'Mind'sweeper

This is an image I picked off the web.. My 'Best time' to date on the expert level remains to be 112 seconds

I have an oncampus job like most desi people at UC and well, as it happens, I spend about 3 hrs out of the 4 I work per day just staring at the computer and running out of sites to look at. I mean I have my quota of mail checking and now with the gmail chat thingie, I dont even have to sit n download some junk for the messengers and can happily chat with most people who r just as addicted as me... However, I do get bored of emails in no time... and seriously I donno how many people can actually be like me in this world... be absolutely content doing nothing in life but playing Minesweeper hours on the end....

Call it stupid/childish/jobless, whatever.. nothing's managed to put my mind in a kind of blank trance the way minesweeper does.. For those who don't understand the game, it may sound dumb.. just clicking away and flagging the mines... And it may seem like people like me don't even think before we 'reveal' an area surrounding mine.. But believe me, it takes weeks of staunch 'practice' and devotion to master it and once you do, you're hooked.. The 'best time' fever catches up and before you know it, you are clicking away to glory and anyone who comes in your path as you subconsciously concentrate and try to uncover those 99 mines is the 'villain of the day', because Minesweeper is that kind of an awesome game where you minimize, you're doomed!

You would expect that if someother window were active, the time should stop going up so you can be 'clever' and figure out where to click while the innocent game awaits for you to get it reactivate...but damn the game... unless the window is actually minimized, the time counts against you and you are done for! I have been sooo addicted to this game that I think its more of a 'mind-sweeper' than what its called and after scourging the net for different versions of the game I have reached the conclusion that the original is the best and I just can't get enough of it. Indeed there's this gloat of glee everytime you just finish the stupid game and thats like the one factor that can make you stop playing... well, for the next 5 minutes atleast!

But I have a word of caution for all you mine-sweeping maniacs... Ergonomically, its one of the worst games you could've chosen for addiction (unless u chose 'Pie Bill Gates' or something similar as you passion - they have pretty much the same detrimental effect) In sometime (I have taken about 3 months to fully appreciate it) your wrist starts giving you this annoying nagging pain that is more muscular than anything else... You find yourself rubbing your wrist more often than not and cursing it for your deterioration in speed at the clicking thing and you see that you can never match the speeds you once had when you hadnt mastered the game!

Moral of the story: Give your poor wrist a break... And dont blame it when it aches as you click away for research work... And hel-lo, there are other games in the world.. I'll talk about that soon.. I'm a gaming freak with more than one addiction... we'll get to that...

Cheers!
Jaya