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What game turned you into a gamer?

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Yesterday was Father’s Day and today I saw this story on Digg which made me remember my dad.

The question is what game turned you into a gamer. I thought a little bit and it was hard for me to pinpoint one single game. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a gamer most of my life and so it’s always just been part of who I am. I continued thinking and I tried to remember the first game I remembered playing. The first one that came to mind was Galaga.

The mall in town had a small arcade with about a dozen cabinets, one of which was “the spaceship game.” I was probably 6 years old at the time and as you can guess, the games were a little beyond me. I don’t think I could see the screen if I stood in front of the machine. So either my dad would play while I watched or he’d hold me up and it was my job to hit the shoot button as fast as possible. As you can imagine, we didn’t ever get too far, but I enjoyed every second of it.

While I wouldn’t consider my dad a gamer, there were a few games that I think he played more than I did. One time I remember waking up at 1AM to find my him playing a level farther into Blaster Master than I’d ever been. Another is SimCity 2000. I think that one got him in trouble with Mom a few times.

Looking back, many of my good gaming memories included my dad in some way. Maybe he’s responsible for my love of gaming.

Why is it the truely great people of the world are never remembered until after they die?

I was greeted with the news Tuesday that Don Herbert, aka Mr. Wizard, had passed away after a long battle with bone cancer. He was 89. Frankly, that name hadn’t crossed my mind for over 15 years, but immediately my heart sank a little knowing he had died.

Growing up, I was always very curious with the world and how things worked. My favorite toys were Lincoln Logs, Lego, Construx, and anything I could build something with. I don’t think I owned a flashlight that I hadn’t dissected a few times. My mother had to constantly stop me from grabbing and touching things in public. With that in mind, I have to partially credit my love of technology and science to Mr. Wizard. I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence that my job and favorite activities revolve around science and technology.

When I was maybe 8 or 9 years old and being absolutely glued to the TV any time Mr. Wizard was on. The funny thing was I never knew when it was on, so it’d be an extra special day if I got to watch him. I never knew, but it turns out Mr. Wizard had a few different successful series’ in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. The man was probably responsible for thousands of kids getting interested in science at a very formative age. Who knows what those people went on to do. I don’t think they give out Nobel prizes for that, but Mr. Wizard probably deserves one.

Any time Steve Jobs gives a keynote, you know it’s going to be huge. I told my coworker, Caroline, that today is like Christmas for Apple fans like myself because Steve always has something cool to show off.

Of course I was all over every bit of live coverage I could find for the last hour and a half. I did a little live commenting on my Jaiku page for anyone that’s interested. The biggest announcements had to do with Leopard which I’m excited as hell to see in person. The iTunes CoverFlow interface is now the main interface for Finder. Apple’s been criticized in the past for not having a consistent interface across even their own apps. I guess they took it personal because now you see it everywhere. Even their website has been updated.

Now all of this Leopard stuff will have the Apple folks buzzing, but the rest of the world could probably care less. Steve had something for those other people today too. Safari on Windows. My initial reaction was “Meh. Another browser to worry about when coding.” However, they claim the rendering speed and Javascript performance is vastly superior to both Internet Explorer and Firefox. I’ll have to wait until I get home and get on my Windows machine to find out I guess (Windows Beta available now). I’m wondering if it’ll force Cocoa style on form widgets like the Mac version does. Supposedly Safari 3 is going to allow more control over them with CSS though. My final thought on Safari 3, you release a beta for Windows but not OS X (I guess I was too quick, there is a beta for OS X too!)?

[Normally I'd post some pictures, but I've been slacking off of work for the last 2 hours.]