http://bit.ly/mR4imR

I normally try to keep my topics here about all things games and digital goodness but this is just a great cause.  This is my wife’s first attempt to raise money for the American Cancer Society.  Her mother is a recent cancer survivor and just a great person at that.  If you are feeling charitable in these hard times it would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks again.

I don’t get it… We go to the doctor when we are sick.  We go to a car care center when we are having car trouble.  We go to specialists whenever we are dealing with something that is clearly beyond our intelligences or window of time.  Sure I can change the oil in my car but it would make a mess all over my driveway, cost me $100 in supplies and take me half the day.  Or I can take it into the shop and have my car back in under an hour.  This is something that we all accept, that we don’t know everything or simply don’t have the time in our lives to care about every little detail that spans the vastness of earth.  This basic human law holds up right until you cross into politics, where suddenly everyone is an expert.

I recently posted a link about a well intended movement.  As popular as it has been, I am sure that you’ve seen it already.  http://www.change.org/petition​s/create-caylees-law is an online petition who’s real intent is simply to raise awareness of some issues that we may or may not have in our legal system.  Determining the validity of this petition is up to lawmakers.  We can all agree that American law is not perfect, and that it will never be.  We can continue to fix leaks and make new leaks by removing dated laws that are supersede by new laws.  The process is constantly evolving and is frankly above most of our heads.

For some reason, individuals came down on my post like Hellfire.  Yes, over an online community petition created by a non-lawmaker as a suggestion to review our current laws on this matter; this is thing that you want to get puffy about?!?

I hate that when it comes to politics, everyone has “the answer”.  I honestly do believe that it is something that is taught to us, not something that we have inherent within us.  We don’t grow up with an obsessed need to push our own views onto others, or insist that there is only one way.  We don’t grow up with a growing sense of ownership over every idea that is pushed into our heads, we are raised that way; there is a difference.  I was one of the lucky ones.  I was raised in a home where politics was never a topic of discussion and we were free to accept that perhaps there is a little truth in both sides.  I was blessed to be raised with an open mind and understand that not all intentions are bad.

For those who think that the law can be perfect for everyone, and not just your own person gain, I pity you.  If a building was burning down and you only had time to save your wife or your child who would you save?  There are thousands of moral questions beyond the severity of saving the life of just one person and lawmakers are forced to make the hard choices every day.  So for the sake of all that is holy in your life, stop pretending that you know everything about politics.  If you did, you wouldn’t be playing armchair politician, you would be out there trying to make a difference even if it meant moving to a small town where you had a chance to win your way into office.

To those who wish to fight about politics; I don’t come to your house and tell you how to wipe your back side, so stop telling the people around you about your strongly suggestive and baseless arguments about how the world should be.  We have people who have dedicated their lives to specializing in lawmaking, so stop thinking that you are any better at their job.

I’ve been away from my PC for a few days now. I sometimes like to take time away to rethink, reevaluate my current situation. It’s no surprise to any loyal readers that the months of March through May are always tough for me. It’s a recurring theme I suppose you could say.

The funny part of this entry is that; after 1 month of no entries and a long time to think. What you are reading is all I have to say. I did write pages and pages of outlandish ramblings. I did write paragraphs that detailed my woes. The problem is that it all seemed like a garbled mess of thoughts. More importantly, that is how I feel; a garbled mess of thoughts.

I haven’t been able to focus since closing the company. XBLIG has proven to be useless as a business model that only serves hobbyists and one-man-army development houses. PC has never been a platform that has brought me fortune. On top of it all, I have struggled with the same stupid problem for nearly a decade if not more. I have never gotten over the art hump.

As much as I love to be in the company of others, I am not what most people would call a social butterfly. I dislike small talk, often forgoing the usual rituals of conversation. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy an engaging conversation. It’s just that most conversations I don’t find to be very engaging. With that said, it is difficult to find a compatible development partner. It has become so difficult, in fact, that I’ve simply given up. After 10 years, I have officially reached the definition of insanity…

On a gaming forum, someone made a comment that I found to be fairly personal. We were debating some fairly well known issues that programmers and artists don’t generally see eye-to-eye. No surprise there. I have however always prided myself in being on equal ground with every member of my development team, be it programmer or artist. I have a huge respect for the amazing work that each person puts forth, the sacrifices they make to reach the level of skill that they have. I know this because I have done the same. I have worked very hard, my entire adult life, to be a better person than the man I was the day before. It is exhausting some days, but what this person said to me made me pause. It affected me more than I thought it would have. She implied that if things aren’t working out after countless tries that, “maybe it’s you.”

There are some things that you just can’t change. Personality is like an incurable disease, it’s something that you are born with. It can be managed with proper treatment but it will never go away. Perhaps my quirks have played a larger role in my life than I am aware of.

Her words were harsh, and crossed the line of debate into personal attacks. Normally I brush off the trolls but I fear that she is probably right. I had convinced myself that; in all these years, it was just bad luck, poor matches, and incompatible personalities. Maybe the answer is much simpler than chemistry, maybe it’s just me.

Walking into the doctor’s office that day, I felt numb. After having watched several YouTube videos of the procedure I felt confident of what I was walking into, or so I thought. Sitting in the waiting room, I waited and waited with my wife at my side. They were running an hour behind schedule, just long enough to let the excitement waiver and the dread set in. We talked about a life without glasses or contacts and my wife contemplated getting the procedure herself. Content with using me as a test subject, she agreed to sit in the viewing room during the procedure.

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I don’t normally get into the rubbage that we all hold so dear in our hearts, politics. My personal perspective on the matter is that it’s all the same. There is a persistent cycle that you can’t control but the man in charge always takes the credit, good or bad. I will say this much. I have my theories about the Republican party; they may not be a stupid as we often credit them as being.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Looking at this situation through Republican eyes, we are in the worst-case scenario that we’ve seen since the 20′s; war, unemployment, growing national debt, and more. There is absolutely nothing that could be done in a few short years but stay the course. Election time comes and McCain makes the worst pick in election history as his running mate. I’m starting to think that he did it on purpose, losing gracefully, and with a fist in the air to give hope for the next election year. Republicans dangle some rotting carrots in Obama’s face and he bites; hook, line, and sinker. Obama is now signing a pretty ridiculous bill that is obviously scewed to the rich, based on some weak promises and hand shakes that they will go easy on some of his agendas… Good luck with that. Looks like we’ll be back in the old Republican saddle in just two short years. Maybe it’s time to start investing in cattle and oil again.

Did you ever have one of those days when you just didn’t feel like yourself?  Or maybe a day that ended with your spirits a little lower than that same morning?  I am having one of those moments right now.  I don’t know why, but I just don’t feel inspired to do anything.  Well… I do know why, but they are so many reasons that it is hard to pick just one.

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I am a salaried employee for the government… Well, my employer is a government contractor, which pretty much translates to my checks coming from Uncle Sam, and the government wants a punch card for your labored hours.  It’s an old convention that likely spawned out of some kind of factory union, and has stayed the course for decades now.  For the same reason that it is illegal to drive with an un-caged bear in Missouri (caged is okay), or illegal to take a lion to the theater in Maryland, or why it’s illegal to serve wine in a tea cup if you live in Kansas; just because.  Sometimes old laws are like bad habits that you just can’t seem to get rid of.

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1. My router burns out, so I buy one from Amazon.
2. It’s defective, so I return it and purchase a Belkin from Best Buy.
3. Belkin sucks and I will never buy their stuff again.  I return it and get a Netgear router, which thankfully works.
4. The switch/hub in my home office insists on transmitting at 10Mbps even though it’s a 10/100 and I have nothing but 100Mbps cards.  So I bypass the switch and only have my server on a hard wire at the moment.
5. My Xbox 360 gets the read ring of death…
6. I sent it away and just got my Xbox 360 back from Microsoft, about 2 weeks later.  I had to uninstall and re-install all of my games and software, like Netflix.
7. My home server just burned a stick of RAM, corrupted a hard drive, and has an on-board video card that doesn’t seem to work anymore.  I suspect viruses at play, though I never download anything on that machine.  It’s strictly a media/data server with Apache for web access.

…looking for my boot disk to see how much damage has been done.  I am so tired of technology some days…

At least once a month, I get an email or feed about the growth potential of the gaming market.  Sometimes the market might be casual and other times it might be discussing the resurgence of PC games.  What I can’t stand however, is when these articles profess by example.

“Look at WoW, and how many users they have!”
“Look at Farmville!  They are swimming in hundred dollar bills!”
“Look at that 1 guy that made $1M from an iPhone Tetris clone!”

I can’t stand it when we just stare at the #1 spot like it is any kind of reflection on the genre, as a whole.  Okay, look at those successes; celebrate them, but don’t bet the farm on the fact that these companies happen to strike a lucky break or hit the market at a perfect time.  Once the momentum is in their favor, reaching #1 seems almost inevitable.  But what about the rest of the industry?  Take a peek at the #2 MMO on the market and you will see a stark difference in active users.  The same goes for casual developers other than Zynga; have a gander at those mildly impressive numbers.

I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie Downer here, but I think that it is important to look at the entire upper bracket, and not just the #1 success.  Obtaining a statistical Median is a better estimate of what to expect than a Max function.  When we look at the Median MMO only sustaining a hundred thousand users or so, it puts your success rate into more perspective.