.Elementa - Project Reality (Escapism, Ends Justifying Means)

I've always wondered why there aren't more games based on hacking.  Not that I condone illegal hacking as a beneficial activity, but rather the use of hacking in a security-based setting.  Hackers are able to find leaks in systems other people would be hard-pressed to even think of, and then help fix said problems, so other, more malicious hackers can't take advantage of the holes.  I made a game system awhile back, when me and some friends were trying to make our own playing card games.  While the card games epically failed, the system concept I came up with stuck with me.  I began making a basic storyline, and over time, it has grown into a large project.  Thought this will probably never come to fruition, and the storyline definitely has flaws, I designed it to confront two problems:

1. Escapism
I wasn't sure what to call this at first, but I recently saw this term used, and realized that's the problem I'd been thinking about the whole time.  Escapism is just what it sounds like: trying to escape from problems or routine in life through entertainment, or by literally escaping.  Nowadays, this is accomplished through games, television, and books.  We are quite good at using escapism as a way to remove ourselves from anything we don't want to approach or confront in our lives.  We instead turn to something that cannot ultimately comfort, and only leaves problems to fester.  The story in Project Reality turns to something even more sinister: what would a fake reality be, one where one wouldn't have to worry about working, eating, or other essentials of living?

2. Ends Justifying the Means
When you want to get something done, how you accomplish your goal does matter.  In fact, often, it matters just as much as the goal itself.  If a pacifist decides to destroy the military to gain world peace, do the ends justify the means? Or is the person really a hypocrite, looking for an outlet for rebellion? If we manage to save someone's life by lying, is our testimony left unstained? Does the Bible ever say we can lie if someone's life is on the line? The ends do not justify the means.  Just because we feel that we will accomplish some greater good does not mean we can do anything to get there.  The second antagonist deals with this in some very strong ways.

These two are the chief problems I confront, though there are also elements of jealousy, sibling rivalry taken to extreme measures, and the ethical quality of hacking present throughout, as well.  Without further adieu, I present the first part of...

Project Reality

The Elementa Network

In the .Elementa world, the very principles of nature itself can be altered through the modern marvel of electronics.  The entire world is beginning to discover the possibilities: Security systems guarded by liquid barriers; military bases surround by shrouds of darkness; air traffic directed along newly-made wind currents…

The ElemenTech Corporation was formed to effect all these changes.  Both inside and out, technology reflects the six elements inherent worldwide.  There are even checks and balances built into the systems, preventing an over-load of any one element to cause chaos to both the internal data and the external surroundings.  The AtomWall security system transforms binary computer data into an elemental fortress, prepared to take on any intruder.  In essence, the more data a system contains, the stronger the wall will be.

Morris Lindstrom – President of the ElemenTech Corporation

The president of the corporation, Morris Lindstrom, was the inventor and mastermind of the project as well.  It was rumored that his younger brother, Kroger Lindstrom, helped with the creation of the system; however, no one had ever seen any proof that he had ever aided the project, aside from a secretive lawsuit soon after the Corporation started.

Morris is known to have excellent business sense.  He ensures the Corporation’s success by paying all his employees a generous salary, while complementing it with a very strict quota.  If you fail to meet the quota, you’re cut from the Corporation, no questions asked.

Morris is at last satisfied with the progress of the AtomWall system, and is now prepared to move on to the next step of the master plan: Project Reality.

Kroger Lindstrom – Engineering Genius,  Inventor of the Elementa network

Morris Lindstrom not only had a good head for business, he also had an incredible sense of back-stabbing politics.  He had worked on the system with his brother, Kroger, who was the genius behind the system.  When the product was nearly complete, Morris went behind Kroger’s back and started the ElemenTech Corporation, stealing all the research and technology at the latest possible moment.  When Kroger discovered what happened, he attempted to shut down the Corporation with a lawsuit; Morris, however, was able to take down the lawsuit by buying out Kroger’s lawyer.  Kroger, furious at being fooled so easily, vanished without a trace to seek his revenge.

Sticks and Stones and Stitches

May you have a happy birthday;
And wherever your head may now lay,
May it be cushioned by spam and jellay!

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Poor Jesse! This morning, he was feeling pretty bad, so he went over to Hall Health.  They told him he had strep throat, and that they'd have to do surgery in his throat to remove fluid from his flooding tonsils.  He was understandably scared; however, after having a few more doctors inspect his throat, they concluded he only had a nasty case of tonsilitis.  So he's in bed now, feeling pretty blech.  Hope he's feeling better soon.

So, there's a birthday boy among the readers, if I understand it correctly.  When I first learned the lockpicking skills at 4 years of age, I tested it on his head with a bunch of Hot Wheels cars.  While those are understandably not the best picks, it certainly opened up his poor little 2-year-old forehead.  He got better, though.

Then there was the red wagon we had in California.  One of us would sit, while the other would pull in circles around the tree in our backyard.  He decided it was his turn, so I began running with the wagon behind.  For the fun of it, I decided to take him through the best part of the ride really fast: the rocky, rooty section underneath the tree swing.  I easily dodged the wooden swing base.  He, however, didn't.  The corner of the swing caught him right on the top of his noggin.  Stitches!

This was also the kid who loved to eat.  He found his way into the kitchen one day, and saw some pudding sitting in the open dishwasher door, which he rapidly consumed.  He had to go to the hospital to have the detergent pumped out of his stomach.

Ever since he learned his Basic Weaponry skill, he's collected various sticks, named them, patched them up, and beautified them in various ways.  He then uses one or two select special ones to beat on various opponents, whether they be trees, people, ghosts, or the latest threat to the peace of the tree fort.

Ethan, here's to another year.  Happy 17th birthday!

It Pours because It Rains

Beef? I am lacking in beef. Fawful is beefless.

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The rain really was flowing today.  A simple 15-minute walk across campus turned into a drench-fest.  Even with my rain jacket on, both I and my bag got soaked.  But it was nothing to worry about; the soggy results of each trek I made always dried off before I went to my next destination.  And it's better raining than having no clouds and freezing.

The rain also kind of fit today's start.  The audition on Tuesday may have gone well, but the results... I got an e-mail this morning from Kaplan, saying they cannot offer me a position.  It could be they just didn't need any more SAT teachers, and needed more for other tests instead; or the audition really wasn't as good as I though.  It's a bummer, especially since I kind of threw all my eggs in one basket, instead of delivering a boatload of résumés before the quarter started.  Now I'll have to print out a bunch of résumés and cover letters, and hit the streets to see what other jobs are available nearby.  A surprising amount of students here don't work, so there'll likely be somewhere that has positions open.  Until then, keep praying! Well, you can keep praying after, too.  But especially for now!

Rockets, Rain, and Relative Chaos

Real numbers commute.  And so do some real people, I hear.

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Today was it.  This was the time to wrap up the Kaplan audition planning.  Former jobs, rockets, resumes, pressure, references, gunpowder... it's all kind of muddled now.  The important thing is, with a little last-minute help from people back home, I got the application together, and had a sort of plan for the audition: "How to launch a rocket".

But first I had to tidy up.  This involved a business casual shirt (PLEASE tell me there's a standard definition for that oxymoron), a damp washcloth, and a trip to the shower.  What made the shower unusual was the haircut session going on.  Someone was giving a free haircut, and there was clippings everywhere on the bathroom floor.  And people kept dropping in to see how it was going.  Kind of eerie.

Then there was the actual process of printing out the cover letter and resume.  I made some editing changes with some advice from the Technical Communication peer review session we had yesterday.  I copied the files over to my thumb drive, and left it sitting while I took that shower.  I came back and took the drive out, and dashed over to the library to print it out.  I opened the resume, printed a couple copies.  Then I went to open the cover letter... and the file was corrupted.

It didn't transfer fully.  For some reason or other, Windows decided to delay the file's write, so when I pulled the drive out, it didn't have time to store it all.  I ended up having to make the resume without the letter, unfortunately.  I'll have to print another one early tomorrow morning for class.  Stinky.

The audition itself went fine, though.  Nothing helps energy-level in a presentation like having a high-energy topic like rockets.

All-in-all, an interesting day.  I'll find out within the next few days what the results were, though.  Here's praying it was worth the time! And what do you know, it looks like the fall rains have started in earnest this time.

The Wheels on the Bus go SCREEECH!

Oh, drat.  I left my coat at the lab.

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I guess this is what they call procrastination.  It has all the same symptoms, and I'm pretty sure it's highly contagious.  I don't want to give it to roomies, but... only time will tell.

The Washington State tranpsortation system is interesting, at the very least.  I daresay it's kind of illogical that Google has more information on the bus routes than the Washington Department of Transportation does.  It also helps more with route planning.  I only had to take one bus down to the ferry terminal on Friday, hopped onto the ferry, and one more bus to my house.  Hooray for homecoming, however temporary.

Then there's the computer troubles.  The hard drive's replaced now, with the tools I had available on Saturday.  The files are all back, but a lot of programs lost data and settings.  So now I have to reset a lot of things from scratch: not easy, especially when you have short-term memory loss like I do.  But it's slowly building its way back up.  Carbonite did an okay job.

Getting back was another issue altogether.  Finding the right bus was no trouble; finding the right stop was.  Bus 66 travels in one big loop, from what I saw when I got on it the first time on Friday.  So when it crossed the bridge, I assumed it would take a couple quick turns and head the other way, where it would drop me off before it crossed again.  But we passed right through 42nd Avenue.  And 43rd.  And 72nd.  And 90th.

I realized too late that the bus did go in a loop; one LONG loop headed north.  It finally dropped me off at a transit station, where I had to call home and figure out how to get back.  Turns out I got on the same bus, headed back... towards the bridge like I thought it was going to.

I made it back to the dorms without being mugged, even though I was an hour later than I thought I was going to be.  But at least I had time enough to work on that cover letter.  Back to the ol' grind, eh?

Men, gods, and the unnaturalness of sin

The Hero will have the power to save the world.  But he will also have the power to destroy it.
We never understood.  He wouldn't simply bear the power of Preservation.  He needed the power of Ruin as well.
The powers were opposites.  As he drew them in, they threatened to annihilate each other.  And yet, because he was of one mind on how to use them, he could keep them separate.  They could touch without destroying each other, if he willed it.  For these two powers had been used to create all things.  If they fought, they destroyed.  If they were used together, they created.
-Mistborn - The Hero of Ages

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The Mistborn trilogy was quite excellent.  Strong character development, a grandiose storyline that all fit in the end, and plenty of action to tie it up.  But Sazed's search still remains one of the most depressingly blinded statements the books make.

Near the end of his study of all three-hundred religions he had in his copperminds, Sazed began to know there was no hope in any of them.  They all contradicted themselves, throwing logic aside, demanding faith in something he couldn't see.  Something he couldn't accept, not when it couldn't answer his questions.  Not when it couldn't tell him where Tindwyl went when she died.

But he realized there was one religion left.  One that had survived for a thousand years, though no Terrisman had ever recovered it: the Terris religion.

Through a long and complex series of circumstances you don't want to know about, he finally finds the one group that still knows his people's long-lost religion.  And he finds that it, like the others, demands faith, instead of giving logical, scientific reasons for its prophecies and teachings.  And looking around him, he saw that's what made followers of the Survivor different from these long-dead religions.

They had faith.  And they had hope through it.

While this is all well and good, I'd have something to add.  Ironically enough, while Christianity does require faith, just as any religion does, it also is able to back itself up logically, scientifically, and through personal testimonies of the saints who have come before us.  Sanderson had it close, I think.  But he's missing a lot of the argument.  Sazed could have placed his hope in any of the other religions... and would have been misled.  Faith and hope aren't the reasons religion exists.  But more on that later.

Now to deal with the second big topic: today's quote.  In the books' mythology, Preservation is the power of... well, preserving.  And Ruin is the... power of ruin.  Pretty straightforward.  A classic concept - order and chaos, age-old rivals.  But in the ending, he notes that all of the world was created using both the power of Preservation and the power of Ruin working together in a bargain, in order to prevent a stalemate, where each would block the other's touch on the world.  This would infer that chaos, and therefore the power of destruction, death, and sin, are a natural part of the world.  And this is what disturbs me most.

I wish I had a book I could look this up in, to get more specific references.  But looking at Genesis 1 will suffice.

The finished creation.  No death.  No decay.  No destruction.  And what did God say?

It was very good.  Not "it's not right, there needs to be a counter-balance", but "it's good as it is".  The whole concept of sin being a natural part of the world was probably dragged in from Taoism's Yin-Yang, or some similar ideal.  And do I even have to note that the fact that the Hero became God is ludicrous? An imperfect man as God would be no God at all.

Aside from that, I must say, excellent story.  Most of his other moral issues were dealt with very well, though sticking very closely to a classic world standpoint.  What I think made the moral conflicts worthwhile was each character having to struggle through whether they were doing the right thing at any given time.  And eventually coming to the right decision, for the most part.

But enough ranting for now.  I need my sleep to kick this stupid cold.

In Sickness.. and I'm too sick to remember the rest.

"Well, if I were said force of doom, then I certainly wouldn't have used my powers to turn the land black. It just lacks flair. Red. Now, that would be an interesting color. Think of the possibilities--if the ash were red, the rivers would run like blood. Black is so monotonous that you can forget about it, but red--you'd always be thinking, 'Why, look at that. That hill is red. That evil force of doom trying to destroy me certainly has style.'"
-Mistborn - Hero of Ages

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So, it's definitely been an interesting time the past few days.

Friday, I got back from classes and started working on the Java homework.  Yes, I had other homework, I could do, but why put off the most fun 'til last? It took me a good couple hours to get the kinks out of the program, but I think it's up to shape now.  That was only the beginning of the fiasco, though.

I put my laptop on 'Stand By' mode while I went to do something else.  I came back to turn it on, and heard something I've heard only once before from my computer.  It was ominous.  If sounds could stab, the laptop should have gone into the acupuncture field.

CLICK.  CLICK.  CLICK.

That was it.  No screen turning on, no familiar happy Windows "HELLO!!!" chime.

As previously mentioned, this has only happened once before.  Turning off the computer didn't help last time, until I waited for a few hours.  It was worse this time.  I waited a couple hours, and tried again.  Nothing.  No blog post that night.

Saturday, I was feeling a liiiittle on the icky side.  I had a bit of head congestion, and felt really chilly.  But our room's windows were open, so that didn't surprise me much.  And the computer still wouldn't turn on.  And I had no way to find Dell Support's phone number without using a library computer.  My little brother and mom came and brought home-made pizza (MMMM!) and Settlers of Catan.  That was an exciting game.  Especially since I won.  But they played well, and we laughed pretty hard the whole time.  And the other people in the cafe lounge were cheering us on! (Don't listen to what they tell you about the Huskies game on the TV; they were celebrating that awesome one-sheep-for-two-brick trade.)

Fortunately, I was able to call back home to get the support number from my other brother, who was sick with a cold.  I called in, and after half-an-hour of reading while placed on hold, someone picked up, and I soon got a verdict.  The hard-drive was faulty, and would need to be replaced.  And that meant having to get data recovery for the faulty one.  I tried turning it on again while he was filling out forms, and wouldn't you know it, the thing turned on just fine.  I'll still have to replace the drive, since it's already done it twice, and there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason behind it.  I really don't feel like losing all my stuff because the drive has a bad head.

Last night, I was definitely feeling feverish, and very congested.  I took some Tylenol, and some Sudafed; the Tylenol seemed to help the fever for awhile; the Sudafed, not so much.  I ended up feeling to yucky to write a post.

And today, I was feeling even ickier.  I laid around until eleven, then demolished an orange mom brought.  The fever seemed to slack off during the afternoon, thought the congestion continued to stick with all day.  I still managed to wrap up homework, and write up this post.  Now you know where I've been the last few days: sick as a dawg.