Initial Thoughts on Ready Player One

I'm only about 50 pages (4 chapters) in to Ready Player One, but I already have lots of thoughts about it.

I'm mostly enjoying it so far. The introduction and first chapter completely hooked me. I'm excited to see where this goes and how it plays out. The premise is lots of fun. The world is richly detailed. It's an apocalyptic future I can really see happening.

But the writing is clunky. Once the second chapter hits the plot basically stops so Cline can give the reader an extended info dump about this world he's created. Rather than revealing details subtly through action and dialogue, he just lays it all out. More than once I wanted to reach through the pages to remind him that the joke isn't funny if you have to explain it.

I liked the detail that Wade Watts' dad named him that because alliterative names reminded him of superhero alter egos. It was a great way to round out a character we never meet, breathe some life into him. And I thought Wade's avatar handle, Parzival, was clever. But then Cline spent a page explaining Percival's part in the Grail Quest and I felt my eyes glazing over. A well-read reader will get the reference. An intelligent reader with a spark of curiosity will look it up. Someone who doesn't care simply won't care. The author doesn't need to spoon-feed his readers like this.

Maybe it's just because I'm used to authors who expect a bit more from their readers. I just finished Dune which is a rich and subtle book. I'm nearly finished with my third or fourth read-through of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and I'm still catching new references. I like authors who drop these things in their books as easter eggs for their readers. It makes reading more fun.

But Cline has to point out and explain all of his references. Even though one of the characters actually says "I mean, did you ever hear of Wikipedia? It's free", he doesn't trust the reader to get the hint. And I can't be the only person who now reads books with my phone close at hand so I can Google words I don't understand or references that sound half familiar.

Of course, all of this sort of makes sense with the narrator he's created. Wade is very much an 18 year old boy, with the vocabulary and ego to match. So maybe this can be written off as character building rather than world-building. But even then, he shouldn't have to break down acronyms like XPs and MMOs. Every character in the book should know what these are, given the setting. And any reader who doesn't know probably has no business reading a book about a video game that has more or less taken over the world.

I also don't need to be told how to pronounce Art3mis; that requires only the most passing knowledge of leetspeak. You don't even need to know what it's called to work out that the 3 is standing in for the letter e. And  the pronunciation of Aech ought to have been clear from Wade's penchant for calling the guy names like Harry, Henry, and Humperdinck.

This is getting ranty. I do like the book. I'm just frustrated by its lack of subtlety. But then certain passages make up for it. The argument Wade and Aech get in to about Star Wars and whether or not Ladyhawke is a worthwhile movie was a lot of fun to read. Even though I hadn't heard of Ladyhawke, I was able to figure out what I needed to know from context. I just wish Cline trusted the reader a little more to figure these things out for themself.

Counting Cards

We played a bunch of Pinochle while my dad and brother were in town last week. I've been playing this game with my family since I was about seven years old. At least, that's when I started sitting on my dad's or uncle's or grandmother's lap and "helping" them play. They taught me the rules and strategy and it wasn't long before I was playing on my own, and even winning occasionally against the adults.

At one point last week, my dad muttered to himself "I think that's all the trump" which got me thinking about playing cards. Part of the strategy I was taught with Pinochle was the importance of counting cards. You need to know how much trump is still out there and who probably has it. It's also good to know who has aces left, if there are any, along with which suits people are short in. If I play a 10 of clubs, I should know either that it will go all the way around or that my partner will trump it.

When I started playing more games with Kevin, our friends from college, and his high school friends, there was always this same assumption that people were counting cards. In Settlers of Catan it's more beneficial to steal cards from people who have what you want. And you know what people have by paying attention to what they draw. In Dominion, your strategy has to rely, in part, on what other people are drawing. If someone is grabbing all the offensive cards, you need to pick up some defensive cards and maybe grab a few of the offensive ones to prevent them from getting all of them. You should have a decent sense of not just the proportions of your own deck but those of your opponents as well.

I guess the point I'm making is that counting cards is always sort of assumed. Generally I lose a card game because I haven't been paying close enough attention to this or because I've miscounted. If I'm focused, I stand a much better chance of winning, because I know how certain plays are likely to go. Occasionally I get lucky and someone else hasn't been paying close enough attention, allowing me to sweep in with a surprise.

So it was confusing to me when I started playing games with some of my coworkers. This was part of project in which we were trying to develop a training type game (and perhaps I shouldn't expect too much from grunts). When I mentioned keeping track of these probabilities, they mostly wrote it off as impossible. Something only a genius would do. Who can keep all those numbers in their head?

It surprised me to learn that not everyone grows up counting cards. The probabilities associated with a deck of cards are so deeply ingrained in my head that it barely even feels like math any more.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this. I realize I'm probably working with a biased sample, but did you grow up counting cards? Do you consider it strategy or cheating (obviously casinos have opinions about this)? Do you think it's a mark of higher intelligence to keep track of probabilities? Or is it something anyone can learn to do?

Power Outage

On Friday night a massive thunderstorm came through DC. The weather report had indicated a possibility of thunderstorms, but what we got went beyond that. Winds in excess of 70 miles per hour. Near continuous lightning (most of it heat lightning, but it was still a pretty cool show). And then the power flickered and went out.

When I woke up the next morning we still didn't have power. This meant, among other things, that I couldn't make myself tea and I couldn't take a hot shower. The morning took a lot longer than usual. Kevin destroyed me in two games of Settlers of Catan before he decided to head out to Charlestown and get out of the heat.

I psyched myself for a cold shower then went to the gym, which at least had air conditioning. I was also able to charge my phone and get a hot shower. Feeling much better about life, I decided to go see Magic Mike. A couple of hours in a dark, cold movie theater would be the perfect way to escape the mid-afternoon heat.

There was a 2:25 showing. Since it was about 12:30 at this point, I figured I'd have time to get something to eat before the movie started. It took me a bit longer than normal to get to the movie theater, but it wasn't too bad. Most of the traffic I encountered was due to stop lights having been turned into four-way stops thanks to power outages that seemed to have struck at random.

I made it to the mall around 1:00 and quickly discovered that I was not the only person who had this idea. I picked a garage and began looking for a parking space. An hour later I still hadn't found one. It seemed that every time someone got in their car and left, it was the car right in front of me who managed to get the spot. By 2:00, the garage was more crowded than when I began and I decided to give up.

It took me until 2:30 to get out of the garage.

I think Hell, if it exists, may involve spending eternity searching for a parking space that doesn't exist. Without any music, which I at least still had. There was a lot of car dancing while I tried to stay calm in the endless gridlock.

When I got home our power was back on. We were really lucky; there are still a ton of people in the area without power (including Kevin's mom, who stayed with us last night).

I think I learned my lesson, though. Next time there's a power outage, just stay home. Or at the very least, don't go anywhere with a parking garage.

Alphabet Project: Exam Day

I flip through the pages of my midterm, checking the answers one more time. I'm mad that I don't have a clue on the bonus question, but excited to be at a school where the professors are nerdy enough to ask the students to name all four members of teen girl squad for extra credit. It feels cool, in a completely uncool way. It makes me feel like I fit in, completely, finally.

I finish double-checking. Chemistry isn't my strongest subject and it would be awful to fail my very first college exam.  I think I got everything right though. Or right enough. Even with that awful song playing through my mind

I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, each and every day

The sophomores were blasting it on repeat over every speaker on campus last night

I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, in every single way

 Occasionally they interjected it with a loop of slightly more useful songs set to Beatles tunes.

nrt, nrt, nrt, nrt.  The pressure times the volume, nrt.

I'll never be able to listen to Let It Be again without hearing the revised lyrics. I'll also never forget the ideal gas law. I guess that's a win.

I walk to the front of the room and add my paper to the stack of completed tests. Then I turn and leave the lecture hall.

Outside, I take a deep breath and enjoy the Southern California sunshine for a moment before beginning the trek back to my dorm. I'd been hearing about this exam, the First Frosh Chem Test, since I interviewed as a prospective student. It wasn't nearly as bad as everyone had led me to believe.

I join the flock of other freshmen who have completed the exam heading back to our dorms. Everyone's chatting about plans for the rest of the day. No one has another class until the afternoon, and with the pressure of the exam gone it seems like we have all the time in the world to relax.

Approaching the residential end of campus I notice that it's a lot louder than normal. Normally the only people outside this early are either on their way to or from class. But most of the upperclassmen are outside. Running back and forth with water guns and hoses.

A water balloon splashes on the sidewalk next to me, followed quickly by another. Some of the frosh are trying to dodge out of the way, others are running to see what the excitement is all about.

The dorms are absolute chaos. A pyramid of dressers, drawers, and bookshelves is displayed in the courtyard. It seems to be as tall as the dorm itself. An entire room has been recreated in the courtyard as well. A couple of cages house freshmen who have been soaked and are now enjoying beers while upperclassmen occasionally hose them down again.

Another dorm has stacked 50 or more mattresses into a pile near the balcony. Students are taking turns jumping from the second story onto it.

A clothesline has been strung up diagonally across the courtyard with all sorts of underwear on display: boxers, briefs, panties, and bras.

There's a full-fledged water balloon fight happening, though the sophomores seem to control nearly all of the ammunition. Frosh are stealing what they can, but are usually promptly punished for their cunning with sprays of water.

I continue on to my dorm, on the far end of campus. I want to put my calculator away before joining in the fun. At the entrance to my dorm I encounter a hastily constructed labyrinth of fences. I have to go through it to reach my room, and there are sophomores stationed all around to pour buckets of water on me, drop water balloons, or spray me with a water gun.

I hold up my calculator in defense. One of them points to the alternate route that's been set up if I don't want to get wet, but I opt to simply hand her my calculator instead. They pass it along while I make my way through the labyrinth. At the other end, I feel like I've been dunked in a pool. Happily my calculator remains dry and functional.

My roommate has already been back to the room. It seems that she had to deal with a hundred Dixie cups stapled together and filled with water. I'm glad she got here first and dismantled them. I throw my stuff on the bed and dash back to the water fight and pile of mattresses. A campus-wide party is the perfect way to blow off steam after my first college exam.

I Hate Mornings

One mistake can completely throw me off.

It takes me a long time to wake up. I get out of bed an hour before I actually have to leave the house so that I can be somewhat coherent. Even then my brain lags a bit behind the rest of me.

This lack of cognitive function is the main reason I value my morning routine so highly. When I do the exact same thing every day, I know that everything gets done. I don't end up leaving the house without a shirt or forgetting to comb my hair when I stick to my routine. Changing my routine takes a while, and I'm still adjusting to the fact that we have a dog now.

This morning was mostly fine. I left the house and locked the door and walked over to the metro. I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, but I tried to ignore it. Whatever I'd forgotten to do could probably wait until I get home. (There's a reason I feed the cat at night instead of in the morning. I've messed that one up a few times.) I said good morning to the man who hands out newspapers and got on the train.

In the time it took me to travel two stops, I realized that I shouldn't have locked the door. Kevin had rushed out with a hasty "good-bye" just before me. But he wasn't headed to work; he was walking the dog. He almost never takes his keys when walking the dog meaning that I had probably locked him out of the house. When I leave the house in the morning, I typically lock the door, remember that Kevin is walking the dog, and unlock the door. Today it took me a lot longer than normal to get to that second step.

I tried to call, but there was no answer on his phone. Convinced that he'd also left his phone in the house and remembering that he had an important client meeting, I hopped off the train and grabbed a cab. The cab would save me the time spent walking from the metro back to my house.

I expected that I'd arrive to Kevin and the dog sitting on our front step trying to figure out what to do. Instead the stoop was empty, and his car was gone. Having been locked out of the house the day before, he had actually taken his keys with him while walking the dog. Crisis averted non-existent. I ended up getting to work about half an hour late.

It doesn't seem quite as bad now that I've calmed down and realized that nothing was terribly messed up. Work didn't really care that I was late (luckily I didn't have any early meetings), and I'm out the cost of the cab fare which isn't the end of the world. But I'm still mad at myself for my complete inability to think clearly in the mornings.

Hello, Abs

Back in high school, I actually had decent abs. This was mostly due to a slightly insane ab routine I had to do twice a week in ballet class. The teacher would put on The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music. If you haven't heard it, it's an incredibly fast song. Then we'd have to do crunches for the entirety of it, one on every beat. My friend and I calculated this once and it came out to about 300 crunches in less than 5 minutes. I'm not sure how I ever survived that.

Fast forward to today when I'm having a hard time doing any crunches. I have very few muscles in my lower back. This means it's hard to keep my back flat on the floor when I'm doing ab work. When my back arches up, I end up using my back muscles instead of my ab muscles to sit up. This results in pain - and not the good kind.

I do have exercises to strengthen my back that I've been doing, and they seem to be working. So over the weekend I decided to give my old crunch routine a go. Not the whole thing, don't worry. The routine itself was one I'd been doing for years that my ballet master simply sped up and made us repeat a few more times. It consists of eight crunches each in six different positions: both feet flat on floor, right leg straight up in air, left leg straight up in air, both legs straight up, legs straddled, legs bent at knee with lower legs parallel to floor. I decided to just go through it once to see how I felt.

The good news is that I survived, though I had to cut down to a partial routine for the next couple of days because my abs were absolutely killing me.

The better news is that a few days later, my lower back exercises finally seemed to kick in in a big way. Either that or my abs finally strengthened enough that 10 crunches no longer leave them fatigued. Either way, the last time I went to the gym, I was able to do my entire ab routine without using half of my focus to keep my back flat. This is definitely progress.

Now that I can actually work on my abs without injuring myself, I'm looking forward to getting back to a flat stomach. Assuming I can stay motivated.

Alphabet Project: Know-It-All

 Know It All

All freshmen are required to take Special Relativity during their first semester at Mudd. It's taught pass/fail which takes some of the pressure off. And really, the math is pretty simple. Just multiply all your standard mechanics equations by gamma and you're good to go. The difficulty lies in the concepts.  Time slows down and space stretches out. The only constant is the speed of light and it is always constant.  You cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Even if two rhinos are charging at each other, both traveling 300,000,000 meters per second, they will approach each other at 300,000,000 meters per second. The math works out, but it takes a while to wrap your brain around.

Worse, these new concepts lead to all sorts of ideas that seem to contradict themselves. Half of our time is devoted to unraveling these paradoxes and trying to make some sense out of them.

Professor Emeritus technically retired last year.  But he knows this subject so well that he decided to continue teaching it. He guides us gently through the many logical conundrums we encounter.

One day, the entire freshman class is gathered in the lecture hall while Professor Emeritus explains a particularly tricky paradox. As he finishes showing us how the math manages to remain consistent no matter which reference frame you're in, the hand of a student in the front row shoots up.

The nasally voice begins, "Well, have you considered...?" Clearly this kid thinks Special Relativity is as real as Hogwarts. He is also under the impression that he's the smartest person in the room. It was probably true in high school; most of the students here were the top of their high school classes. A few have yet to realize that this is no longer the case.

When the student finishes poking holes in the paradox and disproving all of relativity, he sits back haughtily. His profile belies his smugness, and I just know there's a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He's sure he has stumped the professor. For an instant, the class is silent, wondering what will happen.

Then Professor Emeritus throws his hands up in the air. The chalk he was holding goes flying. "Oh my god," he deadpans, "I hadn't thought of that. My career is over!"

All of the tension from a moment earlier is released as laughter. Professor Emeritus proceeds to explain, quite kindly, why the know-it-all is completely wrong. Meanwhile the know-it-all has been reminded that we're here to learn, not show off.