24 entries
I skipped The Sims 3 entirely, and then The Sims 4 hooked me all over again in 2014: a new engine, color customization, the build-and-budget loop I never get tired of, and a running grudge about the basements they took away.
Read entry →The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, a 24-year-old named Miki Endo who kept broadcasting evacuation warnings until the wave reached her, the hard truth about why you cannot just automate a human voice, and how all of it pulled me toward Japan's earthquake-warning world and a piece of software called jQuake.
Read entry →At nineteen I got into an online argument with Apple over a $50 rebate, invented a whole concerned-parent character to win it, and was so proud of the transcript that I posted the entire thing.
Read entry →Senior year: a brand-new tech-school teacher who actually pushed us, a Lego robot competition my friend Zach and I won with pure laziness and ingenuity, the FBLA web contest that handed me a career, A+ tutoring with Diana, and the honest truth that I look back on high school and feel proud.
Read entry →The Sims came back in 2004 with a brand new engine, real aging, and genetics, and it caught me right in the middle of high school. Generations, basements, aliens, and aspirations I could never stop chasing.
Read entry →Junior year is when it all accelerated: half days at a tech school learning to be a software developer, my first job, a permit then a license then a beat-up Corsica, Steam and Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft launching, and a soundtrack that made no sense. With DragonSiblings still running the whole time.
Read entry →At fifteen I posted a 5,800-word techno-thriller to my forum in one sitting. It has island bases, exploding elevators, and a hero who keeps blowing up elevators just to find out if they will.
Read entry →Sophomore year ran on the same rails as freshman year, until DragonSiblings was born that October and became the center of everything. The shared school computer that named my company, Stanley going from band-buddy to best friend, a math teacher who would not give me a single point, and a forum where I built, moderated, argued, and wrote.
Read entry →My first real online world. Making pizzas by typing, locking skills at 20.99, a clothing store named after a restaurant I never ate at, and a strange full circle twenty years later when I got to write code for the open-source revival.
Read entry →Starting high school at Holt: the self-guided tour, the seminar teacher I would keep for four years, block scheduling and the locker I never opened, falling hard for keyboarding class, an English teacher who set me up for life, standing up to a teacher who only saw my brother, and putting my head down for the A+ program.
Read entry →Best Buy's house-brand Pentium 4 desktop was the second computer I ever bought, and the last pre-built one. After this, I built my own.
Read entry →The year a teacher pulled me into the hallway, knelt down, and refused to sugarcoat how badly I was wrecking my own future. Sixth-grade math for the third time, the A+ program, and the moment I decided to turn the whole thing around.
Read entry →Two computers, an ethernet hub, and my friend Mike. Long all-night campaigns, giant walled cities, and the first time I ever wired two machines together to play a game. It happened to be the best strategy game ever made.
Read entry →The year music went digital and middle school stopped feeling new. Retaking sixth-grade math, parting ways with band, a Coca-Cola machine exploit that paid me back in twelve-packs, and finally noticing nobody had taught me how to study.
Read entry →I was a simulation kid before The Sims ever showed up, but the original in 2000 swallowed me whole. A pack-by-pack trip through the game that carried me from sixth grade into high school, and that I have never really put down since.
Read entry →My first taste of playing games with strangers over the internet, back in the dial-up days. It is also where a random username generator handed me the name I would carry for years: Trihedralguy.
Read entry →We did not have money for games, so a free one mattered. The Hasbro Game of Life came on a real CD inside a cereal box, I still have it, and I loved its art enough that I eventually took the whole thing apart to see how it worked.
Read entry →My first year of middle school, the year everyone lost their minds about Y2K. Band instead of gym, a clarinet I picked by default, a friend named Stanley, and a computer lab full of wasted potential.
Read entry →Our family had a Packard Bell, but the eMachines 333cs was the first computer that was truly mine, monitor and all.
Read entry →In fifth grade, Mrs. Rudy's class had us write and illustrate a book about ourselves. Mine is five chapters of family history, a cat named Jupiter, a computer poem, and a closing wish that turned out to be my actual life.
Read entry →Fifth grade at Wentzville West, a quieter year. Two teachers with nearly the same name, Apple II computers in a room with no business having them, and a brand-new iMac I was forbidden to go near.
Read entry →My biggest, most loaded school year. A new town, a forbidden half of the building, a best friend named Mike, and the day I raised my hand, claimed I knew computers, and accidentally erased a game in front of everyone.
Read entry →A CRT glowing on a narrow cabinet at the end of my uncle's hallway, my dad watching, and the first dial-up screech I ever heard. Then the long dial-up childhood that followed: AOL to Prodigy to MSN, four messengers at once, and a local number out in Harvester.
Read entry →A kindergarten inventory my mom filled out in 1993, before I started school. At the bottom, in her handwriting, is a sentence that quietly predicted my whole life.
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