Once upon a time, in a land right here and now, I made an abundance of interface mistakes when using
computer applications and games. I would then whine like a baby and blame the program(er): "Whaaa,
it should have prompted me." To make matters worse, most programs actually played this "are you sure
you want to..." hand-holding game of weakness with me, and thus coddled me like a spoiled brat. They
made me weak, they made me lazy, and they are undoubtedly the source of my horribly limited
intelligence.
The sad thing is, this is actually a vicious cycle. See, the MOST tech savvy users were the ones
attracted to technology in the ancient times... in the seventies. A time when programmers used
punchcards, like MEN should. Any type of interface that has the word 'punch' in it is manly, and is
showing hardware and software who is boss. So whenever anything from an array to a zener diode
started feeling frisky, all it had to do was look at the PUNCH card that was sliding into its reader
slot and then the situation was all like "You see all this byte-kicking going on over here? Now shut
up."
We have steadily regressed though. As more unlikely tech enthusiasts are being lured to computers by
the fiendish temptations of facebook and angry birds, the pressure upon programs to anticipate and
compensate for their inevitible mistakes is unrivaled. Unfortunately, it is partly due to this
advancement in programming, this zealous error-catching storm of insanity, that leads users into
greater depths of stupidity. Programs are nearing the point at which they will be rolling their data
structures and twiddling their control handles while having to deal with us. Twittering (going to
work this word in as many times as possible) at our molasses-in-wintertime speed and club-fingered
neanderthal key bashing.
Program updating: "You won't remember, just let me." Closing a program unexpectedly: "That was
prolly your ham finger, am I right? I'll just ignore that then." Saving progress as you work: "You
will forget, then whine like always... jusT alLoW mE To dO iT FoR yoU, UsEr." How long before
programs realize the whole process would be much more efficient by dropping users entirely? Would it
be so difficult for a competent programmer to write a program that could dynamically write its own
programs to load porn, post on facebook, or play flashgames? I think not.
This is why I love adom. Like a twitchy piano teacher with a yard stick, adom teaches one to hit the
right notes. Or ELSE. Whether it was magic missiling myself in a corridor, inexplicably hitting the
'Qy' combination for no reason, holding the 'a' button for 1/10th of a second too long, thus
'a'pplying 'a'lchemy to two potions and blasting myself into the afterlife, or just knuckle-headedly
clicking the 'x' on my application window when I wanted to minimize it. I learned that keypress
mistakes WILL KILL YOU. In my panic riddled post-adom state of keypress grandmastery, I can now
snootily look down my snoot at the crawl players who actually implimented a command sequence to the
extent of 'ctrl-x yes {enter}' to protect themselves from such mistakes. The fools. How will they
ever learn if not by anguish induced face palms?
Furthermore, adom taught me more than just caution and precision, it taught me life wasn't fair. Of
course I knew it already, from the news and such, but nothing really drives home the feeling of
teeth-gritting injustice like playing adom for two years and then one day your most promising
character ever has a chance meeting with a ki-rin on their way out of the rift. Now that
is a lesson in 'why do I even try' that nothing can match. For your amusement and undoubted
nostalgia, here are some other examples of adom's approach to teaching fairness lessons: Descend a
staircase, you die. Don an unidentified item, you die. Walk on a tile, any tile, at any time, IT IS
A TRAP YOUDIE. I could go on for hours, but you already know all this. This is adom and this is the
world.
Take for instance the antelope that gets eaten while crossing the alligator infested river in
drought season. It didn't get eaten because it was the slowest, it didn't get eaten because it was
the least brave or had a poor work ethic. It wasn't sick and it wasn't old. It got eaten because the
universe decided to screw it, and that is all there is to it. Truth be told, the antelope didn't
even have to be crossing a river to die that day, a meteor could have gotten it just as easily at
any time, and it WOULD HAVE too if the alligator had missed. This is what adom has taught me. There
IS such a thing as being doomed and running out of luck, this is fact.
I now have perspective enough to take any unfair occurance life throws at me in stride, and to
expect more of the same, especially sequentially. If my text editor were to start randomly deleting
the pages as I type this, it wouldn't bother nor surprise me in the slightest. I already anticipate
for my editor to start doing exactly that any time now. Just because it has never previously done
that means nothing. Nothing. I make saves the same as I would in a game of adom, every 15 seconds on
the dot, because I know if I don't, the text will immediately be eaten by said lurking program bug,
or a power outage simultaneously timed with a laptop battery failure would get it... or something.
All the universe needs is an excuse, a loophole big enough to lasso an ant by the leg, if you allow
it that, you're dead.
Let the universe try to kill my dog. Just let it try. I only take him for walks at night now, so as
to avoid what little vehicle traffic there was, and I always carry him in my arms as I walk. No
snakes can bite him and no birds of prey could carry him off, as I also have him tied to me via his
leash. This is quite uncomfortable for both the dog and myself, as he weighs about 40 pounds, and
his leash is just a braided rusty old tire tread wire, but adom has taught me that this is all
necessary. Dogs have unwaivering faith in their abilities as fighters, and since I live in
appalachia, there is a chance that a bear could attack at any moment. The only chance my dog has to
escape a bear is if he is being pushed by a fleeing cowardly human. The universe will never eat my
dog, nor squish him via meteor, as I live within panic-fleeing distance of a sturdy and reliable
coal mine. Take THAT universe. Ha, ha ha. Ha...
Anyway, back to adom thanking. You see, it made me smarter. Not smart, mind you, just smarter. From
the first time it crashes (which shouldn't take long), you start learning. You first learn to search
out and deal with hidden folders and files, which will come in handy for the rest of your days
dealing with unruly software. What better way for a program to encourage a user to learn the ins and
outs of their operating system than to disable their game until they learn? Very sneaky adom
Also, I am certain that this is adom's way of saving the faint of heart from getting involved in
something with which they clearly have no business. In adom's opinion, what is to come should be
reserved for only the nerdy and masochistic of heart, so this is adom's acid test. If you can't
perservere through this, there are many other interesting things on the web. It's like adom is
saying "Here is your chance to escape, angry birds are twittering (ho) in the distance. You have no
one to blame but yourself if you stay."