Thoughts on presents

It's nearing the time of year when everyone scrambles around buying presents for each other.

So here are a few things that I would suggest you get me, if you feel the need to get me something. Which by the way no one should feel they need to get me anything. I am perfectly happy not getting stuff actually.

My first thought is to donate to something. Donate to whatever charity you like, or if you want to donate to something that seems like "me" I can offer a few suggestions. I always liked the Black Hills Children's Home, I know a few folks that work there and it would mean the world to those kids. Child's Play is a charity run by gamers for kids, they give video games, movies, and similar things to kids in hospitals. I also like monkeys. And of course any animal shelter or library is awesome. If you run across any other cool charities that seem like they would interest me, just let me know! A donation is a wonderful gift, and a sure way to make me smile.

I like stuff people make. Art is awesome. Art need not be a masterpiece to be loved and hung on my walls. And other little trinkets like that. Some of the gifts I remember most were things people made for me. A little beaded bookmark, a keychain with a piece of amethyst, a hand made pen... And I tend to like food that people make too. Yum!

But if you do feel the need to buy me something specifically material, well there are a few things. Amazon gift certificates would be used to get me kindle books. iTunes gift certificates would be used to get me music. I've been having fun modding Nerf guns, so if you buy me one it will keep me busy tearing it apart and repainting it for a while. I like Star Wars figurines (specifically I am wanting an Aayla Secura to go with my Kit Fisto). I love Legos of course, especially anything that looks like castle type stuff, Star Wars, or Technic. I am currently really into SteamPunk, so pocket watches, clocks, or really anything with gears or weird moving parts, doesn't have to actually work. Or if you happen to see something and think "Oh man, I know EXACTLY who that would be PERFECT for!"

Where have all the geeks gone?

I watched I Am Legend this weekend. It was great, I loved it. It was a drama, when I was expecting a horror. Very fantastic movie.

I suggested my coworkers go and see it when they get a chance, and that got us talking about movies. One of them suggested that Transformers was the movie of the year. Seemed reasonable, but I said Pirates was in the running too, which they responded with 'meh'. 'Meh'?!? It's pirates! But alright, not everyone has the same tastes.

Then I mentioned the preview at the beginning of I Am Legend, the preview for the new Narnia movie. Oh it looked great! My coworker than said "I didn't see the first Narnia." I kinda blinked at him and asked if he read the book, he said "It was a book?" I kinda rubbed my temples, and said "You might like it. It's big, epic, awesome. The cinematics reminded me of the big battle scenes in Lord of the Rings." He said "I didn't watch that either." To which I responded "Wait, what? You didn't watch Lord of the Rings?!?" He kinda looked at me funny.

I shouted across the cubicle walls at the only other coworker that was in the office at the time "PLEASE tell me you have seen Lord of the Rings!!!" I got the response of "Uhm, I watched the movie once, I think..."

These people are programmers!!! Yet, they are not geeks. It is so strange. My Star Wars jokes fall flat on their ears also. The best I have gotten out of them is that most of them have seen Wrath of Khan (but they don't know it by name, I just say "That Sci-fi movie where they put the bug in the guy's ear" and they say "Oh yeah, I saw that once").

I think I might start performing experiments on them. Expose them to pieces of geek culture and see how the react to it. Will they embrace it? Will they reject it? Will they begin flinging their poo?

Genius Plan (aka: fun with links)

So here's the plan. I need to steal a robot, and I need to kidnap a rocket scientist.

Using these two tools, we shall send a robot to the moon. And it shall move around 500 meters, and it shall take pictures of things. Maybe it will even snap some pictures of some old NASA junk that was left behind. We will collect our $30 million prize from Google for being the first privately funded operation to get to the moon with a robot.

Of course we'll give some money to OLC (who is likely who we would steal the robot from). And likely give a bit to Ted thanking him for his assistance (we will also release him from captivity if he wants, but only after he explains that equation to me again, because the last time he explained it to me I so didn't get it). Obviously some of the money will also have to go to posting bail after the kidnapping and theft.

But there should be plenty of money left over to take on our next step in the plan. We will work with Virtual Reality. We will combine full body sensor arrays goggles and a bit of wire-fu to create a full body 3d interactive VR experience. This will make us even more money of course.

This is just the start of the plan though! Oh it gets better! We shall reinvest that money into creating Holodecks! Of course we will license the name fro Startrek, and this corporation cooperation will be as big as iPod and Starbucks. Obviously this will completely crush the entertainment industry, which we will buy out completely. This will obviously bring in MASSIVE amounts of money.

But of course, we all know money can buy anything, even private plane landing strips on government airports. So that will let us push through new technology that will let people plug their brains directly into computers. We'll of course hook their brains up to our world wide entertainment system, along with lots of other software. We'll need a catchy name for it, something like Matrix or Web, but maybe not something that's taken yet (I kinda like the sound of Grid).

Ah, but here is where it gets REALLY tasty. These humans that we jack into the Grid, they have all this unused brain, all that useless computational power! So we will use their brains to run our distributed computing system (much like SETI@home). With that computational power we will find extra terrestrial life. And we will lure them here with tentacle porn. Once they are here, we will beat them up with Cheetos. We will then steal their space ship, and fly around the universe having a fun time.

Ah yes. It's a perfect plan.