It’s way past my bedtime, but I finally finished Myst IV. I’ll admit I made heavy use both of the built-in hint system and a walkthrough I found on the Web. Partly, this was because Revelation had the same problem as Exile: at times, the necessary path or puzzle piece was too hard to find, or it turned out to be in a place I thought I’d checked, but I hadn’t clicked in exactly the right place.

I also “cheated” because I found many of the puzzles far too tedious. One of the things I liked about the original Myst, and especially Riven, is that the process of solving the puzzles also caused the story to unfold. What I found about Revelation was that I would enter an age (or part of an age), wander around for a while, learn the story points, and then be stuck with three or four complex and annoying puzzles, that I had figure out before I could move on and learn more about the story or characters. Usually I “got” what the puzzle wanted me to do, but I’m not determined enough—or not clever enough—to go through the process of figuring the right solution. I almost prefer looking up the solution, so I can get on with the game and cool new things. In that respect, I was a little disappointed; Revelation’s plots and characters had a lot of good setup, but once the plot got going, there wasn’t much in the way of meat, and the climax and ending felt especially weak.

I’ve never been good at puzzles. I like to feel clever, and being on the receiving end of a puzzle usually make me feel a little dim. What I really like is giving puzzles, since then I already know the answer, and I can feel smart (it’s too bad I don’t have a gift for inventing them, either.) Knowing that the solutions were so quick at hand probably made me more likely to use them; if I’d had to play the game without access to the hint guide or walkthrough (like with Riven), maybe I would have gotten through more of it on my own. On the other hand, maybe I would have given up and put the game on a shelf for a couple of years, as I did with the original Myst.

Did I really “play” Revelation? Probably not. On the other hand, I played enough of it to make myself happy, and it did last me two weeks of evenings, which is pretty good. Myst IV: Revelation did have some fun and interesting points, but the gameplay was mostly the same as Myst III: Exile, with a less detailed story.

Overall rating: B

A few years ago, I remember concerns that teaching children math with calculators would leave students unable to do arithmetic without them. I think a bigger problem is people who can’t even handle simple subtraction with the calculator.

I had another fun encounter with a retail employee today. I stopped at Subway on the way home. After semi-competently putting together my order, he punched some buttons on the register and undercharged me by about two dollars. I pointed this out, at which point he got confused and called over the other employee (I think he was new), who entered the correct information into the register.

After exchanging some bills, there was still the fractional part of my bill—12¢—left to settle. He opened the cash drawer and stared at it for a while. At the suggestion of the other employee, he tried the calculator, with little success. I helpfully suggested that the change was 88 cents, but this apparently confused him more. He mumbled something about being “bad at math,” told the register I had tendered exact change, took three quarters out of the drawer and closed it. He then took another quarter out of his own pocket and gave me whole a dollar in change.

Both the calculator and the register would have given him the right change, if he’d been at all competent at using them. I tried to tell him the answer, but apparently converting “eighty-eight cents” into three quarters, three pennies, and a dime is too difficult a problem.

The volume of comment spam this weblog receives has been steadily increasing over the past few months. My last legitimate comment was nearly a month ago. Last night alone, I received 153 comment spams. I don’t want to deal with it anymore; comments are no longer accepted here.

I’ve been playing Myst IV: Revelation for a week or so now. I’ve been stuck for the past few days, so I decided to try the game’s built in help system. After reading some of the relevant tips at “Hint Level 1” I am now more confused than ever.

I don’t think I’m ready to give in and try “Hint Level 2” yet, though.

I’ve been playing Railroad Tycoon 3 for the past few weeks. I didn’t play the demo of this one (I don’t think there is a Mac demo, although the online mini-game is pretty fun), but bought it on impulse when I saw the Mac version on the store shelf.

So far, I am quite happy with the game. A few things I’ve learned:

Continue reading →

Laura keeps talking about how we live in the hood, but still:

On September 24, 2004 at approximately 10:26 PM, Mountain View Police Department responded to a report of a shooting in the ___ block of _. __________ ___. near ______ ______. A group of Hispanic male pedestrians were fired upon by the occupants of a vehicle southbound on __________. One of the pedestrians, a male in his late teens, was shot in the chest and subsequently declared dead at the Stanford Hospital.

This is quite literally right across the street from where I live. I didn’t know about it at the time, but one of my neighbors mentioned it to me in the resident center the next day, and Saturday evening I noticed a lot of people hanging around lighting candles on the street as I drove by. The police department’s press release notes that “an impromptu shrine has been set up by family and friends of the victim,” which I’m assuming is what I saw.

On the radio just now, I heard an announcement asking anyone with information on this particular incident to call the Tip Line. I’m always surprised at how much infrastructure Mountain View has, actually. It doesn’t feel like a large enough city to have enough crime to need a Tip Line. I guess it’s a pretty big city, though: 72,000 residents in 12 square miles. We have five fire stations, too, and an excellent park system. Laura and I go out to Shoreline Park every so often, and recently we biked down the Stevens Creek Trail—I’ve been driving on Stevens Creek Drive for years, but it never occurred to me that there might actually be an actual Stevens creek, which is a really nice ride.