richter

High: Barack Obama

So unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the fantastic news: Barack Obama will be our next President! Now, if you know me (and you probably do if you’re bothering to read this), you know that normally I don’t give a flying fuck about politics. I believe that individual votes don’t matter. I still believe this, at least on the Presidential level for sure. But this election was important.

First off, I think it’s about goddamn time we elected a non-white President. This country has an awful history of racism. We’ve made strides and are trying to improve, but we’ve got a long way to go. This is an important milestone. We’ve shown that, while there are ignorant idiots in our country, we aren’t all so thickheaded.

Next, this is the first election in a long time where it wasn’t, “Ok, who sucks the least?” This was totally the case during the last election. Choosing between two evils is not fun, and hard to get excited about. But when you’ve got a clearly charismatic leader with a passion for positive change and a deep message of hope, well then it becomes important. America finally had the opportunity to make a good decision, and they made it. I’m proud of us.

Low: Proposition 8

But you know what? Votes can matter. The smart voter will take the time to education him or herself on the relevant proposed legislation and vote on local elections. Typically these votes matter more because they’re thrown into a smaller pool and they tend to be much tighter than elections where the whole damn country is voting.

Which brings me to proposition 8. This awful piece of legislation is unbelievable. This is actual copy from the proposition:

Eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California…

What the hell? Did we read that right? Eliminate the right??? Since when is America about eliminating rights? We are supposed to guarantee rights, for fuck’s sake! I understand people that think marriage should be kept in the church. But they’re missing the point. Marriage has been a legal affair for a long time now; it’s no longer between your, your spouse, and your God. Telling your neighbor what to do is unacceptable, wrong and unfair. I love California, but I am deeply disappointed in this state for passing some of the worst legislation I’ve ever seen. Disgraceful.

Furthermore, it looks like it just barely passed, by a margin of around 3%. I don’t understand how it’s acceptable for the very slight majority to remove rights from the minority. That’s democracy at its ugliest. America, intelligently, is not a pure democracy. We’re a Federal Republic. Where we use it, we shouldn’t allow democracy to fail us like this.

High: YAP

YAP released last week. That’s very exciting, considering it’s been almost a year since my last Yahoo! release. The only live software that I implemented is the Developer Tool, which is built on symfony and worlds above the last version. The really cool part was watching people get excited at Snap Summit. We fielded lots of questions and our product was well received (which is more than I can say for Profiles; that kind of made us nervous!).

Low: More Layoffs

Well, I made it through one round of layoffs. But not everyone I knew was unaffected. Time for another round, and I’ve only been with the company for about a year and a half. Sheesh…

High: Donkey Kong High Score

I’ve been obsessed with King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters for a while now. I’ve seen it I think four times now since buying it, and I talk about it constantly. It’s so good! Go watch it.

Anyway, I’ve been playing the game for a while (the real version can be emulated using MAME) and I was looking for a way to compete. Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell are insanely good at a much harder game so I didn’t want to compete with them, just amateurs on a smaller level.

So then I found a shitty flash game at Big Money Arcade! Very cool. The game itself is awful. It’s choppy, poorly programmed, and has many bugs. One such bug will take all of your lives with a glitch in the barrels. It’s insanely bad. But, it allowed me to satisfy my craving to compete. The current high score when I first visited was only 73,900. On my first try, I landed 32,800, so I was like, “Dude, it’s in the bag.” My high score ended up at 184,700, which I was very pleased with.

So for the next week or so I was hitting the high score page everyday, waiting for someone to beat me. I wanted to play again! But what’s the point in competing with yourself? Well, finally the other day, a German fellow named domi08 beat my high score with 223,100, which is a respectable distance from my last high score. I was excited! Couldn’t want to get a free couple of hours to win it back.

To win a high score back properly, you have to destroy it! I got 315,200, almost 100k more. Niiiice right?

Low: Donkey Kong High Score

Well, the next damn morning Andrea woke me up to let me know that my high score was already gone. Sheesh! This guy must be more obsessed than I am! The worst part is that he won by a measly 300 points. You call that winning? Sad. When I get it back, it’ll be by a good margin. That’s how you win!

… Anyone else notice the stark contract between important issues and dorky bullshit in this post? Jeez, I’m pathetic.