You have a LinkedIn account. Now what?

Ignore it, of course!  Who wants to hear from Richard Branson and your co-workers in equal measure?  The novelty's officially worn off!  Yeah, we all are skilled in Adobe Illustrator.  So what.

Rock Me Sexy Video Game

I can't tell if this game is for the young people, or for role-playing swingers.  It seems to be for people who hate video games, definitely.  What's the point of virtual social climbing anyway?  It's just a bit confusing, because it seems like it should be called "Knights & Princesses."  But not all brides can be princesses, arguably, even back then in Ye Olden Days.

Zynga Poker?

Lord knows I've referenced it enough!  Didn't have a post dedicated to it, tho.(ugh)  I just thought I'd mention this one thing I learned today... actually, a while ago, but I didn't think to brainfart it on the web.  I learned a new swear word: "follo."  See, if there's one thing they won't tolerate in the chat section of Zynga Poker, it's swearing.  Okay, swearing, and solicitations for chips.  So whatever you do, don't use the word "follow" in Zynga Poker chat, because it'll come out as ****w and a JavaScript window will pop up, saying "No swearing!"  Now, of course, you can say "F O L L O W" like that.  Follow me?... oh, according to urbandictionary dot com, a "follo" is like a wigger.  Boy!  Didn't know they were so sensitive!  Plus, they've got the political muscle in Washington to protect them from such typed-out verbal onslaughts!  Good for them.  They must be House Follo's...

MAME -> Gauntlet II

Welp, now that I've conquered Gauntlet 1 on Mame... and with a rather low per-coin average to show for it... there's clearly only one thing to do: move on to the sequel, Gauntlet II!  But I can tell you right now that this outing is by far much less fun than the original.  It's kind of like what happened to Farmville.  Too many new features, and plus they went all corporate when Lady Gaga got on board.  Reminds me!  I need to harvest my metallic unicorns in Gagaville.  Plus, there's a lot less of the potions.  And rightfully so, in a way, because being able to kill all those angry Grunts in one fell swoop is so much easier than slowly marching through them.
There's all kinds of new features, so the game makers did their homework.  Fake exits, moving exits... a big dragon that shoots fire at you.  All kinds of stuff.  The thief is trickier, and he has a new counterpart: a mugger.  I don't think I'll be able to survive 1,000 levels of this one.
Now, for those of you who don't know, the Gauntlet games are based on an old game for the Atari 8-bit computers called Dandy by... Pale Face Johnson?  I'm sorry, it's John Palevich.  John Howard Palevich...  or Jack, either one.  He had to sue Atari for copyright infringement due to the wildly popular success of the Gauntlet series.  But I think I understand the mentality behind Gauntlet.  The guys at Atari, well, some of them wanted to bring Palevich in as a partner, but the other side won out, of course, saying "So you're telling me, that we're going to let this guy... he's not in the Coin-Op division.  He's NOT EVEN AN ATARI EMPLOYEE... and we're just going to let this guy just kind of... breeze on in here into the halls of Atari.  This n00b, this wide-eyed innocent is just going to waltz on in here and grab the keys to the kingdom?  I don't think so!  How's he going to handle all these new features we're going to put into Gauntlet?  He'll go into sensory overload!  He won't be able to handle it!  SCREW him!  Plus, he'll probably say at every turn, 'This is MY baby, and you're not going to change ONE THING to it.'  So, I reiterate: S C R E W him!"  That's according to the court transcripts, anywho.

Facebook -> Snake

...this got 1,300 "Like"s?  Wow!  Well, it was nice to reminisce about the Vic 20, I suppose... actually, the graphics in this game are probably better than the Vic 20.  I don't think the Vic 20 could handle such vibrant colors terribly well.

The Web -> Pac-Man Variation

Well, you know, if I had more time... anyway, this is from worldsbiggestpacman.com.  You can use Facebook to connect to it, BTW.  Alas, it's never one of the recommended games... you know, unlike those f... wonderful Pou games.  I swear the only reason I found this was because it's in a JavaScript textbook.

Friday, Dec. 9, 2022 - 9:43pm - It's STILL THERE!  That's worldsbiggestpacman.com.  Stop by and design a level today.  Maybe two!

Zune -> Hexic

That's right... I've got a Zune.  Of course, I don't use it to listen to the radio or anything cool like that, or to connect to hundreds of my fellow Zuners.  I've got the manual in deep storage someplace, so I can't figure it out.  But every once in a while, when I'm sitting there, trying to fall asleep at 3 in the morning, trying to not look back at the train wreck that is my life, studying the configuration that the various cars have made, and why I can't seem to move them... I'll turn to my Zune and either watch some videos I have on there (mostly non-porn now) or I will occasionally turn to the unfortunately short list of games.  I was playing the checkers for a while... oh, crap.  Now I KNOW I'm getting old.  Next thing you know, I'll be telling people "Okay, thank you!" all the time as I get ready to go back to the old folks' home.  But last night, I believe it was, I was fiddling around with the ol' Hexic again.  Yes, give that Pajitnov his due.  Even he couldn't replicate Tetris's success with such hasty follow-up fare like "Hat-tris."  Hah!  But his legacy seems to live on, if only for me, in such modern incarnations as your Candy Crushers, your Bejeweled Blitzes, what have you, and now your Hexices: a hexagonal switch-em game.

 But as with all Microsoft products, it ultimately falls upon the users to provide feedback to the programmers and to the finer minds who've chosen the Microsoft lifestyle on a more permanent, salaried basis, yet somehow manage to not find all the flaws that the poor suckers who actually use their products always manage to find.  Of course, games are odd birds, and their logic is far too complicated these days, even with seemingly simple fare like that fu... wonderful Farmville 1 and 2 and all its ilk.  But where they're part of a vibrant community, Hexic is in an all-but-forgotten backwater, and I'm certainly not expecting a patch any time soon... and if I do get one, well, then I'll know for sure that I'm of interest to the NSA and their ilk.  But I think I understand programmers of games, and that they can't be expected to anticipate all the permutations that can arise.  In this case, as you can sort of see from the circle in the lower image, I was on the last move in "Survival Mode," "Expert" level.  The algorithm missed that green combo there, and started the end-of-round tally when the every last move has been exhausted.  So, if anyone does want to look for that glitch, it'd be somewhere in there.  It does the tally, counting all the empty spaces and locking down all the free hexic tiles, then goes on to the next level.  But in this case, it couldn't go on to the next level, because, well, there's one combo that hasn't been processed!  And so, the game froze... hence, my ability to take a picture of the screen.  I had to let the battery run out, and start the whole thing all over again, which as a Zune user (...or a Zunatic?), I'm used to by now.  It happens.  Probably happens with video iPods, too, right?  ...RI-IGHT????!!!!!!!