Jay McGavren's Journal

The invasion of sensible thought by video games...

As I passed a pay phone today, my first thought was: “Hmmm, a hard line. I’d better remember that’s there.” (I’ve been playing The Matrix: Path of Neo.)

As I may have mentioned to some of you, I’ve also caught myself considering what Tom Nook would pay for various items while walking through the produce section at the grocery.

Ah, that’s why I’ve been in such a blue mood lately! I forgot to listen to The Campfire Headphase for, like, a whole month! I feel much better now.

Either that, or I had my first productive day in a few weeks. It feels good to be out of programmer’s block.

If, like me, you haven’t played Animal Crossing: Wild World in 4 months (the critters all reminded me exactly how long I’d been gone), you may want to pay your town a brief visit. I found a ton of fish and insects that I’d never seen before. I also found a ton of weeds, but at least there was a four-leaf clover among them. I even found a ton of cockroaches in my house! (Actually, there’s no upside to that.)

Getting distracted by too many e-mails during the day, but don’t want to close the client in case your boss wants something?

Create a rule in Outlook (or a filter in GMail or Thunderbird) that finds e-mails from your boss/wife/friend’s address. Have it forward them to the SMS address for your cell phone (usually number@provider.com). Then just ignore or turn off the new mail indicator for your mail client. You won’t have your workflow interrupted just to read about new specials in the cafeteria, and you can impress your boss by responding immediately to his e-mails at 8 PM on Sunday (from the comfort of home).

The Bhagavad Gita in two lines...

Be cool.

Be nice.

Of course, if you don’t know what “cool” or “nice” are exactly, or why you should be cool and nice, you may want to read the Gita:

Jack Hawley - The Bhagavad Gita: a Walkthrough for Westerners

I heard it is one of the core texts of the Hindu religion, and encapsulates the wisdom of all India over thousands of years, so I picked it up. And as long as you filter out the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo (“Atma”, etc.), it really does seem like a recipe for better living.

But in an effort to drill that wisdom into harder-headed readers, the Gita does repeat itself quite a bit. So if you don’t purchase it, meditate on the above two lines. No, seriously, close your eyes and think really hard about them, preferably once a day. You’ll come to many of the same conclusions the book does.