Anarchy Online: Casual Intelligence (Part 1: Shopping)

I was speaking with my wife recently about Anarchy Online.  If you’d like to learn more about this (free to play / pay per month for larger expansions) game, by all means click the link and find out, it will open in a new window.  If you don’t care enough or already know about it, just bear with me for a moment whilst I explain one of those subtle points about why this game is so great.

In a word: Shopping.  As a general rule in “real life”, I like shopping for cool stuff.  Best Buy is my Disneyworld-esque shopping center of choice, naturally.  I also don’t buy much there due to the prices, naturally.  But it has awesome stuff that I like to look at and potentially make a mental note to shop for later online, naturally.  And it’s also filled with tons of stuff that I have no intention of EVER purchasing, but it’s pretty nifty to know that they have it.  Naturally.

Bringing that psychology into the world of online gaming, and you have a dynamic that is completely overlooked in almost every online game out there.  When it comes time to shop for something (a weapon, armor, social items, clothing, buffs, potions, stims, what-have-you), in any standard well-known MMOG out there, you go to a very plainly labelled store, and it gives you a list of the items you can use.  The list consists of three major categories of that item: Those that are too low level for you to care about, those that are too high level for you to use, and maybe one single item that is the current best of it’s type for you to use at your character’s level of experience.  In a word: Boring.

Then go shopping at any level in Anarchy Online.  Say you want to buy a weapon, so you go to a weapon shop by finding a store terminal center and logging into the terminal.  You are instantly barraged with an array of weaponry so vast that it’s almost immediately confusing.  You need to mentally filter out exactly what kind of weapon you’re looking for, then root through the handful of weapons in that terminal that fit your needs.  The selection is random, and the randomness comes from a MASSIVE cache of server-side possibilities that are so vast, there is a very good chance that none of the weapons in the store fit exactly what you need as far as speed, damage, and general efficiency are concerned.

So what now?  Now, unless you got really lucky, you need to shop around a bit more by finding another store.  There are sweet spots (my favorite being the strip mall in Old Athens city) where terminal centers are aplenty, and you can also hop from city to city, checking out different stores to see what’s in stock at this moment.

The very act of shopping for items becomes a mission (or “quest” for you warcrappers) in and of itself, and it’s probably one of the most casually satisfying aspects of the entire game.  This is mostly due to the psychological impact that searching-and-finding has on the average person, which is a point that is emboldened simply by the sheer number of single-player games and solo missions in MMOs that rely on that exact methodology: Go find an item.  But the mental impact of actually acquiring the item becomes ironically much more personal when you’re not just drumming out the feeder-bar text given to you from a mission booth or quest giver; you are literally searching for something to help your character out for no other cause than to increase your own efficiency as a player in the game.

Personally, I love belt shopping.  My wife is sitting next to me and just now lucked out in the OA “strip mall” by finding a three-slot belt wearable at level 12 (provided a few points were dumped into Computers, obviously).  That’s a pretty sweet find, so I asked her to pick up a couple of them (one for me, one for some lucky sod I run into at some point, since I love helping out the newbz).

Anyway, that’s enough rambling.  I love Anarchy Online for a lot of reasons, but today’s reason is all about the shopping.  I’d much rather search through a hundred terminals of mediocre and unusable items to find that one sweet deal than press a feeder bar for the only next-better-sword-for-you at the obvious store of obviousness that is so prevalent in the fantasy MMOs soaking up the market today.

Maybe it’s just me. ;)

More later…

The Panphobic Internet

I rarely buy in to the whole “be yourself” philosophy.  Too many people say that; it is only a means to blow off whatever valid point might be made about one’s personality.  Be the kind of person you want to be, I say.  I think I’m not alone in my social tendencies, to that end.

When I am in a social situation, be it with one person or a group of people, I find that I spend the initial stages of the exchange analyzing (sub-consciously or otherwise) the personality traits of those around me.  As the interaction continues, I tend to mold myself into an amalgamation of personalities that can interact best with that person or persons.  It is only when I am at home, without any reason or desire to adapt myself socially, that I am truly just “me”, and that is often when I truly am the sum of my memories.  In itself, the Me that sits here now is a combination of all the personalities that I have been in the past, with some dominant traits taking over where the less-used ones are set aside as pending, to be brought forth only when they can best be used.

With that in mind, it explains a lot about the internet.  It is behind the blanket of anonymity that people can embrace the personality-free monotone that is text on the screen, where people’s “true selves” come out more easily.  Of course, that is a very convenient way to look at it from my angle, because that makes me a saint by comparison to 99% of the people I watch in online-social exchanges.  Insults are aplenty, racism and phobia and paranoia are everywhere, and opinions without any basis of rational thought are thrown around like bacteria, polluting others’ sense of well-being in a tornado of bad moods and worse attitudes.  The internet embraces, and is embraced by, panphobia.  It seems like everyone on the planet is pissed off and/or scared shitless about anything they are given the option to fear, and with the internet they are provided a means to shed all of their social adaptations and inhibitions, and let their true selves — as ignorant and selfish as they may be — shine out for all to see in an internal defense mechanism made external as we all scream at the wall and watch the words of our inner demons appear without consequence.  ”Epic fail” would be the phrase to use, ironically coined by those who unknowingly embody the term.

The process of shedding our adaptive personalities in favor of the panphobic nature that blankets the internet is bolstered by the very rights we fight for.  We want the freedom to speak our mind, combined with the freedom to be heard.  An interesting dynamic, when you’re letting everyone talk at once.   When the ethical nature of tolerance that humanity has cultivated for so long disintegrates in a wind of noxious dissatisfaction with our lives, and hatred towards at least one other person or group of persons, it results in everyone screaming not only for their right to be heard, but practically begging for their right to silence others.  Organized religion failed to silence offending opinion when it was separated from the state.  The Internet, while not allowing it to happen, certainly seems to be cultivating the desire for it to happen through its integration into the world.

We’ve gone from giving everyone the right to be heard, to giving everyone the right to ignore, and to remain ignorant.

I am guilty as charged.  I love the internet for allowing me to speak my mind, and I refuse to shut up.  The very nature of my dissatisfaction with those who would perpetuate the global panphobia and intolerance you can see today by just randomly browsing forums means that I am no different.  Given the option, I would silence them (or at the very least force a sense of decency and ethics down their ignorant throats).  I am no better.

If it’s unavoidable, then perhaps the restraints that we place on ourselves in adapting to social situations are the very same restraints we should place on ourselves when barking into cyberspace.

I am not quite at the level of opening up and letting everyone know my personal data in order to restrain myself into an ethically bound entity on the internet.  Perhaps one day I will.  For now, at the very least, I can recognize a certain level of personal restraint (nay, adaptation) that I would have in any social situation, and apply it to my presence in cyberspace.  There’s nothing wrong with snark and sarcasm when applied with the right doses at the right times, but there is such a thing as letting our ignorance of other viewpoints and attitudes interfere with our ability to comprehend why we might not each be islands unto ourselves.  There’s only one island, and we’re all on it.  The only thing we shouldn’t tolerate is the panphobia that has become the very definition of internet culture.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the Internet to proclaim that the Internet might have been a pretty bad idea.  The entity of anonymous free-for-all phobia that embodies this global digital culture is probably the only thing left that cannot realistically be pwned with an overused meme or geeky witticism.

Internet is Epic fail.

See?  Doesn’t work at all.

More later.

10 Things Android (Doesn’t Really) Do Better Than iPhone

What follows is a direct reply to the MaximumPC.com article at: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/10_things_android_does_better_iphone

This response can be called “as biased” as the original article itself, considering that someone really had to dig for just 10 things Android OS does better than iPhone OS.  And these things are such a stretch, some of them are downright moronic.  I own two phones.  I originally purchased an iPhone 3G 8-gig, which is basically a second generation of the iPhone, and it cost me $300.  Even after taking that hit out of my federal tax return, I love the phone dearly, and still consider it the coolest piece of equipment I have, it gets more use than my PC.  About a year after I got the iPhone, I had to switch to Sprint, so I got an HTC Hero, which is a third-generation of it’s series, and supposedly the final true “iPhone killer” when compared to the exact model of my iPhone.  The volume of how destructively wrong that assessment is can only be referred to as “WTF”.  If anything, owning this piece of crap has only increased my love for the iPhone, which does everything I want a handheld device to do at least twice as good.

Keep in mind that I have not upgraded my iPhone to OS4, nor do I intend to.  From what I’m told, OS4 ruins my older 3G model with lag and slowdowns, so I’m sticking with the latest release of OS3, and that is what I am using to compare to Android OS in this response-review (based solely on my experiences with the HTC Hero).

I’ll start with the “10 Things” list from Maximum PC:

1: Android can Run Multiple Apps at the Same Time

Interestingly idiotic.  From just reading the text, the author pretty much punches himself in the face with this one.  If the iPhone can only multitask it’s native applications, such as Mail, iPod, and Phone, then would it not stand to reason that such benefits would be directly comparable to how cool he makes it out to be that you can do things on the Android while receiving notifications (like Mail), listen to music (like on the iPod), or… well, that last part is just stupid.  Gee, what I wouldn’t give to have my GPS device running full-tilt while I’m doing something else on my phone… except only I cannot think of a single instance where I would EVER need that.  Fact is, the iPhone only has the capability to multitask a few select things, which are precisely the things I want it to: playing music and… well, that’s pretty much it.  It’s a handheld device.  I don’t have anything I need it to do in the background.  If I want it to do something, I ask it to, it does, and then I’m done.  If I get a phone call, the worst case is that whatever I’m doing gets “paused”, and then I go right back to it.  Unlike, say, the Android, which crashes half the programs instantly upon receiving a call, often losing work.  In addition, this so-called multitasking that IS possible on my HTC is spotty at best.  I can’t even listen to music while doing ANYTHING else unless I want everything to lag so horrendously that I have no option but to go back and stop the music player, then dig out my app killer just to make sure it really did stop, because just stopping an application ALWAYS leaves it running full-tilt in the background, which is so ridiculous that I’ll be mentioning this moronic “feature” again later.  No such problems on the iPhone.

2: Android Keeps Information Visible on Your Home Screen

Widgets on Android are a complete and utter joke, and that author (what’s his name… Paul, okay, we’ll use your first name from now on…) — Paul’s comments are the punchline to that joke.  Weather widget?  Yeah, okay, you slide over to it, and it freezes the phone while loading the constantly-running-and-draining-your-battery-but-oh-so-convenient weather app in the background that apparently cannot actually display the information you want it to until you swipe to that screen, at which point you’re stuck waiting for 30+ seconds while it updates it’s information because it’s still showing yesterday’s weather.  When it finally updates, it couldn’t get your GPS signal right and can’t seem to retain the fact that you don’t want it to use your current GPS location to analyze the weather, but hey, at least you know the current humidity in New Jersey.  Maybe you should visit there, it looks nice out.  On my home screen on my iPhone is a button for the Weather Channel.  I press it (without “hunting” for it), and there’s practically zero load time, maybe 5 seconds on a bad signal.  Boom, the weather at the location that I last saved, along with the OPTION to either switch to another custom location or utilize GPS services to pull it up pretty much instantly for right where I’m standing.  This difference between Android’s use of widgets and iPhone’s is similarly comparable across the board.  (even the Android clock is slow… the CLOCK widget, for goddess’s sake, will show the last time you saw when you last swiped to it if it’s not on your first home screen, while it tries to load the CURRENT time… W.T.F.)

3: Android Has a Better App Market

When I saw the title of number 3, I nearly spit my coffee all over the screen of my iPhone.  I really truly did not think for a hot second that Paul would ever go there.  If there’s one thing I’ll put at the top of the list that is completely untouchable, it’s the iPhone’s App Store.  Android’s Market doesn’t even come close.  This is a sacrifice where true and full freedom breeds chaos and anarchy, and while moderation may not let the top-of-the-line first release through, it will almost certainly get there within a couple updates, or else that next contender WILL enter in and demolish it.  Let’s start with the App Store:

In the App Store, when I search for an app, if it exists, the search is going to find it.  Sure, there will be some crud in there, but for the most part it is simply the apps that do exactly what I’m looking for.  How do I know?  Because you go to an app and it often has many full paragraphs of descriptions about the app and it’s updates over time.  Scroll down a bit and you see screenshots, often up to 6 full screenshots showing you exactly what you’ll see when using this app.  Down from that is the ratings, giving an average review score that you can click on, and you are practically guaranteed to see at least one full review from someone who has actually used it.  Further down is information about the creator of the app, as well as an address to check out more apps by that author/company, along with full size of the app it’s version.  When you click to install it, it immediately leaves the app store, takes you to the exact location of the newly generated icon, and shows you a progress bar that tells you how it’s downloading, and when it’s installing, after which you can click-and-go.  Could not possibly be easier or prettier in it’s simplicity, yet informative and practical.

And now for the Android Market:  You go there, and search for an app.  Good luck finding anything even related to what you’re searching for, but let’s skip past that and assume you found something that is named in such a way that it might be what you want that’s not pornographic in nature, so you go to it.  If you’re LUCKY, you get a single line of text describing it, often in broken or simply downright bad english, a price tag that is probably in euros, and one of two average review scores: 1 star, or 5 stars.  It has 1 star if it’s been on the Market for a while and people have actually downloaded it, and all the reviews you can find are “sux” or “downt git” with still no actual description of what it does or what’s bad about it.  If it’s 5 stars, that’s because one or two people have downloaded it (probably good friends of the author), and their reviews are “works grate!” and “first!”.  Did I mention no screenshots?  That’s right, you have no way of knowing what it will even look like on your Android phone until after you’ve downloaded it (and likely paid for it through the requisite of converting your cash into french indochinese piastre).  Once you do decide to download it, it minimizes into your notification tray, which will lag around a bit while it downloads and while you try desperately to swipe it downwards but it cannot read your touch because it’s too locked up attempting to busy itself with the download, eventually allowing you to run the app from that notification tray, from which it will disappear forever after that first load, and you’ll have to remember exactly what it’s called in order to dig it out of your app list later in order to copy over to your home screen.  Dumb.

4: Android Gives You Better Notifications

After reading through this twice, I still don’t understand where the “better” comes in.  Something about multitasking and home screens?  Both of my phones show me what I want to see when I check for them.  Both will push mail and notify me when I get one, even in the background.  I’ve never experienced a moment where my life would have been better if my iPhone had informed me while I’m in the middle of a game that I have a Facebook comment.  It waits for me to finish to check that silly stuff, and even then only when I want it to.  I have zero problem with this.

5: Android Lets You Choose Your Hardware

This is starting to tire me out.  You’re really stretching, Paul.  iPhone OS runs perfectly on the phone that was designed around it.  Android runs shoddily on a series of slow retro-fitted phones in order to alienate whatever percentage of poor sods decide to buy that particular brand because they were told by everyone that it was the “iPhone killer”.  My hand is raised, by the way.

6: Android Lets You Choose Your Carrier

True, but the price of tea in China is down this year, Paul.  Android OS certainly does not work better on Sprint than iPhone OS works on AT&T, despite what you may think of the carriers.  (I have never had any problems with AT&T’s service in Michigan, but Sprint is complete ass, not that it makes any difference to the OS’s at all)

7: Android Lets You Install Custom ROMs

Paul is truly cracking me up now.  It’s like watching a starving man crawl through the desert, begging for water but refusing the fountain released by Apple because it is so very blasphemous.  He starts with explaining how all jailbreaking does is allow you to install pirate-apps onto your iPhone.  He then starts his Android props with “Not only do Custom ROMs bring the same functionality Jailbreaking does“– Wait, stop, Paul.  You can install pirate apps onto your Android phone with them?  You mean the ones that don’t get through the unfiltered Market filter?  Right, okay, moving on… Paul notes that you can do several things, all of which are basically a repetitive rewording of “customize your UI”. True, I can’t customize the UI on my iPhone.  Lord knows I want to, because all this convenience gets so boring.  How I long for a distracting and unresponsive yet fully customized UI!  Oh, look, it’s my Hero.  Whew!

8: Android Lets You Change Your Settings Faster

Very true!  With my Android, I can put a single button on the home screen that, when pressed, will initiate WiFi and connect to my router.  With iPhone, I have to hit a painstakingly long series of… 3 buttons to do it.  Oh but it gets better, check this out.  I can hit the WiFi button on my Android, then immediately go to my iPhone, hit Settings > Wifi > ON, then the home button, get connected, load up the browser, bring up facebook, post an update, go back home, go back into settings > WiFi > OFF, home button, then turn my iPhone off.  At that final moment, the Android MIGHT have finally established a connection to my WiFi network, but only so long as I took my time with the above sequence, and only so long as I’m within, say, 14 inches of my router.  But thank goodness there was that convenient button!  It seemed so quick!

9: Android Does Google and Social Integration

The title here is pretty silly, because it makes me double-check that I still have Google and Facebook on my iPhone.  Yep, still there.  But there is the one thing that I must bow down to that seems like only a cursory mention in his description of number 9: Facebook integrating into the phone’s contact list.  THAT is freakin’ awesome, and I bow down to Android for it.  Certainly not a game-winner, but I definitely wish my iPhone could do that as seamlessly as my Android can.

10: Android Gives You More Options to Fit Your Budget

I bought my HTC Hero this past February, right around the time that the iPhone 3G I own went down to $99 off the shelf.  Retail price for the oh-so-superior Android phone?  $249.  Yes, you have more options.  You can roll the dice with a pricey piece of junk, or buy an iPhone and know EXACTLY what you’re getting and what it can do without taking the chance of stumbling into an overmarketed paperweight that should never have hit the shelves in the first place, just because your friends and every review site told you it had a “open source” OS and was a “good competitor” to the iPhone.  I’m amazed those reviewers still have jobs.  I’d be amazed if Paul still has one, too.

Further game-killers:

No games on the android.  Like at all.  Bounce the cow and mine the loot and crap, sure.  Check out the immense, wonderfully developed games on the iPhone and you’ll see there is no comparison.  Android pawns off junkware that you wouldn’t download for free on your PC.  iPhone has games like Quest and Dungeon Hunter that make me wish there WAS a version of it on PC.  And they run beautifully, whereas the java junker games I’ve found on Android make me feel like I’m trying to play the ASCII version of Oregon Trail on a TRS-80.

Battery life sucks on the HTC Hero.  I can manage the battery life wonderfully on my iPhone and it will last a couple days on a full charge with moderate use, even after all this time.  The android goes from full charge to zero in a couple hours unless I basically sit on the third party “app killer” app that loads up to kill all the apps that continuously reload themselves into the memory of the Android for NO REASON WHATSOEVER.  It’s pathetic.

That’s enough for now.  Perhaps on next post, I will post MY 10 things the Android OS does better.  Yes, despite how biased you might think I am about my iPhone (and you’d be right), I do have a few things my HTC can do that I wish like hell my iPhone could do (only one of which was covered in MaxPC’s so-called Top 10).  So I’ll switch my bias around temporarily to do that… another night.

More later.

Breaking it Down: The Afghan Mineral Empire-To-Be

The New York Times recently announced the “discovery” of a vast field of mineral deposits in Afghanistan.  This, of course, is some serious news.  Plenty of good, and plenty of bad.  A break-down of a few elements of this story:

How on the Planet Earth was this not already known?  If you look at the map of the mineral deposits, they’re ALL OVER the place, totaling over $1 trillion in mineral wealth.  It seems to me that this was a fact that could not have been missed for so long, and it therefore becomes a huge contributing factor to our involvement in Afghanistan, both now and in the past.  It’s announcement and supposed “discovery” leads me to believe that the Pentagon officials have good reason to publicize the news… I just can’t for the life of me think of any reason that would outweigh the potentially disastrous outcome of this.

It is stated to be “many years” before the minerals can be exploited to any reliable degree.  Exsqueeze me?  Baking powder?  Dude, they’re minerals ripe for mining, and the money involved is insane.  You can bet your ass that Afghanistan will NOT be footing the bill in starting the mining projects.  With the U.S. on one side and China on the other, they’re going to get some professional help, and we are DEFINITELY going to see some huge industrial mines in full swing, easily within the decade.  Claiming that it will be many years in development simply because Afghanistan officials don’t know about the mining business is naive assumption at best.

China are some serious beyotches.  It is an inarguable fact that this find is not only going to draw their attention, but with how completely enamored they are with the mining industry — especially in the middle east — they are going to jump on the first plane over and begin the bidding war.  And without someone to stop them with a diplomatic shield; with the corruption in the Afghan government; and with the United States already bogged down financially in supplying military support to the region, China is going to win every bid, hands-down, no contest.  They are going to make the effort to outright purchase the entire country.  And you can bet that Karzai is going to be just fine with selling (he’s still only pretending to be dismayed by the $30 million that came in from China for the copper mines, I highly doubt their previous minister of mines was alone in a bribe that substantial).

The United States is now facing a problem of epic proportions.  If China or any other country comes marching in with every intention of mining Afghanistan drier than it already is, the sick amount of ground troops we have deployed there will simply not be enough.  We will fall to only two choices: Spend an equivalent amount to the wealth of the mines in protecting and stabilizing the country under some false hopes that they will just hand over the mining rights, or pull out completely and let Afghanistan become a Chinese state.

As much as the U.S. does not want to see Afghanistan get bought by China, neither do the Taliban.  The bad news is the Taliban are the embodiment of purified corruption, honed, trained and nurtured to accept anything in exchange for social power over the region.  China doesn’t care about social power outside of it’s own borders, so they’ll be the first to allow the Taliban to take over, and likely even pay them quite a sum to keep clear of the precious mining regions.  Perhaps even ask them to send their children out to work in the mines, an offer they would be all too happy to accept, since it would keep those children from being afflicted with such sinful western notions of education and independent thinking.

Afghanistan is not on the brink of being a wealthy exporter of minerals to the world.  It’s about to get bought, twisted up, wrung out, and put away by the greater powers of the world.

I felt sorry for the common people living in the region before.  I’m devastated at the thought of what will happen to them over the next decade.  There is likely nothing that anyone can do about it without sparking a world war, either… and that would undoubtedly not end as well as WW2 did for the United States.

More later.

Gaming Companies Are Skeered of iPhones

Firstly, the article on Appmodo: http://appmodo.com/18071/crysis-ceo-says-the-iphone-is-a-disservice-to-gaming/

Seriously? Really? You know what you sound like, dude? You sound like the same scared-of-new-tech idiots in charge of the RIAA and MPAA, all completely at a loss for how to integrate their industry into the newest technological trends in order to maintain a foot-hold in the business that they believe they have some God-given right to make a fortune monopolizing for the rest of eternity. They, and you, are dead wrong.

You do not have the right to wish away a new product just to make your fortune off the exact same sales pitch every single year. You do not have the right to simply kick back and let the bucks roll in while simply checking off a list of things you don’t want to see hit the market. Your career is not secure in blatant stagnation.

You want to remain on top of the gaming industry? Port your games to handhelds and release them for five bucks a pop, then start making new games based off that engine with one team while designing the next handheld engine with another team. And don’t go whining that you don’t have the resources to match the cost. Your team made Crysis for fuck’s sake, and you’ll match revenue to resource with ZERO packaging costs and easily three to five times the effective sales via downloads that you can split into chapters and make a gorram KILLING on.

So stop whining and adapt your business, prick, or go join the RIAA. You’re wasting your time complaining to gamers that we’re not forking over enough money for your old and decrepit console game.

More later.

Good Things

This is a list of a few of the good things in my life that I can think of to improve my mood at any given time.

My Wife: Bonnie has improved the quality of my life a thousand fold. She has given me the strength to go through with changes that I never thought were possible, the respect that I desire in regards to my own choices, the kick that I need to continue with the parts of life that I don’t much desire (but need to do), and most importantly the love that I’m only just starting to feel that maybe I do deserve.

GridStream Productions: The entity that I started so many years ago is still one of the greatest things I have ever experienced: the ability to entertain without being limited by someone else’s dogma about what entertainment should be, or in what medium it should be delivered. The staff in GSP is still amazing, and I owe what little sanity I’ve been able to hold on to these past 8 years almost entirely to them.

The New Workplace: I no longer feel like I need to step softly around everyone, as I am finally in a work environment with like minds and positive reinforcement. I am now in my element in the office, and I can do my job without the constant fear of being thrown under the bus by those who so irrationally disapproved of my existence.

My iPhone: It may seem like a small thing made smaller by the fact that it’s only an iPod touch now, but this little gem is still the coolest piece of equipment ever, a pocket-sized laptop with cool games and a longer wifi reach than any laptop I’ve ever used. I can do my Internet thang from virtually anywhere with this, and that makes it awesomesauce.

Okay, I’m getting tired of typing now and want to go spend time with the wife and stepkids. There’s more to this list, but maybe I’ll finish it up later. Word.

More later…

Moving to Grand Rapids (like now)

This is my final night in my apartment here in Williamston, MI.  I think I have seen more personal growth here in this very room than I have anywhere else in my entire life.  Many of the pieces of me that can only be defined through one’s own individual expression have taken shape right here, sitting at this computer.

To some people that may sound pretty pathetic, but honestly I think it has been extremely good for me.  I needed a piece of me to rub off in a way that simply wasn’t going to happen in “the real world”.  From this chair and this desk (but not this PC, hehe), I created the online radio organization called GridStream Productions (http://www.gridstream.org ), and it is an entity that took on a life of it’s own over the past several years.  So much so that I look back on it now and I have a hard time believing that it actually stemmed from what I considered a “failure waiting to happen” back when I first had the idea.  I had no idea that it would turn into the beast that it has.

Through GSP I have developed many great friends from all over the world, and I have really put my own little mark on a sizable portion of the online gaming community, and it’s rooted back to the infant days of the MMORPG.  That, as they say, is awesomesauce.

——————

Anyway, to the point: This is my last night sitting in this chair under the low-light glow of my desk lamp, typing away from my tiny little Williamston MI studio.  Tomorrow morning the U-Haul gets loaded up and Bonnie and I ship out to Grand Rapids, MI.

The move is almost entirely due to the centralizing of my department at my job as a radio commercial-traffic manager.  I think at any other point in my life before now I would have resisted such a move, but the timing of this reorganization of the business office could not have been better.  I am a newlywed, I have a whole new life ahead of me that I could not have forseen (and would have laughed at the suggestion of it’s possibility a mere few months before now), and both Bonnie and I are willing and ready to take on a whole new life in a different place.

The best thing is that we’re really not moving all that far.  Sure, it’s only an hour away from where we are now, but it’s like going from the country to the big-big city, and it’s beyond exciting.  I can’t wait to get started. :)

I only wish I could have taken some more time off work to get use to the area — a couple days would have been great — but in either case, I’m looking forward to the excitement of a ‘real’ down-town big-city life.  I’m eager and ready to join the rat race, I guess you could say. ;P

Wish me luck, peeps.  I’m outtie!  (but I’ll be back!)

More later.

Life Changes on January Twenty-Six, Twenty-Ten

Maiwage!  It’s what bwings us hea… togeva… todayyy.

So yeah, takin’ the vows.  Obviously, I’ve found someone who fulfills the two great necessities in my life.  She makes me happy, and she’s able to consistently put up with me.  How this worked out is practically a novel-length series of happenings, stretched over the course of a whole decade.

My love for Bonnie holds no bounds, and that’s a can of extra-super name-brand awesomesauce.

As fun as it’s been to retain the grumpy perma-bachelor status in my life, especially this past decade, the next step must be made.  Shockingly enough, I’m actually ready for it.  I want to work through all of life’s problems with her, and she does with me.  It’s just a natural step.

Oh, sure, I’ve had my gripes about the institution of marriage in the past.  With my opinionated self, doing away with those views on it isn’t likely to happen.  But that doesn’t mean that the concept of getting married isn’t both logical and requisite in my situation.  If I know I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, it only stands to reason that I should take the vows with her and let the world know about it, yes?

Anyway, it makes sense.  My feet, as it were, are nice and warm. ;)

Few hours to go.  She’s off to get her hair did, and I’m going to start prepping myself.

Big Day.  Very Excited. :)

More later.

The LTK Christmas 2009 Post

Currently listening to Sprkly play christmas songs on the flute while the kidlets play with their great grandma in the living room.  Meanwhile, I’m burning down the battery on my laptop in the attempt to preserve it’s charge capacity for later.

Sprkly’s flute playing is magnificent.  I’m actually in awe how well she can read music and play right along to it, especially being out of practice on full pieces as she is.  It’s virtually flawless.  I’m trying to type as quietly possible while she plays because I don’t want to distract her.  I want to hit record on my laptop and just capture some of it, but I know the acoustics of the room and the laptop mic just wouldn’t do it any justice at all.  Gotta be here to experience it.

Kids are looking forward to Xmas morning, and I’m looking forward to my first time really playing Santa for a couple munchkins.

————-

Christmas Morning.  Santa came and gave a few presents each to the good little girls.  They each got drawing sets and school-type supplies, as well as clothes and stickers and stuffed animals and night-lights and dolls and… all very exciting stuff.  They’re having a good morning.

Their father is coming to pick them up in a matter of hours, after which Sprkly and I take the trip out to my dad’s house and possibly out to say hi to my mom and grandparents.  Then it’s home again and holing up and hiding for the weekend.

Strictly speaking, I really ought to go into work at some point this weekend, there’s still plenty of crap to do.  I just don’t have it in me right now.  But I might regret it on Monday if I don’t.  I hate that kind of weighted stress.  Life is ass.

Okay, back to Christmas.  Good times.  Snow is on the ground and I’m out in the country and the kids are having fun.  Hopefully they’ll hold off the cranky factor until after their dad comes to get them.  (heh heh)

Sprkly’s mom is currently making a ham for lunch, then later at my dad’s there’s going to be enough finger-food to feed a utensil-deprived army.  That means ham-rolls.  That means heaven.  (if you know now what a ham-roll is, you have yet to truly live)

More later today… possibly later tonight.

—————

Couldn’t go to my dad’s today because the flu ravaged the entire household over there.  So Sprkly and I ended up back here, at the homestead, drinking.

Well, we made the attempt to go see Avatar 3D with the free tix I have, but we took one look at the lines for the movie and said “um… no.”  We’ll try again tomorrow.  We thought “super-crowded theater or vodka at home with gridstream.”  The latter won.

Merry fuckin’ Christmas, y’all.  I say that in a non-denominational non-specific-religion kind of way.  G’night.

(today was a VERY good day)

More later.

Tis Really the Season

Okay, so it’s Christmas Eve.  Currently I’m being bad, in that I’m posting a blog in preparation for the night away from home, while Sprkly is actually preparing for a night away from home… whilst simultaneously dealing with the kidlets, no less.  In my own defense, I did ask if there was anything I could possibly help with, and she couldn’t really point anything out.  So yeah, I’ll pay.

Today is certainly going better than yesterday went.  Stands to reason, naturally, since I’m home right now and worked for 16 hours yesterday.

The weather is getting a little cranky outside, and we have a long hour-plus trip to make in a matter of minutes.

Just got the call, couple things I do need to do on the way out the door.  So okay, not long to text-babble.

Been spending the past two weeks really thinking on storylines and restructuring, so much so that I’m subscribed to a couple writing/publishing e-newsletters, and I’m seriously considering a couple fiction-authoring help guides.  The snowflake method is looking VERY promising to my style of writing, so I’m going to start with that.  I really, badly want to get published, and I need to really seriously re-outline and re-build one of my stories from the ground up.  Ideas are aplenty, I just need the Craft.

Okay, rambling over, gotta get to rushing and finishing up here.

Happy Yule, y’all.

More later.