And then you put the other foot in front of the first, repeat as necessary

So it is probably no surprise to most of you that I’ve just been too doggone busy to post lately.  As the title implies, some time I just have to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and walking.

But I did recently manage to give myself an earworm for a song mashup that may not exist, but probably should.  Here are the lyrics that run through my head:

“Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen.
Prettiest girl I ever seen.
Tastes so sweet make a grown man cry,
Sweet cherry pie.”

That was fun, but bent my mind a little.

Route 30 parallels the Pike for quite a stretch, at times with sufficient elevation that looking across 30 you cannot see the pike below.

Except for when a car carrier goes by and you can see just enough of the top.  Seeing a line of cars ‘driving’ backwards on the Pike was very amusing.

Played poker tonight, at Jducoeur’s invitation (thank you!), and had a lot of fun.  Not having played anything but the ubiquitous Texas Hold ‘Em for quite some time, the variety of variations called at the table were at times mind-bending.  Particularly, I occasionally had troubles with some of the more convoluted split-pot high-low variations.  Not strategy-wise, typically, but I did flub a few action sequences, to my embarrassment.  Overall though, thanks to some good choices in Liege Lord, and some good fortunes in being the only high hand in Anaconda, (both split-pot games, oddly), I ended up more than doubling my stake (after factoring in chips bought from me at the very end).  But the money would have been well spent had I lost it all, as I had a really good time.  Of course, now I must find an opportunity to give some of the money back at another poker night.

And now I must to bed before I lose too much more sleep.

MMORPGs came before the Internet, didn’t ya know?

15 years ago, most people didn’t have Internet Access, per se. They had dial-up service. 28.8k was state of the art (with 33.6k poking it’s nose in places).   Service was typically AOL or CompuServe, maybe something else, and metered per hour, sometimes as much as $5/hour.  You might also have to pay long distance charges if there wasn’t an access point in your local exchange.  Oh, and of course, if you only had one phone line you would tie it up, unless someone picked up the phdsgndjkls nhyreio hnbknrw.b;ip0f nu3tur  in which case that’s what you’d see.

I’m not just trying to show my age here, I’m setting the scene.  15 years ago, I was pretty cutting edge in some ways: pretty fast 28.8k modem, second phone line, lucky enough to live in the corner of town that fell into the local exchange that covered a large area.  But we didn’t have any of the dial services like AOL, because the fees were unreasonable.  But I still spent hours each week online.

How?  Local BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) – Other people would set up their computers with modems and phone lines and special software and host local systems that people like me would dial into.  All ANSI text based terminals, with crude text-based interfaces, and no mouse.  (I’m ignoring the later RIP vector systems)  Some of these were BBSs in the literal sense of an electronic bulletin board – Forums these days – log in write new posts, respond, communicate, for community.  Some had file exchange options.  Many had Doors.  Doors were add on third party modules that let visitors interact with the system and with others in different ways.  Some would let you do things like bank unused minutes (with only one, maybe two modems, most BBS limited your online time so as to ensure fairer access), or send messages all across the country through BlueWave, a store-and-forward type e-mail system.  Like the current postal service, all the messages would be gathered together, and in the middle of the nights, systems would dial into each other and pass messages around like pony express.  Turn around time was typically a day, maybe two if a link was offline.

And many BBS’ had games.  Multiplayer games, although, again, with most local BBS only having the one modem, they were asynchronously multiplayer.  And me living in a larger local exchange, I had access to dozens of local systems.  The only cost was my time, and the $15/month we spent on a second phone line.  So I was a regular member of half a dozen or so systems, and most every day after school, I’d spend some time dialing around my regular list.  If one was busy I’d move on to the next, and return later, etc.  I wasn’t big into the discussion forums or the file exchanges, but I did play the games.  I had my favorites, and the popular games would find their way into almost every BBS.  Tradewars 2000, Exitilus, and the ever ubiquitous Legend of the Red Dragon (LoRD).

All of the above has been windup and warmup.  Yesterday I discovered that someone has made a web based remake of LoRD called Legend of the Green Dragon.  And it’s an open source project, fully with the intention that people can download and run their own game servers.  How could I resist?  So yesterday I spent some time installing it, adding modules, configuring, and setting it up.  And now I invite you to dabble around.  For anyone who has played Kingdom of Loathing, you’ll probably recognize the influence this game had on that.  You can find the game running at http://logd.lebor.net , and it’s open for anyone to sign up and play.  You are welcome to come join me as I delight in the fact that good games never die, they just get remade by dedicated fans…