I just realized that I was thinking of the wrong game back on 12/5. "A Mind Forever Voyaging" is about a person's mind being put into a simulated world that models the future. "Suspended" is the one where you only see the world through six robots. I'm looking at a list of Infocom games and there are some real classics. "Planetfall", where you're in the Stellar Patrol and marooned on a world with a wise-cracking robot named Floyd. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which was changed just enough to make it really hard for HGG readers. "Bureaucracy", another Douglas Adam brainbender. Just about all of these games are way too hard for me.

Eudora Pro now has a free with ads option. In other words, it's free but it will show ads if it's in the foreground. The paid version doesn't have the ads, and there is a Lite option with no ads and some features turned off. It's kind of sad that they have to do this in order to keep up with Netscape and Microsoft, who have free e-mail clients. But I've never liked their e-mail clients: Netscape's is imbedded in a huge application and Microsoft's is Microsoft's. There are a few other commercial/shareware e-mail clients that will also suffer from the free competition. I bought Eudora Pro because I used Eudora Light and found that to be an excellent product. Although Eudora Pro didn't solve all my problems, I still feel that we need to support companies that support free versions of their products, especially one that's as venerable as Eudora. Sure, Netscape and Microsoft have free products, but that's just marketing. Eudora Light was done because Qualcomm pledged to maintain a free version of Eudora when they bought it. You try to support companies that do the right thing for the right reasons.

People have been complaining about Apple's AirPort technology, which isn't as easy to set up and configure if there are any problems in your network. Duh! Setting up a network is not easy if you're trying to do anything beyond the basics. DHCP, NAT, LMNOP and other rather obtuse acronyms are still not "turn it on and it works". For just the basic setup, where the AirPort *is* the network and it connects to a dial-up ISP, it works fine. Anything else requires people to get into the guts of it or get additional software to handle those extra features.

Weird poll on Slashdot.org: "Who is the most powerful: Particle Man, Triangle Man, Person Man, or Universe Man?". I have no idea what the reference is, although commenters say it's from a They MIght Be Giants song. To which I say "who?". I know they're a musical group and they were quite popular with the college crowd when I went to college. And I've been assured I've heard at least one of their songs on the radio. But if I don't know what those songs are, they're just another pointless alt band to me.

So I go to their site, download the twelve sound files that are available and listen to them. Don't recognize any of the songs. They sound like any other alt band and maybe I could learn to like their music -- two or three years ago. Today, nah. Don't like them. Know that other people in my group like them so it's doubtful that I'll ever take the time to try to like them. Such is my misanthropic view of being influenced in my musical tastes.