Frustrating day with a nice ending.

The first part of my day was exceptionally lonely and boring. The only call I got was from a telemarketer offering to give me free stuff because I participated in a sweepstakes. But then they suddenly started talking about my credit card info and I didn't want to pay, so I hung up on them. It sounded like they already had my info from somewhere else, and I'm worried they're going to charge me anyway. I'll just have to report on it if they do. I seriously thought about closing my bank account and moving it to a different bank, because I want to avoid the service fee I'm paying at my current bank anyway.

I'm also frustrated with a lot of my conservative friends because they've bought into the anti-corporate fearmongering of Democrats who want to regulate the Internet as a Title II utility. It makes me sad to see how stupid and ideologically inconsistent some of them are. It's no different than a lot of the government programs they oppose, but because they might not be able to stream Netflix or pirate movies easily, suddenly they're for government and against the free market? Shameful and foolish, acting against their own long-term interests for a perceived short-term gain. Existing antitrust laws would be sufficient to protect the consumer if properly enforced, without all this extra red tape, and encourage competition on top of it.

I'm sad to report that my Mom has made a terrible mistake shopping for my Wii U games. I unfortunately got angry with her and yelled at her again. I should be grateful she was willing to spend so much on me, but I hate being ripped off and seeing money go to waste. It's because she paid over $200 for $80 worth of games due to shopping at Wal-Mart rather than GameStop, and paid $60 a piece for Wii U games. Worse, she paid $75 for a new copy of Hyrule Warrior, which is more than it costs in the eShop. She casually mentioned how much they cost, and I freaked and told her to cancel the order. She then turned around and ordered the four games from GameStop instead for $80, and I thought we were going to be fine. It turned out that Wal-Mart didn't let her cancel two of the games... and they were the two she was being gouged the most on. Paper Mario: Color Splash, and Hyrule Warriors.

I think part of the reason I was so frustrated is that I've been working so hard to earn an extra $30 on InboxDollars, and the difference between GameStop's price and the price she spent at Wal-Mart on the two games they didn't let her cancel amounted to $30. But now that we're looking at those new-in-box games as an investment, that makes me feel better. I'm going to put them in my little wooden box and keep them until I turn 35. I suspect they'll be worth more than we paid in a few years as Wii U stuff becomes scarce and collectors start going after it.

I stopped to write this blog at just about this point, when suddenly Infamous called me. I was relieved, because everyone including him has been ignoring me this week, and my days seem empty and unmemorable on days when no one talks to me. I was desperate for someone to call me so I could vent about my day, and he didn't disappoint. He's finally gotten a bit more used to me again, and we're talking more casually over streams rather than just talking shop all the time about PowerPoint presentations. I honestly am kind of wondering he's warmed up to me a bit because I gave someone in the chat advice on how to get financial aid that I think they need, and he thinks I support the program as a result. On principle, I don't support it and would not vote for the continuation of the program. But I consider that irrelevant. If someone needs money and there's a government program that's offering them money, then I don't think individuals refusing to take the money on principle is going to return it to the taxpayer's pocket. It will just get wasted on something else. Besides, I'd rather the money go to someone I know than some random person I care nothing about. Maybe it's best if I don't mention that to Infamous.

Anyway, he was playing Breath of the Wild again, and this time he was going through this Death Mountain area with Gorons, that I remember seeing him play through last time a little. This time he got to the dungeon after using up all his Ancient Arrows to kill the sentries. Then he had to backtrack and use the cannons because he got up the mountain without hitting the boss once. But eventually he got into the dungeon and it was really dark inside. While we were in the call, he added someone I don't know well, that I'm going to call Fabian. He was kind of a chatterbox like me, thank goodness. I'm so tired of Skype calls with people where I have to do most of the work keeping the conversation going and I get half-ignored while they do other stuff. He has this weird way of speaking that seems expressive in an exaggerated way. Hard to explain, but he was very easy to talk to.

The call went on for three hours, and it turns out that Fabian understands where I'm coming from on Breath of the Wild, given that I've played so many Assassin's Creed and Elder Scrolls games to the point that I've gotten burned out on the open-world formula. Fabian also told me that he's going to be taking some games he purchased by mistake back to Target, even though he purchased them online. Apparently Target will take returns of items you buy online at any individual store. He told me right before he hung up the call that he has to go and do that in the morning. Oh, and he also added me as a contact. I do seem to slowly be reintegrating into the chat. I haven't heard anything from Insulator about his proposal to make me a moderator. I think maybe Infamous rejected the idea, and he doesn't have the heart to tell me. Could also be why Infamous was feeling bad and wanted to be extra nice to me today. Oh well, doesn't matter. The fact is, I needed someone to be nice to me today. I got that call just when I needed it.

Windows Update seems to have broken a Thinkpad's fingerprint recognition.

I spent a lot of the day talking to my Mom about how her fingerprint recognition is intermittently failing ever since the latest Windows Update, and the software that does it now requires a password every other day in order to keep functioning.

We also talked about how her Outlook e-mail at work kept accidentally marking senders as spam, and eventually we figured out that she was triggering a right-click on accident somehow. She has terrible luck with computers.

She actually made a blackberry cobbler today. I think it's because it's getting cold. She loves to start baking things to warm the house up when it gets cold. Oh, and she also asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I decided to ask her for some Wii U games that I still want rather than Switch games, in order to go a little easier on her wallet. I'm planning to ask for the Switch games I want on my birthday, assuming my Dad gives us more money this year. If not, I'd rather we just save it and avoid any unnecessary expenditures.

Also, I'm still thinking about something Insulator asked me the other day. He talked about making me a moderator in a chat that we both participate in. I'm a little hesitant to take on such a job, but I really don't want the chat to die, and a lot of the other moderators seem to have vanished.

Hot Chocolate and Iced Tea

The main thing I remember about today is that my Mom made several jars of iced tea with a hole for a straw through the lid. At another point, she also made a cup of hot chocolate with actual marshmallows.

I spent most of the day on InboxDollars trying to earn money for watching videos and doing surveys. It's very slow going, and I honestly think after I earn my first $30, I may just call it quits.

Infamous plays BoTW and beats Ganon.

Nothing comes to mind about the day except that I watched Infamous beat Ganon today for his retrospective recording. He was beating him before having beaten the whole game, in order to get the bad ending. He struggled to reflect a Beamos beam back at a creature a few times because he forgot he had a two-handed sword equipped, and I pointed it out to him. I also remember he had trouble beating Fireblight Ganon because he didn't know you had to use bombs to get his shield down, and I didn't remember that fact either. Other than that, though, nothing particularly interesting happened.

A nice day, but weird thoughts about my past.

I am in a pretty good mood today. I got that SD card I was waiting on from Amazon, though I'm not going to be shopping there anymore due to the owner's politics. It's a shame, they were so convenient and I got gift cards for the place all the time.

My Mom made me some hot chocolate with real marshmallows today, and I thought it was pretty good. Infamous showed me a video debunking a rumor about how to beat the running man in Ocarina of Time (though I already knew it was impossible to beat him), and Insulator talked to me about what kind of market share the Switch was going to see. We also speculated on whether we were going to see a Switch Mini or some other kind of hardware refresh. I think that if at all possible, Nintendo should update the Switch to use Pascal instead of Maxwell due to improved battery life.

I've been thinking a lot today about my past. Unfortunately, some of my friend group are people from that old forum, and that means I've ended up talking to them about the weird, controversial rumors that used to go around about me back when I was active. A part of me is really anxious that they'll think less of me now. It's probably just nerves.

My values.

I talk a lot about the things I oppose. Sometimes I worry that it sounds like my whole motivation is contempt. But my primary motivation isn't that. I don't talk a lot about the things I love and care about that motivate me to fight for my values.

Well, I care about my family. And I care about freedom of expression, and a world where people can accomplish anything if they work hard enough. I value innovation, I like seeing new and creative solutions to problems. I want childr...en to grow up in families with two parents that love them, so they can grow up to be healthy and happy. And I want communities to be safe for children, for adults, for everyone.

Being conservative isn't easy, because everyone thinks it's the cruel, selfish, bigoted way to be. Liberals don't understand that the compassionate-sounding ideas they promote just aren't good for people or society in the long-run. They're so focused on the tone that they miss the content. The thing about being conservative is that you always have to tell people what they don't want to hear... that the world isn't perfect, you can't trust everyone, human nature is flawed, and we can't afford to take care of everyone. You have to tell them that the government can't always be trusted, that you have to take responsibility for your actions, and basically that there are limits in life.

It's not what people want to hear. They would rather have a world where everyone is equal, everyone can get along, and there's enough resources for everyone, and where everyone wants the best for everyone else and can be trusted. Those are the kind of dreams the young have always had. It's why children often resent their elders and think they're trying to spoil their fun rather than passing on hard-won knowledge. It's not easy to be the person that tells people how the world really is, and what it takes to actually do good in it. That people are different from each other and have different strengths and weaknesses. That people have different values, and the differences aren't always reconcilable. That you can't necessarily trust everyone.

Every generation has to relearn this lesson from scratch, because they always believe it's a conspiracy by their elders to prevent happiness... they never realize that the habits of past generations, cynical and harsh as they may seem, are there to help people, not to hurt them. It's just that what reality actually offers isn't always as rich or perfect as what you imagined in your dreams. And the ideas that sound compassionate and feel good sometimes bring about the worst results.

Thanksgiving and money.

Today, I really didn't talk to anyone online very much. Cinderelliot did briefly tell me about how his Thanksgiving was going, and that he went up to his grandmother's house and spent a lot of time there. He has yet to decide what game he wants to play next. A woman named Kvinne (not her real name) wished me a happy Thanksgiving even though they don't celebrate it in her country, and I thought that was really nice of her. I shared a lot of Thanksgiving memes on Facebook, too.

So I spent most of the day hanging out with my Mom. I woke up to have green bean casserole, a turkey drumstick with no bone (it fell off the bone because it was so juicy), cranberry sauce, and some stuffing with yellow cornbread and good herbs like rosemary and thyme. It was a very nice Thanksgiving dinner. We called my Grandma to see how she was doing at our Aunt's house, and she asked me if I'd think about coming to the airport to pick her up. That's at 5:00AM, so that's probably not happening. I would be in such a bad mood that it would spoil any fun we might have. Anyway, I asked my Mom for another $100 to put in my bank account today at about the same time I typically do, but she seemed uncomfortable due to some recent expenses we had a few months ago. A new Windows Phone for me and a used Thinkpad to replace her failing computer, to be specific. I'll need to start stretching the money out two or three times as long if my Dad doesn't give her more money, which kind of sucks (though he's likely to do that this Christmas). I should probably start selling some things, because I do have a lot of stuff I don't use. But it makes my Mom sad when I start doing that, because it makes her feel that she can't give me enough to make me happy. I should probably sell some of my old video game stuff on eBay after the holidays are over, but walk it to the post office while she's at work. The right thing to do would be to get a job, but... I'm too scared of all the foreigners around here to go to work or school anymore (that International School they built nearby has made traffic worse and attracted a lot of undesirables to our neighborhood) and I don't even feel safe taking the bus these days. Sigh. I'm a terrible person. Lazy and paranoid. But I'm slowly getting smarter at making money online.

The Black Friday deals on Steam were excellent, though. I got Gothic II, Risen, and Helen's Mysterious Castle for a combined total of less than $10. Also, just now, as I was winding the day up, Insulator linked me to a really good Amazon deal on an 200GB SD card. Normally $80, but on sale for $49. I couldn't quite afford that, so I got the next one down. A 128GB card for $28, and I spent a $5 Amazon gift card that I got via Bing rewards on that. Oh, and I decided to put a little bit of money into shares of Frontier Communication, my ISP. They're a very large ISP, but they lost 86% of their value recently. The stock is cheap right now, and if they recover I could find myself doing well. It's probably a bad idea, but I won't learn anything if I don't make a few mistakes.

Antitrust, Sonic and Star Fox.

So, I spent the majority of the day debating with people about everything from antitrust laws to net neutrality, and I came to the conclusion that I'm on the president's side. I realized that the kind of antitrust action he’s proposing is the only way to maintain a free market.

There really is no option (that I can think of) other than government to deal with large corporations that have monopolies, it’s just a question of whether you want them to regulate the big businesses and price control them to the point that they’re basically a government agency, or have the government fix the free market by breaking up monopolies from time to time. I guess in a way that’s true, which is why people embrace socialism, thinking they might as well let the government do everything if they’re going to let it regulate anything at all… but that’s ultimately throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Keeping government intervention as minimal and indirect as possible, and as uncoercive as possible towards small businesses and individuals could still give us a lot of freedom. That seems like the principle our founders were going for… a government that governs as little as possible, an anti-government that mostly springs into action to prevent concentration of power and slow things down. Checks and balances. Antitrust regulations are just the fourth check. A check by the courts and/or the executive branch on large corporations that are powerful enough to merit government attention. One thing government should never, ever do… though, is bail corporations out like Obama did before. Welfare is bad for both people and corporations, because it removes any kind of check on their fitness and ability to compete. Societies just don’t work well if a lack of productivity is encouraged and there’s no pressure on people to adapt, innovate, or work hard. 

The problem is that some big corporations (not all of them, some are smarter) don’t want this… they have lobbyists, and ironically want more regulation because they know it will increase the cost of doing business, and thereby kill small business and make sure no one can compete with them. It also doesn’t hurt that they hope the government will bail them out because they’re “too big to fail.” In other words, large companies are greedily trading economic freedom for a guaranteed monopoly. That is how the US is being run. Not capitalism, not socialism… basically a modern type of feudalism with more social mobility. In my opinion, a company that’s “too big to fail,” is a company that desperately needs to fail or be split up, otherwise everything stagnates. Like in certain kinds of forests, forest fires are needed to clear out the undergrowth and dead old trees. Preventing the fires from happening would ultimately bad for the forest, even if it seems to save plants and animals in the short term.

The whole first part of the day is a blur other than thinking about that. All I really remember about today is that I spent a large portion of it in a call with Cinderelliot. I remember we played through the final part of Sonic Adventure, and it took a long time because he died a lot and spent a while searching for power-ups he'd missed before in the stages. He commented that the game hadn't aged well due to glitches, and I didn't really disagree.

After that, we talked about getting a surge protector and his plans to go on a senior trip with his friends from High School. I'm a little jealous because I was never really offered anything like that, nor did I have any really close friends. We eventually decided to play Star Fox Zero as a follow up to Sonic Adventure 2. We had a really hard time killing this one boss that looked like a spider, he died to it a couple times. Weirdly, Infamous sent me a strange text talking about insects and how they have something like a brain in every part of their body, making them hard to completely kill and strange to study. I thought it seemed oddly related to the game, and seemed perhaps also symbolic of how liberals and advocates of centralized government see us. As being like insects that are hard to kill because we're so decentralized and hard to understand. 

Tech frustration and helping people with various writing projects.

I'm not really proud of what I did today. This morning, my Mom's phone slipped out of her pocket and hit the ground really hard. I was terrified it would break or get scuffed up, but it seems fine. I got mad and chewed her out. We argued, I said she shouldn't keep it in that stupid pocket, and she told me the phone was too slick. I don't know why I got upset, I was really more frustrated with myself for not insisting on getting her a case and screen protector beforehand (which would have made it less slick and more able to survive a drop intact). Now we'll have to wait a week for case to arrive, while the phone keeps getting banged up and may not even work by the time it gets here.

On top of that, later in the day she complained that the fingerprint scanner on her computer wasn't working, and she couldn't enter her password. It turns out Windows was asking for her PIN (not her password), and she didn't know it. Luckily, I remembered it for her. On top of this, she had used the less reliable method of simply turning the computer on and then scanning the fingerprint once she reached Windows, being met with intermittent failure. Turning the computer on via the fingerprint reader and having the BIOS recognize the fingerprints would have been much more reliable. I've shown her this twice now. I got upset then, too, though I only cursed once and not directly at her, though I got a bit testy with her when she mentioned my mouth, because I was mad and didn't want to hear it. A lot of times that's the cycle... I get mad in general, I say something nasty that's not directed at anyone in particular, she criticizes me for losing my temper, and then I direct my anger at her, and then we get into a stupid fight for a few minutes before we both calm down, hug, and apologize.

I wish I wasn't so mean. I mean, she does so much for me and doesn't expect anything in return. I think I'm a terrible person. I've been totally useless my whole life, no one else loves me except her, and I really don't think anyone else would tolerate me. She is pretty much biologically wired to tolerate me because she's my Mom, but I can't imagine anyone other than a blood relative putting up with this. I'm such a burden on her. Even if I have to be useless and rely on her, why is it that I can't at least be consistently nice to basically the only person in the world that loves me and wants to take care of me? Why do I have to act like a dumb dog that bites the hand that feeds it? I understand intellectually I shouldn't cuss her out and shouldn't lose my temper over meaningless little things, but it feels like it happens before I have a chance to reflect on it. And then I have all the time in the world to feel guilty over it. Sigh. I'm probably going to try and get her something nice for her birthday to sort of make up for it. That's coming up next month.

Anyway, other than that, I had a call with Infamous today. It wasn't very long and mostly I just watched him work on a Zelda-related documentation project while I browsed Facebook and sort of nodded along, because he was only making a rough draft and didn't need much input today. He mentioned wanting to create a group chat with interested parties in order to work on the project, and we reassured one another that it's going to be a very topical chat and not something that's going to become a club or clique, because we both hate that.

I spent the bulk of my day doing today talking to Cinderelliot while he was working on a essay and a history presentation. We got onto various topics, like agreeing that the doctrine of purgatory was ridiculous and the sale of indulgences was corrupt. Dante's Inferno compared to biblical hell was the subject of the essay. We also argued briefly about net neutrality, me arguing against it and him arguing for it. I was complaining about the taxes and regulations it creates, and how it drove two of the best local ISPs in my area to sell off their wireline holdings to no-name companies that don't provide as good of a service because they couldn't make as much of a profit under the net neutrality regulations Obama enacted. He seemed comfortable talking to me, because we're both mostly conservative. I myself am more open-minded about accepting government intervention on antitrust regulations that apply to mergers and monopolies to restore a free market situation, but I do not like net neutrality at all because it's more taxes, price controls, more regulations, and a requirement to provide service to areas where it isn't profitable. It's only a step short of making Internet a nationalized utility.

Also, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on November 21st, 1990. So the console is 27 years old today.

Lots of game streaming.

Almost as soon as I woke up, Infamous called me in the Voice Chat and started streaming Breath of the Wild. It was an interesting level, because he was doing this challenge where Link has all of his equipment taken from him. He died to the Hinox miniboss at first, so after reloading the game, he decided to try throwing a Royal Broadsword onto the island before he set foot on it to see if it would be there after his equipment was taken away. It turns out the plan worked, and he was able to use that sword to defeat the miniboss. Soon after beating the challenge, he began the boring process of scanning several Amiibo into the game and resetting whenever he didn't get the item he wanted.

Soon, my Mom came home with Chick-fil-a. I took the opportunity to leave the call, though I could have just as easily had the food in my room like I usually do during calls. Partly because I was bored, but partly because I wanted to savor the sandwich. Is it any wonder I'm always afraid people are doing such things to me when they say they have to go? I suppose I should reflect on that. Anyway, she told me she got the Polynesian sauce she knows I like. Unfortunately, she didn't get the nuggets that I usually eat it with, and the idea of polluting a perfect Chick-fil-a sandwich with extra sauce (even if it's very good) just didn't appeal to me. So the packets will have to be saved for another time.

My Mom is finally learning to use Facebook, getting online after both of my Grandmas. She posted her first conservative political meme today, and I'm really proud of her. I just hope the rest of my family doesn't try adding her and then I have to deal with all of them remembering I exist and sending me friend requests. I'll have to be really diplomatic about rejecting some of them so I don't have to police my posts further. She likes my sense of humor, and of course my politics. So it could be interesting having her around my online environments.

Over the course of the day, Cinderelliot completed the Dark missions in Sonic Adventure 2. He completed about half of them before dinner, and the other half after dinner. Because of the unusual timing, I remember that my Mom made some kind of soup, along with a ham and tomato sandwich. He had some strange issues with the Wii U going out during play because the power strip he has it plugged into is dying and unreliable. I keep telling him he needs a new one, but he doesn't want to spend the money. I don't think he's making the smartest decision here, but I didn't press the issue. I think that power strip is partly responsible for killing his PlayStation 3 (which he's still very sad about), though I haven't mentioned that to him. Maybe I should. Anyway, after beating the story, we remembered that he told me earlier that he was scared of the Dark ending where it's implied that Eggman takes over the world. That seems so strange to me, because I was sort of excited by it. I liked the idea of being a bad guy and conquering the world instead of just being a hero. That's part of the game's appeal, at least for me.

Some trivia about November 20th came to my attention that is semi-interesting. It's the birthday of Microsoft Windows, and also the sixth anniversary of Skyward Sword's North American release. I should probably play that game again, I rushed through it the first time. If only I didn't have so many games on my backlog. Sigh. So many things I want to play, but I never have time to play any of them. It's easier to just watch other people play games, and it's a little more relaxing. I like the idea of playing games, but in practice I find playing most of them stressful and frustrating to the point that I avoid playing them. And modern games are only getting more challenging with more action on screen and more complex controls that I don't understand readily.

Facebook and Sonic Adventure.

Well, today marks the day I used the nuclear option on my Facebook page. I created a separate list of conservative friends, and will reserve my more serious posts for them alone so I don't get trolled by my liberal friends. I feel like a total hypocrite doing this, given how many times I've complained about other people being cliquish or not letting me be in their little club. I worry that I'm being closed-minded and tribal, but I'm honestly just too exhausted to care anymore. Their arguments are boring and I've heard them a thousand times before.

Anyway, aside from that, my friend Cinderelliot told me that he figured out how to inject a Banjo-Kazooie game into the Wii U's menu. I'm actually somewhat impressed by this, because I know that Banjo-Kazooie isn't available on the eShop normally. I haven't hacked my own Wii U yet, but now that the Switch is out, I think it's worth trying to get as much out of my Wii U as I can. I seriously would like to see more homebrew Wii U software, preferably some applications or games that show the value of the second screen in everyday applications.

We finally started playing through the Dark missions in Sonic Adventure 2 after beating the Hero missions the other night. While we were playing, Infamous messaged me asking if I wanted to watch him record a game, I told him that I was watching Cinderelliot play Sonic Adventure 2, and he said he wanted to join the call. He didn't stay longer than a few minutes, but I ended up telling him that we started having the calls with the games one-on-one because people in the voice chat complained about the game music being too loud. He seemed surprised.

I rounded out the day with a conversation with Insulator about how Nintendo seems to be spreading releases throughout the year now, rather than focusing them all on November in order to take advantage of the Christmas rush. We agreed that it was a good strategy, and makes the rest of the year less boring. November used to be so chaotic that a lot of good games got lost in the shuffle, with only the major titles standing out among the crowd.

More Wii U antics and Amazon shopping.

As it turns out, my friend Cinderelliot (not his real name) managed to get his punishment rescinded by doing a lot of housework and cleaning, and trying to be really contrite and repentant. He managed to get the laptop back, so he didn't need the Wii U method after all.

However, since we started thinking about things we could do with the Wii U, we spent a lot of time today permanently softmodding his Wii U so that he could launch homebrew on it outside of the vWii jail. The exploits for his version of the firmware are a pain to use, randomly failing due to Nintendo patching out the ability to launch homebrew via the Internet Browser. He did eventually get it working, though. So now if this ever happens again, he can just use a text editor directly on the Wii U. That could definitely come in handy.

Also, my Mom reminded me of that fact that I told her yesterday that she needed a protective phone case because she's kind of clumsy and managed to make a small scratch in a screen made out of Gorilla Glass by dropping it on a hard floor. It's not severe enough to cause problems, but it's clear she needs extra protection given that she's keeping it in a sweater pocket where it's prone to fall out. I told her to put it in her front jean pocket, but she wants to wear jeans that are so tight she can barely even use that pocket. So I went to Amazon and found the Amzer case for her Lumia 920 we debated buying for her before, but which we dismissed due to thinking the phone looked strong enough without any protection. I also made sure to get her an ArmorSuit MilitaryShield screen protector to go with it.

As a nice bonus, I was about to remove a couple of Styx CDs that I had in my cart, but she told me to go ahead and buy them on her American Express card along with the stuff for her phone. She actually had about $25 worth of rewards points available, so they were essentially free. So I'll be getting a couple of CDs, while she'll be getting protection for her phone. I hope she doesn't drop it again in the meantime, but with a Lumia 920, finding a protective case locally would be almost impossible.

I wrapped up the day chatting with another friend of mine named Insulator briefly about how annoying people who set their profiles to private on a certain forum community we're both members of are. We agreed that it makes them seem really petty and cliquish, and/or paranoid, and praised Infamous (the admin of our chat) for giving people a place where anyone is welcome as long as they behave. A place that people can always come back to.

My friends suffer for want of better technology.

I am always amazed at the kind of low-end or unusually broken technology a lot of my friends are forced so subsist on. It makes me want to buy them stuff because it's so ridiculous sometimes. But a situation came to mind tonight that I want to talk about.

There's this 17-year-old friend of mine who made the mistake of staying up past his bed time, and his mother caught him. His punishment was having the laptop taken away and his bed time moved to 9:00pm. This sounds reasonable at first, until you realize that he had two school projects on the laptop, and she doesn't care that the projects are due by Monday. He doesn't have access to another computer at home, and he would have to write three times slower on a smartphone starting from scratch (he doesn't have a Bluetooth keyboard so it would take forever). On top of all this, his writing hand is injured such that if he tried to write on pencil and paper, it would hurt him.

The solutions I've come up with involve using a borrowed USB keyboard with his Wii U. Seriously. I worked out a way for him to use a cloud-based text editing website called Collabedit which actually works on the Wii U's Internet Browser. I also found that Gmail works, but only if he specifically enables basic HTML view instead of standard view because the latter uses too much RAM. Google Docs would obviously be out of the question. One of these two solutions should yield a result that will allow him to finish up the body of the document at home, typing on the Wii U, and then download the resulting document at school Monday morning to add in all the formatting and headers that can't be used with a basic text editor.

They have this weird rule that anything his parents paid for can be taken from him as a punishment, but not anything he paid for himself. So if I were to send or buy him a computer, in theory, they wouldn't take it from him because it's "his." I'm seriously tempted to buy him a Raspberry Pi or a Bluetooth keyboard at this point.

If I had a lot of extra money to spare, I have a feeling I'd spend a lot of buying technical gadgets and games for my friends.

Entertainingly, I had trouble turning on the monitor the Wii U is attached to in the process of figuring this out. I had trouble finding the power button because it's not on the front, and then I couldn't get it to work. My Mom had to be the one to figure out that I had the monitor unplugged for some reason. Kind of embarrassing, like an old tech support joke. But that just shows it can happen to anyone. Sometimes you don't think of the obvious.