Of Meat and Men

At 9:30 this morning I think achieved Hank Hill-level boring middle-agedness. Later in the day I gained the official designation of “Yeast Scholar.” I think it’s instructive, and germane to this course, to examine the relative satisfaction I derived from each.

I stood in my bedroom this morning, grinning at my laser printer as the second page of a four-page document rose smoothly up into the output tray. I pumped my fist like Tiger Woods sinking a long birdie putt at Augusta National and would have shouted “Wh-hoo!” but for fear of waking up one of my apartment mates.

For many months this printer had forced me to feed it one sheet of paper at a time. If I actually loaded a stack of paper into the supply slot, the glutton would suck down most or all of the sheets together and screw up everything.

But now I, a man who has never so much as used a washroom in an ITT Technical Institute, had tamed the rapacious LaserJet 6L. Best of all, this was not some take-it-apart-and-put-it-back-together-and-see-if-that-works act of desperation (a specialty of mine). I’d fixed it methodically, using replacement parts and an instructional video ordered from a site thoughtfully named Fixyourownprinter.com.

The parts and instructional CD arrived on Friday, which was the same day I launched my career as an adventuring “Pastamancer” in the Kingdom of Loathing. I liked the Monty Python-esque character names and storylines of this site and the intentionally minimalist graphics. But let’s face it, unless you’re 10 years old, fetching meat for an owl so he can glue the head back on his action figure will never be as rewarding as vanquishing balky feed rollers and pressure pads in your very own word-printing machine. Am I right, men?

I have some suggestions for the Kingdom site, and, mind you, this is 122 pieces of meat talking. The letter/number requirements for the user name and password seemed ridiculously restrictive (Is this NORAD?). And the type for the menu of links at the top of the screen (“character,” “inventory,” “skills,” etc.) must have been set in something like 6 pt. Way too small. Adjusting the type-display size using my browser controls didn’t affect those words.

The type could have been larger at Magnatune, too, but at least there the browser’s type-size adjustment worked. The radio playlists of full-length cuts were a welcome feature. So many music sites give you only samples. Magnatune would do well to further subdivide its music, though. For example, folk and roots rock must have been lumped in with pop or rock or some other category.

Lastly on this week’s Web explorations was xkcd. (Can we be any more obscure with the site names?) Some nice nerdy toons here. Hit the “random” button to explore. I expected the “next” button or the forward-arrow button to take me to the continuation of “Pod Bay Doors,” but neither did. And when I clicked on “RSS Feed” or “Atom Feed” (whatever that is), my Firefox browser took me to a page of XML code.

* * *

For the second week, I have no idea if this is what our instructors are looking for by way of a reflection paper. I hope so. Being a former newspaper reporter, I found the readings on the future of newspapers on the Web to be fascinating and thought-provoking. I read for hours and hours and can’t wait to discuss that material.