Interview Meme: R_M Speaks
Feb. 17th, 2004 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterThere's an interview meme going around, and I've gone ahead and taken the plunge. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluelang asked me some questions and I respond to them past the cut.
1. What one role-playing gaming product (that does not exist to the best of your knowledge) would you like to see created and why?
What, you mean aside from the sure-to-be-a-hit country Vampire song, "Camarilla By Morning"? :)
The former answer to this question would have been a D20/D&D sourcebook based on Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion universe, but now it's shading more toward a D20/D&D sourcebook based on David Weber's "War God" series: Oath of Swords, The War God's Own, and Windrider's Oath (so far). In both cases, the settings are close enough to plain-vanilla D&D that the sourcebooks would require no major rules tweaks. Paksenarrion is already more or less Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off, right down to the paladin class's godgifted steed, a Druid-like wise man of the forest, and even a race of evil, pale, subterranean elves; War God is farther from "plain vanilla" D&D but still about as close as, say, Dragonlance—having most of the same races (elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings), paladins (under the name "champions"), gods and demons, but a variant system of magic and psionics and another race called the Hradani (who are basically high-endurance humanoids with fox's ears and the Barbarian's Rage ability in males).
In both cases, it's not so much the rules that I want these for, or even particularly the ability to run or play in a game in the setting (though make no mistake, I would like those)—it's the sourcebook nature of getting more information about the world, seeing the information about the way the world works that the author knows but never made it into the novels.
It's even vaguely conceivable that such a thing could realistically happen if the author were to give permission and cooperate in the undertaking—another Baen series, John Ringo's Aldenata books, was made into a D20 sourcebook that was included free on the Aldenata CD-ROM (and is apparently now in the process of being adapted for publication as a Traveller T20 supplement). Whether it actually will ever happen, I don't have any earthly idea.
2. What attracted you to Pepsi's iTunes Music Store bottlecap promotion, what songs are you planning to download, and why?
Well, the fact that I have and use iTunes already, on my Powerbook and on my winbox, made it a fairly easy choice to make to get into the store itself. The thing is, though, I'm still ambivalent about the idea of spending a buck a song—essentially used-CD price, or even a little more—on songs that aren't even full CD quality. Sure, AAC sounds great compared to MP3, but it's still lossily-compressed, and the digital restrictions management on it—no matter how permissive it is in general—still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
But as for the promotion, well...it's basically free money. Up to 200 free songs—that's up to $198 of product—over the lifetime of the contest, restricted only by how successful I am at cap-hunting-and-mooching. It's a chance to build a song library at no charge, and try it out and see how well I like it. It's a chance to have for free what I cannot, at this point, justify spending any of my actual cash money for, both on the basis of uncertainty of how much of a value it is and on the basis of owing too many other agencies too much money to fling ten bucks here and twenty there toward music.
As for the cap-hunting itself...well, I'm an old hand at it, having perfected my technique during the PepsiStuff/DewStuff promotion of a few years back, where I collected sufficient bottlecaps to earn a flashlight, a DVD, a backpack, and a 16-meg Rio MP3 player. People drink Pepsis in class, then screw the lid back on and pitch them...even if the lid has a prize on it. Back in the day, almost nobody was collecting those points but me, so I made out like a bandit. And now...well, there are some people on campus who collect them—I've run across a few capless bottles, and spoke to one person who said he redeemed them himself—but I was still able to find 9 in an hour or so of looking tonight. Now, $9 for an hour of work isn't really all that much of a "wage," but there's also the thrill of the hunt involved: each time I unscrew a cap, I get a little frisson of uncertainty which then resolves into either a "Yes!" or an "Oh well, next time." And the next-times are soon forgotten.
Some friends give me flak about my "dumpster diving," but I look at it like this. If you saw someone casually throw $20 in the trash, you'd fish it out, wouldn't you? That's not all that different from what people are doing here...throwing 99-cent free-song caps away because they don't need them. See, SMSU is mostly a Windows campus, and since mp3 players such as WinAmp have been out for Windows for a long time already, people are naturally going to be reluctant to switch to a brand new player with a completely different interface. My brother, an inveterate Windows user, thinks that iTunes "sucks," and even I found the interface a bit daunting when I was using it for the first time. That being the case, even a lot of folks who enjoy MP3s aren't going to be able to have any use for the iTunes caps, because they aren't going to have any use for iTunes. And what they throw away, I can recover and redeem.
As for what songs I'm going to get...well, I'm not sure yet. I've been browsing and they have a lot of stuff, though most of it's stuff I already have (either as CD or mp3) and don't have too much of an urge to buy again. I might pick up INXS's "Live Baby Live" album, and any other INXSes that I don't already have as CDs...I might also grab the Deep Purple album they have too. Maybe some Guster stuff...though I think I'll pass on the "meow mix" album where they sing "meow meow meow meow" instead of the lyrics. (Well, maybe I'll grab the meow mix of "Ramona" just for giggles.) Maybe sometime when I'm down visiting my parents I'll demonstrate it by downloading one of my Dad's favorite songs, "Key Largo" by Bertie Higgins.
3. What is your dream job and what decisions would you have had to make differently in your life to get it?
My dream job would be something where I could sit at home all day and surf the net, and still do work that I enjoy and would pay me. I kind of envy my brother who does coding jobs from home and gets paid thousands of bucks for it. I can't help thinking, "But I could do that!" If only I knew how.
And it's my own darned fault that I don't, really. I didn't pay much attention in school. Didn't do my reading. Didn't do my homework. Coasted by on my natural smarts and my ability to take tests, but still don't feel like I learned a darned thing. Only took some Java and Visual Basic programming, and almost everything I learned therein vanished the moment I stepped out of the classroom. I should be able to learn it...if Will Wheaton can learn to code, I expect I could too. It's just...I have a hard time applying myself to these things. If I went back to school now, I'd like to think I'd actually study. But...I'd only like to think that, because I know myself too well. So now I'm doing customer service work for a phone company with no real idea how to get into something better.
4. What piece of Pulp science do you feel cheated that we don't have yet and why?
As the song goes, "It's the eighties, so where's my rocket pack?" I wish that personal flying apparatuses (apparati?) were more prevalent, whether personal rocket or helicoptor packs or sky-cars. Realistically I know that such things would be accidents waiting to happen, as people have trouble navigating properly in two dimensions now, so adding a third to the equation is just asking for trouble. But it doesn't keep me from wishing that I could just hop through the air to visit the folks instead of driving down. Maybe someday if I'm ever rich, I can invest in an ultralite.
5. You wake up to find your consciousness transferred into a transforming robot. Describe the robot and it's alternate form(s).
First of all, it's a Pretender. Not one of the American comic book absurdities, which involved giant humanoid shells around robots—the toys being taken way too literally—but the Japanese version from Masterforce, where ordinary-looking humans could turn into robots via a sentai-like transformation sequence. That way, I could still appear to be the same person I've always been when I need to (okay, okay, it's cheating I know, but still! :). The robot would be something like the head of Fortress Maximus...a robot that turns into a computer. Perhaps it would have several computer forms...mainframe, desktop, laptop...PDA would be stretching it a little far, though. I'd spend my days sitting hooked up to the Internet, surfing with no human interface difficulties. :) Perhaps it would turn into the head of a bigger Fort-Max style robot—the entire SMSU campus transforming into the body. Hmm, that almost begs for an Undocumented Features story right there.
And as for passing on the meme, here's the rules. I'll try to come up with interview questions for at least the first four or five people who say they want 'em. (It'll be easier if I at least know who you are...but if not, I suppose I can get to know you through your LJ!)
THE RULES:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers. (And drop a link to that entry in response to my question response here, if you don't mind, so that people reading the comments can easily jump to your answers.)
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
bluelang asked me some questions and I respond to them past the cut.1. What one role-playing gaming product (that does not exist to the best of your knowledge) would you like to see created and why?
What, you mean aside from the sure-to-be-a-hit country Vampire song, "Camarilla By Morning"? :)
The former answer to this question would have been a D20/D&D sourcebook based on Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion universe, but now it's shading more toward a D20/D&D sourcebook based on David Weber's "War God" series: Oath of Swords, The War God's Own, and Windrider's Oath (so far). In both cases, the settings are close enough to plain-vanilla D&D that the sourcebooks would require no major rules tweaks. Paksenarrion is already more or less Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off, right down to the paladin class's godgifted steed, a Druid-like wise man of the forest, and even a race of evil, pale, subterranean elves; War God is farther from "plain vanilla" D&D but still about as close as, say, Dragonlance—having most of the same races (elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings), paladins (under the name "champions"), gods and demons, but a variant system of magic and psionics and another race called the Hradani (who are basically high-endurance humanoids with fox's ears and the Barbarian's Rage ability in males).
In both cases, it's not so much the rules that I want these for, or even particularly the ability to run or play in a game in the setting (though make no mistake, I would like those)—it's the sourcebook nature of getting more information about the world, seeing the information about the way the world works that the author knows but never made it into the novels.
It's even vaguely conceivable that such a thing could realistically happen if the author were to give permission and cooperate in the undertaking—another Baen series, John Ringo's Aldenata books, was made into a D20 sourcebook that was included free on the Aldenata CD-ROM (and is apparently now in the process of being adapted for publication as a Traveller T20 supplement). Whether it actually will ever happen, I don't have any earthly idea.
2. What attracted you to Pepsi's iTunes Music Store bottlecap promotion, what songs are you planning to download, and why?
Well, the fact that I have and use iTunes already, on my Powerbook and on my winbox, made it a fairly easy choice to make to get into the store itself. The thing is, though, I'm still ambivalent about the idea of spending a buck a song—essentially used-CD price, or even a little more—on songs that aren't even full CD quality. Sure, AAC sounds great compared to MP3, but it's still lossily-compressed, and the digital restrictions management on it—no matter how permissive it is in general—still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
But as for the promotion, well...it's basically free money. Up to 200 free songs—that's up to $198 of product—over the lifetime of the contest, restricted only by how successful I am at cap-hunting-and-mooching. It's a chance to build a song library at no charge, and try it out and see how well I like it. It's a chance to have for free what I cannot, at this point, justify spending any of my actual cash money for, both on the basis of uncertainty of how much of a value it is and on the basis of owing too many other agencies too much money to fling ten bucks here and twenty there toward music.
As for the cap-hunting itself...well, I'm an old hand at it, having perfected my technique during the PepsiStuff/DewStuff promotion of a few years back, where I collected sufficient bottlecaps to earn a flashlight, a DVD, a backpack, and a 16-meg Rio MP3 player. People drink Pepsis in class, then screw the lid back on and pitch them...even if the lid has a prize on it. Back in the day, almost nobody was collecting those points but me, so I made out like a bandit. And now...well, there are some people on campus who collect them—I've run across a few capless bottles, and spoke to one person who said he redeemed them himself—but I was still able to find 9 in an hour or so of looking tonight. Now, $9 for an hour of work isn't really all that much of a "wage," but there's also the thrill of the hunt involved: each time I unscrew a cap, I get a little frisson of uncertainty which then resolves into either a "Yes!" or an "Oh well, next time." And the next-times are soon forgotten.
Some friends give me flak about my "dumpster diving," but I look at it like this. If you saw someone casually throw $20 in the trash, you'd fish it out, wouldn't you? That's not all that different from what people are doing here...throwing 99-cent free-song caps away because they don't need them. See, SMSU is mostly a Windows campus, and since mp3 players such as WinAmp have been out for Windows for a long time already, people are naturally going to be reluctant to switch to a brand new player with a completely different interface. My brother, an inveterate Windows user, thinks that iTunes "sucks," and even I found the interface a bit daunting when I was using it for the first time. That being the case, even a lot of folks who enjoy MP3s aren't going to be able to have any use for the iTunes caps, because they aren't going to have any use for iTunes. And what they throw away, I can recover and redeem.
As for what songs I'm going to get...well, I'm not sure yet. I've been browsing and they have a lot of stuff, though most of it's stuff I already have (either as CD or mp3) and don't have too much of an urge to buy again. I might pick up INXS's "Live Baby Live" album, and any other INXSes that I don't already have as CDs...I might also grab the Deep Purple album they have too. Maybe some Guster stuff...though I think I'll pass on the "meow mix" album where they sing "meow meow meow meow" instead of the lyrics. (Well, maybe I'll grab the meow mix of "Ramona" just for giggles.) Maybe sometime when I'm down visiting my parents I'll demonstrate it by downloading one of my Dad's favorite songs, "Key Largo" by Bertie Higgins.
3. What is your dream job and what decisions would you have had to make differently in your life to get it?
My dream job would be something where I could sit at home all day and surf the net, and still do work that I enjoy and would pay me. I kind of envy my brother who does coding jobs from home and gets paid thousands of bucks for it. I can't help thinking, "But I could do that!" If only I knew how.
And it's my own darned fault that I don't, really. I didn't pay much attention in school. Didn't do my reading. Didn't do my homework. Coasted by on my natural smarts and my ability to take tests, but still don't feel like I learned a darned thing. Only took some Java and Visual Basic programming, and almost everything I learned therein vanished the moment I stepped out of the classroom. I should be able to learn it...if Will Wheaton can learn to code, I expect I could too. It's just...I have a hard time applying myself to these things. If I went back to school now, I'd like to think I'd actually study. But...I'd only like to think that, because I know myself too well. So now I'm doing customer service work for a phone company with no real idea how to get into something better.
4. What piece of Pulp science do you feel cheated that we don't have yet and why?
As the song goes, "It's the eighties, so where's my rocket pack?" I wish that personal flying apparatuses (apparati?) were more prevalent, whether personal rocket or helicoptor packs or sky-cars. Realistically I know that such things would be accidents waiting to happen, as people have trouble navigating properly in two dimensions now, so adding a third to the equation is just asking for trouble. But it doesn't keep me from wishing that I could just hop through the air to visit the folks instead of driving down. Maybe someday if I'm ever rich, I can invest in an ultralite.
5. You wake up to find your consciousness transferred into a transforming robot. Describe the robot and it's alternate form(s).
First of all, it's a Pretender. Not one of the American comic book absurdities, which involved giant humanoid shells around robots—the toys being taken way too literally—but the Japanese version from Masterforce, where ordinary-looking humans could turn into robots via a sentai-like transformation sequence. That way, I could still appear to be the same person I've always been when I need to (okay, okay, it's cheating I know, but still! :). The robot would be something like the head of Fortress Maximus...a robot that turns into a computer. Perhaps it would have several computer forms...mainframe, desktop, laptop...PDA would be stretching it a little far, though. I'd spend my days sitting hooked up to the Internet, surfing with no human interface difficulties. :) Perhaps it would turn into the head of a bigger Fort-Max style robot—the entire SMSU campus transforming into the body. Hmm, that almost begs for an Undocumented Features story right there.
And as for passing on the meme, here's the rules. I'll try to come up with interview questions for at least the first four or five people who say they want 'em. (It'll be easier if I at least know who you are...but if not, I suppose I can get to know you through your LJ!)
THE RULES:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers. (And drop a link to that entry in response to my question response here, if you don't mind, so that people reading the comments can easily jump to your answers.)
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
