To-Do List

Last time, I talked about my plans for Project Zero and a couple of the obstacles that I face in putting out a new edition (and any other of my work, honestly) and I forgot the biggest one (to be fair my neighbors were fairly loud. Also, they were playing the bean bag game...for hours):

I hate editing. No, it's not a dislike. No, the thought of editing my own work makes my skin crawl and my stomach churn (I have no problem doing this to others' work, but I curl up into the fetus position and cry when it comes to my own).

I tried to quantify why in the hopes I could overcome it (didn't really work) and I this is what I think my problem is: what if I take out or change the one thing that would have gotten me published? I know for the most part that this thought is ridiculous. I mean, if I want to change it, then everyone else who reads it probably wouldn't miss it, right?

Anyway, enough of my self-pity for now. As the title says, I have a to-do list. You'd think it'd be stuff I have to get before school starts or something. Well, it's not. Instead, I have a stack of ps3 games next to our TV. A stack of four or five games that I vowed to get through before purchasing any more games.

The stack started with the Zone of the Enders HD Collection and includes Lego Lord of the Rings, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Resistance 2,  and Assassin's Creed I and Revelations. And that doesn't even include the games I wanted to play through a second time, like Arkham City (I platinum'd on Asylum) and Bioshock Infinite (psyched for the expansion DLC), or the games I get for free through PSPlus.

This time I'm sitting at the DMV waiting to renew my license and I'm typing this on my phone (I upgraded to the GS3 back in March. Handy for doing things like this...), so I'm keeping this one short.

However, if any of my author buddies see this, can anyone recommend a magazine or something like that that publishes YA, supernatural, and/or general fiction short stories?

The PSN Malfunction

It's now Monday, May 2nd. The PlayStation Network has been down since April 20th. Over the past twelve days and some odd hours (it was taken offline some time that Wednesday evening), some details have surfaced over what happened. It was determined that there was an external attack (hackers hacking) on Sony's online networking platforms (the PlayStation Network, their Qriocity music store, and recently, the Sony Online Entertainment...thing. Are they still calling it portal or hub?) There were some *ahem* liberties taken with the sparse information Sony has given the public and many conclusions were jumped to. This one I saw repeatedly: "Sony should burn because it in no way protected customer information at all and I'm going to sue them."

At the time, there was no evidence that the good folks at PlayStation hadn't protected customer's private information. From what Sony has said (and big companies never, ever mislead the public. Ever.), credit card data was/is encrypted and it does not appear that it was pulled in the "external attack." Then there came the reports that Sony's list of "77 million user's" credit card data was being sold off in chunks. Well, the problem with that statement (and the reason it's in quotes) is that only about 10 million users had active credit cards attached to their profiles. Also, on average, well over 25,000 people in the US alone are victims of identy theft daily. So the couple of people (and not saying it isn't related, but it could be a freaky coincidence) that have come forward with fraudulent charges being made around the time of the "external attack" very well could've had their credit card info nabbed in some other way.

And let's be real, if not for the credit card thing, what's on someone's profile that isn't, say, on Facebook or on one of a dozen data aggregate sites (once I found out that my cell number and home address was on these sites, I had it removed. It's a bit time consuming, but relatively easy.)?

Someone rudely accused me of defending big business, and that really isn't me. Rather than pointing fingers at Sony when there wasn't a whole lot of info to go on (there still isn't and we may never know just how beefy or not Sony's security was), I think that the gaming community would've been better served uniting in common desire to see justice served against the person(s) who hacked the system and caused such a lengthy blackout.

The only thing I really need the PSN for right now is to sync my trophies to my user profile so I can switch out hard drives (I purchased a much larger HDD without realizing that 1) the system was down and 2) that it required a connection at all), so the PSN being down isn't a big loss for me.

And I still blame this mess on that shmuck who thought it would be a good idea to release the PS3's root key online and didn't expect any retaliation in return. Yeah, you hacked the unhackable system, opened the floodgate for others to do with the system what they will, and you didn't expect anything bad to happen? Either to you (Sony has been accused of drawing the legal battle out in order to ramp up legal fees) or to your fellow gamers (who were the real victims in all this)? Good job there, guy. (And do you really think for one second this was just about Sony removing the ability to install another OS?)

And to those who say that Sony either should have had better security (still don't know how good it was) or that they deserve this, let me say this: If I were to break into your house, steal your wallet and computer, kick you in dangly bits, and run away, shouldn't I be the one getting the blame? This hypothetical you wouldn't say, "well, I guess the locks weren't good enough. I deserved to have all my stuff stolen and my dangly bits kicked in." No. That wouldn't happen.

To sum it up: I'm not pro-Sony (or big corporations), I'm pro-going after the person who perpetrated the attacks.

Those Were the Days...

The holiday season is upon us. It is a time that one is supposed to put the needs and wants of others first (at least when it comes to buying stuff). It is then, with great reluctance, that I sadly admit that I've spent way too much on myself as of late. Most of it being video games (or video juegos for those in Spanish speaking countries).

The shopping spree began in mid-November with the release of Goldeneye for the Wii (I've talked at length about it already, so go check that post if you want my thoughts on the game itself) and continued through last week where I picked up Super Mario Bros. All-Stars (also for the Wii. And a pain in the ass to find, but I'll save that for a different time), Band Hero (it was less than $10 on clearance), and bought Castle Crashers and X-Men: Arcade off the PlayStation Network. That sounds like a lot, but I had gift cards that covered Mario and the two PSN titles, and, well, Band Hero was on the cheap.

Something I noticed about my buying habits there? Three out of five purchases were motivated by nostalgia, those feelings of a simpler time and more awesome gaming than yearly installments of Call of Duty (yeah, I know, Goldeneye is a CoD clone). And it's four out of five if you count Castle Crashers and the fact that I bought it because it's an awesome lil homage to the beat 'em ups of a bygone era (such as the era X-Men: Arcade hails from).

Mario All-Stars is a collection of the SNES ports of the NES Mario games and I had been holding out for those versions of the game since I got the Wii. X-Men Arcade is, well, the X-Men arcade game from the early 90's. I remember using coupon vouchers for free arcade tokens and blowing it all in 15 minutes on that sucker back in the day. And now I feel old. And sad. Because I'm old. Goldeneye, I purchased because it was an update/remake of Goldeneye.

So my question is: How much does nostalgia really influence our lives? There's a whole niche industry that thrives on kids and adults buying stuff simply because they remember it. Look at stores like Hot Topic. They have walls dedicated to things like Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles, and assorted old Nick Toons. And it's stuff we purchase and wear with pride (even though, at the height of its popularity, most of my classmates wouldn't have been caught did in a Power Rangers shirt).

And I've been guilty of buying this stuff. It wasn't for me, I swear. But I did get a Rocko's Modern Life Tee for the girlfriend.

So why do we do it? With video games and movies, where we can actually go back and play/watch the things we remember, they hardly hold up to our memories. If X-Men wasn't a game that everybody and their grandmas had an emulated version on their PC, I'm sure I would've been disappointed with the PSN release. But I knew exactly what I was getting there. Same with Mario and Goldeneye. But yet, we lay our money down for these products in hopes of capturing those days of our youth (and sometimes these come with spiffy new paint jobs, like the Perfect Dark HD game on XBLA).

There wasn't a huge point to this post. Only waxing intellectual-like. I'd invite others to join in with comments and such, but it annoys me when I read a very well-thought out article on other sites and then having it end with "Why don't you let us know what YOU think, whydontcha?"
Like, thanks guys, didn't know what the text box under the COMMENTS section meant. But that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes...