A few days ago a certain TV Personality came in to get ink. Oddly enough our HP certified research book
had actually given out the wrong cartridge numbers. So we had sent him (And by we I mean me) home with the wrong ones, and on top of them being wrong he had also accidentally put the color cart in the spot for the black cart.
So today I spent twenty minutes correcting our mistake by prying the cartridge out of his AIO 5610.
When I finally got it out, I made sure to test the printer to make sure I hadn't broken the carriage inside.
Thankfully I hadn't, and it worked fine.
We exchanged the inks for the proper ones. While all of this was going on a few customers recognized him, and just HAD to gush which seemed to (Understandably) mildly irritate the guy. But he kept his cool, wasn't ornery, and managed to deal with them without being a huge meanie. Anyway after all of this was finally over with HE TIPPED ME TEN DOLLARS. Pretty swell guy I'd say.
Now I won't say who the actor is on the off chance he stumbles upon this, and decides I'm not that awesome after all.
But I will leave a hint you'll need a magnifier to read.
(*He played the bad guy in Superman III)
I used the money on a Christmas gift for somebody. I contemplated putting "Celebrity Name" next to "From" on the tag.
When I was growing up, we were never a super wealthy family. In fact, we were nowhere near wealthy at all. I suppose we could have fared worse. We never went hungry. We always had a roof over our head. We were blessed with a couple of modern
conveniences here or there. But when the NES came out in 1985 the folks weren't in the best spot for spending dough on lavish consoles. We had a few friends, and relatives who owned one so it was only when visiting them, or going to an arcade with a few dollars were we able to play Super Mario Brothers
But one thing we were fortunate for, was that we had managed to get our first computer around that time. The C-64
The Commodore 64 had come out only a couple of years before, and blew away pretty much anything a console could do at the time. Plus because it was a full blown computer we could do all of the stuff rising to prominence in the decade in terms of educational, or business computing. My Father tracked bills, bought learning software for our homework, and of course we bought games for it. Especially since the crash had pretty much ended the console side of the games industry. But when the Nintendo came out it was huge, and everyone had to have one.
Commodore owners were fortunate to get a lot of ports of games that landed on the NES, SMS, and 7800 as well as the ones made for other computers. But the first party Nintendo games had suddenly stopped coming out for anything decidedly not a Nintendo system.
So imagine our surprise one Christmas Eve, when my Brother had discovered a strange 5.25" Floppy disk with a Super Mario Bros. Title on it. Upon popping it in, and loading it we were greeted with what at the time we didn't realize was a Demoscene intro, and then the following game:
Super Mario Bros! In 16 color glory! But with different maps, and enemies. We didn't care though. It was Mario!
What we didn't learn until many, many years later is that the Public Domain Catalog disk my Father had ordered was actually a hacked version of a game released in Europe.
The Great Giana Sisters was written by Armin Gessert. A game programmer for Rainbow Arts, a now defunct publisher for the European gaming market. Legend has it that Rainbow Arts had approached Nintendo about porting SMB to various computer formats, but Nintendo declined. So with the money already invested in making a platformer Rainbow Arts pressed on. Armin changed the characters to completely original designs. He replaced the famous plumbers with two women. Instead of a mushroom increasing the character size, there was an orb that changed the player from a typical girl into a punk rock girl replete with mohawk. Other power ups replaced the Mario ones.
Eventually Nintendo of Europe caught on, (Likely due to the advertisements for the game stating "The Brothers are history"), and after going to their Japanese headquarters sued Rainbow Arts for Infringing on their Intellectual Property.
The changes RA had made apparently didn't go far enough, and Nintendo won. It really isn't hard to see why since you're still hitting blocks for diamonds (Which replaced coins), jumping on enemies, or firing fireballs.
How did this history lesson end up on a disk in the USA? Well apparently a group of crackers who (If my memory serves me right from the early boot screen) called themselves "ABYSS" changed some sprites into The Mario Bros., wrote an intro, and distributed it through various public domain outlets one of which was the now defunct PD select catalog my Dad had at the time. As far as I'm aware this was the only instance of such a long winded middle finger, as everything in the catalog was pretty much guaranteed to be freeware. By this point the original game had been shelved so it's not like anyone Stateside who had no European friends was ever going to know this history.
All of that said it was an awful lot of fun, and while it wasn't an actual Mario game, it was a very well constructed platformer. It controlled well. It was challenging. It was still different enough from SMB to have it's own feel, and on top of all of that Game music composer Chris Huelsbeck came up with a soundtrack that is fondly remembered to this day.
We finally got our NES in 1989 but I still went back to modded GGS from time to time.
Eventually Armin got the rights to his game code, and started a software house Spellbound
Spellbound even managed to patch things up with Nintendo because if you live in Europe you can now buy Giana Sisters for the Nintendo DS
Sadly it doesn't look like it's coming here to the USA. But if you're up for it there are importers.
Even more sadly Armin Gessert passed away recently. Chris Huelsbeck reflected on him here
If after reading this nostalgia trip you feel inclined to try to check out GGS, but have no interest in overpaying an importer for a DS game, or you don't have the hundreds it would likely cost to buy an original C64 or Amiga disk
There is a fan project who has you covered
Giana's Return is a labor of love. It plays very closely to the original GGS, is inspired by it in every possible way.
It is freeware (As all fan projects are), and you'll be very surprised at what a good game it is.
The levels are all original, the characters are inspired by the original game, but drawn completely differently.
A few noteworthy changes are a lifebar which oddly enough makes the game a little too easy for my tastes, a new scoring system similar to the first SMB game. Jump on enemies in succession without touching the ground and the points eventually become extra lives. They also added some bosses, and a password system.
If you'd like to see what all the fuss about GGS is, and why Computer users of the early days hold it in such high regard, check out this fan project gone horribly correct
Staying in
Written and Copyright (C)2009 Richard Hossan
"Go on out" they said
"You'll feel better" they said
Well I don't feel better in fact, I feel worse
Could have stood to stay in again
I'd feel more comfortable in autonomy
I'd feel relaxed in anonymity
Nursing a bottle of wine in my watchtower
Writing little ditties that tell epic stories
Every chapter true - No embellishments
"Go forth. Explore." they said
"You'll feel useful" they said
Well "Useful to whom?" is the question as an answer
Could have stood to stay in again.
I'd feel more comfortable in autonomy
I'd feel relaxed in anonymity
Nursing a bottle of wine in my watchtower
Writing little ditties that tell epic stories
I'm a character who doesn't belong in this novel
Data
Written and Copyright (C) 2009 Richard Hossan
It's all stored in binary
Zeros, and ones
Ones, and zeroes
Translated into text, and graphics
Movie files
Memories
Stuffed into a file folder
In turn in a cabinet
Over, and over again
On hard disk after hard disk
And on a DVD just in case
I haven't tortured myself enough
It's not a simple matter
Of clicking "Delete"
Of emptying a bin
Of purging a temporary folder
My history can never be cleared
With a tunnel vision browser.
Some guy marries Dating Sim sprites, sound files, on PCB.
Sometimes I think it's best to stop trying anything in the "Meet someone" arena.
There are times where I've given into the loneliness described by this semi comical ditty:
It's actually even beyond the level of addiction really. Even the people pooping into their socks rather than leaving their game, film, or sporting event to run to the restroom are likely saying "I thought I had problems"
And yes those people do exist
Discuss.
Yesterday was a very long day of waiting. I had Jury Duty. I was excused from both cases that I'm sworn to secrecy about so rather about talking about anything interesting, I'll talk about some quick bullet points about the day before running off to almost as boring work.
- There was a TV locked onto WFSB 3. After a terrible morning show, and The Price is Right we had to see all of the CBS Soap line up.
- The morning show promoted a brand of milk called "Troo Moo" I made this guy laugh when I borrowed Linkara's bit and said "Because illiteracy is kewl"
- A bunch of us talked about how all of the Trash TV shows moved from Chicago, Illinois, to Stamford, Connecticut.
- We had an hour for lunch so I had enough time to drive to Target to get my Father's Christmas gift
- For my lunch I ate the breakfast burrito I hadn't had time to eat on the way in in the morning. Yes it was cold.
- CBS has some awful Soap Operas. The acting is wooden, the dialogue is terrible, and it was only a quick cameo from Betty White that kept my eyeballs on the set for more than five minutes.
- The room had a Coke Machine. I purchased 3 Orange Fantas for $1.25 each
- I only had to go through the Metal Detector going in, but not out which struck me as odd.
- I was probably the next to youngest person there. There was a girl probably about 5 years older than me going on about a name change after a recent marriage, and a guy probably in his early 20's who pretty much slept all day.
When I got home I was completely wiped. I helped my Dad reconfigure his DVD player with Component cables, ate, and watched the new Nostalgia Critic then slept from 8pm to around 1am where I dreamed I was attacked by bees.
Then I slept until 2 woke up until 3 slept until 4 woke up until 5 etc.
Now I'm off to work.
I was just realizing my pal Foxzen kind of resembles the Gwen character from Mission Hill
.Oh, and she was voiced by Go-Go's member Jane Wieldin!
Feel free to correct me of course.
Well not only was today chock full of crappy, shitty badness such as getting to sit through a meeting about how my boss has to go a State away to go to a different meeting because my idiot coworkers are too lazy to show people where items are. Then I had the luxury of getting a zillion pallets of shipment (Both sarcasm AND mild exaggeration but still) while having only one other person to close with.
The bright spot in this was that it was slow. This allowed me to get through a large portion of tasks at hand. However this also meant that I couldn't get the extras they wanted me to get with orders because there were too few shoppers. The ones we did get essentially told me to get bent. Politely, and in much nicer terms mind you. But the fact remains I was told to get bent.
After we got everything set to go though I was given a white cardboard box from my Boss. I opened it to see I had received a placard made of glass signifying I've been with the company for several years. Not entirely by choice. The job market out here has been pretty abysmal even before things became worse but suffice it to say I have yet to be fired. Although I suppose if some big wig stumbles upon this, and ascertains my identity which probably won't prove difficult I may be banished.
Anyway where most people may say to themselves "Ah that was nice" upon winning such a trinket, my inner voice saw really a hollow victory. Immediately he began reminding me that if they had really cared they would give me a raise that wasn't terribly patronizing or insulting to my intelligence. That all this award really does is remind me how pathetic, and idiotic I am. It doesn't make me an object of anyone's affection. Not that would happen anyway.
I won't really go on with more examples because it would bore you, or make you say "Then die already".
Or not. Maybe. I don't know.
Honestly I don't know what's worse, that I feel bad when something worthwhile happens, or that the bad feeling brought out a good point in that a raise would have been a much better token of gratitude. And I now feel bad for feeling ungrateful. But I do appreciate the goodwill, that someone in the company thought enough to program in a list of people coming up on a certain number of years, that those folks would be ordered a token of thanks.
I suppose it's better than nothing. There are after all many workplaces that rarely utter a verbal "Thank you for not sucking for once"
I don't really know where I'm going with this other than to ask myself out loud why I can't enjoy something innocuous.
It's good to have a healthy level of skepticism as to avoid easily being duped, or hoodwinked. But sometimes I think I somehow veer into paranoia at inappropriate times.
