The problem with Facebook games

Who am I kidding, there are a million problems with Facebook games.

But despite the fact that I get annoyed by many aspects of them, there were a couple I actually kind of enjoyed. I really like casual games. I'm especially fond of time management games or simple puzzles like Plants Vs. Zombies. Incidentally, the first time I beat PvZ it was all in one sitting during a bout of insomnia. Good times.

Anyway, here's the biggest stumbling block I have with Facebook games and why I'm pretty much done with them: because the developers can just turn them off if they feel like it.

I realize that this is something that MMORPGers also deal with, and I'm not sure how I'll feel the day that WoW finally gives up the ghost. I think part of me hopes that Blizzard always has a server running somewhere that I can be on.

But the basic thing for me is this: I've been playing some of my games for years now. There's one in particular that I really enjoyed called Restaurant City by Playfish.

The goal of the game was simple, you collected ingredients and combined them to learn recipes. You wanted to get the recipe to level 10. At first, I loved it. I wanted to master all the recipes. You see, I've got this thing where if there's a collecting aspect to a game I will PLAY IT TO DEATH. I'm not allowed to play Pokemon.

Then they started adding new ingredients. Then they made ingredients available for real world money, so they made them all more rare and hard to find. Then they started adding 7-10 new recipes EVERY WEEK. It got to the point where I had an excel spreadsheet that I would update to help me manage my quest to get a meaningless achievement in a casual game. For months I've kind of wanted to break free of it, but felt that I was *SO* close to getting all the recipes! I was at 94% for the longest time, then they added 10 more that all took the rarest ingredient plus 10 that took a new ingredient and well, I was back to 90% in no time. But still, 90%! That's so close!

Well, Playfish solved this problem for me yesterday when they announced that they weren't making enough money off of RC anymore and they were shutting it down. To "celebrate" they were adding eight new recipes, most of which take one of the rarest ingredients.

Last year, they shut down another one of their games called Country Story, right around when I finally started playing it again because they'd fixed some bugs with it and it was fun again. I uninstalled the game the day they announced it because I realized there was absolutely no point to continuing to play and build something that somebody else had the power to just switch off.

For years I've been playing RC, almost daily. It didn't take up a ton of my time, and I enjoyed it so I'm not complaining on that front. But now I realize that it was entirely wasted time because they can just decide that it's not working for them and turn it off. All my progress, all those recipes I did max out, all gone because it was never really real or mine to begin with. Nothing has driven that point home more perfectly.

I'm still debating if I'll do one last push to master all the recipes, but since I think I need 200 flour I don't know what I'll bother. I do know that I've taken all my other Playfish games and I'm prepping to uninstall them. I'm giving stuff away to people who still play and just giving up. Why bother making a character? Why build a "house" or do anything in Sims Social if it will just stop being popular in a year and they'll turn it off to do something else?

I'm just going to go back to playing Plants vs. Zombies, because the stuff I unlock in that will never go away.

Big Bang Theory - Season 4

I tend to watch tv shows in binges. I also don't tend to watch anything on a regular schedule. For a while, I was in grad school and my shifting class schedule made it difficult. Now I'm just too out of the habit. I explain all this so that you know why I'm only just now getting around to finishing up the fourth season of Big Bang Theory. We caught up to the show while this season was airing, and had to wait for it to come out on DVD. Then we had to wait until we remembered. Anyway. I admit I was pretty worried about this season in general. One thing that I hate on sitcoms is the on-again off-again couple. I used to be obsessed with Friends in high school, and halfway through the show Ross and Rachel drove me so insane I stopped watching and never looked back. I also was wary of how Amy Farrah-Fowler was going to change things.

I have to say I've been pretty happy overall. I'm still two episodes from the end of the season, so I expect certain things will happen. But the off-again version of Penny and Leonard hasn't been annoying. It's been a pretty proper source of comedy, and it's actually helped give Penny a bit more dimension and character.

I go back and forth on Amy. In the most recent episode we were watching, I commented that I wasn't sure how I felt about where her arc was going and my husband responded, "at least she has another character trait." He's not wrong, she was one note at the beginning but has slowly started to become more interesting. I'm still not entirely sure where I stand with her, I definitely enjoy her more when she's with Sheldon than with Penny.

But I have to admit that having three regular female characters has meant that the show has started to feature them a lot more. This is especially nice because despite being comedic characters with their own strange traits (like Bernadette's clumsiness) both Amy and Bernadette are intellectuals who rival the male characters.

One of my favorite things about the show which has become even more evident this season is that the characters on this show, despite their faults, are all good friends to each other. Penny is given a lot of grief by Sheldon, but she shows over and over again that she will stand up for her friends, and do whatever they need just because they need it. The guys are a little less so, but you get the sense that when it's important the pranks and the jokes go away and they rally.

A lot of people like to disparage Big Bang Theory, and I've heard it called "nerdsploitation" and that it's actually insulting to geeks. People say that it is what normal people think nerds and geeks are like.

Personally, I think those people are being as narrow minded as they're accusing the creators of being. There is much about the show that reflects people that I know and love. Yes, they're caricatures and they're amped up because they're in a sitcom. But the show has always come across to me as a loving laugh WITH a subculture, not at it's expense. Since I'm a member of that subculture, I've not really seen the levels of offense other people have.

I'm fine if you think the show isn't funny. I disagree, but that's all a matter of taste. But references are usually pretty darn accurate (they were much closer to reality with their WoW references than South Park was, that's for sure) and they represent a large number of geeky interests. They aren't just scientists, or comic book fans, or sci-fi tv addicts. Now if Sheldon would stop hating on Babylon 5 and realize it's the best show of the 90s, we'll all be good.

I Am Not A Cook

Despite several attempts to learn, I've never really managed to become much of a chef. I like baking, and I'm actually pretty good at several more advanced things when it comes to desserts. I can make a pie crust from scratch so well that I actually prefer doing it that way to buying one at the store. Store bought doesn't taste as good.

But I'm just not good at cooking. For one thing, I'm impatient. Anything that requires constant monitoring is right out. I tried making a roux for a soup once, and it was a disaster because "stir constantly" is not in my repertoire.

I also am really terrible about anything that is supposed to simmer or cook slowly. Which is part of the reason I'm no longer allowed to make pancakes. For the record, I used to be good at pancakes in middle school. My impatience must have gotten worse as I got older. But suffice it to say after a few disasters that only got worse with each run, I said I'm just not allowed. Luckily I found a recipe for mini-pancake muffins. Yay, baking!

Anyway, over the last few weeks I've had a craving for egg salad and deviled eggs. Since I lost the blade to my food processor, I can't really do deviled eggs. But egg salad? I should be able to handle that right?

It took me two days of research and reading to figure out boiling eggs properly. Sure, I could boil an egg, and it would come out OKAY. But a few pages of tips and tricks later and I no longer have that gray outside to the yolk, and they're always perfectly cooked through.

I looked up a few recipes for egg salad when I went to make it, because I was suddenly hit with a panic: does it have more than just egg and mayonnaise? What's the ratio I should use? You see, I like baking because it's the right mix of exact and forgiving ("accidentally" dump in too many chocolate chips? Oh well, bake it anyway!). But as soon as you put "to taste" on a recipe for actual food? I'm sunk.

I don't have a sophisticated palate (I'm not even sure how to spell it). I like plain foods and not a lot of spices. I've never developed that ability to just taste something and say "Hm, it needs some basil" or anything like that. People have tried to teach me, it doesn't stick.

So after I realized that no two egg salad recipes were going to agree on anything, you can see why it's a little crazy that I decided to just wing it. I smashed up a random number of eggs (I had boiled a whole dozen, just in case) and then added mayo and a touch of pickle juice. I don't keep mustard around, or lemon juice, and I needed something, right? It's what my mom always used in deviled eggs, I figured it would work.

You would expect, given my history, that this story would end with me having somehow created something poisonous. But it actually turned out GREAT. I had egg salad sandwiches every day for a week until I ran out. It was better tasting than the store bought stuff, and a heck of a lot cheaper.

So long story short, I'm unreasonably proud that I managed to make egg salad properly without a recipe or measuring anything. Next step - figuring out how to bake french fries instead of frying them. And buying a new blade for my food processor.