What was your general strategy
for Oregon Trail?
Be. The. Banker. ALWAYS! The Banker started off with more
money than any other character. This I knew when we were
traversing the trail in my 5th grade computer class. You could buy
more ammo right off that bat, enough to last an entire class period!
I would stock up on ammo, head West, and hunt immediately. I
remember mashing the spacebar repeatedly, pelting squirrels and
bison with flag-raising ferocity. There was a large mural on the wall
which charted each student's progress along the Trail. All year
long, my sad little cart remained at the beginning. Eventually,
everyone died from cholera and we moved on to Number
Munchers, but the fact remains that I slaughtered thousands of
pounds of meat on that trail... even though I could only carry back
twelve.
Invent an achievement bonus...
Red Ring of Bling: +10GP for displaying five or more bricked
360 consoles in your living room.
How did you get this job?
When I was about fourteen years old I launched an online
"radio" show; think podcasting before there was ever a pod to
cast to. The "show" started one fateful summer day when I was
bored and recording a rant about how Johnson's and Johnson's
"No Tears" shampoo did, in fact, cause tearing. Don't fixate on
the fact that a fourteen year old kid was using baby shampoo on
his hair…that's not the important part. What matters here is that
this little rant was downloaded by hundreds of people over the
course of a day, encouraging me to record other rants and raves
(usually about hacking, videogames or technology) and eventu-
ally created the online brand "Pointless Audio".
A few hundred shows later, some several-hour live broad-
casts complete with callers, PA became PointlessTV when I
snuck my father's old VHS camcorder out of the closet and
pirated a copy of Ulead Media Studio.
Long story short? That site caught the attention of one of G4's
original founders. He asked me to come down and be a
production assistant on a show when I was
nineteen, and I did just that. In a handful
of days, I quit school, left work, and left a
cartoony-silhouette-dust-cloud in my wake.
What's your favorite thing on the
internets?
Driving On Salvia
This is brilliant for more reasons then I have space on
this page. Pure genius, my friends.
What's your favorite Uwe Boll movie?
Postal. But that's not fair.
Asking someone to pick their
favorite Uwe Boll film is the
same as asking them their
favorite STD. Sure, you could
go with crabs because they're
fairly easily treated and far
from permanent; but you're
still essentially admitting that
parasitic insects feasting on
your groin-blood is a
"favorite".
What other job do you feel most qualified for?
I think I'm a jack of many trades, but a master of none.
I've come this far, but I don't know if there's one "job"
I'm more "qualified" for than another. Perhaps a consul-
tant? I love leaping into existing projects and tweaking
them, or taking a kernel of an idea and popping it...Jiffy
style.
Read any good books lately?
I recently finished The Paradox of Choice by Barry
Schwartz and Little Brother by Corey Doctorow.
Paradox of Choice is a fantastic read that details why a
larger selection of everything is actually harming society,
and how the virtually unlimited options we humans face
each day is beginning to cripple our appreciation of life. I
tend to agree.
Little Brother is a riveting near-future-cyberpunk-esque
thriller about a young hacker who, after being wrongly
imprisoned by Homeland Security, fights back using
off-the-shelf technology and a metric ton of ingenuity. It's
a startling portrait of America twenty years down the
road, and it's loaded with specific technical references
that make it a must-read for any self-professed nerd.
Plus, it's free online. Though I bought the hardback, and
slapped a copy on my Kindle. 'Cause that's how I roll.
