Bobby C. Jones: Entertainment

Where's my alter ego?

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:43:10 GMT

This past weekend I finally bit the bullet and created an account on Second Life, known as SL to the veterans. Before joining I couldn't help but imagine SL as a real life, known as RL to the SL veterans, Lord of the Flies, full of anonymous people running around unchecked and behaving badly while hiding behind specious 3D avatars. Within minutes I discovered just how easy it would be to do so.

Upon entering SL the first task is to learn the basics. A couple of tutorials walk you through moving around, interacting with objects, and setting your appearance. It's not easy to create an accurate representation of your real self. It's much easier to simply drag and drop your way into a look that you'd have trouble achieving in RL with 8 hours a day in the gym with Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal trainer. You can even give yourself a sex change. Click...Drag. Look ma, I'm wearing your shoes.

So I set out with bulging muscles barely contained beneath my skin tight wife beater in search of other Second Lifer's interested in some intellectual chatting. I found some. My first encounter went something like this.

Me: Hi.
Random Guy: Hey, can I hug you?
Me: Um...You're kinda scaring me.
Random Girl: Why, because he's black? What a $%@#& bigot.
Random Guy and Random Girl run off unchecked to behave badly in some other cyber location.

Fortunately I'm a veteran of newsgroups and other public forums and wasn't discouraged by the high level of intellect of this exchange. I pressed on and noticed a lone figure on the horizon. I flew closer for a better look. I believe that learning to fly is the final tutorial before you're released into the SL wilderness.

As I flew closer, banking hard to the right in what I thought to be a terrific fly by, the figure formed into a woman with jet black hair cut into a severe short crop that reminded me of an 80's hairdo right out of an MTV video. To complete the look she was wearing black pants, a black shirt with shredded sleeves, no shoes, and a green and red stripped necktie. However, what really caught my attention was her green skin mottled with dark spots. Obviously she was just a little lost, like me, and was off in this remote corner looking for someone with whom to share her deep cerebral thoughts. I guessed that she had mistakenly eaten some bad SL mushrooms to end up in her current state.

I introduced myself, and immediately apologized for my lack of clothing. I had been trying on bathing suites by the pool and Click...Drag removed them. I couldn't remember what to Click...Drag to put them back on. Look ma, I've been swimming in the cold end of the pool.

She was definitely an intellect. I missed half of our conversation while I thumbed through my dictionary looking up several words that I didn't recognize from her first sentence. She typed like the wind and her end of the conversation grew off the screen. My three and four letter interjections didn't slow her a bit. They may have even spurred her on. Of course I missed all of that part of the conversation because I was engrossed in reading her bio. It turns out that she was a member of a number of lesbian groups and more than a couple of other sexually oriented organizations that I never knew existed. I imagine that if I really had been the single 21 year old multi-millionaire that my bio claimed I would have been thinking that I had struck gold. I returned to the conversation.

Her: So what do you think?
Me: I'm sorry. What?
Her: Well, do you want to or not?
Me: Um...I don't know. Hey, can I ask you a question? Were those your mom's shoes that you lost?

I may try again this weekend. It'll just depend on whether or not I feel like myself.

Technorati tags: Second Life

Whatever happened to sex, drugs, and rock & roll?

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 04:38:22 GMT

For Christmas my wife gave me a Zune, the new MP3 player by Microsoft. I immediately ran to the basement and excavated my box of CD's, and a few cassette tapes, from beneath a mound of dust that had built up undisturbed over I forget just how many years. After ripping my antique collection to my hard drive I decided that my music library needed some new life. I hit the Zune Marketplace for some fresh new rock & roll.

My first purchase was a track from KoRn, Coming Undone. It's a superb hard driving guitar riff wrapping a really depressing message. Here's the chorus and a link to the full song.

Wait
I'm coming undone
Irate
I'm coming undone
Too late
I'm coming undone
One looks so strong
So delicate
Wait
I'm starting to suffocate
And soon I anticipate
I'm coming undone
One looks so strong
So delicate

My next purchase was a track, Broken Glass, from Buckcherry, a great sounding band that would have done well competing with the 80's big hair bands. Here's the chorus:

Sickened, broken, blood shed, murder you're children
Torture, treason, never falling out of war
Standing on a broken glass!

Read them all, if you can stand it. It's no wonder there's a huge shortage of counselors for teens.

Whatever happened to the good wholesome days when rock & roll was all about sex and drugs? Who can forget Whitesnake and their testosterone pumping Slide It In?

I'm gonna slide it in
Right to the top,
Slide it in,
I ain't never gonna stop
Slide it in,
Right to the top,
I'm gonna slide it in, slide it in,
Slide it, in baby...

Or Guns N' Roses with their mind altering Mr. Brownstone:

I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' ta get a little better
Said a little better than before
I used ta do a little but a little wouldn't do
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' ta get a little better
Said a little better than before

Stuck it in the needle and I shot it in the middle
And it, it drove outta my mind
I should've known better, said I wish I never met her Said I,
I leave it all behind Yowsa!

Don't you just miss the good ol' days when rock lyrics were uplifting? I sure do. Fortunately I did find one new song that was overflowing with good old time values by a group called Nickelback, Animals. This is my favorite part:

We were parked out by the tracks
We're sitting in the back
And we just started getting busy
When she whispered "what was that?"
The wind, I think 'cause no one else knows where we are
And that was when she started screamin'
"That's my dad outside the car!"
Oh please, the keys, they're not in the ignition
Must have wound up on the floor while
we were switching our positions
I guess they knew that she was missing
As I tried to tell her dad it was her mouth that I was kissing

Now that I've got my tunes all lined out, I'm working hard on the second article on Visual Studio Code Snippets. I should finish it before the weekend is over.

Technorati tags: music

I don't play golf

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:46:12 GMT

Since moving to Atlanta I am asked at least once a week if I play golf. I don’t. And I wasn’t named after Robert Trent Jones. My real name is Bobby.

I’m named after a great uncle who stood between my father and my grandfather, an overbearing Southern Baptist preacher. I personally don’t have anything against Southern Baptists; I was baptized during a revival at the Donie, Texas 1st Baptist Church. That makes me one according to the Southern Baptist Convention. But abusive Southern Baptist preachers don’t have their names passed on, their protective brothers do.

As a young man I couldn’t stand my name. I thought it sounded immature. You called me Bob or I ignored you. Of course it didn’t help that at 16 I looked every bit of 12. At 17 I joined the Marine Corps to get away from the little boy persona. I was too young to realize that a short name, dress blues, and a swagger, earned or not, weren’t the keys to growing up.

For the first 5 years of my professional life I continued to be Bob Jones. I couldn’t point to a catalyst, but at some point, Bob Jones, just sounded as silly as the idea that a name can make a man. I added the half-syllable back. I now have new friends that call me Bobby, old friends that call me Bob, and family that never got away from calling me Bobby Clay, no matter how fixedly I gave them the evil eye.
When my wife and I bought our first house the title company advised me to include my middle initial as part of my official signature to help differentiate me from the multitudes of other Bobby Jones’s running around. I took the advice and the C. has been with me every since.

I’ve only met a couple of other Bobby Jones’s face to face, although I was once invited to join a start up web site to unite the Bobby Jones’s of the world. I declined when I found out the first planned activity was a golf outing.