6 Responses to ““I’m Here Because I’m Bored!””

1. #1 |  Jonathan Hohensee |  June 8th, 2008 at 11:17 am

   I’d watch it

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2. #2 |  Mike Healy |  June 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am

   That was compelling.

   My best time on ‘expert’ is 262 seconds.

   Yes, I am bored.

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3. #3 |  Alien |  June 8th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

   I love minesweeper. Short logic game you can do between other business/projects. I have a time of 2 seconds on beginner (clicked 2 corners and the rest auto-opened). 6 seconds is my best non-completely-lucky beginner finish. 42 seconds intermediate. 207 seconds expert.

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4. #4 |  Chris Berez |  June 8th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

   That was brilliant.

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5. #5 |  Psion |  June 9th, 2008 at 1:08 am

   Minesweeper. Heh. I remember those days like some might remember their first kiss. For most people, solitaire is their gateway game when they use computers, but I was never a card fiend. Besides, I’d played way more sophisticated games over previous years and thought I wasn’t prone to addictions.

   I cut my teeth on text adventure games, punk. Chess played on boards mapped out with letters and numbers. “Air Traffic Controller”. “B2 Bomber”. I tried ‘em all and walked away. I was a tough guy.

   Maybe it was the office. The fluorescent lights and tie that clipped on too tight. But my first time did something. I was just experimenting. Doing something while I was waiting for my boss to approve a report I’d written. What’s the harm, right?

   No one tells you the rules when you first play Minesweeper. For me, that was my final chance. I clicked randomly about and faced the inevitable result. BOOM! I died. What a dumb game. I should have been annoyed and took a hit of C. But I had time and a curious disposition. I wanted to know /why/ I died. So I tried again, and spent time studying what was going on. Pretty soon, I beat it. I got the little yellow smiley with sunglasses and suddenly I felt …

   Cool.

   My boss came back with feed back, and I alt-tabbed back to something more productive-looking with smooth professionalism. He liked my work and I was a stand-up guy, so I wasn’t hurting anything by going back to Minesweeper as soon as he walked away.

   I stayed late at the office that night.

   Pretty soon, I bought a PDA with Minesweeper on it. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a common thing. It’s not like it’s illegal or something. Except, sometimes, while I was being paid to do something for the company, I’d sneak off to the men’s room. I’d sit there for an hour on a seat lined with toilet paper garland trying to best my previous time. And I made sure I had great scores on all the difficulty settings. Even though no one else ever used my PDA, I didn’t want any long game times visible on the high-score list.

   It’s a game of logic. And logic … that’s a thing of pride to computer people. Minesweeper /spoke/ to me. It became a metaphor for life in the corporate world. No! Life. Period. Everything seemed so much clearer when I did Minesweeper.

   These days, I’m all alone. The wife left me and took the kids. The bank foreclosed. I’m out on the street living in a cardboard box with my dog, and even that mutt died because I didn’t have time to feed it.

   But at least I have plenty of time to do Minesweeper.

   And read The Agitator.

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6. #6 |  Jeremy’s Jeremiad » Another Videogame Based Movie |  June 12th, 2008 at 10:24 pm

   [...] H/T Agitator [...]

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