Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, November 15,2004.

Back in the late 1980s when entire computer systems could run on a solitary floppy disk, when computer graphics had but two dimensions, and apparently I had all the time in the world, I lost three entire days of a Christmas vacation doing nothing but playing the game SimCity. Sigh. It was delightful. Oh I had a certain amount of guilt at the time and a new wife with deep concerns (what next -- Star Trek conventions?), but as far as binges go, it was actually educational.

SimCity -- for those of you might have missed it because you had lives or cable television -- was the first commercially successful simulation game. The idea was for you to be a city planner. You were given a chunk of land with forests, rivers, oceans, etc, you zoned different parcels of the land (residential, industrial, commercial), connected the parcels with roads and public transportation, and based on this the sims (people) would move in and build things and ask for more police and pay taxes and plead for better roads and so on. Just like in real life. Your job, as the omnipotent city-planner person, was to grow your city to a sustainable level. Keep the taxes flowing in while convincing the sims not to flow out.

And as omnipotent city-planner person, you got a glimpse at your dark side (if you cared to look). For example, I would jack my tax rates up for a few years and absolutely fleece my sims so that I could buy an airport. Then I'd bulldoze the zones the sims had vacated because of the high taxes and plop the airport down right there. I'd zone flood-prone areas as residential because better to wash away sims than my expensive power plants. And I'd routinely bulldoze hospitals and churches that the sims had built because, hey, you don't get no tax money from hospitals and churches.

So what made this experience educational? Well, I learned two things, which are reflected in this week's comic: One, nothing makes people so temporarily happy as a new highway. Greater Grand Rapids unveiled its M-6/SouthBelt/Paul Henry Freeway this week thus achieving the very dream of every American city: a complete loop of limited-access highway. I, myself, took the blessed road home Wednesday, sailing along in 75 mph bliss. Then, after exiting, I crawled along in a 15 minute backup on a two-lane road now choked by the new traffic. And like any good sim, I wanted to tell the omnipotent city-planner moron to build me a four-lane road with a median and traffic lights. NOW!

Two, if given an appreciable amount of extra time, my natural instinct (like most people) is to spend it goofing off. With the Internet, a full set of encyclopedias, and at least 20 novels I've been meaning to read, it's a wonder I ever get anything done. Well, a wonder until I realize that I don't actually get paid to find out that Woodrow Wilson's first wife died while in office or that Tayshaun Prince had 19 points for the Pistons Wednesday night or reminiscing about old computer games that... come to think of it, I'd better get back to work.