A Gustav 30 in 30, #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

[Gustav 6,325]

In perhaps the most meta image the VHL has ever seen, here's my computer with this article in progress. I've had the same laptop the whole time I've been in the VHL--so imagine how many times I've pressed the space bar you see here for your enjoyment.

 

 

There have been thirteen World Junior Championships in the VHL since I took part in my first one back in S65. And before you ask, that one was a nightmare.

 

The WJC is a big opportunity for anyone new looking to make a difference. It's true that not many people care about the tournament if they're not in it. It's also true that not many people in our tournaments care about them. But for many, it's a big deal. That's especially true when those people are very new and are finally getting a chance to get their hands on STHS. And it was true for me as well when I applied to run Team USA in hopes of GMing my player to success. I'd never touched the STHS client before and I was ready to do what I'd seen in my own locker room in terms of helping players have a good time.

 

I didn't get exactly what I asked for, but it still felt great to be picked as GM of Team Asia. That feeling didn't even change when I found that there weren't enough players eligible for my team, or that the ones I had were mostly inactive. Lots of people wanted a WJC job, and it felt really good to be important. I picked my roster, made the right complaints, and soon received notice that I could fill in those inactive spots with players that had been left off of other teams. And that helped to some extent--we still had a worse roster than most other teams, but I at least brought in a few people that helped us out. @Kuch9's Viktor Kozlov and @xsjack's Jack Lynch were wrecking the M at the time, while I always appreciated seeing "Srraxxarrakex II" (I wonder how many others can spell that!) on the play-by-play. I announced the roster and sent out the proper invites, and then I got in the business of figuring out how to run STHS.

 

And then I broke my computer.

 

Running STHS on Mac is something that's been figured out by different people, in one way or another, over the years, but no one I knew had done it and neither did anyone they knew. The STHS client is Windows software, meaning that you'll need to find a workaround if you want to get your hockey jollies with any other OS. These workarounds exist for Mac, but they're janky to say the least--I eventually came across one fully functioning, but that was after I spent $100 on Parallels (a program that drained both my battery and my storage). Before "eventually," I found out how to make it work on a very janky level with Wine. Do you enjoy not being able to see where you just put your players in your lineup and just having to remember? I've got quite the program for you if you do.

 

Many of you know that I'm not great with computer stuff, so I'm also assuming that you know how much of an accomplishment it was that I got it to work to begin with. The STHS website has two "versions" of the client, one for Windows and one that's allegedly for Mac. The thing is, the Mac "version" is the same exact .exe file as the Windows one, and the only difference is that it downloads itself in a folder with a text file that basically tells you you're shit out of luck. I don't remember this file being particularly helpful to me, and that's what led to me eventually finding my way to Wikihow trying to figure out how I could open this thing with my computer.

 

"Download Wine" seemed easy enough, so I followed the link that was on Wikihow and clicked the button to download the software. That popped up a window that wasn't clear at all as to its purpose, but had a button that said "continue" or something similar. So, I clicked that...and watched as my computer installed some random antivirus software.

 

Shit.

 

I found the actual button that got me past that window quickly enough and downloaded Wine for real. From there, it was about three straight hours of trial and error as I clicked things, first trying to get the software to open, then trying to open the client file from the index, then trying to figure out how to put players in my lines, then finally generating a lines file and emailing it to Devise. All was well and good and the world had no worries in it.

 

That was, of course, until my computer slowed to a crawl and refused to do anything I wanted it to. I really hadn't paid attention to this random thing that was sitting in my downloads folder because I didn't see anything happening with it right away, but here I was a couple days later with a nonfunctioning computer and a few searches on my phone warning me that this program (I forget what it was called) was straight-up malware that I was dumb enough to install. Deleting it didn't fix anything, so I ended up having to take it to the Apple store and hearing that they'd be happy to reset it for me, and by the way, that will be $800 (seriously), and, oh right, you have AppleCare (a 1-year policy that came with this thing and that I'm very happy I was still under the terms of at the time), so you'd better thank your lucky stars you won't have to pay that much. I didn't have a functioning computer, so it wasn't a big deal for me to just not have a computer altogether in the week or so they took to reset it (I'm also not sure why that took as long as it did either). During this time, I didn't have any real-life setbacks beyond having to convince a professor that I couldn't do the homework because my computer was broken--something that I'm sure he heard as a fake excuse all the time, because he definitely never believed me.

 

That also led to me dropping off the face of the VHL Earth for close to a week. Regardless, I'd sent in my lines and I hoped my team had done well despite me not being around Discord much (don't ask me why I never checked in on my phone, because I have no idea). I was not altogether surprised, but still disappointed, to find out that a.) Team Asia had gotten absolutely bodied in the first round of the tournament and wouldn't be progressing to the next ones, and b.) I had managed to screw up the lines (because I didn't know I had to hit "copy all") and everything past our first game was simmed with auto-generated lines. Asia did manage to pull off a win--despite the index no longer existing, comments on this thread tell us that we managed to beat Europe--but that was it. Team Asia was Team Disappointment for the rest of the games we played and had the GM to match.

 

But after the tournament, I'd learned a lot. I'd put together a team and thought about how I would hypothetically manage them had I had the means to do so, I learned that the community saw me as good enough to do something cool in an official capacity, and I learned that I really cared about those things after I had them taken away for a bit. And, for better or for worse, in my own janky way, I made STHS work on a MacBook. That's something that would set the stage for...quite a bit. And there's quite a bit more personal history, and some marginally better GM accomplishments, on the way.

 

 

Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience:

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?