Driven to Distraction
2005-03-24,

Just a couple more hours until the frantic preparations commence for the long weekend. Frantic, cos I'd like to get everything ready tonight and still get a decent night's sleep, since we're setting a launch time of 500am. We'd like to be there by lunch. We've left it petty much up to the kids as far as attraction destinations, since neither has been there. The Girl is leaning toward the National Zoo, which is cool, assuming the weather holds up. The Boy has been hemming und hawing (MS Word has no problem with "hem und haw"; it must be used to indecisive, clich�-wielding Germans) between the Air and Space museum and the - mind you, this is a seven-year-old boy - American History museum. Gotta love these kids.

My good friend, McG (no, not the director) pointed me to a game geek article on something new brewing from the creator of that dread game, The Sims. Called (for now) Spore, it's basically an evolution game, starting from the single cell and heading all the way up to interplanetary invasions-- and the player grows its creation as time goes on, designing newer, better-evolved creatures, on and on until you're up to designing social structures. Crazy! I love the idea, and I believe I'll be getting it soon after it comes out. Normally I'm not into 'sim' games, nor 'Starcraft'-type gigs either (which is what the game evolves into). It's just the idea of the whole thing, having the balls to make a game based on evolution. I absolutely cannot wait for the uproar from the Christian Right. "Playing God!" they'll say. Then again, this might actually end up being a teaching tool for Intelligent Design crackpots. "See!? You can't come up with intelligent creatures without the influence of a superior being!" I can only hope that there's an 'auto' mode, where your system does the process on its own. Wait! Someone's already done that.

When passing time between tests (don't ask), the mind wanders and some things become funnier than they should be. Thus I present, Fun With Visio, Vol. 1, Episode 1:

Try to forgive me.

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