change, so it’s really kind of dumb to do it that way. But I like it that way! And I totally don’t know enough about how much slower PHP/MySQL is than static HTML. Hm.

Do you know. How many freaking ants. There are in this house. No. No, you don’t. But there are so many. There were a bunch of different bugs for awhile, but now it seems to just be ants. One day I found a spider behind my door and I was like EWWW but then I realized he was killing all the ants, so I left him there, whereas normally I would have my mom come in an kill it. But then one day I pointed it out to her, how cool it was that he was killing the ants so I wouldn’t have to do it, and it was all natural like, and then she killed him, thinking that’s what I meant I wanted. So I was kind of sad. I put salt around my door, but now I just step in salt all the time.

I can’t quite decide whether my hair is fake-red or not. I’m leaning toward it is, but not the terrible-fake-red. I’ll probably dye it again sooner than I normally do, which is usually when my natural hair colour is grown out like two inches.

One grammar rule I can’t get a grasp on is was/were. I read the Grammar Girl on it, but I still don’t get it. And most grammar rules just make sense to me, they’re like just, duh.

Frick.

Dogs are basically the most requested feature on FarmVille, and they’ve been “coming soon” for quite some time. They finally came out last night for 65 FV each, which is equivalent to around $20.

Um, yeah. I don’t have a problem paying for online content (even though I don’t actually do it because I’m cheap), but this is ridiculous. Zynga knows everyone wants a dog. Why not at least make it somewhat affordable? I mean, sure, $20 is not a lot, but realistically, a dog doesn’t cost as much as a building.

Oh, sure, there’s the coin dog, which you can buy for in-game earned money, but it’s 300,000 coins (which is not a big deal to me now, or anyone probably around level 40+, but it can take a few weeks to get there, even playing basically non-stop like me) and if you don’t feed your dog every day for two weeks straight, it will run away. Now, come on. Is that not evil? I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to get to my computer every day for two weeks straight. Plus, the only dog available is a red border collie, clearly because it’s the dumbest looking one (no offense to real red border collies).

And then — and THEN I hear people are having problems with these dogs they’ve bought with real money.

A week or so ago, they released a big new feature called co-op farming that lets you help out your friends and earn prizes, yada yada.

And okay. Seriously. My roommate has been in the bathroom for over an hour. This is ridiculous.

Anyway, for at least a day, if I remember correctly, you couldn’t actually do any jobs.

You know, when you release a big feature like this, it better damn well work. And when you release something that costs people money, it better damn well work!

I’m not usually one for complaining about FarmVille. I’m fine with them making money off it, because they are a business, after all. I understand that there are bugs and I understand that things can load slow sometimes. But this, really, is just plain evil.

I’m not gonna quit, but I’m not gonna get a dog either. I was never really all that excited for them anyway; I just like owning one (or nine) of each animal, but I mean, if I wanna play with a virtual dog, I have my old Petz games. Or, you know, my real dog.

Don’t remember when I left Digg, but it was around the time I realized everyone on it were woman-haters. I can be a woman-hater too, but after awhile, it’s just not funny anymore.

People have been saying for years that Reddit’s going the way of Digg. I’ve finally seen it for myself. There’s been all these childish spats over what moderators have said and done. There was one awhile ago on the IAmA subreddit, which is actually one of the few that are usually worth reading. Some mod made a stylesheet for the subreddit and then was banned from it and wanted them to take the stylesheet down. Understandable, yes, but they went about it wrong.

Around Valentine’s Day, a user posted that he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him and wanted advice on how to get revenge. Later, he posted an update about what he did. He went way too far. And the whole purpose of it was to “hurt” her. Again, I understand that he was hurt, but he wanted to destroy her. Okay, cheating’s not good, but geez people, it’s not the end of the world.

I don’t recognize many people’s usernames, but there’s one who I previously thought had some rather insightful comment, who’s now involved with this war over them accepting money for submitting stuff to Reddit. I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that, and it looks to me like this person is still pretty cool. But then people are saying she’s abused her power as a mod and banned other people for making money off their submissions… But I figure, if she’s a mod, and Reddit doesn’t mind her making money off them, then let her be a mod.

Anyway, I’ve always disagreed with some widely-held Reddit views (downloading, marijuana use, pun threads), but now it seems that most people are expressing views I don’t agree with.

It’s been fun. I managed to get there before most of the other Digg users did and managed to enjoy some slightly higher intelligenced discussions. But now, the Facebook people who believe they can get free stuff by inviting all their friends to some group are looking slightly less annoying.

It’s a good thing I took my own advice. I’ve been playing Farmville mostly nonstop since then. I got into a mini-depression a few weeks ago due to slacking on taking my medicine (I even called home — which I never do — and cried to my mom, which was how she figured out I was depressed in the first place last year (geez, nearly a year since I’ve been depressed; glad to be on the mend though)) and started getting disinterested in it; my parents said they’d know I was back to normal when I started playing Farmville again.

Anyway, I didn’t really want to bring that into all of this. While I was still sick, my brother had his birthday and my family and I went out for supper. I made everyone promise before leaving that we wouldn’t talk about how *I* was doing, because it was his day after all. Plus, I’m just plain sick of being asked how I’m doing. Right now, quite well, actually, in case you were wondering, but I don’t want to jinx it. ‘Specially with it being reading week almost and I want to just go home, relax, and have some fun (and farm).

So yeah. I’m pretty damn addicted to Farmville. In the beginning, I was like, well, this is dumb, there’s nothing to do. Because really, you just plant your crops and then you have to wait a few hours before you can do anything. I always thought I didn’t like games like that. I got sick of Project Rockstar after awhile because it was really no fun just picking actions for your band to do from a dropdown list every morning and then forgetting about them until tomorrow. I want a game like Neopets, where there are actually games to play, always something to do, some way to make money. But you eventually figure out that you can visit other people’s farms and decorate your own and frantically try to adopt lost animals from your news feed.

Anyway, I really like Farmville. It’s not perfect, but it’s quite well-made. And updated regularly! But there are a few minor little changes I would want to make if they let me make the game.

Change your avatar’s clothes

We don’t have to go full-fledged dollmaker here, but just let us change the colour of the darn overalls! Mine will be green with a white shirt. Speaking of the avatar maker, it would be nice if you could, you know, click on a hair style and then pick a colour, rather than search through all the pages. It just makes more sense, you know? Just an efficiency thing. And speaking of colours, why can’t we have an eyedropper for things like hair and clothes and hay bales? I don’t actually know how hard that would be to program because I’ve never done it myself, but I know having a set number of objects in X colours is easier. But again, eyedroppers are so much nicer and more efficient. One monochrome item and… actually, now that I think about it, that might be very not fun to make. But I’m only second year, these people are supposed to be professionals, right?

No lopsided farms

Whyyy is there that extra space along the edges after you’ve filled your lot with crops? I know some people use it for trees and animals, but I’d really rather everything was just nice and even. And why don’t we have fences that are four units long so they can properly be placed right around the crops? Though I guess that would actually cause a problem at corners… hmm. Two units then, for cheaper!

Fix the bleeding hedges

So, okay, this is not so much a change as an actual bug that needs fixed. And I don’t mean like “damn, those bloody hedges!”, I mean the hedges actually bleed. And I don’t mean like “Amityville Horror”, I mean like graphically they poke through other objects. The hedges are so nice, but I hate using them because they’re broken.

Rotate everything

I can’t put my horse stable next to my chicken coop and dairy farms because it faces left while the other two face down. Just makes no sense. I want to rotate buildings. And even if we don’t have the right and up facing versions, it would be nice to at least have left and down for all objects.

And well, the other things are just whiny gimme-gimme things that normal people ask for and that will probably eventually be implemented but I want to mention them anyway. Let me upgrade my barn more! And no maximum number of collectibles! (Quoth me, “you can never have too many Beetle collectibles”). And more duck items!

So you know, not really a lot of changes. Just eensy-weensy things that would be nice. And sure, sometimes I don’t get my gifts and sometimes Farmville being “enhanced” interrupts my plowing, and sometimes the page just doesn’t load, but all in all, Farmville is some quality entertainment.

My brother likes to watch “Full House” for reasons I can’t comprehend. We were discussing the living arrangements in the house (where do the stairs in the kitchen lead? Don’t the stairs in the living room lead to the girls’ rooms? Then why are the girls always seen going up/down the kitchen stairs?) and the relationship of the characters, and I said I was pretty sure Joey was a friend of Danny’s and Jesse was actually his brother (in-law, actually).

My brother then wondered why the kids would call him “Uncle Joey” seeing as he isn’t really their uncle. Somehow this led to our inside joke phrase “call me Uncle Joey”, which — is it just me? — or does it have a slightly creepy connotation?

When I have a strange phrase, I like to Google it and see who else has had this particular phrase pop into their heads as well. There were about twenty other “call me Uncle Joey” pages, with only two I could see obviously pertaining to this Uncle Joey.

One of the results was a “Twilight” fanfiction. Now, I can tell when fanfics are written by preteen girls because they sound like what I wrote at that age.

We didn’t understand magnitude as kids. A character in this fanfic is described as someone who would “never be caught dead in anything less then a three star restaurant”.

Now, I don’t know what a three star restaurant constitutes, but on a presumed five star scale, I suppose it would be average. Most people don’t go to one and two star restaurants anyway. This sentence is writing a lot to say nothing about a person. They really intend to say they are snobby and rich and uptight, but think it’s better to write some bullshit than to actually put the words that they mean.

I made a similar mistake when I was younger. I was writing a Spice Girls fanfic, which was actually just a complete ripoff of another Spice Girls fic I’d read online. Anyway, Victoria was being a bitch because someone had ruined her dress, so she shouted “I’ll have you know I paid twenty pounds for this dress!!!”.

Yeah. I didn’t get the British monetary system.

Most people did nothing. I, sick person that I am, sat there every day happily doing work. Well, except during my last project, which I now suspect was only because I had to use a Mac. It was also June, and June is not a time to be in school. Which is something I like about university. By the end of the year, I didn’t feel like giving up and not giving a shit, which I always felt by the end of the year in high school.

But, I digress! — And hey, I used that word and I used it properly, even if you, like I, don’t know the actual meaning when you first read it.

Seriously tho.

My first project for the class was a website. I figured it would be dumb for me to just make a website. For one, I could finish it in one class (you know, if I really wanted to). Secondly, I wouldn’t be learning anything. And this is kind of… school. And that’s kind of (but not really) the purpose of school. So, instead of just making one website, I decided to make a bunch of websites.

…Sigh.

It was a lot of work, and I lingered on this project for longer than I should have, but again, it turned out nicely. I was also forced to teach myself Javascript because I couldn’t use PHP and MySQL like I usually do. So I was quite happy about that too.

If you’d like to play the mystery game I created, then click here.

Just a warning, it miiiight take awhile to solve. There are things to read (yes, read, eww) to help you solve the mystery, but a lot of it is (probably) bullshit. Me sitting beside you and prodding you would allow you to finish in half and hour, if I remember correctly. If you actually want to “get into” the mystery, it’ll take a little longer. And I’m seriously afraid no one will ever actually understand who did it/where it ends without my telling them.

Good luck, gumshoes. Comments appreciated.

We were doing a project in grade 6 science. Hard to believe that was nearly a decade ago. We were supposed to research one of the, at that time, nine planets, and for reasons unknown to me now, I picked Neptune. I guess I just liked it because it was so blue. This was before my favourite colour was green, you see. And the name “Neptune” just sounds spacey. Neptune. Neeeeptuuuune.

Back in those days, Ask Jeeves was my search engine of choice, though I do recall, on that particular day, using Dogpile. I guess certain names just appealed to me. But Ask Jeeves, that was where it was at, man.

Until one little remark from my science/math/art/music/drama teacher made me change my ways. You know, I never got that. My class had two teachers who taught us all of our subjects, where all the other classes had a separate teacher for the arts and gym. It kind of screwed us over for the next two years in music class, but, alas. I was going to say “I digress”, which would indeed be appropriate here (I had to look it up because I had no idea what it meant and I was surprised to learn it means “I’m rambling”), but that’s not really what I mean to say. I more mean to say “but, whatever” but “but, alas” sounds much better, doncha think?

Anyway, my teacher was talking to the class in general and she said — well, I don’t remember exactly how she said it, because this was like half a lifetime ago. But she said something like “Google: that’s what they use at the Smithsonian!” and I was like “wow, the Smithsonian! That must be smart people!”.

And so, from that day on, I used Google exclusively, never looking back, because that’s what the smart people use.

“Why would you think I would believe that?” asks Ilana.

“I did” I reply forlornly.

I skipped over the bit about decompiling server-side code because there were too many big words in the heading. Reading that would have given it away sooner, considering the obviously fake screenshot. When I did go back and reread it, I found it wasn’t that hard to understand, but it did freak me out because that would be a major security problem if that were possible.

So, IE supports Firefox add-ons and can render pages like Firefox (or Safari, or or or…). So like… why… what… why not use IE? What’s the difference?

When I got to the website skinning section, I finally asked myself “what is the date today? I think they’re a bit early”. It wasn’t the fact that this would be terribly impossible to implement that gave it away, it was the fact that they included a Mozilla skin. I checked the date, then went to the comments on the site and realized, yes, I had been had. I just wasn’t in the proper timezone.

Had it been today that this article came up in my news feed, you know, I can’t say whether I would have fell for it or not. I feel a bit cheated that it wasn’t the right day, but I also am glad because it was a nicely put together trick, which I have no problem falling for. And I think I’ve probably written in the past about how I quite don’t like pranks on April Fools’ because they are obviously pranks and thus no one falls for them.

Which brings me to another prank — Conficker. Now, no one can say yet whether it was a prank or a dud or a virus yet-to-be-launched, but I quite hope it turns out like Y2k. Some people are saying “oh, oh, I’m disappointed with you, Conficker!”. I say no. They just don’t understand it. It’s done just enough. Hmhmhm, hahaha, ho ho, whahahaha…! (Can you tell I am ready for “Lost” tonight? Probably no, I’m being much too obscure.)

When I first heard about Conficker and the April 1st launch date I thought “great, it shouldn’t do anything”. That’s the best prank it could pull; everyone thinking they’re going to wake up with a dancing cow on the screen, only to find nothing happened. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, really. Except that it blocks people from visiting anti-virus sites, which is suspicious and makes me think it’s actually still just a lame virus.

Another thing that this virus may have intentionally or unintentionally done is gotten people to update their computers. Does IE7 come through Windows update? I hope so. Let’s get rid of IE6, shall we? At least do it for those of us tricked by IE8.1!

The award for the only trick that made me laugh today goes to Reddit — or should I say Reddigg? Very cute, and alright that it’s obviously fake.

In mostly unrelated but sad news, I decided to check Neopets today to see what they would pull. Something about plants. But anyway, I decided to drop by the Secret Lab because last time I was there, it turned my lab rat into an ugly camel-like thing, and I quite want him back to a Poogle.

Of course, I had to go and pick the wrong pet, my baby Acara. And of course, it had to go and make her silver. Which isn’t as bad as changing her species or gender, but honestly, I hardly get colour changes for my other pet which is what I want, and the one time I zap her, bam! Ugly colour. And Baby Paintbrushes don’t cost, what was it, 200,000 NP?, anymore, so I’ve got to suck it up and go to the Trading Post with three times that! Guess I’m back to buying a thousand 15 NP stocks everyday…

It’s funny that the people who say “oh no! Cloning/genetically modified food/birth control/medicine/blah blah blah is not natural! We shouldn’t be doing these things to our bodies/food/blah blah blah!” are the same people who continue to pollute and don’t see a problem with it despite the fact that adding all these chemicals into the environment is not natural.

The greenhouse effect is basically there are these gases floating around in the atmosphere that make it warmer on Earth. This is necessary. If the greenhouse effect didn’t exist, we would be living (or rather not living) on a cold, cold planet.

Global warming is simple, really, and I don’t think I really understood how simple until now. I guess I never took the time to understand.

Humans are making more of of these greenhouse gases and they’re floating around in the atmosphere, thus making it even warmer. That’s “not natural”.

We’re going to die in a billion years anyway because the sun is slowly getting warmer and it will dry up all the water and suck up our atmosphere and Earth will be uninhabitable. That’s the first inevitability I’ve come across. No need to worry about the sun going supernova or becoming a black hole, because it never will. No need to worry about the sun becoming a red giant, which it will, and sucking up the Earth, because that happens after we get all hot and unlivable. No need to worry about being sucked into the black hole in the centre of the universe, because that happens much later. This is all assuming no stupid acts on the part of humans, but I’d say that’ll cut our outlook at least in half.

So yeah, this timeline here is pretty scary. The sun is 4.5 billion years old. Earth’s only got a billion years left. We’re nearing the end.

And if astronomy class has done one thing, it’s made me fail as a sci-fi writer. There is no where life “as we know it” can exist on any other planet or body in our solar system and the nearest star is much too far away from us to actually travel to, and even if we did, we don’t know what’s there. I would say yes, there is probably life out there somewhere, but I don’t think we’re ever going to find it. They might find us, but if what they say about the speed of light is true, that would be highly unlikely.

See now, I wasn’t planning on writing this much, but that’s what blogs make you do. I’m supposed to be studying for an astronomy test, damnit!