Eventually Clever

Two weeks ago, our landlords returned from vacation to discover that their bedroom had been infested with bedbugs. It had probably been infested for a long time, but they never reacted to the bedbug bites (which happens, from time to time).

So, they had the Orkin guy come over, spray and bug bomb the place, and they have since spent the last two weeks washing every scrap of fabric they own. Oh, and they were told not to use their bedroom for 21 days while any remaining eggs hatched and promptly died.

The one consolation, they told us, was that the bugs seemed to be contained to their bedroom.

Yesterday morning, Dina woke up with bites on her arm and chest. I was clear, being the less-delicious spouse. While she showered, I flipped over the mattress and box spring and found one of the little bastards - I whipped out a plastic bag and a pair of tweezers and did my best CSI imitation.

I was hoping against hope that

Then I phoned Orkin, and was told by the dispatcher that the exterminator was really busy this week, but he’d phone back to make an appointment. I took the kids out to the park instead of the Eco-Museum, as planned, and Dina waited for the call. By noon, the call didn’t come, so I grabbed the phone book and started calling other places who might want our money.

I found an exterminator right away, and he showed up at 2:00. The first thing he did was confirm the infestation, adn then set to work getting his spray gear ready.

I bundled the kids and cats together and herded them downstairs to the landlord’s apartment. I had to keep them out of the apartment for four hours while the spray dried into a harmless (to us) powder. I was reassured that we wouldn’t have to move out of the apartment or any of the bedrooms for 21 days. Phew!

An hour later, the exterminator knocked on the door and told us the good news - he had only found 3 adult male bedbugs - no females, eggs or larvae. Everything was sprayed, bedsheets were sprayed and bagged, and we just had to wait out the four hours.

So, we watched TV downstairs, and then went out for dinner - which the kids enjoyed, but were a little too tired to enjoy quietly - and then went home. From that point, the washing machine and dryer didn’t stop while we got the beds made. Our landlord brought up a pair of plastic mattress bags to cover the mattress and boxspring, keeping future visitors outside, where they belonged! Dina washed all of the toys that were on the floor, and I started dusting the furniture.

The only thing we have to do is leave the bug powder along the edges of the walls for three weeks. Bedbugs love hiding in those places.

All things considered, we got off quite lightly, but I’m disappointed that we’ve lost a day of our vacation…and that the remaining days will be too filled with laundry to be truly relaxing. Ugh!

Now that the Summer Olympics are over, here’s the Open Question for August:

“What are your favourite summer sports? Do you play softball with the company, volleyball at the beach, or chase around the kids on a bicycle? Are the sports you play now different from the sports you played as a kid?”

Leave your answers or links in the comments below. I’ll post my answers tomorrow.

The summer season is winding down, and my anticipation for the upcoming TV season is rising.

Basically, it’s last year all over again, as I want to hop on board the shows that were so rudely interrupted by the writer’s strike: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Chuck, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Amazing Race, Battlestar Galactica and, since it was a strong finisher, The Border.

I can’t think of a single new series, other than Fringe, and that leaves me cold. I’ll skip it.

The announced midseason replacements look interesting. Dollhouse is worth a look on the strength of Joss Whedon’s reputation alone, but the highlight is the return of Cupid! That’s right, Rob Thomas’ first show, the cult classic starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall, will return to the airwaves with a new cast. Sarah Paulson, one of the highlights of Studio 60, will play the psychiatrist…should be fun!

…since I learned that Quantum Cards closed its doors, and I’m still bummed. I drive past the storefront every weekday on the way to the kids’ daycare, and the space hasn’t been rented, or even cleaned. I can still see the the very first promotional poster for Kobold Quarterly on the bulletin board.

Aside from a couple of calls and trips to see Jill and Kathy, the bulk of my games buying has been online. eBay and Amazon are the first stops, but I’ll also buy directly from the publisher as a vote of confidence. I’m pretty keen on supporting Paizo’s experiment with updating and maintaining the 3.5 edition ruleset through a year-long public playtest, so I bought the softcover Pathfinder RPG Beta directly from them. (I felt no such sense of loyalty or support for Wizards of the Coast when I snapped up the three-volume core rules slipcase set for 4e at a ridiculously deep discount from Amazon).

Saving money is all well and good, but hanging out was better.

…but sometimes my job makes me laugh heartily - in a good way!

Today’s a good day to clear out the 3K email messages, 100-odd bookmarks and a few Gigs of hard drive space that are cluttered up with project drafts.

I’m busily playing Alien Syndrome on the PSP during my spare, writer’s-blocked, or too-stressed-to-work moments. It’s one of those dungeon-crawlin’, beastie-blasting RPGs that I love to play, with a sci-fi twist. I’m the Ripley character exploring an abandoned space hulk and fighting all the mutants and alien blobs that have infested it.

It’s also the most frustrating games I own. Not because it’s a legitimate challenge - the gameplay is, in fact, entirely pedestrian - but because the application is badly designed. I’m talking about the technical bits of the interface and user experience that support the game, like the loading system and, most importantly,the save system.

To resume a game, you have to select Load Character and the choose the game file from the memory card. Then you have to choose a Single Player or Multiplayer Game, and then select New Game or Load Game. If you choose Load Game, you have to select the very same game file you selected in the Load Character step! Why select the same game file twice?

Resuming a game should be easier than that: Choose New or Resume Game, then load the file. Presto! Done!

If you wanted to grab characters created in other saved game, to bulk up a multiplayer character in single-player mode, or to switch between character builds in a single-player game (which I half-think is cheating), then those options can be added after the game file is loaded: Play or Change Character. Then you make the selection from another file.

The most common action should have the fewest number of steps. Why make the player wait to have fun?

But that’s just an annoyance. The Save system is the real frustration.

You can only save your game at designated checkpoints on the map. That’s fine - this is a convention from the beginnings of adventure gaming. There’s no technological requirement to do so any longer, but it does break each game map/level into smaller chapters/achievable goals. Plus, it lets you say “Just let me reach the next save point, Honey.”

The problem is that completing a game level does not automatically save the game. If you fight through the bugs, reach the exit, load the next level and then either die or turn the game off, you resume the game not from the start of the level (which is typical) but from the last checkpoint you used on the level you just completed.

This is unacceptably bad design, and leads me to put the game aside earlier than I would normally. Why would I want to play the same sections over and over again?

I do, because I’m in the mood for some mindless fun, but if the most memorable aspect of a game is the shoddy save system, then there’s an overall problem with the game.