Bill Olander.. William R. Olander.. passed away March 18th, 1989. He died of complications resulting from AIDS. He was by all accounts an amazing man. I've linked to NY Time's obit below.

I've been vaguely aware of this particular Bill Olander who is not myself for several years. Its one of those things you find out when you google yourself to see what people are saying about you on the internet. Today someone came looking for this man on my site for the first time that I'm aware. I thought it was worth while to talk about someone who I would be honored to be mistaken for.

Like most great epiphanies, this one came to me in the shower. I was thinking to myself about everything I have to do from my To Do list and then my mind wandered over the concept of To Do lists and what mine looks like. It occurred to me that I have structured most of my existence around a series of To Do lists that are always adding items and I am in the never ending process of removing items from those lists aiming for the mythical 0% left to do. Hypothetically when I hit zero then my life will be complete.

Because I'm a bit of a geek (a lot of a geek?) I needed to make sure that my DVR was set up correctly to get the shows I wanted to watch this season. The DVR doesn't allow for the recording of more than two shows at a time so some shows need to be sacrified. Maybe this will change when the Comcast/Tivo deal becomes available in my area. Here's the little chart I put together.

Back in 5th grade, I got it into my head that I wanted to buy myself a Nintendo. My parents made me a deal where they would match the money I made mowing lawns if rather than an NES, I bought a computer. The Christmas after my big purchase I received King's Quest III as my first computer game. I later went back to the first two King's Quest games but I didn't go much further back than that.

That's not to say I was completely unaware of prior games. I have a vague memory of playing Zork (Not to be confused with Jean Batiste Emmanuel Zorg) on a friend's Commodor 64 computer but it wasn't one of those moments that was seared into my memory banks. Even worse was the 'Science Fair' where I stayed up late several nights trying to build one of these things only to half-ass the presentation with a 'Find the Bugs' sign. Not my most shining moment and best forgotten. Even so, I found myself strangely elated when I discovered Inform 7 and Interactive Fiction in general.

For those of you who don't remember or just didn't exist at the time... there was a time when computers didn't have super fancy graphics and weren't connected to each other. The games created for these computers were text based where in you walked your character through the world by typing 'Go North' and 'Open Door'. They could be frustrating when trying to find just the right phrasing to do what you wanted to do. Though I haven't played with it yet, Inform seems designed to mitigate this by adding in some fuzzy logic to the parsing.

By the late 80s, Text Adventure Games had gone their way only to move their way onto the internet in the form of MUDs where you would play these games with other players. As with so many things that have become outdated (remind me to make a post about the retro-gaming movement) the business of Text Adventure Games became the hobby of Interactive Fiction. In the hands of 'the people' creativity flourished leading the way for experimental works that were as much art as they were 'games'. Interactive Fiction will never be big business again but it is amazing to see the the evolution of the medium.

Yet another little piece of awesome that I was previously unaware of.

I was in the comic book store today and noticed cover of Wizard Magazine #210. It has a picture of President Obama in Superman-esque garb drawn by Alex Ross with the heading "A comic fan storms the White House". Looking at that cover brought home the sense of empowerment that goes with the election of the new president. Certainly not as important if I were a person of color, but just as Clinton's white house saw my parent's generation move into power, Obama is my generation and he serves as a symbol of all that comes with that.

It has been a couple of days now since the election, giving me a chance to collect my thoughts on the past election. First, to Obama, congratulations on winning the heart of the country. I myself voted for him with the understanding that he has promised a lot and I don't believe that he is going to accomplish half of what he says. That said, if he manages to accomplish half of what he says then I'll be happy.

As for McCain, that's a longer story.

Each of the Presidential Canidates has a Proposed Tax Bill.. basically an "If I was President, this is how I would change taxes." document. The chart below shows what each of those bills would do to your current tax payment under the plan. You'll note that if you're making $3 million or more in a year, the amount of taxes you'll pay will be going up significantly if Obama gets his way. I can't image this makes him very popular.