Lost In The Ozone Again

Every now and again I stop and clean out the drafts folder in my G-mail account. I tend to save bits of useless information there, you know, just in case I ever need to know the number of ball bearings produced in Uzbekistan in 1931. But just run of the mill web surfing seems to generate a few blank messages that never got sent. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere, so every now and again I will go in and clear out the trash. So I'm going through my drafts folder and I come across this message:

I have probably spent a million hours playing computer games (2 hours a day times infinity). I got started playing Windows Solitaire at Intel. Graduated to playing Minesweeper, and when the new version of Windows came out, Spider Solitaire (2 decks). These last two I "win" fairly often, somewhere between one out of two and one out of ten. The original Solitaire, like the card version, almost never runs to completion. You get blocked somewhere along the way.

Recently I have been playing some of the games that Google offers for their home page. Some of the ones I enjoy are:
- Flood It
- Deduction Game
- Series of Tubes - Dead link
- Linez

The main criteria for selection seems to be that it is easy to play: just use the mouse, no keys. Also, no finesse required, click or no click, no clicking on moving objects or other variable situations. And a definite solution.

Linez does not really have a definite solution, the game will "beat" you every time, all you can do is try to hold out as long as you can. Still, it is mildly entertaining.

For a while I would come home and play Spider Solitaire and listen to the "Kill Bill" sound track for an hour or so. That lasted for about a year, more or less. Currently I don't play just one game over and over, I play a variety, and I don't spend as long at it as I used to.

There was an episode on Star Trek once where a fellow is addicted to playing a "game". The game is embodied in a ball, slightly bigger that a softball, with a button and some lights. You press the button, the lights flash, and the game indicates whether you have won, or lost. Evidently this guy had made a fortune gambling on this device, and then his luck had changed and he had lost his fortune, but by now he is hooked and can't quit "playing" even though he continues to almost always loose.

I remember writing it like years ago, and I thought I posted it to my blog, but here it is showing up in my drafts folder and saying I accessed it nine days ago. No, I didn't. I haven't seen this message for eons. What the devil is going on? On the other hand, the Search function in Blogger seems to be working again. I'm wondering if Google's hashing algorithm has reached it's limit and we are now seeing the effects of wrap around, i.e. some items are getting assigned duplicate hash codes and so sometimes you get the wrong block of text back. Or maybe it's the North Koreans, though given this story, I am beginning to doubt their abilities, no matter what their fearless leader says.

Anyway, all this gives me an excuse to embed yet another YouTube un-video.


Commander Cody - "Lost In The Ozone"
The song isn't much, and the singer is nothing special, but I really like the sound of the steel guitar and almost screechy sound made by the violin. You only hear the violin for a few seconds just before the one minute mark and then again towards the end.

Update September 2015: some of the game links are dead.
Update March 2017 added video caption.