Yakima hits the internet meme bigtime.

New Year's Windfall

Over the course of the holiday I was moving some stuff around and found a very dusty five dollar bill crumpled up behind my monitor. Then, today, when I blew the dust off of it to take down to the store for some delicious snacks, I discovered a ten dollar bill hidden inside the crumpled up five. So, free money! It may not be a sound investment strategy, but I seem to get a lot of pleasure out of losing track of money and then rediscovering it months or years later; for instance, in the pocket of a coat that's been put away during the warmer months. It's like a surprise pay day.

I learned my lesson about resolutions last year, when I did not manage even to follow up on the one about reading National Book Award winners. How hard is it to read books? So this year my sole resolution is to lower my standards.

I've been playing a lot of Halo lately, now that I have a PC that can run it. (A good example of lowered standards, sort of, maybe, but it is the best computer I have ever owned and a friend gave it to me for nothing, much like, weirdly, the jeans I'm wearing at the moment. I didn't really expect a hand-me-down renaissance in my mid-twenties, but here we are, and I can't complain.) While fleeing desperately from the Flood, there's that moment where you come across some Covenant soldiers fighting for their own lives. I suppose there are a few of those moments, but what stood out in this one was that one of them survived, which they don't usually do. It promptly started to take pot-shots at me, which somehow doesn't seem quite right. So, here's my game design criticism for the day: I avoiding shooting at the guy for awhile. What if he/she/it had done the same? For that matter, what if we reached some kind of temporary truce while trying to escape? I mean, I doubt it would have survived for long, and perhaps enemies united by a greater threat is a played out theme, but it would be pretty cool if the option was there, based on the player's behavior.