Today was an excellent day. Got some big news that my home office will be sharing soon. Plus I came home to find a suspicious package on my doorstep. What did it contain, you ask?

The FIEND FUCKING FOLIO, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Edition THE FIRST printed in 1981, courtesy of our good friends Lloyd and Jeanie. This is when you know that certain people are truly your friends: When you offhandedly mention in passing that you used to read the Dungeons and Dragons Fiend Folio over and over when you were a kid and man, you really wished you still had it.

Well here it is, the original freakin book — it even smells like I remembered it. And it only had one previous owner. Yes, apparently this book once belonged to one “Eric Frost” according to a Boris Vallejo bookplate on the inside cover. Eric, you had good taste. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of your Fiend Folio.

Remember people: Mezzodaemons have 10+40pt hit dice. Yeah, I don’t believe in that 3rd/4th/5th edition garbage. Fuck that noise — it’s 1979 Gary Gygax AD&D rules or nothing.

Microsoft’s Creative Destruction: A pretty good op-ed on Microsoft’s continued slide into irrelevance written by someone who used to work there. The main point is that “internecine warfare” is Microsoft’s flashing red weak spot where it keeps hitting itself for massive damage.

One thing to note is that Microsoft’s existence made computers cheap and ubiquitous for the masses. If it hadn’t been for Microsoft, there would be two types of computers: Five to ten thousand dollar machines that are completely closed architectures (the Jobs model) or super-cheap machines running free software that only gearheads know how to use (the Linux model).

Microsoft provided the middle ground — the accessible, affordable, user-programmable “good-enough” PC that most people need. This is the Jay Leno of PCs: Satisfactory but without an edge or any innovation. They turned computers into commodities, which is what people really needed. For the time this was a good thing.

But the question going forward is this: Do we see computers like we see appliances (toaster ovens, microwaves, etc..) or do we see them like we see cars? Are they going to continue to be viewed as mere tools, or are they material projections of how we view ourselves? And I’m not just talking about price or flashy style — I’m talking about usability and performance. Because if we continue to move towards the latter as a culture then Microsoft needs to get its act together and figure out how to build products that people don’t just need — it needs to build things that people want.

This American Life has its own iPhone app: Now you have super easy access to nebbishy hipsters sharing their embarrassing slices of life with you.