97 cm of Dutch courage
Well, despite my earlier feelings of competence, Star Wars: Jedi Academy has quickly turned into a morass of Sith v. Jedi combat, and I’m just not a skilled enough gamer to actually win battles through any sort of ability. It’s essentially a process of quicksaving at each Sith outpost and then screaming, collapsing, and quickloading repeatedly until I get a lucky torso hit. Because my computer has enough lag and because I can’t seem to master the combos, every lightsaber battle is less choreagraphed than it is accidental. None of which makes for inspiring or compelling gameplay.
So, I may need to put this back on the shelf until I can afford to acquire a faster computer, or a least a processing accelerator. The main argument for the former is te impending release of the LEGO Star Wars: Original Trilogy game, which will doubtless fail to run on my machine by the time that Aspyr gets around to re-engineering it for the Mac. And a new machine with the dual-boot Intel capability would allow me to not have to wait for Aspyr anyway.
However, while I may need to hang up my lightsaber, I will get to wield a sabre from long, long ago and far, far away: an 18th century Dutch rapier is currently shipping my way from the Netherlands (pictured on the right). While some parents might have thought that an updated computer would be a good practical gift for a recent Masters graduate, mine went for the gloriously useless antique sword option that I’d cavalierly added to my gift list in order to fill it out somewhat. As a deeply impractical person, myself, I am enamored both of the gift and the people who got it for me. Zombies beware! This is the kind of Dutch courage that I prefer: almost a meter of two hundred year old steel. That’ll get me through the long dark night of the soulless.
Gradumacated
Unsurprisingly, it’s particularly hard to find keychains, hats, et al. at the Simmons bookstore that read “Alumnus”.
While the commencement address was given by the eloquent and honest Eve Ensler, I was particularly interested to see what President Daniel Sargeant Cheever, Jr. was like before he retired and I wouldn’t have the chance. The Boston Globe had just written up a rather glowing profile of his tenure at Simmons and the transformations he had spearheaded, and it made me wish I’d been more involved in the community he’d helped reinvigorate.
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