Starcraft II
Last night I went to sleep at 7:30. Why, you ask, would a 20-something be in bed at that pathetically early hour on a Friday night? I could play it safe and point to the long and exciting/tiring week...
It was Wednesday night, or I should say, Thursday morning. I am in the middle of an odd dream of what it would be like to shave my head. Let me just say, it was not a pretty picture. So as I go to make another pass with the electric razor I am suddenly jolted out of my slumber by a loud, screeching noise. I immediately hurled myself out of bed and lunge at the noise. The phone was ringing. I squinted, trying desperately to cut through the dark and make out the digits on my alarm clock that was now across the room. One o'clock. Now, at one in the morning, you know that any telephone call can only be bad news. No one ever calls to tell you that you've won a million dollars. I wait for the caller ID to display on the phone, hoping to catch it before the next ring so as to avoid waking anyone else up. "Incomplete Data". Figures... There are only a few possibilities. 1) Someone has been hurt or is dead, or 2) Something at work has gone horribly wrong (which is not mutually exclusive from possibility one). I brace myself.
"Hello?"
"Mike? This is Mark from work."
"What's up?"
"Um... I need to speak to Mike."
"It's me... what's going on?"
"You know the server that you just upgraded? It keeps shutting itself down. The local tech has been out twice to restart it, and I've got him headed out there again."
My mind races. What on earth could I have done that caused the machine to shut itself down? Well, two and a half hours later I had moved all critical systems to a remote site, meanwhile the computer has shut itself down yet again! Good enough though. I had put a band-aid on that problem and could go back to sleep. I enjoyed the tepid reprise of sleep, the entire hour before I had to get back up and go to work. In all I got four and half hours of sleep that night.
The next night, intending to make up for the previous night's lack of sleep, I retired early. I am on the verge of sleep, you know, that tricky line where you're not quite awake and not really asleep? My cell phone starts going off pack of fire crackers. I force myself from my stupor and read the incoming messages. "Houston scheduler failure." "You've got to be kidding me!" Not only is this the second night in a row, but this is an error that popped up a year ago to which we never could find the cause. The only permanent solution was to reinstall windows to wipe away whatever mysterious setting caused the problem in the first place. I put a band-aid on it and made the messages stop. "So much for a night to catch up on sleep..." It was now my normal bed time.
Then Friday night I was a mix of tired, bored, and alone. Tired from the previous week of work mayhem, bored because being tired I did not want to really do anything, and alone because everyone was gone for their own Memorial Day Weekend plans. "So blah, it's seven thirty and I'm going to bed."
When I woke up this morning an old friend has left me a single message:
"[20:42] SuX: did u see sc2?"
My heart skips a beat and my fingers type like the wind. Within moments I am greeted with a splash screen announcing that Blizzard has finally begun working on the sequel to the revolutionary and timeless classic Starcraft. I once did a rough calculation of the time I spent playing the previous installment. With part pride and a measure of shame I claim a minimum of over one thousand hours. And now, to my joy and dismay, for the long-awaited sequel, and for the lack of time I have to devote to a new game, I sit in exuberant glee that at last, Starcraft II will soon be a reality.
It was Wednesday night, or I should say, Thursday morning. I am in the middle of an odd dream of what it would be like to shave my head. Let me just say, it was not a pretty picture. So as I go to make another pass with the electric razor I am suddenly jolted out of my slumber by a loud, screeching noise. I immediately hurled myself out of bed and lunge at the noise. The phone was ringing. I squinted, trying desperately to cut through the dark and make out the digits on my alarm clock that was now across the room. One o'clock. Now, at one in the morning, you know that any telephone call can only be bad news. No one ever calls to tell you that you've won a million dollars. I wait for the caller ID to display on the phone, hoping to catch it before the next ring so as to avoid waking anyone else up. "Incomplete Data". Figures... There are only a few possibilities. 1) Someone has been hurt or is dead, or 2) Something at work has gone horribly wrong (which is not mutually exclusive from possibility one). I brace myself.
"Hello?"
"Mike? This is Mark from work."
"What's up?"
"Um... I need to speak to Mike."
"It's me... what's going on?"
"You know the server that you just upgraded? It keeps shutting itself down. The local tech has been out twice to restart it, and I've got him headed out there again."
My mind races. What on earth could I have done that caused the machine to shut itself down? Well, two and a half hours later I had moved all critical systems to a remote site, meanwhile the computer has shut itself down yet again! Good enough though. I had put a band-aid on that problem and could go back to sleep. I enjoyed the tepid reprise of sleep, the entire hour before I had to get back up and go to work. In all I got four and half hours of sleep that night.
The next night, intending to make up for the previous night's lack of sleep, I retired early. I am on the verge of sleep, you know, that tricky line where you're not quite awake and not really asleep? My cell phone starts going off pack of fire crackers. I force myself from my stupor and read the incoming messages. "Houston scheduler failure." "You've got to be kidding me!" Not only is this the second night in a row, but this is an error that popped up a year ago to which we never could find the cause. The only permanent solution was to reinstall windows to wipe away whatever mysterious setting caused the problem in the first place. I put a band-aid on it and made the messages stop. "So much for a night to catch up on sleep..." It was now my normal bed time.
Then Friday night I was a mix of tired, bored, and alone. Tired from the previous week of work mayhem, bored because being tired I did not want to really do anything, and alone because everyone was gone for their own Memorial Day Weekend plans. "So blah, it's seven thirty and I'm going to bed."
When I woke up this morning an old friend has left me a single message:
"[20:42] SuX: did u see sc2?"
My heart skips a beat and my fingers type like the wind. Within moments I am greeted with a splash screen announcing that Blizzard has finally begun working on the sequel to the revolutionary and timeless classic Starcraft. I once did a rough calculation of the time I spent playing the previous installment. With part pride and a measure of shame I claim a minimum of over one thousand hours. And now, to my joy and dismay, for the long-awaited sequel, and for the lack of time I have to devote to a new game, I sit in exuberant glee that at last, Starcraft II will soon be a reality.
posted by Mike at 7:03 AM
1 Comments:
This is quite a story. I'm glad that SCII was able to lift your spirits!
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