On my (Now) Love/(Previously)Hate Relationship with FourSquare

Although I generally consider myself to be pretty quick to pick up the next great technology, especially when it comes to social media, I was initially extremely hesitant to sign up for things like FourSquare. I think it fell into my thoughts about blogging - I considered it to be extremely narcissistic from a person like me, who really isn't that grand or important in the scheme of things. Aside from my fears that it was paradise for stalking, there was also the knowledge that I never really *go* anywhere, and who really cares about the places I don't go?

I had a bit of a change of heart at PAX because everyone was checking in from there, and it became part of the social experience to check in as well. There was also, of course, the ability to rub it in all my friends face through Facebook that I was at PAX, and they were not. I then realized that there were a lot of nice uses for FourSquare - seeing what restaurants are nearby, remembering the name of the place we ate the night before that I'd forgotten already, etc.

And I further realized that perhaps the problem wasn't that I didn't need FourSquare because I never went anywhere, the problem was actually that I should go someplace sometimes!

Female on Female

In preparing for PAX, the BF and I came up with a short list of the panels that both of us wanted to attend. Of course, one of the events that I was initially tempted by was the panel focused on female gamers. Initially, I felt as though I was obligated to go. I mean, it's like 6th Grade Health Class, at some point in time you segregate off the girls and explain to them about monthly bleeding and other fun stuff like that.

Un/fortunately, it conflicted with something that the BF wanted to see, and when I considered it, the panel he marked sounded more interesting to me as well. It was something I was interested in, not a duty or a burden.

After having read some other women's perspectives on the matter, I find myself glad that I did not attend.

Let me start off with a little backstory.

I don't think I ever had a conception of "gender roles" as society views them until I was nearly a teenager. As a child, I had pretty dresses, but I had overalls and jeans as well. Sure, I adored my stuffed animals and my Barbie Dolls, but I also loved my computer games, toy cars and Lego kits. And looking back, I didn't necessarily play with Barbies like most girls. Yeah, I dressed them up and stuff, but half the time Barbie realized that Ken was boring, shot his stupid ass with a miniature gun, and then went to race her Ferrarri.


Another aspect of this was that my best friend during those formative years was a girl who was just as much into dragons and X-files and Star Trek as I was. Because there were two of us, I never really felt that I was "different." Yes, other kids weren't geeky. That I understood. But those other kids were male and female alike.

It wasn't until I went to an all-girls school when I started to hear it. "You can do whatever you want to be, despite the fact that you are a woman."

Waitaminute. Despite? That's new...

Very few of the other girls likes the things that I did. Sure, some if them read fantasy books, and liked science, but no one loved computers and Sci-Fi and Dungeons and Dragons and things of that nature.

At this point, at the beginning of my teenaged years, I realized I was different.

At first, I embraced it. Not yet interested in what the male members of the species thought of me, I said "screw it" to the general "female" accoutrements. No makeup or dresses for me! No sir! Baggy nerd tee-shirts and jeans are the way to go!

Of course then, as more and more girls started dating and hormones did their thing, I realized that boys really liked girly girls. That was odd. I suffered through this for a year or so before meeting guys outside of the Catholic School circle. Nerdy guys. Guys that would trade their right arm and half their anime collection for a girl that liked the things they did.

I rode this high for years, even realizing that if I could be geeky AND girly that I would be an all-new level of super awesome in their eyes. So I started trying again. Bought cute clothes. Dressed up when I started going to college. I made a lot of geek guy friends there, and felt bad for the fact that I knew so few geek girls for them to meet.

It only became logical from that point that I started participating in female-centric events. Various employers I had and classes I went to wanted to establish different ways to encorporate girls into their fold. Diversity was the big push!And the geeky pursuits didn't have enough of it. So there were think tanks, and media and I ate it all up. I thought it was my duty as a woman to try and convert women to the Dark Side of Geekery!

And I felt this way for _years_. I don't know when it changed. Perhaps it was when I heard of capable men being turned down for women with no skills but who has two matching x chromosomes. I doubted it more when men started telling me that they "never really though about it until someone mentioned it."

And then I remembered. I never felt like I was a "minority" until it was pointed out. But then again, I was never told how to be in the first place. My parents didn't stress being pretty, or owning the best shoes, my parents stressed finding something that made me happy and doing it well.

Worse, because these campaigns were stressing how equivalent women were to men in technical regards, men started to become suspicious. Men innately know that when a woman says something over and over again, there are generally two reasons, and they're usually connected. The first is that she is lying. The second is that she doubts herself, and if someone else believes it, then she will as well. Getting back to the original point, my friends who went to the PAX panel on Females felt that many of the women there were doing more to hinder our place in the gaming world than they were to further it. And it scares me. I wonder how many more of these initiatives will fail, and what the end result will be.

I don't know what the solution is for getting women in technology. What I do know is that women who proselytize and take "advantage" of their "difference" often do more harm than good. I also know that the "gender issue" is one that I still think of every day. Do I list myself as a Diversity candidate because I am the minority in my field? Or is that too "easy"? How do I find the right balance of my geeky pursuits, and my feminine ones (as both clothes and video games are quite pricy....)? How do I dress in the workplace so I will be taken "seriously" as a technician while at the same time still balancing something that looks decent and is utilitarian as well? Because let me tell you, women's dress pants are not designed for climbing under desks all day.

Even in titling this blog, my initial thought was to title it something that encompassed both geekiness and girliness. But while yes, both of these are a part of me, I'd like to think that I will have a lot to say that applies to men as well, and I don't want to ostracize those readers.

Android: Helping The Helpless Be Better At Life

I've always been the sort of person that was perpetually in my own head. I am often too lost in thought about whatever has me preoccupied for the day to be too awful aware of the world around me. I've always been extremely observant in regards to anything inside a screen (probably due to using computers at a very young age), but anything outside of that little panel is basically non-existent. I walk into walls. I lose things that are right in front of my face. I walk right past people I know without noticing them. All in all, when I am in a new place, I am a pretty helpless person. I can't rely on noticing street signs or landmarks to navigate myself around. I often can't remember to check for details of an event before I start driving there. And last weekend, I was in Boston for the first time ever.

Sure, I wasn't alone there, but it's hard for other people to direct me to places that I don't know that I'm going. That, unfortunately, is one of the perils of possessing a scattered mind. Fortunately, I had my Droid X with me, and it basically comes equipped with everything I need to live. It's funny, I don't realize how dependent I've become on my phone until I leave it somewhere, or forget to charge it.

While in Boston, I used it for everything. Where were my friends at? Let me check FourSquare, or text them. What events did I want to see at the Con? Let's check Conventionalist. The food at the Con sucks? Alright, let's check Google, Where, and Yelp. I remember as a child on vacations just relying on maps, street signs, visitor guides, and the pamphlets at the hotel to figure things out, and this is just so much better. Absolutely everything I needed in one package - that is why I don't mind that the Droid X is so large that a tiny person like me could use it as a Great Shield.

But moreso than that was the community that was made possible by the Android (ok, fine, and the iPhone as well). Checking the Twitter feeds for #PAX revealed tons of interesting things that were going on, gossip about the Con, and individuals that were planning their own get togethers while at PAX. Sure, the cell internet was terribly slow as a result. It was fascinating to see things happening at the show, and then to see them get tweeted mere moments later.

I'm really, truly glad to see Smart Phones helping the helpless geeks become better at social pursuits.

Rift Community Event

Yes, I'm being evil. I am backdating blog posts that I am adding today. While at PAX, the cell internet was reasonably slow because there were simply so many people trying to access it, so I wrote a decent amount of blog content that I will be slowly posting. This is why I haven't said anything comprehensive about PAX yet, because I already wrote it!

While I am going to strive to not make this another video game only blog, part of what interests me in life is video gaming, and as such I am certainly going to post about it to some extent. Don't worry, I'll try to keep it to a reasonable level.

That said, while at PAX, one of the things that I was lucky to have the opportunity to attend was the Rift Community Event. I have been playing Rift since beta, and am nearly 50 (PAX set me back a bit, but it was definitely worth it). Getting to put faces to names, and to actually talk to the people responsible for developing the game was a fantastic opportunity. While I was sad that they didn't have a booth at the event, this definitely made up for it, and was honestly probably better in the end.

Trion closed down the Blu Restaurant for the evening, and they were serving h'or d'oeuvres, pasta, and drinks. I have to give the restaurant credit, the food and drinks at the event were definitely amazing, including this little mini crabcake that was good enough to satisfy a Marylander. Several of the Community Leaders, Sr. Devs and Marketing people from Rift were there, I took pics of mostly everyone (save Abigale and Elrar, who you might know as being Community Managers), which are hosted on my Flickr.

There were only probably around 200 or so people there, so the people from Trion were mingling around, and we got to talk to a few of them a good bit. They seemed really, genuinely interested in our feedback as players, and were aware of a lot of the things that were being brought up. A lot of the things that we mentioned as having problems with in the game, they had experienced as well, and were already working on solutions. Ironically, many of the issues I personally was having were resolved in the patch that hit the morning of the event, so I didn't have as many questions to ask.



Dwarf Jumping: This has been a big pet peeve of a few of my guildies for a while (most notable, my boyfriend), hence it was basically the first thing asked. The dwarf jumping animations, especially for the male dwarves, are just bad. The dwarves jump and split-kick their legs, and it's just horribly awkward looking. Apparently the reason their animation is so bad is because they had a hard time rendering them as jumping realistically, but at the same time not losing height in the process. It was more important to have dwarves not be penalized for their small stature in the game world (which has happened in games in the past). We made some suggestions as to how to improve their jump animation, including the flip-jump that was used in EQ, as well as having a High Elf come out and do a Legolas-style "Dwarf toss." I'm not certain they'll actually fix this particular issue, but at least there's a good reason.

Belmont: For those of you who don't play on Belmont (or one of the other original beta servers), you might not be aware of the fact that these older servers have had their share of little issues as of recent. They are aware of this, and are keeping a close eye on these servers to ensure that they continue functioning properly.

Raids: They were sincerely surprised at how fast that players got to the raid bosses, and in turn got so many of them down. Because of this, (and because earlier that morning they'd buffed several bosses) I have the feeling that the next round of raid bosses will be harder.

Artifacts!: I actually tracked down the "guy that put things in hard to reach places" (Sr. Game Developer Simon Ffinch) and he confirmed that every artifact in the game can be reached by player characters, even those without Angelic Flight. He personally tested all of them before Angelic Flight was even added to the game. As the OCD type of person who sees something shiny and must acquire it, I was very happy to learn this. He cannot confirm the same for crafting nodes because he didn't test them all. If an artifact is particularly hard to get to, there is a higher chance that it will be a rarer artifact. It's not a guarantee, but the chances are better. Also, apparently someone had already completed 100 Artifact sets and gotten the Shiny Tartagon - but was 14 levels too low to use it.

Underwater Zones: During their video loop, I saw something that looked like a Mermaid underwater, and I asked about the rumored underwater zones. It is something that the Devs really want to explore, but many of them have played other games where underwater zones have been pretty terrible. They realize that the swimming system that Rift released with had some limitations, and they want to get past these in order to deliver the best gameplay possible. Many of them have experienced underwater zones in games like EverQuest, and knew how terrible they could be (if you played EQ, you know exactly what I am talking about).

I'm sure there are other things that I am forgetting, but those were the things that come to mind right now. All and all, I had an extremely good time, and if you have the opportunity to go to a Community event, I HIGHLY recommend it.