"are you lonesome tonight"

[jazzfish]

What's Expected Of Us, a rather short story by Ted Chiang. "Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button." Chiang's Hugo- and Nebula-winning "Hell Is the Absence of God" is creepy and disturbing and brilliant; this one is no less any of those things despite its brevity.

This Is What Happens When You Let Developers Create UI: "Deep down inside every software developer, there's a budding graphic designer waiting to get out. And if you let that happen, you're in trouble."

Answer left as an exercise for the student: David Moles takes on the SFBC's "most influential books" meme. Of particular note are #11 and 32. His comments on _Timescape_ (49) fit with what I recall of it, as well.

---

I feel like I should have more to say. Or maybe like I do but am not sure to whom I want to say it. Awhile ago I realised I'd all but forgotten how to be alone. This is darkly amusing in light of how pleased I remain by my lack of roommates. The problem is compounded by never having learned how to meet people and having lost the automatic social outlets (Spiel, other gaming, even classes and work) I had in B'burg. Time and distance and commitments mean that getting together with friends now requires effort and advance planning. I'd known this on some level, of course, but, well. Knowing the path is not walking the path.

My two challenges are to remember the quiet joy of an evening at home by myself, and to expand my social horizons. To make those phone calls and write those emails and determine Things To Do.

Comments

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

hah hah! Best comment evar:

If you've got UI problems, I feel bad for you son.
I've got 99 problems, but design ain't one.

Great short story

[zyxwvut.livejournal.com]

Much enjoyed. Thank'oo.

In other news... You may be proving an axiom that zahraa had long held: that it's harder to make friends after college.

Z

P.S.: For freakin' years now, I've heard you B-Burgers talking about "Spiel" without much idea of exactly what kind of thing it is. I know it's a gaming group -- duh -- the thing I don't understand is, is it a VTech club? Is it held at someone's house? How large is the membership? Stuff like that.

Re: Great short story

[rbandrews]

It's a gaming group which is a Virginia Tech club. Membership fluctuated around 10-20 while I was there, I dunno what it is now except that it's >0. Usually met on campus, but at people's houses during breaks and whatnot.

Re: Great short story

[jazzfish]

Quite welcome. Ted Chiang has a collection out; I've not yet read it (it's next on The List) but the stories I've read from it have been nothing short of amazing.

It totally is. You're no longer thrown into close proximity with a bunch of people and united against the common enemy of the teachers (high school), and you're no longer free from authority and with few responsibilities (college). Instead you've got the 8-5 grind and commute, and you're not as close to your cow-orkers since you spend so much time with them anyway, without the uniting factor of high school. So there's not necessarily a place to meet people. (Man, that's disjointed and rambly. I think the general sense gets across, though.)

Spiel is technically a VTech club. uilos and I and a few other people started it up in, um, spring 2000, because our gaming nights had finally outgrown everyone's apartments. So there's game night once a week from seven PM to usually midnight, and once a month there's a full Satyrday of games, all hosted in the student center which has big rooms and tables. "Membership" is by nature extremely fluid. Last year there were generally around ten people on Wednesdays, and maybe as many as twenty wandering in and out on Game Days.

[rbandrews]

Funny thing abiut that GUI is, it has the distunction of being no easier to use than the comnand-line wget, which I regard with some dread whenever I have to drag it out.

To watch a Mac developer bang his head against this unwrappable program, see Deep Vacuum.

Mole's review of "most influential books"

[selki.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I didn't agree with all of his views, but I laughed at several of his descriptions. My memory of Timescape: a surprisingly ponderous book about academics and scientists racing to save the world from doooooom! I remember a moment of "Oh!" when light was shed subtly on one character who seemed repulsive for much of the book (why he was behaving the way he was).