Lauren's Tales

The mainstream press has just noticed that we’re out of IP addresses.  Of course, countless numbers of geeks have been working tirelessly for years to ensure that the net would continue to work without much attention from the outside world.  There’s nothing like a story with an ‘end of the world’ angle to become news, even when we already have the end of the world in Egypt, Australia and large portions of the snowed-in US.  Many countries have not used up their IP allocations, however.  Thus the following was posted in an IRC chat and reposed on NANOG:

13:13 < dec0de> africa is where it's at
13:15 < moebius_> Dear Sirs, I am the son of the deposed Prime Minister of
                  Nigeria.  We are in possession of 93,208,512 IP addresses and
                  wish to request your assistance...

You know those intervention things that people have when one of their loved ones is on heroin?  I have acquired a damaging addiction, and I’m having an intervention on myself.

The addiction is the notorious game Civilization.  I periodically pick up the recent version and play some, then get bored and put it back down.  The last time I picked it up, however, something different happened.  I started learning some of the deeper aspects of the game and winning at higher levels.  Civilization may have that famous “one more turn” aspect that draws people in, but that’s nothing compared to the addictive power of learning.  Of course, I was learning to be a better Civ player.

And then there is the appeal of a really solid alpha state lasting for hours.  The appeal goes up if you’re in discomfort.  Since I have chronic daily migraines, the invitation to step inside an alpha state and hide for a few hours is much harder to ignore.

Of course, the downsides to playing games are much smaller than the downsides of opioid addiction.  But there are downsides.  One is persistent RSI problems.  I’ve had worse, and I know these will go away once I stop playing for long enough.  When I change my activity patterns, I will probably get other RSI problems, but I need to give these parts of my arms a rest.  The other is that I’m not getting much writing done.

It’s hard to write when I have a migraine anyway.  Writing doesn’t offer the same comfort as Civ.  However, I will be spending much more time being a writer than being a Civ player.  At least until my arms heal up.

As an aside:  there are a couple of things that may bring me some migraine relief in the next few months.  Then I would have less pain to hide from.  Now wouldn’t that be cool.