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While scanning my usual news sites I ran across this article at MacWorld about a chef's game for the iPhone:
http://www.macworld.com/appguide/app.html?id=310830
This article is a review of a game that requires that you learn how to organize the events necessary to become a chef as a resort. The review tells what the game is generally about. I don't have an iPhone or a Touch iPod so I can't download the 99 cent game to check it out for myself.
The thought crossed my mind that a similar game could be created for any profession such that to get winning scores in the game the player would have to learn the rudiments of the career they found themselves interested in.
The only source for what I'm gonna write about is the article I linked above. I'm not trying to write true stuff. I'm speculating on the possibilities of how games like this could be employed by educators (who might soon find themselves unemployed).
I don't know how long I've been playing Minesweeper. My older sister, who has always been my nemesis, sometime loved, sometime hated, somehow, in her inimitable way, challenged me to endure the learning curve to see if I wouldn't get addicted. I got addicted. I play Minesweeper to beat my latest best time. I've done it practically every day, sometime for hours at a time, for over a decade. Obsessed.
Maybe I'm even more addicted to playing Hearts on my computer. I started playing these two games back when I switched from Macs to Window boxes. Got addicted to the MS version. Probably because they came free with the OS. Then, when it was either submit to total masochism or switch back to Mac, I partially rescued my sanity by switching back to Macs for the last three years.
Game-wise, it was a lousy move, but I'm not that kind of gamer. I like these two game simple games. I immediately began a search for a Minesweeper game for the Mac, but nothing I encountered had the elements I had addicted myself to on Windows. To find a version of Hearts I could live with I had to buy a CD full of the various card games.
Meanwhile, I learned how to play Sudoku and promptly allowed myself to get addicted to that. I willingly paid for a real good Sudoku game that was owned by a lousy site who didn't bother to ever upgrade the games they sold. At least not the Mac games (which is deceptively the name of their company). This game didn't work on the upgrade to Snow Leopard.
So, I continuously was on the prowl for these three games. I play another Solitaire game I downloaded free that has ads I can live with in it. Recently I resolved my Jonesing for Minesweeper with a free game I found of all places on an Apple games site.
I not only found a Minesweeper game on that site, but a Sudoku game too. Neither game is a finished product. Neither keep score for the fastest times and neither of them have a Help or Preferences folder, but they're the real deal as far as the game-playing is concerned.
What I'm writing about is my devotion to playing these silly games. They're there for me to goto as a tool to segue between two areas of concentration. The Hearts game I bought on the CD does have a Preferences page such as you'd expect on a commercial product. I just noticed a checkbox on that Preferences page that let me opt to play Hearts at a more difficult level. I checked the box.
I bought this CD maybe two years ago. I've played the Hearts game on it practically everyday since. I thought I had this computer game figured out. I knew within a reasonable range what the final outcome might be. I certainly didn't think checking that box would destroy my arrogance, but it did.
Previously, I could depend on winning 8 out of 10 Hearts games. Now I feel lucky to win 2 out of 10 games. I lose many games by 50-60 points out of the 100 points it takes to win. Slowly, over a period of two weeks or so, I conjured a strategy that will allow me to address the changes checking that box in the Preferences page wrought.
I literally get depressed if I don't win consistently. Since my stay at the State Hospital I don't allow depression to find a home in my psyche. I MUST find a winning strategy, and so I do. Why would I not? I've been a must-abator all of my life.
I can't help but to get tickled over Tiger Wood's wife beating him with a golf club for messing around on her. Talk about your poetic justice. The best golf player that ever lived gets punished with his own weapons of war.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
