Stop 1: A smoking, hoodied gentleman casually explains that there is no need for us to take the car out for a test drive, but if we “really want to”, we can. Uhh onward.

Stop 2: Two dealerships. No, of course they don’t have cars < $10,000!

Stop 3: This car has to be dug out of snow that fell two weeks ago and also needs a battery boost.  The salesman breaks the hood latch doing this but hey, we can deal with that as it means a few bucks off. Out on the road (with the salesman) a cupful of water pours from the visor mount onto the dash.  Back we go.

Stop 4: This car is nice.  It’s got everything we could ask, albeit a  bit larger than we wanted for a 4 cyl, but it’s in great shape.  However, it’s boxed in their driveway by another resident who isn’t home, and there’s no insurance on the car which means that even if we could get it out of the driveway, we couldn’t actually *drive* it–though we did have a really nice chat with Grandpa while standing there.

Stop 5: Reluctantly home. Heavy snowfall sent us home earlier than we planned. But it was mainly due to the fact that the heat in our current car is lukewarm (at best)–the ‘defrost’ mode makes seeing out the windshield worse than if we didn’t turn it on–and it was getting dark at 1630 hrs.  Frost-bitten and tired, we stopped halfway home for warm food and to get the feeling back in our toes. Six cups of tea later, and a pee break we make it home unsuccessful, but planning the next outting for Sunday.

Day 2 – Stop 1: Dealerships at the Auto Mall.  One-stop shopping! Dressed in multiple, wooly layers and another list off we go. We quickly find that Sunday shopping doesn’t exist in the bible belt of the Valley so we settle for walking the humongous lots on our own. Found some good deals, but no way to get in touch with anyone; frustrating, but their loss I suppose.

Stop 2: Smallish, but friendly car lot.  Test drive two cars; one noisy, ugly and overpriced, the other nice, clean, running well but out of our price range.  Some bargaining, but in the end, not good enough.

Stop 3: Notice a small used-car lot on the way to our next destination. Two possibles!  Take the better one out for a road test and see that the wipers aren’t intermittent; they run rapid –or off.  We wipe the condensation from inside the windshield and note the large crack running down the centre.  Bad brakes, no side mirror and rough idling. We don’t bother with our second choice.

Stop 4: Decent salesman, new car just came in from a trade-in.  Bingo!  The back seats are a bit roughed up, but not a problem.  This is it… our new car.  Just needs to pass the test drive. Topped up with gas and away we go. Less than two blocks from the lot, the heating gauge jumps to H.  Okay maybe it’s a glitch; we drive a bit further but then notice the smell.  We turn around and while stopped at the red light, the car shakes and just about dies. Back on the lot, we open the hood to smoke billowing and the salesman mumbling, “well that’s no good…”.

Stops 5,6,7,8,9...  various dealerships, backlots, salesmen, u-turns, illegal and dangerous driving, phone calls, bad directions, train-crossings, drive-bys and non-stop rain.

Home: The goal was to purchase –and drive home a car before the end of this weekend. We weren’t fussy, we had cash, we thought we were as prepared as we could be.  It would be easy and fun!  Instead we found the weather, our current car and our timeframe were all against us.  Who would have thought that spending thousands of dollars would prove to be so damn difficult?

Well…that all changed for me recently. For the past two months I have spent a great deal of time in front of my 15″ laptop screen–juggling four on-line courses, paid design work, and my usual duties as an Arch Linux developer. A few weeks ago I noticed I was getting headaches much more frequently than I’m used to. I also became aware that their intensity was directly proportional to the amount of time spent ‘at the keys’.

For a bit of background, my desktop consists of a 15″ widescreen LCD at 1680×1050. It is normally set to 100 dpi, with Arial 8pt for GUI stuff and Dina 13px for terminal applications.

I began experimenting with my desktop config last week, trying darker and low contrasting colour schemes in a vain attempt to ease the strain on my eyes. After each significant change, I’d go back to my routine for a couple of days to get acclimated. Despite this, nothing seemed to help and before long another headache would set in.

At some point I realized it wasn’t so much the contrast level that was bothering me, but rather my ability to focus on large blocks of text for extended periods of time. That’s when I decided to tweak my fonts.

The result? It’s been about a week now and I haven’t suffered a single headache. Not only that, but I can now sit comfortably in my chair without unconsciously leaning over my keys! And In case anyone is wondering the obvious…yes, I already wear glasses–a very light and up-to-date prescription.

For anyone interested, here’s what has changed:

I bumped the dpi/ppi from 100dpi to it’s natural setting of 124x125dpi (determined by X’s DisplaySize settings and the physical measurements of the screen (13″ x 8.3″)). This made an enormous difference for most GUI applications, with the exception of Firefox.

For Firefox, I have forced the minimum font size to 13, though I may bump it to 14 in the near future. It is not an ideal solution as there are several instances where small fonts are appropriate (sidebar text, etc.) however there’s no easy way to discern the body of a page from peripheral elements.

Lastly, for the terminal I’m still using Dina, but now at it’s maximum size of 16 pixels. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a decent console font any larger than that without jumping up to a 20px Terminus.

This influx must be due to the ‘want it now’ generation where people can’t stand to spend more than a few minutes on one thing before losing attention. Want to learn about Italy? You can now find out everything you need to know, not by reading a travel guide written by an experienced traveller, but by quick facts summarized by a computer, with cute little diagrams to keep your attention. These invading, generic and shoddy attempts at information could be called the Walmartizing of books.

A while ago, I noticed this invasion of Dummy books at our small,local book store where the computer section is nothing but “Windows for Dummies”. There was not one independently written book on anything other than mainstream technology.*blah*

It is discouraging to realize how popular and how invasive these books have become, while independent writers are pushed aside by these seemingly informative and digested knock-offs.  It is sad too as I realized that over time, our wonderfully diverse bookstores will become one big yellow store for dummies.

No one really cares if I have finished my Christmas shopping—why should they? Do they really expect to stand around and listen to my woes of not being able to find some obsolete perfume my mom has worn for the last thirty years? Or to hear about the scads of money I have spent on everyone? I doubt it. The fact is, at this time of year that greeting replaces the hi-how-are-you-variety. To which ‘fine’ or ‘good’ are the stock answers because no one wants to hear how I really am. It is just filler to get through those awkward moments in passing.

Ellen Degeneres talks about this on her Here and Now (2003) dvd:

Even when we say, “How are you?” we don’t mean, “How are you?”—we don’t care. Just give us a “fine” or a “good”—a one syllable answer and move along. And don’t even say “pretty good”. That’s a follow-up question: “pretty good” “something happen?… I don’t… have… time to…”

Funny stuff because it is so true. In the past few weeks, I have been asked repeatedly if I finished my Christmas shopping and even though I haven’t, I just say “yup, how about you?” Frankly I hope they don’t have some long, convoluted response either. I just don’t care and that’s why I never ask anyone to start with. I did make the mistake once of responding with, “actually I’m not buying Christmas gifts this year”, which prompted a clipped explanation of my reasons why—then somehow foolishly claiming that we actually don’t have cable TV. I’ll bet he was glad he asked! It all sounds so radically different that people just don’t know what to say in response, and at that point I wished I never said anything, but “yup, how about you?”. It is a meaningless, empty greeting and discouraging to think that finishing one’s Christmas shopping is something to be touted to anyone who asks.

Let’s face it Christmas has become one long commercialized holiday where the expectation is to shop til you drop and outdo last year. There is nothing more repulsive than listening to someone talk about their shopping excursions; how long the line-ups were, how aisles were clogged with pushy people, all to buy another wallet for dad because that’s what he wants every year and that is what’s expected. When in contrast, donations for food banks are down, the homeless are freezing on the cold streets, and single mothers cannot give gifts to their children.

I think it has something to do with the sheer mind twisting that goes on trying to live left-handed in a right-handed world. Think about it, doors, phones, knives, scissors, musical instruments, cars, bounded note-pads…they all require some sort of mental readjustment. I have one knife I use faithfully, because it’s the only one that cuts properly for me. In notepads, I start on the ‘backward’ side of the last page and work my way forward. Using a can opener? Forget it, I can’t. Throughout my whole life, I’ve had to adapt, modify and go against nature, whether it was from playing baseball in grade five using a right-handed mitt (which involved catching the ball in my left hand, whipping off the glove, throwing the ball with my left, and shoving the glove back on before the next hit); or learning to play the guitar in grade eight…upside down and backwards—it’s all a brain fuck.

Everyday there is some roadblock that requires alteration, whether subliminal or not it’s draining for us lefties to get by in a right-handed world. No wonder some days my head is pounding from using a right-handed mouse. Oftentimes I switch it, but some mice aren’t ambidextrous. In fact when I started university, the left side of the keyboard had no room for a mouse, so I was forced to learn it right-handed. Eventually I gave in and used the right-handed mouse for everything, even gaming—it just became too much of a hassle and actually I became quite good at maneuvering. It wasn’t until a few months ago I decided to switch. Talk about immediate relief—it was pure bliss. Despite the occasional instinct to reach with my right, I now use mice exclusively with my left. The only thing I haven’t been able to master yet is gaming. (I just can’t walk forward, turn and shoot, it requires too much undoing of already learned behaviour.)

I had a psychology intern in my office recently to train her on a computer program and she saw me struggle with the dilemma of which hand to use to guide the mouse. She thought it was interesting how the two sides of my brain were fighting for control. It was interesting to note the subliminal, internal struggle going on each time I reached for the mouse. I wasn’t aware of the massive, internal battle going on, but I found it frustrating that my hands and brain weren’t talking at all!

Sure, we may be the clichéd creative, artistic and all the other good things but are we prone to disease, mental illness and early death simply because we use our left-hand more? All I can say is try living in a backwards world, where your brain is forced to do unnatural things, while every attempt at writing neatly becomes a smudged, inky mess. It’s no wonder we are destined to become cancerous, schizophrenics who only live until 40.

When I go out to do battle with the enemy, I strap on my nipple protectors, shimmy into my hot, pink g-string, sling my gun over my shoulder and I’m ready for anything. But wait…let’s not forget the matching stiletto heels! At least I’ll look sexy when I die, all sprawled out. Round one… I’m hit, moaning *ahhh*…my body ripples with the impact as my bouncy, abundant breasts heave forward bursting from my tight leather. I hear the cheers from my opponents as they scream “kill the whore!” The assault increases, more jolting, more orgasmic moaning. I collapse to my knees, well-rounded and naked buttocks gleaming in the lantern light as I fall forward… I lay battered…defeated…but yet – teasingly hot all sprawled out! The killers reap their praise, “you got the whore!”, “good job!” Round two…the whore changes her model to a nondescript male skin and the flaming taunts quickly die down. I am a woman gamer, a generic gamer, not an object to be taunted because of my skimpy outfit, but just a gamer—like everyone else.

It’s been over five years since I wrote that article about “Women in G-strings” and it was by far the most commented on, by women, men, gamers and non-gamers alike. I received hundreds of responses either bashing or applauding my opinion. I also received a lot of “why don’t you just make your own model if it bothers you so much?” advice. As a woman gamer I have always customized my model in one way or another but my point is—why should I have to?

Five years later, it is obvious that game developers still cater to men and have not faced the reality that women make up a large segment of gamers. I had high hopes that designers and/or gaming developers would see the need to include models that are of the non-humongous-breasted variety, but I see that variety is not what we got. It seems we have the same narrow-minded bimbo-themed models showing up in all genres of games, they cast spells, tantalize and whimper seductively.

My more recent foray into Dark Messiah started off great with the demo, showcasing cool effects, decent models and all the makings of an epic game, but then fell flat with the full release and the giggly, jealous bimbo sideline story. I ditched the game for that reason and for the obvious, it was buggy as hell. But the point is… they turned a potentially exceptional game into a mediocre sham by not offering ONE main female model, while the main male model interacts with fawning, stupid women, who want nothing more than to garner his attention. *tsk* Dark Messiah developers. Is this what female gamers want in a game? We already subject ourselves to the incessant flaming and harassment that goes on in game just because we are female, so why wear a model that looks something like a stripper or worse, play as a man with annoying bimbo sidekicks.

I’ve played a lot of games over the years and each time I participate in the forums, I ask about plans for female models, characters, etc. It is troubling to read (as in the case of Dark Messiah forums) that “historically speaking women were not warriors”, therefore there are no female warriors in the game. This is where I point out that ‘historically speaking’ mages did not kill with sticky magical fire grenades that bounce on the ground, explode and kill. My point got lost in the heated “historical fact” conundrum and I gave up. This issue of gender often gets lumped in with the political online debate that all ethnic groups should be represented or the game should be historically accurate, or worse be educational in terms of skill. I do not care whether a game accurately reflects history, but I do care that almost half of the gaming population have no choice but to play as stupidly dressed females or as men. Why not throw in some solid female peripheral characters or a main character that can be customized to be male or female? I understand that including both male and female main characters may not be so easy to do for single player games, since it involves changing dialogue, voices, interactions, and the physics of the game, but at least have some solid side characters.

There is hope as there are some developers that realize the potential in including decent female models and have adapted their games to include competent side characters. Half Life II did it right. In both HL I and II even though the main character is male, the females in the game are fighters, decently dressed and not stupidly orgasmic in sound. In other words, they are normal. I quite liked playing as Doctor Freeman because the gender-issue wasn’t an “issue” at all. For one, he doesn’t speak and the other characters treat him as somewhat gender neutral. His side-kick Alyx is the best damn looking female model I have ever seen—she’s tough, dressed normally AND smart. Even though she subtly flirts with Doctor Freeman from time to time, it is unobtrusive.

I don’t play online as much anymore as I’d rather spend the time on single player but I know that popular opinion on many forums is that women should stop whining and just play. I like to think I have a choice, but frankly when a new game comes out and its main character is male and the only other females in game are bimbos, then there is no choice. It is inherently impossible to enjoy such a game as a woman gamer.

Frankly I still believe that more women would take up gaming if their sexuality was not an issue during game play and modelers/developers responded with suitable model choices. My advice to any woman wanting to take up any game; wear a generic model/skin and/or purchase games that offer choices. Perhaps in our collective purchasing power, we can force developers to consider the other half of the spending gaming community.